Читать книгу The Untamed American Spirit: Historical Novels & Western Adventures - Emerson Hough - Страница 56

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“The last day on the trail!” Such was the first word with which the leader of our little party greeted his young friends when they rolled out of their tents in the morning. And soon all hands were busy adjusting the packs ready for the plucky animals which had brought them through so far. Their breakfast was hurried as rapidly as possible.

“Well,” said Rob, “I don’t know whether or not to be glad. We certainly have had a grand trip with the pack-train, hard as it has been sometimes. At least it’s brought us here to the foot of Mount Robson.”

“Our horses will be glad enough to be done with it,” said Uncle Dick. “Down at the Cache they’ll have all the grass they want and nothing to do for all the rest of this summer — unless some of Leo’s children take to riding them too hard.”

“Leo?” inquired John. “He’s the Indian who’s going to take us down the Canoe River, isn’t he?”

“Yes, and a good man, too, Leo. He and Moise will show us how to get along without the horses, eh, Moise?”

That good-natured man grinned and showed his white teeth. “Sometam she’ll ron pretty fast, this river on Columbia valley?” said he.

“Well, at any rate, we turn in our horses with Leo here at the Cache and get them the next time we come through — next year or some other year, perhaps. A horse takes his chance of getting a permanent residence in this part of the world. But our train has come through in fine shape — not a sore back in the lot. That speaks well for your care in packing, young men, and for Moise’s skill in making saddles.”

By this time they all had shaken down into the routine of packing the horses in the morning, and not long after they had finished their breakfast all was in readiness for their last march.

“En avant!” said Uncle Dick. “Mush! Moise, we’ll lunch at the Cache to-day.”

They swung on steadily down the broadened valley whose course now changed more to the southwest for five miles or so. The trail was much better, and as they reached the wide eastern end of the valley, which broadens out near the historic Tête Jaune Cache, they made rapid progress, animated by the continually changing scene before them.

For the last five miles they were in a broad, grassy valley where many hoofs had worn a plainly marked trail. On ahead they could see the Fraser swinging in from its southwest bend to meet them. The courses of many other small streams, outlined by green bushes, also could be seen coming in from almost every direction. Farther to the west and south lofty mountains rose, broken by caps which seemed to be of no great altitude. The Selwyns, on the other side of the Fraser, stood behind them, and off on the right gradually rose the high, sweeping hills which climbed to the shoulders of Mount Robson itself. The whole made an extraordinary landscape.

“We’re in the Tête Jaune Valley,” said Uncle Dick, halting at the edge of the grassy expanse which seemed quite flat for five miles or so ahead of them. “We’re coming now to one of the most interesting points in all the Rocky Mountains, and one of the least known. Some day, where we are here, there will be a town, perhaps a good one. Yonder is the original pathway of the Fraser — five hundred feet across here already, and a great river before it gets much farther toward the Pacific. We leave it here, so let’s not give it a worse name than we have to, for, take it all in all, it hasn’t harmed us thus far.

“On across the Fraser, to the south, is the North Thompson,” he continued. “Not very much known by any except a few of our explorers. It’s rather rough-looking in there, isn’t it? The Albreda Pass makes up from the Thompson, over yonder where you see the big mountains rising.”

“Is that where we go to get to the Canoe River?” said John. “It’s over in there somewhere.”

“No, the pass to the Canoe River is a wonderful thing in its way for this high country. Look over there to the south twenty miles or so, and you’ll see Cranberry Lake. The McLennan River runs out of that to join the Fraser right here, and that lake is just twenty-one feet above the level of this ground where we stand! You could pole a boat up there if you liked. Just over Cranberry Lake it’s only a mile to where the Canoe River bends in from the west. That country is just made for a pass from the Fraser to the Columbia, and to my mind it’s quite as interesting as any of these great mountain passes. I don’t know of any divide as low as this between two waterways as great as those of the Fraser and the Columbia. It’s only two thousand five hundred and sixty-three feet above sea-level at the summit, and, as I said, is only twenty-one feet above the Fraser.”

“We must have come down quite a way,” said Rob, “since we left the pass.”

“More than a thousand feet. And in that thousand feet the Fraser has grown from a trickle to a great river — in fifty miles downhill.”

“Well, I can see,” said Rob, looking about the pleasant valley which lay before them, “that this is a good place for a town.”

“Certainly,” said the leader of their party. “There’ll be more than one railroad come through here across the Yellowhead Pass, very likely, and already they are making surveys down the Fraser and Thompson and the Canoe River. Sometime there will be a railroad down the Big Bend of the Columbia below us, and it will have a branch up here, as sure as we’re standing here now. That will open up all this country from the points along the Canadian Pacific. Then all these names — the Thompson, the Fraser, and the Canoe — will be as familiar to the traveling public as the Missouri and the Mississippi. Yet as we stand here and look at that country it is a country as yet unknown and unnamed! I couldn’t map it, John, myself, for, although that country south of us is one of the most interesting of the continent, it is one of the least known. In short, that’s the game country we’ve been heading for, and I’ll promise you a grizzly when we get south of that flat divide.”

“Well,” said John, “that’ll satisfy me, all right. We’ve had mighty little shooting this far.”

“All in good time, all in good time, John, my boy. Maybe we’ll show you as good sport as you’re looking for, at least, what with rapids and grizzly bears.

“But now we must go on and find Leo, if we can. I sent word to him last fall for him to meet me here at the Cache this month. We’ll see what luck there is in the wilderness despatch.”

They passed on rapidly along and across the sunlit valley, exulting in a sense of freedom in getting out of the dark and gloomy mountains into an open country where they could see all about them. Soon they saw smoke rising above the tops of the low trees, and discovered it to come from a number of tepees, tall and conical, built with long poles, precisely like the tepees of the tribes east of the Rockies.

“That’s the Shuswap village,” said Uncle Dick. “Leo lives there with his people. Some good canoemen and hunters in there, too. First, let’s go on down to the end of the trail. I want you to see the actual location of the old Tête Jaune Cache.”

When they pulled up at the bank of the Fraser it was on an open flat shut in by low pines and poplars. They could see no building at all; only a few poles and tent-stakes littered the ground.

“This is the Cache,” said Uncle Dick.

“It isn’t so much of a place as I expected,” said John. “Weren’t there any houses here?”

“Over there, no doubt, were some log buildings once upon a time,” said Uncle Dick. “No doubt the old trappers built their cache well and strong, for plenty of good furs came through here — marten and ermine and beaver and otter — for the ladies of Great Britain to wear nearly a hundred years ago. But, you see, in this climate logs rot rather early, and the fires have run all through here, as well. So when the traders left these old trails Nature soon claimed her own and wiped out all traces of them. The cache has gone the way of Jasper House and Henry House.”

“What became of all of those old fellows?” inquired Rob. “We only hear of the ones that wrote books.”

“They are gone and forgotten,” said Uncle Dick. “No one knows even where old Tête Jaune himself — whether he was Iroquois or Swede or plain Injun — lies buried to-day. There is no record of where he laid his bones to rest. He was a brave man, whoever he was, and he lived in a great age of adventure. Think of what he must have seen, spending all his life in a country like this!

“But each to his own day, I suppose. Here we are at the end of our trail. We’ll have to cross the Fraser. I must see Leo, and learn what he has done about the boats — I’ve told him to build a couple of good big boats — bateaux — to take us down the Canoe River over yonder.

“Here, you see, we leave the trail,” he continued. “Yonder is the Fraser trail down to Fort George. Once at Fort George, you know, you can take an automobile down the old Ashcroft trail to the Canadian Pacific.”

“Automobile! What do you know about that!” exclaimed Jesse. “I didn’t know we were within a thousand miles of one.”

“Yes, within two hundred miles. It doesn’t look much like it, does it? You see, we’re living in rather a wonderful age. This country which looks so wild will not be wild very much longer. That’s the only reason I’ve allowed you to take so dangerous a journey as this, this spring, with me. Before long all these things will be common. People will come out here on the cars by thousands, and complain about the sleepers and the dining-car, when they are crossing the Rocky Mountains, very likely. One day they’ll have horseback trails through here, as they do around Banff, and I suppose even old Mount Robson will get more or less common one time or another. But at least we’ve seen this country before those things happened.

“This is all there is to the old Cache. It’s mostly a memory, but history has written it down as one of the important places in the Rockies. John, you must bring your map up to date here, at the Tête Jaune Cache. And here your trail bends to the south, for now we’re going to follow the Columbia, and not the Fraser, after this, although my railroad goes on down the Fraser.

“We’ll ride over now to the village and see if we can find Leo,” he concluded, as he turned his horse back and started off in the direction of the tepees.