“Huh! s’pose thet’d make any diff’runce. Why, if thet dog sot out to do it, he’d go through a winder like a hoss kickin’ a hole in a fog. You stay by Smoke, thet’s a good gal.”
Swickey was silenced. The thought of losing Smoke outweighed the anticipated joy of lacing on her small snowshoes and accompanying the men on the trip about which there seemed to be so much mystery.
After dinner the three men filed out of the cabin and down across the frozen river, then up toward No-Man’s Lake, David breaking the trail, Avery and Barney Axel following. They crossed the windswept glare of the lake, carrying their snowshoes. Round the base of Timberland Mountain they crept like flies circling a sugar-cone, slowly and with frequent pauses. David carried a rifle, Avery an axe, and Barney his own complaining body, which was just a trifle more than he bargained for at the start. His feet telegraphed along the trunk-line (so to speak) to give them a rest. But Barney was whipcord and iron, and moreover he had a double purpose of gratitude and revenge to stimulate him.
They came to the mouth of a black, ice-bound brook, and, following his directions, skirted its margin for perhaps a half-mile through the glen which wound along the north side of the mountain.
“It’s somewhere right here,” he called from the rear, where he had been examining the blaze on a pine. The two men waited for him, and, following his slow pace, were presently on a comparative level where a branch of the stream swung off toward the east. The second stream ran through a shallow gorge of limestone ledges, their ragged edges sticking up through the snow at intervals.
“Fust time I ever sighted this stream,” said Avery. “Howcome we got a line of traps t’other side of the main brook.”
Axel leaned wearily against a tree. His vengeance was costing him more physical pain than he cared to admit.
“There’s where it is,” he said, pointing to the ledges. “Mebby you might poke around with the axe a bit. You’ll know it when you find it.”
Avery handed the axe to David, who scooped away the snow and tapped a sliver of shale from the ledge. “Nothing here,” he said, “except stone.”
“Try a piece furder along,” said Axel. “That surveyor feller, young Bascomb, could show you. He’s been here, and so has Harrigan.”