The worst of it was that Jiggins and Collins knew which way we’d gone, and would be able to find we left in a canoe. If it hadn’t been for Mark’s man-trap they would have had to guess at that, and, as likely as not, would have guessed wrong. Anyhow, we had a start, and it was too dark for them to chase us along the shore. I don’t know what happened to the men in that path, but I expect they had a couple more tumbles before they came out where we had hidden the canoe.
We paddled along till daylight, and then we kept on paddling. We figured we were safe now, because Jiggins and Collins were left three hours behind; and, besides, we didn’t see how they could possibly chase us. There were several things we didn’t know, though. It isn’t safe to figure up the score till the last man’s out, and we crowed too soon. Uncle Hieronymous’s mine was worth too much money for these men to give it up without trying pretty average hard, and I will say for them they did their best.
“All we have to do now,” says Mark, “is to k-keep on down-stream until we f-f-find your uncle and Ole and Jerry. They’re s-s-somewhere along the river, and we can’t miss ’em.”
The Middle Branch, I guess I’ve said before, was nothing but a little stream. Sometimes it was fifteen feet wide, but very seldom any wider, except once in a great while where the current had worn out a pool at a sharp bend—a place like the one where we rescued Mr. Macmillan’s landing-net. There was hardly a place where we could have landed, because the underbrush grew right down to the water’s edge so thick it would have been next to impossible to get through it without cutting a path with a hatchet. Once, after we had been out about an hour, we jammed into a pile of brush and logs that clogged the stream. It didn’t do any harm, but we had to haul the canoe over the top of it. This took us all of twenty minutes. We didn’t think anything of it then, but, if only we had known it, twenty minutes was a lot to waste just then.
Shortly after daylight we came out into the Père Marquette River. That meant the real start of our voyage.
“Aha!” says Mark. “The great river the Indians t-t-told us of. I never thought to l-l-live to see it.”
“What’s that?” says I.
“I’m Father Marquette,” says he.
“Shucks!” says I. “He never got way inland as far as this.”
“You can’t prove it,” says he, “and, anyhow, this is the Mississippi River, hain’t it?”