CHAPTER VIII

THE VALLEY OF ENCHANTMENT

ROGER knew what was expected of him under such conditions. A regard for his own safety induced him to roll aside. If the wounded animal endeavored to fasten upon his body in its death throes, he preferred to be in some other and safer locality.

There was confusion for a minute or so. Roger, after escaping from the claws of the unseen beast, scrambled first to his knees and then to his feet. He could not think of going back to search for his gun, because something was struggling on the very spot, and he could imagine what that writhing object must be.

So he drew his hunting knife and waited. Then the sounds began to grow fainter, which the boy knew was a promising sign. Finally all became still again.

"Dick!" he whispered.

"Yes, I'm here, Roger," he heard his cousin say.

"Is he dead, do you think?" asked the other.

"I have just poked about with the barrel of my gun, and touched him," Dick replied. "There's no movement to the body, so I feel sure I finished him. Come this way; I felt your gun with my foot just now."

They had no means of seeing the motionless form of Dick's quarry, unless they chose to go to great trouble with flint and steel and tinder. There was really no need of this, because all of them were familiar with the denizens of the forest; so that, using their hands, they readily ascertained the nature of the invader of the camp.

"Why, it's only a wildcat, after all, Dick!" exclaimed Roger, a note of disappointment in his tones, as he came upon the abbreviated tail. "I was so sure it was the painter we heard crying earlier in the night."

"I thought the same way, Roger," confessed the other, "until I came to feel the fur, when something told me it was different. But we never yet killed such a wildcat as this, in all our tramping."

"It does seem to be a monster," admitted the other.

"It is not only the size I meant, Roger, but feel of the ears."

"Why, how very strange, Dick; for all the world like a tassel at the end! What kind of a beast have we run across? We never saw wildcats like this along the Missouri, you know."

"I have heard old voyageurs tell about a species they meet with further north in the cold country of the Chippewas and the Crees. They call it a lynx in Canada. It is a very fierce beast, all accounts agree."

"But, Dick, think of his coming right into our camp, and trying to carry me off! I never would have believed it if any one had told the story. He tugged at my leg again and again. It was that woke me up, I expect. If that's the kind of wildcats they have in this country, I am not surprised at the Indians keeping away from this region."

"There must be some reason for the beast acting as it did. I think we will find that in rolling about you must have managed to get over the spot where Benjamin laid our stock of pemmican, and that was what the beast was after."

"Oh! do you think so?" remarked Roger, heaving a sigh of relief. "Well, I shall be glad to believe he was not trying to carry me off. But all the same, Dick, you never before heard of a wildcat being so bold."

"I never did, and that is a fact," admitted Dick.

They settled down once more, though this time Roger changed his position so as to make sure he would not invite a repetition of the attack. Mayhew, too, had taken warning from the adventure; he proceeded to fasten their stock of dried venison to the limb of a tree in such a way that it would be safe from the depredations of any hungry animal.

That one alarm was not repeated. Throughout the balance of the night prowling wild beasts might roam the forest and seek their prey, but they gave the camp of the little party a wide berth. Perhaps they scented trouble in the blood of their kind that had already been spilled.

With the coming of dawn the boys were up and doing. Roger examined the stiffened form of the lynx with much curiosity. He seemed to be of the opinion that, since the ice had now been broken, they were apt to run across many other strange creatures, the like of which they had never before set eyes on.

Indeed, before they had been an hour on the way that morning, they began to notice that a remarkable change was taking place in the character of their surroundings. The sun's rays, falling on the face of a hill, filled them with awe, for it seemed to reveal almost every hue of the rainbow. Here a waterfall burst upon their vision, the stream dropping fully a hundred feet, and looking like a bridal wreath as the light breeze carried the fine spray to leeward, through several rainbows.

"The Enchanted Land, of a truth, Dick!" was Roger's comment, as they came to a full stop, to gaze upon these remarkable sights.

"Already it begins to look to me as though there might be some truth in the weird stories the Indians have been telling about this country up here," the other boy confessed.

As for Mayhew, the guide, he could not find words to describe the mingled feelings of admiration and wonder that filled his soul. None of them dreamed of turning back, although they were beginning to encounter sights such as the eyes of white men had possibly never before beheld.

"Jasper was not dismayed by all this," said Dick, "for we can see that he and his party kept on, following the course of this river of the cataracts and the rapids. So we, too, must march on."

"I feel thirsty," remarked Roger, shortly after this, "and as here runs a nice looking little stream I think I will take a drink."

Dick was about to follow suit when he saw Roger suddenly start up from his kneeling position, with a look of the most intense astonishment on his face.

"Why, Dick, it burns me!" he cried. "The water is hot!"

Dick immediately tested it with his hand.

"Just as you say, Roger, it seems as though it might be over a fire. Do you know, I noticed something like a trace of steam, but I thought it only such vapor as we often see rising from ice-cold water."

"But who ever before met with boiling water in the open?" asked Roger. "Why, there must be fires under the earth here, such as leap out of volcanoes in other countries."

He even rested his hand on the rock close by, but found it cold. Vegetation grew all around the hot stream and pool, showing that it never overflowed its banks at any time.

"There's one good thing about it," remarked Dick, turning to the frontiersman; "after this, if these hot springs are common here, you will never need to build a fire in order to make a pannikin of tea."

"I can believe almost anything after this," muttered Roger, as he dabbled his hand in the pool, and quickly snatched it out again, for the water seemed to almost scald his flesh. "Of course nothing can live in such a stream. I wonder what next we will run across. Cats with tassels on their ears, rocks and mud looking like they had been painted every color going, waterfalls that drop from the clouds, and where rainbows play hide and seek in the sunlight, and now a boiling spring, and a hot pool. What if one of us had fallen in here, and could not get out?"

"We'll soon begin to believe in those stories the red men tell of the Evil Spirits that live in this enchanted valley," laughed Dick, who seemed determined not to allow himself to be dismayed by anything wonderful they might encounter in their wanderings.

"I'm getting that way even now, Dick. I tell you, it wouldn't surprise me very much if we ran upon one of those monsters they say used to live in America centuries and centuries ago, much larger than an elephant. I only hope my rifle speaks true, if ever I have to face anything like that!"

Leaving the hot spring behind them, they pushed on along the trail made by Jasper Williams's party. Doubtless those three men were also filled with wonder at what they saw. Roger more than once expressed doubt as to whether they would have the courage to continue their explorations much further, surrounded as they found themselves by such marvelous freaks of nature.

"It wouldn't surprise me if we met them hurrying back out of here," he told his companions. "Jasper himself is a bold spirit, but I have a poor opinion of the two other men with him. I believe they are inclined to be superstitious, like the Indians, and these things are enough to make the flesh creep."

Here and there, as openings occurred, they could catch glimpses of distant peaks that looked like cathedral spires in the gilding rays of the sun. Dick was drinking in these pictures with eagerness, for the boy had something of the artist in his nature. He could appreciate such glorious works wrought by the deft hand of nature more fully than Roger, who saw rather the practical side of the picture.

Once, during that morning tramp, Roger did receive a fright. It did not come from any threatened attack on the part of a ferocious wild beast, nor yet through his narrow escape from falling into some pit where strange, gurgling, mysterious sounds oozed forth. On the contrary it was just because it started to snow furiously, so that the whole landscape was blotted out.

"That settles it, Dick," he exclaimed, in sheer disgust, "we're done for now. The only thing left us is to head as best we may for the place we believe the Valley of Wonders lies, and which we must be close to, right now."

"You are in too big a hurry, Roger," his cousin told him. "Just because a few flakes chance to come down is no proof that we are in for a storm. Look up and you will see the blue sky over yonder. It is only a passing squall, and soon over with, so cheer up."

His prophecy proved true, because in another minute the snow ceased to fall, and out came the welcome sun again, to once more paint the hillsides with his wondrous brush, and stripe them with rainbow tints.

"You must own up that most of our troubles come and go like that," commented Dick. "At first they seem to be dark and heavy, but all at once the sun breaks out, and we forget the gloomy past. It ought to be a lesson to you."

"I know it, Dick, but my nature is different from yours. I am either bubbling over with joy or else weighed down with foreboding. But we can see some distance ahead at this point, and I must confess that there is no sign of a human being, so Jasper and his comrades cannot be returning along the trail."

"The wind is shifting for one thing," observed Dick, "which may bring about a change in the weather before very long."

"Listen, what do you suppose that sound can be? If the weather were not so cold, and the season summer instead of early winter, I would surely say it was distant thunder!"

All three stood still to listen intently. Presently the far-away rumbling sound was again borne to their ears; and, just as Roger had declared, it was like distant thunder coming from beyond the range of forest-clad hills.

It was not strange that the two boys and the frontiersman turned uneasy looks upon each other, surrounded as they were by such strange freaks of nature.