"Belike you and your pals have struck something rich up there," Cranston went on. "I know the stuff's there somewhere, but it doesn't keep me awake nights. I've seen too many disappointments. I'd liever raise horses."
Two dark-skinned little boys, whom their father addressed as Gavin and Hob, brought Ralph's supper from the house, and having bashfully delivered it, stood off regarding the stranger with a mighty curiosity. Cranston sat by smoking and watching Ralph satisfy his appetite. He radiated a hospitable pleasure.
"If you're wanting to go back from here," said Cranston, "I'll tell you straight, it can't be done. Of course it was a regular company route in the old days, but they thought nothing of taking a crew of thirty Iroquois to track them upstream. A man couldn't do it alone. Why, the current runs seven mile an hour."
"I've got to go back," said Ralph, with a sinking heart. "What can I do?"
"Make the big swing around, and go in from the other side," said Cranston. "It's a long trip, but shortest in the end. Take the steamboat from here down to the Crossing; then by freighter's wagon ninety miles to Caribou Lake; then by boat down the lake and down the little river and the big river to the Landing; then another hundred miles overland to town."
"What town?" asked Ralph desperately.
"Prince George, of course," said Cranston.
At last Ralph began to have a glimmering of his whereabouts. "Then this is the Spirit River!" he cried, off his guard.
Cranston glanced at him with a twinkle under his bushy brows. "What did you think it was?" he asked dryly, "the Rhine?"
Ralph blushed. "I didn't know there was any river that flowed right through the Rockies," he muttered.