CHAPTER XXIIIHUNGER
Nature! Theywere to discover during the days that followed that she was no mean antagonist. At first everything went delightfully; the sun warmed and cheered them by day; the stars whispered at night. The moon was swallowed up in the dawn now. On the shortest night of the year there was scarcely any darkness; then the nights began to lengthen imperceptibly. They rode and spelled and rode again. They built great fires. The character of the country never changed. The sea of green grass seemed to be limitless.
On the third day the horse that Conacher rode sickened mysteriously. On the following morning it was incapable of bearing him. Loseis shook her head ominously.
“It is a sort of distemper that attacks them in the summer,” she said. “He will be sick for weeks. We might as well leave him. The others may catch it from him.”
So Conacher was obliged to set out on foot. The sick horse screamed piteously upon being left behind; and attempted to follow; but fell down in the grass, where he lay struggling feebly and watching them with raised head until they passed out of sight. They could not now hope to make more than thirty or forty miles a day, though all took turns in riding. And still there was no suggestion of their approach to a great river. The prairie rolled on as before. As far as Conacher could tell they had not yet even passed the crown of the watershed. They all had their sickening moments of doubt. Suppose there was no river?
Loseis’ worst prognostications were fulfilled. The other two horses sickened. By the sixth day they were all on foot. Mary-Lou’s moccasins wore through; and they had nothing out of which to make new ones. Fortunately both Loseis and Conacher wore boots. The prairie which looked so smooth made rough walking for humans, and their progress was cut down, Conacher figured, to between twenty and twenty-miles [missing or incorrect word] a day. The eighth day passed without any sign of the river of promise. Conacher estimated that they had covered nearly three hundred miles.
They had met with no game on the prairie except the ubiquitous chickens. Conacher was averse to wasting his precious bullets on such small fowl—it is very easy to miss a prairie chicken with a rifle; consequently they had depended on the meat and fish brought by Mary-Lou. On the seventh day it was exhausted, and they ate chicken. On that miserable eighth day some bad fairy waved a wand, and the chicken disappeared from the prairie. During the entire day Conacher did not obtain a shot. Consequently they went supperless to bed.
He was up at sunrise, ranging the prairie while the girls slept. But with no luck. There was nothing living in sight except the gophers who gained the shelter of their burrows ere he could come close enough to hope to hit them with his clumsy gun. In desperation he did shoot at gophers at last, only to plug the earth. When he returned to camp, the girls, having heard the sound of his gun, awaited him with anticipatory smiles, and he had the bitterness of showing them his empty hands. There was no breakfast.
On this first morning it was easy to turn it into a joke.
“Anyway, I’m sick of meat,” said Loseis.
“My people lak go ’ongry for awhile,” said Mary-Lou. “Mak’ the big feed taste better bam-bye.”
“Well, it’ll save a lot of time,” said Conacher with a sheepish grin. He felt responsible for their plight.
They set forth briskly enough; but were very glad to rest when mid-morning came. All of them were now feeling very painful gnawings, but they concealed it from each other. Conacher prowled over the prairie in vain. They listlessly resumed their march.
During the course of the afternoon they came unexpectedly to the lip of a deep coulee with a trickle of water in the bottom. To Conacher’s dismay it proved to be flowing in a southerly direction. This was exactly opposite to what he expected. It was against all the theories as to the lay of this unexplored land, and he was ready to despair. However, there was nothing to do but to keep on the way they were going.
An hour later they crossed it again. The water was now flowing north, and Conacher’s mind was somewhat relieved. Upon this second crossing they found more water than before in the streamlet, and a fringe of spruce trees, the first grown trees they had seen since leaving Blackburn’s River. They also found, what was more important to them, berry-bushes, and a patch of wild strawberries. Only the strawberries were ripe. Before eating any, they carefully collected them in their little cooking pot, and scrupulously divided them. There was about a cupful apiece.
The berries were deliciously refreshing; but they seemed to have the effect of still further sharpening the pangs of hunger. They searched far up and down the coulee for more, but in vain. It was an isolated patch of trees and bushes.
“Let us get on,” Conacher kept urging the girls. “We must reach a game country before our strength fails.”
They wearily climbed the steep side of the coulee to the endless rolling prairie again, that they now hated. On this day they suffered a keener pain from hunger than during the days that followed. All three became tight-lipped and silent. Their limbs were leaden; and progress was painfully slow. Twice more they crossed the coulee. No more trees or berries. It was now evident that the general course of the little stream was northwest, which was in line with Conacher’s calculations. It was undoubtedly a tributary of the big river they were seeking: but whether the river were ten miles or a hundred miles further, it was impossible to tell. It was exasperating in their fatigued condition to climb in and out of the steep coulee so many times: but even so they made better time than they could have done by following it throughout its crazy windings.
Seeing more spruce trees, they descended into it to spend the night, but found no berries here. They heaped a great fire and made themselves soft beds of spruce boughs: but their empty stomachs refused to be assuaged by these luxuries. Mary-Lou cut three small strips from the top of one of her worn-out moccasins, and boiled them, and handed them around.
“Chew,” she said. “It will stop the pains anyhow.”
Afterwards a curious false strength seemed to come to them. They felt no desire to sleep, but sat up for hours around their fire under the spruces, talking animatedly with flushed faces and bright eyes.
“When I was a kid,” said Conacher, “I had a grand-uncle in New York, who was a great old high-liver. Never thought about anything but eats. He knew all the best restaurants in the city, and what was the proper thing to order in each place. He took me out to dinner a couple of times when I was a boy. Once we went to Delmonico’s. I have never forgotten what we ate that day. First oysters. I suppose you don’t know oysters, Loseis. Well, they are the best eating there is. Slip down your throat like velvet. Then a thick soup that was called potage Mongole. God knows what was in it. It was a combination of all the most delicious flavors you ever knew. Then there was something that was called Tournedos Henri Quatre. It was like beef, but it was the sauce that made all the difference. The French are wizards for sauces. We ended up with mince pie; good old American mince pie; and there’s nothing better! Oh, what a feed that was!”
“The best thing I ever tasted,” said Loseis vivaciously, “was roast pig. Three years ago Jim Cornwall came through from the Crossing with dogs, and brought my father a little frozen pig on his sled for Christmas. We thawed him out and roasted him until his hide crackled. Oh, my dear! the smell alone would drive you crazy; and the taste was better than anything in the world. I can taste him now! Do you member, Mary-Lou?”
“I remember,” said Mary-Lou, closing her eyes. “I did taste that pig meat. It was sweeter than young porcupine; it was sweeter than moose-nose or the back-fat of caribou; it was sweeter than all meat.”
“And do you remember?” asked Loseis, “when they stuck the knife into him how a little stream of juicy fat ran down?”
“We soaked it up with bread,” said Mary-Lou.
The subject was inexhaustible. They discussed it with anxious, drawn, eager faces. It never occurred to them to laugh at each other or at themselves. When they finally slept they dreamed of feasting.
Another day of misery followed no different from the day before, except that the pangs of hunger were less sharp and more enervating. It was hard to keep walking. It nearly broke Conacher’s heart to see the boyish Loseis pressing on with set face, quite unconscious of how she was staggering in her tracks. He took the second gun from her. She fought like a little spitfire to regain it, weeping out of anger and weakness. Her anger smoldered all the rest of the day, making the way even more bitter. Mary-Lou stood starvation better than either of the whites. They found another tantalizing patch of berries; and wasted hours looking for more. As on the night before, their supper consisted of a small strip of boiled hide apiece.
On the third day of starvation it seemed a wonder that they were able to move at all. Nevertheless they staggered on for a few miles. To add to their miseries it rained copiously; and their blankets soaked up some additional pounds of water. All day a division existed between Conacher and Loseis that was harder to bear than starvation. It was due to nothing in the world but compassion. It made each tender heart rage to behold the misery of the other. Especially Conacher’s, because he told himself that no woman ought to be subjected to such an ordeal. He supposed from Loseis’ black looks that she was blaming him for having led her into this, and he was ready to blow his brains out.
The little stream having received a tributary from the south, flowed with increased speed and volume. It now held a fairly straight course for the northwest; and it became evident that the whole country was sloping gently in that direction. The walls of the coulee gradually became higher; in the bottom it was now continuously wooded; but they felt too weak to climb down for a few berries. These changes in the country suggested that they were approaching the bottom of the watershed, and at midday from a rise in the prairie, Conacher at last beheld a blue shadow athwart the westerly horizon which indicated the valley of a considerable river. It seemed like a mockery now. It was a good twenty-five miles distant, and in their weakened state that was half a world away.
At the end of the day they made a detour from the coulee to visit a small slough and a poplar bluff that they had marked from a rise. It was a likely place to find bear. There was no bear, but the water of the slough was sweet, and they determined to spend the night in that spot. Will it be our last camp? Conacher thought with dread in his heart. The sky was still threatening, and he constructed an inclined thatch of poplar leaves, with a fire in front for the girls. They chewed their strips of boiled hide. This finished one moccasin, except for the ragged lower part, that Mary-Lou had bound round her foot. Afterwards, when Loseis, with a cold face, turned to seek her blanket, Conacher felt that he could bear no more.
“Loseis . . . !” he murmured heart-brokenly.
Mary-Lou vanished away amongst the little trees.
“What is it?” asked Loseis coldly.
“I cannot bear it . . . !”
“What?”
“Your look! . . . Forgive me!”
“For what must I forgive you?”
“I don’t know. Whatever it is that I have done that angers you. For getting you into this scrape.”
Her face looked very small and pinched. It worked curiously with anger. Her voice came unnaturally sharp: “Forgive you! What sort of talk is this? Are you trying to make me feel worse than I feel already? Aren’t you satisfied with doing most of the work, and walking twice as far to hunt, and carrying a double load, but you must make me feel what a burden I am by asking me to forgive you!”
He only dimly understood the torment of this proud nature. “But Loseis . . . !” he protested, staring, “this is foolishness . . . !”
“Of course! of course! of course! I am a fool! That is well understood!”
“Listen to me,” he said doggedly. “You say I carry too heavy a burden. Why add to it with your cold and angry looks? The weight of two guns is nothing to me. It is your hard eyes that break me down.”
Loseis’ reply was to burst into tears.
He took her in his arms. “Don’t you love me any more?” he whispered.
She crept within his arms, but she abused him still. “You fool! it is because I love you so, that I am always angry. It drives me wild to think that I should spoil the life of a man like you!”
“But that’s nonsense!” said Conacher. “I am nothing in particular. A man only has one life. How could he spend it better? We shall go together. What else matters . . . Don’t you feel better now?”
“A little bit,” she admitted. “But to-morrow I shall be angry with you again. You are too good and patient. If you turned hateful I should feel better. It would even things up a little.”
“You’re a funny one!” he murmured.
However, the airwascleared; and they rolled up in their blankets with a bit of comfort at their hearts.
When Conacher awoke next morning a light rain was drifting down. He pulled his blanket closer around him. Lying there like that one did not suffer; it was warm; the pangs of hunger did not make themselves felt; a comfortable numbness filled the frame. But the thought of getting up was hideous. For a long time he lay struggling with it. Useless for him to tell himself that he was the head of the party; the girls were dependent on him; it was up to him to find them food; he felt that hecould notget up; the effort was too great.
In the end he had to get up. The first few moments were the worst. He stood in the rain, swaying and nauseated, a black mist swimming before his eyes. Each morning it was much worse. If he could conquer this first weakness, he could go on through the day—but to-morrow morning! He shook that thought away. He forced himself to walk up and down, supporting himself by the little trees. After awhile he felt better. Picking up his gun, he started on his hopeless circuit of the bluff.
He paused in front of the little shelter he had constructed for the girls. They slept. Loseis was lying with her head pillowed on Mary-Lou’s shoulder like a child. In her weakness she looked entirely the child, the sick child. At the sight of those transparent cheeks and bluish eyelids, Conacher’s breast was wrung with agony. The worst of overcoming the physical weakness was, that one then began to think again, with horrible clearness. How could he ask this exhausted child to go on any further? She was dearer to him than his life. Would it not be kinder to end her sufferings while she slept? She opened her eyes, and smiled at him enchantingly. That smile capped his agony. Swallowing the groan that was forced up by his breast, he smiled back, and staggered on.
Like all the prairie sloughs, this one lay in a dish-like depression surrounded by a shallow rim of grass. Conacher had made half his round of the bluff, when over this rim at a distance of about a hundred yards appeared a lumbering black body of an astonishing bigness. For an instant he thought his senses were failing him; he began to tremble violently; but he quickly realized that it was a veritable bear. A bear’s eye-sight is not very keen, and the animal had not seen him. He drew back amongst the little trees, struggling to control his excitement. Youcan notmiss him! he kept telling himself.
The bear was evidently making for the bluff to breakfast off poplar bark. Conacher realized with a pang that he was directly in the wind of the animal. The bear was in no hurry. He turned aside to snuff and scratch at the roots of a clump of roses. He was the largest black bear that Conacher had ever seen. The big head was dwarfed by his mighty rump. His black pelt was grayed with moisture. The man’s mouth watered ridiculously. The bear turned towards him, and his heart began to thump. Then the animal changed his mind, and sauntered around the rim of the bench. Conacher, stepping with infinite care, kept pace with him amongst the little trees.
The bear disappeared over the edge of the rim, and Conacher’s heart almost broke. Should I go after him? he asked himself. No! he is bound to come to the bluff and the slough. The animal reappeared and hope flared up anew. He was heading towards the bluff again. He was no longer directly in Conacher’s wind, consequently the chance of getting him was better. But the deliberation of the beast well-nigh maddened the man. Bruin stood gazing off to the east as if he were debating the choice between this and some other feeding ground. He sat up on his haunches, and licked his paws. Finally he came lumbering towards the trees in a businesslike manner. Conacher raised his gun.
Before the bear had made half the distance that separated them, though Conacher had not moved, the animal’s mysterious instinct warned him of the presence of danger. He stopped with a woof! of alarm, and turning in his tracks, galloped back for the shelter of the rim. Conacher fired. The bear’s broad beam offered him a goodly mark, and he knew by the tremor that went through the animal that he had hit him: but it was not in a vulnerable spot. He galloped on without a pause. He disappeared over the encircling rim of grass. A voice seemed to cry inside Conacher: “You have lost your last chance!”
He found strength to run as if he had not been starved for four days. As he topped the rise, he saw the bear lying in the grass a hundred feet away; and a great, calm thankfulness filled his breast. It was all right! The animal was not dead, but disabled in his hind quarters. He lay with his head between his paws awaiting the end. Conacher dispatched him with a bullet through the brain.
Crying out: “A bear! I’ve got him!” Conacher dropped to his knees, and started instanter to skin his prey. Presently Mary-Lou who was more skillful at this job than he, relieved him. Loseis stood looking on like a happy little ghost. They could not wait to skin the bear entire; but cut off a piece of meat, and ran back to the fire with it.
Conacher kept saying over and over like an old woman: “Mind! Mind! Only a little piece at first, or it will make you sick!”
“If there is meat, why not eat?” grumbled Mary-Lou.
Nevertheless she obeyed; and at first only three tiny pieces were set upon pointed sticks to roast over the fire. It may be guessed that they were notverywell cooked before they were eaten. Conacher and Loseis nibbled them to make them go as far as possible. Mary-Lou saw no sense at all in this proceeding, but loyally followed their example.
“Is that all?” said Loseis wistfully.
“Mary-Lou could put some small pieces in the pot and boil them,” suggested Conacher. “The soup would be good for you.”
“Soup!” said Loseis, making a face.
“Well, by and by we will roast another little piece. To-morrow, if you feel all right, you can eat all you want.”
There was no question of moving on that day. They ate a little more; slept; and ate again. Conacher and Loseis sat happily side by side under the shelter of the leaves, watching Mary-Lou cut off thin slabs of the meat, and hang them in the smoke of the fire. The Indian girl also contrived moccasins for herself out of squares of the hide.
Next morning they awoke with bounding pulses as if they had never known what it was to starve. At breakfast time they feasted without stint. Their cheeks seemed to have filled out over night; their eyes were bright; their teeth gleaming. There was something so comical in the sight of this abrupt transformation, that they continually burst out laughing with their mouths full at the sight of each other’s joy.
They set out again laden with as much meat as they could carry.
CHAPTER XXIVDOWNSTREAM
Asthey descended by imperceptible degrees towards the river, they could no longer make out the line of its valley ahead. The bald-headed prairie now began to take on a parklike aspect. Groups of graceful, full-grown poplars with their greenish yellow bark became more and more numerous, gradually leading them into a well-grown forest of aspen trees, interspersed with spruce. But there were still grassy openings of all sizes, from pretty glades to miniature prairies. Through the trackless forest it was very slow going; giant raspberry bushes, now in blossom, barred the way; rotting trunks lay prone in every direction; and vivid moss treacherously masked the holes where the ancient stems had rotted clean out of the ground.
As the afternoon wore on, and there was no end to this, no sign of any river, a feeling of discouragement attacked them again. Could they have been mistaken? And then without warning, they issued out of the trees on to a grassy knoll; and there, with a magnificent effect of dramatic surprise, lay the long-sought river at their very feet.
It was a thrilling moment. That view, so cunningly masked by the belt of forest, was one of the finest views imaginable. It was a first-class river. It flowed in the bottom of a valley at least six hundred feet deep, and no more than half a mile across from rim to rim. From the opposite rim, the prairie rolled on to the horizon. It was not so much a valley as a deep, clean gash in the prairie. The side upon which they stood was mantled with the deep green of spruce, while the other side rolled up in fantastic knobs and terraces of buffalo grass.
The river poured a smooth, yellowish green flood through the bottom of this mighty trough; just the color of poplar bark. It was broken by several high islands, covered with spruce trees, which stemmed the current like majestic ships. The point upon which they stood was on the outside of a great bend, and they could look far up-stream, where the river seemed to flatten out, and to issue dazzling and molten from the afternoon sun itself.
Conacher’s first thought was: “Plenty of water! I’ll be able to make a raft. We’ll have some easy days now.”
They gazed at the noble prospect with full hearts. Conacher in particular was bursting with pride. He felt like the creator of that river, because they had found it where he had said it would be.
“We happen to have hit it just right,” he said with a transparent air of carelessness. “In years to come when there is a trail it will strike the river here. Above here, you see, it flows east of north, and at this point it swings around to the westward. That agrees with the Indian reports. It is the only river east of the Rockies that has a westward trend.”
“It is too beautiful to be called the Mud River,” said Loseis.
“After this it shall be Laurentia’s River.”
“Suppose there are rapids,” suggested the matter-of-fact Mary-Lou.
“It will probably flow smooth for two hundred miles,” said Conacher. “Then it will strike the limestone outcrop that crosses the whole country. We’ll find rapids, maybe cascades, there.”
“And we are the first whites to see it!” murmured Loseis.
“If I can bring him a good sketch map of it, it will put my boss in a good humor,” said Conacher.
They made their way down to the water’s edge; and chose a camping spot on a curious tongue of land pointing downstream. At the highest stage of water it was an island; but it was now connected with the shore by a bar of dried mud. On one side of them the resistless brown flood swept down silently, its silken surface etched with eddies; on the other side there was a quiet back-water which Conacher said would be ideal for constructing the raft. He spent the remaining hours of daylight in searching for the three big, dead trees that he required for that purpose.
They slept in great comfort on heaps of spruce boughs, with a generous fire between them. Even in July the nights were cold. In the silence of the night they discovered that the smoothly flowing river had a voice. It was neither a roar nor a whisper, but partook of the nature of both sounds. Though scarcely audible, it was tremendous; like the breathing and stirring of a mighty bed-fellow.
The entire following day was devoted to the construction of the raft. Conacher cut down his trees; lopped off the branches; and chopped the trunks in two. He then launched his logs, and floated them together. During the earlier stages of his labor, he was often obliged to wade thigh deep into the icy water. Since he had neither spikes to fasten the logs, nor rope to lash them together, he was forced patiently to burn holes in them with his ramrod, heated in the fire. Twenty-four such holes had to be burned; and twelve neatly fitting wooden pegs shaped with the ax. Two short lengths were laid across the six logs and pegged down. The peg at each corner was allowed to stick up a few inches. A flooring of poles was then laid on the crosspieces to keep the passengers and their slender baggage dry. These poles were not fastened down, but were held in place by the pegs at each corner. Conacher’s last act was to burn a hole in each of the outside logs into which he drove a stout forked branch to serve as a rowlock. The oars were merely small spruce poles flattened with the ax at the broad end.
The builder surveyed his completed effort with a pride that was difficult to conceal. “After all this work,” he said with his offhand air, “I shall be good and sore if we have to abandon it in a few miles.”
“It is beautiful!” said Loseis.
For a touch of bravura Conacher made a little hearth of clay tiled with flat stones on one end of his raft; and laid a fire ready to light. “So we can boil our meat as we travel,” he explained.
“It is like a steamboat!” said Loseis.
They turned in early; and were ready to push off soon after sunrise the following morning. This was the fourteenth morning after their departure from the slough where their enemies had turned back. The raft proved to possess ample buoyancy; they could move about on it with a certain freedom. The floor of poles held them safely above danger of a wetting. Mary-Lou lighted the fire, and put the breakfast on to cook.
Loseis and Conacher sculled out of the back-water. At the foot of the island the current seized them as in a giant hand and drew them along. They took their oars inboard. There was nothing further to do. The tendency of the current itself was to draw them into the center of the stream, and keep them there. They sat down on their blankets to survey the scenery. The raft gyrated slowly in the eddies, giving them views up and down stream without so much as having to turn their heads.
“This is better than walking,” said Conacher.
Loseis agreed that it was; nevertheless she looked with some trepidation to see what each new bend of the unknown river had to show.
Conacher assured her on the word of a geologist that as long as it ran between dirt banks there could be no serious obstruction to navigation; when rocks appeared, then look out! He had note-book and compass out to make memoranda of its course. He calculated that the current was running about five miles an hour.
The sun was hot to-day; basking deliciously in its rays, the girl fell into a comfortable doze. The scenery was beautiful and monotonous; they looked at it, only partly aware of what they were looking at, a half smile fixed on their lips. Thus they recuperated from the fatigues of the past few days. Since the raft did not move through the water, but with the water, it came to seem as if it was not moving at all. The raft was the fixed point, and the shores were being slowly rolled past them like a panorama on great spools.
This pleasant dream was rudely broken into by the sound of a hoarse roar downstream.
“Rapid!” said Mary-Lou, moving towards an oar.
Loseis looked reproachfully at Conacher.
They edged the raft close inshore where they could land quickly if need be.
“Let’s have a look at it before you call me a liar,” said Conacher.
Rounding the outside of a bend, they came in view of the white horses leaping below. An exclamation of fear broke from the girls. Conacher caught hold of a fallen tree to stay their progress while he studied the white water.
“Nothing but a riffle,” he announced. “Its bark is worse than its bite. This is a sharper bend than usual, and it’s just the water backing up on the outside that makes all the fuss. Notice that all the waves are regular and unbroken. Deep water. It will be perfectly safe to run it if you are willing.”
“All right if you say so,” said Loseis.
They cast off from their tree. Conacher and Mary-Lou each stood up with an oar, and Loseis crouched behind them.
“Head for the roughest part near the shore,” said Conacher, “and keep her straight; that’s all.”
Their hearts beat fast as the shores began to slip by with ever-increasing swiftness. The voice of the rapid was like that of a ravening beast. There is no other feeling quite like that upon the brink of a rapid. The feeling is: No power on earth can save me from it now—well, what the hell! They were gripped by an exquisite fear. Finally the heavy raft wriggled over the first and the biggest of those strange, fixed billows and stuck her nose in the trough. A sheet of spray flew back over them, whereupon they were seized by a mad exhilaration, and all three yelled like demons. The raft bucked over the short, steep billows like a rogue horse. Conacher and Mary-Lou were forced to their knees; and the latter lost her oar. A moment later they found themselves in smooth water, roaring with laughter.
As soon as they had eaten their supper that night, they pushed off again. The girls slept while Conacher watched throughout the long twilight. The sunset glow alternated with the cold eastern sky as the raft waltzed gracefully in the eddies. They grounded her on a bar during the few hours of darkness; and at dawn they pushed off again; the girls watching now while Conacher slept. He awakened in the sunshine to find them laughing at the antics of the bears on the steep banks.
For three days they traveled in this pleasant fashion. Mooseberries and black currants were ripening now. The bushes grew thickly along the edges of the water and wherever there were berries there were bears. Drifting down silently on the raft, Conacher could always get a shot in the early mornings. The berries made a welcome change from a diet of meat exclusively.
As they traveled north the steep high banks gradually flattened down, and the current of the river slackened. Finally the high banks disappeared altogether; they could see nothing over the tops of the poplars and pines that lined the water’s edge. The course of the stream became very tortuous, and progress was slow.
“We’re evidently coming to something,” Conacher remarked. “This country is a vast belt of silt deposited by the river as the result of some obstruction ahead.”
On the fourth day the obstruction appeared in the form of a low wall of limestone through which the river had finally succeeded in forcing a passage. The rock walls were but three or four feet high, and the river slipped between them very swiftly and smoothly with a curious growling sound. On the other side the whole character of the country was changed. Rock appeared everywhere; and the lush vegetation of the prairies was gone.
They had not gone far before they came to a rapid, a real rapid this one, with great bowlders sticking up out of it, that tore the current to white tatters. Landing at a safe distance above, they walked down along the shore to see if there was a possible channel through. Conacher was naturally averse to abandoning the raft which had cost him such pains.
After a little study, he pointed out to the girls how it might be done. “It would be foolish, though, to risk the guns and ammunition and the ax. You girls carry the things along the shore, and I’ll take the raft down.”
“Suppose you hit a rock?” said Loseis, paling.
“Why, I’d get a ducking, that’s all.”
He accomplished the feat without accident. To the watching Loseis he made an extraordinarily gallant figure, standing on the raft, braced and swaying to every movement; his resolute glance fixed ahead, while he paddled madly to steer it around obstructions.
In the next rapid, an hour or so later, he was not so fortunate. The raft, in spite of his efforts, slid up on a submerged shelf of rock, and rearing on end, flung the loose poles in every direction. Conacher, jumping clear of the wreck, went down with the current. The frame of the raft followed him down; and he contrived to bring it ashore below; and the paddle too. With some new poles the raft was as good as ever.
However, the rapids seemed to grow successively worse; and Loseis forbade him to risk his neck in the next one. They sent the raft down empty. After a mad voyage, battered back and forth on the bowlders, it came through minus its poles, somewhat loosened up but still practicable. They then camped for the night.
On the following day they were nosing along close to the shore with the disquieting roar of a rapid in their ears, but apparently still at some distance. The view down river was cut off by a low, stony hill, sparsely covered with trees, around the base of which the stream wound its way. Suddenly Conacher perceived that the current was sucking ominously along-shore. That part of the shore was much cumbered with old down trees. He drove the raft into the naked branches.
“Grab hold!” he said sharply to the girls.
They missed the first tree. Fine beads of perspiration broke out on Conacher’s forehead. He perceived that in a dozen yards the raft would be beyond his control. He seized the next overhanging branch, and wound a leg around his improvised oarlock to hold the raft. The girls were now fully alive to the danger. Mary-Lou climbed into the tree, and Loseis swiftly passed her their precious few belongings. When everything was ashore Conacher let the raft go, and it lumbered around the point with surprising swiftness.
“That’s the last of it,” said Conacher sadly.
They climbed the stony hill. As they rounded the top, a hoarse, throaty bellowing buffeted their ears; and a moment later a wild welter of white water was spread before their eyes. They had seen nothing like this. After rounding the hill the stream straightened out, and narrowing down to a quarter of its usual width tumbled down as steeply as a flight of stairs between high wooded banks. The impression of power was overwhelming. The water was forced into great, regular billows which looked to be fifteen feet high. Each billow or ridge of water converged to a point in the middle; and the effect as one looked downstream was of a series of blunt white arrows pointing up. No boat could have lived in that turmoil. The raft—or what was left of it—was already out of sight. The three looked at each other with scared and thankful faces. A close call!
They now had to adjust their minds to traveling on foot again—and this would not be anything like the rolling prairie! The first thing was to roll up their packs, and strap them on their backs. They then descended into the gorge; but found it impossible to make headway along the steep side, impeded with stones and down timber. They were forced to climb a hundred feet or so to level ground. This was scarcely better. Only those who have tried to make their way through a trackless virgin forest can appreciate the difficulties that faced them in the shape of undergrowth, fallen trees and holes in the earth. The débris of ages was heaped in their path. They guided themselves by the sound of the cascade upon their left.
In a mile or so (which had all the effect of ten) the river fell quiet again, and they pushed back to its bank. It was an open question which was the more difficult going. Along the edge of the stream the dead timber brought down by the freshets was left stranded in inextricable tangles. Conacher finally chose a course parallel with the river bank, and a few yards back from the edge. Here they were at least sure of a supply of water. All day long it was a case of climbing over obstacles or through them or chopping a way. Heart-breaking work. They camped while it was still early, completely tired out.
For day after day this continued. There was no lack of dead timber to make another raft: but the rapids followed each other in such close succession that it seemed a waste of time. It was exasperating to have to undergo such crushing labor with the stream running alongside ready to carry them in the desired direction. “If I only had a dug-out!” Conacher groaned a dozen times a day. But even if they could have taken the time to make a dug-out, there was no suitable timber in that stony land. The noise of their progress through the bush scared away all game; and they would soon have gone hungry, had it not been for the smoked meat which Mary-Lou had thoughtfully provided. Presently this gave out, and they had to lay over for a day, while Conacher hunted a bear, along the river. Their clothes were in rags.
In ten days Conacher figured that they had made about fifty miles: but this was pure guesswork. It was now within two or three days of the time when the surveying outfit was due at the mouth of the Mud River.
The three travelers were sitting gloomily on the shore of the river in a spot where it flowed as smoothly and prettily between poplar and birch-covered shores as a river in a civilized land where picnics might be held. The view downstream was blocked by a graceful island. Suddenly around that island came poking the nose of a birch-bark canoe with a single paddler.
To those three that sight was like a blow between the eyes. They glanced fearfully at each other for confirmation. It was a month since they had seen others of their kind. They stared at the approaching canoe with open mouths. Then Conacher jumped to his feet and hailed. The paddler was arrested in mid-motion. He was no less startled by the meeting than they. After a moment he came paddling gingerly towards them. They saw that it was a white man, an odd, withered, brownish specimen, whose skin was all of a color with his battered hat, and faded khaki jacket.
He grounded his canoe gently in the mud, and stepped out. An old smoked pioneer with a comically injured look which never varied. They shook hands gravely all around before a word was spoken.
“Who are you?” demanded Conacher and Loseis simultaneously.
“Bill Mitchell,” he replied with the shrug and the aggrieved look that were characteristic of him. “Who the hell are you?”
“I am Conacher of the surveying outfit, and this is Miss Blackburn.”
“Blackburn’s daughter!” exclaimed the old man with widening eyes. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve come down from Blackburn’s Post this away!”
Conacher was not anxious to go into lengthy explanations. “We’re expecting to join my outfit on the Sinclair River,” he said quickly. “How far are we from the Sinclair?”
“Matter of ten mile. There’s one rapid between.”
“Well, thank God!” cried Conacher fervently. “Have you seen the surveying outfit?”
“Spelled with them three days since,” replied the old man. “They’re working up-stream slow. Ought to be off the mouth of the Mud River some time to-morrow.”
Conacher and Loseis exchanged a beaming look. All their troubles rolled away. “Well, we didn’t manage that so badly,” said the former, conceitedly.
“What are you doing here?” Conacher asked of the old man.
“Me?” he answered with his disgruntled look; “what do you think I’m doin’? I’m prospectin’ this river. It ain’t never been prospected.”
“But when you get above the rapids it’s a prairie river,” said Conacher. “We came through three hundred miles of it, and there’s likely three hundred miles more above that.”
“Then I’ll work up to the mountains,” said the old man undisturbed.
“You fellows ought to study a little geology before you break your hearts with a journey like this,” said Conacher nettled. “Nobody has ever found any amount of gold on the easterly slope of the Rockies.”
“Mebbe this river comes right through the mountains like the Spirit and the Sinclair,” said the old fellow obstinately.
“Look at it!” said Conacher. “There’s damned little snow water in that. It’s pure prairie mud.”
“Oh, well, I’ve come so far I might as well go see,” he said calmly. “I got all summer. All I want is to get into the mountains before I go into winter quarters.”
Conacher gave him up. He described the upper reaches of the river for his benefit. “How will you get your canoe around the big fall?” he asked.
“Chop a trail through the bush, and then come back for it,” said the old man calmly. “It don’t weigh but forty pound.”
Looking into his canoe they perceived that his entire worldly goods consisted of three bags of flour, a box of ammunition, and a slim dunnage bag of odds and ends. It appeared that his gun was of the same caliber as that carried by Conacher. The old man looked at the other’s still partly filled ammunition belt desirously.
“You’ll be joining your outfit to-morrow,” he said suggestively.
“Tell you what I’ll do,” said Conacher. “Cache your flour here, and carry us down to the mouth of the river and it shall be yours.”
“Don’t mind ef I do,” said Bill Mitchell.
After the labors of the past days that last ten miles was like riding in a taxi. They whisked the light canoe around the rapid with no trouble at all. Below, the Mud River widened out and found its way into the Sinclair through a miniature delta amongst low, grassy islands covered with gigantic cottonwood trees that created a dim green twilight below. Mitchell landed them on a pine-clad point that looked down a reach of the greater river, several miles long. The old man did not get out.
“Won’t you spell with us?” asked Conacher politely.
The pioneer rubbed his hairy chin, and squinted down river as if he had perceived something important down there. “I guess not,” he drawled. “Got to be gettin’ along.” With a casual good-by, he pushed off and resumed his solitary journey up-stream.
“What a strange creature!” murmured Loseis.
“It was the presence of a lady which embarrassed him,” said Conacher. “He confided to me that he had not seen a white girl in seven years.”
Twenty-four hours later it was Conacher who perceived, down at the end of the long reach, the flash of wet paddles in the sun.
“Here they come!” he cried.
The two girls ran to his side. For a long time they could make out nothing but the regular flash of several paddles like heliograph signals. Finally four little black objects took shape down river. The watchers filled with a mounting excitement that became painful to bear; their breasts were like dynamos humming higher and higher until the pitch became unendurable. They had looked forward to this meeting through such hardships and perils! there had been so many days when they despaired of accomplishing it! But here they came at last; men of their own kind; friends; rescuers. Conacher and Loseis felt as if their hearts would crack with joy.
“My God! how astonished they’ll be!” said Conacher shakily.
The impulse to make the most of their friends’ astonishment was irresistible; and the three drew back under cover of the trees. Soon they were able to distinguish that the approaching party consisted of three white men and eight Indians traveling in three big dug-outs, and a rough, narrow scow that was being poled along close to the shore. Finally Conacher recognized his especial friend.
“Alec Jordan!” he murmured with a tight, warm feeling around the heart. “Good old Alec!”
They saw that the oncoming boats intended to make a landing directly at their feet. It was an inevitable camping-place. The three dug-outs grounded almost simultaneously on the shingle. As the white men rose in their places, Conacher stepped out from among the trees.
“Hello, fellows!” he said in a casual voice.
They stared at him completely awe-struck. “My God!” they murmured in hushed tones; and looked at each other. The Indians in the scow pushed off in a panic and floated away on the current.
Conacher, pale with excitement, but grinning widely, stepped down the bank. “I’m no ghost!” he cried. He marched up to Langmuir, the head of the party. “I want to report for duty,” he said simply.
“Report . . . for duty!” stammered Langmuir clownishly.
Jordan was the first to recover from the shock. He flung his arms around his friend. “Conacher! Conacher!Conacher!” he yelled, shaking him violently as if to make certain that he was flesh and blood.
“How in hell did you get here?” demanded Langmuir in a voice of extreme bitterness, which was not really bitter.
“Been waitin’ for you since yesterday,” said Conacher airily. “I cut across the prairie north of Blackburn’s Post, and came down the Mud River to head you off. Got a map of the river for you, chief, such as it is.”
“Well, I’m damned!” said Langmuir solemnly. And the others echoed him in varying tones: “I’mdamned!”
Conacher was not yet done surprising them. As they turned to climb the bank, he said somewhat nervously: “I’ve got a couple of guests with me. . . .”
Loseis stepped into view above. In breeches and Stetson, smiling merrily, yet a little apprehensively, too, she made an enchanting figure. The rents in her clothes, the marks of hardship in her face, only set off the bravery of her spirit. To those white men so long parted from the women of their race, it was like a miracle.
“Miss Blackburn, gentlemen,” Conacher sang out. “Mr. Langmuir; Mr. Jordan; Mr. Seely.”
They snatched off their hats. “Pleased to meet you,” they mumbled sheepishly.
“Merciful Heaven! am I awake or dreaming!” Langmuir murmured to himself.