mere _sense_ in
the forest's growth that others had passed that way. Only an expert
could have followed it.

The canoe loads were dumped out on the beach. One after another, even to
the little children, the people shouldered their packs. The long sash
was knotted into a loop, which was passed around the pack and the
bearer's forehead. Some of the stronger men carried thus upward of two
hundred pounds.

Unlike a party of white men, the Indians put no system into their work.
They rested when they pleased, chatted, shouted, squatted on their heels
conversing. Yet somehow the task was accomplished, and quickly. To one
on an elevation dominating the scene it would have been most
picturesque. Especially noticeable were those who for the moment stood
idle, generally on heights, where their muscle-loose attitudes and
fluttering draperies added a strangely decorative note to the landscape;
while below plodded, bending forward under their enormous loads, an
unending procession of patient toilers. In five minutes the portage was
alive from one end to the other.

To Dick and Sam Bolton the traverse was a simple matter. Sam, by the aid
of his voyager's sash, easily carried the supplies and blankets; Dick
fastened the two paddles across the thwarts to form a neck-yoke, and
swung off with the canoe. Then they returned to the plateau until their
savage friends should have finished the crossing.

Ordinarily white men of this class are welcome enough to travel with the
Indian tribes. Their presence is hardly considered extraordinary enough
for comment. Sam Bolton, however, knew that in the present instance he
and Dick aroused an unusual interest of some sort.

He was not able to place it to his own satisfaction. It might be because
of Bolton's reputation as a woodsman; it might be because of Dick
Herron's spectacular service to Haukemah in the instance of the bear; it
might be that careful talk had not had its due effect in convincing the
Indians that the journey looked merely to the establishment of new
winter posts; Sam was not disinclined to attribute it to pernicious
activity on the part of the Ojibway. It might spring from any one of
these. Nor could he quite decide its quality;--whether friendly or
inimical. Merely persisted the fact that he and his companion were
watched curiously by the men and fearfully by the women; that they
brought a certain constraint to the camp fire.

Finally an incident, though it did not decide th