Читать книгу The Untamed American Spirit: Historical Novels & Western Adventures - Emerson Hough - Страница 110

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“Well, well, young gentlemen,” called out the tall and bronze-faced man who now strode toward them across the railway platform, “did you think I was never coming? I see that you are holding down your luggage.”

“Not a hard thing to do, was it, Uncle Dick?” said Jesse. “We haven’t got very much along.”

“That all depends. Let me tell you, my young friends, on this trip every fellow has to look out for himself the best he can. It’s the hardest travel you’ve ever had. You must keep your eye on your own stuff all along.”

“What do you mean — that we must be careful or some one will steal our things?” demanded Jesse.

“No, there isn’t so very much danger of theft — that is, from the breeds or others along the way; they’ll steal whisky, but nothing else, usually. But it’s a rough country, and there are many portages, much changing of cargoes. Each chap must keep his eye on his own kit all the time, and look out for himself the best way he can. That’s the lesson of this great North. It’s the roughest country in the world. As you know, there is an old saying among the fur-traders that no man has ever whipped the North.

“I was thinking more especially about the dogs,” he added, nodding toward the luggage on which the boys were sitting.

“And what do you mean about the dogs, Uncle Dick?” asked Jesse.

“Well, those are the beggars that will steal you blind. They’ll eat anything they can swallow and some things they can’t. I’ve had them eat the heels off a pair of boots, and moccasins are like pie for them. They would eat your hat if you left it lying — eat the pack-straps off your bag. So don’t leave anything lying around, and remember that goes now, and all the way through the trip.”

“Are there dogs all the way through?” asked John, curiously.

“Yes, we’re in the dog country, and will be for five thousand miles down one river and across and up the other. You’ll not see a cow or a sheep, and only two horses, in the next three months. North of Smith’s Landing, which is at the head of the Mackenzie River proper, there never has been a horse, and I think there never will be one. The dogs do all the hauling and all the packing — and they are always hungry. That’s what the fellows tell me who have been up there — the whole country starves almost the year round, and the dogs worst of all. I’m just telling you these things to be useful to you, because we’ve got nothing along which we can afford to spare.”

“When are we going to start, Uncle Dick?” demanded Jesse, once more, somewhat mindful of the recent laughter of his companions at his eagerness.

“Well, that’s hard to say,” replied his elder relative. “I’d like to start to-morrow morning. It all depends on the stage of the water. If a flood came down the Athabasca to-morrow you’d see pretty much every breed in that saloon over there stop drinking and hurry to the scows.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” asked John.

“Well, when the river goes up the scows can run the Grand Rapids, down below here, without unloading, or at least without unloading everything. If the river is low so that the rocks stand out, the men have to portage every pound of the brigade stuff. The Grand Rapids are bad, let me tell you that! It is only within the last fifty years that any one has ever tried to run them. I’ll show you the man who first went through — an old man now over seventy; but he was a young chap when he first tried it. Well, he found that he could get through, so he tried it over again. He and others have been guiding on those rapids ever since. That cuts off the old Clearwater trail from here to Fort McMurray, which used to be their old way of getting north.

“So now you see,” he continued, “why these breeds like high water. It means less work for them. It’s hard work for them at best, but a breed would rather risk his life than do any work he could escape. They know there is danger — there is hardly a brigade goes north which brings back all its men again.

“But come on now,” he added. “It’s almost time for supper. We’ll go fix up our camp for the night.”

The boys, each stoutly picking up his own pack-bag, followed their tall leader as he strode away. Their camp was far enough removed from the noise of the hotel bar to leave them in quiet and undisturbed.

“My, but the mosquitoes are thick!” said Jesse, brushing at his face with the broken bough which he had caught up. “I never saw them so bad.”

“Well, Jesse,” said Uncle Dick, smiling, “just you wait. Before you get back you’ll say you never saw mosquitoes before in your life. The traders tell me that they are worse the farther north you go. They say it takes about two or three years for a new man to get used to them so that he can sleep or work at his best — it’s a sort of nervousness that they stir up, though in time that wears off. I think also when they keep on biting you you get immune to the poison, so that it doesn’t hurt so much.”

“Don’t they bite the half-breeds and Indians?” asked John.

“Certainly they bite them. You watch the breeds around a camp at night. Every fellow will cover up his head with his blanket, so that he can sleep or smother, as it happens. As for us, however, we’ve got our black headnets and our long-sleeved gloves. Dope isn’t much good. No one cares much for mosquito dope in the Far North; you’ll see more of it in the States than you will in here, because they have learned that it is more or less useless.

“Our big mosquito tent is just the same as the one we took down the Columbia River with us — the one that the Indians cut the end out of when we gave it to them! I’ve tried that tent all through Alaska in my work, and everywhere in this part of the world, and it’s the only thing for mosquitoes. You crawl in through the little sleeve and tie it after you get inside, and then kill the mosquitoes that have followed you in. The windows allow you to get fresh air, and the floor cloth sewed in keeps the mosquitoes from coming up from below. It’s the only protection in the world.”

“But I saw a lot of little tents or bars down in the camp near the river a little while ago,” said Rob.

“Precisely. That’s the other answer to the mosquito question — the individual mosquito bar-tent. They are regularly made and sold in all this northern country now, and mighty useful they are, too. As you see, it’s just a piece of canvas about six feet long and one breadth wide, with mosquito bar sewed to the edges. You tie up each corner to a tree or stick, and let the bar of cheese-cloth drop down around your bed, which you make on the ground. When you lie down you tuck the edge under your blankets, and there you are! If you don’t roll about very much you are fairly safe from mosquitoes. That, let me say, is the typical individual remedy for mosquitoes in this country. Of course, when we are out on railroad work, map-making and writing and the like, we have to have something bigger and better than that. That sort of little tent is only for the single night. No doubt we’ll use them ourselves, traveling along on the scows, because it is a good deal of trouble to put up a big wall tent every night.

“The distances in this country are so big,” he added, after a time, explaining, “that every one travels in a hurry and spends no unnecessary work in making camp. We’ll have to learn to break camp in ten minutes, and to make it in fifteen. I should say it would take us about thirty minutes to make a landing, build a fire, cook a meal, and get off again. There’s no time to be wasted, don’t you see?”

“I suppose Sir Alexander Mackenzie found that out himself when he first went down this river,” said Rob.

“I’ll warrant you he did! And his lesson has stuck in the minds of all these northern people to this day.”

“Well, anyhow,” commented Jesse, as one mosquito bit his hand, “I wish they wouldn’t bother me while I’m eating.”

“Now if John had said that,” said Uncle Dick, “it wouldn’t be so strange.”

They all joined in his laughing at John, whose appetite made a standing joke among them. But John only laughed with them and went on with his supper. “There can’t anybody bluff me out of a good meal,” said he, “not even the mosquitoes.”

“That’s the idea,” nodded his older adviser. “But really these insect pests are the great drawback of this entire northern country. Perhaps they will keep the settlers out as much as anything else. Fur-traders and trappers and travelers like ourselves — they can’t stop for them, of course. We’ll take our chances like Sir Alexander Mackenzie — eh, boys?”

“I’m not afraid,” said Jesse.

“Nor I,” added John.

And indeed they finished their evening meal, which they cooked for themselves, in fairly comfortable surroundings; and in their mosquito-proof tent they passed an untroubled night, each in the morning declaring that he had slept in perfect comfort.

“We’ll leave the tents standing for a while,” said Uncle Dick, “until we know just when we are going to embark. The brigade may pull out any day now. We’ll have warning enough so that we can easily get ready. But come on now and we’ll go over to the boat-yard,” he added. “It’s time we began to see about our own boat and to get our supplies ready for shipping.”

They followed him through the straggling town down to the edge of the water-front, where the Athabasca, now somewhat turbulent in the high waters of the spring, rolled rapidly by.

Here there was a rude sort of lumber-yard, to all appearance, with the addition of a sort of rough shipyard. Chips and shavings and fragments of boards lay all about. Here and there on trestles stood the gaunt frames of what appeared to be rough flatboats, long, wide, and shallow, constructed with no great art or care. There was no keel to any one of these boats, and the ribs were flimsily put together.

“Well, I don’t think much of these boats,” grumbled John, as he passed among them slowly.

“Don’t be too rough with them,” said Uncle Dick, laughingly. “Like everything else up here, they may not be the best in the world, but they do for their purpose. These scows are never intended to come back, you must remember; all they have to do is to stand the trip down, for a month or two. All the frame houses of the Far North are made out of these scows; they break them up at the ends of the trips. Our boat may be part of a church before it gets through.

“Come now, and I’ll introduce you to old Adam McAdam, the builder and pump-maker.” He nodded toward an old man who was passing slowly here and there among the rude craft. “This old chap is no doubt over seventy-five years old, and he must have built hundreds of these boats in his time. He makes the pumps, too, and a pump has to go with every scow to keep it from sinking at first, before the seams get swelled up.”

The old man proved pleasant enough, and with a certain pride showed them all about these rude craft of the fur trade. Each boat appeared to be about fifty feet in length and nearly twenty in width, the carrying capacity of each being about ten tons.

“Of course you know, my lads,” said the old man, “a scow goes no faster than the river runs. Here’s the great oar — twenty feet it is in length — made out of a young tree. The steersman uses that to straighten her up betimes. But there’s nothing to make the boat run saving the current, do ye mind?”

“Well, that won’t be so very fast,” commented Rob, thinking of the long distances that lay ahead.

“Oh, we’re not confined to scows for much more than two hundred and fifty miles,” replied Uncle Dick. “At McMurray we get a steamer which carries us down-stream to Smith’s Landing. That’s the big and bad portage of the whole trip — that is to say, excepting the Rat Portage of five hundred miles over the Yukon. But when we get below the Smith’s Landing portage we strike another Hudson’s Bay Company steamer that takes us fast enough, day and night, all the way to the Arctic Circle. That’s where we make our time, don’t you see? These boats only get us over the rapids.

“Of course,” he explained, a little later, “a few of them go on down, towed by the steamboats, because the steamboats are not big enough to carry all the freight which must go north. There are only two steamboats between us and the Arctic Circle now, barring one or two little ones which are not of much account. The scows have to carry all the supplies for the entire fur trade — trade goods, bacon, flour, and everything.”

“Who’s that old gentleman coming along there, Uncle Dick?” demanded Jesse, turning toward the end of the street.

“That’s old Father Le Fèvre,” replied his uncle. “He’s the purchasing agent for all the many missions of the Catholic Church in the Far North. Each year he comes in with ten or more scows, each carrying ten tons of goods. He may go as far as Chippewyan, and then come back, or he may go on to Great Slave. I understand there are two good Sisters going even farther north this year. No one knows when they will come back, of course; they’ll be teachers up among the native schools.

“Well, now you see the transport system beyond the head of the rails in the Athabasca and Mackenzie country,” he continued, as, hands in pocket, he passed along among the finished and unfinished craft which still lay in the shipyard.

Outside, moored to stumps along the shore, floated a number of the rude scows, some of which even now were partially laden. The leader of the expedition pointed out to one of these.

“That’s our boat yonder, young men,” said he. “You’ll see that she has the distinction of a name. Most scows have only numbers on them, and each post gets certain scows with certain numbers. But ours has a name — the Midnight Sun. How do you like that?”

“That’s fine, sir!” said Rob. “And we’ll see to it that she doesn’t come to grief as long as we use her.”

“Well, it will only be for a couple of hundred miles or so,” said Uncle Dick, “but I fancy there’ll be nothing slow in that two hundred miles.”

“Where will we eat?” demanded John, with his usual regard for creature comforts.

“That’s easy,” said Rob. “I know all about that. I saw two men loading a cook-stove on one of the scows. They took it out of a canoe, and how they did it without upsetting the canoe I can’t tell, but they did it. I suppose we’ll cook as we go along.”

“Precisely,” nodded Uncle Dick. “The cook-boat is the only thing that goes under steam. The cook builds his fire in the stove just as though he were on shore. When he calls time for meals, the men from the other boats take turns in putting out in canoes and going to the cook-boat for meals. Sometimes a landing is made while they eat, and of course they always tie up at night They have certain stages which they try to make. The whole thing is all planned out on a pretty good system, rough but effective, as you will see.”

“Is he a pretty good cook?” asked John, somewhat demurring.

“Well, good enough for us, if he is good enough for the others,” replied his uncle. “But I’ll tell you what we might do once in a while. They do say that the two good Sisters who go north with the mission brigade know how to cook better than any half-breed. I’ve made arrangements so that we can eat on their scow once in a while if we like.”

“What’s that funny business on the end of our boat?” asked Jesse, presently, pointing to a rude framework of bent poles which covered the short deck at the stern of the boat.

“That’s what they call a ‘bower’ up in this country,” said Uncle Dick. “They have some curious old English words in here, even yet. Now a bower is simply a lot of poles, like an Indian wickiup, covering the end of your boat, as you see. You can throw your blankets over it, if you like, or green willows. It keeps the sun off. Since the Hudson’s Bay Company charges a pretty stiff price for taking any passenger north, it tries to earn its money by building a bower for the select few, such as we are.”

“I don’t think that we need any bower,” said Rob, and all the other boys shook their heads.

“A little sunshine won’t hurt us,” said Jesse, stoutly.

“But think of the style about it,” laughed Uncle Dick, pleased to see the hardiness of his young charges. “Well, we’ll do as we like about that. One thing, we’ve got to have a chance to see out, for I know you will want to keep your eyes open every foot of the way.”

“Well, I wish the breeds would hurry up and get the boats loaded,” added Jesse, impatiently, after a while. “There’s nothing doing here worth while.”

“Don’t be too hard with the breeds,” counseled Uncle Dick. “They’re like children, that’s all. This is the best time of the year for them, when the great fur brigade goes north. It couldn’t go without them. The fur trade in this country couldn’t exist without the half-breeds and the full-bloods; there’s a half-dozen tribes on whom the revenues of this great corporation depend absolutely.

“You’ll see now the best water-men and the best trail-men in the world. Look at these packages — a hundred pounds or better in each. Every pound of all that stuff is to be portaged across the Smith’s Landing portage, and the Mountain Portage, and even at Grand Island, just below here, if the water is low. They have to carry it up from the scows to the steamboats, and from the steamboats to the shore. Every pound is handled again and again. It’s the half-breeds that do that. They’re as strong as horses and as patient as dogs; fine men they are, so you must let them have their little fling after their old ways; they don’t know any better.”

“How many of the fur posts are there in the North, Uncle Dick?” asked Rob, curious always to be exact in all his information.

“Well, let’s see,” pondered Uncle Dick, holding up his fingers and counting them off. “The first one above here is McMurray; that’s one of the treaty posts where the tribes are paid their annuities by the Dominion government. It’s two hundred and fifty-two miles from here, and there’s where we hit our first steamboat, as I told you.

“Then comes Chippewyan, on Athabasca Lake. It was founded by Sir Alexander Mackenzie in seventeen eighty-eight, and from that time on it has been one of the most important trading-posts of the North — in fact, I believe it is the most important to-day, as it seems to be a sort of center, right where a lot of rivers converge. That’s four hundred and thirty-seven miles from here. When you get that far in, my buckos, you’ll be able to say that you are away from the hated pale-faces and fairly launched on your trip through the wildest wilderness the world has to-day. It is a hundred miles on to Smith’s Landing — sixteen miles there of the fiercest water you ever saw in all your lives. Wagon portage there, but sometimes the boats go through. Fort Smith is at the other end of that portage.

“Next down is Fort Resolution, and that’s seven hundred and forty-five miles from here. Hay River is eight hundred and fifteen, and Fort Providence nine hundred and five miles, and Fort Simpson, at the mouth of the Liard River, is a thousand and eighty-five miles from here. Getting along in the world pretty well then, eh?

“There are a few others as I recall them — Fort Wrigley, twelve hundred and sixty-five miles from here, and Fort Norman, fourteen hundred and thirty-seven miles. Now you come to Fort Good Hope, and that is right under the Arctic Circle. It is sixteen hundred and nine miles from here, where we are at the head of the railroads. If we are fast enough in our journey we’ll get our first sight of the Midnight Sun at Good Hope, perhaps.

“The next post north of Good Hope is Arctic Red River, eighteen hundred and nineteen miles; and of course you know that the last post of the Hudson’s Bay Company is Fort McPherson, on the Peel River, near the mouth of the Mackenzie. That is rated as eighteen hundred and nineteen miles by the government map-makers, who may or may not be right; being an engineer myself, I’ll say they must be right! In round numbers we might as well call it two thousand miles.

“Well, that’s your distance, young men, and here are the ships which are to carry you part of the way.”

“And when we get to Fort McPherson we’re not half-way through, are we, sir?” asked Rob.

“No, we’re not, and if we were starting a hundred and twenty-eight years earlier than we are, with Sir Alexander Mackenzie, we would have to hustle to get back before the snows caught us. As it is, we’ll hope some time in July to start across the Rat Portage. That’s five hundred miles, just along the Arctic Circle, and in that five hundred miles we go from Canadian into American territory — at Rampart House, on the Porcupine River. Well, it’s down-stream from there to the Yukon, and then we hit our own boats — more of them, and faster and more comfortable. I have no doubt, John, that you can get all you want to eat on any one of a half-dozen good boats that ply on the Yukon to-day from White Horse down to the mouth.

“Of course,” he added, “this trip of ours is not quite as rough as it would have been twenty years ago when the Klondike rush began. The world has moved since then, as it always has moved and always will. I suppose some time white men will live in a good deal of this country which we now think impossible for a white man to inhabit. Little by little, as they learn the ways of the Indians and half-breeds, they will edge north, changing things as they go.

“But I don’t want to talk about those times,” he added, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m for the wilderness as it is, and I’m glad that you three boys and myself can see that country up there before it has changed too much. Not that it is any country for a tenderfoot now. You’ll find it wild enough and rough enough. It has gone back since the Klondike rush. In travel you’ll see the old ways of the Hudson’s Bay Company, even although the independents have cut into their trade a little bit. You’ll see the Far North much as it was when Sir Alexander first went down our river here.

“And as you go on I want you to study the old times, and the new times as well. That’s the way, boys, to learn things. As for me, I found out long ago that the only way to learn about a country is not to look it up on a map, but to tramp across it in your moccasins.

“So now,” he concluded, as they four stood at the river’s brink, looking out at the long line of the scows swinging in the rapid current of the Athabasca, “that’s the first lesson. What do you think of our boat, the Midnight Sun?”

“She’s fine, sir!” said Rob, and the other boys, eagerly looking up into the face of their tall and self-reliant leader, showed plainly enough their enjoyment of the prospect and their confidence in their ability to meet what might be on ahead.