"Did he get out?" asked Pen.
"I won't tell you about it now; but when we get into the sitting-room this evening, I'll let you know just how one man made a bear of himself away up on Sawbuck Mountain."
That was something to look forward to; but not long after Corry and Pen had gone to school, Porter Hudson took his gun, and marched away to the woods, all alone by himself. The crust was still as firm as ever, and there had been no snow worth mentioning since the great storm.
"I don't know exactly what I'm going to kill," he said to himself; "but I'm ready for any thing that comes."
His first call for Ponto had been obeyed somewhat fatly and sluggishly; but, the moment the old dog saw the gun, he was another and a more willing animal. He led the way, head and tail up, until he came to the spot in the road where the wolves had pulled down the buck. The new snow, thin as it was, covered all traces of that adventure. But Ponto's memory, or nose, made him precisely accurate. Port was quite willing to stop a moment, and recall how that spot had looked in the moonlight, and how uncommonly loud and sharp had seemed to be the reports of the guns. All the hills had echoed them; and it occurred to him, that, if he should now meet a pack of wolves, he would have but two loads of buckshot, instead of eight.
"And no slugs," he added. "I should have brought some along. I don't care, though. I could climb a small tree, and fire away."
He afterwards noted quite a number of small trees well adapted to such business. So were some lower limbs of several larger trees, and he stood for a few minutes under one of these. He imagined himself sitting on that great projecting branch, climbing out to where it was ten feet above the snow, with a large pack of very ferocious and hungry wolves raging around below him, while he loaded and fired until the last of them had keeled over.
"Wolves can't climb," he remarked to himself; and he felt that such an affair would be grand to tell of when he should get back to the city. It would make a sort of hero of him, and the wolves could be skinned right there. He enjoyed it mentally; but that particular pack of wild beasts, killed off, in his imagination, under that tree, were all the game, of any kind, that he obtained that day. Ponto did better, for he discovered innumerable tracks in the snow, and they seemed to answer his purposes admirably. He could sniff and bark, and run and come back again, and look up into Port's face as if he were saying, "There, I've had another hunt."
Port had one. In fact, he hunted until he was sick of it, and decided that it was altogether too cold to hunt any longer. It seemed to him that he had been gone from the house a very long time indeed; and he was all but astonished, on his return, to discover that he was quite in season for dinner.
"Didn't you see any thing whatever?" asked Susie. She had felt a little anxiety about him, considering what dreadful things the forest was known to contain, and was even relieved to have him reply,—