R VI.

AFTER BLACK DUCKS.

If Cyrus's dreams were ruffled after the morning's excitement, those of
his comrades were a perfect chaos.

A slight wind hummed wordless songs through the tasselled tops of the
pine-trees about the camp. The music was tender and drowsy as a mother's
lullaby. Contrary to their expectations, Neal and Dol were lulled to
sleep by it like babies, with a feeling as if some guardian spirit were
gliding among the tree-tops.

But when slumber held them, when the murmur increased to a surge of
sound, sank to a ripple and again rolled forth, in their dreams they
imagined it the scurrying of a deer's hoofs along some lonely forest
deer-path, the rustling of a buck through bushes, the splashing of a
mighty moose among lily-pads and grasses at the margin of a dark pond,
the startled cluck of a coon. In fact, that rolling music of the pines
was translated into every forest sound which they had heard, or expected
to hear.

The excitement of wild scenes, new sensations, strange knowledge, still
thrilled them even in sleep. Their visions were accordingly wild,
rushing, jumbled, yet all set in a light so bright as to be
bewildering--a sign that health and happiness as great as human boys can
enjoy were the possession of the dreamers.

By and by their pulses grew steadier. Out of this confused rush of
imaginings grew in the mind of each one steady, absorbing dream. Neal
fancied that he was on the top of Old Squaw Mountain, and that beneath,
above, around him, sounded the strangely prolonged weird call, which he
had heard at a distance on the previous night while Cyrus was recovering
the jack-light. Owing to the ever-changing excitements of camp-life, he
had not questioned his comrade again about it.

Dol's visions resolved themselves into a mighty coon hunt. He tossed on
his pine boughs, kicked and jabbered in his sleep, with sundry odd
little cries and untranslatable mutterings,--

"Go it, Tiger! Go it, old dog! There he is--up the tree! Ah"
(disgustedly), "you're no good!"

A lull. Then the dreamer rolled out a string of what may be called
gibberish, seeing that it consisted of fragments of words and was
unintelligible, followed by,--

"The coon's eating the pork--no, he's b-b-b-barking it! Hu-loo-oo!"

"Oh, say, Chick, give us a chance! We can't sleep with you chirping into
our ears."

It was Cyrus who spoke, shaking with drowsy laughter, and Cyrus's big
hand gently shook the dreamer's arm.