“Well, it's just this way, Mr. Jackson. I made you the offer to take this load down, but I don't feel like running any more risk than I have to.”
“If you see anything to worry you in that sky, Badeau, you can just let us run the risk.”
The thermometer dropped twenty-five degrees during the night. A film of ice formed in the harbor. The wind swung around to the northeast, and brought a bank of innocent looking clouds that spread slowly over the sky. Out on the lake front the shore ice grew higher and whiter as the waves beat tirelessly over it, and formed blocks and cones and miniature mountain ranges.
When Jackson met Hunch on the wharf, he seemed to have forgotten what he had said the evening before. “Well, Badeau, what do you make of it?”
“Of what?”
“The weather. Think you can make it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You ought to have gone out last night.”
To this Hunch made no reply; he kept one eye on the work of the timber shovers.
“Still,” added Jackson, “you can run down in two or three hours with this wind.”