It was well past the middle of the afternoon when they reached the canoe at the end of the first carry. The three-mile trudge had been made in silence, neither of the amateur carriers having breath to spare for talk. Since they had the tent and one of the blanket-rolls and sufficient food, Prime was for putting off the remaining double carry to another day, but again Lucetta was adamant.
"If we do that we shall lose all day tomorrow," was the form her protest took; "and now that we have started we had better keep on going."
"Oh, what is the frantic hurry?" Prime cut in. "You said your school didn't begin until September. Haven't we the entire, unspoiled summer ahead of us?"
"Clothes," she remarked briefly. "Yours may last all summer, but mine won't—not if we have to go on tramping through the woods every day."
Prime's laugh was a shout. "We'll be blanket Indians, both of us, before we get out of this. I feel that in my bones, too. But about the second carry; we'll make it if you say so. It will at least give us a good appetite for supper."
They made it, reaching the end of the six-mile doubling a short while before the late sunset. Prime was all in, down, and out, but he would not admit it until after the supper had been eaten and the shelter-tent set up over its bed of spruce-tips. Then he let go with both hands.
"I'm dog-tired, and I am not ashamed to admit it," he confessed. "But you—you look as fresh as a daisy. What are you made of—spring steel?"
"Not by any manner of means; but I wasn't going to be the first to say anything. I feel as if I were slowly ossifying. I wouldn't walk another mile to-night for a fortune."
Prime stretched himself lazily before the fire with his hands under his head. "Luckily, you don't have to. You had better turn in and get all the sleep that is coming to you. I'm going to hit the blankets after I smoke another pinch of this horrible tobacco."
As he sat up to roll the pinch a rising wind began to swish through the tree-tops. A little later there was a fitful play of lightning followed by a muttering of distant thunder.