"How do you know they'll come back?" asked John dubiously.
"Alex told me he would, and I have noticed that he always does things when he says he is going to."
"I don't hear them, anyway," began Jesse, the youngest, who was, by nature as well as by years perhaps, not quite so bold and courageous as his two young friends.
"You couldn't hear them very far," replied Rob, "because they wear moccasins."
"Do you think they really can get the canoes out, carrying them on their backs all the way from where we left them?" asked Jesse.
"They're very strong," Rob answered, "and that work isn't new to them. And, you know, they carried all our packs in the same way."
"That Moise is as strong as a horse," said John. "My! I couldn't lift the end of his pack here. I bet it weighed two hundred pounds at least. And he just laughed. I think he's a good-natured man, anyhow."
"Most of these woodsmen are," replied Rob. "They are used to hardships, and they just laugh instead of complain about things. Alex is quieter than Moise, but I'll venture to say they'll both do their part all right. And moreover," he added stoutly, "if Alex said he'd be here before dark, he'll be here."
"It will be in less than ten minutes, then," said Jesse, looking at the new watch which his mother had given him to take along on his trip. "The canoe's a pretty heavy thing, John."
"They're not heavy for canoes--sixteen-foot Peterboroughs. They beat any boat going for their weight, and they're regular ships in the water under load."
"They look pretty small to me," demurred Jesse.
"They're bigger than the skin boats that we had among the Aleuts last year," ventured John. "Besides, I've noticed a good deal depends on the way you handle a boat."
"Not everybody has boats as good as these," admitted Jesse.
"Yes," said John, "it must have cost Uncle Dick a lot of money to get them up here from the railroad. Sir Alexander Mackenzie traveled in a big birch-bark when he was here--ten men in her, and three thousand pounds of cargo besides. She was twenty-five feet long. Uncle Dick told me the Indians have dugouts farther down the river, but not very good ones. I didn't think they knew anything about birch-bark so far northwest, but he says all their big journeys were made in those big bark canoes in the early days."