frontiersman. They read it with unmoved faces, and tossed it aside
with a more than ordinarily rough joke or oath. Thorpe understood
their reticence. It was a part of his own nature. He felt more
than ever akin to these men.

As swamper he had more or less to do with a cant-hook in helping
the teamsters roll the end of the log on the little "dray." He
soon caught the knack. Towards Christmas he had become a fairly
efficient cant-hook man, and was helping roll the great sticks of
timber up the slanting skids. Thus always intelligence counts,
especially that rare intelligence which resolves into the analytical
and the minutely observing.

On Sundays Thorpe fell into the habit of accompanying old Jackson
Hines on his hunting expeditions. The ancient had been raised in
the woods. He seemed to know by instinct the haunts and habits of
all the wild animals, just as he seemed to know by instinct when
one of his horses was likely to be troubled by the colic. His
woodcraft was really remarkable.

So the two would stand for hours in the early morning and late
evening waiting for deer on the edges of the swamps. They haunted
the runways during the middle of the day. On soft moccasined feet
they stole about in the evening with a bull's-eye lantern fastened
on the head of one of them for a "jack." Several times they
surprised the wolves, and shone the animals' eyes like the
scattered embers of a camp fire.

Thorpe learned to shoot at a deer's shoulders rather than his heart,
how to tell when the animal had sustained a mortal hurt from the