By the time the dishes question was disposed of and everything had been tidied up and the fire once more attended to, the darkness of an October night had fallen. Everything outside the circle of our firelight was veiled in obscurity. There was no moon and it was a little cloudy, at least, the stars did not seem to show much. Very soon as we sat on our benches in front of the girls" cabin, we began to hear various wild notes from the great somber forest about us.
"What is that kind of plaintive cry that I hear now and then near the stream?" Theodora asked. "It"s like the word _seet_! I have heard it several times since dark, once or twice back of the cabins, and now out there by the two pines."
"That? Oh, that is the night note of a little mouse-catching owl," said Addison. "Some term it the saw-whet owl, I believe. There are numbers of these little fellows about at night, in these woods. They catch lots of woods mice and such small birds as chickadees."
"But hark! what was that strange, lonesome, hollow cry?" said Ellen, as an outcry at a distance, came wafted on the still air.
"Oh, that"s a racc.o.o.n," said Tom. "He"s trying to attract the notice of some other "c.o.o.n. You"ll hear him for fifteen or twenty minutes now, every minute or so."
"They came into our corn-field last year," said Willis. "We heard them every night, calling to each other. I set a trap, but never could get any of them into it."
Willis went on to relate several racc.o.o.n stories which his older brothers had told him. "Hullo!" he suddenly interrupted himself. "Hear that? away off up there by the foot of the mountain?"
"I know what that was," said Tom. "That was a screamer."
"What is a "screamer?"" Theodora asked.
"Oh, it"s a kind of wild-cat," replied Thomas. "You tell her, Addison."
"If it is a wild-cat, it is the same as the "lucivee," or loup-cervier,"
replied Addison. "But I have never heard one cry out at night; so I cannot say for certain."
"Oh, I have," said Willis. "They have little ta.s.sels on the top of their ears and are about as big as a fair-sized dog. But they never come near a camp; they are so shy that you never can get sight of one, though the lumbermen tell stories of having fights with them. They"ve got long claws and could scratch like sin, if they were cornered up anywheres."
"Sometimes they will follow after anybody for a long ways," said Thomas.
"Father told me that, when he was a boy, the mill stream at the village got so low one fall that they could not grind wheat or corn there. So grandpa sent him over to Pride"s grist mill, in Willowford, with the horse and wagon and a load of corn. There were a lot of grists in ahead of him; and before the miller got around to grind out father"s corn, it was dark, and he had to drive home, thirteen miles, in the evening. It was woods nearly all the way then; and after he had gone a mile, or two, and it had come on very dark, so dark he could hardly see his hand before him, he heard a snarling noise behind him. Turning round, he saw two bright spots just behind the wagon. It scared him; he started the horse up, but those spots came right close along after him. Every time he looked around, he would see them, and he could hear the creature"s feet _pat_ in the road, too, as it ran after the wagon. He kept the horse trotting along pretty fast and held the b.u.t.t of his whip all ready to strike, if the creature jumped into the wagon. It didn"t jump in, but kept near the hind end of the wagon; and it followed father for as much as two miles, till he met a man with an ox team. He was so taken up watching for those eyes, back there in the dark, that he came near running into the ox team; but the man shouted to him to pull up. He told the man that something had been chasing him; but the eyes had disappeared; and he saw nothing more of them. Father thinks now that it was a "screamer," though it might have been a panther. There were lots of panthers in the woods, in those days."
"Are there any now?" asked Theodora, looking a little uncomfortable.
"No," said Addison. "I don"t think there are."
"Well, I"m not so sure of that," said Thomas. "There may be one pa.s.sing through here, once in a while. Did you ever hear the Old Squire tell the story of the panther that he and my grandfather killed, when they were boys?"
"No," said Addison. "The old gentleman never talks much of his early exploits."
Ellen said that she had heard Gram speak of it once.
"Tell the story, Tom," said I.
"Oh, you get the old gentleman to tell it to you, sometime," replied Tom. "I can"t tell it good. But "twas real _scarey_ and interesting.
Something about a cow. The panther killed my grandfather"s father"s cow, I believe. The men were all away. It was in the winter time; and those two boys followed the panther"s track away up into the great woods here somewheres and shot it. It"s a real interesting story. You get the old gentleman to tell it to you some evening."
"We will," said Theodora. "I"ll ask him the first night after we go home."
"My! Did you hear what an awful noise _that_ was, just now?" exclaimed Kate.
We had all heard it--a singular yell, not wholly unlike the human voice, yet of ugly, wild intonation. Addison and Thomas exchanged glances.
"Queer what a noise a screech owl will make," the former remarked, after a moment"s silence.
"Dear me, was that a screech owl?" said Theodora.
"Oh, I guess so," replied Addison carelessly. "They make an awful outcry sometimes."
Tom did not say anything, but he told me next day that it was a bear which had made that cry, only a little ways from the camp; and that he had winked to Addison not to tell the girls, for they were looking nervously about them, after hearing the "screamer" story.
It was not a cold night, for October; yet as the evening advanced the fire felt very comfortable.
As we sat talking, several striped squirrels came out in sight into the firelight. There were hundreds of these little fellows there in the clearing, gathering the hazel nuts for their winter store. The hazel nuts were very large, nearly the size of those sold as filberts. The squirrels made their winter burrows in the ground about the old stumps.
Kate had gathered a pint dipper full of the nuts before dark; and as we sat talking, we cracked them with round stones from the stream. Once we heard a great rushing and running, as of large animals through the bushes, at no great distance away.
"Hear the deer go!" Willis exclaimed.
Tom laughed. "We will pop over some of them to-morrow," said he. But he whispered to me a few minutes later, that he expected two bears were having a squabble over there in the brush. By and by we heard them running again; and this time they pa.s.sed around to the south of our camping place, and we heard them go, splashing, through the stream and away into the woods on the other side. Willis jumped up and gave a loud _so-ho!_ which resounded far across the darkened wilderness; and then for a time all the wild denizens of the forest seemed to remain quiet, as if listening to this unusual shout.
"Oh, don"t, Willis!" cried Ellen. "It seems as if you were telling all these wild creatures where we are!"
"So I am," said Willis; "if they want to call on us, they will find a load of buckshot all ready for them."
"What time is it, Kate?" Addison at length asked.
"Twenty-five minutes to ten," she replied.
"Well, we want to get an early start to-morrow morning," said Addison.
"So I guess we had better go to bed and try to get as much sleep as we can. I"m for one."
"So am I," said Theodora. "But I don"t believe I shall sleep much."
"Oh, you need not be the least bit afraid," said Addison.
"We"ll look out for you, girls," said Thomas. "I will kindle up a good fire, so that it will shine right into your cabin; and you can close and b.u.t.ton your door. You need not be one bit afraid to go to sleep. Nothing will come near this fire."
"You are going to keep the camp-fire burning all night, Addison, aren"t you now?" said Theodora.
"Oh, yes," replied he, cheerily. "If I don"t get too soundly asleep," he added, in a lower voice, at which Tom and Willis laughed, well knowing that it is one thing for a tired party to talk of tending a fire all night, but quite another thing to actually do so, as the morning"s cold ashes generally show.
"If I don"t miss of it," said Tom, "I"m going to have a rare dish for breakfast. I hope I sha"n"t over-sleep."
"What is it?" Ellen asked.
"Oh, you will find out at breakfast," he replied.
"Well, good-night, boys," said Kate. "I hope you will all sleep well, but not so well as to forget the camp-fire."
"No, please now do not let that go out," added Theodora.
"We will look out for it," said Willis--"in the morning!"