At the top of this long pitch, the tall trees also ended, and here the stream issued from a vast bush-grown swamp devoid of timber. A few dead trees rose from it, and climbing a low spruce, Pete saw this whitened expanse of spectral cones extended for miles. It was a forbidding prospect. The stream’s course appeared visible only a few rods. It seemed hardly probable the man he was trailing would cross this swamp. No signs of his ascending this waterway had so far been met, and Pete, now discouraged, was about to return to his canoe and on the morn go back, when, glancing across the stream, he saw a tiny opening in the bushes, as if they had been pushed aside.
To cross, leaping from rock to rock in the rapids below, was his next move, and returning to where the fall began, there, just back from this point, and beside a ledge, were the charred embers of a camp-fire.
Weeks old, without doubt, for rain had fallen on them, and all about were the footprints of some one wearing boots.
CHAPTER XVIII
“’Tain’t allus the bell cow that gives the most milk.”–Old Cy Walker.
Old Cy was, above all, a peaceable man, and while curiosity had led him to follow the trail of this robber and to cross this vast swamp, now that he saw the suggestive smoke sign, he hesitated about venturing nearer.
“I guess we’d best be keerful,” he whispered to Ray, “or we may wish we had been. I callate our pirate friend’s got a hidin’ spot over thar, ’n’ most likely don’t want callers. He may be only a queer old trapper a little short o’ scruples ag’in’ takin’ what he finds, ’n’ then ag’in he may be worse’n that. His campin’ spot’s ag’in’ him, anyhow.”
But the sun was now very low; a camp site must soon be found, and scarce two minutes from the time he saw this rising column of smoke, Old Cy dipped his paddle and slowly drew back into the protecting forest. Once well out of sight, the canoe was turned and they sped back down-stream and into the swamp once more. Here he turned aside into a lagoon they had passed, and at its head they pulled their canoe out into the bog.
The two gathered up their belongings, and picking their way out of the morass, reached the belt of hard bottom skirting the ridge. They were now out of sight from the lake, but still too near the stream to risk a camp-fire, and so Old Cy led the way along this belt until a more secluded niche in the ridge was reached, and here they began camp-making. It was a simple process. A level spot was cleared from brush, two convenient saplings denuded of their lower limbs, a cross pole was placed in suitable crotches, near-by spruces were attacked with the axe, and a bark wigwam soon resulted, and just as the darkness began to gather, a fire was started.