“Yes, and we have not time to go back and make new. I hope they will think we travelled both ways on that trail. I will go back a little way and make a few prints leading down.”
While Hugh was untying and pushing off the bateau, Blaise, going carefully and lightly, followed for a little way the route he had taken when he went in search of his white brother. Then, turning, he came back, leaving here and there clear impressions to show direction. Twenty or thirty feet from the shore, he branched off to the left, making tracks leading to the alongshore trail, but avoiding the spot where the bateau lay. He then went on towards the mouth of the bay, carefully obliterating all toe marks that pointed up the channel, and making sure to leave some pointing down.
In the meantime Hugh had pushed off the bateau. He noticed that the boat had left no clear traces, except where the rope had rubbed the bark from the limb around which it had been tied. That scar might easily have been made by the claws of some animal climbing out over the water. To make such an origin seem more likely, he scratched the scar lengthwise several times with his thumb nail. As he paddled along close to shore, he came upon the tree Blaise had crossed on, and pushed it out into mid channel.
About a hundred feet below the place where they had come out of the woods, Hugh joined Blaise. Here they took pains to leave distinct signs that a boat had been pulled up on shore. They wished their pursuers to see that they had taken to the water at this spot. Their intention was to lead Ohrante, should he find their trail, away from the island where the furs were hidden.
“Wouldn’t it be possible, Blaise,” Hugh questioned, “to load the furs and start across the lake at once? If the wind is right, I am willing to risk Ohrante’s seeing us and giving chase. With a good breeze we can outdistance his canoes.”
Blaise shook his head. “We could not run away from him in this wind. Last night it was nearly northeast, but now it is northwest. Surely you noticed that when we were on the ridge top. We cannot make speed with this heavy bateau against the wind. Yet it is not too strong for canoes to go against it, if the men at the paddles have skill. No, we must wait till the wind changes or till darkness comes again. Now we will carry our false trail farther.”
Blaise steered the boat straight across the channel to the outer end of the opposite island. Between steep, high, bare masses of detached rock and the small island itself, a reef extended, the inner end rising out of the water to form a beach of boulders and pebbles. The boys ran the bateau on the pebbles and jumped out. They could see off across the open water to the east, where the sun was already above the horizon.
“Here,” said Blaise, “we will leave the ashes of a fire, as if we had stopped to cook a meal. Make haste and get wood.”
Hugh did not need to be warned to make haste. A small fire was soon kindled on the pebbles where it could not spread, then partly stamped out and left smouldering. As the boys embarked again, Hugh glanced back to satisfy himself that the wind was not carrying any sparks towards the woods. Heretofore he had always drenched his cooking fire before leaving camp, but to have poured water on this one would have defeated his younger brother’s purpose. Blaise wanted the recent kindling of the fire to be in plain evidence.
“Where we have gone from here our enemies cannot tell,” he explained. “They will find no tracks or signs on this little island except around the fire. Then they will be sure we have gone by boat, but which way they will not know.”