r secret hearts did not envy the schoolmaster.
They thought he had too great a weight of dignity to maintain and they
enjoyed cleaving the clear current with their bare bodies. What! be
deprived of the wilderness pleasures! Not they! The two boys did not
remount, after the passage of the river, but, fresh and full of life,
walked on with the others at a pace so swift that the miles dropped
rapidly behind them. They were passing, too, through a country rarely
trodden even by the red men; Henry knew it by the great quantities of
game they saw; the deer seemed to look from every thicket, now and then
a magnificent elk went crashing by, once a bear lumbered away, and twice
small groups of buffalo were stampeded in the glades and rushed off,
snorting through the undergrowth.

"They say that far to the westward on plains that seem to have no end
those animals are to be seen in millions," said Mr. Pennypacker.

"It's so, I've heard it from the Indians," confirmed Ross the guide.

They stopped a little while before sundown, and as the game was so
plentiful all around them, Ross said he would shoot a deer in order to
save their dried meat and other provisions.

"You come with me, while the others are making the camp," he said to
Henry.

The boy flushed with pride and gratification, and, taking his rifle,
plunged at once into the forest with the guide. But he said nothing,
knowing that silence would recommend him to Ross far more than words,
and took care to bring down his moccasined feet without sound. Nor did
he let the undergrowth rustle, as he slipped through it, and Ross
regarded him with silent approval. "A born woodsman," he said to
himself.

A mile from the camp they stopped at the crest of a little hill, thickly
clad with forest and undergrowth, and looked down into the glade beyond.
Here they saw several deer grazing, and as the wind blew from them
toward the hunters they had taken no alarm.

"Pick the fat buck there on the right," whispered Ross to Henry.

Henry said not a word. He had learned the taciturnity of the woods, and
leveling his rifle, took sure aim. There was no buck fever about him
now, and, when his rifle cracked, the deer bounded into the air and
dropped down dead. Ross, all business, began to cut up and clean the
game, and with Henry's aid, he did it so skillfully and rapidly that
they returned to the camp, loaded with the juicy deer meat, by the time
the fire and everything else was ready for