Nor had he mistaken his
man.

"Sure," Shorty affirmed. "It was just what I was stopping to think
about. I knew there was some reason I ought to do it."

Again they turned to go, but Sprague and Stine made no movement.

"Good luck, Smoke," Sprague called to him. "I'll--er--" He hesitated.
"I'll just stay here and watch you."

"We need three men in the boat, two at the oars and one at the
steering-sweep," Kit said quietly.

Sprague looked at Stine.

"I'm damned if I do," said that gentleman. "If you're not afraid to
stand here and look on, I'm not."

"Who's afraid?" Sprague demanded hotly.

Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of a
squabble.

"We can do without them," Kit said to Shorty. "You take the bow with
a paddle, and I'll handle the steering-sweep. All you'll have to do is
just to help keep her straight. Once we're started, you won't be able to
hear me, so just keep on keeping her straight."

They cast off the boat and worked out to middle in the quickening
current. From the Canyon came an ever-growing roar. The river sucked in
to the entrance with the smoothness of molten glass, and here, as the
darkening walls received them, Shorty took a chew of tobacco and dipped
his paddle. The boat leaped on the first crests of the ridge, and they
were deafened by the uproar of wild water that reverberated from the
narrow walls and multiplied itself. They were half-smothered with flying
spray. At times Kit could not see his comrade at the bow. It was only a
matter of two minutes, in which time they rode the ridge three-quarters
of a mile and emerged in safety and tied to the bank in the eddy below.

Shorty emptied his mouth of tobacco juice--he had forgotten to spit--and
spoke.

"That was bear-meat," he exulted, "the real bear-meat. Say, we want
a few, didn't we? Smoke, I don't mind tellin' you in confidence that
before we started I was the gosh-dangdest scaredest man this side of the
Rocky Mountains. Now I'm a bear-eater. Come on an' we'll run that other
boat through."

Midway back, on foot, they encountered their employers, who had watched
the passage from above.

"There comes the fish-eaters," said Shorty. "Keep to win'ward."

After running the stranger's boat through, whose name proved to be
Breck, Kit and Shorty met his wife, a slender, girlish woman whose blue
eyes were moist with gratitude. Breck himself tried to hand Kit fifty
dollars, and then attempted it on Shorty.