“Nothing but a riffle,” he announced. “Its bark is worse than its bite. This is a sharper bend than usual, and it’s just the water backing up on the outside that makes all the fuss. Notice that all the waves are regular and unbroken. Deep water. It will be perfectly safe to run it if you are willing.”
“All right if you say so,” said Loseis.
They cast off from their tree. Conacher and Mary-Lou each stood up with an oar, and Loseis crouched behind them.
“Head for the roughest part near the shore,” said Conacher, “and keep her straight; that’s all.”
Their hearts beat fast as the shores began to slip by with ever-increasing swiftness. The voice of the rapid was like that of a ravening beast. There is no other feeling quite like that upon the brink of a rapid. The feeling is: No power on earth can save me from it now—well, what the hell! They were gripped by an exquisite fear. Finally the heavy raft wriggled over the first and the biggest of those strange, fixed billows and stuck her nose in the trough. A sheet of spray flew back over them, whereupon they were seized by a mad exhilaration, and all three yelled like demons. The raft bucked over the short, steep billows like a rogue horse. Conacher and Mary-Lou were forced to their knees; and the latter lost her oar. A moment later they found themselves in smooth water, roaring with laughter.
As soon as they had eaten their supper that night, they pushed off again. The girls slept while Conacher watched throughout the long twilight. The sunset glow alternated with the cold eastern sky as the raft waltzed gracefully in the eddies. They grounded her on a bar during the few hours of darkness; and at dawn they pushed off again; the girls watching now while Conacher slept. He awakened in the sunshine to find them laughing at the antics of the bears on the steep banks.
For three days they traveled in this pleasant fashion. Mooseberries and black currants were ripening now. The bushes grew thickly along the edges of the water and wherever there were berries there were bears. Drifting down silently on the raft, Conacher could always get a shot in the early mornings. The berries made a welcome change from a diet of meat exclusively.
As they traveled north the steep high banks gradually flattened down, and the current of the river slackened. Finally the high banks disappeared altogether; they could see nothing over the tops of the poplars and pines that lined the water’s edge. The course of the stream became very tortuous, and progress was slow.
“We’re evidently coming to something,” Conacher remarked. “This country is a vast belt of silt deposited by the river as the result of some obstruction ahead.”
On the fourth day the obstruction appeared in the form of a low wall of limestone through which the river had finally succeeded in forcing a passage. The rock walls were but three or four feet high, and the river slipped between them very swiftly and smoothly with a curious growling sound. On the other side the whole character of the country was changed. Rock appeared everywhere; and the lush vegetation of the prairies was gone.