rap just before I seen the moose.
It's funny you didn't see it." Connie answered nothing, and as the man
devoured a huge breakfast without asking his rescuers to join him, he
continued to mutter and growl about his lost marten. Daylight was
breaking and Connie, bottling his wrath behind tight-pressed lips, rose
abruptly, and prepared to depart.

"Whur you goin'?" asked the man, his cheeks distended with food. "You
lay around here soakin' up heat all night; looks like you could anyways
cut a little wood an' help worsh these dishes! An', say, don't you want
to buy some moose meat? I'll sell you all you want fer two-bits a
pound, an' cut it yerself."

For a moment Connie saw red. His fists clenched and he swallowed hard
but once more his sense of humour asserted itself, and looking the man
squarely in the eye he burst into a roar of laughter, while 'Merican
Joe, who possessed neither Connie's self-restraint nor his sense of
humour, launched into an unflattering tirade of jumbled Indian, English,
and jargon, that, could a single word of it have been understood, would
have goaded even the craven _chechakos_ to warfare.

Two hours later, as they sat in their cozy tent, pitched five miles down
the river, and devoured their breakfast, Connie grinned at his
companion.

"Big difference in men--even in _chechakos_, ain't there, Joe?"

"Humph," grunted the Indian.

"No one else within two hundred miles of here--his partner crippled so
he never could have found him if he tried, and he never would have
tried--a few more hours and he would have been dead--we come along and
find him--and he not only don't offer us a meal, but accuses us of
stealing his marten--and offers to _sell_ us moose meat--at two-bits a
pound! I wish some of the men I know could have the handling of those
birds for about a month!"

"Humph! If mos' w'ite men I know got to han'le um dey ain' goin' live no
mont'--you bet!"

"Anyway," laughed the boy, "we've sure learned the difference between
_nerve_ and _brass_!"

CHAPTER V

THE PLAGUE FLAG IN THE SKY

It was nearly noon of the day following the departure of Connie Morgan
and 'Merican Joe from the camp of the two _chechakos_.

The mountains had been left behind, and even the foothills had flattened
to low, rolling ridges which protruded irregularly into snow-covered
marshes among which the bed of the frozen river looped interminably. No
breath of air stirred the scrub willows along the bank,