When it grew too dark to shoot, the hunters came in with six geese. Bill had had the bad luck of merely winging a bird, so that he was compelled to follow his game for nearly an hour. A wild goose is so protectively colored that among dead leaves and brush it can make itself almost as invisible as a sparrow.
When Bill finally captured his bird, it was almost dark and he had forgotten to watch the direction to camp; he was lost.
He fired two shots in quick succession.
“There is Big Boy,” Tatanka laughed. “He is lost, Tim; shoot twice, so he can find home. He is hungry.”
Two shots fired close together means, “I’m lost,” to hunters and woodsmen.
Of course Bill was not far from camp and he came home in time for supper.
“Bill,” his younger brother teased him, “the next time you run after a goose, hang a cowbell on your neck, so we can tell where you go.”
Barker and the Indian had built a lean-to and a warm camp-fire with back-logs of green oaks. For the fire itself they had cut a big pile of green white-birch.
“Look here, boys,” Barker told them after supper, “we sleep between the log-fire and the lean-to. Any man that wakes up puts a few logs on the fire. In that way I think we’ll keep warm.”
They sat late around the camp-fire and when, at last, they were ready to roll in, Tatanka walked out to the point, below which river and valley spread out in a strange light.