The afternoon was half-spent when Ramsay smelled wood smoke. He quickened his pace, but remained cautious. This was a wild land, with no part of it wilder than this lonely Lake Michigan Beach, and there was never any certainty as to just what anyone would find or how he would be received. Nevertheless, if these people were friendly, other humans would be welcome. Ramsay was both hungry and tired to the point of exhaustion. He fingered the two dollars in his pocket. He could pay his way. He rounded a long, forested nose of land where the bluff cut the sand beach to a narrow five feet and looked out on a peaceful bay.
The bluff gave way to gently rising, treeless hills. A rail fence hemmed part of them in, and black-and-white cattle grazed inside the fence. A stone house, of Dutch architecture, stood on a knoll that commanded a view of the lake, and a suitable distance from it was a snug wooden barn. A small lake, or large pond, separated from Lake Michigan by a narrow neck of land, glowed like a blue sapphire. Chickens, ducks and geese crowded noisily together in the barnyard, and a man with a wooden pail in his hand came out of the barn door.
Ramsay walked forward, as first uncertainly and then very steadily. A man might be afraid, but it was always to his advantage not to let the enemy, if enemy this might be, know he was afraid. The man at the barn door hesitated, and then stood still while the boy approached.
Ramsay greeted him pleasantly, "Hello."
"Hello."
The man was tall and supple, with a frank, open face and intelligent, blue eyes. He was perhaps six years older than Ramsay and he spoke with a Dutch accent. Ramsay said, "I was sailing up to Three Points on the Holter. Now she's wrecked and I must walk...."
"The Holter's wrecked?" the other broke in.
"Yes."
"Any drowned people on the beach?"
"Two, but a man on a black-and-white horse took them away from me at pistol point." Ramsay knew a rising impatience. "Why the dickens should he do that?"