Notwithstanding the strenuous work of the summer, the boys got together frequently to talk over their plans for the future. Dauphin and Rob would begin together their studies in the preparatory department of Carlton College, while Ed would look forward to the time when he would be older and could join them.
Professor Hodge had written Dauphin that the college would accept his Natural History collection at a price which would enable him to finish his preparatory course and enter college, by working a part of his time, and the care of Science Hall was offered him to supply that need. Rob had no friends or acquaintances in the college town, but that fact did not dismay him. Mr. Allen had taught his boys that difficulties were but stepping stones up the heights of achievement, to the one who had a clean life and steady will. Rob had both, and, whatever the price demanded of effort and grit, he determined to have an education.
Dauphin would be a naturalist. He would need the training of the college to give him quick perception, ability to classify his knowledge, and arrive at correct conclusions. He would need to study the languages in
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 order that what had been revealed in the research of men of other lands might be his.
Rob had not yet chosen the line of his life work, but he was equally sure with Dauph that success and fame awaited boys who would apply themselves as they intended to do. Many were the happy, earnest hours spent by the boys in talking over the years they had spent together, as well as the years that were to come. How marvelously their lives had been spared, many times, since they had made their home in the forest wilderness. Through dangers of fire and drowning and freezing, one or another of them had been snatched back from the grave. The work of these pioneer boys had been hard, but it had developed them into lads of tough fiber, both of body and brain. They had had no idle hours; whether at work out of doors, or during the long evenings of the winters, they had their purpose in view—to prepare for life through college. If their few dollars earned were jealously put away for this purpose, no less were their minds trained by study for the necessary preparation.
The days of August were drawing rapidly to a close; soon farewells must be said, and the delights of forest and stream, as well as the duties of the farm, be laid aside by the older boys for years, if not forever.
“Boys,” said Dauphin, “Professor Hodge, in one of his letters, suggested that he would like the measurements of the hill and river forts, and the old mound city, for a paper he is preparing on ‘The Moundbuilders in Wisconsin.’ Let’s take a couple of days,
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 and do a little more exploring, and sketch the mounds, and take the measurements for the professor.”
The boys readily agreed to the plan, and Ed suggested that they go by the Indian camp at the mouth of Little Yellow, opposite Jim Dacora’s, and persuade their friend Kalichigoogah to accompany them over to the mound village.
The young Indian welcomed the boys to the camp, and his mother, Menominee Mary, invited them to rest a bit in the wigwam. The earth floor was as neat and wholesome as the floor of a parlor. Around the sides were the couches, platforms raised about a foot from the floor and heavily covered with the soft-dressed and ornamented skins of bear, lynx, raccoon, and deer. The Indian mother offered the boys sweet, ripe blackberries in white, birchbark dishes, but when they mentioned the object of their expedition there came over her a quick stiffening of body, and a startled look, almost of fear in her eyes. “Butte-des-morts” said she using the French description, “much bad. White boys stay here—not go.” But the boys, of course, were determined to go on, notwithstanding the warning of the Indian woman, which they were wholly at loss to understand. After the return of the Winnebagoes from the South, Mary had placed her son in a mission school where he had learned to read, and had acquired much of the way, and some of the habits of thought of the white race; but there are things of one’s early life that no subsequent training or polish will be able to remove. Thus it was with the Indian lad’s
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 veneration or superstitious fear of the mysterious relics of the moundbuilders—places of “big medicine.”
He was willing to explain to the boys the cause of his mother’s warning, but was as loth as she that these sacred places should be disturbed. “They mounds of dead,” said Kalichigoogah. “Big men, tall like trees, make camp there. One day come snake, long like Minnenecedah [the Yellow river]—big men make medicine; snake turn into long mound. One day come great beast—two spears like logs in mouth [elephant]—big men make medicine, great beast turn into big mound. Not good white boys go near mounds. Angry spirit wake up; kill boy.”
The white boys agreeing that they would not dig into the mounds at this time, but only take measurements, and make a plan of the old encampment, the Indian mother consented, though with great reluctance, for her son to accompany the party. But first she would put into his keeping a little buckskin sack containing “strong medicine”—potent charms—which might be able to protect them from the vengeance of the spirits, should they be aroused.
As there was no need for them to hunt game, and the danger from bears, or wild cats, panthers or lynx small indeed, at that time of year, the boys had not burdened themselves with their guns, but Kalichigoogah wrapped his blanket about his new 16-shot winchester, which the boys accused him of taking along to shoot the ghosts. The Indian lad made no reply to their chaffing, but strode off in silence.
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The Yellow river was waded on a sandbar, and the river flat, a mile or more in width, crossed. Here, the annual overflows had cut the soft alluvial soil into deep, wide ditches, so that the land looked like a succession of long breastworks. The flat was heavily timbered with oak and hickory and linden, with an occasional gigantic pine rearing its head high above the deciduous trees, like a sentinel of the forest. Here the woods-folk still dwelt in comparative safety from their most ferocious brother animal—man. It was going to be hard for Dauph and Rob to part from this paradise............