With Boone on the frontier

by Edward Stratemeyer

The meal finished, they put away what was left of the steaks for the morrow. They resolved to keep a camp-fire burning all night, and for that purpose chopped quite a pile of wood.

The shelter they had built was not over eight feet in diameter, and on one side of this they placed the carcasses of the deer, being afraid to leave them outside, for fear that some wild animal might come up and rob them of the prizes. They lay down on the other side of the shelter, close to the tiny doorway they had left. Just outside of this doorway was the fire, which they heaped up with chunks of wood piled as high as the limbs overhead permitted.

“We must be careful of the flames,” cautioned Joe. “We don’t want to set the forest on fire.”

Utterly worn out from the tramp on snowshoes, they were both willing to retire early, and an hour after sunset found them both at rest, almost in each other’s arms. They had but scant covering from the cold, but with the shelter and the fire this was hardly necessary.

Harry was the first to fall asleep, and a little later Joe, with a last glance at the fire, followed suit.

An hour went by, followed by another. Outside, scarcely a sound broke the stillness of the night. The fire blazed away merrily as stick after stick was consumed, and then gradually sank lower and lower until only a flicker illuminated the surroundings.

Then, from a distance, a lone wolf appeared, on the trail of the deer that had been shot. The wolf sniffed the air, and uttered a lonely howl that was taken up by other wolves still further away. In a very few minutes ten or a dozen of the animals were gathered on the trail, and the pack moved slowly and cautiously toward where the deer had been taken.

When the wolves came in sight of the fire they paused again, and more lonely howls rent the night air. But the scent of the deer was now strong, and the wolves were desperately hungry, and gradually they grew bolder and formed a circle around the shelter.

Not far from the fire lay some of the bones of the deer, and a bit of the meat that Harry had burned in cooking the steaks. One wolf sneaked in and gobbled up this, and on the instant a wild howl of jealousy arose from the rest of the pack, as they sprang in to get their share.

It was this howl which awoke Joe and Harry with a start. Both sat up and rubbed their eyes, for some of the smoke of the fire had drifted into the shelter, and they could see but little in the semi-darkness.