CHAPTER VII.INTO THE WILDERNESS.
Skookum Joe, equipped with a dog tent and some provisions, had been left on the point of the junction of the Lewes River and Gold Creek, to await the arrival of the down-river steamer of the Yukon and White Pass Railroad Company to arrive that day, and he waved them a friendly farewell as the Indians slowly poled their boats out into the stream. The current of Gold Creek was by no means as swift as that of the Lewes, and, while Swiftwater Jim took command of one boat, Rand was made captain of the other. Both boats had been built with narrow walking boards along the sides after the manner of the celebrated pole boats that plied on the Mississippi and its tributaries in the upstream journies in Lincoln’s time. One of the boys was told off to work with the three Indians in each boat for short stretches at a time, thus placing two men on each side with poles about twelvefeet long, while the commander of each boat with a long oar gave an occasional impulse to the direction in the way of steering, although little of this was necessary. Two of the pole men would start at the bow of the boat, placing their poles on the bottom of the creek and walk the full length of the “running board.” As they reached the stern, two others would start at the bow and walk down the boat while their predecessors returned to the bow.
The Indians seemed to be able to continue this performance without intermission, and feel no fatigue from it, but the Scout who was detailed to aid the Indians soon found himself suffering from a peculiar aching in the side and back, that Swiftwater described as the “Siwash Curve,” due entirely to the fact that the white man in poling up a river would exert himself in a way that the average Indian considered unprofessional, and would try to hold back, thus adding to the “white man’s burden.” He insisted that the white man usually got over this after the first day’s work, and tried to make it pleasant for the Siwash ever after. He limited the trick of each boy at the pole for the first day to one hour, and he himself and Rand took their ownturns at the poles to relieve the aching and untried muscles of the younger Scouts. Soon after leaving the sandy banks and tundra of the lower stream, the creek began to wind its way through dense forests of spruce, poplar and oak with the ghostly bark of the birch lighting up the dim that marks the tangled wildwood of more southern climates, showing how little the sunlight of these northern climes penetrated the overshadowing canopy.
“Fine woods for huntin’,” remarked Swiftwater to Jack, as they poled slowly up stream, “also for travelin’ in winter. Bresh won’t grow very far in from the streams this far north. Great country for garden stuff howsomever.”
“Do you mean to say that vegetables will grow this far north?” inquired the interested reporter.
“Finest garden sass in the world in some sections. Why, there’s a valley between the Yukon and the Tanana, three hundred miles north of here, that can grow anything but bananas and cocoanuts. I’m told they grow bigger potatoes and cabbages, and carrots and other plain, ordinary cooking vegetables up there within a couple of hundred miles of the Arctic Circle than they do down in Oregon, where every man’struck patch looks like the floral hall at the county fair when I was a boy.”
“How can anything ripen in the short summers up here?” asked Don.
“All vegetation has got to have light, and the more it has the harder it will grow. Sun up here is on the job all the time. Reminds me of the year that I started out to be star performer with old John Robinson’s circus back in Injianny. Got up at three a. m. to help feed the animals and hosses, and assist the chef in the cook tent; waited on table for the canvas men and other nobility from six to nine a. m., ‘doubled in brass’ as the sayin’ goes, with the band, by carryin’ the front end of the bass drum in the gra-a-nd street parade, wore a toga as a Roman senator in the great entree, handled jugglin’ and other apparatus durin’ two performances, and at midnight helped to take down the big top. The other three hours I had to myself. I don’t mean to say that the sun up here in the summer time performs all those gymnastics, but he works the same number of hours and everything up here that wants to live must keep right up with him. Ground is frozen twenty feet deep, and thaws out about eighteen inches in the summer time. That furnishes moisture.Consequently, grass and vegetable are on the jump all the time, working twenty hours a day, and they manage to mature. Oats and other grains that have to grow long stalks, I understand, however, never top out.”
The work of poling the boats up stream was varied at times by what Swiftwater described as “canal work.” At stretch where the banks of the stream were reasonably high and precipitous, and the water of considerable depth close to the shore, the three Indians in each boat fastened themselves tandem to a long cable stretched from the bow of the boat to the shore, and towed the craft for miles at a time, while one of the boys with the long steering oar kept the bow away from the shore and headed up stream. This method was considerable relief from the steady poling which told perceptibly upon the back and shoulders of the novice, and it formed a method of rest for the Indians. The progress was about three miles per hour, and the boys alternately spent considerable time ashore, walking along the banks and occasionally relieving one or two of the Indians in the harness. The miner on the occasion of these tows spent most of his time ashore, directing the Indians and making frequentexcursions into the neighboring forest with one or the other of the young Scouts, examining the timber and pointing out the peculiarities of the different trees. He carried with him a repeating shotgun, and was constantly on the lookout for game, both birds and mammals.
“Might run across a caribou,” said he, “but I scarcely think so this time of year. Besides, up here he doesn’t take to heavy timber like this same as he does in Maine and the Kanuck provinces. He runs in droves of hundreds and thousands up this way, and seems to like the scrub timber.”
A short time before noon they came to a sharp bend in the creek where the nature of the bank hid the current ahead from the boys in the two boats. Suddenly the Indians towing the leading craft stopped, and as three held it against the current, the leader of the team beckoned to Swiftwater, who had fallen behind.
“Carry,” he said, briefly, to the latter as he came up, and pointed to the stream ahead.
“He means a portage,” said the miner to Jack, who was walking with him, as they topped the rise, they went forward to inspect the creek. Directly in front of them where the stream hadmade a turn, the heavy timber of the forest had retreated back from the water for several hundred yards and the elevated shore sank to almost the level of the water, and became half swamp and half meadow, covered with tufts of grass, and nearer the woods with a stunted growth of brush and small dwarf birches. Gold Creek itself spread out to nearly twice its former width, with innumerable little sandbars and a few boulders protruding from the bottom. Even Jack’s unpractised eye could see that the current had no depth of any moment.
“Stake out,” said Swiftwater to the Indians. “We’ll have to portage.” The Indians at once drove the steel anchorage stakes which they carried into the soil and drew the bow of the boats up against the bank and took similar precautions with the stern of each. The Scouts had all joined Jack and Swiftwater at the top of the bank, where the commander of the expedition pointed out that the widening of the Gold had so reduced the depth of the channel that it would be impossible to take the fully loaded boats over the route. As a result most of the cargo if not all of it would have to be unloaded, and perhaps “toted” around the shallow to the deep water of the channel.
“A good deal of work, isn’t it?” inquired Dick.
“There’s no freighting de luxe up in this country that I ever found,” replied the miner. “We shall be lucky if we can get along without a ‘carry.’ First thing we’ve got to know is how much water we’re drawing on each boat fore and aft. Gerald, you’re nominated boat measurer, and you can take Pepper with you. You will find two or three lumber gauges in the dunnage in the rear boat. Each of you take one, and let me know at once what each boat is drawing. Rand, you and Dick are leadsmen of this voyage, and you will each take a pair of knee boots and a lumber gauge and follow the channel of the Creek from shore to shore and give me the greatest depth of water you can find in a continuous channel up to where the creek narrows again and the water will naturally deepen. If you will wait a few minutes we will give you the data to work on. Jack, you and I will take up a job of stevedorin’ and get our longshoremen to work. You take three of these Injuns and get to work unloading this first boat, and I’ll take the others and rustle cargo on the other. Most o’ these pieces can be jacked up the gangplanks, but wherethey’re too heavy in either boat we’ll call all hands and get ’em ashore.”
By this time, Gerald and Pepper were armed with two slim painted woodstaffs, not unlike the wands of the Boy Scouts, but marked with figures, and having at one end a movable arm about two inches long that could be screwed fast at any point. These they fastened at the extreme end of each gauge, and hooked them under the bottoms of the boats and marking the top of the water were able to tell just what each boat was drawing. They found, however, that the boats did not trim exactly even, and that at one point or another, bow or stern, the draught was more or less by perhaps an inch. The general average was about twenty-six inches in one boat and twenty-eight inches in the other.
“These here ocean greyhoun’s had a displacement, as they say in ocean goin’ craft, of six inches before they were loaded,” said Swiftwater, “when I had ’em measured in White Horse, and if the channel anywhere above here peters out to that it’s a case of carrying all this stuff around this meadow land. If we can get even two inches above that the job’ll be easier.” With the above figures in mind, Rand and Dick plunged into theshallows of the broad channel. Working from rock to sandbar, and bar to boulder, they followed the deepest pools in a tortuous path that corkscrewed nearly from one shore to another, and in an hour’s time were able to report to Swiftwater that they could find passageway sufficiently wide for the boats with a minimum depth of fourteen inches.
When they made their report to Swiftwater, a look of intense satisfaction crossed his face, and he remarked:
“Wa-al, I guess that cuts out one big engineerin’ problem that might o’ kept us here a week. Hustle that freight off; smallest pieces first.” The channel figures were reported to Gerald and Pepper, and they were instructed to measure frequently the draught of the boats as the stuff was moved ashore, and to report to the miner when the draught was reduced to eleven inches.
“Better be on the safe side,” he remarked. “Poor place to move freight if we should get stuck out there through any mistake of our survey men.”
So fast had the Indians worked while the leadsmen were in the channel that it required but afew minutes more to reduce the draught of the batteaus to the scale.
“S-s-say,” said Pepper with an anxious look, “isn’t it a long time since breakfast? I can hardly remember it.”
Swiftwater grinned.
“It surely is, Pepper,” he said, “and I guess we’ll camp right now and do a little business with the inner man before we go any further. I’m apt to become int’rested at times, and forget all about that other feller.”
At his orders the Indians constructed a small fireplace, and the voyagers were soon sitting about on the bank and boats enjoying with eight hour appetites, strong black tea, ship’s biscuits and canned baked beans, to which they did full justice.
As soon as the meal was over, Swiftwater ordered all six Indians to harness themselves to a single boat, and placed Rand in it to handle the steering oar while he himself waded along with the Indians over the shallows to direct their movements, Dick accompanying him to point out the channel. The current was very sluggish, and rapid progress was made over the half mile that intervened before reaching deep water again.Arrived at the desired point the boat was tied to the bank and the remaining cargo quickly removed. Then with all hands aboard, and poles in hand the crew floated the scow back to their former landing place. Here two of the Indians were left to work with Gerald, Jack, Pepper and Don in replacing cargo on the empty boat while the other was towed up stream and unloaded. The first trip had been so easy and successful that Swiftwater told Gerald to allow a load sufficient to give thirteen inches draught. The second boat returning was loaded to the same capacity, leaving still a small amount of cargo, requiring a third trip for one of the boats. On this last trip the boat also took in the boys, and as the Indians had by this time learned the channel the trip was made by poling without mishap.
By the middle of the afternoon the cargo had all been replaced on the two boats, and the miner announced that as they could not reach their destination before dark they would make camp and take the rest of the day to themselves. At this point the forest came down close to the water’s edge, and the ground was high and dry, and Swiftwater told the boys to “camp out” if they so desired, and had double tarpaulins placed onthe ground for them and “dog tents” erected for them near the Indians.
A roaring big fire was built, and one of the Indians told off to keep it up. The Scouts thought it was very soldierlike. They talked excitedly for a while, and being weary fell into an early deep sleep. Later there was a good deal of restlessness and turning and twisting. Then through the starlight, occasionally a mysterious figure could be dimly discerned stealing silently toward the boats. There was a quiet grin on the face of Swiftwater, who had bunked on one of the boats, when he arose at an early hour and found three recumbent figures sleeping peacefully on the comfortable mattresses in his own boats, and on going ashore saw that the “dog tents” were empty.
“Not quite seasoned yet,” he said to himself, as he quietly awakened the Indians.
CHAPTER VIII.COLONEL SNOW’S RANCH.
At an early hour that morning the journey was resumed and their progress up stream continued uninterruptedly until about the middle of the forenoon, when Swiftwater stepped ashore and began to search along the right bank for landmarks. Suddenly, he stepped out of the woods, and held up his hand and the Indians in the first boat began to turn the craft’s head in toward the shore.
“Here we are,” cried the miner, pointing to a large board nailed across two small trees, under which a “cairn” or pile of boulders had been erected. “This is one of the corners of the Colonel’s property.”
The boats were quickly fastened and the boys tumbled up the bank with some curiosity to investigate the site of what was for some weeks to be a home to them.
“The Colonel told me,” said Rand “that hehad bought from the Canadian Government about two thousand acres of the best virgin timber of the British Columbia section, and this must be some of it.”
The site of their camp certainly bore out the owner’s anticipations of the value of his purchase. For miles in every direction stretched a solid substantial growth of timber—hemlock, spruce, fir, poplar and birch, towering to hundreds of feet into the air, and many bolls five and six feet through at the butt. There was very little undergrowth and heavy turf extended in the long aisles of the forest in every direction.
Within a very short time the boats had been permanently fastened to the banks by heavy ropes and strong stakes cut in the small timber, and all hands began to unload the camp equipage. From the bottom of one end of the craft where the camp stuff and supplies had been piled, rough boards which Swiftwater referred to as “sawed stuff,” and which had been carried as a sort of false bottom to the boats, were brought out and made into a sort of platform roughly nailed together and placed on a foundation of small boulders gathered from the bed of the creek which raised it a few inches from the ground. On thisa heavy army tent, which had been brought from White Horse, was erected by the Scouts themselves and stoutly pegged and guyed in the most approved fashion. A series of flies divided the interior into rooms, and in these the camp bedsteads were placed. This was to be the permanent abiding place of the boys and the miner while the work of preparing the sawmill camp for the next winter’s work was going on.
The Indians were each given a dog tent and two of the tarpaulins were turned over to them, and at some little distance away they soon rigged up something between a hut and a burrow of stones, sods, and brush, about ten feet square, the bottom of which they filled two feet deep with spruce and fir boughs. Over all they drew the tarpaulins and pegged them down. The boys watched curiously the gathering of the fir and spruce sprigs.
“Makes the finest spring bed in the world,” said Jim. “I’ve slept on it hundreds of nights, and there’s no mattress made that equals it. We’ll make up some for ourselves within a few days.”
Preparations for the night having been made, and a fireplace dug out of the bank of the creek near the water’s edge, and walled up with stonesto some distance above the bank so that a perceptible draft was obtained, one of the boys was directed to bring from the stores a bright new copper kettle with a porcelain lining and a tight cover. Three flat stones were placed together and formed a support for the pot.
“Pepper,” said Swiftwater, “from this day to the time we go out, you are to be captain of the Kettle. You are to see that it is kept clean and filled with clear water from the creek at least once a day; that the water is boiled and that these water jugs are kept filled and corked. I want to ask the rest of you boys to drink, for a time at least, nothing but the water that our friend Pepper turns out; none from the creek. A man’s health in a new country depends a good deal on how the water hits him, and until you are acclimated it is the safest thing.” The Scouts readily promised to comply with the miner’s request, and Pepper feeling that the health of the camp was somehow in his charge felt not a little elated. He issued orders at once for a supply of firewood, agreeing to carry the water himself, which he did, filling the kettle which held about ten gallons. He put on so many small airs while the boys were bringing in the firewood and arrangingit beneath the kettle that they began to dub him “Health Officer,” “Doctor,” and poke fun at him in several ways. Finally Dick came up and inspected the whole arrangement as if he had never seen it before, and said:
“Hello, Grandma, makin’ apple-butter or quince preserves?”
Pepper turned red but went on poking the fire. A minute or two later Gerald strolled by with:
“Auntie, can’t I have one of the doughnuts, now?”
Still Pepper struggled to preserve his temper and gave his whole dignified attention to his new duties until:
“Mamma, how long fo’ dat hog and hominy fit to eat?” and Rand dodged a stick of firewood, as the infuriated Captain of the Kettle turned back to the simmering pot. He was undisturbed for nearly an hour when Don strolled up with an ostentatiously small armful of sticks and stayed only long enough to ask:
“Seems to me that I smell braw parritch; or is it kail-brose ye would be steaming there, gilly?”
Satisfied that a small conspiracy had been hatched against him the ruffled Pepper bided his time. Suddenly, Jack came hurriedly towardhim holding his nose and pushing him away snatched off the cover of the kettle and yelled dramatically:
“I told you so; I told you so; he can’t even cook water; and now it’s all burned black.”
The shout of laughter that went up was the last straw for the enraged Pepper and jumping on his brother the two rolled over on the grass together in one of those friendly tussles that had been frequent incidents of their boyhood and that always served to bring Pepper’s ruffled temper down to normal temperature. Thereafter Pepper insisted in supplying his own firewood and running the kettle without help, and resented any interference with his duties.
The days that followed were busy, but uneventful. Swiftwater kept the camp busy at something all the time and not many days passed before the camp began to take on a look of permanency. He set up first what he called a saw-pit, two big “horses,” each made by driving fir poles into the ground and crossing them and laying other sapling across these. The two horses were about seven feet high and twelve feet apart. From one to the other of these ran a sixteen foot plank. Spruce trees of medium size were then cut down,divided into sixteen foot lengths, and typo squared with an ax. These timbers were then raised to the top of the horses, and, while one Indian mounted the log, the other stood underneath and with a long gang saw “ripped” the timber into deals or boards, thick plank or scantling as was needed for camp use. As this lumber began to pile up, he set the other Indians at work clearing a place among the heavier trees, but not far from the creek, for a sod house. It was to be some twenty feet square and was to house Colonel Snow’s lumbering gangs when they came in the following winter.
“‘Tenting on the old camp ground,’ ’s good enough, up here in the summer,” he said to the boys, “but with the mercury loafing around sixty below zero, canvas is no sort of shelter. A log house is better but it is almost impossible to make the caulking of that weather-proof.
“Sod houses are the invention of the pioneer of the plains whose chief recreation was going twenty miles to look at a tree four inches through. Of course if we had the time we could saw out lumber enough to make a ‘camp’ that would be weather proof, but the sod house is insured against fire, flood, lightning and wind and is as cosy asa cave; besides, it takes a shorter time to build,” and with this the miner led the boys, with the exception of Gerald, who was to keep camp and oversee the four Indians left there, to the boats, one of which the other two Indians had unmoored, and when all were aboard, began to pole upstream.
About a half mile above the camp the woods receded from the creek and a broad stretch of elevated meadow intervened. Early as it was, the short grass was green and luxuriant, and what surprised the boys more than any thing else was the number, variety and size of the wild flowers.
All hands had been supplied with long handled spades with sharp edges, and as Swiftwater marked the turf out in strips five and ten feet long by two feet wide, the boys quickly cut it out, while the Indians with a hand barrow carried and loaded it onto the boat. It was cut to the bottoms of the grass roots and was found to be of unusual thickness and tenacity, the ten foot lengths folding up like matting without breaking.
The miner told the boys that its condition was due largely to the shortness of the seasons; for while the grass grew with remarkable rapidity, the underlying roots decayed much more slowly thanin lower latitudes, and in time made the turf a tough mass of twisted roots that it was almost an impossibility to separate. Hence it was much better for their purpose.
They spent the greater part of the day at the work, having brought food and water with them, and when night came the boat was loaded as deeply as was safe for her draught. She dropped slowly down the stream directed by the Indians and was soon tied at her old moorings.
During the day, what Swiftwater called “the hold,” had been excavated by the Indians to a depth of about eighteen inches over the entire site of the proposed house, and this had been filled in as solidly as possible with small boulders from the creek. The crevices between the stones had been filled with creek sand and the whole rammed hard. On this a solid platform of two-inch planks had been laid by the sawyers and at intervals of three feet long, thin stakes, sharpened at the top, had been driven deeply into the ground just at the ends of the excavation. Thus all had been prepared for the erection of the sod walls the next day.
Early the next morning Jack, who had determined to keep an eye on all the details of a sodhouse in case he should ever want to erect one himself, was wandering around the newly laid foundation, when suddenly there came to his ear a muffled buzzing much like the drone of a distant grasshopper. “This sounds like real summer,” said Jack to himself, instinctively looking around for the insect. As he approached one corner of the foundation, the sound increased in strength, and less resembled the grasshopper than something like the shaking of a bag of marbles. One of the Indians was approaching the structure and as the sound caught his ear he broke into a run with a deep guttural exclamation, at the same time motioning to Jack to keep away from the foundation.
“Snake,” he said. “Mooch bad. Killum.”
He picked up a stake lying beside the platform and began to poke around beneath it. As he reached forward to push the stake underneath, something struck like a flash at the back of his hand, and at the same moment a large rattlesnake uncoiled and slid from underneath the boards out into the short grass. With a blow of the stake the Indian broke the snake’s back and then began to suck the two punctures on his knuckle, at thesame time keeping the hand tightly closed and the skin drawn tight.
For a moment Jack was horrified. Then the instincts of the Scouts and his quickly working brain ran rapidly over the instructions of “first aid.” With a shout that brought the other boys and Swiftwater on the run he drew from his pocket a small cord, doubled it into a slipnoose and placing it on the Indian’s wrist drew it so tight as to cut off the circulation. At the same time he called to Rand to bring the medicine case. The miner, as soon as he comprehended what the trouble was, also disappeared in the direction of the tent. When Rand returned he had in his hand a solution of permanganate of potash and a vial of strong ammonia. With each of these he saturated the wound with some difficulty, however, as the aborigine insisted for a time in keeping his lips to the wound as his own theory of first aid. The hand and wrist had now swollen so much that the cord had practically disappeared in the flesh and the Indian was evidently suffering much pain. At this moment Swiftwater appeared with a small gallon demijohn, from which he poured for the Indian a large tin cup full of neat whisky. The red man swallowed it without a quiver and theminer poured out another of similar size which the Indian also drank.
“That’ll fix him,” said Jim, “but I’m very glad you thought of that cord Jack or we’d have been an Indian short. Those drugs you have will neutralize the poison and I don’t know but they would have been sufficient, but I’m takin’ no chances. This” (indicating the demijohn), “is the old reliable snakebite cure, discovered by Columbus when he discovered the rattlesnake over here and my mind naturally reverted to it at the first jump. The worst of it is that the Injun won’t be of much use for a couple of days and I’m afraid all the other Siwashes will quit work and go to huntin’ rattlesnakes.”
The work of building the sod house began soon after the morning meal, and by night had made substantial progress. One of the side walls was built higher than the other, and a roof of rough boards was laid on top of thick planks which formed the top course of the walls. On this roof was laid a course of sod, the grass of which began in a few days to grow lustily.
“’Taint everywhere,” said Swiftwater, with a smile, “that a man can have his lawn on the roof of his house.”
CHAPTER IX.AN HEIRLOOM RETURNED.
Rand, whose inquiring turn of mind was scarcely inferior to that of Jack, but of a more profound and less transitory nature, had shown a strong interest in the Indian boatmen from the beginning of their journey and had struck up an especial friendship with the Indian whose dog had tackled the wild cat and had been later crushed by the Kodiak bear. The red man, while not morose, was taciturn, and replied to all questions with monosyllables and scarcely a smile. He showed friendliness in other ways, and as he became better acquainted with the boys responded to the young Scout leader’s approaches. Day by day and word by word he inducted Rand into the mysteries of the “pigeon,” or jargon used as a language of communication with the natives. It was made up of half Siwash, half English words, the latter so amputated and distorted as scarcely to be recognizable. It was rather automaticin character, as it could be changed or added to as circumstances required, and Rand found it easy to use after he had mastered the first few principles of it, if it may be said to have had any.
One evening, after the day’s work was over, Rand strolled over to the shack where the Indians lived and found his erstwhile friend sitting on a stone, engaged in slowly carving with a sharp knife the soft wood of a sycamore spar that had been carefully cleared of its branches and smoothed to comparative symmetry. The worker had begun at the butt end of the pole and had worked his way carefully upward. The carvings were weird, goggle eyed, snouted and saw-toothed creatures, the like of which could only have originated in the brain of the late Lewis Carroll, who wrote “Alice in Wonderland” or in the dreams of a Siwash nourished on smoked salmon and rancid seal oil. Part of the carved lines of one creature formed the features of another (if they could be dignified by the name of features), and there was a sort of artistic continuity about the whole that aroused Rand’s interest and admiration. At the butt of the pole another Indian had begun with two or three beantins filled with crude colors evidently made from vegetable dyes, to paint the carvings already finished. Rand pointed to the pole, and asked:
“What?”
“Totem,” grunted the Siwash. “Me chief.” He further informed the young Scout that it was his purpose to set it up in front of the camp. Just then, Swiftwater came along and spoke to the Indian in his native Siwash. The latter arose and stood for a moment erect, with his hand on his breast with so dignified an air that Rand could scarcely recognize in the figure before him the slouching round-shouldered aborigine, who went daily, so stolidly, about the labor of the camp. Swiftwater listened to the rather oratorical harangue which the Indian delivered, smiling at times, but giving the man respectful attention. He even gave him half a salute, as he turned and walked with Rand toward their own tent.
“I didn’t know that we had with us a representative of the old Siwash nobility. The tribal relations of these people are pretty well broken up since we brought our boasted civilization and our whiskey up among their homes, and they don’t recognize the authority of their head men any more. They have ‘got onto’ our most cherishedprinciple that all men were created free and equal, and the chiefs and their families have to hustle for a living as hard as the lowest of them. Still, they cling to their ancient dignities. That totem he’s been carving is the insignia of his clan or family, and as he couldn’t bring the old family totem pole with him, he carves one wherever he settles for a time, and sets it up. You remember in old ‘Ivanhoe,’ Front de Boeuf and the Templar displayed their banners on the castle walls whenever they came up for the week end, and they really didn’t have so much on this old rootdigger after all. I rather like his spunk. Good family connections are really something to be proud of if ye don’t let ’em interfere with yer business, and they don’t come visitin’ too often.”
Something about the totem pole aroused Rand’s imagination, and with the other boys he went over to the shack to look at the “work of art” as Jack insisted on calling it. Although the boys had seen totem poles in the city museums, and one or two on their original ground in the Alaskan villages that they had visited, there was something familiar about this one. As they went over the various figures, trying to distinguish them from each other and speculating on whatthey were supposed to represent, Pepper, who had been inspecting the upper part of the work, where lack of color made the figures less conspicuous, suddenly exclaimed:
“S-s-say, this fellow’s family isn’t so very old. Here’s the ace of clubs, and that couldn’t have got over here before Columbus, and he didn’t come up this far.”
“What’s that?” said Rand. “Let’s look at it.” Then, for the first time, the reason for the familiarity of the design struck him.
“Hey, boys,” he cried, excitedly, “don’t you see it?”
“What is it?” they cried in chorus, crowding around him.
“There, there, and there. The top of this totem is an exact replica of our narwhal horn. Here’s the mammoth, and here’s the pile of tusks.”
“Begorra, that’s truth,” said Gerald. “Looks as though he had copied it from our ivory. Run and get it, Rand.”
The young Scout leader, who had been made custodian of the treasure, returned to the tent and brought out the relic. It was a short, broken piece of the twisted horn of the narwhal or whitewhale, discolored, and rubbed smooth as if with much handling. It was covered with rude etchings evidently made with flints or sharp shells. As nearly as could be made out, the figures represented a mammoth, an extinct creature of the elephant tribe, a man beside a dogless sledge, a pile of mammoth tusks, and a high cliff with an opening or cave at the top whose mouth was shaped like the ace of clubs referred to by Pepper.
With the greatest care the boys went over the lines of the graven ivory comparing the figures with the carvings of the hieroglyphics which the “chief” had carved on his totem pole, and found them to be almost identical, except for a few minor particulars caused by the relief work on the totem, and less crudity in the carvings.
The Indians at this time of day were engaged at their work of sawing lumber and in finishing the foundations of the sod house, where a ditch was being dug, but it being near the hour of noon the man who had described himself as a “chief” came to the shack to arrange for the noonday meal.
The boys turned to greet him as he came up, and Rand drew his attention to the ivory, intendingto indicate the resemblance of the two carvings. As his eye fell upon the relic a remarkable change came over the Siwash. He reached forward, and his eyes blazing with excitement, almost tore the ivory from Rand’s hand and stepped back in a defiant attitude.
Heretofore, the tones of the Indians, like those of their dogs, had been low, guttural and subdued. Now the aborigine gave vent to a shrill piercing yell, and, at the same time, waved hysterically to his comrades, all five of whom dropped their tools and rushed to the shack and surrounded the chief.
With a wealth of wild gesticulation and deep growling tones that at times rose to almost a shriek in a higher note they examined the horn and appeared to pay it the most awed reverence. The Scouts seeing that they were so deeply interested did not attempt to repossess themselves of their treasure for some minutes, and then Rand was met by a most firm refusal on the part of the leading Indian to give it up.
The other Indians surrounded him in a defiant attitude—the first sign of insubordination that had yet appeared among them, and the boys seeing that they had encountered a mystery whichcould not at once be unraveled, and that the relic had some almost overpowering importance to the Siwashes, determined to drop the matter for the time being, and put it up later to the commander of the camp.
The aborigines went back quietly to their labor in the afternoon, and the boys who were at work with the miner, laying out the foundation for the sawmill, took occasion in the intervals of their labor to tell Swiftwater the story of the narwhal’s horn, and the incident that had taken place at noon. The guide listened with close attention, and at the finish of the incident his face was rather grave.
“I’ll talk with that main guy Siwash, some time this afternoon. Meantime, I wish you would all leave this matter in my hands. It may turn out to be of more importance to us than we think.”
The Scouts readily agreed, and toward the middle of the afternoon the miner left them and strolled over to where the Indians were at work on the sod house, and calling the “chief” to one side walked away with him to the bank of the creek.
“Well,” said Jack, when they were all togetherat one end of the foundation, “what do you think of it? There seems to be more in that horn than we thought when we decided to bring it along with us.”
“Yes,” replied Rand, “and we seem to be coming out of the little end of it.”
“Faith,” exclaimed Gerald, “it looks as if that Indian was going to hold on to our relic, and the others seem as if they were going to stand by him.”
“They certainly have seen something like it before,” commented Dick, “and maybe it’s worth more to them than to us. It was only a mere guess of ours, after Colonel Snow undertook to interpret it to us, that there might be anything behind it, and it was only because it had evidently come from an Arctic country that we even thought of bringing it along with us.”
“I think,” said Rand, “that we shall have trouble getting it back, and I, for one, propose that we leave the whole matter in the hands of Swiftwater and try and get the true inwardness of the thing from him. It ought to be a good story if we don’t get anything else out of it.” This view was readily agreed to, and the afternoon’swork was progressing satisfactorily when Don, after deep thought, said:
“I’ve been listening to this Siwash language, and I haed me doots as to whether it was a real language like Gaelic or English or just a rumble, but when I heard that head man scream like a white man I concluded that it’s got some elements of a language.”
The conference between the miner and the chief lasted for a half hour, after which the latter returned to his work, and Swiftwater joined the boys. His face was still grave, and simply remarking that he would enlighten them at supper when the afternoon’s work was completed.
“I’m a little bothered about this matter,” said Swiftwater, after the evening meal was concluded, “and would have given a good deal if it hadn’t happened. My experience with savages the world over has taught me that while you may rob them and make war on them and get away with it, that you cannot interfere safely with their religions or their traditions. Not that we have intentionally done so, but it may have an effect after all.
“The chief told me a long story, a good deal of which I couldn’t quite make out the sense of,but it seems that you boys have in some way got hold of an ancient treasure of his tribe many hundred years old, and considered in some way, sacred. He says there were two of these relics, that they were handed from generation to generation and carefully guarded. At first they were merely the record of a buried treasure, the wealth of the northern tribes being the ivory of the walrus and the narwhal and such tusks of the mammoth as came to them through the melting of the glaciers. The buried treasure was never found, and the tradition finally became incorporated in the totem or coat of arms of the tribe.
“Many years ago this family of Siwashes was raided by tall red Indians from the far southwest and the family scattered, and many women and children and much loot taken. These ivory relics were among the loot, and have been simply a legend of the remnants of the tribe ever since.
“The unexpected return of this relic has aroused a new spirit in them, and I can see a little offishness and suspicion. While I do not expect any trouble from them I want to be absolutely certain of them until we get this work of Colonel Snow’s done, and as I say, I should havebeen better satisfied if the matter had not come up at this time.”
“I want to suggest,” said Rand, “that we Scouts surrender all claim to the ivory, and tell the Indians that they are welcome to the relic.”
“That might be a good idea, and I will go along with you and explain to the Siwashes that it came into your hands accidentally.”
The boys crossed over to the shack where the chief sat smoking with the others. For some reason all work on the totem pole had been abandoned for that night at least.
Rand, in his newly acquired jargon, explained to the aborigines that the Scouts desired to present the heirloom to the tribe, and Swiftwater supplemented this with a talk in the native tongue telling just how the boys had come into possession of the horn.
The Indians listened gravely, without expression, except to nod eager assent to the offer of the Scouts to relinquish the prized relic. The chief even showed some cordiality, saying:
“Good! You come me potlatch,” which Jim explained was an invitation to visit him at his village on the occasion of a merrymaking similar to a Christmas celebration.
The Scouts retired that night full of the mystery of the thing, feeling as if they had come, somehow, into touch with a long dead past. Swiftwater appeared more reassured, but took occasion to visit the shack before turning in and found the aborigines all herded together with the dog in the almost air tight hut, ventilation appearing to be a thing abhorrent to them.
The first thing that became apparent when the boys and the miner threw back the cheesecloth door of their tent that kept out the horde of mosquitos in the early morning was the absolute silence of the forest. The six Indians had taken one of the two boats, and with the dog had silently drifted away during the night down the current of Gold.