So Tubby walked off. He was feeling in the best of spirits. He believed his troubles were mostly in the past, and the immediate future looked as rosy as the sky at dawn. In another day or two Uncle George would surely turn up, when the little operation of having that paper signed could be carried out. Then for a week of unalloyed happiness, roving the pine woods, feasting on royal game, and enjoying the society of the world-wide sportsman at evening time, when sitting in front of a cheery blaze inside that bunk-house the boys would be entertained with wonderful stories of the amazing scenes Uncle George had run across during his long and adventurous career.
Tubby had no difficulty in following that beaten path. In going to and from the spring the guides had made such a plain track that even a worse greenhorn than Tubby might have kept right. In fact, to stray would have been unpardonable sin in the eyes of a scout.
It proved to be much longer than he had expected. Tubby fancied that there was another water place closer to the camp, though Uncle George for some reason of his own preferred this spring. The path turned this way and that, passing around high barriers of lopped-off branches, now dead, and beginning to decay as time passed. Tubby could not but shudder as he contemplated the effect of a stray lighted match thrown into one of these heaps of dead stuff, that would prove as so much tinder. He hoped they would not have the ill luck to witness a forest fire.
Finally he came to the spring. It was a fine one, too, clear and bubbling. Tubby lay as flat as he could, and managed after considerable exertion to get a satisfying drink of that cold water.
“My, but that is good!” he told himself, after he had once more resumed an upright position. “I don’t wonder at them coming all this distance to get a supply of water. Now to fill my bucket, and trot back over the trail; and by the same token it won’t be just as easy a job as coming out was. But then the boys will thank me for my trouble, and that’s quite enough.”
As Tubby started off, carrying the pail of water, he suddenly bethought himself once again of that tremendous bobcat Andy had killed. It occurred to Tubby that he had been informed such creatures were always to be found in pairs. What if the mate to the defunct cat should bar his way, and attack him, recognizing in him one of the party that had been the means of making her a feline widow?
Tubby did not like the idea at all. He cast numerous nervous looks about him, as he hastened his steps a little. As a rule he swept the lower branches of the trees with those keen glances, for if the bobcat were lying in wait to waylay him it would select some such roost for its hiding place.
Then all at once Tubby plainly heard a sound behind him, that was exactly like the swift patter of feet in the dead leaves and pine needles. He whirled around and immediately experienced one of the greatest shocks of his whole life!
In and out of the aisles of the forest a moving object came pattering along. Tubby saw that it was about knee high and of a singular dun color. To his eyes it looked terribly fierce!
“Oh, murder! It must be a savage wolf, come across from Canada!” was what he told himself, remembering something he had heard a man say while they were waiting at a little wayside station in Maine, about such beasts of prey having been unusually plentiful up in Canada in the preceding spring, and bolder than ever known before.