I began to fear that, after all, I should have but a sorry night of it. I should be too hungry to think; too cold either to sleep or dream; besides, I was likely to get wet to the shirt—as the rain had commenced falling in large heavy drops.
After another unsuccessful effort to strike a trail, I pulled up and sat listening. My eyes would no longer avail me; perhaps my ears might do better service.
And so it chanced. The report of a rifle reached them, apparently fired some hundred yards off in the woods.
Considering that I was upon hostile ground, such a sound might have caused me alarm; but I knew from the sharp whip-like crack that the piece was a hunter’s rifle, and no Mexican ever handled a gun of that kind. Moreover, I had heard, closely following upon the shot, a dull concussion, as of some heavy body dropped from a high elevation to the ground. I was hunter enough to know the signification of this sound. It was the game—bird or beast—that had fallen from a tree.
An American must have fired that shot; but who? There were only three or four of the rangers who carried the hunter-rifle—a very different weapon from the “regulation” piece—old backwoodsmen who had been indulged in their whim. It might be one of these.
Without hesitation, I headed my horse for the spot, and rode as rapidly as the underwood would permit me.
I kept on for five minutes or more without halting. I certainly must have passed the place where the shot had been fired, and yet I saw no one; but just as I was about to pull up again, a well-known voice reached me from behind with the words—
“By the jumpin Geehosophat! it ur the young fellur—the capt’n!”
Turning, I beheld my trapper comrades just emerging from the bushes, where they had cautiously cached themselves, on hearing the hoof-strokes of my horse, and lain hid till I had passed them.
Rube carried upon his shoulders a large turkey gobbler—the game I had heard drop—while upon Garey’s back I observed the choice portions of a deer.