“It’s easy enough to follow a blazed trial,” mused Anne out loud. It seemed natural to talk out loud in the woods, when one was alone. “I don’t see why they make such a fuss about being ‘careful.’ I remember these trees perfectly. I remember everything!”
The blazes on the trees were fresh and plain along here. But presently Anne came to a place where a great pine had fallen under the storms of the previous hard winter, and lay right across the path. Another had crashed into a grove of spruces and had taken them all down with it to ruin. “I remember we went out of the way around this,” said Anne. She made a wide detour, and looking carefully, came again upon blazes, quite conspicuous ones. She had lost time in rediscovering the path. “I see why it is better to keep together, on a long walk,” she said to herself. “A lot of eyes can spy blazes quicker. I’ll have to hurry to catch up with the rest, unless they stop. I think they will stop for me.” She hurried on a little faster.
“I wonder if paths always look so different coming down?” thought Anne a little later. Again she came to a blind part of the trail. A perfect maze of fallen trees had wiped out every sign of a path. And a great moss-covered boulder stood square in the way. “I certainly never saw that rock before! We should have spoken of it,” said Anne dubiously. “I don’t see any blazes—oh yes, there is one. But it looks very old and faint, not like those we followed this morning. There’s another! Can I be on the right path? They did not say there was another branching off.”
This was a very wriggling narrow path indeed, and Anne could not help seeing that it was different from the one she remembered. She began to feel rather nervous, and she remembered with a pang Tante’s last words to the Club—“Above all, keep together. Together is a safe motto, especially in the woods.” No one answered her repeated calls.
The path grew vaguer and vaguer. Sometimes the blazes seemed quite obliterated. Sometimes there seemed groups of them marking paths that led in opposite ways. Anne had to choose as best she could what seemed the right general direction.
Finally she came out quite abruptly into a sort of clearing, where the blazes converged in a hopeless muddle. Probably it was the site of an old wood-cutters’ camp, and these were the paths the men had made to get lumber, leading nowhere but to the place where some big tree had stood. Anne had no idea which way to go next. She was indeed lost. She shouted, but no one answered. Her voice did not seem to carry far; only the twittering of frightened birds and the mocking caw of an old black crow answered her.
Anne sat down, breathless, to think; and for the first time she was really frightened. Once she fancied she heard a far-off shout, that might be the Club yell. But it seemed to come from the wrong direction; and not hearing it again, in answer to hers, she concluded she had been mistaken.
Suddenly she heard the sharp crack of a rifle somewhere in the woods beyond her. There was no mistaking that sound. “Somebody is hunting!” she thought. “Suppose he should shoot me by mistake!” She jumped to her feet and hurried forward again, away from the sound of the shot.
Then she discovered all of a sudden that she was on a broad, well-marked trail leading down the mountain. This was encouraging, for she could walk faster now. But she stopped abruptly in a few moments. She had spied something through the trees. It was a hut in the woods beside the trail; a hut away off in this lonely spot on the side of a mountain that was supposed to be uninhabited!
It was a shiftless low shack of rough logs covered with tar-paper. From a tiny chimney a thin coil of smoke was rising. About the hut was a disorderly litter of barrels and boxes and earthen jugs. A wheelbarrow stood by the door. Probably there was someone in the house who could tell her which way to go home. But Anne had no desire to investigate the owner of this lonely, untidy place. Her one thought was to get away as soon as possible.