As Freckles followed into the lights and sounds of the camp, his heart and soul were singing for joy.

CHAPTER II

Wherein Freckles Proves His Mettle and Finds Friends

Next morning found Freckles in clean, whole clothing, fed, and rested.  Then McLean outfitted him and gave him careful instruction in the use of his weapon.  The Boss showed him around the timber-line, and engaged him a place to board with the family of his head teamster, Duncan, whom he had brought from Scotland with him, and who lived in a small clearing he was working out between the swamp and the corduroy.  When the gang was started for the south camp, Freckles was left to guard a fortune in the Limberlost.  That he was under guard himself those first weeks he never knew.

Each hour was torture to the boy.  The restricted life of a great city orphanage was the other extreme of the world compared with the Limberlost.  He was afraid for his life every minute.  The heat was intense.  The heavy wading-boots rubbed his feet until they bled.  He was sore and stiff from his long tramp and outdoor exposure.  The seven miles of trail was agony at every step.  He practiced at night, under the direction of Duncan, until he grew sure in the use of his revolver.  He cut a stout hickory cudgel, with a knot on the end as big as his fist; this never left his hand.  What he thought in those first days he himself could not recall clearly afterward.

His heart stood still every time he saw the beautiful marsh-grass begin a sinuous waving against the play of the wind, as McLean had told him it would.  He bolted half a mile with the first boom of the bittern, and his hat lifted with every yelp of the sheitpoke.  Once he saw a lean, shadowy form following him, and fired his revolver.  Then he was frightened worse than ever for fear it might have been Duncan’s collie.

The first afternoon that he found his wires down, and he was compelled to plunge knee deep into the black swamp-muck to restring them, he became so ill from fear and nervousness that he scarcely could control his shaking hand to do the work.  With every step, he felt that he would miss secure footing and be swallowed in that clinging sea of blackness.  In dumb agony he plunged forward, clinging to the posts and trees until he had finished restringing and testing the wire.  He had consumed much time.  Night closed in.  The Limberlost stirred gently, then shook herself, growled, and awoke around him.

There seemed to be a great owl hooting from every hollow tree, and a little one screeching from every knothole.  The bellowing of big bullfrogs was not sufficiently deafening to shut out the wailing of whip-poor-wills that seemed to come from every bush.  Nighthawks swept past him with their shivering cry, and bats struck his face.  A prowling wildcat missed its catch and screamed with rage.  A straying fox bayed incessantly for its mate.