In the morning 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 ’tall.  But der’s breed familee call Lachlan, eef she’s not move ’way somew’ere.  Dat familee she’s talk Henglish, and ver’ fond of preacher.  S’pose we go mak leetle veesit hon dem Lachlan, eh?  Ah theenk us two feller we’re gon’ beet dat water weeth de paddle een de morneeng.”