When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in my craw; but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around.  So I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last year's camp, and then clumb a tree.

I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn't see nothing, I didn't hear nothing—I only _thought_ I heard and seen as much as a thousand things.  Well, I couldn't stay up there forever; so at last I got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast.

By the time it was night I was pretty hungry.  So when it was good and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank—about a quarter of a mile.  I went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night when I hear a _plunkety-plunk, plunkety-plunk_, and says to myself, horses coming; and next I hear people's voices.  I got everything into the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could find out.  I hadn't got far when I hear a man say:

"We better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about beat out.  Let's look around."

I didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy.  I tied up in the old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe.

I didn't sleep much.  I couldn't, somehow, for thinking.  And every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck.  So the sleep didn't do me no good.  By and by I says to myself, I can't live this way; I'm a-going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; I'll find it out or bust.  Well, I felt better right off.