“What! You an’ Harry got two deer an’ an old buck one trip?” he ejaculated. “By hemlock! but it won’t be no ust fer us old fellows to go out no more; eh, colonel?”
“It’s the air that is doing it,” returned Daniel Boone with a laugh. “Such purity can’t help but make a good shot and a good trailer out of most anybody.”
“I’ll bring in Yellow Blanket ef I kin,” said Pep Frost. “But he’s a cur, as the colonel says, an’ more’n likely he’s lit out long ago fer his wigwam.”
When Joe returned home he found Harry hard at work dressing the deer skins, and he went to work to fix up the head and antlers of the buck, so that they might be hung up in the living room for a coat and hat rack, as Harmony had suggested.
As mentioned before, it had been a hot day, and when the sun went down it was hardly any cooler. There was scarcely a breath of air stirring, and, as a consequence, scarcely anybody felt like retiring to the rather stuffy bedchambers of the log cabin until sleep could no longer be put off.
As tired as he was, Harry could not sleep until long after he had gone to bed. He lay with Joe, and he rather envied his chum, who slept peacefully. When at last Harry did go to sleep he dreamed of shooting deer, and of being gored by the big buck, and about an hour later he awoke with a start and dripping with perspiration.
“Oh, what a dream!” he murmured to himself, and sat bolt upright, he could not tell why.
Joe still slept, and so did the youth’s father and Ezra Winship, who occupied the second bed in the room. From outside the faint rays of the old moon cast a dim light into the room.
Feeling thirsty, Harry resolved to go out to the living room for a drink. Not to awaken the others, he crawled from the bed as silently as possible, and tiptoed his way to the other part of the cabin.
The water in the crock was warm and stale, and having tasted of it Harry spit it out into the fireplace.