"Or break into the door?" added Ross equally uncertain as to tone. "One thing I know, Less, they’re afraid of fire."
At that both boys came out of their bunks and began to fill the stove with wood. But at these sounds from below, the wolves departed hastily and put in the remainder of the night howling from the side of the mountain a safe distance away.
"Guess Uncle Jake is right. They seem as afraid of us as we are of them!" exclaimed Leslie, lighting a candle and setting it in the window. Then he turned on Ross with a sheepish grin. "Say, Doc, is my hair standing straight up?"
Ross passed his hand over his own. "I don’t see it stand, but if it feels like mine it won’t lie down again in a week. To-morrow, Less, we’ll let studies go by the board and have that window and the door barricaded. Then, if a wolf or two chance to stumble against them we can turn over and laugh in our sleep."
There was no more sleep in the shack that night, however, and before daylight the boys were up planning the proposed barricade. They finally hit on two cross poles for the door, fitted into crudely carved stanchions nailed to either side. These bars were removed by day, but when night came, it was with a feeling of relief that the boys dropped the bars into their stanchions and knew the device could foil any wolf that prowled about the mountains. The window, also, was similarly barricaded.
But, secure behind these protections, the boys soon became accustomed to their midnight visitors, and even began to look eagerly for them during the day, Leslie being a fair shot.
"I would like to get a skin or two, Ross," he said one evening. "Sue would like ’em as rugs, you bet!"
It was after supper, and the boys, having washed the dishes, had blown out the candle and were sitting beside the stove. The draft in front was open, and the blazing chunks within sent a cheerful glow dancing past the window and flickering on the bunk and the side wall beyond. Outside, the wind soughed among the branches of the seven spruces, whipping them savagely. It was densely dark, darker than it would be an hour later when the moon swung over the tops of the mountain opposite the shack. There had been no storm for several days, but severe cold, so that on top of a strong crust a light snow drifted about continually.
"I’m satisfied to leave the skin on the brutes if they’ll agree to leave mine on me!" laughed Ross in answer to Leslie. "Guess you’re a better sport, Less, than I am."
Leslie shook his head. "Aw, I’m no sport," he disclaimed in a pleased tone. "If I ever think I am I shall remember the first night the wolves came."