“What do you suppose that is?” Scott asked wonderingly.
Murphy looked at it with little interest. He could not eat it and he no longer had any interest in anything unless it gave promise of dinner. “Leads down to that logging camp unless my geography is crooked and we might as well follow it to the swamp. It’s going our way.”
“Maybe it goes through the swamp,” Scott suggested with a flash of hope. “Wonder where those fellows did get their supplies from? I should think they would have been afraid to get them from the river boats. It would have made their place too conspicuous.”
They followed the trail with curiosity even if without much hope and saw it duck into the heavy brush. As he ducked in after it Scott uttered a shout of triumph. There was a boat chained to a tree at the end of the trail. Like the trail it was far from new but showed signs of use at a comparatively recent date.
Murphy’s spirits came up with a bound. “Well,” he exclaimed, “this is the first piece of real luck we have had in some time. That boat looks almost as good to me as a loaf of bread.”
The question of ownership never entered their heads. They had been in dire need of a boat and Providence had provided one. There were no questions asked. There were no oars, but Murphy cut a pole with his hunting knife and they were soon skimming over the water merrily.
“Set your course due north, boy, and point it out to me, that’s all I ask!” he exclaimed, as he heaved away on the pole. “That swamp water does not look so bad from a boat, does it?”
They had gone with one bound from the dumps of despair to the summit of hope and they were so happy they felt silly. They had not realized how worried they really were. Now nothing seemed impossible. They felt perfectly confident that all their troubles were over and they would soon be at headquarters reporting their great discovery.
They were well out in the swamp, probably a half mile or more when Murphy gave a shout and redoubled his efforts with the pole. Scott thought he had sighted dry land again and stood up in the boat to see. Instead of land it was a house built up on piles in the middle of the swamp.
“Surely no one lives in that house away out there!” Scott exclaimed.