up and down the
rocky hills; it was well that the cage was strong.

After more than an hour of this arduous tramping they heard the rush of
the river. "We'd best scout a little way ahead before we go any
farther," Horace declared.

They set down the cage, crept forward to the river and reconnoitered
the bank. Their canoe was where they had left it, concealed behind a
cedar thicket, and no other canoe was in sight up or down the river.
Horace swept the shore with the field-glass.

"Nothing in sight," he reported. "We may have time to pack our outfit
and get off, after all. Possibly those fellows haven't a canoe."

They quickly launched the canoe, and put the cage of black foxes
amidships; Fred sat behind it in order to hold it steady. Horace took
the stern paddle, and Peter the bow.

The river ran swift and rather shallow, but there were no dangerous
rapids between them and camp. They swept down the current, and in a
few minutes the tent came in sight. Horace took up the glass again,
but he could see no sign of the trappers. They paddled on, intending
to land at their usual place, but when they were scarcely twenty yards
from the tent, Fred uttered a suppressed cry.

"Look! A canoe--lower down!" He spoke barely loud enough for his
brother to hear him. He had caught a glimpse of the bow of a birch
canoe, which was thrust back almost out of sight behind a willow clump
below the campground.

"Run straight past!" Horace commanded, instantly. "Dig in your paddle,
Mac!"

The canoe shot forward, and at doubled speed swept by the tent. As
they passed it a man rose from behind a thicket and yelled hoarsely:--

"Stop, there! Halt!"

_Bang!_ went a rifle somewhere behind them, and then the rapid _crack!
crack! crack!_ of more than one repeater. A bullet clipped through the
sides of the canoe, fortunately well above the water-line. Another
glanced from a rock, and hummed past them.

As the boys whirled by the ambushed birch canoe, Fred snatched up the
shotgun, and sent two loads of buckshot tearing through its sides.

"That'll cripple them for a while!" he cried.

_Bang!_ A better-aimed bullet dashed the steering paddle from Horace's
hands. The canoe swerved, and heeled in the current. Horace snatched
the extra paddle that lay in the stern, and brought the craft round
just in time to prevent it from upsetting. As the paddle that had been
hit floated past, Fred picked it up; it had a round hole thr