While the lads were breakfasting, Mackintosh and Haggis busied themselves with striking the tent and packing the rest of the camp outfit upon the single pack-horse that accompanied the naturalist's wanderings. The two men had already fed at an earlier hour, and had stowed away most of their belongings in preparation for the journey.
"We'll be making straight for the Silver Lake, where the hanky was found," explained Mackintosh as they set off. "Haggis'll maybe pick up tracks there that'll be o' use to us." And so a northerly route was taken—crossing an arm of the Athabasca, and then following a course through the woods under the unerring guidance of the half-breed.
Towards noon the Scotsman called a halt, as he pointed to a small clearing through which ran a small stream of clear water.
"This'll no' be a bad place for us to eat our dinner, lads," he said. "If you'll unpack the mare and tether her, Haggis, we can see aboot the fire and the meat."
"Don't you think it would be well if we were to shoot something?" suggested Bob. "You see, we don't know where we may have to go yet, and game may be scarce. There seemed to be any amount of it on the way here. It would be as well to save what we have in hand."
"A good thought," returned Mackintosh approvingly. "Let's see what the pair o' you can do wi' your guns while Haggis and I are setting things to rights."
"I'll go one way and you the other, Bob, and see which of us will have the best bag in half an hour!" said Alf, with the eager delight of a friendly competition in prospect.
"Right you are," agreed Arnold heartily, "You go to the right; I'll take the left, and in half an hour we'll meet again at the camp and compare notes."
With a few words of friendly chaffing as to which would be the more successful, the chums parted. Each was determined that his gun should prove a superior Nimrod's skill, and both were stirred to high spirits by the excitement of the quest.
It must not be a matter for surprise that the boys could take such pleasure in the diversions of the moment, even recollecting the serious nature of the mission on which they had embarked with the original Skipper Mackintosh. The truth was that, once having been convinced that the absent men were indeed alive, the weight of anxiety was greatly lifted by that knowledge. As we are already aware, their fathers were men who had had many a backwoods adventure in their youth. They were well capable of taking care of themselves according to the circumstances in which they were placed. Hence the chief anxiety now was to hasten a meeting, when they would learn aright the cause of the elders' absence; and, though they could not conjecture what that cause could be, they felt assured that accident (in the ordinary sense of the word) was not the reason. Ordinary accidents of the hunt were not likely to meet two such experienced sportsmen at one time; and if one had suffered the other would have found means to communicate the fact ere this. The boys felt assured that to some other cause the matter must be attributed, and so they were fairly at ease in their minds, though, of course, anxious to hasten the time when the mystery would be explained.