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

buffalo are all gone now, and, in fact, we don’t get much pemmican any more. It’s made by drying meat and pounding it up fine with a stone, then putting it in a hide sack and pouring grease in on top of it. That used to be the trail food of the voyageurs, because a little of it would go a good way. Do you think you could make any of it for the boys, Moise?”

“I don’ know,” grinned Moise. “Those squaw, she’ll make pemmican—not the honter. Besides, we’ll not got meat. Maybe so if we’ll get moose deer we could make some, if we stop long tam in camp. But always squaw make pemmican—not man.”

“Well, we’ll have to give some kind of imitation of the old ways once in a while,” commented Alex, “for though they are changed and gone, our young friends here want to know how the fur-traders used to travel.”

“One thing,” said John, feeling at his ankle. “I’ll be awfully glad when we get out of the devil’s club country.”

“Do you have those up in Alaska?” asked Alex.

“Have them?—I should say we have! They’re the meanest thing you can run across out of doors. If you step on one of those long, snaky branches, it’ll turn around and hit you, no matter where you are, and whenever it hits those little thorns stick in and stay.”

“I know,” nodded Alex. “I struck plenty of them on the trail up north from the railroad. They went right through my moccasins. We’ll not be troubled by these, however, when we get east of the divide—that’s a plant which belongs in the wet country of the western slope.”

All this time Moise was busy rearranging the cargoes in the first boat, leaving on the shore, however, such parcels as did not belong in the Mary Ann. Having finished this to his liking, he turned before they made the second trip on the Jaybird and her cargo.

“Don’t we catch any of those feesh?” he asked Alex, nodding back at the lake.

“Fish?” asked John. “I didn’t see any fish.”

“Plenty trout,” said Moise. “I s’pose we’ll better catch some while we can.”

“Yes,” said Alex, “I think that might be a good idea. Now, if we had a net such as Sir Alexander and old Simon Fraser always took along, we’d have no trouble. Moise saw what I also saw, and which you young gentlemen did not notice—a long bar of gravel where the trout were feeding.”

“We’ll not need any net,” said Rob. “Here are our fly-rods and our reels. If there are any trout rising, we can soon catch plenty of them.”

“Very well. We’d better take the rods back, then, when we go for the second boat.”

When they got to the shore of the middle lake, the boys saw that the keener eyes of the old voyageurs had noted what they had missed—a series of ripples made by feeding fish not far from the point where they had landed.

“Look at that!” cried Jesse. “I see them now, myself.”

“Better you’ll take piece pork for those feesh,” said Moise.

“I don’t think we’ll need it,” replied Rob. “We’ve plenty of flies, and these trout won’t be very wild up here, for no one fishes for them. Anyhow, we’ll try it—you’ll push us out, won’t you, Moise?”

Carefully taking their places now in the Jaybird, whose cargo was placed temporarily on the bank, the three boys and Moise now pushed out. As Rob had predicted, the fish were feeding freely, and there was no difficulty in catching three or four dozen of them, some of very good weight. The bottom of the canoe was pretty well covered with fish when at length, after an hour or so of this sport, Moise thought it was time to return to shore, where Alex, quietly smoking all the time, had sat awaiting them.

“Now we’ll have plenty for eat quite a while,” said Moise.

“That’s all right,” said John. “I’m getting mighty hungry. How long is it going to be before we have something to eat?”

“Why, John,” said Rob, laughingly, “the morning isn’t half gone yet, and we’ve just had breakfast.”

VI FOLLOWING MACKENZIE

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Well,” said Alex, “now we’ve got all these fish, we’ll have to take care of them. Come ahead and let’s clean them, Moise.”

The boys all fell to and assisted the men at this work, Moise showing them how to prepare the fish.

“How are we going to keep them?” asked John, who always seemed to be afraid there would not be enough to eat.

“Well,” explained Alex, “we’ll put them in between some green willow boughs and keep them that way till night. Then I suppose we’ll have to smoke them a little—hang them up by the tail the way the Injuns do. That’s the way we do whitefish in the north. If it weren’t for the fish which we catch in these northern waters, we’d all starve to death in the winter, and so would our dogs, all through the fur country.”

“By the time we’re done this trip,” ventured Rob, “we’ll begin to be voyageurs ourselves, and will know how to make our living in the country.”

“That’s the talk!” said Alex, admiringly. “The main thing is to learn to do things right. Each country has its own ways, and usually they are the most useful ways. An Injun never wants to do work that he doesn’t have to do. So, you’ll pretty much always see that the Injun ways of keeping camp aren’t bad to follow as an example, after all.

“But now,” said he at length, after they had finished cleaning and washing off their trout, “we’ll have to get on across to the other lake.”

As before, Moise now took the heavier pack on his own broad shoulders, and Alex once more picked up the canoe.

“She’s a little lighter than the other boat, I believe,” said he, “but they’re both good boats, as sure’s you’re born—you can’t beat a Peterborough model in the woods!”

The other boys noticed now that when he carried his canoe, he did so by placing a paddle on each side, threaded under and above the thwarts so as to form a support on each side, which rested on his shoulders. His head would have been covered entirely by the boat as he stood, were it not that he let it drop backward a little, so that he could see the trail ahead of him. Rob pointed out to Jesse all these different things, with which their training in connection with the big Alaskan sea-going dugouts had not made them familiar.

“Have we got everything now, fellows?” asked Rob, making a last search before they left the scene of their disembarkation.

“All set!” said John. “Here we go!”

It required now but a few moments to make the second traverse of the portage, and soon the boats again were loaded. They found this most easterly of the three lakes on the summit to be of about the same size as the one which they had just left. It was rather longer than it was wide, and they could see at its eastern side the depression where the outlet made off toward the east. Again taking their places at the paddles in the order established at the start of the day, they rapidly pushed on across. They found now that this lake discharged through a little creek which rapidly became deep and clear.

“It’s going to be just the way,” said Rob, “that Sir Alexander tells. I say, fellows, we could take that boat and come through here in the dark, no matter what Simon Fraser said about Sir Alexander.”

They found the course down this little waterway not troublesome, and fared on down the winding stream until at length they heard the sound of running water just beyond.

“That’s the Parsnip now, no doubt,” said Alex, quietly, to his young charges. Already Moise had pushed the Mary Ann over the last remaining portion of the stream, and she was floating fair and free on the current of the second stream, not much larger than the one from which they now emerged.

“Voila!” Moise exclaimed. “She’ll been the Peace River—or what those voyageur call the Parsneep. Now, I’ll think we make fast ride, yes.”

Jesse, leaning back against his bed-roll, looked a little serious.

“Boys,” said he, “I don’t like the looks of this. This water sounds dangerous to me, and you can’t tell me but what these mountains are pretty steep.”

“Pshaw! It’s just a little creek,” scoffed John.

“That’s all right, but a little creek gets to be a big river mighty fast up in this country—we’ve seen them up in Alaska many a time. Look at the snow-fields back in those mountains!”

“Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Jess,” said Alex; “most of the snow has gone down in the June rise. The water is about as low now as it is at any time of the year. Now, if we were here on high water, as Simon Fraser was, and going the other way, we might have our own troubles—I expect he found all this country under water where we are now, and the current must have been something pretty stiff to climb against.”

“In any case,” Rob added, “we’re just in the same shape that Sir Alexander and old Simon were when they were here. We wouldn’t care to turn back, and we’ve got to go through. If they did it, so can we. I don’t believe this stream’s as bad, anyhow, as the Fraser or the Columbia, because the traders must have used it for a regular route long ago.”

“I was reading,” said John, “in Simon Fraser’s travels, about how they did in the rapids of the Fraser River. Why, it was a wonder they ever got through at all. But they didn’t seem to make much fuss about it. Those men didn’t know where they were going, either—they just got in their boat and turned loose, not knowing what there was on ahead! That’s what I call nerve. Pshaw! Jess, we’re only tenderfeet compared to those chaps!”

“That’s the talk!” commented Alex, once more lighting his pipe and smiling. “We’ll go through like a bird, I’m pretty sure.”

“Yes,” said Moise, “we’ll show those boy how the voyageur ron the rapeed.”

“One thing I want to say to you young gentlemen,” resumed Alex, “not to alarm you, but to teach you how to travel. If by any accident the boat should upset, hang to the boat and don’t try to swim. The current will be very apt to sweep you on through to some place where you can get a footing. But all these mountain waters are very strong and very cold. Whatever you do, hang to the boat!”

“Yes!” said Rob, “‘don’t give up the ship,’ as Lawrence said. Sir Alexander tells how he got wrecked on the Bad River with his whole crew. But they hung to the canoe and got her out at the foot of the rapids, after all, and not one of them was hurt.”

“He didn’t lose a man on the whole trip, for that matter,” John added.

“Well, now, let’s see about the rapids,” said Rob again, spreading out his map and opening one of his books which he always kept close at hand. “Simon Fraser tells as day by day what he did when he was going west. They got into that lake we’ve just left, about noon. They must have poked up the creek some time, and very early that same morning. That was June thirtieth, and on the same day they passed another river coming in from the west side—which must be between here and the outlet from McLeod Lake.”

“What does the map say about the other side of the stream?” asked John, peering over Rob’s shoulder.

“Well, on the