In that part of the world were an abundance of poisonous serpents, and he had a natural dread of disturbing some of them.

“If I can find the right kind of tree, I think that will be the best sort of a place, for nothing could get at me there, and there may be all the limbs I want to make a bed.  I guess there’s the location now.”

He was walking along all the time that he had been thinking and talking, and, at this juncture, he approached a straggling group of trees, which seemed likely to offer the very refuge he was seeking.  He made his way toward them with quickened steps.

Fred found himself upon a sort of plateau, broken here and there by rocks, boulders, and irregularities of surface, but in the main easy to be traversed, and he lost no time in making a survey of the grove which had caught his eye.  There were some twenty in all, and several of them offered the very shelter.  The limbs were no more than six or eight feet above the ground, and the largest trees were fifty feet in height, the branches appearing dense, and capable, apparently, of affording as firm a support as anyone could need while asleep.

“I guess that will do,” he concluded, after surveying the largest, which happened to stand on the outer edge of the grove.  “If I can get the bed, there ain’t any danger of being bothered by snakes and wild animals.”

Fred naturally pondered a moment as to the best means of climbing into the tree with his gun.  It was full size, and of such weight that he had been considerably wearied in carrying it such a distance, but it contained a precious charge, to be used in some emergency that was likely to arise, and no man was wealthy enough to buy it from him.  The way that he decided upon was to leave the gun against the trunk of the tree, and then climb in the way that comes natural to a boy.  The barrel of course, would bother him a little, but he could pull through very well, and he immediately set about doing so.

As he expected, the gun got in his way, but he managed it very well, without knocking it down, and in a few minutes had climbed high enough to grasp the first limb with one hand, which was all that he desired, as he could easily draw himself up in that fashion.

Fred had just made his grasp certain, when he heard a peculiar yelp, and a rush of something by him.

Not knowing what it meant, but apprehending some new danger, he drew himself upon the limb with a spasmodic effort, and then turned to see what it meant.  To his amazement and terror, he discovered that it was an immense wolf, which had made a snap at and narrowly missed his heels.  It had come like a shadow, making no announcement of its presence, and a second or two sooner would have brought the two into collision.

As Fred looked downward the wolf looked upward, and the two glared at each other for a minute or so, as if they meant to stare each other out of countenance.  The wolf was unusually large, belonging to what is known as the mountain species, and he seemed capable of leaping up among the limbs without any extra effort; but wolves are not addicted to climbing trees, and the one in question seemed to content himself with looking up and meditating upon the situation.  It seemed to the lad that he was saying: