"And the next morning, some time before daylight, he started down river on his dangerous trail of discovery. Below his pond there were other ponds; and as he swam through them many of the beavers living in them asked him where he was going. "'Out on discovery; our food trees will last us only this coming winter; we have to find a new home,' he answered them all. "On he went, through the last of the ponds, down the river, swimming fast, so very fast that his big webbed hind feet, swiftly kicking, made the water foam past his breast. He had started out too early; when he passed the last of the pines, daylight was still some time off, so he dived under a pile of driftwood, then crawled up into it, found a good resting-place on one of the logs and went to sleep, sure that none of the prowlers could reach him there. "The sun shining down through the little openings in the driftwood pile awakened him. He slipped down into the water, made a dive, and came up out in the middle of the river. Near by was a high, sloping bank bare of trees and brush; he swam to shore, climbed it, looked north, and saw the big ridge and the big, low gap in it. He looked all around; no animals were in sight except a few elk, and he knew that they would not harm him: he began waddling toward the gap. "The sun was hot. Loud Slap's legs were short; his body fat and heavy; there was no water; he soon became very tired and thirsty, and the top of the gap seemed to be a long way off. More and more often he had to stop and rest, but he kept saying to himself: 'I will not give up! I will not give up!'--and at last he arrived at the top of the gap. Close up to the top on the other side were thick, cool groves of quaking aspen and willows; as far as he could see, the valley below him and its far side was one green growth of trees, and he knew that somewhere down there was water, plenty of it. Down he went, oh, how easily, on the steeper places just pushing a little with his hind feet and sliding along on his belly. He soon came to a small stream of running water and drank and drank of it, rolled over and over in its shallowness until wet all over, and then he followed it down. Other little streams came into it, and at last it became so deep that he could swim. After a time he came to where this stream joined a much larger one, and he turned and went up it, and away up in the timber found where a dam could be built that would form a very large pond, and best of all the quaking aspens and willows were everywhere there growing so closely together that they formed a food supply that would last a number of winters. "That night Loud Slap slept in a hole that he dug in a bank of the stream. This is the one which we long ago named Ki-nuk´-si Is-si-sak´-ta. I understand that the white people have another name for it.[5] [5] Ki-nuk´-si Is-si-sak´-ta (Little River). By the whites named Milk River.