CRUST AND LAKE HUNTING. 533 



entirely alone. They were equally at home every where, as 

 much so as the wild deer they hunted. 



Old Sturge himself is a ' case ' for any country. He will 

 walk forty miles a day with as little trouble as a dandy would 

 feel it to be promenading from the Astor to the Broadway 

 hotel ; and ' Sturge ' will have the advantage in that, though 

 he only carries a pack on his shoulders of sixty or eighty 

 pounds dead weight, the dandy is burdened with an unappre- 

 ciable quantity of live brass. He goes in and out to his 

 favorite Lake twice a day, something as if it were "only 

 cross the way." He is a helter-skelter, harum-scarum, good- 

 natured, headlong fellow, who is forever blundering into the 

 most ludicrous scrapes with wild animals, and yet has man- 

 hood enough to come out right end up usually. 



He always has a number of traps set near the Lake. He 

 was coming in one morning with one or two old hunters, and 

 passing by a trap on the way, found a large bear caught by 

 the hind-leg. Without waiting to shoot the creature, or 

 indeed thinking at all of it, he rushed upon it with his knife 

 to cut its throat. Bruin of course met him with the hug 

 fraternal, and then commenced between them a desperate 

 struggle. His comrades were too much paralyzed with 

 laughter to come to his help, and before he succeeded in 

 despatching the bear with his knife, his clothing had all been 

 stripped off, and himself badly torn and bruised. 



Nobody on the face of the earth but ( Old Sturge,' would 

 ever have dreamed of doing such a stupidly reckless thing ; 

 but this is only one out of many such madcap capers. How- 

 ever, he is pioneering a settlement to Louis Lake most 

 effectively, by taking there a large family of children most 

 of them boys, and as hardy as young partridges. He intends 

 to keep a corner of the shantee for sportsmen, who prefer 

 Louis Lake, and the tough, wiry old fellow will hold himself 

 in readiness to carry them astride his shoulders if they desiro 

 it thirty miles further into the wilderness. 



