ached.

CHAPTER NINE

Dick Herron and Sam Bolton sat on the trunk of a fallen tree. It was dim
morning. Through the haze that shrouded the river figures moved.
Occasionally a sharp sound eddied the motionless silence--a paddle
dropped, the prow of a canoe splashed as it was lifted to the water, the
tame crow uttered a squawk. Little by little the groups dwindled.
Invisible canoes were setting out, beyond the limits of vision. Soon
there remained but a few scattered, cowled figures, the last women
hastily loading their craft that they might not be left behind. Now
these, too, thrust through the gray curtain of fog. The white men were
alone.

With the passing of the multitude once again the North came close.
Spying on the deserted camp an hundred smaller woods creatures fearfully
approached, bright-eyed, alert, ready to retreat, but eager to
investigate for scraps of food that might have been left. Squirrels
poised in spruce-trees, leaped boldly through space, or hurried across
little open stretches of ground. Meat-hawks, their fluffy plumage
smoothed to alertness, swooped here and there. Momentary and hasty
scurryings in the dead leaves attested the presence of other animals,
faint chirpings and rustlings the presence of other birds, following
these their most courageous foragers. In a day the Indian camp would
have taken on the character of the forest; in a month, an ancient ruin,
it would have fitted as accurately with its surroundings as an acorn in
the cup.

Now the twisted vapours drained from among the tree-trunks into the
river bed, where it lay, not more than five feet deep, accurately
marking the course of the stream. The sun struck across the tops of the
trees. A chickadee, upside down in bright-eyed contemplation, uttered
two flute-notes. Instantly a winter-wren, as though at a signal, went
into ecstatic ravings. The North was up and about her daily business.

Sam Bolton and Dick finally got under way. After an hour they arrived
opposite the mouth of a tributary stream. This Sam announced as the
Mattawishguia. Immediately they turned to it.

The Mattawishguia would be variously described; in California as a
river, in New England as a brook, in Superior country as a trout stream.
It is an hundred feet wide, full of rapids, almost all fast water, and,
except in a few still pools, from a foot to two feet deep. The bottom is
of round stones.

Travel by canoe in such a stream is a farce. The water