“According to my reckoning,” Rob answered, “we’re now about where Mackenzie was on June 9th. The day before that—which will be the day after this as we run down the stream—they had sight of a high, white mountain in the evening, off to the east, and there were mountains and valleys in full sight to the south. The valley was wide. That answers pretty closely to the description of this country here. In the morning of that day—which will be later on in the day for us as we go down—they saw a high, white bank on the east. We haven’t passed any such bank. They made seventeen miles of this water coming up. If we can locate that white bank, we ought to strike slacker water below there and then faster water still farther below, according to their story. On June 6th the water was so high and heavy that they had to pull up by the branches of trees, because they couldn’t paddle or pole or track. As they were three days in making something like thirty miles, we ought to expect pretty fast work the next day or so below here. But of course they had high water, and we haven’t.”
“That seems to me good reasoning,” said Alex. “We’ll take it slow and easy, and if we hear a bad rapid we’ll go ashore and look it out first before we run it. Not that I know even now just where that stream comes in from McLeod.”
“We could find out by exploring,” said Rob, “but I don’t think we need do that. Let’s go through on our own as much as we can. We want to stop when we get down into some good bear country anyhow—as soon as Moise and John have eaten up enough pork to make room in the boat!”
“They’re making such a hole in the bacon now,” said Alex, “that I’m afraid we’ll have to stop and hunt somewhere to-morrow.”
“That’ll suit us all right,” boasted John. “Rob and I will stroll out and kill you almost anything you want to-morrow evening.”
They all returned now to the camp, which had been left on the bar around the bend, and passed the night there.
“We’ll have to be good voyageurs from now on,” said Alex, when they turned in for the night, “and that means getting on the trail by four o’clock in the morning.”