It seemed to him that he had hardly closed his eyes when he felt Spud shaking him. “Go ’way,” he murmured sleepily. “What you waking me up now for?”
“It’s your turn again to watch,” Spud growled, unceremoniously hauling Billy off the boughs.
If it had been hard and lonely work before it was doubly so now. It was past midnight, at the hour when vital forces and courage are at their lowest ebb. Billy was stiff and sore. Every movement was painful. He had never felt so utterly miserable in all his life. As he afterward expressed it, every bit of sand had run out.
He piled fuel on the fire, and then sat down on the log and gave himself over to his misery. How long he had sat there he could not tell when he was brought out of a semi-drowse by a slight noise back of the lean-to. In an instant he was wide awake, straining his ears for a repetition of the sound.
The fire had burned low and the circle of light had narrowed to a faint glow of but a few feet in diameter. Billy held his breath. Had he imagined it? No, there was a rustle of leaves back of the lean-to. Something was moving there. Then there followed a decided and pronounced sniff! Billy felt his scalp prickle as if each individual hair was rising on end. With a wild yell he grabbed a glowing ember from the fire and hurled it in the direction of the sound. There was a startled “whoof,” and the sound of a heavy animal lumbering off through the brush.
Spud came tumbling out of the lean-to white and shaky. “For heaven’s sake, Billy, what’s the matter?” he gasped.
Billy’s teeth were chattering so that he could hardly speak. “I—I—I th-think it wa-was a bear,” he finally managed to get out.
“Go on, what you givin’ us!” said Spud.
Billy had by now so far recovered himself that he could give a connected account of what he had heard, and both agreed that their visitor could have been nothing less than bruin. Needless to say there was no more sleep for either that night. They piled fresh fuel on the fire and kept watch together, starting nervously at the smallest sound.
It was with a sigh of profound relief that they noted the gray of dawn stealing through the trees, and with the coming of the light their spirits rose perceptibly.