"I'm thinking the same," replied the other, who was not only looking across the creek, but into the woods beyond, as though he expected to catch sight of the cow herself; "though it may be the one that crossed there isn't the one that we're after."
Fred Linden was asking himself whether there was not some way in which they could reach the other side without going to the trouble of removing their shoes and leggins, and hunting a shallow portion, or allowing their garments to become saturated. He exclaimed: "Why didn't I think of it? There's our canoe!"
A number of these frail craft were owned in Greville, and Fred had a fine one himself, which was only a short distance off. Three minutes later the two reached it.
The barken structure was moored by means of a long rope to a tree a considerable distance from the water, so that in case of one of those sudden rises that sometimes took place, it would not be carried away by the freshet. The boat was quickly launched, and a few strokes of the paddle carried the two to the opposite bank of the stream.
"I wonder whether there is any danger of a rise," remarked Fred, as he carried the rope to a tree twenty feet distant and made it fast to a limb; "there was a good deal of thunder and lightning last night off to the east."
"But the creek doesn't come from that way," said the surprised Terry; "so what is the odds, as me father said he used to ask when the Injins was on all sides of him, and a panther in the tree he wanted to climb, and he found himself standing on the head of a rattlesnake."
"The creek winds through every point of the compass, so it doesn't make much difference, as you say, where it rains, since it is sure to make a rise; the only question is whether the rain was enough to affect the creek so that it will trouble us."
"If it was goin' to do that, wouldn't it have done so before this?" was the natural question of his companion.
"That depends on how far away the rain was."
The boys were not idle while talking. The canoe was soon made fast, and then they resumed their hunt for the estray. They were not skillful enough in woodcraft to trace the animal through the forest by the means that an Indian would have used, but they were hopeful that by taking a general direction they would soon find her. If she still had the bell tied around her neck, there was no reason why they should not be successful.