There being no need to set a watch, all who were remaining in camp at once wrapped themselves in their blankets and threw themselves upon the beds already prepared—consisting of the leafy tips of small spruce trees, than which nothing can make a more comfortable couch—and, needless to say, their eyes closed almost at once, for they were weary after their travels, and they slept till the first streak of dawn awakened Hank.
"Up you gets, one and all," he sang out. "Jest give them hosses a mouthful of water, and then we'll ride. Time we come along with the others we'll feed, and then away agin."
That was Joe's first experience of working on an empty stomach, and truth compels us to add that he found the experience a trying one. He felt hollow and sickly. The sharp morning air made him ravenous; he simply longed for the hour for breakfast.
"Guess you do feel holler," laughed Hank, when our hero told him of his feelings. "I mind the time when I was jest a slip of a lad and felt jest as you do. But I was away huntin' with my father then, for he made a tidy pile of dollars by gettin' skins and selling 'em in Montreal, and sometimes over the border in America. Wall, he were a hot 'un. He never seemed to want to eat, only when he was set down to it—gee!—he could put away double as much as the average man. It was then that I used to get that sinking sensation. We'd be out at daylight winter mornings, with the thermometer 'way down below zero, and the air that crisp it made you jest long for a bite. And I've been two days and more without a trace of food. That's mighty hard, you'll believe me. Howsomever, you stick it out this time. You'll soon get used to waitin'."
However, when three hours had passed, during which the party had made very rapid progress through a country thinly covered with trees, the famishing feeling with which Joe had been assailed had worn off to a considerable degree.
"Feel as though I could go along comfortably all day without food," he told Hank. "I'm not nearly so hungry."
"You jest wait till you smell a steak cookin'," came the laughing rejoinder. "Gee! Won't yer mouth water jest! But we're mighty near them folks now. Seems to me as ef I could smell a fire burnin'."
A mile farther along they came upon their comrades camped in a little clearing. Mike at once came towards them.
"He was camped sure enough last night," he said; "but Hurley's a smart 'un. He heard us comin', and streaked straight off; but he ain't far. We've picked up a heap of lost way, and to-night we'll nab him. You ain't fed?"
"None," answered Hank, dropping from his horse. "These here lads is fairly shoutin' fer food."