So they sat the rest of the evening, each thinking of David, until Swickey, drowsy with the heat of the big stove, finally bade them good-night and went to her room.
“I’m glad Ross is comin’ up next spring,” said Cameron.
“So be I,” replied Avery.
“Some young folks I could name needs settin’ back where they belong,” ventured Cameron mysteriously.
“Seen Andy Slocum lately?” asked Avery, in a casual manner.
“Huh?” Cameron was startled at his companion’s uncanny “second-sight” as he mentally termed it. “Oh, Andy?—sure—seen him stand-in’ in the window of the hotel when we druv by comin’ home.”
CHAPTER XXI—THE TRAPS
In a swirling mist of powdered snow that all but obscured the sun, two figures appeared below the three cabins and moved over the unbroken white of the clearing toward Lost Lake. They were muffled to the eyes—heavily clad against the biting wind of that Christmas morning, and they walked, one behind the other, the taller of the two breaking a trail, with his short broad snowshoes, for his companion.
Joe or “Red” Smeaton, as he was called, watched them from the screen of a clump of cedars on the hillside. “Cameron’s gone,” he muttered. “Seen him drive down the Tramworth road half-hour agone. Guess they hain’t nobody ’ceptin’ the dog at the camp, fur there goes the ole man and the gal. Wonder where they be p’intin’ fur? Hain’t goin’ nowhere near the trap-line. They’s headed straight fur ‘Fifteen-Two,’ if they keep goin’ long enough.”
He drew back from the branches and picked up a gunnysack at his feet. It was half filled with stiff objects that he shook together before he finally slung the bag to his shoulder and tramped along Avery’s “line,” passing the unsprung traps, but stopping whenever a luckless fisher or fox lay frozen across the harsh steel jaws that opened grudgingly to the pressure of his knee, as he unlocked the biting rims and drew out those pitifully inert shapes.