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

fire, and by and by the odors arose so pleasantly that each boy sat waiting, his knife and fork on the tin plate in his lap. Alex, looking on, smiled quietly, but said nothing.

“Moise doesn’t build a fire just the way I’ve been taught,” said Rob, after a while.

“No,” added John. “I was thinking of that, too.”

“He’s Injun, same as me,” said Alex, smiling. “No white man can build a fire for an Injun. S’pose you ask me to put your hat on for you so you wouldn’t need to touch it. I couldn’t do that. You’d have to fix it a little yourself. Same way with Injun and his fire.”

“That’s funny,” said Rob. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know,” smiled Alex.

“He just throws the sticks together in a long heap and pushes the ends in when they burn through,” said Jesse. “He didn’t cut any wood at all.”

Moise grinned at this, but ventured no more reply.

“You see,” said Alex, “if you live all the time in the open you learn to do as little work as possible, because there is always so much to do that your life depends on that you don’t want to waste any strength.”

“It doesn’t take a white man long to get into that habit,” said Rob.

“Yes. Besides, there is another reason. An Injun has to make his living with his rifle. Chopping with an ax is a sound that frightens game more than any other. The bear and deer will just get up and leave when they hear you chopping. So when we come into camp we build our fire as small as possible, and without cutting any more wood than we are obliged to. You see, we’ll be gone the next morning, perhaps, so we slip through as light as possible. A white man leaves a trail like a wagon-road, but you’d hardly know an Injun had been there. You soon get the habit when you have to live that way.”

“Grub pile!” sang out Moise now, laughing as he moved the pans and the steaming tea-kettle by the side of the fire. And very soon the boys were falling to with good will in their first meal in camp.

“Moise, she’ll ben good cook—many tams mans’ll tol’ me that,” grinned Moise, pleasantly, drawing a little apart from the fire with his own tin pan on his knee.

“We’ll give you a recommendation,” said John. “This stew is fine. I was awfully hungry.”

It was not long after they had finished their supper before all began to feel sleepy, for they had walked or worked more or less ever since morning.

Alex arose and took from his belt the great Hudson Bay knife, or buffalo knife, which he wore at his back, thrust through his belt. With this he hacked off a few boughs from the nearest pine-tree and threw them down in the first sheltered spot. Over this he threw a narrow strip of much-worn bear hide and a single fold of heavy blanket, this being all the bed which he seemed to have.

“Is that all you ever had?” asked Rob. “I don’t think you’ll sleep well, Alex. Let me give you some of my bed.”

“Thank you, no,” said Alex, sitting down and lighting his pipe. “We make our beds small when we have to carry them in the woods. We sleep well. We get used to it, you see.”

“Injun man she’ll been like dog,” grinned Moise, throwing down his own single blanket under a tree. “A dog she’ll sleep plenty, all right, an’ she’ll got no bed at all, what?”

“But won’t you come under the edge of the tent?” asked Rob.

“No, you’re to have the tent,” said Alex. “I’m under orders from your Uncle, who employed me. But you’re to make your own beds, and take care of them in making and breaking camp. That’s understood.”

“I’ll do that for those boy,” offered Moise.

“No,” said Alex, quietly, “my orders are they’re to do that for themselves. That’s what their Uncle said. They must learn how to do all these things.”

“Maybe we know now, a little bit,” ventured John, smiling.

“I don’t doubt it,” said Alex. “But now, just from a look at your bed, you’ve taken a great deal of time making your camp to-night. You’ve got a good many boughs. They took noise and took time to gather. We’ll see how simple a camp we can make after we get out on the trail. My word! We’ll have trouble enough to get anything to sleep on when we get in the lower Peace, where there’s only willows.”

“What do you do if it rains?” queried Jesse. “You haven’t got any tent over you, and it leaks through the trees.”

“It won’t rain so much when we get east,” said Alex. “When it does, Moise and I’ll get up and smoke. But it won’t rain to-night, that’s certain,” he added, knocking his pipe on the heel of his moccasin. “Throw the door of your tent open, because you’ll not need to protect yourselves against the mosquitoes to-night. It’s getting cold. Good night, young gentlemen.”

In a few moments the camp was silent, except something which sounded a little like a snore from the point where Moise had last been seen.

John nudged his neighbors in the beds on the tent floor, and spoke in low tones, so that he might not disturb the others outside. “Are you asleep yet, Rob?”

“Almost,” said Rob, whispering.

“So’m I. I think Jesse is already. But say, isn’t it comfy? And I like both those men.”

III STUDYING OUT THE TRAIL

It must have been some time about five o’clock in the morning, or even earlier, when Rob, awakened by the increasing light in the tent, stirred in his blanket and rolled over. He found himself looking into the eyes of John, who also was lying awake. They whispered for a minute or two, not wishing to waken Jesse, who still was asleep, his face puckered up into a frown as though he were uneasy about something. They tried to steal out the other tent, but their first movement awakened Jesse, who sat up rubbing his eyes.

“What’s the matter?” said he; “where are we?” He smiled sheepishly as the other boys laughed at him.

“A good way from home, you’ll find,” answered John.

The smell of fresh smoke came to their nostrils from the fire, which had been built for some time. So quiet had the men been about their work that they had left the boys undisturbed for the best part of an hour. They themselves had been accustomed to taking the trail even earlier in the day than this.

“Good morning, young gentlemen,” said Alex, quietly. “I hope you slept well.”

“Well,” said Jesse, grinning, “I guess I did, for one.”

“You’ll been hongree?” smiled Moise at the fireside.

“Awfully!” said John. “I could eat a piece of raw bear meat.”

“So?” grinned Moise. “Maybe you’ll seen heem before we get through, hein? She’ll not been very good for eat raw.”

“Nor any other way, according to my taste,” said Alex, “but we’ll see how we like it cooked, perhaps.”

“Do you really think we’ll see any bear on this trip?” asked Rob.

“Plenty,” said Alex, quietly.

“Grizzlies?”

“Very likely, when we get a little farther into the mountains. We ought to pick up two or three on this trip—if they don’t pick us up.”

“I’m not worrying about that,” said Rob. “We’re old bear hunters.”

Both the men looked at him and laughed.

“Indeed, we are,” insisted Rob. “We killed a bear, and an awfully big one, all by ourselves up on Kadiak Island. She was bigger than that tent there; and had two little ones besides. Each of them was big as a man, almost. They get awfully big up there in Alaska. I’ll bet you haven’t a one in all these mountains as big as one of those fellows up in our country.”

“Maybe not,” said Alex, still smiling, “but they get pretty near as big as a horse in here, and I want to tell you that one of our old, white-faced grizzlies will give you a hot time enough if you run across him—he’ll come to you without any coaxing.”

“This is fine!” said Rob. “I begin to think we’re going to have a good trip this time.”

“Grub pile!” sang out Moise about this time. A moment later they were all sitting on the ground at the side of the breakfast fire, eating of the fried bacon, bannock, and tea which Moise had prepared.

“To-day, Moise, she’ll get feesh,” said Moise, after a time. “Also maybe the duck. I’ll heard some wild goose seenging this morning down on the lake below there. She’s not far, I’ll think.”

“Just a little ways,” said Alex, nodding. “If we’d gone in a little farther to the west we might have hit the lake there, but I thought it was easier to let the water of this little creek carry our boats in.”

“Listen!” said John. “Isn’t that a little bird singing?”

A peal of sweet music came to them as they sat, from a small warbler on a near-by tree.

“Those bird, he’s all same Injun,” remarked Moise. “He seeng for the sun.”

The sun now indeed was coming up in the view from the mountain ranges on the east, though the air still was cool and the grass all about them still wet with the morning dew.

“Soon she’ll get warm,” said Moise. “Those mosquito, she’ll begin to seeng now, too.”

“Yes,” said Rob, “there were plenty of them in the tent this morning before we got up. We’ll have to get out the fly dope pretty soon, if I’m any judge.”

“But now,” he added, “suppose we read a little bit in our book before we break camp and pack up.”

“You’re still reading Sir Alexander and his voyages?” smiled Alex.

“Yes, indeed, I don’t suppose we’d be here if we hadn’t read that old book. It’s going to be our guide all the way through. I want to see just how close we can come to following the trail Mackenzie made when he crossed this very country, a hundred and eighteen years ago this very month.”

“Some say they can’t see how Sir Alexander made so many mistakes,” said Alex, smiling. He himself was a man of considerable intelligence and education, as the boys already had learned.

“I know,” said Rob, nodding. “For instance, Simon Fraser—”

“Yes, I know those Simon Fraser—he’s beeg man in the Companee,” broke in Moise, who very likely did not know what he was talking about.

Alex smiled. “There have always been Mackenzies and Frasers in the fur trade. This was a long time ago.”

“How’ll those boy know heem, then?” said Moise. “I don’t know. Some boy she’ll read more nowadays than when I’m leetle. Better they know how to cook and for to keel the grizzly, hein?”

“Both,” said Alex. “But now we’ll read a little, if you please, Moise. Let’s see where we are as nearly as we can tell, according to the old Mackenzie journal.”

“I’ll know where we ought for be,” grumbled Moise, who did not fancy this starting-place which had been selected. “We’ll ought to been north many miles on the portage, where there’s wagon trail to Lake McLeod.”

“Now, Moise,” said Rob, “what fun would that be? Of course we could put our boats and outfit on a wagon or cart, and go across to Lake McLeod, without any trouble at all. Everybody goes that way, and has done so for years. But that isn’t the old canoe trail of Mackenzie and Fraser.”

“Everybody goes on the Giscombe Portage now,” said Moise.

“Well, all the fur-traders used to come in here, at least before they had studied out this country very closely. You see, they didn’t have any maps—they were the ones who made the first maps. Mackenzie was the first