"There warn't nothin' to be done but build a boat, an' nary one o' the three of us knew the fust durn thing about boat-buildin'. But we put together a kind of a log-raft, that floated, anyway, put the dunnage aboard it, an' drifted down the lake. This was easy goin', for a while.
"All of a sudden, a swift current took us, the lake narrowed into a river, an', afore we had a chance to pole our heavy an' clumsy raft to the bank, we was shootin' wi' sickenin' speed down white water. It was Grand Canyon Rapids, a mile long! Half-way through, the raft struck a rock an' went to bits, the logs bustin' free. I grabbed one an' went spinnin' down the rapids. I must ha' hit my head on a snag, for I don't remember no more till I woke up to find myself on the bank, an' Bull Evans leanin' over me.
"'What's the worst, Bull?' I asks, as soon as I realizes.
"'Red Bill's gone,' he says, 'an' so's most o' the grub. The dunnage is scattered anywheres along a mile or two. We hoofs it from here. No more rafts in mine!'
"An' a good thing we did hoof it, too. If we'd got through the Grand Canyon Rapids an' struck, unknowin', the White Horse Rapids—what they afterwards called the 'Miners' Grave'—nary a one o' the three of us would ha' come out alive.
"As it was, bein' afoot, we broke away from what afterwards was the Klondyke Trail, an', instead of striking across Lake Labarge, kep' between it an' Lake Kluane, strikin' some creeks leadin' into the White River. There, at last, after three months on the trail, we panned an' found color. We trailed on, pannin' as we went, cleanin' up pretty fair, an' final, struck some placers on the Stewart River. The Injuns was peaceful an' we could get grub from a half-breed tradin' store near old Fort Selkirk. We wintered there."
"That was in '85?" Owens queried.
"Winter o' '85 an' spring o' '86."
"Then you must have been right on hand for the great strike on Forty-Mile?"
"We sure was."