Leaving their skates at the camp, carrying nothing but their firearms, with carefully loaded ammunition belts about their waists, they sallied forth to find the moose.
“If we don’t find him to-day,” said Frank, as they left the camp, “I believe we should stay here all night and go out early to-morrow morning for him again. It was in the early morning that we saw him before.”
Not taking the direction which would lead them again to the woodsmen’s camp, knowing the moose would not deliberately come up to a place where the work was going on, they bore off at an angle opposite that which they had pursued when they left the woodsmen some days previous.
Two small creeks were frozen over, either of which might have been a waterhole. The boys crossed these, going deeper and deeper into the evergreen woods.
“Not even a thing for Paul to take a picture of,” Lanky remarked when they stopped in an opening to look the country over.
Off to one side they saw the mountains stretching away, and, as Frank thought, they should find something by going back in that direction. Getting their bearings, in order not to be lost, they made for the mountains which strung out to the south.
Suddenly Frank came to a halt and stopped all the boys.
Toward the hills, in a grove of trees, he saw moving things. Eight pairs of eyes studied the distance carefully.
Scattering out in a long line so that each was no closer than ten yards from the other, the boys swept forward toward the trees like a wave of soldiers just over the trenches heading for the enemy.
Frank was at the center, where he could call to the boys quickly and yet not have to yell too loud.