The Young Alaskans on the Missouri by Emerson Hough (world best books to read .TXT) 📖

the half of a quilt back of their slim bed, and so prepared to pass a night which they found very long and cold. Their supper now was cooked, and before the small but efficient fire they now could complete the labors of their own day—each boy with his notes, and John with the map which he always brought up each day at least in sketch outline.

“I don’t know just how many people ever have been in here,” said Billy, after a time. “Not so very many, sure, for nearly all try to get up the cañon. I heard that a man and his wife once climbed up the cañon, but I doubt that. There’s Bill Bowers, from the head of Henry’s Lake, he’s been up to the top, but I don’t know just how far—he said you couldn’t follow the cañon all the way. I don’t doubt that prospectors and hunters have been across here, and the Bannacks hunted these mountains for sheep, many a year. Used to be great bighorn country, and of course, if this country never was known by anybody, the bighorns would still be here. There’s stories that there’s a few in back, but I don’t believe it. You can ride up the south slope of Sawtelle Mountain, in the timber, almost to the top, and almost this high. I guess she’s been traveled over, all right, by now. Only, they couldn’t carry off the old river. If they could, I guess they’d have done that, too.”

That night the stars came out astonishingly brilliant and large. The silence of the great hills was unbroken even by a coyote’s howl. To them all, half dozing by their little fire, it did indeed seem they had found their ultimate wilderness, after all.

The chill of morning still was over all the high country when they got astir and began to care for the horses on their picket ropes and to finish the cooking of their remaining food. Then, each now leading his horse, they began to thread their way downhill. Over country where now they had established the general courses, it was easier for such good mountain travelers to pick out a feasible way down. They crossed the cañon at about the same place, but swung off more to the right, and early in the morning were descending a timbered slope which brought them to the edge of the Alaska Basin and the Red Rock road. They now were on perfect footing and not far from the Culver camp, so they took plenty of time.

“The name ‘Culver Cañon’ did not seem to stick,” said Billy, as they marked the gorge where the river debouched, far to their right, now. “I don’t know what the surveyors call it—they never have done much over in here but guess at things mostly—but the name ‘Hell Roaring Cañon’ is the one that I’ve always heard used for it. It’s not much known even now. A few people call it the ‘real head of the Missouri,’ but nobody in here seems to know much about its history, or to care much about it. They all just say it’s a mighty rough cañon, up in. Somehow, too, the place has a bad name for storms. I’ve heard a rancher say, over east of the pass, on Henry’s Lake, that in the winter it got black over in here on Jefferson, and he couldn’t sleep at night, sometimes, because of the noise of the storms over in these cañons. Oh, I reckon she’s wild, all right.

“Now, below the mouth, you’ll see all the names are off. Hell Roaring breaks into four channels just at the mouth, over the wash. Fact is, there’s seven channels across the valley, in all, but four creeks are permanent, and they wander all out yonder, clean across the valley, but come together below, above the upper lake; and that’s the head of the Red Rock, which ought to be called the Missouri by rights.

“And you ought to have seen the grayling once, in all these branches!” he added. “No finer fishing ever was in the world. The water’s as bright as glass, fast and clean, and not too deep to wade, with bends and willow coves on below—loveliest creeks you ever saw. Then, over across, is a creek where Jim Blair, a rancher, planted regular brook trout, years ago. They get to a half pound, three quarters, and take the fly like gentlemen. But all this country’s shot to pieces now—automobiles everywhere, and all sorts of men who kill the last fish they can.”

“But have they got them all?” asked Rob. “It would be easy planting and keeping up such waters as these.”

“Sure it would. Well, maybe some day folks’ll learn that the old times in their country are gone. We act like they wasn’t, but that’s because we’ve got no sense—don’t know our history.

“Now,” he added, as they forded one bright, merry stream that crossed their way, “you all ride down the road to where the bridge is—that’s the main stream again, and she’s pretty big—regular river, all right. Wait for me there at the bridge. I’ll see if I can pick out a fish or so. I see a dry quaking asp lying here that some fellow has left, and I’ll just try it myself. You know, get a quaking-asp pole that’s dry and hasn’t been dead too long, it’s the lightest and springiest natural fishing rod that grows. The tip is strong enough, if it hasn’t rotted, and she handles almost as good as a boughten rod. Now Rob, you lead my horse on down, and I’ll try it along the willows with a ‘hopper.’”

“Oh, let me go along, too!” exclaimed Jesse. “Lead my horse, John?”

“All right,” said John. “Good luck.”

At the bridge, a half mile below, the three remaining members of the party picketed the horses on a pleasant grass plat near the road. Rob went exploring for a little way, then, without saying anything, began to get together some dry wood for a fire, and also began cutting some short willow twigs which he sharpened at each end.

“The ‘old way,’ Rob?” said John, smiling.

“Yes,” nodded Uncle Dick. “Rob has seen what I have seen—there’s trout in this water, and grayling, too. Do you see that grayling between the bridge there, over the white bar? I’ve been watching him rise. So, by the time we get a broiling fire, maybe Rob’ll have need for his skewers—to hold a fish flat for broiling before a fire, in the ‘old way’ we learned in the far North. Eh, Rob?”

“That’s the way I figured it, sir,” replied Rob, smiling. “Billy’ll get something on hoppers, at this season, for that’s what the trout and grayling are feeding on, right now.”

Sure enough, in not much over a half hour, Billy and Jesse met them at the bridge, with five fine fish—two grayling and three trout—Jesse very much excited.

“All you have to do is just to sneak up and drop a hopper right in the deep water at the bends, and they nail it!” said he. “Billy showed me. He always carries a few hooks and a line in his vest pocket, he told me. Fish all through this country!”

It took the boys but a few minutes to split the fish down the back and skewer them flat, without scaling them at all. Then they hung them before the fire, flesh side to the flame, and soon they were sizzling in their own fat.

“Now, you can’t put them on a plate, Billy!” said Jesse, as Billy began searching in the pack. “Just some salt—that’s all. You have to eat it right off the skin, you know.”

“Well, that ain’t no way to eat,” grumbled Billy. “It’s awful mussy-looking, to my way of thinking.”

“Try it,” said Uncle Dick, whittling himself a little fork out of a willow branch. And very soon Billy also was a believer that the ‘old way’ of the Arctic Indians is about the best way to cook a fish.

Now, having appeased their hunger, they saddled again and made their way slowly to the ranch of Mrs. Culver at the Picnic Spring, as the place was called—in time for Jesse and John each to catch a brace of great trout before dusk had come.

They now were all willing to vote their experience of the past two days to be about the pleasantest and most satisfying of any of the trip, which now they felt had drawn to a natural close. That evening they all, including their sprightly hostess, bent late over the table, covered with maps and books.

“I surely will be sorry to see you leave,” said the quaint little woman of the high country. “It’s not often I see many who know any history of the big river, or who care for it. But now I can see that you all surely do. You know it, and you love it, too.”

“If you know it well, you can’t well help loving it, I reckon,” said Billy Williams.

CHAPTER XXX SPORTING PLANS

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Let’s see, Rob—what day of the month is this?” began John, the following morning, when, their bills for the horses and themselves all discharged and their motor car purring at the gate, they bade farewell to their interesting friend and prepared to head eastward once more.

“Well,” said Rob, “we were at the Three Forks on July 27th, and we spent a week getting to the Shoshoni Cove—that’s August 4th; and we left on August 5th, and got to Monida August 6th, and came here that day; and day before yesterday was the 7th, and we came down the mountain yesterday, the 8th; this must be about August 9th, I suppose.”

“That’s right,” said Uncle Dick; “giving us a full week or even more if we want it, to explore the Madison Fork, which is another head of the big river. Then we’ll wind up on the Gallatin head, at Billy’s place, and figure there what we want to do next. We might well stop at the head of Henry’s Lake, and in a day or so we’ll pick up Billy’s car there and be on our way, with a camp outfit of our own again.”

Their journey over the clean, hard road around the rim of the wide Alaska Basin was one of delight. They sped down the farther slope of the Red Rock Pass, along the bright waters of Duck Creek, until early in the afternoon they raised the wide and pleasing view of Henry’s Lake, one of the most beautiful valleys of the Rockies. Around this the road led them comfortably enough to the cluster of log cabins and tents which was now to make their next stopping place. Here they sent back the Monida car, whose driver said he could make the Picnic Creek camp by nightfall if he drove hard. Soon they all were made comfortable in the cabins of this “dude ranch,” as the Western people call any place where tourists are taken in for pay.

The proprietor of this place was an old-time settler who could remember the days of buffalo and beaver in this country, and who told them marvelous tales of the enormous number of trout in the lake.

“Go down to the landing, below the tamarack swamp,” said he, “and get a boat and just push out over the moss a little way. Off to the right you’ll see a stake sticking up in the water. Drop your anchor a little way from it and cast that way; it marks a spring, or cold hole, and they lie in there.”

The three boys did as advised, and to their great surprise began to catch trout after trout as they cast their flies toward the indicated spot.