The Young Alaskans in the Rockies by Emerson Hough (classic books for 12 year olds TXT) 📖

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 the first 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 much alarmed 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.

XXVII ON THE RAPIDS

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 capsized the 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 much time 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 young man. 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