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But things on this old planet seemed even enough the next day, when, after a dozen hours of much needed sleep, the campers' eyes opened upon a scene which might have stirred any sluggish blood—and they were not sluggards.
A fresh breath of frost was in the air to quicken circulation and hunger. Under a smiling sun an October breeze frolicked through leaves with tints of fire and gold, humming, while it swiftly skimmed over their beauties, as if it was reading a wind's poem of autumn.
Katahdin looked as though it had suddenly taken on the white crown of age, with age's stately calm. The weather had grown colder during the night. Summer—the balmy Indian summer, with its late spells of sultriness—had taken a weeping departure yesterday. To-day there was no threatening of rain-storm or slide. The mountain's principal peaks had fleecy wraps of snow.
"Ha! Old Katahdin has put on its nightcap," exclaimed Cyrus, when the trio issued from their tent in the morning. "Listen, you fellows! This is the 21st of October. I propose that we start back to our home-camp to-morrow. It will take us two days to reach Millinokett Lake. Then we'll set our faces towards civilization the first week in November, or thereabouts."
"Oh, bother it! So soon!" protested Dol.
"Now, Young Rattlebrain,"—Garst took the calm tone of leadership,—"please consider that this is the first time you've camped out in Maine woods. You might find it fun to be snowed up in camp during a first fall, and to tramp homewards through a thawing slush. But your father wouldn't relish its effects on your British constitution. And out here—once we're well into November—there's no knowing when the temperature may drop to zero with mighty short notice. I've often turned in at night, feeling as if I were on 'India's coral strands' and woke up next morning thinking I had popped off in my sleep to 'Greenland's icy mountains.' Herb Heal! you know what tricks a thermometer, if we had one, might play in our camp from this out; talk sense to these fellows."
Herb, who had risen an hour before his charges, had already fetched fresh water, coaxed up the fire, and was busily mixing flapjacks for breakfast. His ears, however, had caught the drift of the talk.
"Guess Cyrus is right," he said. "Seeing as it's the first time you Britishers have slept off your spring mattresses, I'd say, light out for the city and steam-heat afore the snow comes. Oh! you needn't get your mad up. I ain't thinking you'd growl at being snowed in. I know better.
"By the great horn spoon! I b'lieve I'll go right along to Greenville with you," exclaimed the guide a minute later. "I might get a chance to pick up a bargain of a second-hand rifle there. And I guess you'd be mighty sick o' your luck, Dol, if you had to lug them moose-antlers part o' the way yerself. I ain't stuck on carrying 'em either, if we can get a jumper."
But there was a third reason, still more powerful than these two, why he should make a trip to the distant town, which stirred Herb's mind while he stirred his cakes. His sturdy sense told him that it would be well he should put in an appearance when Cyrus made a statement before the Greenville coroner as to the cause and manner of Chris's death.
"Now, you boys, we don't want no fooling this blessed day," he said, when breakfast was in order, and the campers were emptying for the second time their tin mugs of coffee. "There's sport before us—tearing good sport. Whatever do you s'pose I come on this morning when I was cruising over the bog for water? Caribou-tracks! Caribou-tracks, as sure as there's a caribou in Maine!
"Who's for following 'em? We hain't got much provisions left; and I guess a chunk of broiled caribou-steak about as big as a horse's upper lip would cheer each of us up, and make us feel first-rate. What say, boys?"
"By all that's glorious!" ejaculated Cyrus, his eyes striking light. "Caribou-signs! Of course we'll follow them. A bit of fresh meat would be pretty acceptable, and a good view of a herd of caribou would be still more so—to me, at any rate. That would just about top off our exploring to a T."
"We've got to be mighty spry, then," said the woodsman, lurching to his feet, muscles swelling, and nostrils spreading like a sleuth-hound's. "If you want caribou, you've got to take 'em while they're around. Old hunters have a saying: 'They're here to-day, to-morrow nowhere.' And that's about the size of it."
"Let's start off this minute!" Dol jerked out the words while he bolted the last salt shreds of his pork. "Hurry up, you fellows! You're as slow as snails. I'd eat the jolliest meal that was ever cooked in three minutes."
"No wonder you squirm and shout all night, then, until sane people with good digestions feel ready to blow your head off," laughed Cyrus, who was one of the laggards; but he disposed of the last mouthfuls of his own meal with little regard for his digestive canal.
In rather less than twenty minutes the four were scanning with wide eyes certain fresh foot-marks, plainly printed on a patch of soft oozing clay, midway on the boggy tract.
"Whew! Bless me! Those caribou-tracks?" Cyrus caught his breath with amazement while he crouched to examine them. "Why, they're bigger than any moose-tracks we've seen!"
"Isn't that great?" gasped Dol.
"Well, come to think of it, it is," answered the guide, in the stealthy tones of an expectant hunter; "for a full-grown bull-caribou don't stand so high as a full-sized moose by two or three feet, and he don't weigh more'n half as much. Still, for all that, caribou deer beat every other animal of the deer tribe, so far's I know, in the size of their hoofs, as you'll see bime-by if luck's with us! And my stars! how they scud along on them big hoofs. I'd back 'em in a race against the smartest of your city chaps that ever spun through Maine on his new-fangled 'wheel,' that he's so sot on."
Garst, who was an enthusiastic cyclist, with a gurgle of unbelieving mirth, prepared to dispute this. There might have ensued a wordy sparring about caribou versus bicycle, had not the guide been impressed with the necessity for prompt action at the expense of speech.
"We must quit our talk and get a move on," he whispered, and led the forward march across the bog, his eyes every now and again narrowing into two gleaming slits, as if he were debating within himself, while he studied the ground or some bush which showed signs of being nibbled or trampled. Then he would sweep the horizon with long-range vision.
But not a tuft of hair or glancing horn hove in sight.
The marsh was left behind. The hoof-marks were lost in a wide meadowy sweep of open ground, bounded at a distance by an irregular line of hills, sparsely covered with spruce-trees.
Towards these Herb headed, leaving Katahdin away back in the rear.
"'Shaw! I'm afeard they're 'nowhere' by this time," he whispered, when the hunters reached the rising ground, glancing at Dol, who stepped lightly beside him.
The boy's lips parted to breathe out compressed disappointment; but his answer was lost in a sharp whirr! whirr! and a sudden flutter of wings above his head. His eyes went aloft towards a bough about eight feet from the ground. So did Herb's, and lit with a new, whimsical hope.
"A spruce partridge!" hissed the guide, his voice thrilling even in its stealthy whisper. "That's luck—dead sure! The Injuns say, 'The red eye never tells a lie;'" and the woodsman pointed out the strip of bare red skin above the beady eyes of the bird, which cuddled itself on its branch, and looked down at them unfrighted.
Dol Farrar, who in this region of moose-birds and moose-calls could believe in anything, felt both his spirits and credulity rise together. He managed to keep abreast of the trained hunter, as the latter, with swift, stretching, silent steps climbed the hill. And he heard the hunter's sudden cluck of triumph as he reached the top, and looked down upon the valley at the other side, the inarticulate sound being followed by one softly rung word,—
"Caribou!"
"Caribou? They look awfully like quiet Alderney cows, except for the big antlers!" The amazed exclamation stirred the English boy's tongue, but he did not make it audible.
Following Herb's example, he stretched himself flat upon his stomach under a spruce, and stared over the brow of the hill at a forest pantomime which was being acted in the valley.
Cautiously slipping from tree to tree, Cyrus and Neal, who had lagged a few steps behind, joined the leaders, and lay low, eagerly gazing too.
On its farther side the hill was yet more sparsely covered, the scattered spruces showing gaps between them where the lumberman's axe had made havoc. Through these openings, which were as shafts of light amid the evergreen's waving play, the hunters saw the sun silver a brown pool in the valley. A few maples and birches waved their shrivelling splendors of scarlet and buff at irregular distances from the water. And in and out among these trees moved in graceful woodland frolic four or five large animals,—perhaps more,—their doings being plainly seen by the watchers on the hill.
Their coats, like those of the smaller deer, were of a brown which seemed to have caught its dye from the autumnal tints surrounding them. In shape they justified Dol's criticism; for they certainly were not unlike cows of the Alderney breed, save for the widely branching horns.
Of the strength of these antlers the hidden spectators got sudden, startling proof, as the two largest caribou drew off from the rest, and charged each other in a real or sham fight, the battle-clang of their meeting horns sounding far away to the hill-top.
"Them two bulls are having a big time of it. Look at 'em now, with the small one. That's a stranger in the herd," hummed Herb into the ear of the boy next to him, his voice so light and even that it might have been but the murmur of a falling leaf. "It's an all-fired pity that we're jest too far off for a shot."
The "stranger," which the woodsman's long-range eye had singled out, was of a smaller size and paler color than the other caribou; and Herb—who could interpret the forest pantomime far better than he would have explained the acting of human beings on a stage—told his companions in whispers and signs that it was in distressed dread of its company.
The attentions which the rest paid to it seemed at first only friendly and facetious. The two big bulls, after trying their mettle against each other for a minute, separated, and moved towards it, prodded it lightly with their horns, and playfully bit its sides, a sport in which the other members of the herd joined.
"They're playing it, like a cat with a mouse; but I guess they'll murder it in the long run if it's sickly or weak. Caribou are the biggest bullies in these woods—to each other," whispered Herb.
"By the great horn spoon! they're doing for it now," he gasped, a minute later. "Sho!... if I only had my old Winchester here, I'd soon stop their lynching. Try it, you, Cyrus! You're a sure shot, an' you can creep within a hundred yards of 'em without being scented. Try it, man!"
The guide's flashing eyes and quick signs conveyed half his meaning; his excited sentences were so low that Garst only caught fag-ends of them. But they were emphasized unexpectedly by a faint bleating sound rising from the valley,—the helpless bleat of a buffeted creature.
"We want meat, and I'm going to spring a surprise on those bullies," muttered Cyrus, setting his teeth.
Still lying flat, he shot his eyes down the hill-slope, forming a plan of descent; then he lifted the rifle beside him, and jammed some fresh cartridges into the magazine.
Ere a dozen long breaths had been drawn, he was stealthily moving towards the valley, slipping from spruce to spruce—an arrowlike, unnoticeable figure in his dark gray tweeds.
He was close to the foot of the hill when the three breathless fellows above saw him raise his rifle, just as the unfortunate little caribou, after many efforts to escape, had been beaten to its knees.
"He'll drop one, sure! He's a crack shot—is Cyrus! There! he's drawing bead. Bravo!... he's floored the biggest!"
Herb's gusty breath blew the sentences through his nostrils, while the sudden, explosive bang of the Winchester cut through all other sounds, and set the air a-quiver.
Twice Cyrus fired.
The largest bull-caribou leaped three feet upward, wheeled about, staggered to his knees. A third shot stopped his bullying forever.
"Hurrah! I guess you've got the leader—the best of the herd. That other bull was a buster too! You might ha' dropped him, if you'd been in the humor!" bellowed the guide, springing to his legs, and letting out his pent-up wind in a full-blast roar of triumph.
He well knew that Cyrus, "being a queer specimen sportsman," and the right sort after all, would be satisfied with the one inevitable deed of death.
As their leader fell, the caribou raised their heads, stared in stiffened wonder for a few seconds, offering a steady mark for the smoking rifle if it had been in the grasp of a butcher. Then, as though propelled by one shock, they cut for the wood at dazzling speed.
A minute—and they were in the distance as tufts of hair blown before a storm-wind.
The half-killed weakling sought shelter more slowly in another direction.
"Well done, Cy!"
"Congratulations, old man!"
"You've got a trophy now. You'll never leave this splendid head behind. My eye, what antlers!"
Such were the exclamations blown to Garst's ears by the hot breath of his English friends, as they reached his side, and stooped with him to examine the fallen forest beauty.
"No; I guess we can manage to haul the head back to camp, with as much meat as we need. You'll have your 'chunk of caribou-steak as big as a horse's upper lip,' to-night, Herb, and bigger if you want it. I'm tickled at getting the antlers, especially as I didn't shoot this beauty for the sake of them. I'll hook them on my shoulders when we start back to Millinokett to-morrow."
So answered the successful hunter, tingling with some pride in the skill which, because of his reverence for all life, he generally kept out of sight.
And he stuck to his purpose about the antlers.
Cheered and invigorated by a sumptuous supper and breakfast of broiled caribou-steaks, supplemented by Herb's lightest cakes, and carrying some of the meat with them as provision for the way, the campers accomplished their backward tramp to the log camp on Millinokett Lake in fulness of strength and spirits.
Once or twice during the journey, when the guide was stalking ahead, and thought himself unnoticed, the city fellows saw him lift his right hand and look at it for a full minute. Then it swung heavily back to his side.
"He's missing his rifle, the partner that never went back on him," said Cyrus. "Say, boys! I've got an idea!"
"Out with it if it's worth anything," grunted Dol. "I never have ideas these days. Too much doing. I don't feel as if there was a steady peg in me to hang one on."
"Oh! quit your nonsense, Chick, and listen. Herb will wait for us in a few minutes," was the Boston man's impatient rejoinder.
Then followed a low-toned consultation, in the course of which such talk as this was heard:—
"Our Pater will want to shell out when he hears about Chris."
"So will mine. He'll be for sending Herb a cool five hundred or thousand dollars, right away. And, as likely as not, Herb would feel flaring mad, and ready to chuck it in his face. He's not the sort of fellow to stand being paid by an outsider for a plucky act, done in the best hour of his life."
"Oh, I say! wouldn't it be decenter to manage the thing ourselves, without letting anybody who doesn't know him meddle in it?" This suggestion was in Dol's voice. "Neal and I could draw our allowances for three months in advance; the Pater will be willing enough. We'll be precious hard up without them, but we'll rub through somehow. Then you can chip in an even third, Cy, and we'll order an A I rifle,—the best ever invented, from the best company in America,—silver plate, with his name,—and all the rest of it. I'd swamp my allowance for a year to see Herb's face when he gets it."
"That's the plan! You do have occasional moments of wisdom, Dol; I'll say that much for you," commented the leader. "Well, Herb has taken a special sort of liking to you. You may tip him a hint to wait in Greenville for a few days, and not to go looking for second-hand rifles till he hears from us. Better not say anything until we're just parting. Ten to one, though, you'll blurt the whole thing out in some harebrained minute, or give it away in your sleep."
"Blow me if I do!" answered Dol solemnly.