"Waal? What did yer see? Clear, I reckon." Jim Hardman looked up swiftly as a couple of tall figures came silently into the clearing in the centre of which the camp fire burned, and he paused for a moment in the task which occupied him. He was squatting on his heels, after the fashion of the Indians and of all backwoodsmen, and was engaged in cleaning the long barrel of his musket, turning the weapon over with loving care, as if it were a child to whom he was devoted. Indeed Jim had no more faithful friend or servant. For this long musket had been his companion on many and many a hunting and prospecting expedition during the past twenty years. He scarcely ever laid it down, but carried it the day long, usually ready in his hands, or when the times were peaceful and quiet, slung across his slender shoulders. Jim could tell tales of how this faithful weapon had brought down buffalo and deer and many another animal, and had helped him to gather the stores of skins in exchange for which he obtained those few luxuries which his simple nature needed. In his more communicative moods he could narrate how the bullets which he had moulded with the aid of a hot camp fire and a supply of lead had been directed against men, against the fierce Indian inhabitants of this Ohio valley, who for years past had waged a ceaseless and pitiless warfare against all white invaders of their old hunting grounds. Indeed, "Hunting" Jim, as he was styled and known by all the backwoodsmen in those parts, had need to care for his weapon, for without it he would be lost, and his life would be at the mercy of the first redskin who crossed his path. "Waal?" he repeated, in his backwoods drawl, as he vigorously rubbed at the shining barrel. "Reckon we're through 'em. There ain't a one in sight. Ef there is, Steve and Silver Fox'll know all about 'em."