“Well, Sandy and I aren’t men,” Dick replied modestly, “but you know we’ve been in the north country for a year now and so far we’ve taken pretty good care of ourselves. Sandy’s Uncle Walter will tell you that.”
The trader surveyed Dick Kent’s stalwart figure and Sandy’s more stocky frame with a renewal of confidence. “Yes,” he concluded, “I believe you fellows will come out all right. Shake.”
Dick and Sandy gripped Martin MacLean’s hard hand. They felt a glow of admiration for the big “sourdough” who had so complimented two “chechakos,” or tenderfeet. The trader drew from his pocket a wallet of money and thrust it into Dick’s hand, with the remark it might come in handy for expenses.
An hour later the boys were gliding down the river, Dick in the stern steering, Sandy in front on the lookout for snags. The dark walls of spruce forest on either side closed in on them with a mysterious silence. They seemed to feel malevolent eyes watching them as they sheered the oily surface of the stream. The strange face both had seen at Fort du Lac remained in their memory and made them silent as they forged along with the current. It was the last warm days of fall; already a hint of winter was in the air, and with the threat of danger hovering about was combined another feeling of dread, as if the very atmosphere of the vast, lonely land heralded the approach of mercilessly cold weather.
“You watch the south bank, and I’ll watch the north,” Dick broke the silence when the landing at Fort du Lac had faded from view around a bend. “I think we’ll be followed by land if our suspicions are correct and there’s really some one on our trail.”
“They’ll have to follow by land for a ways anyway,” rejoined Sandy. “Mr. MacLean will see them if they use one of the canoes at the landing. But I suppose they have a canoe hidden somewhere along the river.”
“That’s about it,” Dick agreed. “We’ll keep sharp watch and be ready to duck if there’s any shooting.”
They paddled on silently for a quarter of an hour, making good time and keeping to the center of the stream. They were just passing a large heap of driftwood, lodged in an eddy near the north shore, when Sandy called Dick’s attention to something under the brush.
“What do you make of that light brown object just the other side of the little sand point sticking out into the river?” asked Sandy.
“I was looking at it myself,” responded Dick. “I thought it was a log with the bark off it at first, but it might be a canoe.”