“Ha! ha! It ought to be prime,” chuckled the owner of the camp. “It was cut from the quarters of a buck which my nephew here, Royal Sinclair,” pointing out the tallest of three lads, “shot four days ago. He was a regular crackerjack—that buck! I mean, he was as fine a deer as ever I saw; weighed over two hundred pounds, had seven prongs to his horns on one side and six on the other. Royal is going to take the antlers home with him to Philadelphia. We were mighty glad to get him, too; for we have been camping here for five weeks, and were running short of provisions. Roy had quite an attack of buck-fever over it, though he didn’t think he was killing the ‘fatted calf’, to entertain a visitor; did you, Roy?”
“I guess not, Uncle! But I’m pretty glad, all the same,” answered Royal, with a smiling glance at Dol.
Young Farrar found himself in very pleasant quarters; and, now that he was recovering, his laugh rang from one log wall to the other.
“What’s ‘buck-fever’?” he questioned, while Joe filled his plate with more venison.
“A sort of disease of which you’ll learn the meaning before you leave these woods,” answered his host merrily. “It attacks a man when he’s out after a deer, and makes him feel as if one leg stands firm under him, while the other shakes as if it had the palsy.
“Now I guess you’d like to know whose camp you’re in, my boy, and then you can tell your story. Well, to begin with the most useful member of the party. That knowing-looking fellow over there, who cooked your supper, is Joe Flint, the best guide that ever pulled a trigger or handled a frying-pan in this region—barring one. These three rascals,” here the speaker beamed upon the strapping lads, with whom Dol had been exchanging sympathetic glances of curiosity, “are my nephews, Royal, Will, and Martin Sinclair. And I—I—
“Good gracious! Listen to that, Joe! What’s up now? Another fellow lost in the woods? Somebody is firing a round with his rifle! Perhaps he wants help. Those are signal shots, anyhow!”
The camper whose horn had been Dol’s signal of deliverance, broke off abruptly in his introductions, just as he had arrived at the most interesting point, and was proclaiming his own identity. He rattled off his short exclamations in excitement, and dashed out of the cabin, followed by Joe, his nephews, and Dol, the latter limping painfully, for his feet now felt like hot-water bags.
“That Winchester has spoken eight or ten times,” said the leader, counting the shots fired by somebody away in the dark recesses of the forest from a powerful repeating-rifle. “Let’s give the fellow, whoever he is, an answer, Joe!”
He seized his own rifle hastily, loaded the magazine with blank cartridges, and fired a noisy salute.