All thought of the trail was forgotten as the boys left it and went to where the body lay on top of the Snow.
“You surely hit it fair enough,” remarked Lanky, turning the dead animal over so that the head could be plainly seen.
A dull blotch below the eyes showed where the bullet had plowed its way through.
“Took it a long time to die,” said Frank.
“Well, maybe the bullet hit a bone and glanced in so that the brain wasn’t hurt immediately,” suggested Lanky. “In the papers you read sometimes of a man who is struck by a bullet in what seems a vital spot and yet who lives three or four hours.”
“How far are we right now from that hut?”
“Not more than half a mile,” sad Frank, trying to measure by the difference in angles which they had pursued.
“Well, we did better than we did with the cotton-tail, anyhow,” said Frank as he turned from the wolf and led the party back to the trail.
“I’m going to get a picture of it,” Paul Bird commented, going back to where the animal lay, getting out his small camera. “Just proves what we did, doesn’t it?”
Back on the trail they turned their attention to finding their way out, and, having gone to the valley they saw where they had made the mistake the day previous. They had been balked by the appearance of the valley, it seeming to show no way out, whereas, in reality, a turn past a small bunch of evergreens showed them that a narrow way led between the next two hills in front of them, and when they followed this, they saw it turn sharply to the right and incline upward.