"Ugh!" grunted the Indian. "Heap wind. Heap bad manitou."
The trunk of that tree fully justified Cal's confidence. It did not snap. At that very moment, however, there was a strong hand of the hurricane upon its broad top, and the general uproar was increased by a groaning, tearing sound.
"It's coming! it's coming!" shouted Cal, as he made a great spring into the gloom at its left, but Crooked Nose only lay flat upon the ground.
Ripping, tearing, splitting the earth on the windward side of the tree, and breaking off, with reports like pistol-shots, the roots of the giant growth gave way. Down, down, down came the grand old oak, crashing through branches and smaller trees in the way. It left a great hollow where its roots had been, but Cal need not have stirred one inch. If he had been twenty feet high he could have walked under that fallen trunk without touching it.
"Safest place there is," he said to Crooked Nose. "Hear that?"
"Ugh!" replied he. "Bad medicine!"
Bad for something, perhaps, for it was the squall of an enormous cat in fright and trouble. It seemed as if the hurricane must have come for that particular tree, since it began at once to die away after the crash. The thunder ceased and the flashes grew fainter, while the small remains of daylight came back and made the dripping forest visible. The spirits of Crooked Nose did not at once return. He glanced at the mound, where the lightning-splintered wreck of the dead tree had fallen. He looked up at the oak-trunk over him, and he shivered as if from cold.
Once more the cry of the cat in trouble sounded just across the brook. The carbine carried by Crooked Nose lay upon the ground, and Cal picked it up. It was loaded, and its owner did not make the least objection when Cal took the weapon, sprang across the narrow channel, and began to search for that angry cry.
Yet again it sounded, and now it plainly came from among the branches of the fallen tree.
"That's so," said Cal. "Must be the same fellow. Hid in these bushes and got pinned down."