“We’re through for the day,” he said happily, as he helped Beatrice out of the boat.  “I’ll confess I’m ready to rest.”

Beatrice made no answer because her eyes were busy.  Coolly and quietly she took stock of the situation, trying to get an idea of the geographical features of the camp site.  She saw in a glance, however, that there was no path to freedom up the gorge behind her.  The rocks were precipitate:  besides, she remembered that over a hundred miles of impassable wilderness lay between her and her father’s cabin.  Without food and supplies she could not hope to make the journey.

The racing river, however, wakened a curious, inviting train of thought.  The torrent continued largely unabated for at least one hundred miles more, she knew, and the hours that it would be passable in a canoe were numbered.  The river had fallen steadily all day; driftwood was left on the shore; rocks dried swiftly in the sun, cropping out like fangs above the foam of the stream.  Was there still time to drift on down the Yuga a hundred or more miles to the distant Indian encampment?  She shut the thought from her mind, at present, and turned her attention to the work of making camp.

With entire good humor she began to gather such pieces of dead wood as she could find for their fire.

“Your prisoner might as well make herself useful,” she said.

Ben’s face lighted as she had not seen it since their outward journey from Snowy Gulch.  “Thank God you’re taking it that way, Beatrice,” he told her fervently.  “It was a proposition I couldn’t help—­”

But the girl’s eyes flashed, and her lips set in a hard line.  “I’m doing it to make my own time go faster,” she told him softly, rather slowly.  “I want you to remember that.”

But instantly both forgot their words to listen to a familiar clucking sound from a near-by shrub.  Peering closely they made out the plump, genial form of Franklin’s grouse,—­a bird known far and wide in the north for her ample breast and her tender flesh.

“Good Lord, there’s supper!” Ben whispered.  “Beatrice, get your pistol—­”

Her eyes smiled as she looked him in the face.  “You remember—­my pistol isn’t loaded!”

“Excuse me.  I forgot.  Give it to me.”

She handed him the little gun, and he slipped in the shells he had taken from it.  Then—­for the simple and sensible reason that he didn’t want to take any chance on the loss of their dinner—­he stole within twenty feet of the bird.  Very carefully he drew down on the plump neck.

“Dinner all safe,” he remarked rather gayly, as the grouse came tumbling through the branches.

XXIV

Quietly Beatrice retrieved the bird and began to remove its feathers.  Ben built the fire, chopped sturdily at a half-grown spruce until it shattered to the earth, and then chopped it into lengths for fuel.  When the fire was blazing bright, he cut away the green branches and laid them, stems overlapping, into a fragrant bed.