But Gran never showed up. The last thing they had seen that reminded them of him—aside from the half-conscious remembrance of the boy that was always in their minds—was the wreck of the rowboat which had drifted down the river during that day of the flood.
It was a week before they came to the great bend of the Columbia. Here they found stores and traders’ houses. They camped out on the batik of Canoe river and remained there two days, laying in provisions and getting acquainted with the people. During their stay there many came to look over the Rambler, and every one lifted brows in disbelief when told that the beat had found her way through the two long and dangerous rapids which lay above.
The boys made no attempt to remove the disbelief from their minds. It really did look like a pretty stiff yarn, so they let it go, loaded in their purchases, and turned the boat south on the great river, about two hundred miles above Upper Arrow lake.
At Boat Encampment the boys had asked, quietly, of course, if any man answering the description of the long-armed fellow who had appeared and disappeared so suddenly had been seen thereabouts, but no one seemed to have seen him, or to have seen a boy answering Gran’s description. It was said that any one passing the place would be certain to be observed, so the boys sailed away with the notion that the two were still up the river.
There followed a number of restful days on a smooth river. There were rapids and falls, of course, but nothing to bring the lads into peril of their lives. They loitered along with the current, stopping at night and often not starting on again until the middle of the day.
The boys will never forget those golden days. They fished and hunted, sat around roaring campfires at night, slept in the warm sunshine when inclined, and read stories of that wonderful land. There was only one trouble over which they brooded.
Gran had disappeared. During the time he had shared the cabin with the boys, since he had come to them so mysteriously at the summit pass, he had endeared himself to them all. Beside the loneliness they felt at his sudden departure, there was always the undefinable feeling that he might be in serious trouble and expecting them to come to him.
“If we knew that he had left us voluntarily,” Clay said, one day, “we might be able to drop him out of our minds, but we don’t know that. In fact, it seems to me that he was forced away.”
“But he wasn’t tied in the boat,” Alex argued. “I guess he might have jumped out when he came to the Rambler. We would have shot that long-armed humbug to pieces if he had tried to stop him.”
“There are ways of forcing a fellow along besides tying him up and carrying him off,” Clay replied. “The man we saw him with may have some grip on him which we do not understand. We’ll have to wait.”