“Oh, he’ll hear us all right, but as he knows us, I guess he won’t make any fuss,” Bob assured him.
“How are you going to fix Sicum so he can’t get away?” Bob asked the Indian a little later.
They were about to retire for the night and the Indian made no reply, but from his pocket took a small chain about four feet in length. One end he fastened to the dog’s collar and the other he tied about his wrist.
“That ought to hold him,” Jack laughed.
“Me think so. Take heap much get him away,” he grunted.
Jack waited until, from his deep breathing, he was certain that the Indian was asleep, and then he crept softly from his bed of boughs. Sicum uttered a low growl once which woke his master, but the latter spoke to him in a low tone and the dog remained quiet. Jack crept on his hands and knees to a big spruce about ten feet from where they were sleeping and toward the shore and sat down with his back against it.
The night was cloudy, not even a star showing in the heavens, and it was intensely dark, so that he was unable to see even his hand when he held it in front of his face.
“Guess I’ll have to trust entirely to my ears,” he thought. “Eyes are no good to-night.”
It was so still that he could plainly hear the beating of his own heart. Not a sound save the gentle lap of the water against the stones on the shore of the lake, some twelve feet from where he sat, reached his ears. There was no wind and even the usual sighing of the branches was absent.
“I believe you could hear a pin drop if there was anyone here to drop it,” he mused.