A NIGHT IN THE WOODS
Although it was not yet noon, Ralph was as hungry as a young wolf,
for he had eaten nothing more than a dish of cold oatmeal and milk
since five o'clock that morning, and he had taken no provisions
with him. Assailed now by the pangs of a youthful, healthy, unsatisfied
appetite, he began to wonder what he could manage to "scare up" in
the form of edibles.
Near at hand was one of the numerous small springs with which these
hills abounded. It rilled up out of the earth and rocks and formed
a pool of clear water in which cress grew plentifully, furnishing
him with a welcome salad. He gathered a hatful of last autumn's
chestnuts---somewhat soggy, to be sure---and, making a small fire
of leaves and bark, he proceeded to roast these in the embers: a
tedious and unsatisfactory process at best. Having thus taken
off the edge of his hunger, he set forth upon his homeward journey
again, in a new direction.
"The next time I come up here in this neck of the woods I'll have
a pocket compass or a watch, at least," he said to himself. "It
was foolish of me to start off without one, but I've learned a
lesson today, anyhow. The trouble is, I never dreamed I'd get lost!"
He was headed directly from Pioneer Lake, as he thought, toward
the hills beyond it, and presently, as he began to climb, the
scenery grew wilder and more unfamiliar, the trees taller and
set more thickly together, the undergrowth almost impenetrable.
Still he fought on. It seemed he had never been so far in this
direction before, and after the first rush of angry despair had
passed, he felt doggedly curious to learn whither he was going,
and what landmark he would see first.
For almost two hours he plodded on, burdened with his rifle and the
pair of eagles, scratching his hands and face, tearing his clothes.
It was a miserable, heart-breaking tramp, one which might have caused
a less plucky lad to sit down and give way to doleful helplessness.
Even Ralph felt an uncanny sense of utter loneliness, and he
upbraided his own stupidity, as he chose to call it, in wandering so
far afield.
At last he noticed a faint roaring noise at the right, and he turned
in that direction, blindly, aimlessly. As he advanced through the
undergrowth the sound grew louder and louder, until finally he
emerged from the thicket and stood upon the bank of a deep stream
which rushed turbulently along and dropped over a ridge, falling
sixty or seventy feet into a cup-like hollow in the rock.
Ralph uttered a cry of delight. "Why, it's my own waterfall! I've
been wandering in a big circle all this while, and here I am not
far from my boulder where---ouch!" The sentence ended in a loud
wail of agony, for, taking a step forward, the young wayfarer's
foot had slipped on a loose stone. His ankle was severely wrenched.
For a few moments the pain was intense, almost unendurable. Poor
Ralph groaned aloud and sank down on the ground, biting his lips
in trying to keep tears of agony from welling to his eyes. How
could he walk the remaining distance home? Even with an improvised
crutch made from a forked branch of some tree, it would be well-nigh
impossible to travel up and down the stony grades that stretched
between the place where he had met with this unfortunate accident
and the farmhouse.
"Oh, if Keno had only not broken away!"
The futile wish was maddening in his present plight. He showered
sharp epithets upon the absent pony, until he remembered the probability
that Keno's return without him would be the means of sending some
one to the rescue. This was some consolation, though it was but
cold comfort in view of the fact that, had Keno not bolted, this
mishap would not have occurred.
However, there was no help for it now. Meanwhile, the badly sprained
ankle was throbbing painfully, and Ralph's next thought was to
thrust it, without taking off his shoe, into the cold running
water in order to check the swelling. He held his foot there,
shivering with relief, then he stretched himself out on the bank of
the stream, in the warm sunlight. Whereupon, with anxious mind and
weary body soothed by the loud splash of the waterfall, with the
pain in his ankle considerably relieved, and with a soft, grassy
nook beside a rock offering repose, it was not very strange that,
after closing his eyes drowsily, Ralph sank into a troubled slumber.
When he awoke, the sun was only a little way above the tops of the
highest trees, and long golden shafts of light were slanting down
through the branches, making an intricate tracery of shadows on the
ground. The air was beginning to have a decided chill, for the
wind had shifted to the west and was blowing the spray of the
waterfall into Ralph's face.
Strange that no one had come, in search of him! Of course his
mother could not have hitched Keno to the old buggy and driven
here, but she might have telephoned to Tom Walsh and asked him
to find out what had become of the missing hunter. He made another
bold attempt to walk, with the aid of a stout pine branch; but
he could not bear to put any weight on that cursed ankle.
"Well, I guess I'm bound to spend the night here," he told himself
grimly, after several futile starts. "I hope mother'll not worry;
she may not have noticed Keno, after all, if he went straight to
the barn. I remember I left the door open. And now what's the
first thing to be done? Oh, I know: make a fire---and two smoke
fires for a distress signal."
So he set about doing this, hobbling with difficulty over the
uneven ground. The signal fires he placed about fifty feet apart,
so that the wind should not confuse them; his camp fire he built
between three big rocks that formed a natural oven, over which
he laid a hastily constructed grill made of green alder withes.
On this grill he intended to broil whatever game he could bring
down with his rifle, for supper; and, as luck would have it, he
did not have to wait long before he "bagged" a large gray squirrel,
which he dexterously skinned and prepared for cooking.
While it was still daylight he gathered plenty of good firewood,
for he realized that having no blanket or poncho he would need
to keep up a brisk fire and to sleep as near it as possible.
Fortunately, another rock adjoining the fireplace afforded shelter
against the cool night wind.
The next thing to consider was his bed. The ground was damp in
places, but if he used leaves for a bed they might take fire and
burn him while he slept. So he built another fire in a sort of
hollow at the base of the fourth rock, and after about an hour---during
which the squirrel was broiling deliciously---he raked away all
the hot ashes, and curled up on the dried warm ground. This proved
to be a fairly comfortable bed and, after eating his nicely browned
supper, and bathing his ankle again, he replenished the fire,
taking care that it should not spread, and lay down beside the
sheltering rock.
Twilight deepened into darkness, the stars appeared one by one in
the vast black dome above him, the forest was deathly still save
for the noise of the waterfall which drowned all other sounds.
Once, an owl, attracted by the fire, perched on a low overhanging
branch and stared into the flames with great blinking yellow eyes;
then, startled by an uneasy movement of the sleeper, it flew away
with a dismal hoot.
Ralph's dreams were troubled, a medley of combats with feathered
foes, of lengthy altercations with Bill Terrill, of frantic digging
in the ground for impossible gold. Twice he was wakened by twinges
of pain, and he lay there, open-eyed, gazing up through the branches
of the stars.
"There's the Pole star and the Pointers," he murmured, to divert
his mind from his suffering. "Of course, the Pointers go around
the North star once in twenty-four hours, so that makes a kind
of clock. I could find my way home by those stars if I had to,
but I can't walk, I can't walk!"
His voice trailed off into silence, and he fell asleep once more.
Presently he was wakened, for a third time, by a man's voice
calling his name. Or was this only another dream? He sat up
and listened intently. The call sounded from some point back on
the trail, and there could be no mistaking its reality; it was
loud, gruff, yet kindly.
"Ralph! Oh-o, Ralph! Where are you, lad?"
Then came a tremendous clatter of loose stones and a crashing in
the undergrowth.
The lone camper, benighted and forlorn, peered around him on all
sides. At first he could see nothing beyond the glow of his own
fire, which intensified the weird shadows of the forest; but he
could hear the shouts and the ringing tramp of a horse's hoofs
on the stony ground. He raised his voice in answer to the call.
"This way! Ki-i-o! Here I am!" he yelled excitedly. "Is that
you, Tom?"
In a minute or two, as his eyes became accustomed to the pitch
darkness beyond the firelight, he beheld the flicker of a lantern
shining among the tree-trunks. Simultaneously, he heard the snorting
of a startled horse. He stood up, leaning against his rock, and
gave a peculiar throaty call that ended in the name "Ke-ee-no-o"---and
then, to his delight, the intelligent old horse responded with a
loud whinny of recognition.
The next moment three shadowy forms, those of a man on horseback and
two others on foot, detached themselves from the enveloping darkness
and advanced into the light of Ralph's campfire. One of the
unmounted searchers carried a lantern.
They were Tom Walsh,---on Keno,---Jack Durham, and Tom Sherwood.
"What in 'tarnation's the trouble, lad?" demanded Tom, as soon
as the searching party had exchanged greetings with Ralph, fervently
overjoyed to see them. "We've been looking for you ever since
three o'clock this afternoon."
Ralph explained the object of his quest.
"I got 'em, too," he added, pointing proudly to the two eagles.
"But when I started to go home, without Keno, and tried to take a
shortcut through the woods, I got lost somehow; and besides, I
sprained my ankle, so I can't walk. I just had to wait for
somebody to come after me. I hope mother hasn't been awfully
worried."
"Well, she wasn't exactly what you'd call calm!" replied Tom.
"But the doc is there at the house now, with her; she might be
lots worse. Does your ankle hurt bad? Can you ride home?"
"Sure I can! Let's start right away---unless you fellows want to
rest. You must be tired."
"I'm not," asserted Tom Sherwood. "How about you, Jack?"
The youngest boy gave a little sigh. "It's awfully nice up here
in the woods by this fire!" he replied evasively. "Let's warm
ourselves and---and hear more about Ralph's adventures, and---do
you think Mrs. Kenyon will-----"
"Yes, I do," interrupted his Cousin Tom. "Come on, youngster;
you and Ralph get on the nag; Sherwood and I'll walk. Let's be
on our way."
So the matter was settled, to Ralph's satisfaction and relief.
Putting out the three fires and sprinkling even the last embers
thoroughly with water from the stream, the four friends started
homeward, with Ralph and Jack mounted on Keno in the lead. Jack
carried the lantern, while Ralph, with one hand on the bridle,
the other holding the two eagles tied and balanced across the
saddle, allowed Keno to pick his own way along the trail. The
sagacious animal seemed to know every foot of the path; even in
the gloom of night he made no misstep. Sherwood and Tom followed
close, the latter carrying Ralph's rifle.