Dick shouldered a thirty-pound pack and the canoe. Sam Bolton and the girl managed the remainder. Every twenty minutes or so they would rest, sinking back against the trunks of trees, mossy stones, or a bank of new ferns. The forest was open and inexpressibly lofty. Moose maples, young birches, and beeches threw their coolness across the face, then above them the columns of the trunks, then far up in green distance the leaves again, like the gold-set roof of a church. The hill mounted always before them. Ancient rocks hoary with moss, redolent of dampness, stood like abandoned altars given over to decay. A strange, sweet wind freighted with stray bird-notes wandered aimlessly.
Nothing was said. Dick led the way and set the intervals of the carrying. When he swung the canoe from his shoulders the others slipped their tump-lines. Then all rubbed their faces with the broad caribou-leaf to keep off the early flies, and lay back, arms extended, breathing deep, resting like boxers between the rounds. Once at the top of the ridge Dick climbed a tree. He did this, not so much in expectation of seeing the water-courses themselves, as to judge by the general lay of the country where they might be found.
In a bare open space under hemlocks Sam indicated a narrow, high, little pen, perhaps three feet long by six inches wide, made of cut saplings. Dick examined it.
"Marten deadfall," he pronounced. "Made last winter. Somebody's been trapping through here."
After a time a blaze on a tree was similarly remarked. Then the travellers came to a tiny creek, which, being followed, soon debouched into a larger. This in turn became navigable, after the north-country fashion. That is to say, the canoe with its load could much of the time be floated down by the men wading in the bed of the creek. Finally Sam, who was in the lead, jerked his head toward the left bank.
"Their winter camp," said he, briefly.
A dim trail led from the water to a sheltered knoll. There stood the framework of a pointed tepee, the long poles spread like fingers above their crossing point. A little pile of gnawed white skulls of various sizes represented at least a portion of the season's catch. Dick turned them over with his foot, identifying them idly. From the sheltered branches of a near-by spruce hung four pairs of snow-shoes cached there until the next winter. Sam gave his first attention to these.
"A man, a woman, and two well-grown children," he pronounced. He ran his hand over the bulging raquette with the long tail and the slightly up-curved end. "Ojibway pattern," he concluded. "Dick, we're in the first hunting district. Here's where we get down to business."
He went over the ground twice carefully, examining the state of the offal, the indications of the last fire.
"They've been gone about six weeks," he surmised. "If they ain't gone visiting, they must be down-stream somewheres. These fellows don't get in to trade their fur 'till along about August."