ankle was too much for me, and now
that the danger was over it was a good time to faint, and I took
advantage of it.

How long I remained unconscious I do not know, but when my eyes opened
again it was night; through the interlacing boughs overhead the stars
were shining brightly, my head was neatly bandaged and so was my foot
and ankle. I could hear our horses cropping grass near by. I raised my
head and there lay Pete; he was alive I knew by his snores that issued
from his nose, and we were in our own camp; but--what are those animals
by our camp fire? Wolves! gaunt, shaggy wolves!

I hastily arose to a sitting posture, but my alarm subsided when in the
dim light of the fire I could trace the outline of another man's figure,
and on a stick close to the stranger's head roosted a giant bird.

Could it be that this wild man of the mountain--possibly my own
father--was camping with us?

CHAPTER V

"Moseyed, by gum! I'll be tarnally tarnashuned if that terri-fa-ca-cious
spook hain't pulled out!" was the exclamation that awakened me the
morning after our adventure with the bear.

Lazily opening my eyes I gazed a moment at the sun just peeping over the
mountain, then closed them again; but when I attempted to change my
position a sharp pain in my ankle thoroughly awakened me. Still I lay
quiet because it was some time before I could collect my scattered
senses and separate in my mind the real incident and the dream
phantasms.

The pain in my ankle, the swelled and irritated condition of my nose
plainly proved to me that there was no dream about my injuries, but I
discovered that my head and leg were neatly bandaged with strips of fine
linen. I sat for a while busily collecting the incidents of the past
twenty-four hours, arranging them in my mind in their proper order and
place. I cut out the dream portion from the realities with very little
trouble until I reached the part where I had awakened in the night and
had seen the wolves, the eagle and the Wild Hunter. I could not be sure
whether that was a dream or reality. Had I seen this strange old man
with his eagle and his wolf pack beside our camp fire or had I dreamed
it? Had this hobgoblin man, who might be my own father, rescued me from
death at the claws of the grizzly and bound my wounds for me, or was
that but a dream too? Had not Big Pete saved me perhaps and cared for me
afterward?

"Pete, old fellow," I said presently, rising to my elbow, "who bro