"I'm shivering, all right," he remarked, with chattering teeth, "but I reckon it's more because of the excitement than that I'm cold. Anyway, if I had the good sense to make my way out here in my sleep just because I was thirsty, why, seems like it'd be too bad to get disappointed; so I'm going to have a drink, no matter what happens."
With which he deliberately passed on a dozen paces, reached the spring, and taking the tin cup they kept there proceeded to slake his thirst. Max could not help admiring his grit, even though believing that Steve would be wiser if he forgot his thirst and hurried to the shelter of his blanket.
"Course you mean to carry the ham back with you, Max?" he inquired, as he once more joined the other.
"I should say so," Max told him; "and after this we'll have to be more careful about our smoked meat, unless we want to feed every animal up here. They're smart enough to get on to that racket of hanging it from a limb. We'll keep it inside the tent, and they can only get it by creeping over us as we sleep, which would be a risky thing to do, I'm thinking."
"Any idea what sort of a thing that animal in the tree was?" asked Steve, as he cast an uneasy look aloft, doubtless wondering whether the fierce beast held a grudge against him for having caused it to relinquish its dinner; so that after that he would be a marked boy.
"I couldn't say," Max replied, slowly. "I only had a glimpse of something moving up there, and then it was gone. The moon happened to be behind a cloud at the time, and that helped to fool me. All I can say is that it was a big animal, and not a 'coon or 'possum."
"Whew! some people keep on saying they never did get that tiger back after the storm set the animals free from the cages," Steve said, uneasily.
"Hello! there, what's all this row about?" Bandy-legs called out just then, for the returning pair had drawn near the khaki colored tent, where they discovered their chums standing with guns in their hands, and blankets swathed around their lightly clad figures, looking for all the world like a couple of mummies, or as Max afterwards told them, like Mexican peons with their ponchos.
"Yes, that's what we want to k-k-know!" added Toby.
"Oh! Steve here got thirsty while he was sleeping, and stepped out to go to the spring for a drink," Max informed them. "I happened to see him, and took a notion I'd follow and see that he didn't come to any harm. Then some animal up in a tree, thinking Steve was going to get after him, threw this down to him, and let out a screech that beat anything I've heard this long while."