than a mile; "and I can see why
Max chose to bring us up here to do our camping. We'll hardly run
across a living soul, unless we go over to that farm to get eggs and
milk. And say, let me tell you there's considerable of small game
frisking around this neck of the woods."

"I've seen heaps of gray squirrels running up the trunks of trees, and
hiding on the far side, as they always do," Max observed.

"And three times a cottontail bounced away, once right under my feet,"
Bandy-legs added, as his quota of evidence in support of Steve's
declaration with regard to their finding all the game they would need,
if so be they felt that it would be right to do any shooting so late in
the season.

"That was a red fox we saw slinking off a little while back," Steve
continued; "and where you find that smart animal depend on it the
hunting's good; for he'd clear out if it wasn't."

"Oh! d-d-did you see that?" gasped Toby, suddenly as he thrust out a
hand, and pointed straight ahead.

Every one of them must have set eyes on the same object that had caught
his attention, for they turned and looked inquiringly at each other.
Steve even leaned back and hastily secured his gun, into which with
trembling hands he commenced to push a couple of shells that were loaded
with buckshot, a dozen to each.

"What could it have been?" Bandy-legs asked. "I just managed to ketch a
glimpse of it as it disappeared in the brush, and if you gave me a
dollar I couldn't say whether it was a brindle dog or a hyena or what!"

"That's just the way we all feel," Max told him.

It could be plainly seen, however, that the boys were more or less
excited over the prospect of some of the wild beasts from the menagerie
still being at large. Indeed, who could blame them, when there was a
prospect of running across a hungry tiger, a ravenous wolf, or perhaps a
man-eating lion at any time in their saunterings through the aisles of
the forest?

CHAPTER VI

THE TERRIBLE ROAR

It was all of half-past four when the boys arrived at the place selected
for a camp. Immediately all of them became very busy, for considerable
work had to be done before night set in, so that they could feel fairly
comfortable.

One staked out the horse so that he could crop the grass, and be
contented, after being watered at the spring that ran close by. This fed
a pond that Max told them could be reached in ten minutes or less, and
which he believed might afford them some