f not all of it would
have to be unloaded, and perhaps "toted" around the shallow to the deep
water of the channel.

"A good deal of work, isn't it?" inquired Dick.

"There's no freighting de luxe up in this country that I ever found,"
replied the miner. "We shall be lucky if we can get along without a
'carry.' First thing we've got to know is how much water we're drawing on
each boat fore and aft. Gerald, you're nominated boat measurer, and you
can take Pepper with you. You will find two or three lumber gauges in the
dunnage in the rear boat. Each of you take one, and let me know at once
what each boat is drawing. Rand, you and Dick are leadsmen of this voyage,
and you will each take a pair of knee boots and a lumber gauge and follow
the channel of the Creek from shore to shore and give me the greatest
depth of water you can find in a continuous channel up to where the creek
narrows again and the water will naturally deepen. If you will wait a few
minutes we will give you the data to work on. Jack, you and I will take up
a job of stevedorin' and get our longshoremen to work. You take three of
these Injuns and get to work unloading this first boat, and I'll take the
others and rustle cargo on the other. Most o' these pieces can be jacked
up the gangplanks, but where they're too heavy in either boat we'll call
all hands and get 'em ashore."

By this time, Gerald and Pepper were armed with two slim painted
woodstaffs, not unlike the wands of the Boy Scouts, but marked with
figures, and having at one end a movable arm about two inches long that
could be screwed fast at any point. These they fastened at the extreme end
of each gauge, and hooked them under the bottoms of the boats and marking
the top of the water were able to tell just what each boat was drawing.
They found, however, that the boats did not trim exactly even, and that at
one point or another, bow or stern, the draught was more or less by
perhaps an inch. The general average was about twenty-six inches in one
boat and twenty-eight inches in the other.

"These here ocean greyhoun's had a displacement, as they say in ocean
goin' craft, of six inches before they were loaded," said Swiftwater,
"when I had 'em measured in White Horse, and if the channel anywhere above
here peters out to that it's a case of carrying all this stuff around this
meadow land. If we can get even two inches above that the job'll be
easier." With the above figures in mind, Rand and Dick