"O' course ye don't—not now!" burst in Captain Zoss. "But wait till winter sets in. Then the berries will be gone, an' birds will be mighty scarce."
"But we'll have the fish, captain. We can cut holes in the ice on the river and spear them, as we do down in Maine."
"Wall, maybe, my lad. But ye don't catch me a-tryin' it when I kin git anything else—not with the ice eight or ten feet thick an' the mercury down to forty below nuthin' at all!"
It was not long after that they turned in, and never did they sleep more soundly, although a number of mosquitoes visited them. Foster Portney was the first to get up, and by the time the boys followed, a delicious smell of frying fish and boiling coffee was floating through the air.
A ten minutes' ride on the lake brought them close to the entrance of the river. Here the water was broken up into a dozen currents, swirling this way and that and throwing the spray in every direction. On either side of this watercourse were high walls.
"Now fer the tug o' war!" said Captain Zoss, and immediate preparations were made to shoot the cañon and the falls of which Randy and Earl had heard so much. Once past that dangerous spot, the remainder of the trip to the gold regions would be an easy one.