Loll, with his fingers under Kobuk's collar, had been looking on, his little face unconsciously assuming the seriousness of those about him. He turned now to greet Kayak Bill, who, apparently calmed and refreshed, was wading out of the rice-grass. The old man's sombrero was cocked at a militant angle; his long raw-hide laces snaked along behind his boots, and clouds of tobacco smoke enveloped him.
"Well," he said gently, "I reckon there ain't no useless good vocabulatin' about that varmint, Silvertip. I should a-known better'n to trust a man o' his moth-eaten morals, anyhow."
Ellen stooped down to pick up the map which had fallen unheeded to the sand. For a moment she traced the beachline with her forefinger, reading the penciled names from the paper. "Sunset Point. Skeleton Rib. . . . Well, at least we know where to look for the cabin, Shane." She looked up decisively. "Let's find it before anything else happens to us."
Ten minutes later the two men had disappeared behind the western sand-dunes, and as if to assure them of his confidence in the future, Boreland's voice, raised: a quavering Irish melody floated back to the camp where Ellen and Jean were spreading the blankets upon the sand. They were weary from their night's work. With Kobuk on guard they curled up beside Lollie, and lulled by the far-away calls of the gulls and the ceaseless chant of the sea, were soon fast asleep. . . .
The hoo-hooing of Boreland and Kayak Bill two hours later awakened the sleepers before the men reached camp.
"Everything is lovely and the goose hangs high!" Boreland cheerily answered their questions. "We found the cabin all right and tonight we all sleep in our own little wickie!"
The pale-green combers that were breaking for miles out on the shoals, made it impossible to think of using the whale-boat. Therefore, immediately after lunch, the party started on the three-mile walk, each one carrying a pack. Jean, with her violin and a scarlet blanket strapped across her strong young shoulders, stopped in the trail again and again to laugh at her smaller sister, nearly obliterated under two feather pillows. Loll, important as the head packer of a Government party, carried a pot of cold beans in his hand, and encouraged Kobuk, whose pack-saddle was filled with necessary odds and ends for the night's camp. The sheet-iron stove, with food and cooking utensils inside, made a noisy, rattling pack on Boreland's back, leaving his hands free for his shot-gun which he carried for the ducks that were flying south. Kayak Bill shouldered a roll of blankets with an ease which many a younger man might have envied. He was balancing the broom across his palm when his eye fell on the pigeon. He picked up the cage with his free hand.
"Beats all get-out what women will get a man into."
A quizzical smile crinkled the corners of his eyes as he "hefted" his burdens. "Here's an old sourdough like me hittin' the trail with a broom in one fist and—by he—hen, a dicky-bird in the other!" Occasionally it appeared to dawn on Kayak that his expletives were not exactly suited to the ears of women and children and he seemed to be doing his best to modify them.
Boreland, whistling, led the way. Despite the discouraging events of the night and morning it was a cheerful little party that started out for the cabin. It is only in civilization that trouble and calamity eat into the heart. The wonder of the wilderness lies in that sense of adventure just ahead, which brings forgetfulness of the hardships left behind.