For a little way the river was bordered with stumpy clearings; then the dark hemlock and jack-pine woods closed down on the shores. The skaters had reached the frontier; it might well be that there were not a dozen cultivated fields between them and the North Pole.
Here the river was about a hundred feet wide, the long ice road that Fred had imagined. Comparatively little snow had yet fallen, and that little seemed to have come with high winds, which had swept the ice clear. More, however, might be looked for any day.
But for that day they were safe. They rushed ahead, forcing the pace a little, after all, in a swinging single file, with the toboggan gliding behind. In great curves the river wound through the woods and frozen swamps, and only twice that day had they to go ashore to get round roaring, unfrozen rapids. Each of those obstructions cost the boys half an hour of labor before they could get the toboggan through the dense underbrush that choked the portage. But they had counted on such delays.
Not a breath of wind stirred, and the forest was profoundly still. Full of wild life though it undoubtedly was, not a sign of it was visible, except now and then a chain of delicate tracks along the shore.
Evening comes early in that latitude and season. At sunset Macgregor estimated that they had covered thirty miles.
"Time to camp, boys!" he shouted from the rear. "Look out for a good place—shelter and lots of dry wood."
Two or three miles farther on they found it—a spot where several large spruce trees had fallen together, and lay dry and dead near the shore. They drew up the toboggan and exchanged their skating-boots for moccasins. Maurice began to cut up wood with a small axe; the others trampled down the snow in a circle.
Dusk was already falling when the fire blazed up, making all at once a spot of almost home-like cheerfulness. Fred chopped a hole in the ice in order to fill the kettle, and while it was boiling, they cut down a number of small saplings, and placed them in lean-to fashion against a ridgepole. The balsam twigs that they trimmed off they threw inside, until the snow was covered with a great heap of fragrant boughs. On it they spread the sleeping-bags to face the fire.
They supped that night on fried bacon, dried eggs, oatmeal cakes, and tea—real voyageur's tea, hot and strong, flavored with brown sugar and wood smoke, and drunk out of tin cups.
Leaning back on the balsam couch, they made merry over their meal, while the stars came out white and clear over the dark woods. There was every prospect now of their reaching the trappers' cabin in two days more, at most. There were only the two serious dangers—a snowstorm might spoil the ice, and Macgregor might not be able to hit upon the right place.