in company with the boys, and finding out who
they were, proposed to spend the night with them. Ree would have
permitted it, but by his actions John so plainly gave the fellow to
understand what he thought of him, that the stranger at last rode back in
the direction he had come, cursing John for the opinions which the latter
had expressed. The boys slept with "one eye open" that night.

Daily the road became worse and worse. For great distances it was
bordered on both sides by forests and the country was rough and broken.
There were wild animals and, undoubtedly, Indians not far away, but the
settlements were yet too near for the young travelers to have much fear.
So when their camp fire had burned low in the evening, they piled on
large sticks of wood, put their feet to the blaze, and, wrapped in their
blankets, slept splendidly. One night when it rained--and the water came
down in torrents--they made their bed inside the cart; but if the weather
was pleasant they preferred to be beside the glowing coals.

An adventure which had an important bearing on the future, befell the
boys early in the fourth week of their travels. They had resolved to be
saving of their ammunition, and wasted no powder in killing game for
which they had no use, though they twice saw wild turkeys and once a
bear, as they left civilization farther and farther behind. But when
provisions from home began to run low, it happened, as so often it does,
that when they felt the need of game to replenish their larder they
chanced upon scarcely any.

"One of us must go through the woods, keeping in line with the road, and
shoot something or other this afternoon," said Ree, at dinner one day.
"The other will not be far away when he returns to the road again."

"Which?" John smiled.

"I don't care. You go this time and I will try my luck another day," Ree
answered. "Get a couple of turkeys, if you can, old boy; or, if you can
get a deer, the weather is cool and the meat will keep."

So John set off, planning to work his way into the woods gradually and
then follow the general direction of the road and come out upon it
sometime before sun-set. He waved his hand to Ree, a smile on his happy
freckled face as he disappeared amid the timber.

Slowly old Jerry plodded on; slowly the miles slipped to the rear; slowly
the time passed. Ree thought of many things during the afternoon and
planned how he and John should spend the winter hunting and trapping and