Chapter 30 Preparations
The weeks slid past at a faster rate when the snow began to melt and the water came over the rapids with a roar, and a rush that threatened to sweep everything before it. Jervis went up to Ochre Lake a day or two after Katherine brought him that dirty fragment of paper, and offered to buy any more of the same kind of thing which the Indians might happen to possess, and pay for it liberally with tobacco. But no one appeared to know anything about the scrap, and no one had any more fragments to offer in barter, so he had to go away with the mystery unsolved. Then a week later, when Katherine and Miles went to the encampment with a sledgeload of provisions it was to find that the whole lot had vanished, leaving the dug-outs, in which they had existed so long, deser
