"Doctor Luke——"
"We can't wait for Doctor Luke."
"That's jus' what I was goin' t' say," said Billy. "We'll leave word for Doctor Luke that we've gone. He can follow. An' when we gets there, we can keep Trapper George quiet until Doctor Luke comes."
"When shall we start?"
"Now!"
Outbound from Bread-and-Butter, fortified with instructions, Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong made along the shore of Skeleton Arm, by the long trail, and were halted before noon at Rattle Water. The ice had gone out of Rattle Water. At the ford the stream was deep, swift, bitter cold—manifestly impassable; and above, beyond Serpent Bend, the water of Ha-ha Shallow, which was the alternative crossing, was in a turmoil, swelling and foaming over the boulders in its wide, shallow bed.
Except where the current eddied, black, flecked with froth, Ha-ha Shallow was not deep. A man might cross—submerged somewhat above the knees, no more; but in the clinging grip and tug of the current his footing would be delicately precarious, and the issue of a misstep, a stumble, a lost balance, would be a desperate chance, with the wager heavily on grim Death.
It was perilous water—the noisy, sucking white rush of it, frothing over the boulders, and running, icy cold, in choppy, crested waves, where the channel was a bed of stones and gravel. Yet the path to the tilt at Poor Luck Barrens lay across and beyond Ha-ha Shallow of Rattle Water.
Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong surveyed the rapids in a dubious silence.