ones would wonder why we are.
It's most twelve years since I used to head off into the Bush this way
in Washington."

Gordon glanced at him with a twinkle in his eyes. "Now," he observed,
"you've hit the reason the first time. When you've done it once,
you'll do it again. You have to. Perhaps it's Nature's protest against
your axiom that man's chief business is dollar-making. Still, I'm
admitting that this is a blamed curious place for Nasmyth to figure on
killing a wapiti in. Say, are you going to sleep here to-night,
Derrick?"

It was very evident that none of the big wapiti--elks, as the Bushman
incorrectly calls them--could have reached that spot, but Nasmyth
laughed.

"I felt I'd like to see the fall--I don't know why," he said. "It's
scarcely another mile, and I've been up almost that far with an Indian
before. There's a ravine with young spruce in it where we could
sleep."

"Then," announced Wheeler resolutely, "we're starting right now. When
I pole a canoe up a place of this kind I want to see where I'm going.
I once went down a big rapid with the canoe-bottom up in front of me
in the dark, and one journey of that kind is quite enough."

They dumped out their camp gear, and took hold of the canoe, a
beautifully modelled, fragile thing, hollowed out of a cedar log, and
for the next half-hour hauled it laboriously over some sixty yards of
boulders and pushed it, walking waist-deep, across rock-strewn pools.
Then they went back for their wet tent, axes, rifles, blankets, and a
bag of flour, and when they had reloaded the canoe, they took up the
poles again. It was the hardest kind of work, and demanded strength
and skill, for a very small blunder would have meant wreck upon some
froth-lapped boulder, or an upset into the fierce white rush of the
river, but at length they reached a deep whirling pool, round which
long smears of white froth swung in wild gyrations. The smooth rock
rose out of the pool without even a cranny one could slip a hand into,
and the river fell tumultuously over a ledge into the head of it. The
water swept out of a veil of thin white mist, and the great rift rang
with a bewildering din. One felt that the vast primeval forces were
omnipotent there. As the men looked about them with the spray on their
wet faces and the white mist streaming by, Mattawa, who stood up
forward, dropped suddenly into the bottom of the canoe.

"In poles," he said. "Paddle! Get a move on her!" Nasmyth, who fe