“Right the first time, and what’s more, you may or may not have noticed that those tracks were not very straight, which seems to indicate that whoever made them had been ‘looking on the wine when it was red.’ No, I feel almost certain that our friend is not very far away, and if we start around four o’clock we ought to catch up with him before night. How does that strike you?”
“Right between the eyes,” Jack replied without hesitation.
Anything which Bob said was usually right in his brother’s eyes, not only because of the love he had for him, but he knew, from many experiences, that Bob’s judgment was pretty apt to be sound.
“But if we’re going to hit the trail by four o’clock, I think it would be a good plan to hit the hay right now,” Jack proposed as he got up from his seat on the floor.
“Hit the boughs, you mean,” Bob laughed as he followed suit. “I guess we’d better, seeing that the fire is about out and there’s only about enough wood to get breakfast in the morning.”
Bob’s watch told him that it was just three o’clock when he opened his eyes, and for a moment he struggled against the almost irresistible desire to go to sleep again. But he knew that much depended on an early start. So making as little noise as possible, he got out of his sleeping bag. But before going to sleep the night before, Jack had made a resolution with himself that he would wake as soon as Bob stirred, and this time he was successful.
“Thought you’d get ahead of me again, hey?” he growled good-naturedly, as Bob was getting to his feet. “My, but it’s dark as the ace of spades and then some,” he muttered, squirming out of his bag.
They made short work of getting breakfast, and it was but a few minutes after four o’clock when they were ready to start. While eating they debated the advisability of leaving the toboggan at the cabin, and taking with them only enough for a single meal. But finally they decided that it would be best not to take such a course.
“The toboggan is so light that we can make almost as good time with it, and we’re not at all sure that we won’t have to sleep out tonight, and without the duds we’d have to roost in a tree and it would be mighty cold,” Bob declared.
The stars shone with a still cold dimness as they started off. The traveling was still heavy, although the snow had settled a trifle and their snow-shoes did not sink quite as deep as the day before. The trail led straight across the lake toward the north, and it was plainly evident to the boys that the man who had made it must have been under the influence of liquor.