“Whoops! Whoopee!” the girl shouted, dancing up and down. “We win! We win!”
So they did. Fifteen minutes later a roaring flame was mounting toward the sky. Dry leaves and green willows make a hot fire.
Before this fire, turning round and round like a top, was the girl, while on willow branches, close as she dared have them, were her steaming garments.
Johnny Longbow saw the light of that fire against the sky, but a hill lay between him and the river. He believed the reflection to be a display of Northern Lights.
They were hunting, he and the hunchback, when he saw that light. A moment after he saw it the hunchback showed him that which set his blood racing and drove all thoughts of the light out of his head.
It was strange, this hunting in the moonlight—strange and a bit uncanny. From over the silver crested hills, the moon shone upon them. Shadows black as ink were all about them. Every little depression in the snow seemed a deep well of mystery. Beneath their feet the snow, softened as it had been by the day’s thaw, gave forth not the slightest sound.
So, with bows unstrung and quivers swinging at their sides, they advanced upon a low hill. Mounting this, they dropped down upon the other side.
They were half way down the slope when the hunchback, stopping dead in his tracks, braced his bow and nocked an arrow. He stood there, a grotesque statue in the moonlight.
“What has he seen?” the boy asked himself. Then, without knowing the reason for it, he put the lower end of his bow against his instep and bent it. After that he selected a broadhead from his quiver. Still he saw nothing, heard nothing.
“It’s strange,” he thought, “Strange and—”