On warm days he came out again, but whenever the weather turned cold and stormy, he crawled back into his hollow log.
CHAPTER XII—IN A WINTER CAMP
The last days of October were cold and windy and it seemed as if the north wind drove all wild birds before it. Thousands of robins and little yellow-patched birds, the hardy myrtle-warblers, filled the timber on the river islands. Long dark clouds of different kinds of blackbirds passed southward, great whitish gulls came drifting along from somewhere, and the black terns, dull colored in summer, had donned their white autumn plumage.
“I believe I saw 500,000 ducks to-day,” said the trapper as he returned to camp one evening with all the mallards he could carry.
“The birds are going fast, and it will soon be winter. We must cut a lot of wood and pull our boats up to a high place, so they will not freeze in. These woods may be under water next spring and we may need our boats in a hurry.”
Early in November came one of those cold rain-storms that mark sharply the end of Indian summer which often prolongs the warm season far into autumn.
It was the first day that all four campers stayed in the shack, which the trapper and the Indian had during the preceding week transformed into a real cozy cabin. Chunks of ash, elm, maple, and cottonwood slowly burning in the old sheet-iron stove which Barker had set up in the middle of the room kept the cabin dry and warm, while the large spattering drops of rain beat a tattoo on the roof.
The few stray leaves that had until now adhered to their branches were swept away. The river-bottom trees assumed their sharp, undraped silhouettes of winter, and from the bluffs all the bright autumn colors had vanished.
The summer birds had gone. Only a few hardy chickadees, woodpeckers, and nuthatches that defy even the coldest northern winter had remained behind the migrating hosts.
By the middle of November the lake was frozen over.