The guide rapidly gave these directions, his breezy voice setting a current of energy astir, like a wind-gust cutting through a quiet grove, while he rolled his indispensable axe, some bread that was left from the meal, and a lump of pork into a little bundle, which he strapped on his back.
“Now,” he said, “if that trail should give us a long tramp, or if you boys should take a notion to go a good ways up Katahdin, or anything turns up to hinder our getting back to camp till nightfall, I’ve our snack right here. I can light a fire in two minutes, to toast our pork; and we’ll wash it down with mountain water, the best drink for climbers. I could rig you up a snug shelter, too, in case of accidents. A woodsman ain’t in it without his axe.”
To what strange work that axe would be put ere night again closed its shutters over granite peaks and evergreen forest, Herb Heal little knew; nor could he have guessed that the coming hours would make the most heart-stirring day of his stirring life. If he could, would he have started out this morning with a happy-go-lucky whistle, softly modulated on his lips, and no more sober burden on his mind than the trail of that moose?
Chapter XXI.
On Katahdin
“See there, boys, I told you so,” said Herb, as the party reached the ever-to-be-remembered clump of hemlocks, the beginning of the trail which they were ready to follow up like sleuth-hounds. “There’s plenty of hair; I guess I singed him in two places.”
He pointed to some shaggy clotted locks on the grass at his feet, and then to a small maroon-colored stain beside them.
“Is that blood?” asked Neal.
“Blood, sure enough, though there ain’t much of it. But I’ll tell you what! I’d as soon there wasn’t any. I wish it had been light enough last night for me to act barber, and only cut some hair from that moose, instead of wounding him. It might have answered the purpose as well, and sent him walking.”
“I don’t believe it would have done anything of the kind,” exclaimed Dol. “He was far too red-hot an old customer to bolt because a bullet shaved him.”