They kept on, in spite of their discomforts, throughout the forenoon without pause. It was their purpose to get on the farther side of as many of these mountain streams as possible. They were now in a bold mountain country, where numerous small tributaries came down to the great Fraser which roared and plunged along beside their trail. “The Bad River,” old Sir Alexander Mackenzie called one of the headwaters of the Fraser, and bad enough it is from its source on down.
They were now near the forks of the two main tributaries of the Fraser, one roaring torrent coming down from the south. The trail held to the north bank of the Fraser, following down from the lake along the rapid but harmless little river which made its outlet. To ford the Fraser was, of course, impossible. Time and again the young adventurers paused to look down at the raging torrent, broken into high, foaming waves by the numerous reefs of rock which ran across it. Continually the roar of the angry waters came up to them through the trees. More than ever they realized that they now were on the shores of one of the wickedest rivers in all the Rockies, as their Uncle Dick had told them of the Fraser.
They now observed that the trees of the forest through which they traveled were much larger than they had been. But, splendid as this forest growth had been, they found that in a large area fire had gone through it in some previous year, and this burned country—or brûlè, as Moise called it—made one of the worst obstacles any traveler could encounter. This hardship was to remain with them almost all the way down the Fraser to the Tête Jaune Cache, and it added immeasurably to the trials of pack-train travel.
At last they pulled up alongside of a broad and brawling stream, turbulent but shallow, a little threatening to one not skilled in mountain travel, but not dangerous to a party led as was this one, by a man acquainted with the region.
“Here we are at Grant Creek,” said Uncle Dick, as they paused on the hither side of the stream. “This is one of the many swift tributaries on the north side of the Fraser, but I am glad we’ve got to ford it, and not the Fraser itself. You see, we have to keep on the north bank all the way down now.”
Uncle Dick carefully located his landmarks and examined some stones and stumps to get some idea of the stage of the water.
“It’s all right,” said he. “Come on across. Follow me closely now.”
Soon they were belly-deep in the tawny flood of the stream, which came down noisily all about them. The sturdy horses, however, seemed not to be in the least alarmed, but followed old Danny, Uncle Dick’s pony, as he slowly plodded on across, angling down the stream and never once losing his footing in the rolling stones of the bottom. The stream was not over a hundred and twenty feet wide at this point, and the ford was made with no difficulty at all.