sleep, but he could not even lie down.
His brain burned, his muscles twitched, and he felt strung like a taut
wire. Leaving his companions asleep, he started to scout ahead. He
went like one in a dream, hardly conscious of anything except the
overwhelming necessity of getting forward. His course took him over a
wooded ridge and down a hillside, and at last he came upon a tiny
creek. Stumbling, sometimes falling, but always pushing on, he
followed the course of the creek for a mile or two; suddenly he found
himself on the shore of a large and rapid river, into which the creek
emptied.

Furious at the obstacle, he looked for a place where he could cross the
river.

It was too deep for him to wade across it, and too swift for him to
swim it. He hurried up the bank, looking for a place where he could
ford it, and at last came to a stretch of short, violent rapids.

He was about to turn back when he caught sight of axe marks in the
undergrowth. Some one had cut a trail for the carry round the rapid.
He stared at the axe marks, and then at the river. Suddenly his dazed
brain cleared.

He recognized the spot. He recognized the trail that he himself had
helped to cut. He had found the Smoke River!

CHAPTER XVI

Fred never quite knew how he got back to camp after he had found the
river. He found his companions still sound asleep, but it did not take
him long to rouse them and to tell them the news.

"I couldn't see any tracks on the shore. I don't think any one has
passed," Fred said.

In less than a minute the boys, wild with joy, were hurrying through
the woods again. It was almost dark when they reached the river;
peering close to the ground they examined the trail carefully, to make
sure that the trappers had not already passed.

The heavy rain had washed the shores, and no fresh tracks showed in the
mud. The men had not been over the portage that day, and they could
hardly have passed the rapids without making a carry. They had
evidently camped for the night at some point below, and would not come
up the river until morning.

After piling up some hemlock boughs for a bed, the boys lay down, and
dropped into a heavy sleep. Now that the strain was over, Fred slept,
too. In fact, for the last quarter of an hour he had hardly been able
to stay on his feet.

In the gray dawn Horace awakened them. They were stiff from their
thirty-mile race of the day before, and their feet were swollen. Ho