constantly tripping them--it was thrilling to see and must have been
agony for the animals.

Midway, where the current was strongest, a mouse-colored cayuse carrying
a tent lost his feet. The turbulent tide slammed him up on top of a
great rock, barely hidden beneath the water, and he got to his feet like
a cat that has fallen upon the edge of an eave-trough. Trembling, the
cayuse called to Smith, and Smith, running downstream, called back,
urging the animal to leave the refuge and swim for it. The pack-horse
perched on the rock gazes wistfully at the shore. The waters, breaking
against his resting-place, wash up to his trembling knees. About him the
wild river roars, and just below leaps over a ten-foot fall into the
Athabasca.

All the other horses, having crossed safely, shake the water from their
dripping sides and begin cropping the tender grass. We could have heard
that horse's heart beat if we could have hushed the river's roar.

Smith called again, the cayuse turned slightly, and whether he leaped
deliberately or his feet slipped on the slippery stones, forcing him to
leap, we could not say, but he plunged suddenly into the stream,
uttering a cry that echoed up the cañon and over the river like the cry
of a lost soul.

The cruel current caught him, lifted him, and plunged him over the drop,
and he was lost instantly in the froth and foam of the falls.

Far down, at a bend of the Athabasca, something white could be seen
drifting towards the shore. That night Smith the Silent made an entry in
his little red book marked "Grand Trunk Pacific," and tented under the