“I guess it is. The rain is stopping too. But we’ll have an awful slushy time of it getting back to camp. To plough through them soaked forests below would be enough to give you city fellows a shaking ague.”
“Couldn’t we climb on to your old log camp?” suggested Garst. “If we have the luck to find the old shanty holding together, we can light a fire there after things dry out a bit, and eat our snack. Then we needn’t be in a hurry to get down. We’ll risk it, anyhow.”
“I reckon that’s about the only thing to be done,” assented the guide.
And in twenty minutes’ time the four were again straining up Katahdin, clutching slippery rocks, sinking in sodden earth, shivering as they were besprinkled by every bush and dwarfed tree, and dreadfully hampered with their rifles.
“Never mind, boys; we’ll get there! Clinch yer teeth, and don’t squirm! Once we’re past this tangle, the bit of climbing that’s left will be as easy as rolling off a log!”
So shouted Herb cheerfully, as he tore a way with hand and foot through the stunted growth of alders and birch, which, beaten down by the winds, was now an almost impassable, sopping tangle.
“Keep in my tracks!” he bellowed again. “Gracious! but this sort o’ work is as slow as molasses crawling up-hill in winter.”
But ten minutes later, when the dripping jungle was behind, he dropped his jesting tone.
He came to a full stop, catching his breath with a big gulp.
“Boys,” he cried, “it’s standing yet! I see it—the old home-camp! There it is above us on that bit of a platform, with the big rock behind it. And I’ve kep’ saying to myself for the last quarter of an hour that we wouldn’t find it—that we’d find nary a thing but mildewed logs!”