Joe heard Lucy, ahead of him, saying it reminded her of the woods that Hop-o’-my-thumb and his brother got lost in. It reminded him of some great forest he once dreamed about in a nightmare; and yet it was beautiful, because of the ghostly gray of the tall trees, and the utter hush and silence of its dim recesses.
“What kind of trees are these?” he called back to Val. “They look like some sort of cedar.”
“You can search me,” Val answered. “I couldn’t tell a tree from a cauliflower. Great place for bears, though.”
The trail here was so wide that Joe could trot ahead and ask Mills.
“Yes, they are cedars,” Mills said. “They call ’em white cedars, I believe. The wood is much softer than your slow-growing cedar in the East. It’s a great forest, isn’t it?”
“Makes me sure I want to be a forest ranger,” Joe answered. “Val says it’s a great place for bears.”
“Hi, bears, ma!” yelled Bob. “Val says there’s lots of ’em here. Say, Mr. Mills, how soon are you going to show us that bear? You know you promised one to-day.”
“You’ll see it yet—I never break a promise,” the Ranger answered.
They rode on, down through the cedar forest, for a mile more, and suddenly saw light through the trees ahead, trotted into a clearing, and almost immediately found themselves by a good-sized hotel, built out of this very cedar lumber, and on the shore of a big lake.
“Lake McDonald,” said the Ranger.