Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/117

Rh plunge, almost at their feet, into a seething cauldron of white water.

"Go oop?" asked the scout.

Connie shook his head. "No," he replied, eyeing the precarious ascent, "it would be all we could do to make it even now, in the summer. How could a mail patrol climb it in the winter—with a dog outfit besides?"

"No kin do," opined the Indian, with a grin. "Mebbe-so we find um nudder pass." And, turning, he led the way over the back trail toward the point, ten miles below, where they had left their canoe at the head of birch-bark navigation. The ascent of the creek had taken four days, its descent took two. And on the evening of the second day they grounded the canoe on a wide bar, where the creek flowed into a larger tributary of the Stewart.

Hardly had the two set foot upon shore before Ick Far's attention became riveted upon some marks in the gravel—marks that, in the twilight, were hardly discernible to Connie—being merely a displacement of pebbles here and there among the myriads of pebbles that formed the bar. To Connie these marks meant nothing. Game was