and was a constant joy to Thorpe.
His enthusiasms were so whole-souled; his delight so perpetual; his
interest so fresh! The most trivial expedients of woods lore seemed
to him wonderful. A dozen times a day he exclaimed in admiration or
surprise over some bit of woodcraft practiced by Thorpe or one of the
Indians.

"Do you mean to say you have lived here six weeks and only brought in
what you could carry on your backs!" he cried.

"Sure," Thorpe replied.

"Harry, you're wonderful! I've got a whole canoe load, and imagined I
was travelling light and roughing it. You beat Robinson Crusoe! He had a
whole ship to draw from."

"My man Friday helps me out," answered Thorpe, laughingly indicating
Injin Charley.

Nearly a week passed before Wallace managed to kill a deer. The animals
were plenty enough; but the young man's volatile and eager attention
stole his patience. And what few running shots offered, he missed,
mainly because of buck fever. Finally, by a lucky chance, he broke
a four-year-old's neck, dropping him in his tracks. The hunter was
delighted. He insisted on doing everything for himself--cruel hard work
it was too--including the toting and skinning. Even the tanning he had
a share in. At first he wanted the hide cured, "with the hair on." Injin
Charley explained that the fur would drop out. It was the wrong season
of the year for pelts.

"Then we'll have buckskin and I'll get a buckskin shirt out of it,"
suggested Wallace.

Injin Charley agreed. One day Wallace returned from fishing in the pool
to find that the Indian had cut out the garment, and was already sewing
it together.

"Oh!" he cried, a little disappointed, "I wanted to see it done!"

Injin Charley merely grunted. To make a buckskin shirt requires the
hides of three deer. Charley had supplied the other two, and wished to
keep the young man from finding it out.

Wallace assumed the woods life as a man would assume an unaccustomed
garment. It sat him well, and he learned fast, but he was always
conscious of it. He liked to wear moccasins, and a deer knife; he liked
to cook his own supper, or pluck the fragrant hemlock browse for his
pillow. Always he seemed to be trying to realize and to savor fully the
charm, the picturesqueness, the romance of all that he was doing and
seeing. To Thorpe these things were a part of everyday life; matters
of expedient or necessity. He enjoyed them, but subconsciously, as one
enjoys an environment. Wallace