"What a sell!" gasped the latter, striving to regain his self-control; "what an awful sell!" He succeeded in choking down his laughter, but there were tears of mirth in his eyes as they swept the staring circle. "It's nothing but an owl, fellows," he chuckled.
"An owl!" exclaimed Ted MacIlvaine, incredulously. "An owl--making a noise like that!"
The scoutmaster nodded and wiped his eyes. "An owl," he repeated. "There! Listen!"
_To-whoo-hoo-hoo, to-whoo-whoo._ A full, deep-toned note, like the distant baying of a hound, was wafted back through the woods. The strained expression on several faces relaxed, but they still looked puzzled.
"That's more familiar," smiled Mr. Curtis. "It's a great horned owl. You look as if you didn't believe it yet, Bob," he added, "but that's what it is, all the same. I've never heard it give that other sound, but I ought to have known--" He broke off, chuckling. "He certainly gave us a shock! I suppose we'll never hear the end of it. Let's get back to the fire; it's sort of chilly here."
They lost no time in following the suggestion. Back in the cabin they fed the blaze with fresh wood, and, sleep being out of the question for a while, gathered close around it, giggling and chattering and laughingly comparing their emotions on awakening to that blood-curdling scream coming out of the night.
"I was scart stiff," frankly confessed Court Parker.
But Bob Gibson declined to treat the incident with the careless levity of the others. "I'd like to shoot the beast!" he growled vindictively, thinking of the way his nerves and feelings had been played upon.
"It would be the best thing that could happen," put in Mr. Curtis, decidedly. "We'll have to see if we can't manage it. Most owls are not only harmless, but a real benefit, living as they do mainly on rats and mice. But this creature can do more damage than any other bird except one or two species of hawks. A single one of them will destroy whole covies of quail, kill partridges, ducks, and song-birds, to say nothing of all sorts of domestic fowls. I'll have to bring out a shotgun and see if I can't pot him, or there won't be any birds left for us to feed."
He made several trips to the neighborhood of the cabin during the following ten days, but it was not until the week after Christmas that he got sight of the big marauder and with a fine shot brought him down from the top of a tall hemlock. Several of the scouts who were with him rushed forward to secure the bird, and were surprised at the size of the buff-and-white body, with its great spread of wing, fierce, hooked beak, and prominent ear-tufts.