His dreamy state deepened, and with it the wilderness effect which the little valley, the high mountains around it and the raging winter made.  His mind traveled far back once more and he easily imagined himself his great ancestor, Paul Cotter, sleeping in the woods with his comrades and hidden from Indian attack.  While the feeling was still strong upon him he too fell asleep, and he did not awaken until it was time for him to take the watch with Pennington and Warner.

It was then about two o’clock in the morning, and the snow had ceased to fall, but it lay deep in all places not sheltered, while the wind had heaped it up many feet in all the gorges and ravines of the mountains.  Dick thought he had never beheld a more majestic world.  All the clouds were gone and hosts of stars glittered in a sky of brilliant blue.  On every side of them rose the lofty peaks and ridges, clothed in gleaming white, the forests themselves a vast, white tracery.  The air was cold but pure and stimulating.  The wind had ceased to blow, but from far points came the faint swish of sliding snow.

Dick folded his blankets, laid them away carefully, put on his heavy overcoat and gloves, and was ready.  Colonel Winchester maintained a heavy watch, knowing its need, fully fifty men, rifle on shoulder and pistol at belt, patrolling all the ways by which a foe could come.

Dick and his comrades were with a picket at the farther end of the valley, where the creek made its exit, rushing through a narrow and winding gorge.  There was a level space on either side of the creek, but it was too narrow for horsemen, and, clogged as it was with snow, it looked dangerous now for those on foot too.  Nevertheless, the picket kept a close watch.  Dick and his friends were aware that guerrillas knew much of the craft and lore of the wilderness, else they could never have maintained themselves, and they did not cease for an instant to watch the watery pass.

They were joined very soon by Shepard, upon whose high boots snow was clinging to the very tops, and he said when Dick looked at him inquiringly: 

“I see that you’re an observer, Mr. Mason.  Yes, I’ve been out on the mountainside.  Colonel Winchester suggested it, and I was glad to do as he wished.  It was difficult work in the snow, but Mr. Reed, our guide, was with me part of the time, and we climbed pretty high.”

“Did you see anything?”

“No footsteps.  That was impossible, because of the falling snow, but I think our friends, the enemy, are abroad in the mountains.  The heavy snow may have kept them from coming much nearer to us than they are now.”

“What makes you think so?”

Shepard smiled.

“We heard sounds, odd sounds,” he replied.

“Were they made by a whistle?” Dick asked eagerly.  Shepard smiled again.

“It was natural for you to ask that question, Mr. Mason,” he replied, “but it was not a whistle.  It was a deeper note, and it carried much farther, many times farther.  Mr. Reed explained it to me.  Somebody with powerful lungs was blowing on a cow’s horn.”