The merry jingles rang on in challenge and answer, repeating from both
sides of the pond, until they reached at last the wooded slopes and
mighty bowlders of Old Squaw Mountain, a peak whose "star-crowned head"
could be imagined rather than discerned against the horizon, near the
distant shore from which the hunters had started. Here echo ran riot.
It seemed to their excited fancies as if the ghost of Old Squaw herself,
the disappointed Indian mother who had, according to tradition, lived so
long in loneliness upon this mountain, were joining in their mirth with
haggish peals.
The canoe had turned bottom uppermost. On righting it they found that
the jack-staff had been dislodged. The jack was floating gayly away over
the ripples; its light, being in an air-tight case, was unquenched.
"Swim ashore with the rifle, Neal," said Cyrus. "I'll pick up the jack.
Did you ever see anything so absurdly comical as it looks, dodging off
on its own hook like a big, wandering eye?"
With his comrade's help young Farrar succeeded in getting the gun across
his back, slinging it round him by its leather shoulder-strap; then he
struck out for the bank, having scarcely twenty yards to swim before he
reached shallow water.
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