The Young Alaskans on the Trail Part 21

XVIII

BAD LUCK WITH THE "MARY ANN"

Alex now went down to the boats and began to rearrange the cargo, from which the boys saw that in his belief it was best to continue the journey that evening, although it now was growing rather late.

Evidently he was for running down ahead of the flood-water if any such should come, although it seemed to all of them that after all they need have no great fear, for the river had risen little if any since morning.

They determined to put the big bear hide in the _Mary Ann_, and shifted some of the burden of that boat to the _Jaybird_, folding up the long hide and putting it at the bottom of the canoe under the thwarts, so that the weight would come as low as possible. When the _Mary Ann_ had received the rest of her necessary cargo she showed most of her bundles and packages above the gunwale, and Alex looked at the two boats a little dubiously, even after Moise had carried down to the dugout of his cousins such of the joint supplies as even his liberality thought proper.

"We'll try her, anyhow," said Alex, taking a look up the river, which came rolling down, tawny now, and not white and green in its colors.

So saying, they pushed off.

They must, at this camp, have been somewhere between twelve and twenty miles east of the mouth of the Parle Pas rapids, and they had made perhaps a dozen miles more that evening when they began to come to a place where again the mountains approached the stream closely. Here they could not see out at all from their place at the foot of the high banks which hedged them in. At nightfall they encamped in a wild region which seemingly never had known the foot of man. The continuous rush of the waters and the gloom of the overhanging forests now had once more that depressing effect which sometimes is not unknown even to seasoned _voyageurs_. Had they been asked, the young travelers must truthfully have replied that they would be glad when at last the mountains were pa.s.sed and the prairie country to the eastward reached.

On the next day they continued among the high hills for several hours, although at length the river expanded into a wide reach which gave them a little free paddling. In such contractions of the stream as they met it seemed to them that the rocks were larger, the water deeper, and each hour becoming more powerful than it had been.

Advancing cautiously, they perhaps had covered thirty miles when they came to a part of the stream not more than three hundred yards wide, where the current was very smooth but of considerable velocity. Below this the mountains crowded still closer in to the stream, seeming to rise almost directly from the edge of the banks and to tower nearly two thousand feet in height.

"We must be getting close to the big portage now," said Rob to Moise, as they reached this part of the river.

"Yes," said Moise, "pretty soon no more water we'll could ron."

Moise's speech was almost prophetic. In less than half an hour after that moment they met with the first really serious accident of the entire journey, and one which easily might have resulted disastrously to life as well as to property.

They were running a piece of water where a flat rapid dropped down without much disturbance toward a deep bend where the current swung sharply to the right. A little island was at one side, on which there had been imbedded the roots of a big tree, which had come down as driftwood. The submerged branch of this tree, swinging up and down in the violent current, made one of the dangerous "sweepers" which canoemen dread. Both Rob and Moise thought there was plenty of room to get by, but just as they cleared the basin-like foot of the rapid the _Mary Ann_ suddenly came to a stop, hard and fast amidships, on a naked limb of the tree which had been hidden in the discolored waters at the time.

As is usual in all such accidents, matters happened very quickly. The first thing they knew the boat was lifted almost bodily from the water. There was the cracking noise of splintering wood, and an instant later, even as the white arm of the tree sunk once more into the water, the _Mary Ann_ sunk down, weak and shattered, her back broken square across, although she still was afloat and free.

Rob gave a sudden shout of excitement and began to paddle swiftly to the left, where the bank was not far away. Moise joined him, and they reached the sh.o.r.e none too soon, their craft half full of water, for not only had the keel to the lower ribs of the boat been shattered by the weight thus suspended amidships, but the sheathing had been ripped and torn across, so that when they dragged the poor _Mary Ann_ up the beach she was little more than the remnant of herself.

The others, coming down the head of the rapid a couple of hundred yards to the rear, saw this accident, and now paddled swiftly over to join the shipwrecked mariners, who luckily had made the sh.o.r.e.

"It's bad, boys," said Rob, hurrying down to catch the prow of the _Jaybird_ as she came alongside. "Just look at that!"

They all got out now and discharged the cargo of the _Mary Ann_, including the heavy grizzly hide, which very likely was the main cause of the accident, its weight having served to fracture the stout fabric of the plucky little boat. When they turned her over the case looked rather hopeless.

"She's smashed almost to her rail," said Rob, "and we've broken that already. It's that old grizzly hide that did it, I'm sure. We lit fair on top of that 'sweeper,' and our whole weight was almost out of the water when it came up below us. Talk about the power of water, I should say you could see it there, all right--it's ripped our whole ship almost in two! I don't see how we can fix it up this time."

Moise by this time had lighted his pipe, yet he did not laugh, as he usually did, but, on the contrary, shook his head at Alex.

"Maybe so we'll could fix heem," was all he would venture.

"Well, one thing certain," said Rob, "we'll have to go into camp right here, even if it isn't late."

"Did you have any fun in the other rapids above here?" asked John of Rob.

"No," said Rob; "it was all easy. We've run a dozen or twenty a lot worse than this one. Not even the Parle Pas hurt us. Then I come in here, head paddler, and I run my boat on a 'sweeper' in a little bit of an easy drop like this. It makes me feel pretty bad, I'll tell you that!"

They walked about the boat with hands in pockets, looking gloomy, for they were a little bit doubtful, since Moise did not know, whether they could repair the _Mary Ann_ into anything like working shape again.

Alex, as usual, made little comment and took things quietly. They noticed him standing and looking intently down the river across the near-by bend.

"I see it too," said Rob. "Smoke!"

The old hunter nodded, and presently walked on down the beach to have a look at the country below, leaving Moise to do what he could with the broken boat. The boys joined Alex.

Presently they saw, not far around the bend, a long dugout canoe pulled up on the beach. Near by was a little fire, at which sat two persons, an old man and a younger one. They did not rise as the visitors approached, but answered quietly when Alex spoke to them in Cree.

XIX

NEW PLANS

"These men say," interpreted Alex, as he turned to the boys, "that it's sixteen to twenty miles from here to the end of the portage out of the hills, across the north bank, which cuts off the thirty miles of canon that n.o.body ever tries to run. They say for a little way the river is wide, with many islands, but below that it narrows down and gets very bad. They're tracking stuff up-stream from the portage to a surveyors' camp which depends on their supplies. They say they will not sell their canoe, because they couldn't get up-stream, but that if we can get east of the portage there's a man, a sort of farmer, somewhere below there, who has a boat which perhaps he would sell."

"What good would that do us?" demanded John. "A boat twenty or thirty miles east of here across the mountains isn't going to help us very much. What we want is a boat now, and I don't see how we can get along without it. Won't they sell their canoe?"

"No, they don't want to sell it," said Alex; "they say they're under employment, and must get through to the camp from Hudson's Hope on time. We couldn't portage a dugout, anyhow. But they say that we can go on up there with them if we like, and then come back and go around by the portage. What do you say, Mr. Rob?"

Rob answered really by his silence and his tight-shut jaw. "Well,"

said he, "at least I don't much care about turning back on a trail.

But we'll have to split here, I think, unless we all go into camp. But part of us can go on through by the river, and the rest come on later.

Maybe we can _cache_ some of our luggage here, and have it brought on across by these men, if they're going back to Hudson's Hope."

"That sounds reasonable," said Alex, nodding. "I believe we can work it out."

He turned and spoke rapidly in Cree to the two travelers, with many gestures, pointing both up and down the stream, all of them talking eagerly and at times vehemently.

"They say," said Alex at last, "there's a place at the foot of the high bank above the canon head where two or three men might be able to get a boat up to the carrying trail, although the landing is little used to-day. But they say if we could get across to the east end of the canon they could send men down by the trail after that other boat.

They don't think we can get our boat across. They say they'll find us in a few days, they think, somewhere on the portage. They ask us if they can have what's left of our canoe. They say they'll take two dollars a day and grub if we want them to work for us. They don't say that no man could make the portage below here, but don't think we could do it with our crew. Well, what do you say now, Mr. Rob?"

"Why, it's all as easy as a fiddle-string," said Rob. "I'll tell you how we'll fix it. Jess, you and Moise go with these men on up to the surveyors' camp, and back down to Hudson's Hope--you can take enough grub to last you around, and you know that water is easy now. Alex and John and I will still have enough grub to last us through to the east side of the Rockies--we're almost through now. It might be rather hard work for Jess. The best way for him is to keep with Moise, who'll take good care of him, and it's more fun to travel than to loaf in camp.

For the rest of us, I say we ought to go through, because we started to go through. We all know where we are now. Moise will bring the men and supplies around to meet us at the east side. Even if we didn't meet," he said to Jesse, "and if you and Moise got left alone, it would be perfectly simple for you to go on through to Peace River Landing, two or three hundred miles, to where you will get word of Uncle d.i.c.k. There are wagon-trails and steamboats and all sorts of things when you once get east of the mountains, so there's no danger at all. In fact, our trip is almost done right where we stand here--the hardest part is behind us. Now, Jess, if you don't feel hard about being asked to go back up the river, or to stay here till these men come back down-stream, that's the way it seems best to me."

"I'm not so anxious as all that to go on down this river," grinned Jesse. "It isn't getting any better. Look at what it did to the old _Mary Ann_ up there."

"Well, the main thing is not to get lonesome," said Rob, "and to be sure there's no danger. We'll get through, some time or somewhere.

Only don't get uneasy, that's all. You ought to get around to us in a couple of days after you start on the back trail. How does it look to you, Alex?"

The old hunter nodded his approval. "Yes," said he; "I think the three of us will take the _Jaybird_ loaded light and run down to the head of the mountain without much trouble. I don't hear of anything particularly nasty down below here until you get nearly to the gorge. I think we had better hire these two breeds for a time, put them on pay from the time they start up the river with Moise and Mr. Jess. They say they would like to go with Mr. Jess for their 'bourgeois'--that's 'boss,' you know. They also say," he added, smiling, "that they would very much like to have some sugar and tea."

After a time Alex rose, beckoned to the two breeds, and they all went back up the beach to the place where Moise by this time was building his camp-fire and spreading out the cargo of the _Mary Ann_ to dry.