Duluth was all agog with excitement, and in every shop-window hung blue-prints of the El Dorado we were bound for. Two big-bladed hunting-knives, a second-hand Marlin rifle for $8, a Smith and Wesson revolver, were our weapons. I already had a six-shooter, given to me by the Tombs Court police. It had killed a negro, and I had reported the murder trial resulting. Three blankets had to be bought, a canoe, and provisions for the week’s trip down the Vermilion River--tea, bacon, flour, biscuits, salt and sugar. R.M. had a small “A” tent with him large enough to hold three; an old, high-prowed bark canoe was purchased from an Indian for $6; but our money did not run to Hudson Bay blankets, and the cheap, thin coverings we bought proved poor protection in those frosty nights of early May. We picked up a guide too, a half-breed named Gallup. He was going to Rainy Lake City in any case, and agreed to show us the portages and rapids for two dollars a day each way. He justified his name. He galloped. He had a slim-nosed Maine cedar-wood canoe that oiled along into the daily head-wind with easy swiftness, whereas R.M. and myself in our high-prowed craft found progress slow and steering a heavy toil. The wind caught our big bows like a sail. Gallup, moreover, sizing us up as English greenhorns, expected good food and lots of whisky, and, getting neither, vented his spleen on us as best he could. His natural evil temper grew steadily worse. There were several ways in which he could have revenge. He used them all. By “losing his way” down branch streams he made the journey last eight days instead of five, yet he went so fast in his neat-nosed craft that it was all R.M. and I could do to keep him in sight at all. The sunlight flashing on his paddle two or three miles ahead, the canoe itself a mere dark speck in the dazzle of water, was all we usually had to guide us. Paxton, weary, much thinner than he had been, useless as a paddler, lay in the bottom of the canoe, leaving all the work to Gallup. And Gallup did it, even with this dead freight against him. To our injunction to make the fellow go slower, his “Ouch! Ouch!” was quite ineffective. I was careful to keep the provisions in my own canoe, so that we could not lose him altogether, and he was faithful in one thing, that he waited for us at the rapids and portages. What did it matter? The head wind held steadily day after day, blowing from the north-west through a cloudless sky. Everything sparkled, the air was champagne; such a winding river of blue I had never seen before. Every tree wore little fingers of bright fresh green. There was exhilaration and wonder at every turn. Burned by the hot sun and wet by the flying spray, our hands swelled till the knuckles disappeared, then cracked between the joints till they bled.