49

Next morning, Faille, Kraus and Zenchuk scrambled up the slide again, rifles slung over their shoulders and loaded in case the resident grizzly had got wind of their sheep. If he had and wouldn’t budge, he would pay the price, though it would be no great advantage to their larder. Bears were good mostly for fat, and for fat they had to be shot in the fall.

No grizzly. They bagged the sheep meat and returned to camp, arriving just as the sun was beginning to heat things up.

“Blast it,” said Zenchuk. “Let’s get off this rock.”

Once they were launched, Faille started laughing about their three inches of freeboard as they crept against the current. Soon they could hear a muffled roar, and the walls around them seemed to vibrate with it. Then they entered a cloud of fine mist. They moved slowly past a couple of sandstone cliffs and Faille announced, “We’re here!” He kept as close to the shore as he could, crossed an eddy at the base of the last cliff and plowed straight into a riffle around the eddy’s edge. Zenchuk and Kraus didn’t have to be told to paddle. They broke through into the smooth water beyond the riffle, a small lake, at the side of which hung a high, surging white curtain. Gigantic fists of water pounded onto the rocks below and exploded upwards like geysers. Faille steered through the mist across the pool toward the other bank.

In a few minutes, they pulled into a small stone beach between house-sized boulders that had obviously, in some previous age, come off the falls. The beach was the terminus of the portage trail. Everything was covered in a fine slime, distilled out of the mist.

They released the dogs, unloaded the scow, dragged it up onto shore and grabbed the bags of sheep meat. Just off the river was a small campground with a few fire rings and some crosspoles for hanging food. Some of the poles were broken in the middle and hung down at crazy angles.

“Who made this place?” asked Kraus.

“The Klondikers. They went right up to Mount Wilson at the head of the Nahanni, then crossed over into the Pelly River or the Macmillan and on to the Ross and the Yukon. Don’t know who gave them that fool idea, but you see signs of them all up the river. You’ll notice corduroy on the climb around the falls. That was so they could skid their boats up.”

They built a fire, set up some drying frames and smudges and started slicing the meat as thinly as possible, draping the strips over the frames. That done, they ate a heavy midday meal of sheep steaks. Then Zenchuk and Kraus, with Zenchuk’s dogs, headed for the climb around the falls; Faille stayed back to keep the smudges going and turn the meat.

Within half an hour, they reached the top of the falls and stood on a slab of rock, watching the water go over the drop.

“Holy,” shouted Kraus. “Imagine if you missed the portage and got caught in that.”

Zenchuk made a slashing movement across his throat. They made their way along the shoreline to the top of the portage, about a half-mile above the falls. The river dropped dramatically in that distance, and the limestone channel was smooth and steep on both sides. Faille had referred to this stretch as “the chute.” There would be no way out of it.

“Looks like Bill and Joe got off the river,” said Zenchuk, pointing.

Kraus sifted through the unburned scraps of wood in the fire ring.

“Pretty fresh, all right.”