The Young Alaskans on the Trail - Emerson Hough (best free novels TXT) 📗

It was a wild and beautiful scene which lay about the little camp in the far-off mountains of the Northwest. The sun had sunk beyond the loftier ridges, although even now in the valley there remained considerable light. One could have seen many miles over the surrounding country had not, close at hand, where the little white tent stood, the forest of spruce been very dense and green. At no great distance beyond its edge was rough and broken country. Farther on, to the southward, stood white-topped peaks many miles distant, although from the camp these could not be seen.

It might have seemed a forbidding scene to any one not used to travel among the mountains. One step aside into the bush, and one would have fancied that no foot had ever trod here. There was no indication of road or trail, nor any hint of a settlement. The forest stood dark, and to-night, so motionless was the air, its silence was more complete than is usually the case among the pines or spruces, where always the upper branches murmur and whisper among themselves. Such scenes cause a feeling of depression even among grown persons who first meet them; and to-night, in this remote spot, one could not well have blamed the three young occupants of this camp had they felt a trifle uneasy as the twilight drew on toward darkness.

They were, it is true, not wholly new to camp life, these three boys—Rob McIntyre, John Hardy, and Jesse Wilcox. You may perhaps call to mind the names of these, since they are the same who, more than a year before, were cast away for some time on the slopes of Kadiak Island, in the far upper portion of Alaska; from which place they were at last rescued in part by their own wits and in part by the watchfulness of their guardian, Mr. Hardy. The latter, whom all three boys called Uncle Dick, was a civil engineer who, as did the parents of all the boys, lived in the coast town of Valdez, in far-off Alaska.

When Rob, John, and Jesse returned home from their dangerous adventures on Kadiak Island, they had been told that many a day would elapse before they would be allowed to take such chances again. Perhaps Uncle Dick never really told the parents of the boys the full truth about the dangers his young charges had encountered on Kadiak Island. Had he done so they would never have been willing for the boys to take another trip even more dangerous in many ways—the one on which they were now starting.

But Uncle Dick Hardy, living out of doors almost all the time on account of his profession as an engineer, was so much accustomed to dangers and adventures that he seemed to think that any one could get out of a scrape who could get into one. So it was not long after the return from Kadiak before he forgot all about the risks the boys had run there. The very next year he was the first one to plead with their parents, and to tell them that in his belief the best way in the world for the boys to pass their next summer’s vacation would be for them to cross the Rocky Mountains from the Pacific side and take the old water trail of the fur-traders, north and east, and down the Peace River from its source.

It chanced that Uncle Dick, who, like all engineers, was sometimes obliged to go to remote parts of the country, had taken charge of an engineering party then locating the new railroad bound westward from Edmonton, in far-off Northwest Canada. While he himself could not leave his employment to go with the boys across the Rockies, he assured their parents that he would meet them when they came down the river, and see that every care should be taken of them meantime.

“Let them go, of course,” he urged. “You can’t really hurt a good, live boy very much. Besides, it is getting to be so nowadays that before long a boy won’t have any wilderness where he can go. Here’s our railroad making west as fast as it can, and it will be taking all sort of people into that country before long. Here’s a chance for the boys to have a fine hunt and some camping and canoeing. It will make them stout and hearty, and give them a good time. What’s the use worrying all the time about these chaps? They’ll make it through, all right. Besides, I am going to send them the two best men in Canada for their guides.

“I wouldn’t say, myself, that these boys could get across alone,” he added, “because it’s a hard trip for men in some ways. But in the care of Alex Mackenzie and Moise Duprat they’ll be as safe as they would be at home in rocking-chairs.”

“What Mackenzie is that?” asked Jesse Wilcox’s mother of her brother, Uncle Dick.

“Well, he may be a relative of old Sir Alexander Mackenzie, so far as I know. The family of that name is a large one in the North, and there always have been Mackenzies in the fur trade. But speaking of the name, here’s what I want to explain to you, sister. These boys will be going back over the very trail that good old Sir Alexander took when he returned from the Pacific Ocean.”

“But that was a long time ago—”

“Yes, in 1793, while George Washington still was alive, and not so very long after the Revolutionary War. You know, Mackenzie was the first man ever to cross this continent, and this was the way he went, both in going west and coming east—just where I want these boys to go. They’ll see everything that he saw, go everywhere that he went, from the crown of the continent on down clear to the Arctics, if you want to let them go that far.

“I’m telling you, sister,” he added, eagerly, “the boys will learn something in that way, something about how this country was discovered and explored and developed, so far as that is concerned. That is history on the hoof, if you like, sister. In my belief they’re the three luckiest little beggars in the world if you will only let them go. I’ll promise to bring them back all right.”

“Yes, I know about your promises!” began Mrs. Wilcox.

“When did I ever fail to keep one?” demanded Uncle Dick of her. “And where can you find three sounder lads in Valdez than these we’re talking about now?”

“But it’s so far, Richard—you’re talking now about the Peace River and the Athabasca River and the Arctic Ocean—why, it seems as though the boys were going clear off the earth, and we certainly would never see them again.”

“Nonsense!” replied Uncle Dick. “The earth isn’t so big as it used to be in Sir Alexander’s time. Let them alone and they’ll come through, and be all the more men for it. There’s no particular hardship about it. I’ll go down with them in the boat to Vancouver and east with them by rail to where they take the stage up the Ashcroft trail—a wagon-road as plain as this street here. They can jog along that way as far as Quesnelles as easy as they could on a street-car in Seattle. Their men’ll get them from there by boat up the Fraser to the headwaters of the Parsnip without much more delay or much more danger, but a lot of hard work. After that they just get in their boats and float.”

“Oh, it sounds easy, Richard,” protested his sister, “but I know all about your simple things!”

“Well, it isn’t every boy I’d offer this good chance,” said Uncle Dick, turning away. “In my belief, they’ll come back knowing more than when they started.”

“But they’re only boys, not grown men like those old fur-traders that used to travel in that country. It was hard enough even for them, if I remember my reading correctly.”

“I just told you, my dear sister, that these boys will go with less risk and less danger than ever Sir Alexander met when