Nell gave a joyful exclamation as the right kind of place loomed just ahead of them--a wooded, rocky arm stretching out into the lake. Had there been water it would, of course, have been a promontory; as it was it offered a screen and some shelter. It was much less exposed and hardly the place that a bull moose would gallop over or wolves be found on. It was altogether promising.
"Here we camp," said Nell, and David dropped his harness, stretching his arms with a sigh of relief.
Leaving the sled they both climbed up the steep and rocky bank, beating a way through snow-covered juniper bushes on to the wooded promontory. Above the lake and sheltered to a great extent, the place seemed ideal to their hopes. David began hacking a clear space with quick strokes of the little axe--a woodman learns that quick tentative stroke in the bitter north, because in the frost his axe blade is liable to fly into a thousand splinters like glass if used as it would be in a warmer climate--a sort of brisk tap, with caution. Nell went down again to the sled to bring up necessaries, for it was plainly labour lost to haul the sled up on to the promontory.
In so doing her attention was drawn to the dog Robin, who was not acting according to his usual rule, which was to lie down and watch while camp was made, waiting for his supper. He moved restlessly about, nose to the ground, this way and that, round, in and out, and presently disappeared among the underwood.
When Nell got up to the top again, laden with sleeping bags, food and utensils, David drew her attention to this.
"Some animal," said Nell; "what a plague! We must look out, Da, it might be a bear."
David thought it couldn't be.
"Bears are still asleep," he said.
"Not when thaws begin," Nell answered decidedly, as she cherished the little flame in the birch bark. "Just a breath of warmer wind and the old things wake up. Dad says you can't always count on them either, because they are so hungry and there's nothing for them to eat--no berries, no roots, no fish, because the streams are not free, no nothing. I hope it isn't a bear. Robin couldn't fight a bear."
"We should have to make polite speeches to it like the Red men do," said David. "Oh, what's the use of bothering when ninety-nine-to-one it's only a chipmunk."