“He’s getting on his feet again!” Alex replied. Then he broke into a laugh which echoed through the cave and out into the canyon and pointed to the cub bear.
“Just look at him now!” he cried. “He’s game! He wants to box the big fellow some more! Come here, Teddy!”
The cub dropped from his boxing position and approached the boy.
“Got knocked out, didn’t you?” Alex jeered. “Knocked plumb out!”
Teddy rubbed the sides of his face with his paws and snorted.
Alex and Don went back to the boat for the night. They had had quite enough of the cavern. In the morning, the first thing, the hide was stripped from the bear, rubbed faithfully with salt, and hung up to cure.
After breakfast Clay and Don climbed to the lip of the canyon and walked a long way to the north, the idea being to see if the river above the falls was suitable for navigation. They returned at noon and reported that if they could get over the falls they could run up for miles with little difficulty. There were rapids, but none the Rambler could not make headway against, they declared.
“And we discovered another thing,” Don exclaimed. “This rock we are on is an island! The river splits something about a mile above here.”
“Then where does the new channel come into the canyon again?” asked Case. “Perhaps we can follow up this new channel and so get around the falls. It is worth looking into, at any rate.”
“It must be down stream,” Clay suggested, “for we did not pass any junction. Perhaps we’d better drop down and find it.”