The next day Jud and Joe joined in the hunt, leaving Hen to nurse the professor. Following a deer trail back from the shore, they came to a patch of swampy woods a mile from the lake. There Will discovered a mound some five feet high made of rushes, rotting moss, leaves, and mold.
"Is that a nest of ants?" he called to the Indian, pointing out to him the symmetrical hillock.
Pinto's face lighted up.
"No," he said, "that a nest of eggs. We dig it out, have good supper to-night."
"It must be some bird," exclaimed Jud, hurrying up, "to make a nest like that. Probably one of them South American ostriches—hey, Pinto?"
"You'll see," was all that the Indian would say as he began to dig into the soft, spongy mass. The rest of the party followed his example. By the time they had reached the center of the mound, digging with sticks and bare hands, the matted, rotting vegetation felt warm to the touch, and this heat increased as they approached the base of the nest. Down at the very bottom of the mound, arranged in a circle on a bed of moss, they found no fewer than twenty-four white eggs as large as those of a duck, but round and covered with a tough, parchment-like shell.
Pinto hurriedly pouched them all in a netted game-bag which he had made for himself out of palm-fiber.
"Want to see bird that laid those eggs?" he asked Jud.
"I sure would," returned the old trapper. "Any fowl that builds a five-foot incubator like that must be worth seein'."
"Rub two eggs together and she come," directed Pinto, holding out his bag to Jud.