When consciousness returned, he found himself in a sort of cavern fitted up as a hunter’s lodge, apparently, for great piles of skins were to be seen in different parts of the place, and a couple of rifles leaned against the rocky wall at one side, while a small keg, that evidently contained powder, stood near by, half concealed by a deer-skin hunting-shirt, which was thrown carelessly over it, with a bullet-pouch and powder-horn secured to the belt.
He noticed also that the cave was divided into apartments, for a curtain made of the skins of various wild animals was suspended from a cord overhead.
A dull, hard pain in his head caused him to think of himself, and he now saw, for the first time, that it was bandaged, and he was reclining on a bed made of the pelts of the bear and the panther at one side of the place.
If any further evidence was required to satisfy the hunter that the place was inhabited, it was forthcoming in the shape of a savory odor of broiling venison that was wafted from the inner apartment.
“Where was he? Who had brought him to this place?”
These and many other questions he asked himself, but after five minutes had been consumed in vain conjecture, he was as far from the solution of the mystery as at the moment when he first awoke to consciousness. He remembered the circumstance of the falling limb in the forest, and after that, all was blank. He did not know when he came, or who had brought him to this place. He was familiar with the country for miles around, he thought, and yet he did not know that there was such a cavern in the vicinity of his cabin.
Of one thing, however, he was assured.
The people who occupied the place must be friendly, else why had they brought him here and cared for him so tenderly?
Soon he heard a voice in the other part of the cave—a coarse, heavy voice, evidently that of a man. It said:
“Give us the whis’, ’Lon. I guess he’s comin’ round all correct. A good pull at this’ll fetch his idees back, I reckon.”