“Off there!” said Bert, pointing to the right.
“No, it’s over there,” was the opinion of George, and he indicated the left.
“It’s right behind you,” insisted Jack.
“And I should say it was in front of us,” spoke Tom. “So you see we each have a different opinion, and, as long as we can’t agree, what are we going to do about it?”
“That’s so,” admitted Jack. “But we can’t stay here doing nothing. We’ve got to get somewhere.”
“Somewhere is very indefinite,” was the remark George made. “It’s very easy to say it, but hard to find it. If we could only get back on the road, we could head in either direction, and some time or other we would get somewhere. But now we are in the woods and we may be heading right toward the middle of the forest instead of toward the edge. And these forests are no little picnic groves, either.”
“I should say not!” Tom exclaimed. “But where is the road? That’s the question.”
It was a question no one could answer, and they did not try. Eagerly and anxiously they scanned the expanse of snow for some indication that a road existed—even a rough, lumberman’s highway.
But all they could see, here and there, were little mounds of snow that indicated where stumps existed under the white covering. They were in a clearing, with woods all around them. If they advanced, they might be going toward the deeper forest instead of toward the place where civilization, in the shape of man, had begun to cut down the trees to make a town or village.