“I’ve been noticing them all the way. They are headed opposite to the way we are going, and from the fact they are not yet filled with snow, it seems three people came in this morning,” replied Frank Allen.
Lanky continued looking toward the prints in the trail, finally remarking about a peculiar heel-print.
“Look, Frank,” he pointed. “One of the fellows must have an iron plate on his heels. Every now and then you can see a print in which a crescent shape shows, like those things they use to stop a heel from wearing down.”
But the boys were little interested in this. They looked casually at the prints for a while, trudging onward, but did not stop for a closer examination. A full hour passed, and they came to a dividing of the trail.
“Here’s the one to take. Here’s where we start saving those ten miles,” came from Frank. “They said it was thirty miles by the road around the mountains and only twenty if we took the trail straight through.”
“What that makes me think is this,” said Lanky, swinging along behind Frank, giving up his leading position. “How can the trail around the hills reach Old Moose lake?”
“I presume there is another divide in the trail lower down,” suggested Frank. “Maybe the lake is reached on one side by one trail and on the opposite side by another.”
Another hour passed away, finding the boys well up in the mountain trail, climbing higher.
The evergreen trees, hemlocks and pines were covered with the finer particles of snow. The trail itself was completely covered. Now and then the boys found it necessary to catch the overhanging branches of a tree to swing themselves along more easily, especially where the trail, in places, grew narrow.
A third hour passed away, indicated by Buster Billings’ watch, finding the young fellows well in the midst of the mountains, having dropped far down into a valley during the last half hour.