Old Joe shook his head. “Jest want to look at something,” he remarked.
He brought the skiff to shore, and looking carefully about for snakes, stepped out.
“May we go with you?” asked Penny, whose limbs had become cramped from sitting so long in one position.
“Kin if yer a mind to, but I only aim to look at that dead campfire.”
“A campfire?” Penny questioned. “Where?”
The old trapper pointed to a barren, dry spot a few feet back from the water’s edge, where a circle of ashes and a few charred pieces of wood lay.
“Why, I hadn’t noticed it,” Penny said. Wondering why the trapper should be interested in a campfire, she started to ask, but thought better of it. By remaining silent, she might learn—certainly not if she inquired directly.
Trapper Joe gazed briefly at the camp-site, kicking the dead embers with the toe of his heavy boot.
“Thet fire hain’t very old—must have been built last night,” he observed.
“By a swamper, I suppose,” said Penny casually. “One of the Hawkins’ family perhaps.”