Jack spent the day in cleaning his rifle, and Dick in stuffing a kingfisher, while Ned bothered him with questions which not Solomon could have answered. As to Carington, he asked Ellett to go up to the church and make careful measurements of the footsteps, as this, by relieving him of the task, would enable him to get away earlier for his long paddle to Mackenzie.
At dawn, Carington, with his two men, in their canoe, went by the Cliff Camp, where all was peacefully still.
At the little town he made his own arrangements for the building of his cabin in the fall, and cashed a draft for himself and one for Mr. Lyndsay. The seven hundred dollars of Canadian notes he rolled into a tight bundle and put in his breeches-pocket. Then, after a hasty meal and a little rest, he turned back for the journey up the river.
There was some paddling to do until they reached swift water, and here he “spelled” his bowmen, taking a turn at poling, and pushed on. Three miles an hour is very good speed at this business, and thus, as the way was long, it was far into the night before they reached the Cliff Camp. Every one else but Jack was in bed. He had taken his blanket and gun, and settled himself patiently at the foot of the cliff.
“You have had a long wait. Is your father up?”
“Then I must keep this money until Ellett can give it to him to-morrow. Jump in. It is late.”
In five minutes the boy was asleep in the bottom of the canoe. Carington began to think over what he should do next day about the tombstone business.
At his own camp-ground it took him some five minutes to restore Jack, for a time, to the world of the wakeful, and Carington himself was glad enough to find his own couch.
Before dawn, Michelle touched him on the shoulder.
“You are pretty hard to wake, Mr. Carington.”
“Am I? What is it? Oh, we are going after bears. Hang the bears!” He rubbed his eyes, sat up, and said to Michelle, “Wake that boy. It will take ten minutes.”
After Jack’s blanket was pulled away, and he himself rolled on to the tent-floor, he began to wake up.
“Coffee ready and lunch in knapsack, Michelle?”
Carington got up, and, laughing at the guide’s difficulty in reviving Jack, went down to the beach, had a cold—a very cold—dip, and in a few minutes was dressed and ready, while Jack, but half awake, was making a boy’s still briefer toilet.