After a long nap and a good supper, the lads felt more cheerful. For a while they sat and watched the most gorgeous sunset they had ever seen. The western sky was covered with scattered clouds, which the sun painted at first with a golden orange which gradually changed to an indescribable red, such as one sees only in the great wild [[162]]forests, where no smoke and dust fill the air. “It may rain to-night,” said Ganawa rising and looking at some dark low clouds in the west. “My sons, we must make our shelter larger and put more boughs on the roof.”
Then for half an hour the three worked diligently on their lean-to. Bruce and Ray cut and carried long boughs of balsam, and Ganawa laid them in place like shingles and tied them with strips of willow bark.
When it grew too dark to work, the lads built a camp-fire of driftwood and for an hour or longer they all sat enjoying its gentle warmth and listening to the voices of the forest. Some night-hawks were screaming overhead as they hunted for flying insects over the lake. A bat circled back and forth near the fire and now and then uttered its faint high-pitched squeak. From across the lake came the call of wolves, and kookookehaw, the big owl, made Ray’s hair stand up when he suddenly uttered his unearthly hoot and deep guttural notes almost above [[163]]the camp-fire, as if he were protesting against the invasion of his realm. These sounds, however, were not unknown to the lads, but there came a new sound which brought Ray to his feet.
“Listen!” he called. “There is somebody coming. They are throwing rocks in the lake and slamming the water with a paddle. Let us get away. They may shoot at us if we stay near the fire. I’ll throw some water on the fire.”
“Stop, my son,” Ganawa spoke. “They are not going to attack us. They are the beaver people and they are making signals to their friends. The wind has changed and their keen noses have caught the man scent. They do hit the water with paddles, but their tails are the paddles, and then they dive with a plunge which makes a noise, as if a man threw a rock into the water.”
It did rain during the night, but the thatch of boughs had been so well built that no rain fell on the sleepers; in fact Ray did not know it had been raining until he saw [[164]]little pools of water on the rocks next morning.
On an ideal summer day the three paddled slowly northward to the outlet of the lake without seeing a sign of other human beings, except a few old Indian camp-sites, as indicated by the usual tepee-poles. At the outlet they spent a day exploring the region. Bruce and Ray each climbed a tall tree from which they could look miles away to the north. The rough rocky hills had disappeared, and as far as their eyes could see the country seemed to be one great monotonous level forest of black spruce, the pulpwood trees of the present time.
“My sons,” said Ganawa, “I believe this little Oba River joins the big river Missinaibi far to the north. My father and I once travelled to the English traders on Hudson Bay by way of the Missinaibi. It is a bad river with many falls and rapids, and it took us all summer to make the journey. Your brother is not camping on this lake and I have seen no white streaks of [[165]]gold rock. To-morrow we start back for the Michipicoten and look for your brother and the gold rock in other places.”
The lads were glad to hear these words, for, although after plenty of rest and sleep, they had lost the feeling of fatigue and discouragement, they still felt as if they might travel on and on forever and never get out of the level black spruce forest where one tree looked like another, and where even the small brown creeks wound about as if they were lost in an endless monotony of trees, and thick soft knolls and patches of moss and Labrador tea without a piece of solid ground anywhere for miles and miles. [[166]]