“If it hurts you bad, just say the word and I’ll go clean out to Harlow and fetch in a doctor,” he offered.
“No!” exclaimed Andy. “It ain’t my knee hurts me, but it’s layin’ down on the job to-day, and maybe to-morrow, and leavin’ all the work to you. That’s what riles me.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” the youth reassured him. “I am able and willing, and you’ll be right as rain in a few days. Now I’ll do a mile or two of the south line and be back in time to fry pancakes for supper.”
He was as good as his word; and, later, his pancakes proved to be as good as any his partner had ever mixed and fried. He told of his visit to the Conley cabin, and the old man agreed with him that it would be a real pleasure to hand Jim Conley just what he deserved. After supper, Young Dan read a complete story, in irregular fragments, and his partner talked a bookful.
Andy’s knee was worse next morning, but he did not say so. He admitted that it didn’t seem to be any more supple, spoke hopefully of another day’s rest and a little more bear’s grease as being all that it required, and again referred to the fight of fifty years ago in terms of regret and acrimony. The truth was that the old fellow had rheumatism; and he knew what it was; and he had felt it before, once or twice a year, in the very same place. Furthermore, the gritty old sportsman was too vain to admit the truth. Of course he had fought with a man from Quebec fifty years ago, in a lumber-camp on Tobique River, and twisted a knee in the heat of the encounter—but if you had put him on oath and asked him to lay a finger on the knee he had wrenched on that distant occasion, he couldn’t have done it.
“I hope you walloped that man from Quebec,” said Young Dan.
“I sure did,” replied Andy, brightening. “He was counted a smart fighter even for them days—but I was the snag he busted himself on.”
“I betcher! Well, I’ll be back in time to cook dinner, so you just keep quiet while I’m gone.”
“No, you take yer grub along and I’ll have supper ready when you git back. I ain’t a cripple yet.”
Young Dan put some food in his pockets and went about his day’s work, armed as usual with axe and rifle. He set out on the line of traps that ran crookedly almost due west, for this was the one that had been longest neglected. Andy Mace had been along it last, just before the forty-eight-hour storm, and now the tracks of his snowshoes were buried deep. Young Dan kept to his course without difficulty, however, though the line was not blazed. He worked easily by signs that would have meant nothing to a city man. His guides were certain trees and bushes and humps and hollows; and the wilderness was full to crowding of such things. So much for the line of general direction—but some of the traps lay several score of yards to the right and left of that line. A modest blaze had been cut in the bark of tree or sapling at several of these points of deflection.
