“And yet—” her voice softened. “Those people probably are in trouble. They may have been driven across the lake in a small boat.
“Tell you what!” she exclaimed. “Here’s a large flat rock and over there are some small dead trees. Those people may not know we are at Chippewa Harbor. We will build a beacon fire to let them know they are not alone. Then perhaps they will come over and we can help them.”
“All the same,” Jeanne thought as she assisted in laying the fire, “I still have faith.”
“Jeanne,” said Vivian as a half hour later the fire, which had blazed high, was a mass of glowing coals, “we are only a short distance from the highest spot on the ridge. In a sort of cave beneath that spot is to be found ‘some considerable treasure.’ Shall we go look for it?”
“Lead on!” said Jeanne.
It was Vivian who talked most of the mysterious “treasure” she and Jeanne were about to seek in the cave-like opening of the rocks on Greenstone Ridge. And why not? Had it not been she who, while lifting her father’s nets, had taken the ancient churn from the bottom of Lake Superior? Had she not cherished it as a mark of Isle Royale’s colorful history? Had she not, with Jeanne’s aid, discovered the note telling of that treasure? What was most important of all, Jeanne had insisted that if anything of value were found it should be sold and added to Vivian’s boat fund.
Vivian was saying as they made their way along the ridge toward its highest point: “I know just the boat we need. It was made by a famous old boat builder. He built it for his own use. He was old. His sight failed him. He never put it in the water. He is quite poor now. If he can sell his boat, how happy he will be!”
“And how happy you and Violet will be!” said Jeanne, suddenly coming out of a brown study. She was still thinking of the lost airplane D.X.123 and of that mournful sight both she and Vivian had seen at the bottom of the little lost lake, the sunken plane.
At the same time she was thinking of that column of smoke rising from the edge of a tiny island along the farther shore of Isle Royale.
“Smoke!” she whispered. “How much it has meant to man through all the years! How he has read the meaning of its upward curlings. If he is wise, it tells him of wind and approaching storm. He signals his distant friends with columns of smoke. Other columns warn him of hiding enemies. All this is of the past. How little that distant smoke says to me! And yet, somehow, I cannot help but feel—” she spoke aloud—“that somehow that smoke is connected with the missing airplane.”