"Well," said Hugh, "he and his partners will have a good feast to-night; but I expect you're getting sleepy, and we want to be up with the sun to-morrow, so maybe we might as well turn in now."
"All right, Hugh, I am getting sleepy and I guess I'd like to go to bed."
"Say we do," said Hugh. "One thing I'll tell ye, seeing that you've never slept out of doors before; when you go to bed, take off your coat, your pants and your shoes; the less a man has on him when he is in bed the better he rests."
Hugh filled his pipe again and put some more wood on the fire, which blazed up brightly; and Jack, sitting on the edge of his bed, began to undress.
"Put your shoes and the clothes that you take off under the head of your bed," said Hugh, "then, if it should come on to rain or snow during the night, they won't get wet. You've got a lot of little odds and ends of things to learn about being in camp, and I want to tell you all of them that I can think of, because if you know them you'll be a heap more comfortable than you will if you don't."
Before long, Jack was snugly wrapped in his blankets, watching the flickering fire and the bright stars that shone out of the black sky above him. Presently Hugh turned into his blankets, and the fire went down.
Jack had been sleepy when he went to bed, but now he felt wakeful. He could hear queer little things moving about in the grass close to his head; the leaves of the trees rustled in the gentle breeze; the horses cropped the grass and walked about not far off, and each one of these sounds seemed loud to him. Every now and then there would be a burst of howling from the hills, and altogether, Jack felt strange. But soon he slept.
CHAPTER XXII
A LOAD OF BLACKTAIL
"Wake up, son, it's getting toward morning, and I want to get started. Levez, as the Frenchmen say up north."