Deer waded knee-deep in the shallow water, and, lifting their
heads, instantly became motionless and absorbed. Occasionally a
buffalo appeared on a level stretch of bank, and, tossing his huge
head, seemed inclined to resent the coming of this stranger into his
domain.
All day the rafts drifted steadily and swiftly down the river,
presenting to the little party ever-varying pictures of densely
wooded hills, of jutting, broken cliffs with scant evergreen growth;
of long reaches of sandy bar that glistened golden in the sunlight,
and over all the flight and call of wildfowl, the flitting of
woodland songsters, and now and then the whistle and bellow of the
horned watchers in the forest.
The intense blue of the vault above began to pale, and low down in
the west a few fleecy clouds, gorgeously golden for a fleeting
instant, then crimson-crowned for another, shaded and darkened as
the setting sun sank behind the hills. Presently the red rays
disappeared, a pink glow suffused the heavens, and at last, as gray
twilight stole down over the hill-tops, the crescent moon peeped
above the wooded fringe of the western bluffs.
"Hard an' fast she is," sang out Jeff Lynn, as he fastened the rope
to a tree at the head of a small island. "All off now, and' we'll
hev' supper. Thar's a fine spring under yon curly birch, an' I
fetched along a leg of deer-meat.
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