“The idea of Big Nick, in trying to git away, stopping to kindly blaze trees to show his pursuers where he is bound for!”
“I’ll admit, it does sound rather silly,” conceded Stanley. “Yet Abner said they would find his trail.”
“My dear boy, he meant that Charlie would find a foot-print, the mark of the canoe against the shore, a broken branch, a stone turned over, and the like. He meant that Charlie would see signs of Nick’s flight where you and I would see nothing.”
“Then all trails are not like this and a road trail?”
“I should say not. Say a man wants to hide something in the big woods; or wants to keep secret a pocket where he is gitting amethysts and tourmalines and the like, he makes a trail no one else can find. Once I found a runaway hive of bees and knew the hollow tree was about filled with honey. I wanted to wait till it got cool in the fall, when the bees would be numb and not wanting to sting me. So I took some reindeer lichen and fixed a trailer here and there on a tree. Some of it took root and grew; some died, but retained its color, and no one would imagine it meant anything. And I got the honey.”
