The Hunters of the Ozark | Page 5

mistaken, and you wanted to hear the bell so much that the sound was in your fancy."
The lad, however, would not admit this. He was sure there had been no mistake. Fred was about to argue further when all doubt was set at rest by the sound of a cow-bell that came faintly but clearly through the forest.
"You are right," said Fred, his face brightening up; "we are on the track of old Brindle sure enough. It's mighty strange though how she came to wander so far from home."
"She got lost I s'pose," replied Terry, repeating the theory that had been hit upon some time before.
"It may be, but it is the first instance I ever heard of, where an animal lost its way so easily."
The boys were in too high spirits, however, to try to explain that which puzzled them. The cow was a valuable creature, being the only one that belonged to the family with whom Terence lived, and who therefore could ill afford her loss.
The friends had pushed perhaps a couple hundred yards further when Terry called to Fred that he was not following the right course.
"Ye're bearing too much to the lift; so much so indaad that if ye kaap on ye'll find yersilf lift."
"Why, I was about to turn a little more in that direction," replied the astonished Fred; "you are altogether wrong."
But the other sturdily insisted that he was right, and he was so positive that he stopped short, and refused to go another step in the direction that his friend was following. The latter was just as certain that Terry was amiss, and it looked as if they had come to a deadlock.
"There's only one way to settle it," said Fred, "and that is for each of us to follow the route he thinks right. The cow can't be far off and we shall soon find out who is wrong. The first one that finds Brindle shall call to the other, and he'll own up what a stupid blunder he has made."
"Ye are speakin' me own sentiments," replied Terry, who kept looking about him and listening as if he expected every moment that the cow herself would solve the question. Fred Linden read the meaning of his action, and he, too, wondered why it was that when both had plainly caught the tinkle of the telltale bell, they should hear it no more. Strange that when it had spoken so clearly it should become silent, but such was the fact.
Little did either suspect the cause.
CHAPTER III.
AN ABORIGINAL PLOT.
The boys tried the plan of Fred Linden; he swerved slightly to the left, while Terry Clark made a sharp angle to the right. They never thought of getting beyond hearing of each other, and, but for the plentiful undergrowth they would have kept in sight. They had taken but a few steps when Fred looked around and found that he was alone. He could hear his young friend pushing his way among the trees, and once or twice he caught snatches of a tune that he was whistling--that being a favorite pastime of the lad when by himself.
"It's curious how he could make such a blunder," thought Fred, with a smile to himself; "he will go tramping around the woods only to find that he was nowhere in the neighborhood of the cow. Ah, the storm is not yet over."
He was looking to the eastward, where the sky, as he caught a glimpse of it among the treetops and branches, was as black as if overcast with one huge thunder cloud.
"It was there it raged so violently last night, and the rain is falling in torrents again. We shall find the creek a river when we go back."
The sturdy youth pressed on fully two hundred yards more, when the old suspicion came back to him. There was something wrong. When he could not explain some things he was satisfied that it was because there was an element of evil in those things--something that boded ill to both him and his friend.
"I have traveled far enough since hearing that bell to pass a long ways beyond it," he said, compressing his lips and shaking his head; "and if that was Brindle that rang it the first time, she would have done it the second time."
Twice before Fred fancied he heard something moving among the undergrowth a short distance in advance, and a little to one side. The noise was now so distinct that he could no longer deceive himself; there was some specific cause for it.
"I guess Terry has worked over this way, finding what a mistake he has made--no! by gracious! it isn't Terry!"
Fred started in alarm, confident that it was an Indian that was moving through the wood. It will be admitted that there