“Well, that lets Withee out of trouble and expense,” said the woodsman, “and you’ll get a good reception down that way. Now, prophet, where’s he been hiding? You know, probably. It’s important, I tell you.” The old man had struck his stallion, and the animal was trying to get away. But Christopher held on grimly.
“You call yourself a good woodsman?” squealed the indignant Eli.
“I reckon I’ll average well.”
“If any one wants anything of ‘Ladder’ Lane now,” cried the prophet, “it must be for something that he’s left behind him! Left behind him!” he repeated. He stood up on the “ding-swingle,” and ran his keen gaze about the ridges that circled the lake.
“Was it something that could build a fire?” he demanded, sharply. Christopher, in no mood for confidences, stared at the peppery old man. “You call yourself a good woodsman, and don’t know what it means to see that!” He pointed his whip at a thin trail of white smoke that mounted, as tenuous almost as a thread, above the distant shore of Dickery Pond. “No lumbermen operating there for three years, and you see that, and are lookin’ for something, and don’t go and find out! And you call yourself a woodsman!” Without further word or look he lashed the stallion; the animal broke away with a squeal, and Prophet Eli’s “ding-swingle” disappeared down the tote road in a swirl of snow.
“No, I ain’t a woodsman!” snorted Christopher. He started away across the pond at a pace that left Wade breath only for effort and not for questions. “I ain’t a woodsman. Standin’ here and not seein’ that smoke! Not seein’ it, and guessin’ what it must mean! I ain’t a woodsman!” Over and over he muttered his bitter complaints at himself in disjointed sentences. “I’m gettin’ old. I must be blind. A lunatic can tell me my business.” His anger rowelled him on, and when he reached the opposite shore of the lake he was obliged to wait for the younger man to come floundering and panting up to him.
“I don’t feel just like talkin’ now, Mr. Wade,” he said, gruffly. “I don’t feel as though I knew enough to talk to any one over ten years old.” He strode on, tugging the sled.
An abandoned main logging-road, well grown to leafless moose-wood and witch-hobble, led them up from the lake. Christopher did not have to search the skies for the smoke. His first sight of it had betrayed the camp’s location. He knew the roads that led to it. And in the end they came upon it, though it seemed to Wade that the road had set itself to twist eternally through copses and up and down the hemlock benches.
The camps were cheerless, the doors of main camp, cook camp, and hovel were open, and the snow had drifted in. But from the battered funnel of the office camp came that trail of smoke, reaching straight up. Crowding close to the funnel for warmth, and nestled in the space that the heat had made in the snow, crouched a creature that Wade recognized as “Ladder” Lane’s tame bobcat. This, then, was “Ladder” Lane’s retreat. Inside there—the young man’s knees trembled, and there was a gripping at his throat, dry and aching from his frantic pursuit of his grim guide.
“Mr. Wade,” said Christopher, halting, “I reckon she’s there, and that she’s all right. I’ll let you go ahead. She knows you. I don’t need to advise you to go careful.”