This was indeed a sad loss. In the woods snow lay a dozen feet deep, and to move about without the assistance of snowshoes was quite impossible. The game which Andy had accumulated was in the ruins, save two partridges which had been left at the Halfway tilt, and there was no other food nearer than the Narrows. Deprived of their snowshoes they could neither visit their rabbit traps nor set new ones.
“How’ll we make out now?” asked Andy hopelessly. “We can’t travel without snowshoes.”
“Maybe the snow on the river ice is packed hard enough t’ bear us,” suggested David. “Leastways we’ll have t’ try un. We’ve got t’ get t’ th’ Narrows tilt, whatever.”
Silently they lashed their sleeping bags upon the toboggan and made preparations for a night journey to the Halfway tilt. They could not reconnoiter for a suitable place to build a temporary shelter in the soft snow of the woods, as Andy had done when he was alone. A step beyond the packed snow around the tilt, or the more or less packed path leading down to the lake, where they had a water hole in the ice, would plunge them to their armpits.
“I’ll haul th’ flatsled,” suggested David, tightening the lashings of the toboggan. “You go ahead, Andy, and pick out th’ path t’ th’ water hole. We can make un all right t’ th’ lake, and we keeps t’ th’ hard path.”
Fortunately it was starlight, and though one or the other now and again stepped off the path, and each time had a brief battle with the deep snow, they at length emerged upon the white expanse of Lake Namaycush. Here the wind had packed the snow so hard that, though they sank nearly to their knees at every step, walking was not unduly difficult until they reached the river bed.
“’Twon’t be so good travelin’ here as on th’ Lake,” said David. “But I’m thinkin’ we’ll make un.”
David’s prediction was correct. In every turn of the river were deep drifts through which they floundered. Sometimes it became necessary to push the toboggan over these difficult places, using it as a support, working their way foot by foot. Slow and exhausting as it was, they stuck to it with a will, but when day broke they had traveled less than a third of the distance to the Halfway tilt.
“I’m fair scrammed!” Andy at length declared. “I’ve got t’ rest. Can’t we put on a fire and ’bide here and rest a little while?”
“Aye,” agreed David. “’Tis wearisome work. We’ll put on a fire and rest, but we mustn’t ’bide here too long. We’ll have t’ reach th’ tilt before night.”