“Dave going?” said Swickey, as her father returned.
“Sure certain,” he replied, but she made no comment.
Next morning, before the sun had smoothed the gray frost from the weathered timbers of the dam, Avery slid the big canoe into the water, and David and Swickey loaded in the various bags and bundles.
“She’s goin’ to be a fine day,” said Avery, as Swickey stepped in and sat amidships, with Smoke curled up and shivering in the bow. David and the old man swung briskly to the paddles, as the canoe rode the lazy swell of the lake. The jutting points in the distance seemed like long, beckoning fingers that withdrew as they neared them. The pines marched round in a widening circle as the canoe slid past in the murmur of waves over the rounded boulders. The smoke from Avery’s pipe twirled behind in little wisps that vanished in the sunshine. With the rhythmic, hush-click! hush-click! of the paddles and the sibilant thin rush of tiny ripples from the bow, mile after mile of shore line wove in and out, now drawing back until the trees were but inch-high at the far apex of some wide, blind cove, now towering above them as the lake narrowed to its western boundary.
In the mild warmth of the noon sun they ran the canoe up a narrow opening where a clump of white birches marked the Squawpan Carry. Here they disembarked.
“Hungry ain’t a big enough word fur it,” said Avery, stripping a piece of birch bark and lighting the small heap of driftwood David had gathered. “See thar!” he exclaimed, pointing to some great, heart-shaped tracks in the mud bordering the stream. “He’s gone up to Squawpan. Like enough is waitin’ up thar, stompin’ around and feelin’ mad ’cause he ain’t got no lady friend to keep him comp’ny.”
“Seems too bad to put one of those big fellows down just to get his head,” said David, gazing at the tracks.
“We ain’t got him down yit,” replied Avery. “Wal, the tea’s a-bilin’—Guess we’ll eat.”
After dinner, Swickey insisted on toting her share of the equipment, taking one of the lighter packs, as she followed David and her father, who tramped along with the partially laden canoe on their shoulders. At the farther end of the trail they again embarked and crossed the pond. Again they disembarked, David and Swickey walking while Avery poled the canoe up the shallows of the headwaters, and through the rapids below the falls. Here they made another short carry, and evening found them in camp on the shore of a rush-edged pond, round which were many tracks of moose and deer.
“We’ll limber up and poke round a bit in the mornin’;” said Avery. “If we don’t see nothin’ we’ll try callin’ ’em to-morrow night. Have to shet Smoke up in the shack; howcome Swickey kin explain it to him so ’st he won’t have bad feelin’s.”