Beaching this at a rather late hour, they do not enter the mission-building nor yet any of the huts of the rancheria. Their own residence is a tent, standing in the grove between; and to it they betake themselves. Once under canvass their first thought is supper, and they set about cooking it. Though they have brought back no buffalo meat a twenty pound turkey “gobbler” has been all day dangling at the horn of Hawkins’ saddle—enough for a plentiful repast.
Oris, who acts as cook, sets to plucking the bird, while Hawkins commences kindling a fire outside the tent. But before the fagots are ablaze, the old hunter, all along abstracted, becomes fidgetty, as if troubled with the reflection of having neglected some duty he ought to have done.
Abruptly breaking off, and pitching aside the sticks, he says:—“This wont do, Cris, nohow. I’ve got a notion in my head there’s something not right about them Indyens. I must up to the house an’ tell the Colonel. You go on, and get the gobbler roasted. I’ll be back by the time its ready.”
“All right,” rejoins Tucker, continuing to make the feathers fly. “Don’t stay if you expect any share of this bird. I’m hungry enough to eat the whole of it myself.”
“You needn’t fear for my stayin’. I’m just as sharp set as yourself.”
So saying, Hawkins strides out of the tent, leaving his comrade to continue the preparations for their repast.
From the hunter’s tent, the house is approached by a narrow path, nearly all the way running through timber. While gliding silently along it, Hawkins comes suddenly to a stop.
“Seems to me I heard a cry,” he mutters to himself; “seems, too, as ’twar a woman’s voice.”
After listening awhile, without hearing it repeated, he adds:
“I reckon, ’twar only the skirl o’ them tree-crickets. The warm night makes ’em chirp their loudest.”