To-day the paddles were seldom idle. Spurred on by the hope of reaching their goal before darkness again intervened, the men were only too willing to work their passage. The swift current might be very well under ordinary conditions, but on this particular day it proved all too slow for their eager hearts.
They glimpsed Indians several times, but, strange to say, none of them manifested the antagonistic manner of those they had seen earlier in their trip down the Lewis and the Columbia rivers.
Roger, who had noticed the change in the demeanor of the natives, wondered what was the cause of it, and as usual applied to Dick for his opinion.
“They are of the same tribe,” he remarked, “for by now I know the Flat Head way of wearing feathers in their scalp-locks. But they seem now to be afraid of us, for those in that dugout paddled frantically for the shore; and never an arrow comes our way now. Can you make it out, Dick?”
“The only thing I can think of,” Dick replied, “is that word has been sent out everywhere that the ‘paleface people’ in the hide canoes are under the protection of Manitou, and that no harm must be done to them.”
“Well,” observed Roger, with a happy smile, “if we’re going to be guarded by the Indian Manitou all winter, we needn’t be afraid of anything. When you come to think of it, Dick, that landslide was the greatest thing that ever happened to us. It held back just long enough to let us pass, and then swallowed our enemies up.”
Noon came and went.
The men were so eager now they hardly wished to land to have something to eat, though Captain Lewis insisted on it, for he knew they needed a rest.
Slowly the long afternoon passed, and, constantly on the move, the canoes swept along the current, urged by the muscles that seemed never to tire. Hope fought with a growing disappointment. Were they then, after all, to be cheated out of the anticipated triumph they had arranged for that night? Perish the thought! and, with that, the paddlers would dip deeper, and run a race to see which could hold the van.
The sun sank lower and lower, and every eye watched its race with almost the same anxiety as was shown when, centuries back, Joshua commanded the heavenly luminary to stand still in order that his army might wholly destroy the Philistines.