Photograph by U.S.G.S.
Crossing a Swollen Stream.
Bridge is a log hewed flat on one side, about three feet wide. Rail is flimsy and but a "bluff of confidence."
As it chanced, the head of the party, with the assistant topographer, had taken a little side trip off the trail, and the packers were annoyed by being stopped in this way.
"I reckon Saracen could find a way, all right," said one of the men, "but I shore do feel like a fool to wait for him to come up and show us old-timers what to do."
Numberless suggestions had been made, and Roger's presence as a stranger had kept him silent, but thinking perhaps that he could be of some use, he spoke in an aside to the first speaker and suggested to him a possible means, which he had heard as having been done in a similar case by Herold. He gave the packer the idea, and told him to go ahead with it as though it were a plan of his own devising.
"You see," said Roger, "it would seem like an intrusion if it came from me."
"Nothing o' the kind," said the other roughly. "I'm not going to steal another man's ideas and put them out as my own. What do you think I am? Here, boys," he continued, "this youngster has an idea that he says has been proved before. Let's try it. Tell us about it, son."
Roger flushed hot at being brought before a group of men he had never seen till that day, but he spoke up bravely.
"It doesn't seem right, I know," he said, "for me to do any talking, but I know of a scheme that might work here, if you thought it would go. Work it just like you do a canoe in tracking. You know with a rope from bow to stern, going against the current, if you pull on the bow, it will swerve in and on the stern it will sweep out?"