CHAPTER XV
FACING DEATH IN A CANOE
Early next morning, the first boat, having been stripped of everythingmovable, was made ready, and Harry got in the stern. He had taken offthe more cumbersome of his clothing and had bidden Roger do the same, sothey started off with only enough on for comfort, but wearing theirshoes, for the return journey would have to be overland through theforest.
"This heap bad," said Harry as they started out, "but I in plenty worse.Keep eyes open much."
"Right you are, Harry," sung out Roger cheerily, and a moment later thecanoe shot into the mouth of the canyon, the other members of the partywatching them with some anxiety, as, aside from the question of danger,the loss of one of the boats would mean a great deal of extra work onthe trip. As the canoe entered the canyon Roger could feel the wholeframe of his companion quiver with the intensity of attention, and heheeded every move of the canoe so closely that he felt as though he knewbefore every movement of the stern paddle just in what direction itwould be, and of what weight.
The boy had learned well the lesson of following orders, and hisconfidence in his companion was so absolute that he was untroubled inmind, which went far to make him alert and able. Suddenly, the boat gavea little jump and the current leaped to double its speed, and for twohundred feet they rushed down a smooth plane of dark water with a seetheof foam awaiting them at the bottom. Just as they reached it, Harryshouted:
"Now!" and bore outward with all his strength.
"Sure!" came Roger's ready answer, as he followed the action almostsimultaneously, but his confidence received a sudden check when theyplunged into blinding foam which drove across the boat so that theIndian could hardly discern the lad kneeling in the bow. Angry littlecross-waves leaped at them, naked scarps of rocks thrust bared fangs atthem, but threading, this way and that, a channel of almost unbelievableintricacy and appalling narrowness, the little boat went through.
At the base of the second of these, in a moment of comparatively stillwater, the Indian called:
"Plenty heap good paddle," he said, "but too much beefsteak. More easystroke." He broke off suddenly, "Ah!"
The warning was needed, for the vicious spite of this rapid began at itsvery mouth, and once the boy heard Harry grunt as he put his wholestrength into a double stroke which, Roger could have sworn, made theframe of the canoe bend and wriggle like a snake. There followed then agreater rapidity of current again, and the walls of the gorge closed inuntil it seemed to the boy that if they got any nearer the boat would beshooting through a tunnel, and the prospect of a subterranean tunnel wasnot pleasant.
Just at the narrowest part, when it was difficult sometimes to avoid thepaddles striking the rock on the side, the torrent boiling through andboth men backing water, the canyon took a sharp turn to the right. Harrythrew her head round, but not far enough, for there, not fifteen feetaway from the angle of the bend, a black rock rose sheer from the water,with a spur sticking out, exactly like the spur of a fighting cock. Theboat could not clear, and though Roger got the bow by, the currentcrushed the side of the canoe against the rock, and with a cry theIndian leaped for the spur.
"Jump!" he yelled to Roger.
But Harry's leap from the stern of the boat, just as she crashed, threwthe canoe off sufficiently to prevent its entire demolition, so, thoughthe frail craft grazed the sharp edge of the rock with the speed of anexpress train, crushing in its upper part, it was still seaworthy. Rogernoted that the Indian had not reached a footing on the spur, but washanging by a hand-hold to a ledge which it would be almost impossible toclimb.
The thought passed through Roger's mind that Rivers would blame himselffor having let him go, in the event of anything happening, but there waslittle time for speculation. From the bow he could see the dangers thatwere before him, but not being in the stern, the canoe was hard topaddle, and almost as in a desperate nightmare, he paddled and swervedand dodged rocks that sprang at him out of the water as though they werealive. Though his heart was in his mouth, and he expected every momentto be his last, the training of the past year stood him in good stead,and his eye never wavered nor did his hand become unsteady until, fiveminutes later, he reached in safety the gravel flat below the lastrapid.
There he held the boat to regain his breath, and found time to wonderwhether Harry had managed to climb on the spur, and if he had, how theparty would be able to release him. But scarcely had this questionformulated itself in his mind than, close by the canoe, two hands thrustthemselves out of the water, followed by a shock of coarse black hair,and with one side of his head bleeding profusely from a scalp wound hehad received on his way down the rapid, the Indian made his way to theboat. Roger helped him in over the stern and they paddled to the shore.
"Heap fine," he commented, "thought you gone sure, that time."
"You were politer than I was," replied the boy, laughing with a catch inhis voice, "I was too busy even to think of you till I got down here."He went on laughing, but harshly and with a curious clang in the tones.
The Indian looked up sharply.
"Stop," he said, "you no laugh."
Roger, brought to a pause by the abrupt command, found he was chokingover his laugh, and that his nerves were badly shaken. He felt a wilddesire to laugh and cry alternately, but he gulped down a few times,straightened up and looked Harry squarely in the eye.
"I'm all right now," he said.
The Indian looked back over the rapid down which they had just come, andshook his head.
"Well, we got through any way," commented Roger.
"Yes," answered Harry slowly, "but we heap near not get through."
"Oh, well," replied the boy with all the recklessness of youthconcerning a danger which is past and over, "a miss is as good as amile, any way."
"So," replied the Indian, "but when it is my scalp," pointing to hishead, "I like mile, every time."
This drawing attention to the cut on Harry's head, Roger looked at it,and found that although it had bled freely, it was but a superficialcut, and would afford no trouble, at least until they got back to thecamp, where the chief would see that it was attended to. But they were along way from the camp, as the two speedily found when they started ontheir homeward journey.
The trip down the rapids, Roger found, had taken a little less thanfifty minutes, and he thought that perhaps it might take a couple ofhours for them to make their way home. But even Harry underestimated thedistance that they had come, and the way back, climbing over fallentrees, scrambling through thickets, stopped by underbrush, scratched bythorns, and caught in brambles, was a fearful task, and it was eleveno'clock at night before they got into camp, having taken fourteen hoursto come back the twelve miles they had done in the canoe in fiftyminutes.
They found the camp waiting for them, and Rivers growing very anxious attheir non-return. He realized, of course, that the rapid might haveproved far longer than had been expected, and that the two would havesome difficulty getting back, but there was a fear of possibly worseconsequences. The cut on Harry's head revealed that everything had notgone well, and the Indian, nothing loath, told in his short and jerkyway the story of the perilous passage, giving the boy due credit forbringing the boat through the last few hundred yards of the rapids, andaverring that he was all that could be desired as a comrade.
Roger's exhaustion from the long tramp back to camp was such that thechief of the party gave orders that he was not to be awakened early,and it was eight o'clock before the boy rolled over and sleepily openedhis eyes to find the camp work well advanced and breakfast over. Hejumped up hurriedly, looking for the various members of the party, butfound only Harry and the cook there.
"Why, where's the crowd?" he asked.
"Waal, son," said the cook, "Mr. Rivers he reckoned that a good sleepwouldn't do any harm, seeing the job you tackled yesterday, and youwon't have much to do to-day. The rest of them have started packing thegrub over the carry to where you left the first boat. They're loadeddown good and p
roper, for I don't believe one of 'em has less thaneighty pounds, and Bulson's got one hundred and ten, all right."
"There's a lot of stuff here yet," commented Roger, looking around, "andthat's no small walk. How many trips do you suppose it will take to getit all down there?"
"Just one trip more, to-morrow. You see on to-morrow's trip Harry andyou and I will have a load, and three extra men can tote a lot."
"But why were we let out of it to-day?" queried the boy.
"We take other boat down," put in the Indian, who had been listening,"this time we do it heap easy. No get knocked on the head."
"I hope not, for your sake," said Roger, who, though no coward, had beensecretly hoping that some one else would look after the other boat. "Butit's quite a trick to have to tackle again."
"No," replied Harry, with a quick negative shake of the head. "Heap easynow. I draw map every rock, know when stop canoe."
"Yes," said the cook thoughtfully, "it isn't much of a job to run arapid when you know what's ahead of you; the trouble is generally thatsome fool rock shows up when you least expect it."
"That's true," said the boy thoughtfully, "even the rock we nearly wentto smash on,--the one you jumped, you know,--we could have dodged thatif we had known that it was there and had hugged the right-hand shore."
"No strike rock this time. You no want try jump?"
"Not on your life, Harry," laughed Roger. "I'm not aching for excitementas much as that. Going through that rapid again will give me enough tothink of for one day, at least."
In the meanwhile, the boat having been got ready, the two shoved outinto the stream and headed for the rapid. As the other men hadsuggested, the passage lost some of its terrors when it was known whatlay beyond, but Roger found that his companion possessed a memory forevery little turn of the river which was to him incredible. He felt thathe would have to go through it a dozen times before he could begin toact as a pilot through, but Harry had the whole stretch of boiling wateras clearly in his mind as though an immense chart were stretched outbefore him.
The second rapid with its smother of foam, moreover, looked almost asbad to the boy on the second trial as it had on the first, and his heartbeat more rapidly as the boat shot into the narrow gorge, in the midstof which, a little lower down, the sharp and jagged spur lay awaitingthe unready traveler. But the Indian was on the alert, and just at theright moment he drove the canoe over beside the bank, so close thatRoger feared a slight eddy might crush in the eggshell sides of thecanoe. But even with every inch gained at the turn, the old black spursuddenly appeared around the bend, grim and perilous athwart their path.Then Harry put his muscle into the paddle, Roger following suit, andthey flew across the river with such speed that the current drivingthem on the rock had little chance to catch the boat, and they shavedthe danger with about two feet to spare. The rapid beyond, which Rogerhad run himself, was none too easy, and as the boy noted its difficulty,he felt a thrill of pride that he had managed to take the first boatthrough that alone.
"Heap bad rapid," said Harry, when the second boat had been drawn upbeside the first, and he had examined both the canoes carefully to seehow much damage they had sustained on the trip.
"Have you ever run any that were worse than this?" queried Roger.
"No. Plenty longer, rougher, but rock in middle much bad."
Questioning his companion Roger heard many stories of difficult anddangerous canoe trips, told with the unimpassioned utterance of theIndian, and in his broken English, and he was able to see that thecanyon through which they had passed was almost as bad as any of them.They did not have to wait long for the arrival of the party from theupper camp, for the latter had cut the trail the preceding day, whileHarry and Roger were taking the first boat down and returning, so thatwhen they started the next morning before breakfast, it was fairly goodgoing. Shortly before noon, the canoeists, waiting beside the boats,heard shouts to which they responded, and a few minutes later thepacking party came crashing through the trees to the riverside.
A SHORT BUT DANGEROUS RAPID.
In tracking canoes to save time of portage, great skill is needed inthese swirling currents.
_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]
Harry, without waiting for any conversation with the other members ofthe party, busied himself in getting together dinner, knowing that thefellows, who had toted heavy packs over the carry, would be sufficientlyhungry and tired. The meal being over, the whole party, including Harryand Roger, started back for the camp, and the boy was surprised to findhow short and easy it seemed after the difficulty he had experienced theday before in forcing his way through the bush, where a trail had notbeen cut. They reached the camp at the upper end of the canyon, wherethe cook had been left, late in the afternoon and made all ready for thestart the following morning.
The next day the entire remainder of the supplies and equipment of thecamp were made up into packs and the party started over the portage towhere the boats had been left lower down on the river. Roger, beingaccommodated with a pack weighing about ninety pounds, felt as though hewere back in the Minnesota swamps, with the tump strap over hisforehead. His familiarity with packing, and his ability to take the tripwithout feeling any physical inconvenience, was a source ofgratification, as Roger's pride was keen not to be thought in any sensea less able member of the party than the oldest and most seasoned hand.The journey down to the lower end of the canyon did not seem so long,and, as on the previous day, the party reached the lower camp aboutnoon. In the afternoon Gersup and Bulson, taking Roger with them, tookadvantage of the half day to make a survey before descending into thebeaches of the lower Cantwell River.
As it was expected that the going would be easy for a while lower in thestream, Rivers readily acceded to Roger's petition that he should takehis rifle along. There had been such a lot of caribou about, that theboy felt he ought at least to get one.
"We haven't space for the head as a trophy, of course, you know," hesaid, "and I don't approve of shooting for sport, but caribou is goodeating, and it is always wise to conserve supplies."
"I've never had a chance at any big game, before, Mr. Rivers," joyfullysaid the boy.
"All right, then," said the chief, smiling, "I guess you won't reducethe visible supply of caribou in Alaska enough to hurt."
Immediately after dinner the three started, and Roger's luck was withhim, for as they rounded the corner of a mountain slope, Gersup halted,and pointed with his finger to four specks about three miles away.Raising his field glasses, he said:
"There you are, Doughty; there are your caribou. You've worked prettyhard and ought to have some fun out of it. We can get along all right,and you go after them. You can't very well get lost, but don't try totrack them after dark."
Roger nodded, and skirting the slope until he was hidden from theanimals' view, he started on a run for a couple of miles, until hethought it would be necessary to exert more prudence. A long and wearyprogress through the rough country, with the endeavor not so much as tocrack a twig or rustle a leaf, brought the lad at last to the littlevalley where he had seen the caribou, and there the shelter stopped,except for sundry large boulders, which did not afford a completecover. Roger had worked round, of course, so that he was coming up wind.He had come within about half a mile of them, when he found coverabsolutely gone, so lying prone on his face, and just wriggling forwardby movements of his knees a foot or so at a time, he spent at least anhour advancing a quarter of a mile on the objects of his quest.
Suddenly, when he was about four hundred yards away, though he was notconscious of having made a sound, and though he had not been able todiscern any change in the direction of the wind, the nearest of the fourstopped feeding and threw up his head. The boy had been careful,throughout his crawl, to change the sight on his rifle to the distancehe estimated he was from the game, and so, when the caribou stopped, hewas ready. He waited a moment, hoping that the animal, seeing andhearing nothing, would resume feeding, but instead, the alarm seemed tocom
municate itself to the others, and they appeared to prepare forflight.
Like a flash the thought shot through Roger's mind that if they oncestarted to run he would not be able to stalk them again that night, anddetermining to risk a long shot, rather than none at all, he laid hisrifle across a boulder which he had been using as a cover, and taking acareful aim, fired. The distance seemed to him tremendous, and as therifle cracked the four leaped into full career, but the one at which theboy had fired gave a jump, which, to his excited idea, seemed to showthat he had been hit. Away started Roger at full tilt after them, butthey were speedily out of sight. Tearing along at topmost speed over theuneven ground, Roger's breath began to give out and little black spotsdanced before his eyes, but when he reached the trail of the fleeingcaribou and found a spot of blood in the tracks of one of them, he wouldnot have changed places with the Director of the Survey. On he went,following this track, and noting that the leaps were growing shorter andshorter, but his endurance was beginning to give out, when he saw beforehim, not more than half a mile away, a solitary caribou. Knowing thatthose which had not been hit were probably four or five miles distant atthis time, and that they would not stop under fifteen miles or so, theboy knew that this was his victim and he redoubled his energies.
The sight of the pursuer seemed to revive the flagging energies of thedeer, and for half an hour he increased the distance. Then Roger sawthat he was gaining, although the dusk was coming on fast. Fearing tolose his game, he decided for another long shot, and was againsuccessful, for at the crack of the rifle the caribou fell, staggered tohis feet, gave a few convulsive leaps, and fell again, and when, tenminutes later, the boy stood beside the object of his quest, amagnificent Barren Ground Caribou, the animal was dead. Roger knew thatit was no use trying to skin the caribou, and greatly though he desiredits head, he had been told that the party could not bother with it, socutting off as much of the meat as he could carry, he started for thecamp, which he reached four or five hours later, and displayed hisevidence, and told his hunting story with infinite zest and relish.
A couple of days later, while the men were enjoying an after-dinnersmoke, Roger noticed Rivers stooping by the edge of one of the riverbars, flicking water out of a gold pan in regular cadenced jerks. Seeingthe boy, he beckoned to him, and carefully pointing to two or three tinyparticles of metal that lay on the rock beside him, he held out his handto the boy.
SKINNING A CARIBOU.
Within the Arctic Circle, animals are slain for food, rarely forsport.
_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]
"Gold!" he said.
"You have found a gold mine?" Roger inquired excitedly.
The geologist smiled at the boy's sudden conclusion that unimaginedwealth lay exposed before them.
"Gold does not come in quarries like building stone," he said with alaugh. "Did you think it came in great masses of rock?"
"No," answered Roger, "but I thought it came in veins through therocks."
"So it does, but you can find it in sand. What is sand?"
The boy thought a moment. "Why," he said, at length, "sand is rocksground small by the action of wind and water."
"Very well," said his chief. "Now if some of the rocks ground smallcontained a vein of gold, what would happen to it?"
"The gold would be turned into sand, too," answered the boy.
"Only in part," said the older man. "The gold is hard and heavy, andwhen it is eroded from the rocks it comes in flakes rather than smallparticles. Then, you see, when sand is washed this way," illustrating bya cradling motion, "the gold sinks to the bottom as the sand is washedaway from it, and you can take out the pieces of gold with comparativeease."
"Then it ought to be very easy to get gold!" exclaimed the boy withvisions of Arabian Nights wealth floating before his eyes.
"Don't you believe it. There is gold on this river bar, as I have shownyou, and, indeed, gold has been reported by the Survey on nearly all thebars of the Tanana River and its tributaries; but the geological historyof the region is far from perfectly known yet, and the tracing to theiroriginal sources the debris of the Cantwell and Tanana Rivers is anexcessively complicated subject. Of course, if you found the originalvein of gold from which these flakes came, it would pay big, but nearits source it may be in sufficient quantity to pay well, even in placerform."
"But if you can wash it right out of the sand," objected Roger, hisimagination fired by the sight of the particles of metal, "why not getit that way?"
"Nothing easier," replied the geologist. "Thousands of people might comeup here and wash the sands of this and other rivers, the White River inparticular, but it doesn't follow that they would get enough to paythem for their trouble. Just think what it would cost to get up here! Isuppose from the 'colors' in this sand, each one of us could wash fromsix to ten dollars' worth of gold a day through the summer, but what usewould that be? It wouldn't pay the expenses of the trip; still hundredshave made small fortunes by such methods."
"Then prospecting for gold's not so easy after all?"
"It's one of the hardest lives I know," was the reply, "and the mostdissatisfying. If you happen to strike a 'pay-streak,' as it is called,it may be very profitable."
"But if you strike the original vein?" asked Roger. "Isn't it prettygood then?"
"Only under certain conditions," answered the older man. "You can'tcrush the quartz rock except with heavy machinery, and you can easilysee that it's no light job getting huge crushers up here. And that's notall: after you have spent thousands of dollars in buying the machineryand more thousands in moving it to this forsaken spot, you then have tospend tens of thousands building up a water power development, or elseface the still more difficult problem of transporting coal to run yourengines. Then high wages are a big factor, too!"
"Then, if it's so hard to get at, what drew the crowds at the time ofthe Yukon and Nome 'strikes?'" asked Roger.
"The desire to get rich quick," was the reply. "It is safe to say thatnot more than ten per cent. of the thousands of people who came toAlaska in the gold rush succeeded. Alaska is no Eldorado to pick upwealth idly, though the gold industry, properly capitalized, isimportant and worth $20,000,000 annually to the country."
"But surely some one made money in the Klondike and Nome fields?"
"There was a lot of gold near the surface, and the first-comers got thatwithout much trouble, as well as getting the richest claims. There isplenty more there, but it is in frozen gravels and hard to get out.Prospecting for gold is the best thing I know to keep away from, unlessyou are willing to live in solitude and disappointment all your life,living on the bare hope that some time you may be lucky enough to strikea rich 'pocket.'"
THE END OF A HARD CLIMB.
A station made in the Land of Snow, the seated figure on a bank whichnever melts.
_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]