"You will help best by obeying orders," he said smilingly. "We shall have to push on after an hour, and if you don't rest you will be too done up to keep the trail till evening."
"Then I must obey," she said.
He turned to look for wood with which to make a fire, and when he returned she was lying on the blanket with another drawn over her, and her eyes smiled at him as he appeared. The next minute they were closed, and two minutes later she was fast asleep. Stane, as he realized the fact, smiled a little to himself.
"Of spirit compact," he murmured to himself, and went forward with preparations for a meal.
It was two hours later when the girl awoke, and the meal was ready—a quite substantial one.
"Have I slept long?" inquired Helen, moving towards the fire.
"Two hours. But don't worry about that. We have lost no time really, for I have done a little exploring. There's a stretch of high ground in front of us, a kind of height of land between the river we have left and the one we are making for. Once we are well across that we shall find the going easier. We'll tackle it this afternoon. I've found something, like a path, an old trapping-line I should think by the way the trees have been blazed."
When the meal was finished they put out the fire and started anew, and, by evening, had passed the crest of the high land between the rivers, and were moving down the wooded slopes on the further side looking for a camping place. The timber thickened, and they suddenly encountered a tremendous barrier of deadfall ten or eleven feet high, with the fallen trunks criss-crossing in all directions. From the further side of it came the ripple of running water proclaiming a stream and the water they were seeking.
"It is exasperating," said Stane, with a little laugh. "But we must climb the beastly thing. If we try to go round it, we shall probably only encounter others. I'll go first and have a look at the other side."
He began to climb the obstruction and when he reached the top looked down at the tangle of trunks below.