“We can be thankful that we are to have the lodge to-morrow,” came from Harry. “It would be no fun building another shelter in such a wind as this.”
“And we can be thankful, too, that the fire didn’t get the best of us. Our stores, traps, guns and everything might have been burned up, and then we would have been worse off than old Skeetles and Dan Marcy.”
“It’s almost morning,” said old Runnell. “I’ll try to get out a few blankets, and then we can make ourselves as comfortable as possible among the tree branches.”
This was agreed to, and with an ax that Joe picked up, they cut out a small shelter, throwing some of the pine brush down as a flooring, and placing the rest over their heads. This made a place not as comfortable as that which had been wrecked, but something which, as Harry declared, “was a heap sight better than nothing at all.”
With the coming up of the sun the wind died down, and by eight o’clock all of the party felt quite comfortable once more. A fire was built in a safe place, and while Harry prepared the morning meal the others chopped their way through the tree branches to where their traps and stores lay, half buried in the snow. Only a small portion of their things had suffered injury, which gratified them exceedingly. Even Harry’s camera remained intact.
“We might as well move over to the lodge at once,” said Fred, while they were eating. “There is no sense in staying out in the cold, and, besides, we want to tell Marcy what we think of him before he goes away.”
“I think one of us had best stay here and watch the things,” said Joe.
Lots were cast, and it fell to Harry to remain at the spot. A little later the others put on their snowshoes and journeyed to the vicinity of Snow Lodge, a tiresome walk, for the snow now lay in all sorts of drifts.
“We won’t be able to do much hunting for a few days,” remarked Joel Runnell. “We’ll have to wait till the sun puts something of a crust on the snow. Then snowshoe walking will be much easier.”
When they came in sight of the lodge they were surprised to find the door and the one window wide open. There were tracks around the doorway, showing that Hiram Skeetles and Dan Marcy had left not a great while before.