The boys were pretty good woodsmen, all but Lub, and they had not doubted their ability to find the lake.
"I think we're in luck about one thing," X-Ray was saying, as he toiled along sturdily, and wishing that he had as much stamina as Phil or Ethan; for somehow his legs seemed a bit shaky after so long and difficult a tramp, with all that burden piled on his back.
"As what?" asked Ethan, giving Phil a nudge, and thus calling attention to the fact that by degrees the puffing Lub had actually gone ahead, fastening his eyes on the winding trail, and evidently feeling that he was becoming quite a woodsman.
"Why, about that cabin the old guide Jerry Kane told us was on the shore of the lake. It'll save us building one, you know, if it's in any kind of a decent condition," the tall boy went on to say.
"Yes, that's a fact," Phil himself remarked; "I've been thinking so right along. I only hope we won't find some fishermen camped in it. Kane said that once in a long while some guide took a party over to Surprise; but that the tramp was so hard few gentlemen cared to try for it. There are lakes all around that offer just about as good fishing."
"I should think there'd be some pretty fine hunting around up here," remarked Ethan. "I've noticed quite a few signs of deer, and that was certainly the track of a big moose we saw. I'd like to run across one of that stripe. Never saw a wild moose in all my life."
"I wouldn't be surprised if some of us do meet one while we roam the woods around the little lake," Phil told him. "If I'm that lucky I want to take a picture of the beast, to add to my collection."
"And I reckon, now," suggested X-Ray, "that nearly every night you'll be setting traps, not to catch wild animals, but to make them take their own pictures. That's the main reason why you've come up here, isn't it, Phil?"
"Well, you know it's a sort of hobby of mine, and I've got all the apparatus for taking flashlight pictures along with me. I started in to the business just to kill time; but let me tell you it grows on a fellow like everything. I'm something of a hunter myself, but this shooting with a camera beats anything else all hollow. Besides, you get your game, and yet don't injure it, which is the best of all."
Ethan laughed, and shook his head.