That night, for the first time in several days, they heard wolves, but they were far off and Lucky did not think that they had scented them.
"White boy be heap careful," was Lucky's parting word the next morning, as Bob started off just as it was beginning to get light. It was nearly ten o'clock and he had waited impatiently several hours for the time to start. Besides his automatic he took with him a 38 Remington with which he was an expert shot. It was his favorite rifle and he was very choice with it. More than one buck had fallen before it in the woods of Maine and once it had brought down a large moose. With it he felt safe.
Although he could hardly believe it the thermometer said forty below when he left the camp, but so clear and dry was the air that it hardly seemed cold at all.
The passage between the mountains was very narrow, in fact, there was hardly any level ground between them, one seeming to rise at the foot of the other, so he had little fear of missing the cabin provided it was really there. The dry snow creaked pleasantly beneath his snow-shoes as he strode along humming a favorite song. Tall trees grew so closely together that he was unable to keep to anything like a straight course, but this gave him no worry. He had the day before him and there was no hurry.
He had gone perhaps three quarters of a mile when he was brought up short by a long drawn out howl, seemingly not very far away.
"That was a timber wolf," he thought as he peered anxiously through the trees.
The howl was answered almost immediately from the side of the other mountain and, for a moment, he wondered if he would not be wise to turn back.
"I don't belive ther's more than two of them," he thought as he listened.
But even as the thought passed through his mind a third howl broke the stillness and this one was surely behind him.
"Seem to have me surrounded," he muttered, as he started on again.