ected would ever take the least interest in
shooting, because his nature has seemed so mild, and sissy-like--I
even heard him declare he wanted to make a try and see what he could
do. Owned up that his father used to be a great hunter years ago; but
that he guessed he'd inherited his mother's gentle disposition; while
his hobble-dehoy sister she wants to play baseball, hockey, tennis,
and those kinds of games all the while. And Thad, I think we ought to
encourage that idea in Smithy. It may be the making of him, if once he
gets waked up."

Thad thought the same way. He knew the boy possessed amiable traits;
but he had always been given too much to dress, and the little things
of life, at which most fellows look with scorn and contempt. He must
have the edges roughened a little, if he was ever going to hold his
own when he went to college, or out in the wide world, where "sissy"
boys are held up to derision.

"Nothing to hinder our hanging over here a bit, and seeing what the
next move of this cannon cracker is going to be," he remarked.

"And the hunting?" asked Allan.

"Why, a party could start out right from camp here, leaving enough
behind to defend the place, of course, and keep Kracker from taking
Aleck away by sheer force, if he did have the nerve enough to come
here," the scoutmaster replied, after thinking over the matter for a
brief time.

"Of course we ought to let the guide go along with the boys; for I
wouldn't like to trust them alone in the mountains," Allan suggested.

"That's right," added Thad. "Some of them seem to have a weakness for
getting into all sorts of trouble from the word go. We can let one
party start out, and after they come back, if they've had any luck,
and the air's cleared some around here, why, another might take a
different direction. You said Step Hen was wild to get a big horn,
didn't you, Allan?"

"Never saw him so set on anything; but then that's his way always. When
he gets a notion in that brain box of his, you can't knock it out with a
sledge hammer. And just now it seems that a real Rocky Mountain sheep
with the big horns beats any old grizzly all hollow, with Step Hen."

"All right, we'll have to let him be one of the first party. He did so
splendidly when he jumped on the back of the Fox, and captured him,
he thinks, that some reward ought to be coming his way. And there's
Smithy, I'll see that he has his chance to try a shot. Giraffe could
lend him his gun; or Bob