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

and I never knew it, and from where you killed him he must have been three hundred yards at least.”

“Those boy she’ll be good shot,” said Moise, approvingly, slapping Jesse warmly on the shoulder. “Plenty meat now on the boat, hein?”

“When I shot him,” said Jesse, simply, “he just fell all over the hill.”

“I was just going to shoot,” said John, “but I couldn’t see very well from where I was, and before I could run into reach Jesse had done the business.”

“Well,” said Moise, “one thing, she’ll been lucky. We’ll make those deck-hand come an’ carry in this meat—me, I’m too proud to carry some more meat, what?”

He laughed now as he began to skin out and quarter the meat in his usual rapid and efficient fashion.

They had finished this part of their work, and were turning down the hill to return to the steamer when they were saluted by the heavy whistle of the boat, which echoed in great volume back and forth between the steep banks of the river, which here lay at the bottom of a trough-like valley, the stream itself several hundred yards in width.

“Don’t hurry,” said Moise; “she’ll wait till we come, an’ she’ll like plenty moose meat on his boat.”

All of which came out as Moise had predicted, for when they told Captain Saunders that they really had a dead moose ready to be brought aboard the latter beamed his satisfaction.

“That’s better than bear meat for me!” said he. “We’ll just lie here while the boys go out and bring in the meat.”

“Now,” said Rob to his friends, as, hot and dusty, they turned to their rooms to get ready for dinner, “I don’t know what you other fellows think, but it seems to me we’ve killed about all the meat we’ll need for a while. Let’s wait now until we see Uncle Dick—it won’t be more than a day or so, and we’ve all had a good hunt.”

XXX FARTHEST NORTH

As they had been told, our travelers found the banks of their river at this far northern latitude much lower than they had been for the first hundred miles below the Landing. Now and again they would pass little scattered settlements of natives, or the cabin of some former trading-station. For the most part, however, the character of the country was that of an untracked wilderness, in spite of the truth, which was that the Hudson Bay Company had known it and traded through it for more than a century past.

By no means the most northerly trading-posts of the great fur-trading company, Fort Vermilion, their present destination, seemed to our young friends almost as though it were at the edge of the world. Their journey progressed almost as though they were in a dream, and it was difficult for them to recall all of its incidents, or to get clearly before their minds the distance back of them to the homes in far-off Alaska, which they had left so long ago. The interest of travelers in new land, however, still was theirs, and they looked forward eagerly also to meeting the originator of this pleasant journey of theirs—Uncle Dick Wilcox, who, as they now learned from the officers of the boat, had been summoned to this remote region on business connected with the investigation of oil-fields on the Athabasca River, and had returned as far as Fort Vermilion on his way out to the settlements.

When finally they came within sight of the ancient post of Fort Vermilion, the boys, as had been the case in such other posts as they previously had seen, could scarcely identify the modest whitewashed buildings of logs or boards as really belonging to a post of the old company of Hudson Bay. The scene which they approached really was a quiet and peaceful one. At the rim of the bank stood the white building of the Company’s post, or store, with a well-shingled red roof. Beyond this were some houses of the employés. In the other direction was the residence of the factor, a person of considerable importance in this neighborhood. Yet farther up-stream, along the bank, stood a church with a little bell; whereas, quite beyond the scattered settlement and in the opposite direction there rose a tall, two-story building with projecting smoke-stack. Rob inquired the nature of this last building, which looked familiar to him.

“That is the grist-mill,” said Captain Saunders to him. “You see, we raise the finest wheat up here you’ll find in the world.”

“I’ve heard of it,” said Rob, “but I couldn’t really believe it, although we had good vegetables away back there at Peace River Landing.”

“It’s the truth,” said Captain Saunders; “yonder is the Company’s wheat-field, a hundred acres of it, and the same sort of wheat that took the first prize at the Centennial, at your own city of Philadelphia, in 1876. I’ll show you old Brother Regnier, the man who raised that wheat, too. He can’t speak any English yet, but he certainly can raise good wheat. And at the experimental farm you shall see nearly every vegetable you ever heard of.”

“I don’t understand it,” said Rob; “we always thought of this country as being arctic—we never speak of it without thinking of dog-trains and snowshoes.”

“The secret is this,” said Captain Saunders. “Our summers are short, but our days are very long. Now, wheat requires sunshine, daylight, to make it grow. All right; we give it more hours of sunshine in a month than you do in a month in Dakota or Iowa. The result is that it grows quicker and stronger and better, as we think. It gets ripe before the nights become too cold. This great abundance of sunlight is the reason, also, that we raise such excellent vegetables—as I’m sure you will have reason to understand, for here we always lay in a supply for our return voyage. I am thinking, however,” added the captain, presently, as the boat, screaming with her whistle, swung alongside of her landing-place, “that you’ll see some one in this crowd here that you ought to know.”

All along the rim of the bank there was rather a gaily-clad line of Indians and half-breeds, men and women, many of whom were waving salutations to members of the boat’s crew. The boys studied this line eagerly, but for some time none of them spoke.

“I see him!” said Jesse at last. “That’s Uncle Dick sitting up there on the bench.”

The others also identified their relative and friend as he sat quietly smoking and waiting for the boat to make her landing. At length he arose and came to the staging—a rather slender, bronzed man, with very brown face and eyes wrinkled at the corners. He wore an engineer’s garb of khaki and stiff-brimmed white hat.

The three boys took off their hats and gave a cheer as they saw him standing there smiling.

“How are you, Uncle Dick?” they all cried; and so eager were they that they could scarcely wait for the gang-plank to be run out.

Their uncle, Mr. Richard Wilcox, at that time employed in the engineering department of one of the Dominion railways, laughed rather happily as he bunched them in his arms when they came ashore. There was little chance for him to say anything for some time, so eager were the boys in their greeting of him.

“Well, you’re all here!” said he at length, breaking away to shake hands with Alex and Moise, who smiled very happily also, now coming up the bank. “How have they done, Alex?”

“Fine!” said the old hunter. “Couldn’t have been better!”

“This was good boys, all right,” affirmed Moise. “We’ll save her life plenty tam, but she’s good boy!”

“Did you have any trouble getting across, Alex?” asked Uncle Dick.

“Plenty, I should say!” said Alex, smiling. “But we came through it. The boys have acted like sportsmen, and I couldn’t say more.”

“I suppose perhaps you got some game then, eh?”

All three now began to speak at once excitedly, and so fast that they could scarcely be understood.

“Did you really get a grizzly?” inquired Uncle Dick of Alex, after a while.

“Yes, sir, and a very good one. And a black bear too, and a moose, and some sheep, and a lot of small stuff like that. They’re hunters and travelers. We gave them a ‘lob-stick’ to mark their journey—far back in the Rockies.”

“Well, Alaska will have to look to its laurels!” said Uncle Dick, taking a long breath and pretending not to be proud of them. “It seems to me you must have been pretty busy shooting things, from all I can learn, young men.”

“Oh, we know the country,” interrupted Rob, “and we’ve got a map—we could build a railroad across there if we had to.”

“Well, to tell the truth, I’m mighty glad you got through all right,” said Uncle Dick. “I’ve been thinking that maybe I oughtn’t to have let you try that trip, for it’s dangerous enough for men. But everything’s well that ends well, and here you are, safe and sound. You’ll have to be getting out of here before long, though, in order to make Valdez in time for your fall school—you’d be running wild if I left you on the trail any longer.

“The boat will be going back to the Landing in a couple of days, I suppose,” he added after a time, as he gathered their hands in his and started along the path up the steep bank; “but there are a few things here you ought to see—the post and the farms and grains which they have—wonderful things in their way. And then I’ll try to get Saunders to fix it so that you can see the Vermilion Chutes of the Peace River.”

“I know right where that is,” said Rob, feeling in his pocket for his map—“about sixty miles below here. That’s the head of navigation on the Peace, isn’t it?”

“It is for the present time,” said Uncle Dick. “I’ve been looking at that cataract of the Peace. There ought to be a lock or a channel cut through, so that steamboats could run the whole length from Chippewayan to the Rockies! As it is, everything has to portage there.”

“We don’t know whether to call this country old or young,” said Rob. “In some ways it doesn’t seem to have changed very much, and in other ways it seems just like any other place.”

“One of these days you’ll see a railroad down the Mackenzie, young man,” said Uncle Dick, “and before long, of course, you’ll see one across the Rockies from the head of the Saskatchewan, above the big bend of the Columbia.”

“Why couldn’t we get in there some time, Uncle Dick?” asked Jesse, who was feeling pretty brave now that they were well out of the Rocky Mountains and the white water of the rapids.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Uncle Dick, suddenly looking around. “It might be a good idea, after all. But I think you’d find pretty bad water in the Columbia if you tried to do any navigation there. Time enough to talk about that next year. Come on now, and I’ll introduce you to the factor and the people up here at the Post.”

They joined him now, and soon were shaking hands with many persons, official and otherwise, of the white or the red race. They found the life very interesting and curious, according to their own notions. The head clerk and they soon struck up a warm friendship. He told them that he had spent thirty years of his life at that one place, although he received his education as far east as Montreal. Married to an Indian woman, who spoke no English, he had a family of ten