“Seven days and we’ll know, I reckon,” laughed Frank, touching his breast, where in the recesses of a pocket that little packet lay with its mysterious contents.
“I’m glad, anyhow, that we didn’t have to make that raft,” declared Bob.
“Same here,” chuckled his comrade, “it would have been a tougher job than either of us thought, with only a little camp hatchet to cut logs. But I would have done it if that trucker hadn’t come along in his bull boat.”
“Which, I take it, means his craft was made from the tough skins of bulls; is that right, Frank?”
“Sure,” Frank replied. “They make fine boats, too, and I’m told are used even up in the Saskatchewan river country. Far better than dugouts, too. But our trail leads us through that far-away mountain range, you know. Hope we’re on the other side of it by to-night. All depends on how rough the traveling is, after we strike the rise.”
“Perhaps, if we look sharp, we may see the very rock at the peak that the balloon banged up against!” suggested Bob, with a grin.
“No telling,” Frank remarked. “But if he had been knocked out of the old basket on top of the ridge, he would have been a goner, sure enough. No help could reach him there.”
They galloped on for several hours. All the time the mountains seemed to rise up closer, though distances were very deceptive in that clear atmosphere.
But no stop was made until noon. Then they found themselves at the base of the high ridge, that loomed up far into the clouds.
“If we could only find a way around this, instead of climbing over,” observed the Kentucky lad, as he looked upward with a sigh of despair.