Peaks towered all about them, a half mile over their heads, covered from base to crest with unbroken forest.
Sometimes the creek flowed between cliffs, and again it opened out into narrow valleys.

In a two days' journey up its course they passed only two cabins.
"In ordinary water we'd have stopped thar," said Jarvis at the second cabin.

"I know the man who lives in it an' he's to be trusted.

We'd have left the boat an' the things with him, an' we'd have walked the rest of the way, but the creek is so high now that we kin make at least twenty miles more an' tie up at Bill Rudd's place.

Thar's no goin' further on the water, 'cause the creek takes a fall of fifteen feet thar, an' this boat is too heavy to be carried around it." They reached Rudd's place about dark.