Wilderness Trek by Zane Grey

Days of leisurely and comfortable going now, over level downs with grass and water abundant but firewood so scarce that whenever they found any deadwood Bill collected it for the next camp. But one jarring fact--in a week's trekking they reached a point opposite the flattening out of that range whose crossing had cost them so many supplies, so much toil and life. By a week's detour, they could have gone round it. Six weeks more than lost!

Late one afternoon, the black, ragged line that had gradually grown for days turned out to be a good-sized river. It flowed north. It presented a problem, not only to cross, but because the water, flowing the wrong way, upset their calculations. The Warburton, for which Dann thought he was trekking, would have flowed due west. According to the leader's rude map, when they crossed it they would be headed north to a point between the Never-never Land and the Gulf and would cross the headwaters of all the streams flowing into the Gulf. At Dann's conference, the first for a long time, Eric Dann asserted positively. "This is the Flinders River. Probably we are two or three hundred miles from the Gulf."