"Many partridge?" he asked.

"Lots," replied Welton; "but the country's too confounded big to hunt
them in. Like to hunt?"

"Nothing better," said Bob.

After a time the road climbed out of the swamp into the hardwoods, full
of warmth and light and new young green, and the voices of many
creatures; with the soft, silent carpet of last autumn's brown, the tiny
patches of melting snow, and the pools with dead leaves sunk in them and
clear surfaces over which was mirrored the flight of birds.

Welton puffed along steadily. He did not appear to talk much, and yet
the sum of his information was considerable.

"That road," he said, pointing to a dim track, "goes down to Thompson's.
He's a settler. Lives on a little lake.

"There's a deer," he remarked, "over in that thicket against the hill."

Bob looked closely, but could see nothing until the animal bounded away,
waving the white flag of its tail.

"Settlers up here are a confounded nuisance," went on Welton after a
while. "They're always hollering for what they call their 'rights.' That
generally means they try to hang up our drive. The average mossback's a
hard customer. I'd rather try to drive nails in a snowbank than tackle
driving logs through a farm country. They never realize that we haven't
got time to talk it all out for a few weeks. There's one old cuss now