Jo Ann sprang up from the table. “Well, let’s get busy this minute and get our work done and get started.” She began stacking the dishes hurriedly.
A few minutes later she was washing the dishes so vigorously that Florence prophesied there wouldn’t be enough left unbroken to set the table for supper. In a surprisingly short time they had finished the dishes, packed the lunch, and were ready to start.
“I believe I’ll carry the gun along,” Jo Ann remarked. “We might see a rabbit or squirrel—or something.”
Soon the two girls were winding their way up a donkey trail that led up the mountain side. From the very first they kept stopping now and then to scan the mountain for the smoke from the charcoal maker’s fire.
Finally Jo Ann cried triumphantly, “I see it! Look, right up there!”
“Yes, that’s it!”
Both girls began searching for a path leading toward the spiral of smoke.
“I know they couldn’t have climbed up this steep place,” Jo Ann remarked. “They’d have had to be human flies to do that. That old grandmother and the little children couldn’t possibly have made it up here.”
“Well, the only thing to do is to follow this trail a little farther and see if we can’t find some trace of the way they did go.” Florence started along the path, Jo Ann close at her heels.
“What on earth made them go to such an outlandish place to make their charcoal, Florence? It looks as if they could’ve found a much better place.”