But the boy just
ran on and on, totally oblivious to their glances.
He told them of his lonely days in the woods shack, when Old Tom went
down river and was three or four weeks in returning; he dwelt upon
blissful days in the spring when he had been allowed to play a man's
part in the small drives which he and Old Tom and the "Jenkinses"
began, and which Old Tom and the Jenkinses alone saw through to market
in Morrison. He touched lightly and inconsequentially upon certain
days when Old Tom would hang for hours over an old tin box filled with
soiled and ink-smeared memoranda, periods which were always followed by
days of moody silence and a week or more of "lessons" in a tattered and
thumbed reader which the woodsman had brought up-river--lessons as
painful and laborious to Old Tom as they were delightful to the starved
mentality of the pupil. And Old Tom, the boy explained, was pretty
likely to be "lickered up fer quite a spell" after such a session which
invariably began with an exploration of the battered tin box.
The boy told Caleb of days and nights on the trail--boasted
unconsciously of Old Tom's super-cunning with trap and deadfall, and
even poison bait. And that brought him to the beautifully oiled bear
trap which he had left outside the door.
"I brung Samanthy along with me," he stated. "I brung her just because
somehow I kind-a thought mebby Old Tom'd be glad if I did.
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