“No need for me to go,” he added, nodding at Berley Todd. “She knows every step of the way.”
“In the dark?”
“In the dark. But there’s a little light. Better take your flashlight. Don’t use it unless you have to.”
A short time later two dusky figures stole out into the night, a tall one and a short one.
In silence they passed through a narrow fringe of spruce, birch and balsam with here and there a cottage looming black and silent in the dark.
Once the girl seized Red’s arm to point through a clump of shapely spruce trees. “That,” she whispered impressively, “is my home—my summer home.”
“If the storm keeps up, shall we go there, perhaps to-morrow night, you and I and Ed?”
“Perhaps.”
They mounted a low hill, then followed along a tree-grown ridge. He marveled at her ability to find her way in the dark. “Great little sport, this one,” he told himself. “Not soft like so many girls.” This was true. The hand that gripped his arm was as hard and muscular as a boy’s. So was her arm.
In his mind’s eye he saw Lake Superior flecked with foam, four miles of it. “It’s going to be tough, at best.”