CHAPTER XXIII
WHEN MORNING CAME
Neither of the boys would be likely to forget that night of the storm,when they passed so many wretched hours in their rude shelter. It waspretty cold, being without a blanket and unable to move around so asto keep their blood in circulation, though, after all, they realizedthat it hardly deserved the name of a blizzard.
"Oh, thank goodness, it's really getting daylight, Bluff!" Jerrycalled out, at last, arousing the other from a nap.
"And the snow seems to have stopped pretty much, likewise that awfulwind," remarked his companion, as he, too, took an observation.
"Let's get outside and stretch a bit," proposed Jerry. "I feel asthough I were seventy years old, and every bone and muscle in my bodycreaks or pains like everything."
"A good idea, Jerry, and I'm with you," Bluff conceded. "After we'vejumped around a while, we'll get limbered up. Here you go, now!"
They proceeded to carry on as if they had just escaped from an asylum,waltzing this way and that, clasped in each other's arms, orattempting some sort of darky hoedown--anything to get their musclesin shape.
"There, that makes me feel young again!" declared Jerry, panting as hethrew himself down beside the fire.
"The next burning question of the day is: What will you have forbreakfast?" demanded Bluff; and with that he commenced to rattle off agreat variety of dishes, beginning with ham and eggs, coffee, wheatcakes with maple syrup, and so on down the list.
Jerry presently threw up his hands, and as the other continued totantalize him by keeping up a running fire of breakfast hints, he evenwent so far as to thrust his fingertips in his ears.
"That's adding insult to injury, Bluff," he told his chum, when hefound a chance to speak. "Because I don't believe we could scare up ascrap of grub this morning, no matter how hard we searched ourpockets. We cleaned it all out at suppertime, you remember."
"Well, there's one last resort, if we _have_ to come to it!"remarked Bluff, with an assumed dejected air, as he rubbed his chinbetween his thumb and forefinger.
Something about his manner caused Jerry to look at him in horror.
"Now, I can guess what you're hinting at, and I tell you rightstraight from the shoulder I never could be hired to eat wolf, not ifI was actually starving."
"Oh, well, I can't say I'm really hankering after the dish myself,"Bluff admitted; "but you never can tell what you may have to come to.Some people don't like to eat crow, but it's been found they're not so_very_ bad, after all. It might turn out the same way with wolf."
"Are you going to help me get that jacket off the rascal?" demandedJerry.
"Sure I will!" he was told. "You'd make a sorry mess of the job, Ireckon; and if the thing's worth saving at all it ought to be takenthe right way. I don't say I could do it as well as Frank, who's had aheap more experience; but you'll get the pelt, Jerry, never fear."
"Then the sooner we finish the job the better," said the other boy;"because it strikes me we had better be leaving here and heading forhome as soon as we can make it. I only hope we don't get lost, andthat we strike camp in time for the middle-of-the-day feed."
Both were speedily engaged in the task of taking off the skin of theslain wolf. Bluff did the main part of the work, but the other washandy at times in various ways.
"I don't remember hearing another howl the whole night through; didyou, Bluff?" Jerry presently asked, when the skin had been rolled upin as compact a bundle as possible.
"Can't say that I did," was the reply.
"And now, do we make a start for home?" demanded Jerry anxiously. "Ihope you've got your bearings all correct."
"Leave that for me," the other boy replied; "but before we quit thisregion for good I'd like to take a turn over yonder." And he pointedin a quarter which his chum knew took in the region where they had hadthe meeting with Bill Nackerson and his two friends, after bringingdown the big moose.
"Yes, we ought to see what became of our moose, hadn't we?" Jerryadmitted.
"That's right, for I'd like to get hold of those splendid horns. Butthere's another thing I want to find out."
"Yes, I can give a pretty good guess what it is," the other told him."I've been worried some, myself, about it. Lots of times in the night,when I was lying listening to the wind moan and howl, I found myselfwondering how those three men were making out, if, as we had an idea,they couldn't scare up a match among 'em."
"Come along, let's hike out that way," said Bluff, frowning, as thoughhe did not feel any too happy at the thought. "After all, it isn'tgoing to be so very much out of our way."
They took one last look at the rude shelter that had served them sowell in warding off considerable of the storm's violence. Often inmemory they would again see that bough barricade; and even take noteof the hole which the bold wolf had torn in it.
Bluff walked along with a confident tread. Jerry was pleased to notethis, for it assured him his chum really knew where he was heading andthe chances of their becoming lost in the Big Woods were not serious.
"I tell you I'm glad I've got as fine a woodsman along as you are," heremarked, after a little while; "because, if I had been alone, while Imight be able to locate north by means of the compass, I declare Icould not tell whether home lay to the north, east, west, or south. Sowhat good would a compass be to such a greenhorn, I'd like to know?"
Bluff liked to hear such talk; any boy would when he set up to be anauthority on woodcraft.
"We're going to hit the place right soon now," he assured hiscompanion soberly and with a manner that showed that Bluff did notthink he was doing anything so very wonderful in leading the way backto the scene of the previous afternoon's double adventure.
Three minutes later he spoke again.
"There, you can see the leaning pine right now. That was only twentyfeet or so away from where we dropped our moose."
"I don't see anything that looks like a camp," hinted Jerry.
"No; seems as though they must have cleared out," he was told; "butthey couldn't take the moose along with 'em, of course."
"What became of it, then?"
"We'll find that out soon enough. Just follow me, will you? Looks asthough there had been a banquet around here, seems to me. Hi! see thebones, would you? And the snow's all trampled down, with patches ofred showing through it here and there."
"Bluff, the wolves struck this place after we chased 'em away; or elsethis may have been another lot of them. They cleaned up our moose,hide and all. But, tell me, isn't that the skull and the horns overthere?"
"Just what it is!" Bluff exclaimed, as he started on a run for thespot, to bend anxiously over the object that was half concealed in adrift, and then joyfully burst out: "Jerry, they haven't been hurt asingle bit. Why, we ought to thank those wolves for gnawing all theflesh off! It'll be easy enough now to hack the horns out with ourhatchet. And as we've got so little to tote back home with us, mebbewe'd better try and get our prize there."
"I wouldn't like to risk leaving such wonderful horns here," Jerryreplied seriously. "Any sportsman happening on them would be temptedto make out that he had killed the big moose himself. What do youreally think could have become of those men, Bluff?" he presentlyasked, uneasily; which question proved how the thought was worryinghim.
"Oh, like as not they made up their minds to start back home rightaway," the other boy asserted, as though he wished to think sohimself.
"But I thought I heard something like a faint shout just then, Bluff;let's listen a bit; for with that hatchet banging away it's hard tocatch anything."
Hardly had Bluff ceased hacking at the moose skull when they caught awailing cry, plainly a human voice, calling:
"Help, oh, help!"