“Yes,” said Rob, “it ought to be about sixty miles of pretty good water now until we get to the one place on this river which the boldest voyageur never tried to run—the Cañon of the Rocky Mountains, as the very first travelers called it.”
“Those map she’ll not been much good,” said Moise, pointing to the government maps of which Rob had a store. “The only good map she’ll been made by the Injun with a stick, s’pose on the sand, or maybe so on a piece of bark. My onkle she’ll made me a map of the Parle Pas. He’ll show the place where to go through the middle on the Parle Pas. S’pose you’ll tell my onkle, Moise he’ll walk down the Parle Pas an’ not ron on heem, he’ll laugh on me, heem! All right, when you get to the Grand Portage sixty miles below, you’ll get all the walk you want, Alex, hein?”
Alex answered him with a pleasant smile, not in the least disposed to be laughed into taking any risks he did not think necessary.
“We’d better drop down a few miles farther before we make camp,” said he. “En avant, Moise. En roulant, ma boule!”
Moise turned to his paddle and broke into song gaily as they once more headed down the stream. They did not tarry again until the sun was behind the western ridges. The mountain shadows were heavy when at last their little fire lighted up the black forest which crowded close in all around them.
“I think this is fine,” said Jesse, quietly, as they sat about the camp-fire that night.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world,” said John; and Rob gave his assent by a quiet nod of satisfaction.
“I feel as if we were almost home now,” said Jesse. “We must have come an awfully long way.”
Alex shook his head. “We’re a long way from home yet,” said he. “When the Klondike rushes were on some men got up as far north as this place, and scattered everywhere, hoping they could get through somehow to the Yukon—none of them knew just how. But few of them ever got up this river beyond Hudson’s Hope, or even Fort St. John, far east of there. Some turned back and went down the Mackenzie, others took the back trail from Peace River landing. A good many just disappeared. I have talked with some who turned back from the mountains here, and they all said they didn’t think the whole world was as big as it seemed by the time they got here! And they came from the East, where home seems close to you!”