The stream was not swift but very crooked and more than once Rex fancied that he could feel the bottom of the canoe scraping. Their pace was very slow but, as Jack said, it was a whole lot better than walking and carrying all the stuff.
The distance from Chamberlain Lake to Longley Pond is not over five miles as the bird flies but Bob was positive in his assertion that they must have gone twenty before they came out on the tiny pond. At any rate it was almost noon and they decided to eat their dinner before starting on the long carry.
“This a hard carry?” Bob asked Kernertok as they were taking the things out of the boat.
“Heap big hill. Heap hard.”
“Sounds encouraging,” Jack laughed.
“Mebby it isn’t so bad as it sounds,” Rex said hopefully.
“If Kernertok says it’s bad you can depend on it that it is worse,” Bob assured them.
Long before three o’clock Rex decided that Bob was not far wrong. It seemed to him that they must have traveled not less than fifteen miles when Kernertok, as they stopped for one of their frequent rests, announced that they were nearly half way across. Pushing through underbrush so thick that it required about all the strength he could muster, climbing over and around rocks nearly the size of a small house and climbing over or crawling under fallen trees had proven a form of exercise wholly new to him.
“I thought we were just going to the next lake and not up to the North Pole,” he panted as he threw himself on the ground and wiped the sweat from his face. “How in the world you ever manage to get that canoe through these woods is a mystery to me.”
“Heap badder places nor this,” Kernertok said solemnly.