“I’ll fetch the pan and the kettle and the baking powder.”
The supper was a success. The flapjacks, fried in a pan greased with a rind of bacon and flooded with molasses at the very moment of consumption, were delicious. Even the two that missed the pan in the act of turning and flapped into the fire lost nothing in flavor.
After supper they brought in the outfit and spread their blankets to warm. There was enough dry fuel inside to last for several days. Outside, the wind continued to blow and the snow to drift before it.
In the morning they found the hingeless door banked high with snow; and upon pushing their way out they found the trail of their approach drifted full up to the edge of the dense wood which screened the front of their retreat. A land of small, heavily wooded hills lay around them. The sky was clear, a thin wind was still blowing and the air was bitterly cold. They made their way over the roof of their dwelling and up the rough slope behind, plunging and squirming through tangles of brush and snow hip-deep; and, upon reaching the crown of the hill, Tom climbed into the spire of a tall spruce. From that high perch he could look abroad for miles in every direction. He looked back over the country through which they had made the laborious journey, and saw nothing but black forests and gray swamps; with here and there the pale trunks of birch trees, and here and there a ridge of high gray maples and beeches, and patches and strips of gleaming snow everywhere. Nothing moved but the wind, and thin, sudden clouds of snow that puffed up and ran and sank before it. No least haze of smoke, no sign of human habitation or trafficking, tinged the clear air above the forests or marred the white of the open spaces. He turned his head and searched the bright horizon all around the world and every square yard of the landscape within his range of vision. There was no smoke or ghost of smoke anywhere, nor any break in the timber that looked as if it had been cut by the hand of man, nor any sign of movement on the patches and lanes of snow. He descended and reported to Mick Otter.
“That a’ right,” said Mick. “Guess we stop here an’ see what happen, hey? Don’t make no tracks in front an’ lay low, what?”
“Sounds good to me—but what about our smoke?” asked Tom.
Mick pointed down the southern slope of the hill, where the underbrush between the boles of the wide-limbed spruces and firs grew thick and interlaced.
“Darn little smoke git through that,” he said. “Burn dry hard-wood all day, anyhow—an’ mighty little of him.”
“It seems to me that we might stay here until Tone and the detective chuck it. If we keep a sharp look-out they won’t catch us in daylight; and they’ll never find that cave at night. It suits me. I don’t want to go any farther away than I have to.”
“Maybe—but we stop here only two-three day, to rest up an’ look out. Go north an’ west then, to place I know where we buy grub—an’ find little camp of mine pretty near the hull way. Maybe they don’t know nothin’ ’bout you over to Timbertown—so we trap an’ make some money, what?”