“Oh! at another time you would hardly pay any attention to them,” Dick told him. “Just now all of us feel a bit nervous, and ugly. Let them scold if it does them any good. We haven’t yet reached the point where we could eat crow, even if we felt like wasting a shot on one.”
It was sensible advice, and, just as Dick prophesied, the noisy flock was soon left in their wake.
“I’ve heard some queer stories about crows,” Mayhew remarked, “and how they even hold a court to try some bird that has been bad. Once I found a crow hanging by the neck dead in a wild grape-vine. Of course I could never tell if it got there by accident, or was hanged by its mates; but lots of people I told the story to said it looked mighty suspicious.”
Dick laughed a little at that, but went on:
“I’ve sat in the woods many a time, myself, and watched a gathering of crows. It seemed as though they came by squads from everywhere until there were hundreds fluttering about the trees. And such a terrible noise they kept up! It made me think of school when we have spelling bees, and everybody is trying to call out at the same time.”
“Yes,” added Roger, trying to take some interest in things that would cause him to forget his misery for even a brief period of time, “and then they would fly off in a great cloud, dodging this way and that as though it might be an army going to attack the fort of an enemy. Yes, they are queer birds; but I don’t like them to make fun of me when I’m sick for something to eat.”
“They acted to me as if they were warning us to go back!” suggested Mayhew, a little uneasily. “I wonder why, and if there’s anything up this way that would give us trouble.”
“It’s open country just here,” said Roger, “and nothing terrible in sight. But I’d give a heap if we could only overtake that loping buffalo. You said a while ago, didn’t you, Mayhew, that he could only be fifteen minutes or so ahead of us?”
“That is what his tracks tell me,” the guide assented, “and we are coming up on him all the while. If we fail to see him in the next half hour I will be a disappointed man.”
“Why, I must be getting weak on my pins, for it seems as if the ground was trembling under me!” declared Roger, showing signs of sudden alarm.