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

holding in place the ragged remnants of his trousers. To the boys it seemed sure that the boats could not get through such water at all, but to their surprise the two men seemed not in the least concerned when at length they returned to the camp.

“It’s a little rough,” said Alex, “but there seems to be a good channel out in the middle, plenty of water. We’ll run the boats through all right without any trouble. We’ll go through light, and then portage the camp stuff across the bend after we get the boats below the rapids. Come on then, young gentlemen, and help us get ready. It may be interesting to you to see your first piece of real white water, although it isn’t very bad.

“As I figure it, then, Mr. Rob,” continued Alex, “we ought to have rather better water below here for a little while. What does your map say about that?”

“Well,” answered Rob, “it’s pretty hard to tell exactly, but taking the stories of Fraser and Mackenzie together, we ought to be here about one hundred and fifty miles above the mouth of the Finlay. By to-morrow night, if we hurry, we ought to be at or below the McLeod Lake outlet. Dr. Macoun says in his government report that it is easy running in the late season from McLeod to the Finlay, about eighty miles; and I saw a letter once from Mr. Hussey, a friend of Uncle Dick’s, who made this trip lately, and he said there was not much bad water between the lake and the mouth of the Finlay. Below there—look out, that’s all!

“It took the Mackenzie party six or eight days’ plugging to get from there up to the carrying place,” he added, “but we’re going downhill instead of uphill. I should think we would have alternate stretches of quiet water here and there, but no very rough water from here on down for a while. With our small boats we probably cannot go so fast for a while now as they did with their big canoes. They could run bang through a big rapid where we’d have to portage.”

“Well,” said Alex, “I suggest that we spend the rest of this day in camp here, run the two canoes through, sleep here to-night, then portage below the rapids to-morrow morning and make a straight run from there down. We don’t want to take too many chances.”

“That’s all right,” said Rob, “and we’ll help you pack the canoes.”

The men did not put very heavy loads in the canoes, but they took the sheep heads, and most of the heavier camp supplies, putting about half of these each in the Mary Ann and the Jaybird, themselves taking the Mary Ann for their first trip through the rapids.

While they were busy finishing their loading, the boys ran on down around the bend and got ready to see the first canoe take the rapids. When Jesse got fully within the sound and sight of the rolling, noisy water which now lay before them, he was very pale.

“What would we do, Rob,” asked he, “if the boat should be lost out there—we couldn’t ever get out of here alive.”

“I don’t think there is that much danger, Jess,” answered Rob. “But if there should be an accident, we have one boat left, and we’d not try to run her through. We’d let her down the edge of the rapids on a rope the best we could, a little at a time. That’s what Alex would do now if he thought there was any real danger.”

“Here they come!” shouted John. All three boys scrambled up on a high, jutting rock, where they could see the course of the boat.

The Mary Ann swept around the curve gently and steadily, caught in the rapid down-set of the current. Moise was in the bow, Alex at the stern paddle, and both the men looked steadily ahead and not at either side. They saw the boat seemed to tip down at a sharp angle, but still go on steadily. Alex was following the long V which ran down in the mid-channel stream, on either side of which were heavy rocks and sharp, abrupt falls in the water. At the foot of this smooth strip they saw the bow of the boat shoot up into the air, then drop down to a more even keel. From that time on the Mary Ann was swept down swiftly, jumping up and down, part of the time almost hidden out of sight, and, as they thought, swamped in the heavy seas. To their delight, however, they saw the little craft emerge at the foot of the white water after a while and, taking advantage of the back current, swing gently alongside and up the shore toward where they stood at the foot of the main cascade. Both the men were smiling at their excitement.

“Well, what do you think about that?” asked John, in wonder. “I was sure they were gone, but they don’t seem to care at all.”

On the contrary, Moise seemed to be very much pleased with the experience. Alex was smoking quietly. Neither said much when finally they came ashore close where the boys stood.

“That was great work,” said Rob. “It was beautiful!”

“These boat she’ll not tip over,” said Moise calmly. “She’s good boat. I s’pose could carry through maybe a hondred ton or so!”

“Well, maybe not that much!” smiled Alex, “but we’ve proved that the channel out there is practicable. We’ll go up now and bring down the other boat. First we’ll put this one high up on the bank, so that no rise in the stream can take it away, because we’re apt to need these boats before we get through.”

Suiting the action to the word, the two voyageurs now went back to the camp, and presently the boys once more saw the nodding and dipping little craft come around the bend. The Jaybird came through with quite as good fortune as had the Mary Ann. And soon the two canoes, lightly loaded, were lying side by side on the beach below the rolling water.

“That’s how we’ll did done it!” said Moise. “S’pose water will be bad, go where he’ll ain’t be so bad. No use for get tip over. S’pose he’ll be too bad, we’ll take a rope an’ let those boat down little bit to a time.”

“Well,” said John, “we don’t want to show the white feather, but I suppose it’s just as well that you should take the boats through a bad place, and not trust to us—we might get rattled in the wrong place out there.”

“Yes,” said Rob, “it’s better to be too careful than not careful enough. I can see now what the boats will do, however, and I have more confidence than I have had at any time about our getting through the journey all right.”

“I can’t quite figure out, Mr. Rob,” said Alex, “just where we are. The maps don’t seem to look like the country, or the country like the maps.”

“According to my reckoning,” Rob answered, “we’re now about where Mackenzie was on June 9th. The day before that—which will be the day after this as we run down the stream—they had sight of a high, white mountain in the evening, off to the east, and there were mountains and valleys in full sight to the south. The valley was wide. That answers pretty closely to the description of this country here. In the morning of that day—which will be later on in the day for us as we go down—they saw a high, white bank on the east. We haven’t passed any such bank. They made seventeen miles of this water coming up. If we can locate that white bank, we ought to strike slacker water below there and then faster water still farther below, according to their story. On June 6th the water was so high and heavy that they had to pull up by the branches of trees, because they couldn’t paddle or pole or track. As they were three days in making something like thirty miles, we ought to expect pretty fast work the next day or so below here. But of course they had high water, and we haven’t.”

“That seems to me good reasoning,” said Alex. “We’ll take it slow and easy, and if we hear a bad rapid we’ll go ashore and look it out first before we run it. Not that I know even now just where that stream comes in from McLeod.”

“We could find out by exploring,” said Rob, “but I don’t think we need do that. Let’s go through on our own as much as we can. We want to stop when we get down into some good bear country anyhow—as soon as Moise and John have eaten up enough pork to make room in the boat!”

“They’re making such a hole in the bacon now,” said Alex, “that I’m afraid we’ll have to stop and hunt somewhere to-morrow.”

“That’ll suit us all right,” boasted John. “Rob and I will stroll out and kill you almost anything you want to-morrow evening.”

They all returned now to the camp, which had been left on the bar around the bend, and passed the night there.

“We’ll have to be good voyageurs from now on,” said Alex, when they turned in for the night, “and that means getting on the trail by four o’clock in the morning.”

XII WILD COUNTRY AND WILDERNESS WAYS

By daylight of the following morning the boys were busy breaking camp and getting their luggage across the bend to the place where they had left the boats below the rapids. They found no very bad water for some little distance, although occasionally there were stretches with steep rocks where the water rippled along very noisily. Again they would meet wide bends where the paddles were useful.

They still were in a wide valley. Far to the east lay the main range of the Rockies, but the mountains were much lower than they are farther to the south. They kept a sharp outlook on both banks, trying to find some landmark which would tell them where they were, and at last, indeed, they found a high, white bank on the right-hand side, which they supposed to have been the one mentioned in the Mackenzie journal, although it was not exactly where Rob’s map said it ought to be. They paused at this place for their first rest, and occupied themselves for a time figuring out, each according to his notion, a map of the country on ahead, which all admitted now was entirely strange to them.

Alex and Moise agreed pretty closely in their description of the country below the Finlay, for they had friends who had made that trip numbers of times. As to the country between this place and the mouth of the Finlay, Rob seemed to be deferred to more than any one else, because he had read carefully and mapped out the country in accordance with the Fraser and Mackenzie journals and such narratives of later travelers as he could find, surveyors, traders, and prospectors.

“Now,” said he presently, “if we should run down two or three hours farther we’d make say fifteen miles, and that ought to bring us about to the spot where Mackenzie climbed the tree to look out over the country. As near as I can get at it, that was pretty near the real divide between the eastern and western waters—that is to say, not far from where the small stream leads back to McLeod Lake, and the McLeod Lake portage across to the Fraser, the way the fur-traders went later on. That’s the Giscombe portage route. It’s a