Finally it was decided they had cooked a sufficient supply of meat. The balance that they expected to carry with them was made up in small packages enclosed in portions of the buffalo hide and tied securely with thongs. As they were burdened with little save their guns, now almost useless to them, these packages would not prove troublesome. Roger was willing to load himself down with twice the amount, and bravely stagger under it all, rather than risk the chance of suffering again the misery he had endured. "You feel sure the lake lies to the east of us, Mayhew, do you not?" Roger asked the guide when they were ready to start, feeling ever so much stronger, and able to push through the drifts where they could not be skirted. "Yes, everything points that way," he was assured by Mayhew. "From the way that Frenchman pointed when he was talking to you both, Dick figured that the lake was off in that direction. And then the crows fly that way in the morning, and return again in the evening. That is a pretty good sign, I take it." Roger became interested at once. Here was something he had not thought of noticing, and consequently he wished for more information. "Tell me why that should be so," he asked, as they started. "These crows do not drift south in the winter time," explained the frontiersman. "They stay up here, and, as they must find feed when the earth is covered under many feet of snow, they have learned that along the shore of the big lake they can get what they need--dead fish and all sorts of other things cast up by the waves." "But what if the lake freezes over, as it may do in very hard winters?" Roger questioned. "Oh, they would still find things to eat on the ice," returned Mayhew. "Being an open stretch, the wind would keep the snow from settling there. But no matter, that is where they fly each morning; and you know what hunters say about a direct line being as 'straight as the crow flies.'" "Mayhew is right, Roger," said Dick, "and the chances are as ten to one that we are heading straight for the big lake right now." For some time they made steady progress. Possibly they covered as much as two miles when the guide was suddenly observed to come to a full stop. Both of the boys followed suit. They were not ten feet behind Mayhew, so it was possible for them to exchange words with him in low tones. Dick it was who found his voice first, for Roger grew so excited he became dumb for the time being. "What is it, Mayhew?" asked Dick, half-elevating his gun, which contained the only charge of powder and lead they possessed, and under such conditions might be looked on as their sole means of defense in case of threatening peril. "There are Injuns near by," came the answer. "I saw a feathered head rise above yonder bush; and, as I live, there are others on either side of us. It looks as though we were surrounded!" CHAPTER XXX ALLIES WITH COPPER-COLORED SKINS