and to cook the dinner they were to carry with them. Oscar took down his spare rifle from where it hung upon the wall and gave it to Hugh.
“You may have a chance at a partridge or even a deer,” he said. “You had better take it along.”
They walked down past the spring into the thickly wooded ravine with its little stream that separated them from Jasper Rock. At one point they could look up and see even more plainly than from the hill above, the Pirate’s cabin. It was a tumbledown log building with a few rude outhouses and ragged fences. A black hen rose suddenly from a tuft of weeds at their feet and ran squawking up the hill toward her unlovely home.
“I hardly know how his stock keeps alive while he is gone,” observed Oscar, “but the creatures are all half wild, anyway, and used to ranging the woods and foraging for themselves.”
After they had tramped some distance, Oscar decreed that they were to separate.
“See,” he said, showing Hugh the map, “here are these two little streams flowing on each side
