“She’s a coming,” Bob shouted.
“Let her come. We got here first,” Jack laughed back over his shoulder.
The flakes steadily increased in number and the sighing of the treetops grew louder as they slowly pushed on toward the north, and by the time another hour had passed the trail had nearly vanished beneath the falling snow. Only here and there could they catch sight of the tracks.
“We’ll be all at sea as far as shoeprints are concerned in another half hour,” Jack declared, as he anxiously scanned the snow ahead.
He was correct in his statement, for in less than fifteen minutes the prints of the snow-shoes had disappeared entirely, and now the skill which they had acquired under the tutelage of their Indian friend Kernertok, was brought into play. A broken twig here, a bit of bark from a tree trunk there, and other signs, readable only by one trained in woodcraft, now had to serve as their only guide. Their progress, slow from the time they had left the lake, was now much slower, as they were often obliged to search for some time before finding the tell-tale clue.
“Hold on a minute, Jack,” Bob shouted a while later. “How long has it been since you saw any marks?”
Jack stopped and looked around.
“Well, it’s been quite a while,” he confessed. “But I’ve been expecting to catch sight of one any minute.”
“And I haven’t seen a thing since we saw where he had leaned up against that big pine and that must have been all of a quarter of a mile back. It’s going to begin to get dark in a mighty short time now and I think we’d better find a good place to camp before we go any farther. I think I can find the way back to that pine in the morning and we can probably pick up the trail again from there if we have any luck, but we’re going it blind now,” and Bob cast an anxious glance about him.
“All right, you’re the doctor,” Jack agreed as he threw the rope from his shoulders. “What’s the matter with right here?” he asked. “Those two saplings will be all right for the canvass and that big pine will make a pretty fair wind break.”