The Hunters of the Ozark

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

"He has no suspicion of any thing wrong, and is sure to do the very thing that he ought not to do."

Fred Linden was right in this conclusion. It can be readily understood, why no thought of peril should enter the brain of the Irish lad, who was never so sure that he was right and Fred wrong when the two parted to take different routes in search of the cow.

"It's a bright lad—is Fred," said Terry, "but there isn't any law that I knows of by which he is to be right ivery time and Mr. Terence Clark wrong. I'm going straight for the point where the tinkle of the bell came from."

The same thought puzzled him that puzzled Fred Linden; after walking more than the whole distance that first intervened, the cow was still invisible. There was nothing in the fact that when she had strayed so far from home, she should keep on in the same direction.

"It may be that she has heard something about the Pacific Ocean, and has set out to see for herself whither the reports are correct," was the quaint thought of the Irish lad, as he pushed vigorously through the undergrowth, which was dense enough to turn him aside more than once and compel him to keep his wits about him to prevent going astray altogether.

Now and then he paused, naturally expecting (as did Fred), that he would hear more of the bell; but it is not necessary to say that, like his companion, he was disappointed. He had fixed the point whence came the noise so firmly in his mind, that he could not go wrong, though a boy of less experience in the woods would have been sure to do so.

Now, if any of you lads have ever driven cows or sheep, around whose necks bells were hung, you have noticed the natural fact that they have a sound peculiar to themselves. Referring particularly to cows, you may have observed the jangle, jangle, made by the motion of the head in cropping the grass, varied now and then by the confused jumble caused by the animal flinging her head over the back of her neck or fore part of the body to drive away the insects plaguing her. There is a certain regularity in all this which will continue for hours, and that may be said to be produced by the natural action of the animal, and which is altogether different from that made by the swaying motion of the hand.

But Terry Clark inherited a sharpness of wits from his parents, and, while pushing forward among the trees and undergrowth, it struck him that there were several curious features about the matter.

"It was a mistake, as Fred said," he thought more than once, "that we did not bring our guns with us."

Then the second sound of the cow-bell fell upon the ear of Fred Linden; Terry was within a hundred feet of the point whence it came, and he could not have heard it more distinctly had he been standing on the spot himself. The noise was so peculiar that a flood of misgiving overwhelmed him. The tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, was so regular that nothing was plainer than that no living quadruped could have made the sound.