“Say, Jud, what’s that thing, anyhow?” he questioned.
“Just a loon, I guess,” replied the older boy, easily, hooking a wriggling catfish, and taking it from his hook carefully, lest it stab his fingers with its sharp horn.
“Sounds awful kind of scary an’ lonesome, I think, Jud, ’specially when it’s most dark, like it is now. Say, Jud, let’s quit and start for home.”
“Well, we may as well, I guess,” replied Jud, “but I hate to leave now; it’s terrible good fishing. I got two dandy big fellows the last few bites. Guess we got enough, though, for a good mess, and we’ll go before it gets any darker. Say, mother’ll be awful glad of the fresh fish.”
“Bet she will,” replied Tom, as he carefully strung his catch on a willow withe. “Say, it’s funny we can’t get meat and things up here like we do home in Cleveland.”
“Course, we couldn’t expect to, but who cares? Mother’s most well of her cough, staying up here,” replied Jud.
“Say, Jud, I don’t seem to remember this place,” spoke Tom, as they plunged waist high through a forest of tall brakes into swampy, black mire. “Do you s’pose we’re on the right road? Wish we had one of the camp men along.”
“Oh, we’re on the right track. If we keep straight on, I guess we’re bound to strike that piece of corduroy road; then we’re all right anyhow; that’s the lumbermen’s trail,” replied Jud confidently. A long, weird, mocking cry came back to the boys from the direction of the black pond.
“There’s that hateful old loon yelling again; wish we could shoot him,” remarked Tom.
“Hugh, guess when you hit a loon, you’ll have to be pretty old. Why, Indian Pete’s lived all his life in the woods and in a canoe, and he’s only shot one loon; they dive even before the bullet can reach ’em, and they can stay under water and come up a long ways off from the place where you first see ’em dive. They’ve got a crazy kind of a call; guess that’s why they say some people are ‘loony’ when they go out of their minds. Say, Tom,” suddenly exclaimed Jud, blankly, as he paused, “I—I don’t see—— Say, did we come through all these dead woods?” Ahead of the boys towered a great forest of giant spruce, their dead bayoneted limbs showing gray and ghost-like in the darkness.