The Lure Of The Mississippi Part 17

The longer the boy tried to drive them away, the bolder they became.

"I'll bet they know the boy hasn't a gun," Tim exclaimed.

Now a very big crane defied the boy altogether. He walked boldly toward the boy, spreading his wings and uttering a loud croak.

"Look, look," exclaimed Tim, "he's going to bite the boy. Let's run and help him."

"No, we mustn't," argued Bill. "Mr. Barker said we shouldn't scare the cranes. If that kid runs away from a crane, he deserves to be bitten."

"I would run," Tim acknowledged, "if I had no gun."

The boy was now actually running away with the crane after him, but falling over a furrow and seeing that he could not run away from the fighting crane, he picked up his stick and went hard at his pursuer. At this unexpected attack, the crane ran away, napped his wings and arose to join the flock at the other end of the field.

The boy started for home, looking back from time to time as if afraid that the big bird might be after him again.

"I wouldn't herd cranes," said Tim, "if they didn't give me a gun."

The boys returned to camp in good time and about four o'clock the hunting actually began, for the big Canada geese began to fly over the timber to their resting place on a long sandspit below Inspiration Point.

"One rule," Mr. Barker called, "about this hunt. Don't fire at any bird that is too far off. We don't want to leave any wounded birds in the woods. Tim, you come with me. I'll tell you when to fire."

The hunters walked back half a dozen rods, so they would not drop any birds below the cliff, and placed themselves about fifty yards apart on a line parallel to the crest of the bluff.

Half a dozen geese soon came flying just above the tops of the old oaks.

"Aim at the last one," Barker told Tim. "Take it from behind!"

Tim brought down a large fat goose.

"Good work!" exclaimed the trapper. "Your shot went right in between the feathers. If you had fired at the bird from in front, the shot might have glanced off the heavy coat of feathers. 'Always aim at a single bird,' is also a good rule in wing-shooting. If you just fire wildly at the whole flock, you are likely to miss them all."

Barker at once took up Tim's goose, saying, "That will just furnish us a good supper with some bacon and corn bread."

After the goose had been picked and drawn, he put a slender green pole through it, which he laid on two forked sticks close to a hot fire. When one side was partly cooked, he turned the other side to the fire. In this way he prepared a savory meal of wild goose roasted on the spit.

When it grew too dark to shoot, the hunters came in with six geese. Bill had had the bad luck of merely winging a bird, so that he was compelled to follow his game for nearly an hour. A wild goose is so protectively colored that among dead leaves and brush it can make itself almost as invisible as a sparrow.

When Bill finally captured his bird, it was almost dark and he had forgotten to watch the direction to camp; he was lost.

He fired two shots in quick succession.

"There is Big Boy," Tatanka laughed. "He is lost, Tim; shoot twice, so he can find home. He is hungry."

Two shots fired close together means, "I'm lost," to hunters and woodsmen.

Of course Bill was not far from camp and he came home in time for supper.

"Bill," his younger brother teased him, "the next time you run after a goose, hang a cowbell on your neck, so we can tell where you go."

Barker and the Indian had built a lean-to and a warm camp-fire with back-logs of green oaks. For the fire itself they had cut a big pile of green white-birch.

"Look here, boys," Barker told them after supper, "we sleep between the log-fire and the lean-to. Any man that wakes up puts a few logs on the fire. In that way I think we'll keep warm."

They sat late around the camp-fire and when, at last, they were ready to roll in, Tatanka walked out to the point, below which river and valley spread out in a strange light.

"Look, my friend," he called. "The whole sky is burning. It is growing daylight. The world is burning up."

As they stepped away from the fire, they all saw the strange appearance of the sky. It was indeed growing daylight, although it was still before midnight.

Great streamers and bundles of whitish and reddish light were shooting up from all points on the horizon toward the zenith. Some streamers flickered, swayed and died out, but others took their places and for half an hour it was light enough to read. The river, the bottom forest, even the Wisconsin bluffs could be plainly seen. The men could even see their canoe amongst the willows below.

"The world is coming to an end," Tatanka muttered, overcome by his superst.i.tious fears.

"No, it isn't," Barker explained to him. "We are seeing a grand display of northern lights, the greatest I have ever seen, although I have seen them many, many times. This is something many city people never see, because they are always cooped up in houses."

In an hour it was dark again, and the tired hunters rolled up in their blankets before the fire.

"Make a night-cap out of your handkerchiefs," Barker advised the boys.

"The night is going to be chilly and your heads and ears will get cold if they are not covered."

Early in the morning they started for the field, where the boy had herded the cranes. The birds were there again, and it was not hard to get within range, although they were much more wary of the hunters than they had been of the small boy with his stick. When the great birds arose, all four fired and each man brought down his bird.

As Bill ran to pick up his game, the trapper called to him, "Look out, Bill; he isn't dead!"

But Bill was too eager to take warning. The bird suddenly straightened out his long neck and shot his sharp beak right into Bill's face.

The young hunter staggered and cried out with pain and surprise. The crane had cut a deep gash in Bill's cheek and the blood ran freely down his face.

At first his three friends laughed at him, but when they saw how badly Bill was wounded, Tatanka quickly chewed a handful of choke-cherry twigs and put them on the wound to stop the bleeding.

Thus ended the crane-hunt near Inspiration Point.

CHAPTER XVI-SMELLING THE STORM

Inspiration point was the first camp at which the lads had enjoyed the magnificent panoramic view of the great river and its valley and where they had tasted the joy of roaming about freely through upland forests and fields.

Some camps one finds so attractive that it is hard to break away, and after one has at last rolled up tents and blankets, memory involuntarily returns to the scene.

The lads enjoyed the camp at Inspiration Point so much that they begged Mr. Barker to stay there at least another night.

"I don't know, boys," the old man objected mildly. "It may not be so pleasant to-night. I think we are going to have rain."

"Where can the rain come from?" the boys questioned. "There isn't a cloud in the sky."