you always. And it is to be worse where we go in the next days."
"Ain't 'e a nice feller ter have along on a picnic?" appealed Myers to the lookers-on. "A reel merry company, that's what 'e is. 'Wot's the good o' livin' terday?' 'e says. 'We gotter die termorrocr.' Yesser. Why—yesser. We ain't got nothin' more ter wait for—'cept them breeds."
Tempest had hired two breeds and a canoe to help lighten the loads across the dangerous Long Traverse of rapids on the Lake. He looked right and left for them now, drawn to his full height, with his bright eyes keen as Dick's own. Outwardly he seemed all that a workman should be. But the test that would try him in so many ways was not yet.
Up the sweep of the shore came a canoe, shot forward by the quick, long strokes of the breeds. They paddled Indian-fashion, changing the hands every few minutes, and the flash of the dripping paddles overhead dazzled in the sunlight. Dick looked down at the canoes which were to carry the little patrol so far. Long and snaky-brown they lay; of varnished strip cedar; a good eighteen feet in length, with a forty-four inch beam and a draught of eighteen inches. Tempest had chosen them from the design-book, and he knew every stroke of them; for he and Dick had tried them on the rapids of the Athabaska and he had gone over them, foot by foot, as they lay covered on the deck of the steamer which brought them up to Smith's Landing. They were fitted with oars, and big rolled lateen sails, and with many paddles. Aft and amidships were stowed part of the freight which was to feed and clothe the men until they touched to white-man life again, and at the shore-lip the two breeds were stowing the remainder into their own light birch canoe.
A man beside Dick stooped to lift the prow of a canoe.
"What's her portaging weight?" he asked; and Dick, blowing the tobacco-smoke round him in a cloud, said:
"About one-twenty pounds. The very lightest make I've come across for the strength."
"Ah!" said the man, and wagged his head. "But you don't know where you're going. Where a feller has to cut
