"You bet! In course they will. Only there's snow everywhere now, and ef you're careful—and I've larned ye to be—then you'd be able to manage without rousing the critters."
"And if I took a hunk of meat with me I might manage to quiet them in any case, eh?" asked our hero.
"Might, mightn't; can't say. Jest a toss up—what then?"
"That's telling," smiled Joe. "But you and Beaver Jack be ready. If you see a sleigh coming along quick, with one man aboard it, put it down that it's me. I'm going to make a move to get possession of one of them, and once I have got it, why, we'll make tracks for the Fennicks."
The little hunter regarded his pupil in open-mouthed amazement. He stepped a pace away, held Joe at arm's length, then brought one hand with a bang down on to his shoulder; only, as this young friend of his had grown so prodigiously of late, Hank had to stand on tiptoe.
"Of all the mad ideas that ever was, this is it!" he cried. "But it aer fine, and I'll say more, it aer the only way to pull us out of this business, mad though it does appear. Ef you hadn't wanted to go, I'd have gone. But you suggested, and so you shall make the attempt. And ef they spot you, jest run for your life out on to the lake. Beaver Jack and me'll follow you across and build up a bit of a breastwork close by the shore. That'll give us a sorter place to hold 'em from, and there you could join us. If you succeed, why, off we goes, in course; and, now that I thinks of it more, ef you ain't too proud, I'd like to come with you. Why? I'll tell you. The dogs are bound to be a bother. You ain't never handled the critters, while I have, many a time, and dogs, like hosses, soon gets to know when they're dealing with a green 'un. How's that?"
"Agreed!" cried Joe, delighted to have a companion. "Ask Jack what he thinks of the affair."
Half an hour later there was quite a stir amongst the garrison of the island, for the enemy had disappeared, having returned downheartened to their own encampment. Beaver Jack and Joe were bearing along between them the light sleigh upon which the Redskin's pelts were stacked, and on which their own traps would find a place. They lifted it to the top of the wall they had built and, leaping to the outside, lowered it carefully. Hank then handed down rifles and ammunition, the former of which they slung over their shoulders.
"If the wust comes to the wust, we makes back here agin," he said. "It aer been a proper tight little island; now we kin move. Them clouds has smothered the moon nicely, and it aer snowing enough to hide a man at fifty yards. Guess we'll cross, throw up a wall of snow, making a sorter nest in case we want it, and then get away on to the camp them half-breeds is occupying."
He took the end of the tow-rope, while Beaver Jack went immediately behind him. Joe fell in in rear, and in that order they strode on across the snow towards the shore which harboured the enemy. They halted once to listen, for a dog had yelped. But as the sound was not repeated, they pressed on again, and were soon at the point where ice and solid earth met beneath the all-pervading mantle of snow.