So after proceeding out of sight of their own wagon, aunt Corinne
and her nephew, toughened by this training, would not have owned to
each other a wish to go back and sit in safety and peace of nerve
again upon the log. Robert plodded carefully ahead, parting the
bushes, and she passed through the gaps with his own figure,
clinching his jacket with fingers that tightened or relaxed with her
tremors.

They had not counted on being smelled out by dogs at the various
watch-fires. One lolling yellow beast sprang up and chased them. Aunt
Corinne would have flown with screams, but her nephew hushed her up
and put her valiantly on a very high stump behind himself. The dog
took no trouble to trace them. He was too comfortable before the
brands, too mud-splashed and stiff from a long day's journey, to care
about chasing any mystery of the wood to its hole. But this warned
them not to venture too near other fires where other possible dogs
lay sentry.

"Why didn't we fetch old Johnson?" whispered aunt Corinne, after
they slid down the tree stump.

"'Cause Boswell'd been at his heels, and the whole camp'd been in a
fight," replied Bobaday. "Old Johnson was under our wagon; I don't
know where Bos was. I was careful not to wake him."

Through gaps in foliage and undergrowth they saw many an individual
part of the general camp; the wagon-cover in some cases being as dun
as the hide of an elephant. When a curtain was dropped over the front
opening of the wagon, Bobaday and Corinne knew that women and