The Young Alaskans on the Trail Part 17

XIV

EXPLORING THE WILDERNESS

IF Rob, John, and Jesse had been eager for exciting incidents on their trip across the mountains, certainly they found them in plenty during the next three days after the caribou hunt, as they continued their pa.s.sage on down the mountain river, when they had brought in all their meat and once more loaded the canoes.

Rob had been studying his maps and records, and predicted freely that below this camp they would find wilder waters. This certainly proved to be the case. Moreover, they found that although it is easier to go down-stream than up in fast water, it is more dangerous, and sometimes progress is not so rapid as might be expected. Indeed, on the first day below the caribou camp they made scarcely more than six or eight miles, for, in pa.s.sing the boats down along sh.o.r.e to avoid a short piece of fast water, the force of the current broke the line of the _Mary Ann_, and it was merely by good fortune that they caught up with her, badly jammed and wedged between two rocks, her gunwale strip broken across and the cedar sh.e.l.l crushed through, so that she had sprung a bad leak.

They hauled the crippled _Mary Ann_ ash.o.r.e and discharged her cargo in order to examine the injuries received.

"Well, now, we're giving an imitation of the early _voyageurs_," said John, as he saw the rent in the side of the canoe. "But how are we going to fix her? She isn't a birch-bark, and if she were, we have no bark."

"I think we'll manage," Rob replied, "because we have canvas and cement and all that sort of thing. But her rail is broken quite across."

"She'll been good boat," said Moise, smiling; "we'll fix heem easy."

So saying, he took his ax and sauntered over to a half-dead cedar-tree, from which, without much difficulty, he cut some long splints. This they managed to lash inside the gunwale of the canoe, stiffening it considerably. The rent in the bottom they patched by means of their cement, and some waterproof material. They finished the patch with abundant spruce gum and tar, melted together and spread all over. When they were done their labors the _Mary Ann_ was again watertight, but not in the least improved in beauty.

"We'll have to be very careful all the way down from here, I'm thinking," said Alex. "The river is getting far more powerful almost every hour as these other streams come in. Below the Finlay, I know very well, she's a big stream, and the sh.o.r.es are so bad that if we had an accident it would leave things rather awkward."

None the less, even with one boat crippled in this way, Rob and John gained confidence in running fast water almost every hour. They learned how to keep their heads when engaged in the pa.s.sage of white water, how to avoid hidden rocks, as well as dangerous swells and eddies. It seemed to them quite astonis.h.i.+ng what rough water could be taken in these little boats, and continually the temptation was, of course, to run a rapid rather than laboriously to disembark and line down alongsh.o.r.e. Thus, to make their story somewhat shorter, they pa.s.sed on down slowly for parts of three days, until at last, long after pa.s.sing the mouth of the Pack River and the Nation, and yet another smaller stream, all coming in from the west, they saw opening up on the left hand a wide valley coming down from the northwest.

The character of the country, and the distance they had traveled, left no doubt whatever in their minds that this was the Finlay River, the other head-stream of the Peace River. They therefore now felt as though they knew precisely where they were. Being tired, they pitched their camp not far below the mouth of the Finlay, and busied themselves in looking over their boats and supplies. They knew that the dreaded Finlay rapids lay only two miles below them.

They were now pa.s.sing down a river which had grown to a very considerable stream, sometimes with high banks, again with sh.o.r.es rather low and marshy, and often broken with many islands scattered across an expanse of water sometimes nearly a quarter of a mile in extent. The last forty miles of the stream to the junction of the Finlay had averaged not more rapid but much heavier than the current had seemed toward the headwaters. The roar of the rapids they approached now came up-stream with a heavier note, and was distinguishable at much greater distances, and the boats in pa.s.sing through some of the heavier rapids did so in the midst of a din quite different from the gentle babble of the shallow stream far toward its source. The boom of the bad water far below this camp made them uneasy.

"Well," said Rob, as they sat in camp near the sh.o.r.e, "we know where we are now. We have pa.s.sed the mouth of the McLeod outlet, and we have pa.s.sed the Nation River and everything else that comes in from the west. Here we turn to the east. It must be nearly one hundred and fifty miles to the real gate of the Rockies--at the Canon of the Rocky Mountains, as the first traders called it."

"It looks like a pretty big river now," said Jesse dubiously.

"I would like to hope it's no worse than it has been just above here,"

said Rob, "but I fear it is, from all I know. Mackenzie got it in high water, and he only averaged half a mile an hour for a long time going up, along in here. Of course coming down we could pick our way better than he could."

"We have been rather lucky on the whole," said Alex, "for, frankly, the water has been rather worse for canoes than I thought it would be.

Moreover, it is still larger below here. But that's not the worst of it."

"What do you mean, Alex?" inquired John.

"You ought not to need to ask me," replied the old hunter. "You're all _voyageurs_, are you not?"

"But what is it, then?"

"Look closely."

They went to the edge of the beach and looked up and down the river carefully, also studying the forking valleys into which they could see from the place where they were in camp.

"Well, I don't know," said Rob, "but it seems to me she's rising a little!"

Alex nodded. "We've been in camp here three hours now," said he, "and she's come up a little more than an inch."

"Why, how do you know that?" asked John.

"I set a stick with a notch at water-level when we first came ash.o.r.e."

"How did you happen to think of that?"

"Very likely the same thing which made Rob guess it."

"Yes," said Rob, "I saw that the Finlay water coming down seemed to be discolored. But at first I supposed it was the natural color of that river. So you think there has been a thaw?"

"Maybe some sort of rain or chinook over in there," said Alex. "What do you think, Moise?"

Moise and Alex talked for a time in the Cree language, Moise shaking his head as he answered.

"Moise thinks there has been a little rise," interpreted Alex. "He says that below here the river sometimes canons up, or runs between high banks with a narrow channel. That would make it bad. You see, the rise of a foot in a place like that would make much more difference than two inches in the places where the river is spread out several hundred yards wide. We know a little bit more about the river from here east, because we have talked with men who have been here."

"I suppose we'll have to wait here until it runs down," said Jesse.

"Maybe not. If we were here earlier in the season and this were the regular spring rise we might have to wait for some time before we could go down with these boats. But the big flood has gone down long ago. There isn't anything to hinder us as yet from dropping down and watching carefully on ahead as we go."

Rob was again consulting his inevitable copy of _Mackenzie's Voyages_.

"It took Mackenzie and Fraser each of them just eight days to get this far up the river from the west end of the Canon of the Rocky Mountains," said he. "Fraser must have built his boat somewhere west of the Rocky Mountain Portage, as they call it. That must be seventy-five miles east of here, as near as I can figure it from the Mackenzie story, but Uncle d.i.c.k's friend, Mr. Hussey, said it was one hundred and thirty miles--and only two big rapids, the Finlay and the Parle Pas. I wish we could run it every foot, because Mackenzie did when he came down. At least, he doesn't say he didn't."

"It was done by the traders for a long time," said Alex, "all but those two rapids and that canon. There is no trail even for horses between Hudson's Hope and Fort St. John, but that is easy water. They serve St. John now with steamboats, and the old canoe days are pretty much over. But, anyhow, there is the main ridge of the Rockies east of us, and we've got to get through it somehow, that's sure. Back there"--he pointed up the valley down which they had been coming now for so long--"we were between two ranges of the divide. The Finlay yonder comes down out of some other range to the northwest. But now the doubled river has to break through that dam of the eastern rim. I suppose we may look for bad water somewhere. Look here," he added, examining the map, "here are the alt.i.tudes all marked on by the government surveyors--twenty-five hundred feet above sea-level at Gis...o...b.. Portage, twenty-two hundred and fifty at Fort McLeod. I suppose it was about three thousand feet where we started across. At the mouth of the Finlay it's only two thousand feet--a big drop. But she drops nearly three hundred feet more to the west end of the portage, and two hundred feet more at the east end. That's going downhill pretty fast--five hundred feet in less than one hundred and fifty miles--and some of it not very fast water."

"Well," ventured Rob, "why don't we drop down as far as we can, and if we get caught by a flood then stop and take a little hunt somewhere back in the hills? You know, we haven't got that grizzly yet you promised us."

"Sure enough," said Alex, with no great enthusiasm; for he did not relish the idea of hunting grizzly bear in company with such young companions.

"But we have come through good grizzly country already," ventured John.

"Very likely," Alex smiled. "I've seen considerable bear sign along the sh.o.r.es, as well as a good many moose tracks close to where we camped."

"If you think we're afraid to go bear hunting, Alex," Rob began, "you certainly don't know us very well. That's one of the reasons we came on this trip--we wanted to get a real Rocky Mountain grizzly."

"It is not too late," the old hunter rejoined, "and I shouldn't wonder if there was as good country east of here as any we've come to. The grizzly is a great traveler, anyhow, and is as apt to be found one place as another. At this time of year all the bears come out of the mountains and feed along the valleys on red willow buds and such things. They even swim from the sh.o.r.e to the islands, in search of willow flats. Besides, there are plenty of saskatoons, I don't doubt, not far back from the river. The bears ought to be down out of the high country by this time, and if you really care for a hunt, there ought to be plenty of good places below here."

"It isn't dark yet," said Rob; "suppose we break camp and run down just a little farther this evening. If the flood comes in behind us, we're just that much ahead."

They acted on Rob's suggestion, and, pa.s.sing rapidly on down the now slightly discolored water, they soon left the Finlay gap behind them.

Their journey was but brief, however, for soon they heard the boom of the rapids below them.

"On sh.o.r.e, queek!" called Moise to Rob, who was in the bow of the leading boat.