From here onward signs of human presence in this swamp became more visible. Now and then an opening cut through the limbs of a lopped-over spruce was met; a spot where drift had been pushed aside to clear the stream was found at one place; signs of a canoe having been nosed into the bog grass were seen; and here were also the same footprints they had followed.
Another bit of hard bottom was reached, and here again was another deadfall. Tracks evidently made within a few days were about here, and tied to its figure-four spindle was a freshly caught brook sucker.
“The scent’s gettin’ warm,” Old Cy muttered, as he examined these signs of a trapper’s presence, and then, mindful of the sun, he paddled on again.
And now an upland growth of tall spruce was seen ahead, the banks became in evidence, and a slight current was met. One more long bend in the stream was followed, then came curving banks and large-bodied spruce. They were out of the swamp.
Soon a more distinctive current opposed them, a low murmur of running water came from ahead, and then a pass between two abutting ledges was entered. Here the stream eddied over sunken rocks, and pushing on, the forest seemed suddenly to vanish as they emerged from the gloom of this short cañon, and the next moment they caught sight of a long, narrow lakelet.
The sun, now almost to the tree-tops, cast a reddish glow upon its placid surface, and so welcome a change was it from the ghostly, forbidding swamp just left, that Old Cy halted their canoe at once to look out upon it. It was seemingly a mile long, but quite a narrow lake. A bold, rocky shore rising in ledges faced them just across, and extended along that side, back of these a low, green-clad mountain, to the right, and at the end of this lanelike lake a bolder, bare-topped cliff was outlined clear and distinct.
This strip of water, for it was not much more, seemingly filled an oblong gorge in these mountains, only one break in them, to the left of this bare peak; and as Old Cy urged their canoe out of the alder-choked stream, now currentless once more, a margin line of rushes and reeds was seen to form that shore. Back of these, also, rose the low ledge they had passed.
“Looks like a good hidin’ spot fer a pirate,” he exclaimed, glancing up and down the smiling lakelet. “Thar ain’t many folks likely to tackle that swamp–it took us ’most all day to cross it. I’ll bet no lumberman ever tried it twice, ’n’ if I wanted to git absolutely ’way from bein’ molested, I’d locate here. I dunno whether we’d best cross ’n’ make camp ’mong them ledges, or go back into the woods. Guess we’d best go back ’n’ take a sneak round behind the ledge. I noticed a loggin[[1]] leadin’ up that way ’fore we left the swamp.”
But now something was discovered that proved Old Cy’s wisdom, for as they, charmed somewhat by the spot, yet feeling it forbidding, still glanced up and down the bold shore just across, suddenly a thin column of smoke rose from away to the right, amid the bare ledges.
First a faint haze, rising in the still air, then a burst of white, until the fleecy pillar was plainly outlined as it ascended and drifted backward into the green forest.