It was the middle of May before they started up the Peace, three days after the fur barges had gone down the Athabasca.  David had never seen anything like Hatchett’s big war canoe, roomy as a small ship, and light as a feather on the water.  Four powerful Dog Ribs went with them, making six paddles in all.  When it came to a question of Baree, Hatchett put down his foot with emphasis.  “What!  Make a dam’ passenger of a dog?  Never.  Let him follow ashore—­or die.”

This would undoubtedly have been Baree’s choice if he had had a voice in the matter.  Day after day he followed the canoe, swimming streams and working his way through swamp and forest.  It was no easy matter.  In the deep, slow waters of the Lower Peace the canoe made thirty-five miles a day; twice it made forty.  But Hatchett kept Baree well fed, and each night the dog slept at David’s feet in camp.  On the sixth day they reached Fort Vermilion, and Hatchett announced himself like a king.  For he was on inspection.  Company inspection, mind you.  Important!  A week later they arrived at Peace River landing, two hundred miles farther west, and on the twentieth day came to Fort St. John, fifty miles from Hudson’s Hope.  From here David saw his first of the mountains.  He made out their snowy peaks clearly, seventy miles away, and with his finger on a certain spot on Hatchett’s map his heart thrilled.  He was almost there!  Each day the mountains grew nearer.  From Hudson’s Hope he fancied that he could almost see the dark blankets of timber on their sides.  Hatchett grunted.  They were still forty miles away.  And Mac Veigh, the factor at Hudson’s Hope, looked at David in a curious sort of way when David told him where he was going.

“You’re the first white man to do it,” he said—­an inflection of doubt in his voice.  “It’s not bad going up the Finly as far as the Kwadocha.  But from there....”

He shook his head.  He was short and thick, and his jaw hung heavy with disapproval.

“You’re still seventy miles from the Stikine when you end up at the Kwadocha,” he went on, thumbing the map.  “Who the devil will you get to take you on from there?  Straight over the backbone of the Rockies.  No trails.  Not even a Post there.  Too rough a country.  Even the Indians won’t live in it.”  He was silent for a moment, as if reflecting deeply.  “Old Towaskook and his tribe are on the Kwadocha,” he added, as if seeing a glimmer of hope. “He might. But I doubt it.  They’re a lazy lot of mongrels, Towaskook’s people, who carve things out of wood, to worship.  Still, he might.  I’ll send up a good man with you to influence him, and you’d better take along a couple hundred dollars in supplies as a further inducement.”