After a few minutes of sputtering anger, the real estate man organized a pursuit of Jerry. He made sure that the forest youth had run out of the kitchen at about the time the visitors came up from the dock.
"He ain't got a long start," said Blent to his satellite, the constable. "Let's see if he didn't leave tracks."
He had. There was still an hour of daylight, although the winter evening was closing in rapidly. Jerry had left by the back door of the lodge and had gone straight across the yard, through the unbroken snow, to the bunkhouse used by the male help.
There he had stopped for his rifle and shotgun, and ammunition. Indeed, he had taken everything that belonged to him, and, loaded down with this loot, had gone right up the hill, keeping in the scrub so as to be hidden from the big house, and had so passed over the rising ground toward the middle of the island.
"The track is plain enough," Blent said. "Ain't ye got a dog, Preston? We could foller him all night."
"Not with our dogs," declared the foreman.
"Why not?"
"Don't think the boss would like it. We don't keep dogs to hunt men with."
"You better take care how you try to block the law," threatened the old man. "That boy's goin' to be caught."
"Not with these dogs," grunted Preston. "You can put that in your pipe and smoke it."