Two hours of easy work against swift water brought them to the mouth of Kettle Creek. In the creek the water was deeper and less swift for a few miles, so Mark slid the pole inboard and manned a paddle. He returned to the pole before noon, and at noon they went ashore and boiled the kettle. At three o'clock they had to go ashore again, unload, and carry canoe and dunnage around Rusty Trap Falls. At sundown they made camp for the night at a spot which Mark calculated to be within a few miles of half way between the mouth of the creek and Kettle Pond, the heart of the land of promise.
"But it's heavy goin' from here on," he said.
He was right. They were ashore almost as much as they were afloat next day. They scrambled over rocky portages. They jumped from boulder to boulder in mid-stream, with burdens on their backs and heads.
"I believe we've carried that canoe more than she has carried us," said Jim, toward the close of the strenuous day.
"Guess ye're right," returned Mark. "Water's lower'n I looked for. We'll wait for snow to fetch in the rest of the stuff—straight acrost from the head of the glen to this valley."
They reached the head of navigable water late in the afternoon of the third day of their journey. Here Kettle Creek, creeping out of Kettle Pond, twisted feebly among scores of great boulders; and the voyagers were forced to make a half-mile carry into the little lake.
The country was full of game.
"We'll take it easy," said Mark. "More'n half my livin' is in the woods, so I look on all the beasts that are worth eatin' or skinnin' as property. So we'll act here like this Kettle Pond country was our own farm, Jim. I don't hold with slaughterin' for the fun of shootin' this early in the season, an' then have a bunch of good meat rot on me come a spell of warm weather."
They cruised the country on all sides for likely lines for traps. They built a solid little hut of logs and poles, all complete with a hearth and chimney. They chinked the cracks in the walls with moss, the cracks in the chimney with clay, and made the roof tight with sheets of birch bark. Between bouts of construction work and exploration, Mark instructed Jim in the art of handling a canoe in still water. The nights fell suddenly from snappy to shivery.
Mark made a horn of birch bark one night and, by producing a variety of grunts and gurgles and groans from it, lured a big bull moose into the open beside the lake. Jim shot the deluded creature by the light of the Hunter's Moon.