g Mike went to work again. He showed Thompson how to
arrange a mattress of hemlock boughs on the bed frame. It was a simple
enough makeshift, soft and springy when Thompson spread his bedding over
it. Then Mike superintended the final disposition of his supplies so
that there would be some semblance of order instead of an
indiscriminately mixed pile in which the article wanted was always at
the bottom. Incidentally he strove to impart to Thompson certain
rudimentary principles in the cooking of simple food. He illustrated the
method of mixing a batch of baking-powder bread, and how to parboil salt
pork before cooking, explained to him the otherwise mysterious
expansion of rice and beans and dried apples in boiling water, all of
which Breyette was shrewd enough to realize that Thompson knew nothing
about. He had a ready ear for instructions but a poor understanding of
these matters. So Mike reiterated out of his experience of camp cooking,
and Thompson tried to remember.

Meanwhile, MacDonald, who had vanished into the woods with a rifle in
his hand at daybreak, came back about noon with a deer's carcass slung
on his sturdy back. This, after it was skinned, the two breeds cut into
pieces the thickness of a man's wrist and as long as they could make
them, rubbed well with salt and hung on a stretched line in the sun. The
purpose and preparation of "jerky" was duly elucidated to Thompson;
rather profitless explanation, for he had no rifle, nor any knowledge
whatever in the use of firearms.

"Bagosh, dat man Ah'm wonder w'ere hees raise," Mike said to his partner
once when Thompson was out of earshot. "Hees ask more damfool question
een ten minute dan a man hees answer een t'ree day. W'at hees gon' do
all by heemself here Ah don' know 'tall, Mac. Bagosh, no!"

By midafternoon all that was possible in the way of settling their man
had been accomplished, even to a pile of firewood sufficient to last him
two weeks. MacDonald contributed that after one brief exhibition of
Thompson's axemanship. Short of remaining on the spot like a pair of
swarthy guardian angels there was no further help they could give him,
and their solicitude did not run to that beneficent extreme. And so
about three o'clock Mike Breyette surveyed the orderly cabin, the pile
of chopped wood, and the venison drying in the sun, and said briskly:

"Well, M'sieu Thompson, Ah theenk we go show you hon Lone Moose village
now. Dere's one w'ite man Ah don' know