Jack, however, as we shall see, was mistaken.
The road above the crossing was much more travelled than below; and for a while the boys found it very difficult to make out Snowfoot's tracks. But soon again fortune favored them.
"Rain—it has been raining here!" said Jack, examining the road where it entered the skirts of the timber, "and raining hard! We must be nearing the path of the whirlwind again."
They passed through a belt of woods, where the storm had evidently passed but without doing much damage; for it was a peculiarity of that elephant of a cloud that it appeared to draw up its destroying trunk once or twice, and skip over a few miles in its course, only to swing it down again with greater fury.
The road was now drenched all the way, and the trail they followed was so distinct that the boys did not stop to make inquiries at the log-huts which began to appear before they were well through the woods.
They made comparatively rapid progress up the valley, until they came to a point where the river, in its winding course, was crossed by the road. There, again, the tornado had done a brisk business; the bridge was destroyed, the side of the road gullied, and the river swollen.
Both boys alighted and examined the track.
"Here is where he stopped and hesitated, finding the bridge gone," said Jack. "And see! here are his own tracks, as if he had got out of the buggy and gone ahead to reconnoitre."
"As well he might," Rufe answered. "Look at these tree-tops, and the timbers of the bridge lodged in the middle of the river!"
"He seems to have got through, and I guess we can," said Jack. "I've forded this stream, below the bridge, before now, when I've wanted to water my horse; but it was free from all this sort of rubbish then. There must have been a great fall of rain up here!"