n' out of
'em. Schmitt said: 'Zake, you go in und ged him. I hef took sick right
now.'"

Happy as we were over the chase of Old Tom, and our prospects for
Sounder, Jude and Moze had seen a lion in a tree--we sought our
blankets early. I lay watching the bright stars, and listening to the
roar of the wind in the pines. At intervals it lulled to a whisper, and
then swelled to a roar, and then died away. Far off in the forest a
coyote barked once. Time and time again, as I was gradually sinking
into slumber, the sudden roar of the wind startled me. I imagined it
was the crash of rolling, weathered stone, and I saw again that huge
outspread flying lion above me.

I awoke sometime later to find Moze had sought the warmth of my side,
and he lay so near my arm that I reached out and covered him with an
end of the blanket I used to break the wind. It was very cold and the
time must have been very late, for the wind had died down, and I heard
not a tinkle from the hobbled horses. The absence of the cowbell music
gave me a sense of loneliness, for without it the silence of the great
forest was a thing to be felt.

This oppressiveness, however, was broken by a far-distant cry, unlike
any sound I had ever heard. Not sure of myself, I freed my ears from
the blanketed hood and listened. It came again, a wild cry, that made
me think first of a lost child, and then of the mourning wolf of the
north. It must have been a long distance off in the forest. An interval
of some moments passed, then it pealed out again, nearer this time, and
so human that it startled me. Moze raised his head and growled low in
his throat and sniffed the keen air.

"Jones, Jones," I called, reaching over to touch the old hunter.

He awoke at once, with the clear-headedness of the light sleeper.

"I heard the cry of some beast," I said, "And it was so weird, so
strange. I want to know what it was."

Such a long silence ensued that I began to despair of hearing the cry
again, when, with a suddenness which straightened the hair on my head,
a wailing shriek, exactly like a despairing woman might give in death
agony, split the night silence. It seemed right on us.

"Cougar! Cougar! Cougar!" exclaimed Jones.

"What's up?" queried Frank, awakened by the dogs.

Their howling roused the rest of the party, and no doubt scared the
cougar, for his womanish screech was not repeated. Then Jones got up
and gatherered his blankets in a roll.

"Where you oozin' fo