“Whew! I must punch up the fire again—but it’s hard to get the kinks out o’ my backbone;” he straightened his curled-up spine with difficulty and stumbled out on the camping-ground.
It was that darkest hour before dawn. The stars were waning as well as the fire. The trees which had been friends in the daytime were spectators now. Each wrapped in its dark mantle, they seemed to stand curiously aloof, watching him.
He attacked the logs with a stick, poking them together and thrusting a dry branch into the ruddy nest where the fire still hatched.
Snip! Snap! Crackle! the flames awoke. Mingling with their reviving laughter, came a low, strange cluck that was not the voice of the fire, immediately followed by a long shrill cry with a wavering trill in it, not unlike human mirth.
It hailed from some point in the scout’s rear.
“For heaven’s sake!” The stick shook in his fingers. “Can it be a wildcat—or another coon?”
Stiffly he wheeled round. His eyes traveled up the great rock—in whose cave his companions lay sleeping; as they gained the top of that old grayback, they were confronted by two other eyes—mere twinkling points of flame!
The scout’s scalp seemed to lift like a blown-off roof. His throat grew very dry.
At the same moment there was a noiseless flitting as of a shadow from the rock’s crest to a near-by tree whence came the weird cry again.
“An owl! Well, forevermore! And my hair is standing straight still! ”