"I don't care, I can't go back if you'll let me stay with you."
Nathan readily adapted himself to the ranger's way of living, helping him in the cabin work and that of the clearing. At intervals, through his friend, he sent his mother tidings of his welfare and learned of her own. Through the same way, and his mother's ready assistance, he gained possession of his other clothes--a tow shirt, a blue frock, a pair of gray breeches, and two pairs of thick woolen stockings, as large a wardrobe as most backwoods dwellers could boast of.
"Your mother stuck this out of the loft winder as I come away," said Job one day, handing him his father's cherished gun.
"Oh, I am glad to get this, and see, it is longer'n I be yet. But I'm growing, for I measured when Toombs put this up loft so't he could hang his gun on the hooks over the fireplace. See, I can hold it at arm's length long enough to see to shoot," and he stretched out the long-barrelled gun with pride.
"Toombs was out a burnin' log heaps," Job went on. "She says he's dretful narvous an' jumps at every sound. I ruther guess he's gittin' his pay as he goes along, my boy."
In preparation for the fall trapping, which was the ranger's chief dependence, the two, accompanied by Gabriel, made long ranges through the forest, marking their line by blazed trees, to build deadfalls for martens on the upland and for mink along the brook and larger streams, and larger traps for martens, otters, fisher, and beaver, and when the leaves began to fall they daily gathered their furry harvest. Day after day, too, the woods rang with Gabe's deep, melodious voice as he drove the deer to water. Many an adventure on lake or in forest spiced the half wild life, and the loving trust of the old man so sweetened it that time glided swiftly past. Many a lesson of woodcraft the boy also learned, as well as the priceless one of love and charity to all created things, if Indians and Toombs were excepted. Perhaps, in time, their turn for forbearance would come.
One day late in the fall Nathan ventured to the Fort, as much to visit the garrison boys, for whose companionship he often longed in his isolation, as to carry some fine partridges to the commandant's lady. He had shot them himself with his father's gun, in the use of which he was becoming expert.