"Well," said Alton, "there is as usual a reason. Whichever of those men comes out on top will not have much use for the other fellow. In the meanwhile we'll be getting on. There's a canoe under the big boulders yonder, and the island should make the horse a corral."
Seaforth said nothing, though he thought a good deal. He guessed that one of the men alluded to was his comrade and the other Hallam, and there was a grim suggestiveness in the former's simple explanation, for it seemed that Alton understood quarter would not be given in the struggle he had embarked upon. There was also something disconcerting in the fact that they found the canoe where he indicated. That it had lain there since Jimmy the prospector, who lay sleeping on the heights above them, had last used it emphasized the desolation of the region they were pushing their way into, and Seaforth once more felt a curious depression as he glanced up the lonely valley. It stretched away before them, a road to the unknown, and he fancied that a future which was fraught with great and perilous possibilities lay hidden beyond the drifting mist.
They had, it seemed, set out upon a journey which led farther than the silver Jimmy had found, but knowing that his comrade would go on to the end of it, Seaforth shook off his misgivings, and assisted him to load and launch the craft. They made fast the pack-horse by a halter, and in ten minutes had landed the beast upon an island. Then, somewhat to Seaforth's regret, they took up the paddles and went on again. Alton smiled curiously as he glanced towards the firs that slid by them half-seen through the mist.
"We're taking Jimmy's road. He was the last man to come down here, and I wonder what he was thinking about," he said. "There would have been an ice fringe along the bank, and Jimmy was hungry. I think he knew he wouldn't get through, and it was only because of the woman he held on so tight."
Seaforth shivered a little, as his fancy called up the scene. The starving man crouching half-frozen with the paddle clenched in stiffened fingers had watched those trees slide by him, knowing that on their speed depended his fast-failing chance of life. He had, Seaforth fancied, stared at the crawling boulders with despair in his dimming eyes, and the weary man turned towards his comrade almost savagely.
"Can't you think of anything a little more pleasant?" he said.
Alton smiled gravely. "It comes to all of us one day, and the trail of the treasure-seeker leads most often to the unknown hunting grounds," he said. "We have got to keep faith with Jimmy. He did his best, and I think he knew I would come up here after him."
Seaforth said nothing further, but bent over his paddle, until an hour later they landed on a point and set up the tent. Neither was communicative over the supper, and Seaforth went early to sleep. The last thing he saw was Alton sitting, a black motionless figure, apparently staring into the darkness from the door of the tent, with his face towards the north.
It was raining when he awakened next morning. The tent was saturated, the fire ill to light, and that day was spent in unremitting toil. The stream ran strong against them, and Seaforth's wet hands grew blistered from the grasp of the paddle and his knees raw from the rasp of the craft's bottom as he swung with the weary blade. Hour by hour the rain beat on them, and the pines that crawled out of it went very slowly by, while it was almost a relief to stand upright now and then, and with strenuous effort drive the frail shell up against the swirl of the slower rapids with long fir poles. At times they were swept down sideways before the poles could find hold again, and fought, gasping and panting, for minutes to regain what they had lost in as many seconds.
Now and then it was also needful to drag the canoe out, flounder amidst boulders or through tangled forest with her contents, and then, hewing a path here and there with the axe, painfully drag her round; but portage after portage was left behind, and they were still fighting their way yard by yard upstream while the rain came down. Seaforth also knew that it often rains for several weeks in that country when the Chinook wind that melts the snow sets in.