“He says,” continued Alex, “that when you get home he wishes you would write to him in care of the priest at St. John. He says he hopes you’ll have plenty of shooting down the river. He says he would like to go to the States when he gets rich. He says his people will talk about you all around the camp-fire, a great many times, telling how you crossed the mountains, where so few white men ever have been.”
“I’ll tell you what, boys,” said Rob, “let’s line up and give them all a cheer.”
So the three boys stood in a row at the waterside, after they had shaken hands once more with the friends they were leaving, and gave them three cheers and a tiger, waving their hats in salutation. Even old Picheu smiled happily at this. Then the boys sprang aboard, and the boats pushed out into the current.
XXIV
THE WHITE MAN’S COUNTRY
They were passing now between very high banks, broken now and then by rock faces. The currents averaged extremely strong, and there were at times runs of roughish water. But gradually the stream now was beginning to widen and to show an occasional island, so that on the whole they found their journey less dangerous than it had been before. The dugout, although not very light under the paddle, proved very tractable, and made a splendid boat for this sort of travel.
“You’d think from the look of this country,” said John to Alex, “that we were the first ever to cross it.”
“No,” said the old hunter, “I wish we were; but that is far from the truth to-day. This spring, before I started west to meet you, there were a dozen wagons passed through the Landing on one day—every one of them with a plow lashed to the wagon-box. The farmers are coming. If you should stop at Dunvegan you’d hardly know you were in Mackenzie’s old country, I’m afraid. And now the buffalo and the elk are all gone, where there used to be so many. It is coming now to be the white man’s country.”