Dick paddling, they started on. The heat still was stifling, but they felt that the air was growing cooler. The wind seemed in their faces, which would tend to bear the fire back along the river. Wild animals of all kinds still could be seen in the water, wallowing along the shore or swimming the stream. But they had no more dangerous encounters with the frightened beasts.
Two hours of paddling, shifting the paddle back and forth between them as soon as one grew tired, and they came to a comparatively clear stretch of water. Here the fire was deeper in the forest, and had not eaten out to the bank yet. In greedy gasps, Dick and Sandy drew in the gusts of cool, pure air that were wafted over them.
“Look back, Sandy,” Dick called.
The whole sky was a mass of red flames behind them, and an ocean of smoke was rolling ceaselessly upward.
“Mackenzie’s Landing can’t be much further,” Sandy said when they had looked their last upon the great fire.
“No, we ought to make it by night. We’ll have to make it or camp without grub or blankets. I prefer going on,” Dick stated.
“So do I,” Sandy rejoined.
Some distance further on, as they rounded a huge bend in the stream, they could not suppress a cheer. In the distance they could see the shoulder of a high, barren bluff which was the ten-mile landmark on the trip to Mackenzie’s Landing.
It was late in the afternoon when in the distance they at last viewed the stockade and roofs of Malcolm Mackenzie’s trading post. Blackened and disheveled, nearly exhausted, they guided their canoe to the pier, where three half-breeds were watching them curiously. The half-breeds helped them secure their canoe, and listened without comment to some of their story of the eventful journey.
“Malcolm Mackenzie, he sick,” one of the half-breeds told them. “No can go. Him burned bad when fight with fire.”