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Updated: May 12, 2025
"He's a brick, isn't he?" remarked Bob, as he looked after him. "You bet he is," agreed Joe emphatically. "All wool and a yard wide," was Herb's tribute, as the boys, having gathered up their books, which in the excitement had been thrown wherever they happened to fall, resumed their walk toward their homes, leaving Buck and his mates glowering after them.
Neal sat as if paralyzed. Dol well, Dol lost his head a bit. A deep, throaty gulp, which was a weak reproduction of the sound made by the moose, as if the boy and the animal were sharing the same throes of excitement, burst from him. There was a rattle and struggle of his vocal organs, which in another second would have become a shout, had not Herb's masterful left hand gripped him.
So did Herb's, and lit with a new, whimsical hope. "A spruce partridge!" hissed the guide, his voice thrilling even in its stealthy whisper. "That's luck dead sure! The Injuns say, 'The red eye never tells a lie;" and the woodsman pointed out the strip of bare red skin above the beady eyes of the bird, which cuddled itself on its branch, and looked down at them unfrighted.
Cyrus and the Farrars, while they looked upon him, felt that, even if they had never heard Herb's exclamation, they would have had no difficulty in identifying the creature, remembering that story which had thrilled them by the camp-fire at Millinokett. It was Herb Heal's traitor chum the half-breed, Cross-eyed Chris.
"Of course there are other times," said Joe, while Jimmy was still struggling to find a crushing answer to Herb's attack. "I'm surprised at you, Herb! How about all the times he's thinking of getting up and eating'" "Gosh, that was a bad mistake," said Herb, with mock seriousness. "I did you an injustice, Doughnuts, and I apologize."
P'raps that was why I didn't let go of Chris in that big blizzard 'till I landed him at camp. But I hope" here Herb's shoulders shook with heaving laughter, and the cooking utensils in his pack jingled an accompaniment "I hope I ain't like a miserly fellow we had in our lumber-camp. He was awful pious about some things, and awful mean about others.
In half an hour the band was again on the march, the business of breaking camp being a swift one. The tent was on Herb's shoulders; and naught was left to mark the visit of man to the humming stream but a bed of withering boughs on which the lynx might sleep to-night, and a few dying embers which the guide had thrashed out with his feet. No halt was made until four o'clock in the afternoon.
However, as the train rounded a curve and the village was lost to view, they regained their usual spirits. "It's a wonder you boys didn't miss the train altogether," said Agnes, Herb's sister. "I don't see why you didn't hurry a little. We were on pins and needles all the time until you showed up."
At their first entrance, as their bodies interfered with the broad light streaming through the cabin-door, Chris had lifted towards them a scared, shrinking stare. But, apparently, he took them for the shadows which walked in the dreams of his delirium. Not a ray of recognition lightened the blankness of that stare as Herb's big figure passed before him.
Cheered and invigorated by a sumptuous supper and breakfast of broiled caribou-steaks, supplemented by Herb's lightest cakes, and carrying some of the meat with them as provision for the way, the campers accomplished their backward tramp to the log camp on Millinokett Lake in fulness of strength and spirits.
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