The old man, who had eaten sparingly and in silence, raised his head.
"Yes, ye'r right, Mr. Thayor, but it won't do for us to stay whar we be no longer 'n we're obleeged to, that's sartain. Them hell-hounds ain't done yit. Yer life ain't safe," he added slowly.
Alice Thayor gave a little gasp, riveting her frightened gaze on the speaker. Margaret turned and looked at her mother with trembling lips; then she patted Alice's hand affectionately. Annette began to cry.
"It's hard to tell ye the truth, friend," continued the old man, "but I might as well tell ye now. There ain't nothin' left for us to do but to git out o' this hell-hole as quick as God'll let us. We got plenty of things in our favour——No, sir, it ain't as bad as it might be with them woods full of smoke. Thar's a railroad over thar"—he continued, nodding to the wilderness beyond them. "I cal'late we could make the railroad in, say, four days. Let's see—Bear Pond—as fur as the leetle Still water; then over them Green Mount'ins and through Alder Swamp."
"And it's clear goin', Hite," interposed the Clown, "as fur as Buck Pond. I was in thar once with the survey." Holcomb did not speak; it was a country which he had never entered.
"I had a trappin' shanty at Buck Pond once," continued Holt, "most thirty years ago. I knowed that country in them days as well as I know my hat and I presume likely it ain't changed. A day from Buck Pond, steady travellin', ought, in my idee, to git us out to the cars. I'll do my best to git ye thar."
Thus it was hurriedly decided that the trapper should lead the way. Holcomb suggested that he and the trapper should return to the burned camp in the hope, if possible, of finding something left which might be of use on the journey. They were sadly in need of an axe; the dull hatchet they had found in the cook's shanty they knew would prove next to useless. So Holcomb and Holt set off at once for the scene of the disaster while the rest got together into more practical carrying shape all that they possessed, ready for a start immediately on their return.
Soon Holcomb and the trapper were trudging about in the stifling heat of the ruins; they had drenched themselves to the waist in the brook and were thus enabled to make a hurried search within the fire zone. The first ruins they came upon were the stables—not a horse had escaped.
Although they found it impossible to approach the still blazing ruins of the main camp, they discovered among the smouldering, charred timbers of Holcomb's cabin the blade of a double-bitted axe, its helve burned off. A few rods further on, in the blinding smoke, they found a keg of nails. The only things the flames had left around them were of iron. An iron reservoir lay on its side where it had fallen; twisted girders loomed above the cauldron of desultory flame, marking the rectangle of the main camp. They shovelled the hot nails and the blades of the two axes into a blackened tin bucket and started back to the brook.
The trapper led. He had gone about a dozen rods farther on when he halted abruptly, peering under the palm of his hand at a smouldering log ahead of him.