't passed
any such bank. They made seventeen miles of this water coming up. If
we can locate that white bank, we ought to strike slacker water below
there and then faster water still farther below, according to their
story. On June 6th the water was so high and heavy that they had to
pull up by the branches of trees, because they couldn't paddle or pole
or track. As they were three days in making something like thirty
miles, we ought to expect pretty fast work the next day or so below
here. But of course they had high water, and we haven't."

"That seems to me good reasoning," said Alex. "We'll take it slow and
easy, and if we hear a bad rapid we'll go ashore and look it out first
before we run it. Not that I know even now just where that stream
comes in from McLeod."

"We could find out by exploring," said Rob, "but I don't think we need
do that. Let's go through on our own as much as we can. We want to
stop when we get down into some good bear country anyhow--as soon as
Moise and John have eaten up enough pork to make room in the boat!"

"They're making such a hole in the bacon now," said Alex, "that I'm
afraid we'll have to stop and hunt somewhere to-morrow."

"That'll suit us all right," boasted John. "Rob and I will stroll out
and kill you almost anything you want to-morrow evening."

They all returned now to the camp, which had been left on the bar
around the bend, and passed the night there.

"We'll have to be good _voyageurs_ from now on," said Alex, when they
turned in for the night, "and that means getting on the trail by four
o'clock in the morning."

XII

WILD COUNTRY AND WILDERNESS WAYS

By daylight of the following morning the boys were busy breaking camp
and getting their luggage across the bend to the place where they had
left the boats below the rapids. They found no very bad water for some
little distance, although occasionally there were stretches with steep
rocks where the water rippled along very noisily. Again they would
meet wide bends where the paddles were useful.

They still were in a wide valley. Far to the east lay the main range
of the Rockies, but the mountains were much lower than they are
farther to the south. They kept a sharp outlook on both banks, trying
to find some landmark which would tell them where they were, and at
last, indeed, they found a high, white bank on the right-hand side,
which they supposed to have been the one mentioned in the Mackenzie
journal, a