The Boy Scouts on the Yukon Part 10

"Haw, haw," yelled Rae, "that won't do you any harm. Let's tie 'em up just as they are and let the bugs chew on 'em."

"Why, man," protested Rand, "they would torture us to death in a few hours. Do you want to murder us?"

"Oh, I ain't so pertikler," sneered Rae. "You fellers have made us trouble enough around Creston, and ye'll have to take yer chances."

"Here, cut that out, Rae," said Dublin, in whom, despite his criminal instincts, there were still many elements of decency. "We're not here to murder anybody. Git them some clothes."

With a growl, Rae limped away to the tent again, returning with two pairs of pajamas, and despite the boys' complaint that these would prove but little protection, they were compelled to don them. Their hands were then bound, and they were then taken a short distance back into the woods, where they were fastened to trees. Then the desperadoes went back and began to ransack the stores. Ripping open boxes and bags they piled up a varied quant.i.ty of provisions, and even helped themselves to a quant.i.ty of clothing and blankets which the expedition had brought up to be left in cache for the following winter. They also tore open the canvas coverings of the sawmill and a dynamo which accompanied it, which was intended to supply electric light for night work to supplement the short days of winter. From both of these they selected a dozen of the smaller parts of the greatest importance and made one canvas bundle of them, thus disabling the machinery completely.

Having gathered their loot together they went to the shack and compelled three of the Indians to come out and carry these things and place them aboard the boat. They had worked nearly two hours, and now cursing the Siwashes, they urged them to hurry with the plunder, fearing the return of the other members of Swift.w.a.ter's party.

Meantime, the boys had been suffering tortures. The woodland pests of all kinds swarmed about them, stinging through the thin clothing and covering their heads and faces, which had now begun to swell to an extent that threatened total blindness in time. Fortunately, the gang had not gagged them, and they were able to comfort one another with the hope that their comrades would find no fishing and return that night. They made desperate effort to release themselves, but with no result except to chafe wrists and ankles to a painful condition. The place where they had been fastened was further up stream than the camp, which was partly concealed from them, but commanded a view of a mile or more up the creek. As time went by they scanned this stretch of water eagerly for some signs of their friends, but in vain. At last, Jack, who had tried to bear up bravely as became a good Scout, spoke up in rather a tremulous voice:

"Rand, do you suppose they will go away and leave us tied up like this all night? These mosquitos will come in clouds after dark, and we can't last long then. One of my eyes is about gone now."

"Rae and Monkey might do it, but I am sure Dublin will see that we are cut loose," replied Rand.

Suddenly, Rand, who had been straining his eyes up the stream, exclaimed excitedly:

"Jack, Jack! There's some one coming down the creek on the sh.o.r.e."

Jack turned eagerly to the sh.o.r.e above. Sure enough. Three figures on horseback had just emerged from the forest, but a hundred rods above them, and rode slowly down the bank.

"They don't see us yet," said Rand. "Wait until they get about half way here, and then yell for help with all your might."

The hors.e.m.e.n rode slowly toward them, and as they reached a point a few yards distant both Rand and Jack let a high boyish scream with all their strength:

"Robbers! Thieves! Help! This way."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEY RODE STRAIGHT FOR THE BOYS.]

At the same moment the three strangers caught sight of the two queer figures tied to the trees and pulled up a moment. With the first yell, Rae and Dublin came running around the sod house with their guns leveled, cursing the boys and commanding silence. At the same moment they caught sight of the strange hors.e.m.e.n. They turned at once and ran back for the shack just as the hors.e.m.e.n seemed to comprehend the situation. There was a sharp bugle call, and the three put spur to their horses, and with carbines in rest came on at a hard gallop. They had to come round a little bend in the creek which delayed them a little, then they rode straight for the boys.

"Don't mind us," cried Rand, "get that gang before they get away. They've been raiding the camp."

Two of the men turned and rode around the sod house while the other with a spring from his mount and with a couple of slashes of a big wood knife cut their bonds, and remounting, followed his comrades without asking a question.

The boys followed as rapidly as possible, and when they came into view of the camp a curious and lively scene met their gaze. Dublin and Rae had gotten the Indians out of the shack and at the point of their guns had herded them toward the boat into which they were tumbling as fast as they could. The hors.e.m.e.n were riding toward the struggling crowd crying out to them to halt. As they rode near, Dublin and Rae turned and deliberately fired at the men, whose carbines at once cracked in reply. The last of the Indians who had not yet gotten into the boat pitched forward on the bank, and jumping over him, Dublin and Rae gave the boat a push out into the middle of the stream, sprang aboard and dropped into the bottom of the craft, which at once began to drift down with the current. As nothing was in sight above the gunwale except the Indians the hors.e.m.e.n did not fire again. As the batteau drifted around the point, Monkey Rae, who had been the first to get aboard and conceal himself, rose, and putting his fingers to his nose, shouted back some insulting epithets.

Having dismounted, the three strangers turned to meet the boys, who at once recognized in their khaki uniforms, blue flannel shirts and broad-brimmed hats, three of the members of Major McClintock's patrol of Royal Northwest Mounted Police, whom they had met in White Horse.

They saluted the boys, who returned the recognition, and then shook hands with their rescuers.

"Faith, it seems we were just in time," said O'Hara, the sergeant, "but I'm sorry we didn't get that crowd. If I'm not mistaken, it's one the Major has been looking for that came up on the same boat from Seattle with you."

Rand a.s.sured him that the desperadoes were the same that had been referred to, and he continued:

"I'm sure I don't know how they got by our post at White Horse, but they must have made a circuit. However, our men'll get thim somewhere. How are ye yerselves? Begorra ye have foine lookin' faces on ye. Wait till I docther ye up a bit. We all get lukin' worse than that sometimes on this patrol duty."

He produced from the haversack or his "war bag," as he called it, at the rear of his saddle, a couple of bottles, one of which contained water of ammonia and another glycerine and vaseline mixed. The application soon relieved the pain and reduced the swellings. As he did so the other policemen walked down to the landing, where they were attracted by groans at the foot of the bank, and there found the Indian who had pitched forward when they had fired, and whom they supposed had been dragged into the boat. Instead he had rolled down the bank and partially into the water.

They picked him up and carried him up onto the gra.s.s, where the boys at once recognized him as the Siwash chief who had deserted at the head of their Indians a few days before.

An examination showed that one of the police bullets had gone through his thigh, but had not made a dangerous wound. Rand at once dressed this, at the same time having some talk with him in "pigeon." The chief could add but little in his jargon to what Dublin had already stated--that they had been met at the conjunction of the Gold and the Lewes by the desperadoes, and under cover of the rifles been compelled to return up stream. Of the narwhal's horn he refused to talk, and his wound having been dressed he was placed on the balsam boughs in the shack.

Rand and Jack at once extended the hospitalities of the camp to the mounted police, who gladly accepted the offer of the empty sod house to stable their mounts, and thus kept them from the attacks of the insect pests. They also showed extreme satisfaction at a rather elaborate camp dinner gotten up by the boys in their honor as a relief from the rather limited army rations that const.i.tuted their portion when riding over the long trails of the "beat" which they covered four times a year.

The evening was spent around the camp fire; the boys giving an account of the work that they had done since they left White Horse, and the troopers relating many wild and hazardous adventures of the lands above Winnipeg, including the forests, the posts of the Hudson Bay Company, the "land of Little Sticks," and the "Great Barrens" that stretch north to Hudson's Bay, and known as the "Silent Places" over to the west, where the Yukon begins and joins itself to Alaska. To these were added many tales of the Soudan and Indian by O'Hara, who had served in the British army.

When they retired that night the troopers refused to accept the share of the tent offered them, but taking the hammocks which they carried, from their saddlegear, fastened it to trees, and with their ponchos and mosquito nettings over them, calmly retired for the night.

It was noon the next day when Swift.w.a.ter and the Scouts with him slipped slowly down the river in their barge, and tied up to the bank. He greeted the Northwest Mounted Police with pleasure, but showed considerable perturbation when the story of the attack on the camp was related. He at once investigated the extent of the raid on the stores, and was evidently much pleased to find that although the robbers had taken considerable loot with them they had not had time to load up the parts of the machinery which they sorted out.

On Sunday afternoon the troopers took their departure, saying that they would cover the creek on their way down, and try to find out where the gang and their Indians had gone to. Swift.w.a.ter promised to follow down the creek in a few days and up the Lewes and file a formal complaint at White Horse. The "green stuff" and trout which the expedition had brought back made a most acceptable Sunday dinner, and after it was over Swift.w.a.ter gave the boys a small talk.

"I propose," said he, "to get to work to-morrow morning and erect the last and most important building of our little city in the wilderness here, and that is the cache. I'm going to hang onto this Injun we have here, although he won't be of any use to us, and take him before the Commissioner in White Horse and find out the reason for his leaving all of a sudden. If there's anything important in that ivory horn he's got I'm going to find it out for you boys and see if he can be of any use to you.

We can leave this camp shipshape in two days. We'll simply drift down the Gold, and wait at the entrance to the Lewes for the steamer up from Dawson to White Horse."

On the following Monday morning the Scouts went heartily to work, and by night had erected a rough house of planks without windows, and raised from the ground about a dozen feet on spars built in bridgework shape. Into this was conveyed all the remaining stores and the machinery, the whole being covered with heavy tarpaulins and tightly tied.

The cache was raised from the ground to prevent bears and other marauders from reaching the provisions it contained, and the shelter was sufficient for all the stuff left behind.

On Wednesday morning the tent was pulled down, the provisions necessary for their few days' journey placed aboard, the wounded chief helped into the craft, and as the boat drifted out into the stream the Creston Patrol of Scouts stood at attention, and with their bugle sounded a salute to their first camp in the wilderness.

CHAPTER XII.

ALASKA'S FIRST AIRSHIP.

The Scouts and their commander reached the mouth of the Gold early in the evening, and made camp on their old ground, the sandy spit between the two rivers. The steamer from Dawson was due some time during the night, and before they turned in they set up a red lantern on the long steering sweep as a signal. The dawn had broken when the hoa.r.s.e siren of the steamer was heard down the Lewes, and by the time all hands were awake she was backing water at the mouth of the Gold. The flat boat was quickly poled out to her, and what Swift.w.a.ter called their "dunnage" was placed aboard. Then, with the steamer's boat in tow the batteau was taken back into the mouth of the creek and securely anch.o.r.ed to the bank to be called for by Colonel Snow's men the following fall.

The trip to White Horse was uneventful, and from there the boys, after a call on Major McClintock at the Mounted Police post, where they left thanks for their rescuers, who had not yet returned from their patrol duty, took a train to Skagway. They found Colonel Snow awaiting them, and after Swift.w.a.ter had given an account of the work at the camp on the Gold, preparations were made for the journey down the Yukon to St. Michaels and the Seward Peninsula, where Colonel Snow had some further business to transact for the government. Traveling in Yukon and Alaska is expensive, but Colonel Snow had agreed to defray the expenses of the trip from Skagway to Nome in payment for the boys' services in the camp, and they had already confided to him the scheme they had in mind to make some money for themselves.

The Scouts had given every attention to detail in setting up the machine, and the apparatus had been given a tryout by frequent runs across the gra.s.s and short lifts into the air. A small grandstand had been built for the town officials and invited guests, and the Scouts attired in their khaki uniforms and broad hats acted as a reception committee and as ushers.

Swift.w.a.ter, who was to go down the Yukon to Dawson with them on his way to the Fairbanks mining district, where he proposed to carve out what he termed a new "stake," acted as box office man and ticket taker. There were nearly two thousand persons on the grounds when the boys brought out from its canvas hanger the neat double plane with its bright motor and varnished propeller. The skids had been replaced with rubber tired bicycle wheels and the controls were of the latest pattern. The machine was dressed with tiny flags, and out of compliment to the neighboring Yukon territory the British colors shared the display equally with the American flag.

The hour of the ascent was announced by a bugle call, and the boys surrounded the aeroplane to keep the crowd back, when Gerald climbed into the seat. A cleared s.p.a.ce of nearly a quarter of a mile had been reserved for him, and starting the motor he glided gently away over the gra.s.s, then lifted his forward plane and rose into the air. He lifted the plane to about two hundred feet, circled the lower end of the field and came back over the heads of the crowd. As he swept over the grand stand the astonished crowd recovered somewhat from its amazement and sent forth a mighty cheer that was added to by almost as great a throng outside the grounds. Having given the crowd an opportunity to inspect the machine at close quarters, Gerald began to mount in spirals until he reached an alt.i.tude of nearly two thousand feet, after which he headed directly for the summit of one of the lofty mountains that form the natural features of the Skagway region. It was nearly a dozen miles away, but he pa.s.sed over the intervening country at a speed of nearly sixty miles an hour, and after the lapse of about twenty minutes returned, and dropping slowly in spirals, glided gently to earth within a score of feet of the spot from which he had risen.

Soon after their return to Skagway the mysterious "piano case" was brought out of storage and unpacked, a vacant but fenced lot was rented and the first aeroplane that Alaska had ever seen was soon put together, and was in process of being tuned up.

As has been told in a previous volume, the Creston Patrol of Boy Scouts had become fairly proficient airmen, having constructed a glider which in a contest had won for them a motor with which they later equipped an airship. Gerald, especially, had shown himself a most capable and courageous aviator, and only a short time before coming to Alaska had received from the Aeronautical Society his license as a full fledged air pilot. Needless to say their exhibition was the notable event of the year, and it added as well a goodly sum to the boys' exchequer.

Citizens and visitors were delighted with the exhibition, and begged for another day of the same thing, but Colonel Snow was anxious to be on his way to the Klondike country, and could not allow the boys more time. The sum realized was not only satisfactory to the town officials, but the share coming to the boys went a considerable way toward providing funds for their trip down the Yukon.