“I don’t either,” said Poke. “I’m perfectly sure, though, they’re both in the scheme, somehow. And it almost startled both of ’em out of a year’s growth to see me shooting at them through the bushes. Beyond that it’s all guesswork with me.”
“Same here,” Sam agreed, thoughtfully.
Just then Herman Boyd overtook the leaders and interrupted their talk. Herman was beginning to be skeptical about Sam’s mental mapping of the brook; and one or two of the others expressed doubts as the hours wore away. Sam, however, maintained unruffled composure. He might be wrong, but even if he were wrong, no harm would be done; and so he held his way, declined to halt beside any of the little streams they crossed, and at last pointed out a brook of considerable size, flowing through a valley which was like a gash in the hills.
“That’s it—or it’s my guess, anyway,” he said. “And I think Freeman’s cabin and the pool are a little higher up.”
Poke proposed a halt for luncheon before pursuing their explorations, and the idea met with favor. It was well after noon when their baskets had been emptied, and the quest was resumed. Again the party straggled. It was a go-as-you-please stroll for everybody. Sam and the Shark, who cared little for fishing, were in the van, the others pausing now and then to drop a hook, though with small reward for their trouble. Probably an hour slipped away before Sam came to a pool generally answering Lon’s description of the home of William Trout, and some time passed before his followers began to overtake him. Meanwhile, with the Shark’s aid, he had been searching for the site of the cabin; and had come upon traces of a building of some sort. Evidently there had been a fire, and after that the woods had come in, so that it was by no means easy to estimate the size of the building which once had stood there.
The Shark was not greatly impressed, nor was he inclined to regard the proof as positive.
“Huh! Maybe it’s the place, and, then again, maybe it isn’t. May have been a farmhouse that was abandoned; may have been somebody’s camp.”
“And so it may have been Old Man Freeman’s,” Sam pointed out.
The Shark shrugged. “Huh! ‘Maybe’ doesn’t get you anywhere. I don’t take much stock in these calculations with no given quantities. And Lon may have been fooling you.”
“I don’t think so,” said Sam. “Lon likes to make a good story, but we’ve always found some basis for his yarns.”