Читать книгу The Untamed American Spirit: Historical Novels & Western Adventures - Emerson Hough - Страница 67

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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 way across, is place where mans can get through. No can line on this side — rock, she come straight down on the river.”

“Well,” said Uncle Dick, “here is a pretty kettle of fish! I don’t like the looks of this in the least. I’m not going to try to take these boys through that rapid over there. Are you sure you can’t line down on this side?”

“No can walk,” said Leo, “no can ron this side. Other side only place for to go through. She’s pretty bad, but maybe-so make ’um.”

“Well, I’m not going to let the boys try it,” said Uncle Dick. “Now see here, young men, I’ll tell you what you have got to do. You see that point below there about two miles, where the forest comes out? Very well; you’ll have to get around there somehow. Go back of that shelving rock face the best you can, and come out on that point, and wait for us.”

The boys looked at him rather soberly. “Why can’t we go with you,” asked John, presently, who did not in the least fancy the look of these dark woods and the heavy, frowning mountains that lay back of them. Indeed, they all reflected that here they were many a day’s march from Revelstoke, over a country practically impassable.

“You couldn’t go in the boats, boys, even if it were safe,” said Uncle Dick. “We want them light as we can have them. Go on now, and do as you are told. This is a place where we all of us will have to take a chance, and now your time has come to take your chances, for it’s the best that we can do. Each of you take a little pack — one rifle will do for you, but each of you must have his ax and matches and compass and a little something to eat — here, take all the bannocks we have cooked, and this little bit of flour. When you get to the point make a smoke to let us know you’re there. If we don’t get through you’ll have to get on the best way you can.”

“Why can’t one of you go with us?” inquired John, still anxiously.

“It wouldn’t be right for the men left in the boat — it takes two men to run a boat through water like that, my boy. Go on, now. I am sorry to send you off, but this is the best that we can do, so you must undertake it like men.”

“It’s all right, fellows,” said Rob; “come on. We can get around there, I’m sure, and I’m pretty sure too that these men, good boatmen that they are, will run that chute. You’re not afraid, are you, Leo?”

But if Leo heard him he said nothing in answer, although he made ready by stripping off his coat and tightening his belt, in which Moise and all the others followed him.

The boys turned for some time, looking back before they were lost to view in the forest. The men were still sitting on the beach, calmly smoking and giving them time to make their detour before they themselves attempted the dangerous run of the rapids.

It was perhaps an hour before the three young adventurers were able to climb the rugged slope which lay before them, and finally to descend a bad rock wall which allowed them access to the long point which Uncle Dick had pointed out to them, far below and at one side of the dreaded Priest Rapids. Here they built their little fire of driftwood, as they had been instructed; and, climbing up on another pile of driftwood which was massed on the beach, they began eagerly to look up-stream.

“The worst waves are over on the other side,” said Rob, after a time. “Look, I can see them now — they look mighty little — that’s the boats angling across from where we left them! It’ll soon be over now, one way or the other.”

They all stood looking anxiously. “They’re out of sight!” exclaimed Rob. And so, indeed, they were.

“That’s only the dip they’ve taken,” said Rob, after a time. “I see them coming now. Look! Look at them come! I believe they’re through.”

They stood looking for a little time, and then all took off their hats and waved them with a yell. They could see the boats now plunging on down, rising and falling, but growing larger and blacker every instant. At last they could see them outlined against the distant white, rolling waves, and knew that they were through the end of the chute and practically safe.

In a few moments more the two boats came on, racing by their point, all the men so busy that they had not time to catch the excited greetings which the boys shouted to them. But once around the point the boats swung in sharply, and soon, bow up-stream, made a landing but a few hundred yards below where they stood. Soon they were all united once more, shaking hands warmly with one another.

“That’s great!” said Uncle Dick. “I’ll warrant there was one swell there over fifteen feet high — maybe twenty, for all we could tell. I know it reared up clear above us, so that you had to lean your head to see the top of it. If we’d hit it would have been all over with us.”

“She’s bad tam, young men,” said Moise. “From where we see him she don’t look so bad, but once you get in there — poom! Well, anyway, here we are. That’s more better’n getting drowned, and more better’n walk, too.” And Moise, the light-hearted, used to taking chances, dismissed the danger once it was past.

“Well, that’s what I call good planning and good work,” said Rob, quietly, after a while. “To find the best thing to do and then to do it — that seems to be the way for an engineer to work, isn’t it, Uncle Dick?”

“Yes, it is, and all’s well that ends well,” commented the other. “And mighty glad I am to think that we are safe together again, and that you don’t have to try to make your way alone and on foot from this part of the country. I wasn’t happy at all when I thought of that.”

“And we weren’t happy at all until we saw you safely through that chute, either,” said Rob.

“Now,” resumed the leader, “how far is it to a good camping-place, Leo? We’ll want to rest a while to-night.”

“Good camp three mile down,” said Leo, “on high bank.”

“And how far have we come to-day, or will we have come by that time?”

“Not far,” said Leo; “’bout ten mile all.”

Uncle Dick sighed. “Well, we’re all tired, so let’s go into camp early to-night, and hold ourselves lucky that we can camp together, too. Maybe we’d better bail out first — it’s lucky, for we only took in three or four pails of water apiece.”

“No man I ever know come through Priest Rapids on the high water like this,” said Leo. “That’s good fun.” And he and George grinned happily at each other.

They pulled on in more leisurely fashion now, and soon reached the foot of a high grassy bluff on the left-hand side of the river. They climbed the steep slope here, and so weary were they that that night they did not put up the tents at all, but lay down, each wrapped in his blanket, as soon as they had completed their scanty supper.

“Better get home pretty soon now,” said Moise. “No sugar no more. No baking-powder no more. Pretty soon no pork, and flour, she’s ’most gone, too.”