g for no reply, and the door opened and
closed after him--and again came the snap of the lock outside.

Steadily the bateau swept down the big river that day. There was no
let-up in the steady creaking of the long sweep. Even in the swifter
currents David could hear the working of it, and he knew he had seen
the last of the more slowly moving raft. Near one of the partly open
windows he heard two men talking just before the bateau shot into the
Brule Point rapids. They were strange voices. He learned that
Audemard's huge raft was made up of thirty-five cribs, seven abreast,
and that nine times between the Point Brule and the Yellowknife the
raft would be split up, so that each crib could be run through
dangerous rapids by itself.

That would be a big job, David assured himself. It would be slow work
as well as hazardous, and as his own life was in no immediate jeopardy,
he would have ample time in which to formulate some plan of action for
himself. At the present moment, it seemed, the one thing for him to do
was to wait--and behave himself, according to the half-breed's
instructions. There was, when he came to think about it, a saving
element of humor about it all. He had always wanted to make a trip down
the Three Rivers in a bateau. And now--he was making it!

At noon a guard brought in his dinner. He could not recall that he had
ever seen this man before, a tall, lithe fellow built to run like a
hound, and who wore a murderous-looking knife at his belt. As the door
opened, David caught a glimpse of two others. They were business-like
looking individuals, with muscles built for work or fight; one sitting
cross-legged on the bateau deck with a rifle over his knees, and the
other standing with a rifle in his hand. The man who brought his dinner
wasted no time or words. He merely nodded, murmured a curt bonjour, and
went out. And Carrigan, as he began to eat, did not have to tell
himself twice that Audemard had been particular in his selection of the
bateau's crew, and that the eyes of the men he had seen could be as
keen as a hawk's when leveled over the tip of a rifle barrel. They
meant business, and he felt no desire to smile in the face of them, as
he had smiled at Concombre Bateese.

It was another man, and a stranger, who brought in his supper. And for
two hours after that, until the sun went down and gloom began to fall,
the bateau sped down the river. It had made forty miles that day, he
figured.

It was s