t know," was the reply. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm sure I don't know."

"Then lend me your ears. You want to get to New Orleans, and so do we."

"Do we?" interrupted Winn, in surprise, looking up from the book of
travels on the title-page of which his name was written so many times,
and which was the very one he had been reading the last evening he had
spent on this raft.

"You do!" exclaimed both Glen and Binney.

"Certainly," was the calm reply. "It is the only market for timber
rafts that I know of south of St. Louis, and as we can't go back, we
are bound to go ahead. So, as I was saying when rudely interrupted,
both you and we want to go to New Orleans. You have no money--real
money, I mean--with which to get there, and we need at least two extra
pair of hands to help us get this raft there. So why not ship your
stuff on board here, and help us navigate this craft to our common
destination?"

"Do you truly mean it, Billy Brackett?"

"I truly mean it. And if you are willing to go as raftmates with us--"

"Are we willing? Well, I should smile! Are we willing? Why, Billy
Brackett, we'd rather go to New Orleans as raftmates with you and Winn
Caspar than to do anything else in the whole world just at present.
Eh, 'Grip'?"

"Well, rather!" answered Binney Gibbs.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE "RIVER-TRADERS" ATTEMPT TO REGAIN POSSESSION.

So it was settled that the three who had been campmates together on the
plains should now, with Winn Caspar to complete the quartet, become
raftmates on a voyage of nearly a thousand miles down the great river.
It is hard to say which of the four was happiest during the busy day
that followed the making of this arrangement. Winn was overjoyed at
recovering the raft lost through his over-confidence in his own wisdom,
and at the prospect of taking a trip so much longer than he had
anticipated at the outset. He had also conceived a great fancy for the
two manly young fellows whose fortunes had become so strangely
connected with those of the _Venture_, and was glad they were to be his
companions on the voyage.

Billy Brackett was not only rejoiced that he had at length been
successful in finding both Winn and the raft, but was delighted to meet
again those with whom he had already shared so much of peril and
pleasure. That they had again become his mates in such a peculiar
manner, and amid such different scenes, was proof, as he quaintly
expressed it, that "T