“Got two beauty shots at her, didn’t you?” queried Ethan; “oh! what a dandy chance for me to pull trigger, if it had only been a big bull with massive horns. But I’m glad for your sake there was so fine a picture. It ought to make a dandy showing, with the snow woods for a background, and those dark firs on the right.”
Of course now that the excitement was all over the boys began to feel somewhat tired after such tedious walking with the clumsy snow-shoes; so when Phil suggested that they find a good place, make a cheerful fire, and sit around in comfort while they ate their lunch, there was no objection from his companion.
A fire is certainly the hunter’s best friend, in winter time at least. Without it how gloomy and cheerless would his surroundings appear, and what physical discomfort must he endure?
The two boys sat there for more than an hour, a friendly log serving them for a seat.
There was plenty of fuel to be had for the gathering; indeed, the site had been selected on that very account.
“I’m trying to make out just which way we ought to go so as to strike that little stream,” Phil was saying, when the other asked what he was doing with a pencil and paper.
“Oh! you mean the one McNab called Cranberry Creek, and that has the beaver colony on it, somewhere like five miles from our lake; is that it, Phil?”
“Yes, and this is how I figure it,” continued the other, showing what he had done in drawing a rough map on the paper. “Here is the camp on the lake; this is the way we got to where we are sitting now, having headed pretty generally into the north. This is the way the creek runs, so if we start from here and keep bending a little to the west we’re likely to strike the stream.”
“Looks good to me, Phil.”
“Then let’s call that our program,” Phil wound up with saying.