“Well,” says he, “if we’re ahead we can always t-try to escape by p-paddlin’, but if we’re behind and run on to ’em sudden, what can we do? We can’t paddle up-stream against this c-current, can we?”
“We’ll have to go perty careful and keep our eyes open,” I says.
We had some coffee and a little bacon. Mark allowed he felt a lot better when it was down, and I’ll admit I wasn’t half as worried. Mark says eatin’ is one of the most important things there is.
“Why,” says he, “the Emperor Napoleon told his folks an army travels on its stomach. What he meant was an army of h-h-hungry men wasn’t any good to him at all.”
We washed up our coffee-pot and frying-pan and packed things away in the canoe. Then we launched her and started out to follow Collins and Jiggins down the river. If it hadn’t been for Mark and his games it wouldn’t have been very exciting, but right off he started to be Father Marquette again, and I was Louis Joliet, a fur-trader. As near as I could get at it, Mark was to preach to the Indians and convert them while I was swapping two-cent beads for ten-dollar pelts.
“The f-farther we go,” says Mark, “the wilder and savager the natives get. A couple of days from now I b-bet we run into cannibals l-like those that passed in the boat.”
Collins and Jiggins had got promoted to cannibals now.
We went cautious, I can promise you. Between being honestly worried about the men ahead of us and being make-believe afraid of Indians we came pretty close to having our hands full. Every time we came to a curve we had to go slow and back water so as not to come swinging around on Jiggins & Co. unexpected, and once or twice when the current was strong we did sweep around kerflip. As luck had it, they weren’t there waiting for us, but it would have been just the same if they had.
The current was swift all the time, but sometimes it was swifter than others. Whenever the stream got narrower it crowded the water together so it seemed to shoot through; and then it went so smooth and purring-like it almost frightened you. It acted strong. It was lucky we knew a little about a canoe, or we would have tipped over or smashed ashore fifty times. Even as it was we brushed a tree that had toppled into the water and grazed a stump that came just to the surface. If we’d hit that square Mark would have had some use for his canvas and paint.
It began to get hot after a while, and we began to get tired. There isn’t anything so tiresome to your back as riding in a canoe when you aren’t used to it. I wished Mark would say something about taking a rest, but he didn’t. I suppose he was wishing I would. Folks get into lots of trouble, off and on, by being afraid to be the first to give in. All the same, I wasn’t going to admit I couldn’t stand as much as he could.