"It's a bobcat!" he exclaimed aloud. "A big bobcat or a lynx!

The critter must have frightened old Keno and made him hit the trail home! Hope I don't meet the brute! I've got only two or three cartridges left."

Pausing only to remove his coat and shirt and to bathe the upper part of his body in the stream, he put on his garments again and set forth along the trail. As he walked slowly through the fragrant woods, squirrels and jays chattered derisively at him overhead, and frightened rabbits dashed helter-skelter among the thickets. He gave them not the slightest heed; his chief interest now was to get home as soon as possible and to relieve his mother from anxiety over his absence.

To hasten his arrival he resolved upon taking a short-cut through the thickest part of the forest, which, though it would eventually lead him out upon the boundary of Silas Perkins' farm, and necessitate his crossing that surly neighbor's property, would save at least two miles of the return journey.

Getting his bearings by the sun, in true woodsman's fashion, he left the trail and struck off through the unblazed aisles of the wood, going onward farther and farther at a resolute pace. The sun presently was obscured by the thick canopy of budding trees, as Ralph descended into a little hollow between two hills, and dusky shadows contended with mid-daylight. Still the boy staggered onward, now and then faltering to rest. His wounds gave him little pain now, though one eye was badly swollen around the cut. But it bothered him and distracted his mind; and this was probably the reason why, in his haste and distress, he found himself growing more and more bewildered by his surroundings. Finally he realized that he had lost his way.

"And I can't be more than five miles from home, too!" he reproached himself, in tired disgust.

CHAPTER IV

A NIGHT IN THE WOODS

Although it was not yet noon, Ralph was as hungry as a young wolf, for he had eaten nothing more than a dish of cold oatmeal and milk since five o'clock that morning, and he had taken no provisions with him. a.s.sailed now by the pangs of a youthful, healthy, unsatisfied appet.i.te, he began to wonder what he could manage to "scare up" in the form of edibles.

Near at hand was one of the numerous small springs with which these hills abounded. It rilled up out of the earth and rocks and formed a pool of clear water in which cress grew plentifully, furnishing him with a welcome salad. He gathered a hatful of last autumn's chestnuts---somewhat soggy, to be sure---and, making a small fire of leaves and bark, he proceeded to roast these in the embers: a tedious and unsatisfactory process at best. Having thus taken off the edge of his hunger, he set forth upon his homeward journey again, in a new direction.

"The next time I come up here in this neck of the woods I'll have a pocket compa.s.s or a watch, at least," he said to himself. "It was foolish of me to start off without one, but I've learned a lesson today, anyhow. The trouble is, I never dreamed I'd get lost!"

He was headed directly from Pioneer Lake, as he thought, toward the hills beyond it, and presently, as he began to climb, the scenery grew wilder and more unfamiliar, the trees taller and set more thickly together, the undergrowth almost impenetrable.

Still he fought on. It seemed he had never been so far in this direction before, and after the first rush of angry despair had pa.s.sed, he felt doggedly curious to learn whither he was going, and what landmark he would see first.

For almost two hours he plodded on, burdened with his rifle and the pair of eagles, scratching his hands and face, tearing his clothes.

It was a miserable, heart-breaking tramp, one which might have caused a less plucky lad to sit down and give way to doleful helplessness.

Even Ralph felt an uncanny sense of utter loneliness, and he upbraided his own stupidity, as he chose to call it, in wandering so far afield.

At last he noticed a faint roaring noise at the right, and he turned in that direction, blindly, aimlessly. As he advanced through the undergrowth the sound grew louder and louder, until finally he emerged from the thicket and stood upon the bank of a deep stream which rushed turbulently along and dropped over a ridge, falling sixty or seventy feet into a cup-like hollow in the rock.

Ralph uttered a cry of delight. "Why, it's my own waterfall! I've been wandering in a big circle all this while, and here I am not far from my boulder where---ouch!" The sentence ended in a loud wail of agony, for, taking a step forward, the young wayfarer's foot had slipped on a loose stone. His ankle was severely wrenched.

For a few moments the pain was intense, almost unendurable. Poor Ralph groaned aloud and sank down on the ground, biting his lips in trying to keep tears of agony from welling to his eyes. How could he walk the remaining distance home? Even with an improvised crutch made from a forked branch of some tree, it would be well-nigh impossible to travel up and down the stony grades that stretched between the place where he had met with this unfortunate accident and the farmhouse.

"Oh, if Keno had only not broken away!"

The futile wish was maddening in his present plight. He showered sharp epithets upon the absent pony, until he remembered the probability that Keno's return without him would be the means of sending some one to the rescue. This was some consolation, though it was but cold comfort in view of the fact that, had Keno not bolted, this mishap would not have occurred.

However, there was no help for it now. Meanwhile, the badly sprained ankle was throbbing painfully, and Ralph's next thought was to thrust it, without taking off his shoe, into the cold running water in order to check the swelling. He held his foot there, shivering with relief, then he stretched himself out on the bank of the stream, in the warm sunlight. Whereupon, with anxious mind and weary body soothed by the loud splash of the waterfall, with the pain in his ankle considerably relieved, and with a soft, gra.s.sy nook beside a rock offering repose, it was not very strange that, after closing his eyes drowsily, Ralph sank into a troubled slumber.

When he awoke, the sun was only a little way above the tops of the highest trees, and long golden shafts of light were slanting down through the branches, making an intricate tracery of shadows on the ground. The air was beginning to have a decided chill, for the wind had shifted to the west and was blowing the spray of the waterfall into Ralph's face.

Strange that no one had come, in search of him! Of course his mother could not have hitched Keno to the old buggy and driven here, but she might have telephoned to Tom Walsh and asked him to find out what had become of the missing hunter. He made another bold attempt to walk, with the aid of a stout pine branch; but he could not bear to put any weight on that cursed ankle.

"Well, I guess I'm bound to spend the night here," he told himself grimly, after several futile starts. "I hope mother'll not worry; she may not have noticed Keno, after all, if he went straight to the barn. I remember I left the door open. And now what's the first thing to be done? Oh, I know: make a fire---and two smoke fires for a distress signal."

So he set about doing this, hobbling with difficulty over the uneven ground. The signal fires he placed about fifty feet apart, so that the wind should not confuse them; his camp fire he built between three big rocks that formed a natural oven, over which he laid a hastily constructed grill made of green alder withes.

On this grill he intended to broil whatever game he could bring down with his rifle, for supper; and, as luck would have it, he did not have to wait long before he "bagged" a large gray squirrel, which he dexterously skinned and prepared for cooking.

While it was still daylight he gathered plenty of good firewood, for he realized that having no blanket or poncho he would need to keep up a brisk fire and to sleep as near it as possible.

Fortunately, another rock adjoining the fireplace afforded shelter against the cool night wind.

The next thing to consider was his bed. The ground was damp in places, but if he used leaves for a bed they might take fire and burn him while he slept. So he built another fire in a sort of hollow at the base of the fourth rock, and after about an hour---during which the squirrel was broiling deliciously---he raked away all the hot ashes, and curled up on the dried warm ground. This proved to be a fairly comfortable bed and, after eating his nicely browned supper, and bathing his ankle again, he replenished the fire, taking care that it should not spread, and lay down beside the sheltering rock.

Twilight deepened into darkness, the stars appeared one by one in the vast black dome above him, the forest was deathly still save for the noise of the waterfall which drowned all other sounds.

Once, an owl, attracted by the fire, perched on a low overhanging branch and stared into the flames with great blinking yellow eyes; then, startled by an uneasy movement of the sleeper, it flew away with a dismal hoot.

Ralph's dreams were troubled, a medley of combats with feathered foes, of lengthy altercations with Bill Terrill, of frantic digging in the ground for impossible gold. Twice he was wakened by twinges of pain, and he lay there, open-eyed, gazing up through the branches of the stars.

"There's the Pole star and the Pointers," he murmured, to divert his mind from his suffering. "Of course, the Pointers go around the North star once in twenty-four hours, so that makes a kind of clock. I could find my way home by those stars if I had to, but I can't walk, I can't walk!"

His voice trailed off into silence, and he fell asleep once more.

Presently he was wakened, for a third time, by a man's voice calling his name. Or was this only another dream? He sat up and listened intently. The call sounded from some point back on the trail, and there could be no mistaking its reality; it was loud, gruff, yet kindly.

"Ralph! Oh-o, Ralph! Where are you, lad?"

Then came a tremendous clatter of loose stones and a crashing in the undergrowth.

The lone camper, benighted and forlorn, peered around him on all sides. At first he could see nothing beyond the glow of his own fire, which intensified the weird shadows of the forest; but he could hear the shouts and the ringing tramp of a horse's hoofs on the stony ground. He raised his voice in answer to the call.

"This way! Ki-i-o! Here I am!" he yelled excitedly. "Is that you, Tom?"

In a minute or two, as his eyes became accustomed to the pitch darkness beyond the firelight, he beheld the flicker of a lantern shining among the tree-trunks. Simultaneously, he heard the snorting of a startled horse. He stood up, leaning against his rock, and gave a peculiar throaty call that ended in the name "Ke-ee-no-o"---and then, to his delight, the intelligent old horse responded with a loud whinny of recognition.

The next moment three shadowy forms, those of a man on horseback and two others on foot, detached themselves from the enveloping darkness and advanced into the light of Ralph's campfire. One of the unmounted searchers carried a lantern.

They were Tom Walsh,---on Keno,---Jack Durham, and Tom Sherwood.

"What in 'tarnation's the trouble, lad?" demanded Tom, as soon as the searching party had exchanged greetings with Ralph, fervently overjoyed to see them. "We've been looking for you ever since three o'clock this afternoon."

Ralph explained the object of his quest.

"I got 'em, too," he added, pointing proudly to the two eagles.

"But when I started to go home, without Keno, and tried to take a shortcut through the woods, I got lost somehow; and besides, I sprained my ankle, so I can't walk. I just had to wait for somebody to come after me. I hope mother hasn't been awfully worried."

"Well, she wasn't exactly what you'd call calm!" replied Tom.

"But the doc is there at the house now, with her; she might be lots worse. Does your ankle hurt bad? Can you ride home?"

"Sure I can! Let's start right away---unless you fellows want to rest. You must be tired."

"I'm not," a.s.serted Tom Sherwood. "How about you, Jack?"

The youngest boy gave a little sigh. "It's awfully nice up here in the woods by this fire!" he replied evasively. "Let's warm ourselves and---and hear more about Ralph's adventures, and---do you think Mrs. Kenyon will-----"

"Yes, I do," interrupted his Cousin Tom. "Come on, youngster; you and Ralph get on the nag; Sherwood and I'll walk. Let's be on our way."