There were the frost-sounds frequent enough, but nothing more. We halted there some little time; Patch was not interested, he sat beside me listless. Then we trudged on a piece farther up the arm, which pointed, as nearly as I could guess, south-west, and this was towards where I thought that I had heard the shots. Here the stream had spread out some width, there was a wide expanse of unruffled snow, and the sounds made by the frost were nearly inaudible.
We waited there again, and to my surprise and amusement Patch became quite animated. He stood beside me, gazing solemnly ahead, with his tail waving slowly, his ears pricked up. He seemed to be listening, as I was, very intently. We stood some minutes thus. I was very cold, but I spoke cheerily to Patch.
He paid no attention to me, just gazed wistfully before him. Yet no sound like a gunshot broke the silence.
I had become impatient; with my mittened hand I patted my companion's head, saying something to him about the futility of this—that it was all hallucination, imagination—at which he looked at me for a moment gravely, then pointed his nose upstream once more, and with his ears erect listened again.
But I could not stand still any longer. I spoke to Patch about it. He paid no attention, at which I turned, meaning to retrace my steps.
I saw he was unwilling to go with me; indeed he sat down in the snow and pointed his nose persistently up the creek, at which it occurred to me we might just as well go on a little farther, as I knew we could not lose ourselves, and I knew, alas! that there was no one "at home" to be troubled about our absence, so I turned again, crying, "Come, my lad! come on, then!"
At this the good old dog began to wag his tail, to jump and caper around me, barking with delight. I had not seen him so excited for weeks, not even when he thought he had a fox cornered, or a rabbit entangled in a snow-drift.
Often he stood still suddenly, as if he had heard something deeply interesting, and always after these intermissions he went ahead with greater demonstrations of pleasure and excitement, which caused me to become more agitated: I wondered what his meaning was.
After a while, when we were standing side by side, attentive, suddenly the stillness, which was oppressive, was broken by two shots!
No doubt of it this time, they were shots! and not so very far away.