“Oh, well, they’ll find some stray ones stowed away in a pocket, like as not!” Bluff remarked, and in that fashion allowed the incident to pass from his mind.
“But tell me what you’re aiming to do next, Bluff?” asked Jerry. “I’d also like to know which way you mean to play the game so’s to get back the horns of our big moose?”
“Oh, I only said that to impress Bill, that’s all!” he observed carelessly. “I had to be true to my name, you know. I only wish I could see some way to beat that crowd out in the end. I’d sure go to a heap of trouble to get there.”
“Are we heading right to get back home?” asked Jerry, a few minutes later.
“My stars! I hope you don’t think I’m silly enough to want to try and cover all the miles between here and the cabin, and with this storm starting in, too.”
“Well, I’ll do whatever you say, Bluff, because I always did own up you knew more about the woods in a day than I could in a week; but all the same I’d be right glad to hear you mean to make a camp, and spend the night resting up.”
“I’m afraid it isn’t going to be much of a camp, though; you don’t want to expect too much.”
“Some sort of brush shelter ought to help out, I should think,” the other returned, as he bent his head lower in order to fight against the driving wind.
Night was coming on unusually early, on account of the clouds above and the falling snow. Any one who knew what these signs foretold could understand that there was a wild time ahead for those caught away from shelter and exposed to the fury of a growing blizzard.
“We might be able to do some better than that,” Bluff went on to say, as he kept turning his head from side to side, as though constantly on the lookout for something he had in mind.
Five, ten minutes passed, until they must have gone nearly half a mile away from the scene of their meeting with Nackerson and his cronies.
“Whew! Let me tell you this is going to be a screecher!” Jerry declared, while he rubbed his ears to make them burn, for the cold wind nipped them.
“You’re wondering why I don’t call a halt, Jerry, so I’ll explain,” Bluff told him. “I remembered seeing a place when we were moving along the trail of the moose where some trees had been uprooted in a storm years ago.”