“I’m glad we didn’t have any o’ th’ traps stowed in there,” remarked David presently.
“Our--our rifles are burned!” choked Andy.
“The rifles! I went and forgot un!” exclaimed David, in consternation. “I went and forgot un! I might’ve pitched un out with th’ sleepin’ bags!”
“What ever will we do without un?” asked Andy. “We can’t do any huntin’ now!”
“Our snowshoes!” broke in David. “We clean forgot our snowshoes! We could have saved un, too, if we’d only thought!”
The snowshoes had been hanging on a peg just outside the tilt door, for trappers do not take snowshoes into warm tilts, where the heat would injure the babish, or netting. Smoke issuing from the door had hidden them, and in the bewilderment following their escape the boys had quite forgotten them. Now, like the rifles, the snowshoes were in the ruins of the burning tilt, and destroyed.
This was indeed a sad loss. In the woods snow lay a dozen feet deep, and to move about without the assistance of snowshoes was quite impossible. The game which Andy had accumulated was in the ruins, save two partridges which had been left at the Halfway tilt, and there was no other food nearer than the Narrows. Deprived of their snowshoes they could neither visit their rabbit traps nor set new ones.
“How’ll we make out now?” asked Andy hopelessly. “We can’t travel without snowshoes.”
“Maybe the snow on the river ice is packed hard enough t’ bear us,” suggested David. “Leastways we’ll have t’ try un. We’ve got t’ get t’ th’ Narrows tilt, _what_ever.”
Silently they lashed their sleeping bags upon the toboggan and made preparations for a night journey to the Halfway tilt. They could not reconnoiter for a suitable place to build a temporary shelter in the soft snow of the woods, as Andy had done when he was alone. A step beyond the packed snow around the tilt, or the more or less packed path leading down to the lake, where they had a water hole in the ice, would plunge them to their armpits.
“I’ll haul th’ flatsled,” suggested David, tightening the lashings of the toboggan. “You go ahead, Andy, and pick out th’ path t’ th’ water hole. We can make un all right t’ th’ lake, and we keeps t’ th’ hard path.”
Fortunately it was starlight, and though one or the other now and again stepped off the path, and each time had a brief battle with the deep snow, they at length emerged upon the white expanse of Lake Namaycush. Here the wind had packed the snow so hard that, though they sank nearly to their knees at every step, walking was not unduly difficult until they reached the river bed.