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They had got to the end of the wood-road, and into the thick of the trees where there wasn't even a trail, and they walked round looking for a way out till they were turned completely. They decided that the only way was to keep walking, and by and by they heard the sound of chopping.
It did not impress me at the time; estrays were constantly at large in our forests in summer, and not infrequently a roaming buck from the near preserves. There was also here in addition to the other roads, an abandoned winter wood-road that ran westward across the island to a small farming settlement.
The trail became a cow-path, the cow-path became a wood-road, which later joined with a hay-road; and they rode down through the low-rolling, tawny California hills to where a set of bars let out on the county road which ran along the bottom of the valley. The girl sat her horse while the man dismounted and began taking down the bars.
After travelling almost ten miles, Austin went home, thinking that by that time either his father or his brother must have been successful in his search, to be met only by the anxious despair of his mother and sisters. "Don't you worry," he forced himself to say with a cheerfulness he was very far from feeling; "she may have gone down that old wood-road that leads out of the Elliotts' pasture.
There was a steep pathway down into the ravine that gave into the lake just beyond his sister's cottage, and this he sought and followed, moving slowly and painfully, but finally reaching the grassy level of the pathway that connected the cottages with the wood-road up the bluff. Trees and shrubbery were thick on both sides, and the path was shaded.
I guided my horse around the huge, straight trunk. An oval blaze scarred it and on the wood was painted a red wolf. "It's the wolf-clan, Brant's own clan of the Mohawk nation," she called out to me. "Follow me, cousin." And she dashed off down the wood-road, I galloping behind, leaping windfalls, gullies, and the shallow forest brooks that crossed our way.
The strange team was then driven, at a moderate pace, for about half a mile along the main wood-road, the whole camp following in procession, and jeering at the unhappy thief.
What a forest solitude our obstructed and dilapidated wood-road led us through! five miles of primitive woods before we came to the forks, three miles before we came to the "burnt shanty," a name merely, no shanty there now for twenty-five years past.
But to make assurance doubly sure, we engaged a guide, as stated, to give us a good start, and go with us beyond the bearing-to-the-left point. He had been to the lake the winter before and knew the way. Our course, the first half hour, was along an obscure wood-road which had been used for drawing ash logs off mountain in winter. There was some hemlock, but more maple and birch.
The cousins might easily reach the Vanderwiller's island, warn them of the fire, and return to town before it got very late, or before the fire crossed the wood-road. They rumbled along, soon striking the corduroy road, having the thick forest on either hand again. The ditches were running bank full.
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