ENCAMPMENTTHE COLUMBIA RIVER, ABOVE THE BOAT ENCAMPMENT
Uncle Dick pointed to the jutting end of the shore which hid the bend of the river from view above them. “You know that river, Leo?” said he.
Leo spread out his hands wide, with a gesture of respect.
“Me know ’um,” said he. “Plenty bad river. Me run ’um, and my Cousin George. And Walt Steffens—he live at Golden, and Jack Bogardus, his partner, and Joe McLimanee, and old man Allison—no one else know this river—no one else ron ’um. No man go up Columby beyond here—come down, yes, maybe-so.”
“Last year,” said Uncle Dick, “when I came in from the Beaver Mouth I saw a broken boat not far below Timbasket Lake. Whose was it?”
“My boat,” grinned Leo. And George also laughed. “We bust up boat on rock, lose flour, tea, everything. We swim out, and walk trail down to here, swim Wood River, and go up Canoe River, fifty mile. Two day we’ll not got anything to eat.”
“Well, I don’t see how they got up these streams at all,” said John.
“Joe McLimanee he come this far fromRevelstruck,” said Leo. “Take him twenty-nine day, not on high water.”
“Then there must be bad rapids below here,” said John.
“Yes,” said his uncle, “and, as I went up the Canoe myself from here, I’ve never seen that part of this river, but they say that at the time of the big gold excitements a generation ago, when the miners tried to get out of this country, they took to rafts. The story is that a hundred and sixty-five men of that stampede were drowned in one year on the Death Rapids.”
Leo picked up a stick and began to make a map on the sand, showing the Big Bend of the Columbia and some of its side-streams.
“You start Beaver Mouth,” said he, “all right, till you come on Surprise Rapids—all at once, right round bend. Surprise Rapids, him very bad. Much portage there. Very bad to get boat through even on line. Portage three mile there, maybe-so.
“Here was old man Brinkman, his rapid—not so bad, but bad enough for to scare old man Brinkman, so they name it on him, ‘Brinkman’s Terror.’
“Here is what Walt Steffen calls ‘DoubleEddy’—bad place sometam in high water. Bime-by we come on Lake Timbasket, up there, maybe thirty mile, maybe-so.”
Leo made a tracing of the outline of the lake, then followed his scratch in the sand on around.
“Now begin Twenty-six Mile Rapid, all bad—Gordon Rapids here, Big Eddy here, Rock Cañon here. Now we come on Boat Encampment. This way Revelstruck. Death Rapids here; Priest Rapids down here; and then Revelstruck Cañon; him bad, very bad, plenty man drown there, too. That five miles from Revelstruck; we get out and walk there.
“Now here”—and he pointed on his sand map—“is Boat Encampment. Right around corner there is one of most bad places on whole river.”
“But you’ve been through, Uncle Dick. Tell us about it.”
“Yes, I came through once last year, and that’s enough for me,” said Uncle Dick. “That’s the Rock Cañon and the Grand Eddy. Leo has shown it all pretty plainly here. I don’t want to make that trip again, myself. But when we got to Lake Timbasket wedidn’t any of us know how bad it was going to be—the old trapper who acted as our guide had never been through when the water was high. But when we got at the head of the Twenty-six Mile Rapids, below Lake Timbasket, it was like the bottom had dropped out of things, and we had to go through, for we couldn’t get back.
“Of course, we could line sometimes, and many of the chutes we did not attempt. The first day below Timbasket we made about ten miles, to a camp somewhere below the Cummins Creek chute. We could hear the water grinding—it sounded like breaking glass—all night long, right near the place where we slept, and it kept me awake all night. I suppose it is the gravel down at the bottom of the deep water. Then there were growlings and rumblings—the Indians say there are spirits in the river, and it sounded like it.
“There was one Swede that the trapper told us of, who started through the Cummins Rapids on a raft and was wrecked. He got ashore and walked back to the settlements. He had only money enough left to buy one sack of flour, then he started down the riveragain. From that day to this he has never been heard of, and no one knows when or where he was drowned.
“We passed one big boulder where the trapper said the name of another Swede was cut on the rock by his friends who were wrecked with him near by. I believe they were some miners trying to get out of this country in boats. That man’s body was never found, for the Columbia never gives up her dead. We saw Leo’s broken boat, as I told you; and on the shores of Lake Timbasket we found the wrecks of two other boats, washed down. You see, this wild country has no telegraph or newspaper in it. When a man starts down the Big Bend of the Columbia he leaves all sort of communication behind him. Many an unknown man had started down this stream and never been seen again and never missed—this river can hold its own mysteries.”
“Well, tell us about this rapid just above here, Uncle Dick,” went on Jesse. “Wasn’t it pretty bad?”
“The worst I ever saw, at least. When we stopped above the head of that cañon the trapper told me where the trail was down hereto the Encampment, but of course I concluded to run on through if the others did. Before we got that far I was pretty well impressed with the Columbia, myself. When we landed at the head of Upper Death Cañon I don’t believe any of us were very sure that our boat would go through. No one was talking very much, I’ll promise you that.
“The worst part of that long stretch of bad water of the Rock Cañon can’t be more than four or five miles in all, and there isn’t a foot of good water in the whole distance, as I remember it. Of course, the worst is the Giant Eddy—it lies just over there, beyond the edge of the hill from us. In there the water runs three different ways all at once. There is no boat on earth can go up this river through the Giant Eddy, and lucky enough is the one which comes down through it.
“You see, once you get in there, you can’t get either up again or out on either side—the rock walls come square down to the river, which boils down through a narrow, crooked gorge. It is like a big letter Z, with all the flood of the Columbia pouring through the bent legs; no one knows how deep, but not half the width which we see here.
“That’s the worst water I ever saw myself—it runs so strong that there is a big ridge thrown up in the middle of the river, many feet higher than the water on either side. There is a crest of white water all down the sides of the top of that high ridge. The water looks as though it were hard, so that you couldn’t drive a nail through it, it’s flung through there at such tremendous pressure.
“You don’t have much time to look as you go through, and there is no place where you can see the Giant Eddy except from the Giant Eddy itself. All I can remember is that we were clawing to keep on top of that high rib of the water mid-stream. I can see it now, that place—with green water running up-stream on each side, and the ridge of white water in the middle, and the long bent slope, like a show-case glass, running on each side from us to the edges of the up-stream currents. It was a very wonderful and terrible sight, and seeing it once was quite enough for me.
“About half-way down that long, bad chute I saw a hole open up in the crown of that ridge and could look down into it, it seemed to me, fifteen feet—some freak in the current made it—no one can tell what. Itseemed to chase us on down, and all our men paddled like mad. If our stern had got into that whirlpool a foot, no power on earth could have saved us. As luck would have it, we kept just outside the rim of the suckhole, and finally escaped it.
“Then we came to the place which lies first around the bend above us—a great deep saucer in the river, below a rock ledge of white water—it is like a shallow bicycle track, higher at the edges, a basin dished out in the river itself. I don’t know how we got into it, and have only a passing memory of the water running three ways, and the high ridge in the middle, and the suckhole that followed us, and then we slipped down into that basin at the last leg of the Z, and through it and across it, and so right around that bend yonder, and here to the Boat Encampment. You may believe me, we were glad enough.
“So now, adding my story to the one you’ll be able to tell from here on down, you may say that you know almost as much about the Big Bend of the Columbia as Gabriel Franchere himself, or even Sir George Simpson, peer of the realm of Great Britain.
“Some day they’ll build a railroad aroundthe Big Bend. Then I believe I’ll take that journey myself; it’s much easier than making it as we are making it now. Not that I wish to frighten you at all, young men, about the rest of our journey, for our men are good, and Leo and George have the advantage of knowing every inch of the river thoroughly—an Indian never forgets a place he once has seen.”
“Have you ‘got some scares,’ Leo?” inquired John, smiling. Leo also smiled.
“No, no get scare—not ’fraid of Columby.”
“You Shuswaps are white-water dogs, all right,” said Uncle Dick. “I’m not going to let you run all the rapids that you want, perhaps, between here and Revelstoke.
“Now,” he continued, “if John has finished his map work I think we can make a few more miles on our way down this evening, and every mile we make is that much done.”
“Bime-by below Canoe,” said Leo, “come on old man Allison’s cabin—him trap there two winters ago, not live there now.”
The boys looked inquiringly at Uncle Dick.
“All right,” said he. “We’ll stop there for the night.” So presently they took boat once more, and, passing the tawny flood waters ofthe Wood and the Canoe rivers, which only stained the edges of the green Columbia, not yet wholly discolored in its course through its snow-crowned pathway, they pulled up at length on a beach at the edge of which stood a little log cabin, roofed with bark and poles.
The boys preferred to spread their mosquito-tent again for the night, but the others concluded to bunk in the old trapper’s cabin, where they all gathered during the evening, as was their custom, for a little conversation before they retired for sleep. John found here an old table made of slabs, on which for a time he pursued his work as map-maker, by the aid of a candle which he fabricated from a saucer full of grease and a rag for a wick. The others sat about in the half darkness on the floor or on the single bunk.
“There was one book you once mentioned, Uncle Dick,” remarked Rob, after a time, “which I always wanted to read, although I could never get a copy. I think they call itThe Northwest Passage by Land. Did you ever read it?”
“Certainly, and a very interesting and usefulbook it is, too. It was done by two Englishmen, Viscount Milton and Doctor Cheadle. They were among the very early ones to take a pack-train across by way of the Yellowhead Pass.”
“And did they come down this way where we are now?”
“Oh, no. They went west just as we did, over the Yellowhead Pass as far as the Tête Jaune Cache. They crossed the Fraser there, just as we did, and turned south, indeed passing up to Cranberry Lake at the summit, just as we did. Their story tells how they crossed the Canoe River on a raft and were nearly swept away and lost, the river being then in flood. From that point, however, they turned west beyond Albreda Lake, for it was their intention not to go down the Fraser or the Canoe or the Columbia, but down the North Thompson. You see, they were trying to get through and to discover a new route to the Cariboo Gold Diggings.”
“What year was that?” inquired Jesse.
“That was in 1863. The Tête Jaune Cache was then sometimes called the Leather Pass. At that time very little was known of this great region between the Rockies and thePacific. Milton and Cheadle named many of its mountains that we passed. The old traders, as I have said, knew nothing of this country except along the trails, and these men even did not know the trails. Just to show you how little idea they actually had of this region hereabout, their book says that they supposed the Canoe River to rise in the Cariboo district!
“Now, in order for the Canoe River to rise in the Cariboo district, it would have to cross a vast range of mountains and two great rivers, the north fork of the Thompson and the Fraser River. Their map would not have been as accurate as John’s here, although when their book was printed they had the use of yet other maps made by others working in from the westward.
“None the less, theirs was a great journey. There were only two of them, both Englishmen, in charge of the party, and they had one half-breed and his wife and boy and an inefficient Irishman who was of no service but much detriment, according to their story. To my mind theirs is the most interesting account given of early times in this region, and the book will prove well worth reading.
“These men were observers, and they werethe first to realize that the days of wild game were going, and that if the Hudson’s Bay Company was to keep up its trade it must feed its people on the products of the soil, and not of the chase. They speak of sixty million acres of land fit for farming in the Saskatchewan Valley, and speak of the country as the future support of this Pacific coast. That is precisely the policy of the Canadian country to-day. They said that the Hudson’s Bay Company could not long govern so vast a region—and all the history of the Dominion government and the changes in the western Canadian provinces have taken place almost as if they had prophesied them literally. They speak of the Yellowhead Pass as being the best one for railroad purposes—and now here is our railroad building directly over that pass, and yet others heading for it. They said also that without doubt there was a good route down the North Thompson—and to-day there is a railroad line following their trail with its survey, with Kamloops as its objective point. It was at Kamloops that they eventually came out, far below the Cariboo district, for which they were heading.
“These men were lost in a wilderness at thattime wholly unknown, and how they ever got through is one of the wonderful things in exploration. They took their horses all the way across, except three, one of which was drowned in the Fraser and two of which they killed to eat—for in the closing part of their trip they nearly starved to death.
“They were following as best they could the path of another party of emigrants who had gone out the year before. But these men grew discouraged, and built rafts and tried to go down the Thompson, where many of them were drowned on the rapids. Perhaps to the wisdom of their half-breed guide is to be attributed the fact that Milton and Cheadle took their horses on through. Had they wearied of the great delay in getting through these tremendous forests with a pack-train, they must either have perished of starvation or have perished on the rapids. But in some way they got through.
“It was in that way, little by little, that all this country was explored and mapped—just as John is mapping out this region now.”
“It’s a funny thing to me,” said John, looking at one of the large folding maps which they had brought along, “how many of these riversup here run north for quite a way and then bend south again.”
“Yes, that’s a peculiarity of this upper Pacific slope,” said Uncle Dick. “That’s the way the Columbia does. Not all Americans know the Columbia River rises near our boundary line and then runs for hundreds of miles north into Canada before it turns and swings southwest over our country to the Pacific—after reaching this very point where we are sitting now.
“Take the Fraser River, too. From the Tête Jaune Cache it swings far northwest, up to the Giscombe Portage. Then it bends just like the Columbia. You may remember the upper bend of the Fraser, for that is about where the Salmon River comes in, down which Sir Alexander Mackenzie came—and where you went in last year on your trip over the Peace River Pass.”
“Oh, don’t we remember that, though!” said John. “And now that you mention it, I recall that at that time we were speaking of this big bend in the Fraser.”
“Yes, and the Canoe River rises in these hills, and it runs north quite a way before it bends down and comes into the Columbia, althoughit runs to the southeast ultimately, and not to the southwest.
“You see, these mountains are all laid out along great parallels, and the rivers have to do just as we did, hunt a way through if they want to get west. This is the pass of the Columbia where we are now, the way it has found downhill between the Selkirks and the Rockies. Always in getting through from east to west, as I have told you, men have followed the rivers up on one side and down on the other. So you can see, right on this ground, the way in which much of our history has been made.”
“One thing about this sort of geography is that when you see it this way you don’t forget it. And I rather like those old books which tell about the trips across the country,” said John.
“Yes,” said his uncle, “they are interesting, and useful as well, and it is interesting to follow their story, as we have done. If you would readThe Northwest Passage—Rob’s book which he has just mentioned—you will see that they had even worse troubles than we, I should say, for, although they had one good guide, most of them were rank tenderfeet. Theywere five days getting from Jasper House up to the Yellowhead Pass, and they were a month and a half in getting from Edmonton to the Tête Jaune Cache—very much longer than we were, as you will remember.
“And worst of all—and here’s what I want you to remember—they delayed so much from time to time that when they got out of this country they met all the rivers at their swollen stages. They reached the Cache in the middle of July, and that was why they found the Canoe River so swollen and dangerous near its sources. We are about a month ahead of them. And now you will see why I have been crowding so hard all along this trip—I don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the earliest explorers who crossed this country, not knowing what they were to find in it. But I give them all honor, these two Englishmen, Milton and Cheadle, for making one of the best trips ever made over the Rockies, all things considered, and contributing as they did to the growth and civilization of this country. For they were among the first to have the vision of all these great developments which have come since then.”
“They must have had a hard old time,”said Rob, “plugging along and not knowing where they were coming out. But, then, you told us that everybody who crossed the mountains in those times had native guides.”
“And so did they. At Edmonton they met a man who had been west with the emigrants the year before, who had started for the gold-fields. This guide had taken the party right up by Cranberry Lake, where we were a few days ago, over the Albreda Pass, and down the Thompson, until he showed them what he called the Cariboo country—which none of them ever reached.
“And when they reached Jasper House they found some of Leo’s people—the Rocky Mountain Shuswaps—living over there. In that way they got more directions on how to reach the Cache. There an old woman told them about the country to the west, and a man took them up to the pass into the Thompson and showed them their way down—if way it could be called. Then, when they got down toward Kamloops, they met yet other natives, and if they had not they must have starved to death, near as they were to the settlements. Left alone, these men perhaps never would have gotten even to the Yellowhead Pass.I’ll warrant it was some Indian who first ran the rapids on the Columbia. Eh, Leo?”
“Maybe-so,” smiled Leo, who had been listening intently to every word of this. “Injun not always ’fraid of water, some tribes.”
“Well,” said Uncle Dick, “I don’t know whether it was courage or laziness, Leo, but certainly a great many of your people were the ones to tell the whites about the rapids on some of these bad rivers.”
They all laughed heartily over this at Leo, who joined in.
“But it’s true,” Uncle Dick went on, “there never has been an original passage of the Rocky Mountains made by a white man, from the time of Lewis and Clark and Mackenzie up to the modern engineers, which was not conducted, in reality, by some native who pointed out the way.
“Now here we are, with Leo and George. I trust them perfectly. Leo’s map, there on the sand at the Boat Encampment, showed me that he was perfectly accurate, and that he knew the places of all the streams and rapids. So I feel no fear about our getting down the Big Bend from here with him as our guide. I’ll warrant that Leo can draw a map of theriver from here to Revelstoke as accurately as any professional map-maker, and name every stream and tell every rapid all the way down. In short, we furnish the grub and Leo furnishes the experience.”
“We’ll not furnish grub much longer,” said Moise. “The flour she’s getting mighty low, and not much pork now, and the tea she’s ’bout gone.”
“Well, what could you expect?” said Uncle Dick. “With three Injuns and an engineer to eat, we ought to have an extra boat to carry the grub—not to mention John, here, who is hungry all the time. We may have to eat our moccasins yet, young men.”
“Leo says we can’t get any fish yet,” said John, “and we’re not to stop for any more bear meat, even if we could eat it. We’re not apt to get any grub right along the river either. I don’t see how any one can hunt in this awful forest. It’s always cold and dark, and there doesn’t seem to be anything to eat there. Rob and I measured some trees by stretching out our arms, and we figured that they were thirty feet or more around, some of them. And one log we walked which paced over three hundred feet—it was so thick we couldn’t crawlover it at all. That’s no sort of place to hunt.”
“No, not for anything unless it was a porcupine,” said Uncle Dick. “We may have to come to that. But even with a little grub we can last for a hundred miles or so, can’t we? Can’t we make forty or fifty miles a day, Leo?”
Leo laughed and shook his head. “Some day not make more than ten or twelve mile,” said he.
“Well, I know that there’s a good deal of slack water for quite a way below here. At least, I have heard that that is the case. So for a time, if we don’t meet bad head-winds, we can put a good deal of this country back of us.”
“Could any one walk along these banks and get out to the settlements at all if he were left alone in here?” inquired Rob.
“One can do a great deal if he has to,” said Uncle Dick. “But I hope none of us will ever have to try to make the railroad on foot from here. There isn’t any trail, and very often the banks are sheer rock faces running into the river. Get behind such a hill, and you’re on another slope, and the first thing you know you’re clear away from the river and all tangledup. But, still, men have come up here one way or another. On the other side, there used to be a sort of pack-horse trail from Revelstoke up to the Selkirk gold-mines. There are two or three creeks which are still worked along the Big Bend of the Columbia. When we engineers have all done our work it will be easier to get in here than it is to-day.”
“Well, I’m going to be an engineer some day,” said Rob, firmly, once more. “I like this work.”
“Well, you’re all going to bed now at once,” said Uncle Dick. “We must hurry on down to-morrow, for, unless I am mistaken, this roily water of the Canoe means that the spring rise has begun earlier than it should.”
They did hurry to embark on the next morning, and, as Uncle Dick had predicted, for many miles the river was much more mild, although the current was steady and strong. They had run perhaps four hours when they came to the mouth of a creek which Leo and George said was called either Nagel Creek or End Creek, they did not know which. They went ashore for a time at a little unfinished log cabin which had been started perhaps two years before by some unknown person or persons.
“That way,” said Leo, “up creek ten mile, fine bear country; plenty caribou too. S’pose we hunt?”
“Certainly not,” said Uncle Dick. “It would take us a day to hunt and another day to get back. What do you say about that, boys?”
“Well,” said Rob, “of course we’d like to hunt a little more, but I don’t myself much like the thought of walking out of this country with a pack on my back and nothing to eat but a little flour. Besides, I’ve a feeling that this river is rising all the time now.”
“She’ll rise five inch last night,” said Moise. “I’ll mark heem on the stick.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Dick, “the June rise is going to chase us out, that’s sure. All those great snow-fields which you see up there on the Selkirks and the Rockies have got to melt and come right down here where our boat is now. So, Leo, you and George go on ahead—we’ll run late to-night and make forty miles to-day, at least, if we can. How far are we from Revelstoke?”
“S’pose ’bout hunderd mile,” said Leo. “Long way.”
“Not long if it was all clear water like this. But it isn’t. A pack-train on an unknown trail is one thing, but a boat on an unknown river is something mighty different. As I’ve told you, every foot of rise changes the river absolutely in the narrows. Therefore all I can allow you for lunch to-day is a piece of bannock—and we’ll eat that as we run.”
They found milder water now for twenty-five miles, and made steady progress. The wind had shifted a little bit, and Rob managed to get assistance out of it by rigging a sail from a corner of the tent. This brought the lead-boat ahead so steadily that Leo and George protested and made Rob take down his sail. But soon the long reach of slack water was passed. More and more they could hear, coming up-stream from perhaps a mile ahead, the low, sullen roar of rapids.
The water began to set faster and faster, and seemed each mile to assume more and more malicious habits. Great boils, coming up from some mysterious depth, would strike the boat as though with a mighty hammer so hard as to make the boys look around in consternation. At times they could see the river sink before them in a great slide, or basin, a depression perhaps two hundred feet across, with white water at its edges. Deep boils and eddies came up every now and then without warning, and sometimes the boat would feel a wrench, as though with some mighty hand thrust up from the water. Their course was hardly steady for more than a moment or so at a time, and the boats required continual steering.In fact, it seemed to them that never was there a stream so variable and so unaccountable as this they were now descending.
“She’s worse than the Peace River, a whole lot,” said Rob; and all the boys agreed with him. In fact, by this time all of them were pretty well sobered down now, for they could see that it was serious work which lay ahead of them. Now and again Uncle Dick would see the boys looking at the black forests which covered these slopes on each side of the river, foaming down between the Selkirks and the Rockies.
Late in the afternoon they passed a little settlement of a few cabins, where a discolored stream came down into the river through a long sluice-box whose end was visible.
“This Howard’s camp,” shouted Leo. “Them mans wash gold here. Some mans live there now.”
Two or three men indeed did come to the bank and wave an excited greeting as the boats swept by. But there was no going ashore, for directly at this place a stretch of rapids demanded the attention of every one in the boats.
And still Uncle Dick urged the Indians of thefirst boat to go on as far as they could that night. They ran until almost dark, and made camp on the top of a high bank on the left side of the river where once an old lumber camp had been. Here they found the breeze good and the mosquito nuisance much diminished.
“How far now to Revelstoke, Leo?” inquired Uncle Dick, as they sat at their frugal supper that night.
“Maybe-so forty mile, maybe-so sixty,” said Leo.
“Can we make it in one day?”
Leo shook his head soberly.
“Two days?”
Leo shook his head.
“Three days?”
“Maybe-so,” said he, at last. “Plenty bad water below here,” said he.
“Well, I haven’t seen any of these awful cañons yet that you’ve been telling about,” said John.
Leo smiled. “To-morrow see ’um plenty,” said he. “Pretty soon come Death Eddy, then Death Cañon, then Death Rapids, then Priest Rapids. All them bad places. Maybe-so can’t run, water too high.”
“We’ll not get out of here any too soon,that’s sure,” said Uncle Dick. “The best time to run any of these mountain rivers is in the fall, for then the water is lowest. But a day or two more will tell the tale for us. So, Moise, please don’t starve us any more than you have to—I could eat a whole porcupine now myself if I had one.”
That night at the fireside Uncle Dick saw the boys bending over close together, and looked at them curiously, for they seemed to be writing.
“What’s up, young men?” said he.
“Well, we’re making our wills,” said Rob. “We haven’t got much to give to anybody, of course, but you know, in case of any accident, we thought the folks ought to know about it. Not that we’re afraid. I was just thinking that so many people were lost here that never were heard of again.”
Uncle Dick did not smile at Rob’s frank confession, but liked the boys all the more for it.
“Well,” said he, “that’s all right, too. I’m willing to admit that when I ran the Rock Cañon above the Boat Encampment last year I did a little writing myself and put it in my pocket, and I tied one leg to the boat with a rope, too. But please don’t be too muchalarmed over anything we’ve said, for if the cañons should prove too bad we will line down with the boat; and if we can’t line down, then we will all take to the woods.”
None the less, the boys were all very quiet that night and slept but little.
“I don’t like that water at all,” whispered Jesse to John. “You can hear it growling and groaning all night long, as though it were gnashing its teeth—I don’t like it at all.”
And, indeed, even on top of their high bank they could hear the strange noises that come up always from the Columbia River when the high water is on. The stream where they were encamped was several hundred yards in width, but now the run-off waters of the mighty snow-sheds were making the river each day more and more a torrent, full of danger even for experienced men.
It was cool that night, almost cool enough for frost, and the morning was chill when they rolled out of their blankets. A heavy mist rose from over the river, and while this obtained Leo refused to attempt to go on. So they lost a little time after breakfast before the sun had broken up the mist enough to make it safe to venture on the river. They were off at about nine o’clock perhaps, plunging at once into three or four miles of very fast water.
The boats now kept close together, and at times they landed, so that their leaders could go ahead and spy out the water around the bend. In making these landings with heavy boats, as the boys observed, the men would always let the stern swing around and then paddle up-stream, so that the landing was made with the bow up-stream. The force of the river would very likely have capsizedthe boat if a landing were attempted with the bow down-stream. “Just like a steamboat-landing,” said Jesse.
Leo himself was now very alert. He did not say a word to anybody, but kept his eyes on ahead as though he felt himself to be the responsible man of the party. Certainly he took every precaution and proved himself a wonderful riverman. But he seemed puzzled at last as, when they landed upon a beach, he turned toward Uncle Dick.
“Me no understand!” said he. “Death Eddy up there, but no see ’um!”
“What do you mean, Leo?”
“Well, Death Eddy up there, and we come through, but no see ’um! I s’pose maybe high water has change’. I go look ahead.”
He went down the stream for a little way until he could see into the next bend, but came back shaking his head.
“No can make that cañon,” said he. “Water she’s too high—bad, very bad in there now. Must line down.”
“What place did you call this, Leo?” inquired Uncle Dick.
“Call ’um Methodist Cañon. Low water she’s all right, now she’s bad.”
“Out you go, boys,” said Uncle Dick. “We’ve got to line through. How far, Leo?”
“Maybe-so one mile,” rejoined the Indian. “S’pose low water, we paddle through here all right!”
Uncle Dick sighed. “Well, I hate to take the time, but I suppose that’s what we’ll have to do. You boys go on along the shore the best you can, while we let the boats down.”
The boys struggled up now on the side of the shelving beach, which was nothing but a mass of heavy rock that had rolled down from the mountainsides. It was a wild scene enough, and the roar of the waters as they crashed through this narrow pass added to the oppressive quality of it.
After a time the water became so bad even close to shore that it was impossible to let the boat down on the line without danger of swamping it. So each boat was lifted out bodily and carried out along the beach for two or three hundred yards until it was safe to launch it again. Part of the time the men were in and part of the time out of the water, guiding the boats among the boulders which lay along the edge.
To make a mile at this work took as muchtime as twenty miles had the day before, and they were glad enough when Moise proposed to boil the kettle. They did this just above the head of Death Rapids, in a very wild and beautiful spot. Just across the river from them they could see a beautiful cascade some two or three hundred feet in height, and they christened this the Lottie Falls, after a sister of Uncle Dick, which name it has to-day. Now and again the boys would look down the raging stream ahead of them, wondering that any man should ever have tried to run such a rapid.
“Hunderd sixty men drown right here, so they say,” commented Leo. He pointed out to them the most dangerous part of the Death Rapids, where the strong current, running down in a long V, ended at the foot of the rapids in a deep, back-curving roller or “cellar-door” wave, sure to swamp any boat or to sweep over any raft.
“S’pose raft go through there, round bend,” said Leo, “it must go down there in that big wave. Then her nose go under wave, and raft she sink, and all mans come off in the water. No can swim. No can hang on raft. Many men drowned there. Plenty Chinaman he’ll get drowned there, time my father was youngman. Chinaman no can swim, no can paddle, no can ron on land—no good. All he do is drown.”
“Well, one thing is sure,” said Uncle Dick. “I’ll not try that rapid, even with our boats, to-day. We’ll just line on down past here.”
“Plenty glad we didn’t stop hunt grizzlum no more,” said Leo. “She’s come up all day long.”
Soon they resumed their slow progress, letting the boats down, foot by foot, along the shore, usually three or four men holding to the one line, and then returning for the other boat after a time. Moise did not like this heavy work at all.
“This boat she’s too big,” said he. “She pull like three, four oxens. I like small little canoe more better, heem.”
“Well,” said Rob, “you can’t get a boat that looks too big for me in here. Look over there at that water—where would any canoe be out there?”
Thus, with very little actual running, and with the boys on foot all the way, they went on until at length they heard coming up from below them the roar of a rapid which sounded especially threatening.
“Priest Rapids!” said Leo. “And he’s bad this time too.”
“Why do they call this the Priest Rapids, Leo?” inquired Rob.
“I don’ know,” said Leo.
“That’s a fact,” added uncle Dick. “No one seems to know why these were called the Priest Rapids. Perhaps because a priest read the burial service over some of the voyageurs here. Perhaps because a priest was saved here, or drowned here—no one seems to know.”
They had called a halt here while Leo and Moise walked up on the bank to reach a higher point of view. The boys could see them now, gesticulating and pointing out across the river. Presently they joined the others.
“She’s too bad for ron this side,” said Moise, “but over on other side, two-third way across, is place where mans can get through. No can line on this side—rock, she come straight down on the river.”
“Well,” said Uncle Dick, “here is a pretty kettle of fish! I don’t like the looks of this in the least. I’m not going to try to take these boys through that rapid over there. Are you sure you can’t line down on this side?”
“No can walk,” said Leo, “no can ron this side. Other side only place for to go through. She’s pretty bad, but maybe-so make ’um.”
“Well, I’m not going to let the boys try it,” said Uncle Dick. “Now see here, young men, I’ll tell you what you have got to do. You see that point below there about two miles, where the forest comes out? Very well; you’ll have to get around there somehow. Go back of that shelving rock face the best you can, and come out on that point, and wait for us.”
The boys looked at him rather soberly. “Why can’t we go with you,” asked John, presently, who did not in the least fancy the look of these dark woods and the heavy, frowning mountains that lay back of them. Indeed, they all reflected that here they were many a day’s march from Revelstoke, over a country practically impassable.
“You couldn’t go in the boats, boys, even if it were safe,” said Uncle Dick. “We want them light as we can have them. Go on now, and do as you are told. This is a place where we all of us will have to take a chance, and now your time has come to take your chances, for it’s the best that we can do. Each of you take a little pack—one rifle will do for you,but each of you must have his ax and matches and compass and a little something to eat—here, take all the bannocks we have cooked, and this little bit of flour. When you get to the point make a smoke to let us know you’re there. If we don’t get through you’ll have to get on the best way you can.”
“Why can’t one of you go with us?” inquired John, still anxiously.
“It wouldn’t be right for the men left in the boat—it takes two men to run a boat through water like that, my boy. Go on, now. I am sorry to send you off, but this is the best that we can do, so you must undertake it like men.”
“It’s all right, fellows,” said Rob; “come on. We can get around there, I’m sure, and I’m pretty sure too that these men, good boatmen that they are, will run that chute. You’re not afraid, are you, Leo?”
But if Leo heard him he said nothing in answer, although he made ready by stripping off his coat and tightening his belt, in which Moise and all the others followed him.
The boys turned for some time, looking back before they were lost to view in the forest. The men were still sitting on the beach, calmly smoking and giving them time to make theirdetour before they themselves attempted the dangerous run of the rapids.
It was perhaps an hour before the three young adventurers were able to climb the rugged slope which lay before them, and finally to descend a bad rock wall which allowed them access to the long point which Uncle Dick had pointed out to them, far below and at one side of the dreaded Priest Rapids. Here they built their little fire of driftwood, as they had been instructed; and, climbing up on another pile of driftwood which was massed on the beach, they began eagerly to look up-stream.
“The worst waves are over on the other side,” said Rob, after a time. “Look, I can see them now—they look mighty little—that’s the boats angling across from where we left them! It’ll soon be over now, one way or the other.”
They all stood looking anxiously. “They’re out of sight!” exclaimed Rob. And so, indeed, they were.
“That’s only the dip they’ve taken,” said Rob, after a time. “I see them coming now. Look!Lookat them come! I believe they’re through.”
They stood looking for a little time, andthen all took off their hats and waved them with a yell. They could see the boats now plunging on down, rising and falling, but growing larger and blacker every instant. At last they could see them outlined against the distant white, rolling waves, and knew that they were through the end of the chute and practically safe.
In a few moments more the two boats came on, racing by their point, all the men so busy that they had not time to catch the excited greetings which the boys shouted to them. But once around the point the boats swung in sharply, and soon, bow up-stream, made a landing but a few hundred yards below where they stood. Soon they were all united once more, shaking hands warmly with one another.
“That’s great!” said Uncle Dick. “I’ll warrant there was one swell there over fifteen feet high—maybe twenty, for all we could tell. I know it reared up clear above us, so that you had to lean your head to see the top of it. If we’d hit it would have been all over with us.”
“She’s bad tam, young men,” said Moise. “From where we see him she don’t look so bad, but once you get in there—poom! Well, anyway, here we are. That’s more better’n gettingdrowned, and more better’n walk, too.” And Moise, the light-hearted, used to taking chances, dismissed the danger once it was past.
“Well, that’s what I call good planning and good work,” said Rob, quietly, after a while. “To find the best thing to do and then to do it—that seems to be the way for an engineer to work, isn’t it, Uncle Dick?”
“Yes, it is, and all’s well that ends well,” commented the other. “And mighty glad I am to think that we are safe together again, and that you don’t have to try to make your way alone and on foot from this part of the country. I wasn’t happy at all when I thought of that.”
“And we weren’t happy at all until we saw you safely through that chute, either,” said Rob.
“Now,” resumed the leader, “how far is it to a good camping-place, Leo? We’ll want to rest a while to-night.”
“Good camp three mile down,” said Leo, “on high bank.”
“And how far have we come to-day, or will we have come by that time?”
“Not far,” said Leo; “’bout ten mile all.”
Uncle Dick sighed. “Well, we’re all tired,so let’s go into camp early to-night, and hold ourselves lucky that we can camp together, too. Maybe we’d better bail out first—it’s lucky, for we only took in three or four pails of water apiece.”
“No man I ever know come through Priest Rapids on the high water like this,” said Leo. “That’s good fun.” And he and George grinned happily at each other.
They pulled on in more leisurely fashion now, and soon reached the foot of a high grassy bluff on the left-hand side of the river. They climbed the steep slope here, and so weary were they that that night they did not put up the tents at all, but lay down, each wrapped in his blanket, as soon as they had completed their scanty supper.
“Better get home pretty soon now,” said Moise. “No sugar no more. No baking-powder no more. Pretty soon no pork, and flour, she’s ’most gone, too.”
Once more, as had now been their custom for several days, in their anxiety to get as far forward as possible each day, our party arose before dawn. If truth were told, perhaps few of them had slept soundly the night through, and as they went about their morning duties they spoke but little. They realized that, though many of their dangers now might be called past, perhaps the worst of them, indeed, they still were not quite out of the woods.
Moise, who had each night left a water-mark, reported that the river during the night had risen nearly a foot. Even feeling as they did that the worst of the rapids were passed, the leaders of the party were a trifle anxious over this report, Leo not less than the others, for he well remembered how the rising waters had wiped out such places as the Death Eddy,which once he had known familiarly. They all knew that the rise of a foot here in the broader parts of the river would mean serious trouble in any cañon.
“How far now, Leo?” asked John once more of the Indian guide, on whom they placed their main reliance.
“Maybe-so forty mile, maybe fifty,” said Leo. “Maybe not run far now. Down there ten mile, come Tom Boyd farm. Steamboat come there maybe. Then can go home on steamboat, suppose our boat is bust.”
“Well, theBroncoisn’t quite busted,” said Uncle Dick, “but she has sprung something of a leak, and we’ll have to do a little calking before we can start out with her this morning. Come on, Moise, let’s see what we can do.”
So saying, they two went down to repair an injury which one of the boats had sustained on a rock. Of course, in this lining down, with the boats close inshore in the shallower water, they often came in contact with the rocks, so that, although both the boats were practically new, the bottom boards were now ragged and furry. A long crack in the side of theBroncoshowed the force with which a boat sometimescould be driven by the swift current, even when the men were taking the best of care to keep it off the rocks.
“Leo doesn’t tell much about his plans, does he?” remarked Rob. “I was thinking all the time we’d have to run the whole fifty miles to Revelstoke.”
Uncle Dick laughed. “Leo believes in saving labor even in talking,” said he, “but I am not complaining, for he has brought us this far in safety. I’m willing to say he’s as good a boatman as I ever saw, and more careful than I feared he would be. Most of these Indians are too lazy to line down, and will take all sorts of chances to save a little work. But I must say Leo has been careful. It has been very rarely we’ve even shipped a little bit of water.”
“One thing,” said John, “we haven’t got much left to get wet, so far as grub’s concerned. I’m pretty near ready to go out hunting porcupines or gophers, for flour and tea and a little bacon rind leave a fellow rather hungry. But I’m mighty glad, Uncle Dick, that you came through that rapid all right with the boats and found us all right afterward. Suppose we had got separated up there in someway and you had gone by us, thinking that we were lower down—what would you have done in that case—suppose we had all the grub?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” replied his uncle, “but I fancy we’d have got through somehow. Men have done that in harder circumstances. Think of those chaps Milton and Cheadle we were talking of the other night; they were in worse shape than we were, for they had no idea where they were or how far it was to safety, or how they were to get there, and they had no guide who had ever been across the country. Now, although we have been in a dangerous country for some days, we know perfectly where we are and how far it is to a settlement. The trail out is plain, or at least the direction is plain.”
“Well, I’m glad we didn’t have to try to get out alone, just the same.”
“And so am I, but I believe that even if you had been left alone you’d have made it out some way. You had a rifle, and, although game is not plentiful in the heavy forest, you very likely would have found a porcupine now and then—that is to say, a porcupine would very likely have found you, for they are veryapt to prowl about the camp almost anywhere in this country. You wouldn’t even have been obliged to make a noise like a porcupine if you had used anything greasy around your cooking or left any scraps where they could get at them. Or you might even have tried eating a little pine bark, the way the porcupines do. Again, in almost any clearing this far down to the south you might have run across some of these gophers which you have seen on the grassy banks lately. Not that I would care to eat gopher myself, for they look like prairie-dog, and I never did like prairie-dog to eat. Besides, they tell bad stories about these mountain gophers; I’ve heard that the spotted fever of the mountains, a very deadly disease, is only found in a gopher country; so I’m very glad you did not have to resort to that sort of diet.”
“We might get some goats back there in the mountains if we had to,” said Rob, “but goat-hunting is hard work, and I don’t suppose a fellow would last long at it on light diet.”
“Well, I wish we had one or two of those kids that we left up on the mountain at Yellowhead Lake,” said John. “Moise says a goat kid isjust as good to eat as any kind of meat. And any kind of meat would be better than bacon rind to chew on.”
“Never mind, John,” said Rob; “we could go two days without anything to eat if we had to, and in two days, at least, we’ll be where you can get as square a meal as you like. Maybe even to-day we’ll land where we can get supplies, although Leo doesn’t seem to tell us very much about things on ahead.”
Leo and his silent but hard-working cousin George now came down to the waterside and signified that it was time to start off, as by this time the sun had cleared the mists from the river. As the light strengthened, they could see that the river had lost something of its deep blue or green color and taken on a tawny hue, which spoke all too plainly of the flood-waters coming down from the snow-fields through the many creeks they had passed on both sides of the river.