How simple the program seemed now! The rocks heretofore appearing almost unsurmountable diminished in size, and no longer stood as a barrier that could not be scaled. A full stomach nearly always makes one see things in a rosy light.
Finally it was decided they had cooked a sufficient supply of meat. The balance that they expected to carry with them was made up in small packages enclosed in portions of the buffalo hide and tied securely with thongs.
As they were burdened with little save their guns, now almost useless to them, these packages would not prove troublesome. Roger was willing to load himself down with twice the amount, and bravely stagger under it all, rather than risk the chance of suffering again the misery he had endured.
“You feel sure the lake lies to the east of us, Mayhew, do you not?” Roger asked the guide when they were ready to start, feeling ever so much stronger, and able to push through the drifts where they could not be skirted.
“Yes, everything points that way,” he was assured by Mayhew. “From the way that Frenchman pointed when he was talking to you both, Dick figured that the lake was off in that direction. And then the crows fly that way in the morning, and return again in the evening. That is a pretty good sign, I take it.”
Roger became interested at once. Here was something he had not thought of noticing, and consequently he wished for more information.
“Tell me why that should be so,” he asked, as they started.
“These crows do not drift south in the winter time,” explained the frontiersman. “They stay up here, and, as they must find feed when the earth is covered under many feet of snow, they have learned that along the shore of the big lake they can get what they need—dead fish and all sorts of other things cast up by the waves.”
“But what if the lake freezes over, as it may do in very hard winters?” Roger questioned.
“Oh, they would still find things to eat on the ice,” returned Mayhew. “Being an open stretch, the wind would keep the snow from settling there. But no matter, that is where they fly each morning; and you know what hunters say about a direct line being as ‘straight as the crow flies.’”