They did not stop for "grub" at midday--just opened a can of pork and beans, finished up the cold fried fish, and drank from the clear blue waters of the river. Then on once more upstream, which now began to broaden into placid lakelets, thereby lessening the current and giving them a chance to make more rapid headway. At four o'clock they reached the forks of the stream--one flowed towards them from the north, the other from the west. "Which way?" asked Larson, rousing the Chippewa. The boy got up immediately and took the stern paddle, steering the western course. They had paddled something over two miles up that arm when Fox-Foot beached the canoe, built a fire, spilled out the remainder of the pork and beans, threw the tin can on the bank, then marshalled his crew aboard again, and deliberately steered over the course they had already come. "We lose two miles good work," he explained. "We build decoy fire, we leave tin can, he come; he think we go that way, but we go north." Back to the forks and up the northern branch they pulled, both Larry and Jack not only willing to have done four miles of seemingly unnecessary paddling, but loud in their praise and appreciation of the Indian's shrewd tactics. At supper time Fox-Foot would allow no fire to be built, no landing to be made, no trace of their passing to be left. They ate canned meat and marmalade, drank again of the stream and pushed on, until just at dusk they reached the edge of a long, still lake, with shores of granite and dense fir forest. "Larry and Jack, you sleep in canoe to-night; no camp. Lake ten miles long; no current; I paddle--me," said the Indian, and nothing that Larry could urge would alter the boy's edict. "Jack, you must wonder what all these precautions are for, yet you never ask," said Larry. "Because I know," returned the boy. "We are trying to escape the man in the mackinaw. He is following you. He is your enemy." "Yes, boy, and to-night you shall know why," replied Larry. "You have taken so much for granted, you have never asked a single question; now you shall know what Foxy and I are after." "You said you were after furs," Jack smiled.