“But if we could cross the lake here, and if we could cross the Selwyn Mountains over there on the other side of it, we would find a little creek up there which heads up just opposite Price Creek. You see, Price Creek runs down into the Canoe River, which is the stream we’re going to follow below Tête Jaune Cache. They say the Indians used to take horses up this little creek and down Price Creek on the other side. If so, they must have had horses born on the other side of the Fraser, for I’ll warrant they couldn’t get them across from the north side where we are.”
“Did any white man ever go over that way?” asked Rob, curiously.
“Not that I know of. I don’t know when the Indians went there, but there’s a story that some of them took horses across the Selwyns over yonder. As for us, we’ve got to keep on down this valley. We are twenty miles west from the Yellowhead Pass, and have thirty miles more to go yet to the Tête Jaune Cache.”
“What are these big mountains over on the right?” inquired Rob.
“That’s the Rainbow range. We make our way right along their feet. On beyond the lake for some distance the river is a little more quiet, then she drops; that’s all. There’s a strip of water in here twenty miles or so that no boat could live in at all. There were two rattle-headed engineers who did try to take a boat down a part of the Fraser in here, and in some miraculous way they ran maybe ten or twelve miles of it, part in and part out of the water. Then their boat smashed on a rock, and they both were drowned. One body was found, the other was never heard of.”
“Well,” said John, “we’re complaining a good deal about going along on horses, but I believe I like that better than taking a boat on that river.”
“When we’ll make camp to-day, M’sieu Deek?” asked Moise, pushing up alongside the leader’s horse. They all sat in the rain, dripping like so many drowned rats.
“Well,” said Uncle Dick, “this is pretty bad, isn’t it? It seems to me that we had better use all the daylight we can to-day, for we’re wet as we can get anyway. There are no bad streams now, but the trail is awful of itself—side-hills and brûlè, and in and out of the water all along the lake side. But we’ve got to pass it some time. Suppose we make the best of a bad bargain, and see if we can get to the lower end of the lake to-day?”
The boys all agreed to this, and so the party pushed on, but they found later that the prediction of their leader was quite true, for none of them had ever seen so fearful a trail as that along the north shore of Moose Lake. But even as it grew darker in the deep valley at last they broke through the farther edge of the heaviest timber, picked their way through a wide strip of brûlè, crossed the last dangerous face of rock side, and emerged into an open area where some sort of camp at last was possible. Here they dismounted, all ready to agree that this was the worst day any of them had ever seen on the trail.