"Which way do you think they most likely went?" Jack asked looking first at Bob and then at Lucky.
"North, I should say," Bob replied and Lucky nodded agreement. "You see, if they had gone south we would probably have run into them or at least heard from them from someone who did," he explained.
"Then I reckon we'd better hunt up that way first," Jack proposed.
Both the boys, having spent a good part of their lives in the great woods of Northern Maine, were very expert in reading the signs of the forest and, as Jack had more than once declared, the Indian forgot more about such things every night than they ever knew. But in spite of all this several hours of hard searching told them next to nothing. To be sure they found plenty of signs which told them that someone had been there not many weeks previous but, as Jack put it, there were altogether too many of them, for they found them not only to the north, but on all other sides as well, and there was absolutely nothing to indicate the direction they had taken when they quit the cabin for the last time.
"Looks like a case of heads you win and tails I lose," Jack said a bit discouragingly as they finally stopped to swallow the lunch they had brought with them.
"Don't quite see the connection," Bob told him.
"Gray matter working a bit sluggishly today?"
"Maybe."
"Well, if we stay here we're not likely to find them and if we don't we're not."
"Don't what?"