Young Alaskans in the Far North - Emerson Hough (the little red hen read aloud TXT) 📗

Dick,” said Jesse when he sleepily rolled out of his blankets on the following morning. “It was midnight when we went to bed, and I don’t feel as though I had slept at all. Besides, it’s Sunday.”

“Yes,” said his uncle, “it’s Sunday, July twenty-seventh, according to my notes, and we’ve been gone from Fort McPherson one week and four days. I think we’ve made mighty good time this far, for I believe we must be considerably over a hundred miles from Fort McPherson to this place where we stand.”

“It’s a fine morning for a little rest,” suggested Rob. “Maybe it wouldn’t be wrong to make a few photographs. I’d like to make a picture of that high peak across from here, which we ought to call Castle Mountain. That’s the mountain we’ve been hunting for the last three or four days.”

“Agreed!” said Uncle Dick. “I think it would be an excellent plan to rest here for a time to-day, and then it would be no harm to start on. Will you let me see the notes of your diary, Rob? We’ve been relying on you to keep a record of our journey across the mountains, because I’ve been too busy and, to tell the truth, too worried, to have much time for making notes of the trip.”

Rob produced his diary, and Uncle Dick read it page by page. “Fine!” said he. “Fine! This doesn’t go into many details, but it will cover the story of our trip as well as I could have done it myself. Now, after we get started down the Bell and the Porcupine, I want you to keep up the same thing, so that we will have some sort of a record of our journey in this wild part of the world.

“I’ll have to admit to you boys, now that we are alone, that I don’t think we ought to waste any time in here. The two Indian boys who have left us have cut down our supplies considerably, but as they can’t possibly get back to McPherson in less than four days, it seemed only fair to share with them what little we had, though it means less for us. We’ll have to hurry.”

“I’m so sick and tired of rabbits by this time,” grumbled John, “that I don’t ever want to see one again. I don’t like to clean them any more, and I don’t like to smell them when they are cooking in the kettle.”

“You’re not the first man in the North to get tired of rabbits,” said Uncle Dick. “For a day or two they are all right, but there is really very little strength in the meat. They are, however, the main prop of the fur trade in the North, and the mainstay of the savage population as well. Except for rabbits, all these natives would starve to death in the winter-time. They have almost nothing to eat from one season to the next after the caribou have gone by.”

“Where is the caribou migration in here?” asked John.

“It won’t pass here at all,” replied their leader. “They tell me that the caribou are north of the Porcupine, toward the Arctic, and that they work south along toward the latter part of August. There are a few sheep in here, but mountain-sheep is a hard meat to kill. There is mighty little hope for us to get anything unless we can catch some fish as we go along—and unless we continue to eat rabbits, and maybe some ptarmigan. I shouldn’t wonder if the ptarmigan would grow much scantier when we get down out of the mountains farther.

“Jesse,” he continued, “there’ll be no harm in your taking your gun and going over to see if you can get us some young geese or some young ducks before we start out, over at the edge of Loon Lake. We’ve got to have all the food-supplies we can possibly get hold of, because we don’t know what is ahead. Hurry up, now, for pretty soon we must call ourselves rested and be on our way. Our canoe is waiting for us, already launched, and it won’t take long to get the loads aboard.”

Jesse complied with his uncle’s instructions, and, taking his light shot-gun, disappeared in the fringe of willows which lay between the camp and the marshy borders of the lake out of which they had made their last portage on the Rocky Mountain summit. It was not long before they began to hear the reports of his gun, and so proficient had he by this time become in its use that when he returned in the course of three-quarters of an hour he had a young goose and a half-dozen mallard ducks to add to the larder.

“Fine!” said Uncle Dick. “Throw them in the boat, son, and we’ll be getting ready.

“Rob, go on with your diary; and, John, be sure that you keep up your maps. There isn’t a single report of any kind in print or in manuscript, so far as I know, which tells the truth about this summit of the Rockies. We are just as much explorers as if we were the first to cross. The Klondikers left no records.

“And now take one last look around you, for I question if you will ever be in a more remote corner of the world in all your lives. This is the most northerly pass of the Rockies. Yonder above us, at the end of what they call the Black Mountain range, lie the last foot-hills between here and the Arctic. Off in that direction the Little Bell finds its head—no man knows where, so far as I can tell. Westward in general lies our course now, and we’ve got to make five hundred miles between McPherson and the mouth of the Porcupine River, and make it in jig time too, if we want to catch an up-bound boat on the Yukon this fall.”

“Well,” said Rob, “I suppose if we had to we could play Robinson Crusoe here at least as well as those poor Klondikers did who came to grief here twenty years ago. But as for me, I want to get home on time—not only because we have to go to school and because our parents are waiting for us, but because we set out to make our round trip within certain dates, and we ought to do so if that is a possible thing.”

“That’s the talk!” said Uncle Dick. “Come ahead then, boys. Now we are alone—let us see how we can travel.”

Rob did as requested and made brief notes of their course throughout the remainder of their trip to the Yukon River, which are given here as he wrote them: