ng to which the
game often came to drink, and for this spring they started a little
while before sundown, Henry carrying his rifle on his shoulder, and his
heart fluttering. He felt his years increase suddenly and his figure
expand with equal abruptness. He had become a man and he was going forth
to slay big game. Yet despite his new manhood the blood would run to his
head and he felt his nerves trembling. He grasped his precious rifle
more firmly and stole a look out of the corner of his eye at its barrel
as it lay across his left shoulder. Though a smaller weapon it was
modeled after the famous Western rifle, which, with the ax, won the
wilderness. The stock was of hard maple wood delicately carved, and the
barrel was comparatively long, slender, and of blue steel. The sights
were as fine-drawn as a hair. When Henry stood the gun beside himself,
it was just as tall as he. He carried, too, a powderhorn, and the horn,
which was as white as snow, was scraped so thin as to be transparent,
thus enabling its owner to know just how much powder it contained,
without taking the trouble of pouring it out. His bullets and wadding he
carried in a small leather pouch by his side.

When they reached the spring the sun was still a half hour high and
filled the west with a red glow. The forest there was tinted by it, and
seen thus in the coming twilight with those weird crimsons and scarlets
showing through it, the wilderness looked very lonely and desolate. An
ordinary boy, at the coming of night would have been awed, if alone, by
the stillness of the great unknown spaces, but it found an answering
chord in Henry.

"Wind's blowin' from the west," said Sol, and so they went to the
eastern side of the spring, where they lay down beside a fallen log at a
fair distance. There was another log, much closer to the spring, but
Ross conferring aside with Sol chose the farther one. "We want to teach
the boy how to shoot an' be of some use to himself, not to slaughter,"
said Ross. Then the three remained there, a long time, and noiseless.
Henry was learning early one of the first great lessons of the forest,
which is silence. But he knew that he could have learned this lesson
alone. He already felt himself superior in some ways to Ross and Sol,
but he liked them too well to tell them so, or to affect even equality
in the lore of the wilderness.

The sun went down behind the Western forest, and the night came on,
heavy and dark. A light wind