“And whereabouts would you say the camp lay from here, then?” asked X-Ray.
Without the slightest hesitation Phil pointed straight into the southeast.
“If you started off and kept a bee-line that way I believe you’d come within pistol-shot of our shack,” he affirmed. “When you struck the shore of the lake it would be easy to locate the camp by the smoke rising, if not from other landmarks that every wise hunter would have jotted down in his memory.”
X-Ray did not continue the low conversation immediately; he was trying to remember if there was any such landmark that he might have noticed close to the camp, and on the ice-bound shore of the lake.
“Oh! yes, there was the odd-shaped tree that looked like an old man on his knees and saying his prayers!” he broke out with, a look of satisfaction crossing his face at being able to recollect; “that was near by, and I think I would know it from across the lake if I happened to strike in there.”
“I’m glad you remembered,” said Phil; “but suppose we stop whispering now.”
“Oh, my, do you expect we’re as close to him as all that, Phil?” demanded X-Ray, beginning to finger at the lock of his gun, in order to make sure it was in readiness for quick use in an emergency.
“He passed along here just a bit ago, for a fact,” Phil told him.
They continued to push on, with that trail always before them, though sometimes they turned aside on account of the barrier presented by a growth of bushes, through which the caribou had gone.
Phil had now come up alongside his companion, and noticing this X-Ray believed things must be quickly getting to a stage when something was liable to happen. He was expecting to see the caribou ahead of them at some little distance, and paid but small attention to points close at hand.