Again the woods rang with a fairly good imitation of the peewit's--or European lapwing's--whistling note.

"Oh! I'd put a patent on that whistle if I were you," snapped Leon sarcastically: "I'm sure nothing like it was ever heard in these--or any other--woods! We'd better be moving on or the mosquitoes will eat us up," he added hastily. "There hasn't been any frost to get rid of them yet."

But as the quartette of boys left the log-camp behind and, with the terrier in erratic attendance, plunged again into the thick woods, it by and by became apparent to each that, so far as a knowledge of their exact whereabouts went or an ability to locate any point of destination, they were approaching the truth of Toiney's words and wandering "lak wit' eye shut!"

For a time they kept to a logging-road that branched off from the shanty, a mere gra.s.s-grown, root-obstructed pathway, over which, when that great white leveler, Winter, evened things up with his mantle of snow, the felled trees were drawn on a rough sled to some point where stood the movable sawmill.

The dense woods were intersected at long intervals by such half-obliterated paths; in their remote recesses lurked other rough shanties where a scout might read the "sign" that told of the hard life of the lumbermen.

But neither vine-laced road nor shanty was easy of discovery for the uninitiated.

"Whew! it kind o' brings the gooseflesh to be so far in the woods as this without having the least idea whether we're getting anywhere or not." Thus spoke Coombsie at the end of half an hour's steady tramping and plowing through the underbrush. "Are you sure that you know in which direction lies the cave called the Bear's Den, Leon? A logging-road runs past that, so I've heard."

"Oh, we'll arrive there in time, I guess; Varney's Paintpot is somewhere in the same direction as the cave," replied the pseudo-leader evasively.

"They're some distance apart, but we've made a bee-line from one to the other when I've been in the woods with my father or brother Jim."

But these woods were a different proposition now, without an older head and more experienced woodlore to rely upon: Leon, who had never before posed as a guide through their mazes, secretly acknowledged this.

He had not imagined that it would be so difficult to find one's way, unaided, in this wilderness of endless trees and underbrush, through whose changing aspects ran the same mystifying thread as if the gold-brown gloom of a shadowy hill-slope,--where only the sunbeams waltzing on dry pine-needles seemed alive,--or the jeweled twilight of a gra.s.sy alley bound a gossamer handkerchief about one's eyes, so that one groped blindfold against a blank wall of uncertainty.

"Say! but I wish I had brought my pocket compa.s.s with me," groaned the scout. "Guess I didn't live up to our scout motto: BE PREPARED! But then--" he looked at his cousin--"we started out with the intention of going down the river and you objected to my trotting back for it, Marcoo, when we determined on a hike through the woods."

"I was afraid that if the men knew what we were planning, they'd have headed us off as Toiney tried to do," confessed Marcoo candidly.

"Well, I wish now that I had gone back; I could have packed the luncheon into my knapsack; it would have been much more easily carried than in this basket. I miss my staff too!" Nixon deposited the lunch-basket, with which he was now impeded, on the ground in a green woodland glade where the n.o.ble forest trees, red oak, cedar, maple, interspersed with an occasional pine, hemlock, or balsam fir, rose to a height of from sixty to a hundred feet, bordering a patch of open ground, starred with wildflowers, dotted with berries.

Delicate queen's lace, purple gentians, starry wood-asters, waxen Indian pipes, made it seem as if this must be the wood-fairies' dancing-ground, where at night they rode a moonbeam from flower to flower, and sipped juice from the milk-berries, bunch-berries or scarlet fox-berries that strayed at intervals along the ground.

"I'd like to stay _here_ forever." Colin stretched himself upon a bank of moss, his mind going back to the explorer's longing, to the wood-hunger which had consumed him, as he lay upon the fragrant marsh-gra.s.s some hours before. He was getting his wish now--and not everybody gets that without having to pay for it. "The trees look kind o' fatherly an' protecting; don't they?" he murmured lazily.

Yes, here one felt admitted to the companionship of those n.o.ble trees,--the greatest story-tellers that ever were, when one listens and interprets their conversations with the breeze. A "Hurrah for the woods!" was on every tongue as the boys chewed a berry or smoked a pearly orchid pipe.

Moods changed a little as they took up their wandering again and presently waded, single file, through a jungle of bushes, scrub oak, dwarf pine, pigmy cedar and birch, laced with brambles. Here the trees overhead were of less magnitude and the tall leafy undergrowth foamed about their ears, giving them somewhat the distracted feeling of being cast away on a trackless sea--each sequestered in his own little boat--with emerald billows shutting out all view of port.

"Three cheers! We're almost through with this jungle. I guess we're coming to more open ground again--none too soon, either!" cried Leon who led, with his dog. "Shouldn't wonder if we were approaching a swamp: it may be Big Swamp, as the men call that great alder-swamp that's all spongy in parts and dotted with deep bog-holes, where one might sink out of sight quick!

"For goodness' sake! look at the crows," he whooped three minutes later, as, leaving the wavy undergrowth behind, he plunged out on a mossy slope strewn with an occasional boulder. "_The crows!_ What do you suppose they're after? They're teasing something! 'Hollering' at something!"

The same amazed exclamation broke from his companions' lips. Halfway down the slope was an old and leafy chestnut tree. Around this the crows were circling, now alighting on the branches, now fluttering off again on sloping sable wing, their yellow beaks gleaming.

A cawing din filled the air, with an occasional loud "Quock!" of alarm or indignation.

"They're teasing something--perhaps it's a squirrel! I've seen them do that before; they're regular pests!" exclaimed Leon, inconsistently finding fault with the crows for being birds of the same feather with himself.

"Whew! there's something doing here. Let's see what it is!" Nixon was equally excited.

With the terrier scampering ahead, the four boys set off at a run toward the crow-infested tree.

"I believe there's something--some animal--hidden in the hollow between the branches!" Leon gave vent to a low shout, his brown eyes yellow with excitement. "It's round that the crows are hovering!"

"There is! There is! I see the end of a big, bushy tail. It isn't a squirrel's tail either!" returned the scout in a fever of mystification.

"Let's go softly, so that we won't frighten the thing whatever it is--then we can have a good look at it!"

"Suppose it should be a wildcat, then we'd 'scat'!" gasped Colin, feeling his wildest hopes and tremors fulfilled. "I see its nose--a black nose--over the edge of the hollow! It's like--Gee! it can't be another c.o.o.n from the swamp--like the dead one that Toiney found in the hencoop?"

Simultaneously the terrier, Blink, was launching himself like a white arrow toward the spreading nut-tree, which stood upon a gra.s.sy knoll, while the woods rang with his fusillade of barking.

And from the hollow in the tree came a shrill whimpering cry, remarkably like that of a small and frightened child.

Starrie Chase fairly gambolled with excitement: "That's where you're right, Col," he panted. "If it isn't a c.o.o.n--another young c.o.o.n--I'm a Dutchman! I hunted one in the woods, by night, with my brother, last year!"

"He keeps on singing," breathed Coombsie. "Isn't his cry like a two-year-old child's?"

"Oh! if we only had my brother's c.o.o.n dog here--and could get him down from the tree--the dog might finish him!" Leon seemed emitting sparks of excitement from his pointed elbows and other quivering joints. "Go for him, Blink!" he raved, hardly knowing what he said. "You're not afraid of anything--you feel like a mastiff! Oh! we _must_ get him out of that tree-hollow on to the ground."

"Caw! Caw!... Caw!... Quock! Quock!" At the approach of the boys and dog the crows set up a wilder din, describing broader circles round the tree or fluttering upward to its loftier branches.

Again came that petulant whimpering cry from the hollow of the chestnut, where a young racc.o.o.n (probably brother to the intruder which had made a short bee-line through the woods, guided by instinct and its nose, to Toiney's hencoop) now wailed and quailed, finding himself between two sets of enemies: the barking dog and excited boys below, the pestering crows above.

Abandoning the wise nocturnal habits of his forefathers, with the rashness of youth, he too had strayed at sunrise from that secluded hole among the ledges on the borders of Big Swamp, filled with dreams of juicy cornfields and other delicacies.

Not readily finding such a land of milk and honey, he climbed into the hollow of this chestnut tree, flanked by a young ash upon the knoll, and there composed himself to sleep.

But thither the crows, flocking, found him; and recognizing in him an hereditary enemy of their eggs and nestlings, set to work to make his life a burden.

Nevertheless Racc.o.o.n Junior preferred their society to that of the boys and dog which instinct warned him to dread above all other foes.

As the well-bred terrier--game enough to face any foe, though it might prove a sorry day for him if he should tackle that young racc.o.o.n--reared on his hind legs, and clawed the bark of the trunk in his excitement, the rash Junior climbed swiftly out of the hollow and fled up among the branches of the tall chestnut tree, seeking to hide himself among the long thick leaves amid a stormy "Quock!" and "Caw!

Caw! Caw!" from the crows.

"Oh! there--there he goes! See his stout body and funny little legs!"

"And his long gray hair and the black patch over his eyes--makes him look as if he wore spectacles!"

"And his bushy tail! Huh! there's some cla.s.s to that tail--all ringed with buff and black."

Such cries broke from three wildly excited throats. Leon spent no breath in admiration. Like lightning, he had s.n.a.t.c.hed up a stone and sent it flying up the tree after the fugitive with such good aim that it struck one of the short, climbing legs.

Another whimpering cry--sharp and shrill as that of a wounded child--rang down among the thick leaves.

"What did you do that for? You've broken one of his legs, I think!"

exclaimed the scout.

"So much the better! If he should light down from the tree, he can't run so fast! I want that dandy tail of his--and his skin!" Starrie Chase was now beside himself with the greedy feeling, that possessed him whenever he saw a wild animal, that its own skin did not belong to it, but to him.

"Say, fellows!" he cried wildly, "if you'll stay right here by the tree and prevent his coming down, I--I'll run all the way back to that farm-clearing--I guess I can find my way--and bring back Toiney's gun, and shoot him. Say--will you?"

No such promise was forthcoming.