“Say, Quonab! that fellow we saw at the Falls claimed to be Hoag's partner. He may come on here and make trouble if we don't head him off. Let's burn her,” and he nodded toward the shanty.
“Ugh!” was the reply.
They gathered some dry brush and a lot of birch bark, piled them up against the wall inside, and threw plenty of firewood on this. With flint and steel Quonab made the vital spark, the birch bark sputtered, the dry, resinous logs were easily set ablaze, and soon great volumes of smoke rolled from the door, the window, and the chimney; and Skookum, standing afar, barked pleasantly aloud.
The hunters shouldered their packs and began the long, upward slope. In an hour they had reached a high, rocky ridge. Here they stopped to rest, and, far below them, marked with grim joy a twisted, leaning column of thick black smoke.
That night they camped in the woods and next day rejoiced to be back again at their own cabin, their own lake, their home.
Several times during the march they had seen fresh deer tracks, and now that the need of meat was felt, Rolf proposed a deer hunt.
Many deer die every winter; some are winter-killed; many are devoured by beasts of prey, or killed by hunters; their numbers are at low ebb in April, so that now one could not count on finding a deer by roaming at random. It was a case for trailing.
Any one can track a deer in the snow. It is not very hard to follow a deer in soft ground, when there are no other deer about. But it is very hard to take one deer trail and follow it over rocky ground and dead leaves, never losing it or changing off, when there are hundreds of deer tracks running in all directions.
Rolf's eyes were better than Quonab's, but experience counts for as much as eyes, and Quonab was leading. They picked out a big buck track that was fresh—no good hunter kills a doe at this season. They knew it for a buck, because of its size and the roundness of the toes.
Before long, Rolf said: “See, Quonab, I want to learn this business; let me do the trailing, and you set me right if I get off the line.”