“Why, you see, he’s a man that’s runnin’ a fur farm over this way,” Teddy explained. “He raises skunks for their skins. He was taken with me when he dropped in at our camp, and told me he wisht I’d come over and stay the winter out with him.”
“And were you on your way to his place when this happened?” asked Jerry.
The injured boy nodded his head in the affirmative. Frank was now down on his knees and starting to remove the legging. He meant to take a look at the wound, both to ascertain how serious it was, and perhaps do what he could to alleviate the suffering of the other.
“Did your uncle send you over to Old Joe’s?” he asked Teddy.
“Bill Nackerson isn’t really my uncle, you know, only a relation of some kind; and I’m right sorry now I ever asked him to take me on a hunting trip. I’ve led a dog’s life of it. After he knocked me down after supper last night I just couldn’t stand it any longer.”
“Then you ran away; is that what you mean?” inquired Jerry, deeply interested by this time and noting a bruise under Teddy’s eye.
“Just what I did,” muttered the boy. “After what I heard Bill Nackerson saying, I got the notion in my head that I wanted to cut out of there. Even a skunk farm couldn’t be _quite_ so bad as he made it for me; anyhow, I was willin’ to take the chances. But that trap nearly finished me. What if you hadn’t heard me yelling?”
“You’d have had a hard spell of it, that’s sure,” Frank admitted. As it was below the freezing point at the time, he fancied poor Teddy might not have lived to see another day.
After he had examined the wound and managed to bind it up, he began to figure on what could be done. Plainly the deer hunt must be given up for that day. It seemed to be ill-fated, seeing that so many postponements were necessary.
Still, there was always a chance that on the way home they would pick up some partridges, which would have to do.
“Do you have any notion how far away this Old Joe’s place might be?” Frank asked Teddy, thinking that their best plan would be to get the boy there if it could be managed.
“I got an idea it was close by here,” replied Teddy. “He told me after I struck the little ravine on the trail it wasn’t more’n a quarter of a mile off.”