“Who’s there?” he called sternly.
A sudden commotion followed. Around the prow of the canoe flashed two round glowing eyes, and a bearded, tuft-eared cat face. Dick’s rifle crashed. There was an inhuman squall of pain; a ball of fur and fury bounded high into the air and fell writhing, spitting and snarling within three feet of Dick, who leaped to one side.
“Hi! Hi! Dick, where are you?” It was Sandy calling from the campfire. He had been awakened by the gun shot.
“It’s all right, Sandy,” Dick called back, stooping over the animal he had killed. “Only a lynx scratching around the canoe. Come and take a look. Gosh! I must have hit him right between the eyes.”
Sandy came running up, and bent over the dead lynx. When the cat’s last struggles ceased, the boys hauled it into the firelight.
“I was scared half to death,” Sandy grinned sheepishly. “I was dreaming we were in Fort Good Faith with Uncle Walter and about a million wild Indians were whooping and shooting at the stockade.”
“You can bet your bottom dollar I didn’t feel so calm about the time that lynx came around the canoe and looked me in the eye,” Dick confessed. “I never took aim at all—just blazed away. Lucky shot I call it. I thought it was some one trying to steal our canoe.”
“What time is it?” Sandy inquired, getting up and stretching.
Dick drew out a fine watch which had been a graduation present. “Only ten o’clock,” he reported. “You can go back to bed, Sandy. My watch isn’t half done.”
The young adventurers talked a few minutes after Sandy was back in his blankets. But Sandy soon fell asleep. In spite of the excitement brought on by the killing of the lynx, Sandy was so tired that he went back to sleep almost immediately.