“What, for instance?”
“Cut up that deer and smoke some strips of the flesh to carry with us. We may not always be so lucky, and smoked venison isn’t at all bad when one’s hungry.”
The amendment was accepted, and they at once went into camp.
It lacked two hours of sundown. The air was pleasant and warm, and the sweet odor from flowers was carried to their nostrils by a light breeze. Hope-Jones cleared a space for the tent and cut props for the canvas. Harvey fetched water from the brook and gathered firewood; and Ferguson, rolling up his sleeves, commenced to skin the deer, then cut a large steak from the loin. In an hour a bed of live coals was glowing, and, using a ramrod for a spit, the Ohioan commenced to broil the venison. Soon savory odors rose, and Hope-Jones and Harvey stood quite near, smacking their lips.
“This is the best dinner I ever ate in my life,” said the boy fifteen minutes later, as he sat on the log of a tree, his tin dish between his knees.
They crawled into the shelter-tent early that evening, right glad to rest, and the two young men were soon in dreamland. But Harvey tossed about uneasily and his eyes refused to close; he was too tired to sleep. For a long time he lay awake, listening to the monotonous notes of the yucahualpa, which sings only at night, and at last, the tent becoming oppressive, he took his blankets and stole quietly without. It was bright with starlight, but there was no moon. A breeze from the west moved the broad leaves of the blood-wood trees, and the sound of their rustling was like the roar of breakers on a distant beach.
The boy stepped to a fallen tree, from the trunk of which branches protruded, but the leaves were gone. Wrapping one blanket completely around him, he lay down, his head resting in a fork several inches above the ground; then he drew the other blanket over him and the next minute was asleep.
CHAPTER III.
A SNAKE AND A PUMA.
“Where’s Harvey?”
Hope-Jones, aroused by Ferguson, rose to an upright position and looked around. The flap of the shelter-tent had been thrown back, and the gray light of early morning was stealing in.