“Well, they can’t be very abundant around here,” Jack said as they started off again.
About four o’clock it began to grow colder and as the sun sank lower in the west, the snow began to stiffen, and they were able to make better time. Rapidly the temperature fell with the sun and soon they stopped and put on their mackinaws.
“I believe the crust will hold in another half hour,” Jack declared. “But I’m ready to call it a day. How about you?”
“I’m pretty tired myself and as soon as we find a good place to camp, I move that we do it. We must have made pretty near twenty miles from the Carry.”
It was after five o’clock and it had been a hard day.
“How about that for a place?” Jack asked a few minutes later as they came to a small clear place. “We can dig away the snow at the foot of that big pine and there’s lots of water in that little brook.”
“I guess it’ll do as well as any other,” Bob decided after a hasty glance around.
They quickly threw off their packs and, breaking through the light crust, they soon had a hole about six feet long by four wide, down to the bare ground, using the snow-shoes as shovels.
“I’ll make the beds if you’ll get the fire going,” Bob said and to this Jack readily agreed.
He had no trouble in finding plenty of dead branches and in a short time a brisk fire was burning near the “bedroom.” In the meantime Bob had been cutting spruce boughs with a small hatchet which Sim had loaned them. These he spread on the ground in the hole which they had dug, until he had a bed nearly a foot thick. Over them he spread a thick blanket and the bed was ready.