This was how to get the Rambler back into the river! During the night the water had run out and left them stranded!
“Tell you what we’ll do,” suggested Alex. “We’ll have Case make some more dough, and that will raise the boat up so we can slide her in!”
“All right,” Case declared, “have all the fun you can, but you won’t get any more of that bread. Teddy and Joe ate it up after we went to sleep.”
CHAPTER XIX.—WHY THERE WAS NO VENISON.
A golden morning followed the day of storm. A golden morning on the Columbia river! Still, the lads were in no mood to enjoy the beauties of Nature as shown in her wilder moods. The Rambler, as has been said, was stuck fast in the mud, some distance from the ever-receding water.
“The rocks are showing again,” Alex observed, looking down the river with the glasses, “and it looks as if there were falls ahead.”
“The Columbia river,” Case grumbled, “seems to me to be pretty sudden. She climbs up a couple of rods one day and drops down the next. I wish she’d kept up until we got through this valley.”
“That’s all the fun of it!” Alex insisted. “If you want to live a life of idle pleasure, just you go and get into a scow on a country mill-pond. We came out here for adventures, didn’t we?”
“From the looks of things,” Case continued, “we ought to have brought a house-moving machine with us. How are we ever going to get this boat back into the river. We might hunt and fish here until another flood comes along,” he added with sarcasm in his tone.
“That would suit me, all right,” Alex returned. “I don’t care how long we remain here. There’s plenty of game in the woods, and, now that you have learned to make bread, we are not likely to starve to death.”