The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound Part 3

Frank agreed with this, but he had never realized the truth of it as he did just then. It was clear that the man who made all he wanted must live as the Indians or grosser savages did, and that it was only the division of employments that provided one with the comforts of civilization. Every man, it seemed, lived by the toil of another, for while on the Pacific Slope they turned the forests into dressed lumber and raised fruit and wheat, the clothes they wore, and their saws and plows and axes, came from the East. One could clear a ranch on Puget Sound only because a host of other men puddled liquid iron or pounded white-hot steel in the forges of, for instance, Pennsylvania. Frank would very much have liked to provide his companion with the fruit of somebody else's labor in the shape of a few matches, which would have made a cheerful fire possible.

In the meanwhile Harry had opened the packet and divided its contents equally.

"There's not enough to keep any over," he observed. "We have got to make the ranch to-morrow."

They ate the little that was left them, and then set to work to search for a young spruce from which they might obtain a few branches, but they failed to find one small enough even to climb. Coming back they lay down among the cedar sprays, which seemed rather wet, and it was some time before Frank could go to sleep. He was still hungry, and the roar of the river and the strangeness of his surroundings had a peculiar effect on him. The mist, which was getting thicker, rested clammily on his face, and crawled in denser wreaths among the black trunks which stood out here and there from the encircling gloom. Drops of moisture began to fall upon him from the branches, and once or twice he cautiously moved an elbow until it touched his companion. It was consoling to feel that he was not alone.

At length, however, he fell asleep, and awaking in the gray light of dawn staggered to his feet when Harry called him, feeling very miserable. He was chilled to the bone. His shoulders ached, his knees ached, and one hip-joint ached worse than all, while his energy and courage seemed to have melted out of him. As a matter of fact, n.o.body unused to it feels very animated on getting up before sunrise from a bed on the damp ground.

"As we have to reach home to-night, we may as well get a move on,"

announced Harry. "It's about four o'clock now, and it won't be dark until after eight."

The prospect of a sixteen hours' march with nothing to eat all the while did not appeal to Frank. It was the first time in his life that he had felt downright hungry, and this fast had made him the more sensitive to an unpleasant pain in his left side.

"If you're not sure about the way, wouldn't it be better if we went back to Jake?" he suggested. "It seems a pity we didn't think of it earlier."

"I did," Harry answered smilingly. "The trouble is that Jake would clear out the minute the wind dropped a little or shifted enough to let him get round the head. Besides, he'd have mighty little to eat if he were still lying behind the point when we got there. When your letter reached us we'd hardly time to run down to Bannington's to meet the steamer, so I just grabbed what I could find, and we sailed in a few minutes."

Frank said nothing further, and they pushed on doggedly into the shadowy bush. It was wrapped in a thick white mist, and every brake they smashed through dripped with moisture. Except for the clamor of the river, everything was wonderfully still--so still, indeed, that the heavy silence was beginning to pall upon Frank, who suddenly turned to his companion.

"Isn't there anything alive besides ourselves in this bush?" he asked.

"That," replied Harry, "is more than I can tell you. We have bears, and a few timber wolves, besides two kinds of deer and several kinds of grouse, and some of them are quite often about, but there are belts of bush where for some reason you can't find one."

They went on again, following up the river for an hour or two. In the meanwhile the mist melted, and Frank could see the endless ranks of mighty trees stretch away before him until they merged into a blurred columnar ma.s.s. At last the canon, which was growing shallower, forked off into two branches, and they followed one branch until a broken rocky slope led them down to the water. It was a dull greenish color and foamed furiously past them among great stones. There was no means of ascertaining how deep it was and the boys looked at each other dubiously for a moment or two. Then Harry made a little gesture.

"We have to get across," he said.

Frank, without waiting for his resolution to fail him, plunged in on the instant, and a couple of steps took him well above his knees. The water seemed icy cold. As a matter of fact, it was mostly melted snow, and the drainage from the glaciers had given it the curious green color. The gravel commenced to slide away beneath Frank's feet, and by the time the foam was swirling round his waist he was gasping and struggling savagely. There was a big, eddying pool not far away and, though he could swim a little, he had no desire to be swept into it. A moment or two later he was driven against a rock with a violence that shook all the breath out of him. He clung to it desperately until Harry came floundering by and held out his hand. They made a yard or two together and then Harry slipped suddenly, jerking Frank off his feet as he rolled over in the flood. Frank went down overhead and as he felt himself being swept along toward the eddy he exerted all his energy in a struggle to regain his footing. He clutched at a rock, but the swirling waters only carried him past. Half dazed and breathless he was flung against another rock. This time, with a great effort, he managed to hold on, and when he stood up, gasping, he found that the water now reached only to his knees. In another minute he and Harry were safe on dry land.

Half an hour later they crossed the other creek, and soon afterward Frank sat down limply in the warm sunlight, which at last came filtering between the thinner trees.

"I must have a rest," he gasped.

"There's just this trouble," Harry pointed out. "If you rest any time you won't want to get up again."

"If I go on now I'll drop in another few hundred yards," declared Frank.

It was probably no more than the truth. He had been clever at athletics and open air games, but, as it happened, he had been able to learn them easily. Besides, he had been indulged by his mother and had been rather a favorite at school, and as one result of it he fell short of the hardihood usually acquired by the boy who has everything against him.

After all, an hour's exercise in a gymnasium or an hour and a half spent over a game amidst applause and excitement is a very different thing from the strain of unrelaxing effort that must be made all day when there is n.o.body to cheer. He did not want to rest, but his worn-out body rebelled and mastered him.

"Aren't--you--played out?" he stammered weakly.

"Oh, yes," replied Harry with a grin. "Still, in this country you're quite often dead played out and have to go on again."

"But if you can't?"

"Then," said Harry dryly, "you have to keep on trying until you're able to."

It struck Frank that this might be painful and his heart sank. After a while he tried another question:

"Don't people get lost in the bush every now and then?"

"Why, yes," was the answer. "There was a man strayed off from a picnic just outside one of the cities not long ago and they didn't find him until a month or two afterward. He was lying dead not a mile from a graded road."

Frank shivered inwardly at this.

"Still, I suppose you generally have something to guide you--the moss on the north side of the trees? I've heard that people who don't know about it walk around in rings."

"I must have gone pretty straight the only time I was lost," laughed Harry; "and it's mighty hard to find moss in some parts of the bush. In others it's all around the trees. I'd rather have a big peak as a guide.

You have heard about people walking round, but I wonder whether you have heard that when they're badly scared they'll walk right across a trail without seeing it?"

"Is that a fact?" Frank asked in astonishment.

"Sure!" said Harry. "A lost man will sometimes walk across a logging road without the slightest idea that he's doing it. Anyway, I know where the homestead lies. It's only a question of holding out until we reach it."

Frank was sincerely pleased to hear this, and by and by he rose with an effort and they went on again.

CHAPTER III

THE RANCH

Dusk was not far away when the boys, stumbling down a low hillside, came into sight of an oblong clearing in the forest with a wooden house standing on one side of it. That was all Frank noticed, for he found it difficult to keep himself on his feet, and his sight seemed hazy.

Indeed, he fell down once or twice in the steeper places, and had some trouble in getting up; and after that he had only a confused recollection of crossing an open s.p.a.ce and entering a dwelling. A man shook hands with him, and a woman in a print dress made him sit down in a low chair before she set out a bountiful meal. Soon after he had eaten a considerable share of it Harry led him into a very little room where a bed like a shelf with a side to it was fixed against one wall. Five minutes later he was blissfully unconscious of his recent painful experience.

The sun was streaming in through the window when he awoke, feeling wonderfully refreshed, and, dressing himself in some overalls which had been laid across the foot of his bed, he walked out into the larger general room. It had uncovered walls of logs and a very roughly boarded floor, and there seemed to be little in it besides a stove, a table and several chairs.

A brown-faced man with a little gray in his hair sat at one end of the table and at the other end sat a woman resembling him and of about the same age. Harry, sitting between them, was apparently engaged in narrating their adventures. Frank, who took the place laid out for him, found that his supper had not spoiled his breakfast, for he fell upon the pork, potatoes, dried apricots, hot cakes and syrup with an excellent appet.i.te. When the meal was over, the man led Frank into another room and filling his pipe asked him to sit down.

"We'd better have a talk," he said. "You can take the chair yonder."

Frank looked at him more closely when he sat down. Mr. Oliver, who was dressed in duck overalls, was rather spare in figure, though he looked wiry. His manner was quiet, and his voice was that of an educated man, but he had somewhat piercing gray eyes.

"I had a sincere regard for your father," he began. "On that account alone I should be glad to have you here; but first of all we had better understand each other. You mentioned that you had been in business in Minneapolis and afterward in Winnipeg. Didn't you like it?"

"No, sir," replied Frank, who felt that it would be wiser to answer carefully any questions this man might ask. "Still, that wasn't exactly why I gave it up, though"--and he hesitated--"to say I gave it up isn't quite correct."

"If I remember, you called it being fired, in your letter," Mr. Oliver suggested with a twinkle in his eyes. "What led up to that?"

"Slack trade in the last case. I'd like to think it was only the grudge a bullying clerk had against me in the other."

"Then, if you had been allowed, you would have stayed with the milling business, though you didn't care for it?"

"Yes," responded Frank. "Anyway, I'd have stayed until I could have got hold of something I liked better."