Jim Hendryx got a big one on the lower portage of the Pagwa. 



We found little to interest the prospector but plenty to interest 

 the sportsman. On every sandbar at every portage we found 

 moose tracks, some of them so fresh it seemed the moose must 

 still be in them. We found bear signs and mink tracks, but we 

 never saw an axe mark or burnt log to indicate previous human 

 presence. One day a porcupine visited camp, carelessly leaving 

 a quill in Johnny Calkins' sleeping bag. 



Our week of upstream exploration ended in a long series of 

 rapids beyond which there seemed to be little water, and we 

 assumed from this that the stream was petering out. So we 

 returned to our first campsite to recheck Uranium Ridge. 



We went out to the spots where we had blazed trees on the 

 trail, placed the counter on the ground and listened tensely 

 to the clicks, pacing them with the second hand on the watch. 

 At each spot where a week ago the counter had threatened to 

 run away, the Geiger tube now transmitted some forty to fifty 

 snail-paced clicks per minute. 



236 



