“I’ll bet you did,” Martin exclaimed with admiration. “Why, I was going at a pretty good clip myself just now, and yet you were at my heels. Face about and back to the tent we go, for now we have a new day’s work before us, and to-morrow we head for home.”
Saying this Martin turned and ran for the camp, Larry doing his best to keep up; but he finished twenty feet behind. It is one thing to beat a crowd of boys on snow-shoes, but quite another to have a competitor who could show his heels to every man in the whole North Country.
And now everything was arranged exactly as if they were making their start in earnest. The sledges were loaded with infinite care, and the dogs harnessed in their places, one dog to each toboggan. Larry was to have Kim under his charge, and to pull in harness with the dog; for Kim was not only the stronger dog of the two, but also the one most easily managed.
Martin had made harnesses for himself and Larry, with broad draw straps over the shoulders and across the chest, so that the weight of the body was thrown into the harness as they bent forward in walking. The old hunter harnessed himself in front of his dog, so as to choose the course, set the pace, and break the trail all at the same time. But he instructed Larry to harness himself next his toboggan and behind Kim.
By this arrangement the old man worked out a shrewdly conceived plan. He knew that Kim would always strive to keep up with the sled just ahead of him, for that is the nature of the malamoot when sledging. This would force the boy to keep up the pace, no matter how tired and leg weary he might be. At the same time it gave Larry the benefit of a thoroughly broken-out trail every step of the way—a thing the boy learned to appreciate within an hour.
Before starting Martin built up a rousing fire to keep the camp kettle boiling, and then with a shout struck out into the forest. At first he went almost in a straight course, and at a pace that made Larry open his eyes in amazement. Was this the speed they would have to keep up hour after hour? Then the old man made wide circles, bending first one way and then the other, until they had been going about an hour and a half. Now he stopped and asked the panting, perspiring Larry, how he would take a short-cut to camp.
“Good gracious, I don’t know!” said the boy.
“Well, I didn’t expect you would,” Martin said quietly; “but I’m going to let you steer us back to it all the same. Take your compass and lead us straight northeast and you’ll land us there. It will be good practice for you. And mind you, keep up the pace.”
Larry now changed places with Kim, taking the lead as Martin had done, got out his compass, and they were off again. The country was fairly open, so that while he was guided by the little instrument, he really steered by landmarks, as Martin had instructed him. Usually the landmark was some tree some distance away that stood exactly in line with the northeast mark indicated by the compass. This tree would then be the boy’s goal until he reached it, when some other mark further on would be selected. In this way the instrument was only brought into use every half mile or so, a much easier method than constantly watching the dial.
The old hunter offered no suggestions about the route, he and Jack simply plodding along in the procession. But Larry, upon whom the brunt of everything had now fallen, had hard work to keep his flagging legs moving along at a rate that would satisfy the members of his rear guard. He was surprised that they did not come across some marks of the trail they had made on the way out even after they had been plodding for a full three-quarters of an hour. This made him apprehensive that Martin was letting him take them out of their course, for some reason of his own. He was astonished, therefore, suddenly to come in sight of their camp dead ahead, and not over a quarter of a mile away. The compass had given him a short-cut from Martin’s purposely bending course.