“We’ve got business of our own for to-day, Barnum, and mighty important business, too.”
And pulling their caps about their ears, and tugging their moose-sled, they set away, up the tote road to the north, leaving Barnum Withee not wholly easy in his mind regarding their motives.
It was from the snow-swirl on Dickery Pond that “Ladder” Lane had emerged, even then death-struck. It was straight to Dickery that Christopher led the way, and two hours’ steady trudging brought them there.
“So it was from off there he came,” muttered the woodsman, blinking into the glare of the snow crystals on its broad surface. “But where, in God’s name, he came from it ain’t in me to say!”
It was one of those still winter days when even the wind seems to be bound by the hard frost. The sliding snow-shoes shrieked as shrilly with the sun high as they had in the early morning. There was no hint of melting.
“There are five old operations around this pond, and a set of empty camps on each one,” said Straight. “I’ve been to each one of them in times past, and I know where the main roads come out to the landings. But it’s slow business, takin’ ’em one after the other. Perhaps we ought to go back and beat the truth of this thing into Barnum Withee’s thick head, and start the hue and cry—but—but—I’d hoped to do it some better way.”
“Straight,” panted the young man, “it’s getting to be perfectly damnable, this suspense! Let’s do something, if it’s only to run up the middle of that pond and shout!”
“Well,” snorted the old guide, irrelevantly, “I’ve been lookin’ for old Red Fins to come along for two days now, and I ain’t disappointed. If there’s trouble anywhere in this section, old Eli has got a smeller that leads him to it.” Wade whirled from his despairing survey of the pond and saw Prophet Eli. He was coming down the tote road on his “ding-swingle,” urging on his little white stallion with loose, clapping reins. Huge mittens of vivid red encased his hands, and his conical, knitted cap was red, and was pulled down over his ears like a candle-snuffer.
Wade felt a queer little thrill of superstition as he looked at him, and then sneered at himself as one who was allowing good wit to be infected by the idle follies of the woods. And yet there was something eerie in the way this bizarre old wanderer turned up now, as he had appeared twice before at times that meant so much, at moments so crucial, in Wade’s woods life.
Prophet Eli swung up to them, halted, and peered at them curiously out of his little eyes.