Camp and Trail | Page 5

Squaw herself,
the disappointed Indian mother who had, according to tradition, lived
so long in loneliness upon this mountain, were joining in their mirth
with haggish peals.
The canoe had turned bottom uppermost. On righting it they found that
the jack-staff had been dislodged. The jack was floating gayly away
over the ripples; its light, being in an air-tight case, was unquenched.

"Swim ashore with the rifle, Neal," said Cyrus. "I'll pick up the jack.
Did you ever see anything so absurdly comical as it looks, dodging off
on its own hook like a big, wandering eye?"
With his comrade's help young Farrar succeeded in getting the gun
across his back, slinging it round him by its leather shoulder-strap; then
he struck out for the bank, having scarcely twenty yards to swim before
he reached shallow water.
Now, for the first time to-night, the moon shone fully out from her veil
of cloud, casting a flood of silver radiance, and showing him a scene in
white and black, still and clear as a steel engraving, of a beauty so
unimagined and grand that it seemed a little awful. It gave him a
sudden respect for the unreclaimed, seldom-trodden region to which his
craving for adventure had brought him.
The outline of Old Squaw Mountain could be plainly discerned, a dark,
towering shape against the horizon. A few stars glinted like a diamond
diadem above its brow. Down its sides and from the base stretched a
sable mantle of forest, enwrapping Squaw Pond, of which the moon
made a mirror.
"My! I think this would make the fellows in Manchester open their eyes
a bit," muttered Neal aloud. "Only one feels as if he ought to see some
old Indian brave such as Cyrus tells about,--a Touch-the-Cloud, or
Whistling Elk, or Spotted Tail, come gliding towards him out of the
woods in his paint and feather toggery. Glad I didn't visit Maine a
hundred years ago, though, when there'd have been a chance of such a
meeting."
Still muttering, young Farrar kicked off his high rubber boots, and
dragged off his coat. He proceeded to shake and wring the water from
his upper garments, listening intently, and glancing half expectantly
into the pitch-black shadows at the edges of the forest, as if he might
hear the stealthy steps and see the savage form of the superseded red
man emerge therefrom.
"Ugh! I mind the ducking now more than I did a while ago," he

murmured. "The water wasn't cold. Why, we bathed at the other end of
the pond late last evening! But these wet clothes are precious
uncomfortable. I wish we were nearer to camp. Good Gracious! What's
that?"
He stood stock-still and erect, his flesh shrinking a little, while his
drenched flannel shirt clung yet more closely and clammily to his skin.
A distant noise was wafted to his ears through the forest behind. It
began like the gentle, mellow lowing of a cow at evening, swelled into
a quavering, appealing crescendo cadence, and gradually died away.
Almost as the last note ceased another commenced at the same low
pitch, with only the rest of a heart-beat between the two, and surged
forth into a plaintive yet tempestuous call, which sank as before. It was
followed by a third, terminating in an impatient roar. The weird solo
ran through several scales in its performance, rising, wailing, booming,
sinking, ever varying in expression. It marked a new era in Neal's
experience of sounds, and left him choking with bewilderment about
what sort of forest creature it could be which uttered such a call.
He began to get out some bungling description when Cyrus joined him
shortly afterwards, but the American had had a lively time of it while
recovering his jack-light and righting the canoe on mid-pond. He was
in no mood for explanations.
"Keep the yarn, whatever it is, till to-morrow, Neal," he said. "I didn't
hear anything special. Perhaps I was too far away. I'm so wet and jaded
that I feel as limp as a washed-out rag. Let's get back to camp as fast as
we can."

CHAPTER III.
LIFE IN A BARK HUT.
It was two o'clock in the morning when the tired, draggled pair
stumbled ashore at the place where they embarked, hauled up their

birch skiff, leaving it to repose, bottom uppermost, under a screen of
bushes, and then stood for some minutes in deliberation.
"I'm sure I hope we can find the trail all right," said Cyrus. "Yes, I see
the blazes on the trees. Here's luck!"
He had been turning the jack-lamp on either side of him, trying to
discover the "blazes," or notches cut in some of the trunks, which
marked the "blazed trail"--in other words, the spotted line through the
otherwise trackless