The Hunters of the Ozark | Page 5

me to listen?"
"I was thinkin' be that token that we might hear something."
"What made you think so?"
"The tinkle of a bell."
"What!" exclaimed the amazed Fred, "are you sure?"
"That I am; just as I was about to speak, I caught the faint sound--just
as we've both heard hundreds of times."
"From what point did it seem to come?"
His friend pointed due south.
"Strange it is that ye didn't catch the same."
"So I think; it may be, Terry, that you are 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