Keeping straight ahead, more enthusiastic than they had been for the past half-hour, they made for the crest of the next rise, hoping they would see the end of their trail, see something to indicate that success was theirs.
At last, coming to the crest, making the last few yards of the steep incline with something of an effort, blowing hard, they stopped to rest and to peer ahead—hoping.
“Look!” Frank gasped slightly, as his right hand went up to indicate a spot where he had seen something. “There’s a cabin over there behind that clump of trees. Can you see it? Just barely visible—right there!”
There was no doubt of it! A hut was behind that clump, and the trail which they had followed to the crest of this hill seemed to lead in that direction!
“It surely looks as if that might be the place. I wish we had a glass with us to take a better sight at it,” muttered Lanky, while he shaded his eyes against the burning white of the snow.
“It’s a shack, all right,” Frank verified by looking more keenly at it. “Whether it is the one we want is another question. But it is the first one we have seen—and because this seems to be a lone trail, I shouldn’t be surprised that these fellows are in that shack.”
“How do we get there? Go straight to it and take a chance on being picked off? Or, do we sneak up to it?” Paul asked.
“There isn’t any chance of sneaking up to it all the way,” Lanky expressed his opinion. “We’ll just have to follow this trail, because if it leads to the shack we are on the right one, and if the trail does not lead to the shack, then the shack doesn’t interest us one particle.”
With a goal of some sort in view, maybe the right goal, the boys went across the crest of the hill and followed the trail down toward the shack, situated on the farther hill behind the clump of hemlocks and pines.
“When we get closer to that place we’ll have to use some care,” said Frank. “If they are the thieves who got our stuff they are going to welcome us rather roughly.”