"I'd just as soon die here as anywhere," he said.
"You're right. We'll stop, and go on by moonrise," said Horace. "Grub's what we need now."
"Why, we're almost at the end! We can't stop now!" Fred cried.
"We won't lose anything," said his brother. "The trappers will be camping, too, about this time. If we don't rest now we'll probably never get to the Smoke at all."
Staggering with fatigue, he set about getting wood for a fire. Mac and Fred helped him, and when they had built a fire they broiled some of the deer meat. Fred could hardly touch the food. Horace and Macgregor ate only a little, and almost as they ate they nodded, and dropped asleep from sheer fatigue.
Fred knew that he, too, ought to sleep, but he could not even lie down. His brain burned, his muscles twitched, and he felt strung like a taut wire. Leaving his companions asleep, he started to scout ahead. He went like one in a dream, hardly conscious of anything except the overwhelming necessity of getting forward. His course took him over a wooded ridge and down a hillside, and at last he came upon a tiny creek. Stumbling, sometimes falling, but always pushing on, he followed the course of the creek for a mile or two; suddenly he found himself on the shore of a large and rapid river, into which the creek emptied.
Furious at the obstacle, he looked for a place where he could cross the river.
It was too deep for him to wade across it, and too swift for him to swim it. He hurried up the bank, looking for a place where he could ford it, and at last came to a stretch of short, violent rapids.
He was about to turn back when he caught sight of axe marks in the undergrowth. Some one had cut a trail for the carry round the rapid. He stared at the axe marks, and then at the river. Suddenly his dazed brain cleared.
He recognized the spot. He recognized the trail that he himself had helped to cut. He had found the Smoke River!