Hugh’s blade rose and dipped with the weary regularity of a machine and his eyes were falling to with sleepiness. But he was startled suddenly broad awake when they rounded a sharp bend and came full upon a gigantic moose, its great shoulders, bearded chin and wide sweep of antlers outlined sharp and black against the starlit water. The huge creature stood knee deep in the cool flood, a long string of wet lily pads still hanging from its dripping jaw. It looked so big as to seem scarcely real and, for a second, stood as still as though carved in stone. Then, with so mighty a splashing that the spent waves rocked the canoe, the great beast plunged to the shore, scrambled up the bank and was off through the forest with a stamping and crashing that could have been heard a mile away.
“Ah-h-h—!” sighed Hugh, letting out the breath that excitement had imprisoned within him for a full minute.
Again they went on in silence, the sound of the paddle behind Hugh being the only proof that he was not alone in this whole forest-covered world. Past one curve and then another they went, until they began to hear a new sound ahead of them, a dull muffled roar that he did not in the least understand. He was about to ask what it was when the Indian spoke at last, a single inarticulate word which was evidently meant as a warning. For in an instant they began to move faster and faster, the sound grew louder, and they plunged, all in one breathless second, down a foaming slope of shouting white rapids. Great black bowlders shouldered up through the water, threatening them in a thousand directions, but somehow the frail canoe threaded its way like magic in and out among the rocks and came safe into the calm pool below. Before Hugh could speak they had swept into another reach of tossing water and then another, the canoe staggering back and forth in the furious current, but coming finally out into the quiet stream again.
Then at last, warmed to friendliness perhaps by Hugh’s calm acceptance of the dangers of the rapids, the Indian behind him spoke. His English, learned at the Indian school near Rudolm, was nearly as good as Hugh’s own, yet had the guttural burr of all Chippewa speech.
“You are going to Oscar Dansk’s?” he asked.
“I wish to,” answered Hugh without looking around. “Can you take me there?”
“No,” was the immediate answer; “the white deer has been seen in the woods near Jasper Peak and we Chippewas will not go where the white deer goes.”
“But I must go on,” insisted Hugh. “How can I ever find the way without you?”
“I will take you to the lake,” was the reply, “and around Harbin’s Channel into the upper end of the lake you can paddle alone. You can keep this canoe; it belongs to Oscar Dansk; he left it at Two Rivers, for his last journey he made overland.”
They went on and on, until Hugh, knowing long since that it was past midnight, began to feel that morning must be close at hand. They passed more rapids, threaded narrow stretches of river, then wider ones, but still the dark held and the journey seemed never to come to an end. At last the Indian spoke again.