“Mastodon?” inquired the Boy.

Mac shook his head.

“I’ll bet my boots,” says Mac, “it’s an Elephas primigenius; and if I’m right, it’s ‘a find,’ young man.  Where’d you stumble on him?”

“Over yonder.”  The Boy leaned his head against the lower bunk.

“Where?” “Across the divide.  The bones have been dragged up on to some rocks.  I saw the end of a tusk stickin’ up out of the snow, and I scratched down till I found—­” He indicated the trophy between them on the floor.

“Tusk?  How long?”

“’Bout nine feet.”  “We’ll go and get it to-morrow.”

No answer from the Boy.

“Early, hey?”

“Well—­a—­it’s a good ways.”

“What if it is?”

“Oh, I don’t mind.  I’d do more ’n that for you, Mac.”

There was something unnatural in such devotion.  Mac looked up.  But the Boy was too tired to play the big fish any longer.  “I wonder if you’ll do something for me.”  He watched with a sinking heart Mac’s sharp uprising from the worshipful attitude.  It was not like any other mortal’s gradual, many-jointed getting-up; it was more like the sudden springing out of the big blade of a clasp-knife.

“What’s your game?”

“Oh, I ain’t got any game,” said the Boy desperately; “or, if I have, there’s mighty little fun in it.  However, I don’t know as I want to walk ten hours again in this kind o’ weather with an elephant on my back just for—­for the poetry o’ the thing.”  He laid his chapped hands on the side board of the bunk and pulled himself up on his legs.

“What’s your game?” repeated Mac sternly, as the Boy reached the door.

“What’s the good o’ talkin’?” he answered; but he paused, turned, and leaned heavily against the rude lintel.

“Course, I know you’d be shot before you’d do it, but what I’d like, would be to hear you say you wouldn’t kick up a hell of a row if Father Wills happens in to the House-Warmin’.”

Mac jerked his set face, fire-reddened, towards the fossil-finder; and he, without waiting for more, simply opened the door, and heavily footed it back to the Big Cabin.

* * * * *

Next morning when Mac came to breakfast he heard that the Boy had had his grub half an hour before the usual time, and was gone off on some tramp again.  Mac sat and mused.

O’Flynn came in with a dripping bucket, and sat down to breakfast shivering.

“Which way’d he go?”

“The Boy?  Down river.”

“Sure he didn’t go over the divide?”

O’Flynn was sure.  He’d just been down to the water-hole, and in the faint light he’d seen the Boy far down on the river-trail “leppin” like a hare in the direction of the Roosian mission.”

“Goin’ to meet ... a ...  Nicholas?”

“Reckon so,” said the Colonel, a bit ruffled.  “Don’t believe he’ll run like a hare very far with his feet all blistered.”