“It sure is kinder heavy,” Bob smiled. “But you see we’ve been in the open most of the time where the sun gets a good whack at it. After we leave the Carry it’ll be most all woods and I hardly think the snow’ll be so wet. Let’s hope not anyway.”
It was only a little past ten o’clock when they reached the North West Carry, a small settlement consisting of a few log cabins and a general store, at the extreme northwestern point of Moosehead Lake.
During the summer and fall it is a busy place thronged with summer visitors and hunters, but now it was all but deserted. The boys knew no one there as they had spent the most of their time, when at the lake, on the other shore.
There was no one in the store as they entered except the man who ran it, but he greeted them as though they were the first outsiders he had seen for a long time.
“You look as if you’d found some prutty hard tramping,” he said after he had shaken them both by the hand.
“Sure is pretty hard going after the snow gets soft,” Bob smiled. “I wonder if we can get dinner anywhere here?” he asked.
“You wait a minute and I’ll see if the wife can fix you up,” the storekeeper replied as he left the store by a back door.
He was back again almost immediately with the welcome news that if they could wait a half hour dinner would be ready for them.
“Where you boys goin’?” he asked as he motioned to them to sit down. “That is,” he added, “if I hain’t stickin’ my nose inter what’s none of my business.”
For a second Bob hesitated, then thinking that it could do no possible harm to tell him, he explained their mission.