The Young Alaskans on the Trail, Emerson Hough [tharntype novel english .TXT] 📗

he first went over the Rockies. Listen. I’ve got the two best men in the Northwest, as I told you. Alex Mackenzie is one of the best-known men in the North. General Wolseley took him for chief of his band of voyageurs, who got the boats up the Nile in Kitchener’s Khartoum campaign. He’s steadier than a clock, and the boys are safer with him than anywhere else without him. My other man, Moise Duprat, is a good cook, a good woodsman, and a good canoeman. They’ll have all the camp outfit they need, they’ll have the finest time in the world in the mountains, and they’ll come through flying—that’s all about it!”

“But won’t there be any bad rapids in the mountains on that river?”

“Surely, surely! That’s what the men are for, and the boats. When the water is too bad they get out and walk around it, same as you walk around a mud puddle in the street. When their men think the way is safe it’s bound to be safe. Besides, you forget that though all this country is more or less new, there are Hudson Bay posts scattered all through it. When they get east of the Rockies, below Hudson’s Hope and Fort St. John, they come on Dunvegan, which now is just a country town, almost. They’ll meet wagon-trains of farmers going into all that country to settle. Why, I’m telling you, the only worry I have is that the boys will find it too solemn and quiet to have a good time!”

“Yes, I know about solemn and quiet things that you propose, Richard!” said his sister. “But at least”—she sighed—“since their fathers want them to live in this northern country for a time, I want my boy to grow up fit for this life. Things here aren’t quite the same as they are in the States. Well—I’ll ask Rob’s mother, and John’s.”

Uncle Dick grinned. He knew his young friends would so beset their parents that eventually they would get consent for the trip he had described as so simple and easy.

And, in truth, this evening camp on the crest of the Rockies in British Columbia was the result of his negotiations.

II THE GATE OF THE MOUNTAINS

Whether Uncle Dick told the boys everything he knew about this undertaking, or whether their mothers realized what they were doing in allowing them to go so far and into a wild region, we shall be forced to leave as an unanswered question. Certainly they started with their Uncle when he left Valdez by steamer for Vancouver. And, finishing that part of their journey which was to be made by rail, wagon, and boat, here they were, in the twilight of a remote valley at the crest of the great Rocky Mountains; near that point, indeed, properly to be called the height of land between the Arctic and the Pacific waters. Moreover, they were for the time quite alone in camp.

“Well, fellows,” said Rob at last, “I suppose we’d better get some more wood together. The men’ll be back before long, and we’ll have to get something to eat.”

“How do you know they’ll come back?” asked John dubiously.

“Alex told me he would, and I have noticed that he always does things when he says he is going to.”

“I don’t hear them, anyway,” began Jesse, the youngest, who was, by nature as well as by years perhaps, not quite so bold and courageous as his two young friends.

“You couldn’t hear them very far,” replied Rob, “because they wear moccasins.”

“Do you think they really can get the canoes out, carrying them on their backs all the way from where we left them?” asked Jesse.

“They’re very strong,” Rob answered, “and that work isn’t new to them. And, you know, they carried all our packs in the same way.”

“That Moise is as strong as a horse,” said John. “My! I couldn’t lift the end of his pack here. I bet it weighed two hundred pounds at least. And he just laughed. I think he’s a good-natured man, anyhow.”

“Most of these woodsmen are,” replied Rob. “They are used to hardships, and they just laugh instead of complain about things. Alex is quieter than Moise, but I’ll venture to say they’ll both do their part all right. And moreover,” he added stoutly, “if Alex said he’d be here before dark, he’ll be here.”

“It will be in less than ten minutes, then,” said Jesse, looking at the new watch which his mother had given him to take along on his trip. “The canoe’s a pretty heavy thing, John.”

Rob did not quite agree with him.

“They’re not heavy for canoes—sixteen-foot Peterboroughs. They beat any boat going for their weight, and they’re regular ships in the water under load.”

“They look pretty small to me,” demurred Jesse.

“They’re bigger than the skin boats that we had among the Aleuts last year,” ventured John. “Besides, I’ve noticed a good deal depends on the way you handle a boat.”

“Not everybody has boats as good as these,” admitted Jesse.

“Yes,” said John, “it must have cost Uncle Dick a lot of money to get them up here from the railroad. Sir Alexander Mackenzie traveled in a big birch-bark when he was here—ten men in her, and three thousand pounds of cargo besides. She was twenty-five feet long. Uncle Dick told me the Indians have dugouts farther down the river, but not very good ones. I didn’t think they knew anything about birch-bark so far northwest, but he says all their big journeys were made in those big bark canoes in the early days.”

“Well, I’m guessing that our boats will seem pretty good before we get through,” was Rob’s belief, “and they’ll pay for themselves too.”

All the boys had been reading in all the books they could find telling of the journeys of the old fur-traders, Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, and others, through this country. Rob had a book open in his lap now.

“How far can we go in a day?” asked Jesse, looking as though he would be gladder to get back home again than to get farther and farther away.

“That depends on the state of the water and the speed of the current,” said the older boy. “It’s no trouble to go fifty miles a day straightaway traveling, or farther if we had to. Some days they didn’t make over six or eight miles going up, but coming down—why, they just flew!”

“That wouldn’t take us long to go clear through to where Uncle Dick is.”

“A few weeks or so, at least, I hope. We’re not out to beat Sir Alexander’s record, you know—he made it from here in six days!”

“I don’t remember that book very well,” said Jesse; “I’ll read it again some time.”

“We’ll all read it each day as we go on, and in that way understand it better when we get through,” ventured John. “But listen; I thought I heard them in the bush.”

It was as he had said. The swish of bushes parting and the occasional sound of a stumbling footfall on the trail now became plainer. They heard the voice of Moise break out into a little song as he saw the light of the fire flickering among the trees. He laughed gaily as he stepped into the ring of the cleared ground, let down one end of the canoe which he was carrying, and with a quick twist of his body set it down gently upon the leaves.

“You’ll mak’ good time, hein?” he asked of the boys, smiling and showing a double row of white teeth.

“What did I tell you, boys?” demanded Rob. “Here they are, and it isn’t quite dark yet.”

The next moment Alex also came in out of the shadow and quietly set down his own canoe, handling it as lightly as though it were but an ordinary pack. Indeed, these two woodsmen were among the most powerful of their class, and well used to all the work which comes on a trip in a wilderness country.

As they stood now a little apart, it might be seen that both of the guides were brown-skinned men, still browner by exposure to the weather. Each of them had had an Indian mother, and the father of each was a white man, the one a silent Scot, of the Hudson Bay fur trade, the other a lively Frenchman of the lower trails, used to horse, boat, and foot travel, and known far and wide in his own day as a good voyageur.

Indeed, two better men could not have been selected by Uncle Dick for the work now in hand. As they stood now in their shirt-sleeves, each wiping off his forehead with his red kerchief, they looked so strong and tall that the boys suddenly felt all uneasiness pass away from their minds. The twilight came on unnoticed, and in the light of the fire, freshly piled up with wood, the camp scene became bright and pleasant. It was impossible to feel any alarm when they were here under the protection of these two men, both of them warriors, who had seen encounters of armed men, not to mention hundreds of meetings with wild beasts.

“Well,” said Rob to Moise, “you must be tired with all that load.”

“Non! Non!” said Moise; “not tired. She’ll been leetle boat, not over hondred-feefty poun’. I’ll make supper now, me.”

“It was best to bring both the boats in to-night,” said Alex, quietly, “and easier to start from here than to push in to the lake. We load here in the morning, and I think there’ll be plain sailing from here. It’s just as well to make a stream carry us and our boats whenever we can. It’s only a little way to the lake.”

“I thought you were never coming, Alex,” said Jesse, frankly, looking up from where he sat on his blanket roll, his chin in his hands.

The tall half-breed answered by gently putting a hand on the boy’s head, and making a better seat for him closer to the fire. Here he was close enough to watch Moise, now busy about his pots and pans.

“Those mosquito he’ll bite you some?” laughed Moise, as he saw the boys still slapping at their hands. “Well, bimeby he’ll not bite so much. She’ll be col’ here un the montaigne, bimeby.”

“I’m lumpy all over with them,” said John.

“It’s lucky you come from a country where you’re more or less used to them,” said Alex. “I’ve seen men driven wild by mosquitoes. But going down the river we’ll camp on the beaches or bars, where the wind will strike us. In two or three weeks we’ll be far enough along toward fall, so that I don’t think the mosquitoes will trouble us too much. You see, it’s the first of August now.”

“We can fix our tent to keep them out,” said Rob, “and we have bars and gloves, of course. But we don’t want to be too much like tenderfeet.”

“That’s the idea,” said Alex quietly. “You’ll not be tenderfeet when you finish this trip.”

“Her Onkle Deek, she’ll tol’ me something about those boy,” said Moise, from the fireside. “She’ll say she’s good boy, all same like man.”

Jesse looked at Moise gravely, but did not smile at his queer way of speech, for by this time they had become better acquainted with both their guides.

“What I’ll tol’ you?” said Moise again a little later. “Here comes cool breeze from the hill. Now those mosquito he’ll hunt his home yas, heem! All right! We’ll eat supper ’fore long.”

Moise had put a pot of meat stew over the fire before he started back up the trail to bring in the canoe, when they first had come in with the packs. This he now finished cooking over the renewed