Kit looked at Shorty, who delayed to answer.

“He’s got his wife with him,” Kit suggested.  Nor had he mistaken his man.

“Sure,” Shorty affirmed.  “It was just what I was stopping to think about.  I knew there was some reason I ought to do it.”

Again they turned to go, but Sprague and Stine made no movement.

“Good luck, Smoke,” Sprague called to him.  “I’ll—­er—­” He hesitated.  “I’ll just stay here and watch you.”

“We need three men in the boat, two at the oars and one at the steering-sweep,” Kit said quietly.

Sprague looked at Stine.

“I’m damned if I do,” said that gentleman.  “If you’re not afraid to stand here and look on, I’m not.”

“Who’s afraid?” Sprague demanded hotly.

Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of a squabble.

“We can do without them,” Kit said to Shorty.  “You take the bow with a paddle, and I’ll handle the steering-sweep.  All you’ll have to do is just to help keep her straight.  Once we’re started, you won’t be able to hear me, so just keep on keeping her straight.”

They cast off the boat and worked out to middle in the quickening current.  From the Canyon came an ever-growing roar.  The river sucked in to the entrance with the smoothness of molten glass, and here, as the darkening walls received them, Shorty took a chew of tobacco and dipped his paddle.  The boat leaped on the first crests of the ridge, and they were deafened by the uproar of wild water that reverberated from the narrow walls and multiplied itself.  They were half-smothered with flying spray.  At times Kit could not see his comrade at the bow.  It was only a matter of two minutes, in which time they rode the ridge three-quarters of a mile and emerged in safety and tied to the bank in the eddy below.

Shorty emptied his mouth of tobacco juice—­he had forgotten to spit—­and spoke.

“That was bear-meat,” he exulted, “the real bear-meat.  Say, we want a few, didn’t we?  Smoke, I don’t mind tellin’ you in confidence that before we started I was the gosh-dangdest scaredest man this side of the Rocky Mountains.  Now I’m a bear-eater.  Come on an’ we’ll run that other boat through.”

Midway back, on foot, they encountered their employers, who had watched the passage from above.

“There comes the fish-eaters,” said Shorty.  “Keep to win’ward.”

After running the stranger’s boat through, whose name proved to be Breck, Kit and Shorty met his wife, a slender, girlish woman whose blue eyes were moist with gratitude.  Breck himself tried to hand Kit fifty dollars, and then attempted it on Shorty.

“Stranger,” was the latter’s rejection, “I come into this country to make money outa the ground an’ not outa my fellow critters.”

Breck rummaged in his boat and produced a demijohn of whiskey.  Shorty’s hand half went out to it and stopped abruptly.  He shook his head.