“I did not see him,” he told the lads, “and I do not think he is coming back to follow us, because he has lost his gun, and it is hard for a poor Indian to buy a new gun. But we shall go away now on a long journey to some big lakes and many streams to the north and northeast of our camp. The lakes are large, they lie in the rocks in the forest and many little streams run into them, and the beaver people build their dams and houses on these little rivers, and they also build houses on many small lakes, which no hunter has ever found; for this [[141]]is the country which the Great Spirit has made to be a refuge for the beaver people and the moose. In this country the hunters shall never kill the last beaver and the last moose, because the animals can always find a trail that leads them to a safe place.”
“My father,” asked Bruce, “shall we stop looking for the camp of my friend while we go to explore many lakes and streams?”
“My son,” replied Ganawa, “we shall always be looking for the camp of your friend and for signs that tell us where he may have gone; and if we do not find him and find no signs of his camp, then, maybe, we shall have to go back and tell our friends that the wilderness has swallowed the white man.”
Bruce and Ray wanted very much to know if Ganawa knew who was the man that had followed them, but on this subject Ganawa did not utter a word and the lads knew it would be useless to ask him. He talked of moose and caribou they might find [[142]]in the country ahead, of many big lakes, some of which he had never seen himself; but the strange Indian, who had fled from them as if driven by an evil conscience, he seemed to have forgotten.
“We must look for moose,” Ganawa told the boys when they entered the narrow bay of a large lake one morning. “My sons are getting thin from eating nothing but fish.”
Ray’s heart began to thump when half an hour later Ganawa pointed toward the north shore of the lake and called in a low voice, “Moose!” and began to steer the canoe so as to approach the animal without alarming him.
“He is too big,” said Ganawa when they had approached within gunshot. But now the moose, a big bull with antlers in the velvet, became suspicious. He left the shallow water, in which he had been feeding on aquatic plants, and circled around far enough so he could get the wind of the hunters. Then he stepped out of the spruce forest, gazed at the hunters and sniffed the [[143]]wind, and Ray thought he saw him shake his head. Then he disappeared among the big black spruces which grow around the shallow bays of almost every northern lake.
“Let him go,” said Ganawa. “He is old and poor. Did you see his ribs? The black flies and the deer-flies and the big bulldog-flies have worried him, and he needs much food to make his big horns grow. We must try to get a young moose.” [[144]]