In a cup,
at the summit of this mountain-top hillock, was the camp-site;
its farther edge only a few yards above a little bass-populated
spring-lake.
The luggage was hauled, gruntily, up the steep; and camp was
pitched. Then car and truck departed for civilization. And the
two weeks of wilderness life set in.
It was a wonderful time for old Lad. The remoteness and wild
stillness of it all seemed to take him back, in a way, to the
wolf-centuries of his ancestors. It had been monstrous pleasant
to roam the peaceful forest back of the Place. But there was a
genuine thrill in exploring these all-but manless woods; with
their queer scents of wild things that seldom ventured close to
the ordained haunts of men.
It was exciting, to wake at midnight, beside the smoldering
campfire, and to hear, above the industrious snoring, of the
guide and his boy, the stealthy forest noises; the pad-pad-pad of
some wary prowler circling at long range the twinkling embers;
the crash of a far-off buck; the lumbering of some bear down to
the lake to drink. The almost moveless sharp air carried a myriad
fascinating scents which human nostrils were too gross to
register; but which were acutely plain and understandable to the
great dog.
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