“Here’s the river, Gist; but we’re cut off. The channel’s open.”
XI
FACING WINTER PERIL
Christopher Gist hurried on. When the Hunter arrived, the two were gazing perplexed; and no wonder.
Here lay the swift Allegheny River, a quarter of a mile wide, but it was not frozen over. It was frozen for only fifty paces out from either bank. All the space between the borders was black current, in which great ice cakes, borne rapidly, churned and swirled on their way to the Forks below.
As far up and down as they could see there was no ice bridge—no way to cross afoot. To leap from floe to floe amid that mad race of tilting, spinning cakes, some thick, some thin, at intervals irregular, was impossible. And to swim through was impossible.
“Pshaw!” Gist uttered. “Who’d ha’ thought this? In all reason the pesky river should be frozen clean across. We’re cut short, major.”
“Just where are we?” asked Washington.
“Maybe the boy knows better than we do.”
“Shanopin-town across about two miles down,” said Robert. “Forks another two miles.”