ations. When the
meal was cooked, he coolly produced a knife, selected a clean bit of
hemlock bark, and helped himself. Then he lit a pipe, and gazed keenly
about him. The buckskin interested him.

"No good," said he, feeling of its texture.

Thorpe laughed. "Not very," he confessed.

"Good," continued the Indian, touching lightly his own moccasins.

"What you do?" he inquired after a long silence, punctuated by the puffs
of tobacco.

"Hunt; trap; fish," replied Thorpe with equal sententiousness.

"Good," concluded the Indian, after a ruminative pause.

That night he slept on the ground. Next day he made a better shelter
than Thorpe's in less than half the time; and was off hunting before
the sun was an hour high. He was armed with an old-fashioned smooth-bore
muzzle-loader; and Thorpe was astonished, after he had become better
acquainted with his new companion's methods, to find that he hunted deer
with fine bird shot. The Indian never expected to kill or even mortally
wound his game; but he would follow for miles the blood drops caused by
his little wounds, until the animals in sheer exhaustion allowed him to
approach close enough for a dispatching blow. At two o'clock he returned
with a small buck, tied scientifically together for toting, with the
waste parts cut away, but every ounce of utility retained.

"I show," said the Indian:--and he did. Thorpe learned the Indian tan;
of what use are the hollow shank bones; how the spinal cord is the
toughest, softest, and most pliable sewing-thread known.

The Indian appeared to intend making the birch-knoll his permanent
headquarters. Thorpe was at first a little suspicious of his new
companion, but the man appeared scrupulously honest, was never
intrusive, and even seemed genuinely desirous of teaching the white
little tricks of the woods brought to their perfection by the Indian
alone. He ended by liking him. The two rarely spoke. They merely sat
near each other, and smoked. One evening the Indian suddenly remarked:

"You look 'um tree."

"What's that?" cried Thorpe, startled.

"You no hunter, no trapper. You look 'um tree, for make 'um lumber."

The white had not begun as yet his explorations. He did not dare until
the return of the logging crew or the passing of someone in authority at
the up-river camp, for he wished first to establish in their minds the
innocence of his intentions.

"What makes you think that, Charley?" he asked.

"You good man in wo