Valley with a definite plan. Some
twenty-five miles below, on the Susan River, we had abandoned about
four pounds of wet flour; twelve or fifteen miles below the flour there
was a pound of powdered milk, and four or five miles still further down
the trail a pail with perhaps four pounds of lard. Hubbard considered
the distances and mapped out each day's march as he hoped to accomplish
it. We had in our possession, besides the caribou bones and hide, one
and one-sixth pounds of pea meal. Could we reach the flour? If so,
that perhaps would take us on to the milk powder, and that to the lard;
and then we should be within easy distance of Grand Lake and Blake's
winter hunting cache.

Hubbard was hopeful; George and I were fearful. Hubbard's belief that
we should be able to reach the flour was largely based on his
expectation that we should get fish in the outlet to Lake Elson. His
idea was that the water of the lake would be much warmer than that of
the river. He had, poor chap! the fatal faculty, common to persons of
the optimistic temperament, of making himself believe what he wanted to
believe. Neither George nor I remarked on the possibilities or
probabilities of our getting fish in Lake Elson's outlet, and just
before we said good-bye to the canoe Hubbard turned to me and said:

"Wallace, don't you think we'll get them there? Aren't you hopeful we
shall?"

"Yes, I hope," I answered. "But I fear. The fish, you know, b'y,
haven't been rising at all for several days, and perhaps it's better
not to let our hopes run too high; for then, if they fail us, the
disappointment won't be so hard to bear."

"Yes, that's so," he replied; "but it makes me feel good to look
forward to good fishing there. We will get fish there, we will! Just
say we will, b'y; for that makes me feel happy."

"We will--we'll say we will," I repeated to comfort him.

Under ordinary conditions we should have found our packs, in their
depleted state, very easy to carry; but, as it was, they weighed us
down grievously as we trudged laboriously up the hill from the river
and over the ridge to the marsh on the farther side of which lay Lake
Elson. On the top of the ridge and on the slope where it descended to
the marsh we found a few mossberries, which we ate while we rested.
Crossing the marsh, we stepped from bog to bog when we could, but a
large part of the time were knee-deep in the icy water and mud. Our
feet at this time were wrappe