“Well I should say not,” laughed Dolph. “But get out here, Teddy. I’ve fixed my kodak so as to work it automatically at a distance. That gives me a chance to get in the picture, you see, and makes it complete.”
“Good for you!” declared Teddy. “I’ve always been sorry for the fellow who carries a kodak along, because he has to make sets of pictures for others, and hardly ever shows up in one himself. Then I want to go out and say good-bye to the bully bass of this old lake. Get ready for another fish supper, Amos.”
The boys must have been up before daylight on that next morning. Certain it is that the sun could not have been half an hour high than they stood on the little beach, waved their hats three times as they gave that many vigorous cheers for Paradise Camp, and then entering their loaded canoes, paddled blithely away.
“A bully little camp, that,” declared Dolph, as they urged the light boats along with sturdy sweeps of the spruce paddles; “we’ll never forget it, or the gamey bass of Manistique Lake.”
“Or a lot of other things that came to pass around this same neck of old Michigan,” suggested Teddy.
“I guess not,” Amos put in, and they knew very well that he was thinking right then of little Sallie, also how she had stood there without flinching, while that half-drunken brute of a father held his fist half raised.
Would any of them forget that picture as long as they lived—Teddy and Dolph felt sure they never could.
In due time they found where the man lived who was willing, for a cash consideration, and a pretty stiff one, to convey the empty canoes and the packs that would embrace all the duffel across the miles of pine woods, to McMillan.
The boys knew how to pack things to good advantage. The canoes were laid on top of all, and upside down, being secured thus so no accident could befall them.
As the sun was shining brightly, of course Dolph could not rest satisfied until he had snapped off a picture of the queer load those horses were expected to haul across the country following a “tote” road made long since by lumbermen.
Sometimes the boys tiring of sitting, and with a view to relieving the horses in the bargain, would drop off and walk.
Noon came and found them still on the way. But the man was now sure they would reach their destination by four o’clock, and so they concluded to stop for an hour, bait the horses and have some refreshments themselves.