Dick Herron, even in ordinary circumstances, withdrew rather grimly into himself.  He looked out at things from beneath knit brows; he held his elbows close to his sides, his fists clenched, his whole spiritual being self-contained and apart, watchful for enmity in what he felt but could not understand.  But to this, his normal habit, now was added a sullenness almost equally instinctive.  In some way he felt himself aggrieved by the girl’s presence.  At first it was merely the natural revolt of a very young man against assuming responsibility he had not invited.  The resulting discomfort of mind, however, he speedily assigned to the girl’s account.  He continued, as at first, to ignore her.  But in the slow rumination of the forest he became more and more irritably sensible of her presence.  Sam’s taciturnity was contrastedly sunny and open.  He looked on things about him with the placid receptivity of an old man, and said nothing because there was nothing to say.  The Ojibway girl remained inscrutable, helping where she could, apparently desirous of neither praise nor blame.

At the end of three days the provisions were ready.  There had resulted perhaps sixty pounds of “jerky.”  It now became necessary to leave the water-way, and to strike directly through the forest, over the hills, and into the country of the Kabinikagam.

Dick shouldered a thirty-pound pack and the canoe.  Sam Bolton and the girl managed the remainder.  Every twenty minutes or so they would rest, sinking back against the trunks of trees, mossy stones, or a bank of new ferns.  The forest was open and inexpressibly lofty.  Moose maples, young birches, and beeches threw their coolness across the face, then above them the columns of the trunks, then far up in green distance the leaves again, like the gold-set roof of a church.  The hill mounted always before them.  Ancient rocks hoary with moss, redolent of dampness, stood like abandoned altars given over to decay.  A strange, sweet wind freighted with stray bird-notes wandered aimlessly.

Nothing was said.  Dick led the way and set the intervals of the carrying.  When he swung the canoe from his shoulders the others slipped their tump-lines.  Then all rubbed their faces with the broad caribou-leaf to keep off the early flies, and lay back, arms extended, breathing deep, resting like boxers between the rounds.  Once at the top of the ridge Dick climbed a tree.  He did this, not so much in expectation of seeing the water-courses themselves, as to judge by the general lay of the country where they might be found.

In a bare open space under hemlocks Sam indicated a narrow, high, little pen, perhaps three feet long by six inches wide, made of cut saplings.  Dick examined it.

“Marten deadfall,” he pronounced.  “Made last winter.  Somebody’s been trapping through here.”

After a time a blaze on a tree was similarly remarked.  Then the travellers came to a tiny creek, which, being followed, soon debouched into a larger.  This in turn became navigable, after the north-country fashion.  That is to say, the canoe with its load could much of the time be floated down by the men wading in the bed of the creek.  Finally Sam, who was in the lead, jerked his head toward the left bank.