“All right,” said Toma, “I think that good idea. We pretty sure find some place not quite so bad. Then we build raft.”
“But what about the ponies?” Sandy wanted to know.
“They’ll be safe enough here.”
“I don’t mean that, Dick. What are we going to do when we build the raft? We can’t take pack-horses along with us.”
“We can take the packs along,” reasoned Dick, “and that’s almost as important. We’ll turn the ponies loose and let them shift for themselves.”
“But we can’t carry all our supplies with us when we do get over. It’s impossible. We can’t do it.”
“No,” admitted Dick, very much perplexed. “We can’t.”
“We make ’em cache for supplies,” Toma suggested. “We carry ’em over to mine, little at a time.”
“That’s the only solution, I suppose,” said Sandy, “but it’s sure to be a whale of a job. How’ll you like to climb up those slippery rocks with a hundred pounds on your back? Another thing, how far do you think it is from the other side of the river to the mine?”
Dick produced the map, while Sandy and Toma gathered around him.