Читать книгу The Untamed American Spirit: Historical Novels & Western Adventures - Emerson Hough - Страница 69

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When they had climbed to the top of the highest bank they saw before them a clearing of over two hundred acres, a part of which had been made into a hay-field. Immediately in front of them was a yard full of beautiful flowers, kept as well as any flower-garden in the cities. To the left lay a series of barns and sheds, and near by was a vegetable-garden in which small green things already were beginning to show.

“Well, what do you know about this?” demanded John. “It looks as though we certainly had got to where people live at last. This is the finest place we’ve seen in many a day, and I’ll bet we can get something to eat here, too.”

Leo raised a shout, which presently brought out of the house a man who proved to be the caretaker of the place, a well-seasoned outdoor character by name of O’Brien. He advanced now and made them welcome.

“Come in, come in,” said he, “and tell me who ye may be and where ye come from? Is it you, Leo? I thought you were at the Cache, far above.”

“We all were there a few days ago,” replied the leader of the party. “We engaged Leo to bring us down the Canoe and the Columbia, and out to Revelstoke — we’ve crossed the mountains at the Yellowhead Pass, coming west from Edmonton by pack-train.”

“Ye’re jokin’, man!” rejoined O’Brien. “Shure, ye’ll not be tellin’ me those boys came all that way?”

“Him did,” said Leo, with almost his first word of praise. “Boys all right. Kill ’um grizzlum. Not scare’ of rapid.”

They went on now to explain to O’Brien more details of their journey and its more exciting incidents, including the hunt for the grizzlies and the still more dangerous experiences on the rapids. O’Brien listened with considerable amazement.

“But I know Leo,” he added, “and he’ll go annywheres in a boat. ’Tis not the first time he’s run this river, bad cess to her! But come in the house now, and I’ll be gettin’ ye something to eat, for belike ye’re hungry.”

“We are frankly and thoroughly hungry,” said Uncle Dick, “especially John here, who is hungry most of the time. We’ve reached your place just as our grub was about gone. Can we stock up with you a little bit, O’Brien?”

“Shure, if ye need to. But why not take passage on the steamer — she’s due this afternoon at three o’clock, and she’s goin’ down to-morrow. Ye see, we run a wood-yard here, for the steamboat company owns this farm now, and I’m takin’ care of it for them.”

“What do you say, boys?” asked their leader. “Shall we make it on down? Or shall we take to the steamer and leave our boats here?”

“Better take to the steamboat,” said O’Brien. “True, ye could get down mayhap to the head of Revelstoke Cañon all right, but then ye’d have to walk in about five miles annyway. The steamer can’t run the cañon herself, for that matter, and no boat should try it at this stage, nor anny other stage, fer all that. She’s a murderer, this old river, that’s what she is.”

Leo and Moise now helped O’Brien with his preparation of the meal, so that in a little time they were all sitting on real chairs and at a real table, with a real oil-cloth cover — the first of such things they had seen for many a day. Their own tin dishes they left in their boats, and ate from china, coarse but clean. Their meal was well cooked and abundant, and O’Brien gave them with a certain pride some fresh rhubarb, raised in a hotbed of his own, and also fried eggs.

“Wait a little,” said he, “and I’ll give ye new potatoes and all sorts o’ things. ’Tis a good farm we have here.”

“But how came you to have a farm like this, up here in the Selkirks?” inquired Rob.

“Well, you see,” answered O’Brien, “there’s quite a bit of gold-mining up here, and has been more. Those camps at the gold-creeks above here all needed supplies, and they used to pack them in — the pack-trail’s right back of our barn yonder. But Sam Boyd knew that every pound of hay and other stuff he raised fifty miles north of Revelstoke was that much closer to the market. This was his farm, you know — till the river got him, as she will every one who lives along her, in time.

“Ye see, Sam was the mail-carrier here, between Revelstoke and the camps above, and, as the trail is a horror, he mostly went by boat. His partner was Tom Horn, a good riverman too, and the two of them in their canoe went up and down together manny a trip. ’Twas a careful man he was, too, Sam, and no coward. But one time, to save them a little walk, I suppose, they concluded to run the Revelstoke Cañon. Well, they never got through, and what became of them no one knows, except that their boat came through in bits. Ye’re lucky this fellow Leo didn’t want to run ye all through there, with the fine big boats ye’ve got below. But at least Sam and Tom never made it through.

“Well, the old river got them, as she has so manny. Sam’s widow lived on here fer a time, then went to town and died there, and the company took the farm. They have a Chink to keep Mrs. Boyd’s flower-garden going the way she did before, for the boys all liked it in the mines. And back in the woods is a whole bunch of Chinks, wood-cutters that supplies the boats. When my Chink is done his gardenin’ I make him hoe my vegetables fer me.

“So ye’re grizzly-hunters, are ye, all of ye?” continued O’Brien. “And not afraid to take yer own life in your hands? ’Tis well, and anny man must learn that who goes into the wilds. But manny a tale I could tell ye of bould and brave men who’ve not been able to beat this old river here. Take yon cañon above Revelstoke, fer instance. She’d be but a graveyard, if the tale was told. One time six men started through in a big bateau, and all were lost but one, and he never knew how he got through at all. Once they say a raft full of Chinamen started down, and all were swept off and drowned but one. He hung to a rope, and was swept through somehow, but when they found him he was so bad scared he could not say a word. He hit the ties afoot, goin’ west and shakin’ his head, and maybe bound for China. No man could ever get him to spake again!

“Now do ye mind the big rapids up there they call the Death Rapids, above the Priest — I’m thinkin’ ye lined through there, or ye wouldn’t be here at the table now, much as I know how Leo hates to line a boat.”

“We certainly did line,” said Uncle Dick, “and were glad to get through at that. We lost almost a day there getting down.”

“Lucky ye lost no more, fer manny a man has lost his all at that very spot. Once a party of fourteen started down, in good boats, too, and only one man got out alive. Some say sixty men have been drowned in that one rapid; some say a hundred and sixty-five, counting in the Chinamen and Frenchmen who were drowned in the big stampede the time so manny started down to the diggings on rafts. Ye see, they’d shoot right around the head of the bend without sendin’ a man ahead to prospect the water, and then when they saw the rapids, ’twas too late to get to either side. ’Tis a death trap she is there, and well named.

“Wan time a Swede was spilled out on the Death Rapids, and somehow he came through alive. He swam for two miles below there before they could catch him with a boat, and he’d been swimming yet if they hadn’t caught him, he was that scared, and if they hadn’t hit him on the head with a oar. ’Twas entirely crazy he was.

“Mayhap ye remember the cabin on the west side, where they’re sluicing — that’s Joe Howard’s cabin. Well, Howard, like everywan else on the river, finds it easiest to get in and out by boat. Wan time he and his mate were lining down a boat not far from shore when she broke away. Howard jumped on a rock, but ’twas so far out he dared not try to swim ashore, fer the current set strong. The other man grabbed the boat and got through the edge of the rapids somehow, but ’twas half a mile below before he got ashore. Then he cuddn’t get the boat up again to where Howard was, and ’twas two or three hours of figgerin’ he did before Howard dared take the plunge and try to catch the pole which his mate reached out to him. ’Twas well-nigh crazy he was — a man nearly always goes crazy when he’s left out on a rock in the fast water that way.

“The Priest Rapids is another murderer, and I’ll not say how many have perished there. You tell me that your boats ran it at this stage of water? ’Twas wonderful, then, that’s all. Men have come through, ’tis true, and tenderfeet at that, and duffers, at that. Two were once cast in the Priest, and only one got through, and he could not swim a stroke! They say that sixty miners were lost in that rapid in one year.

“To be sure, maybe these are large tales, for such matters grow, most like, as the years go by, but ye’ve seen the river yerselves, and ye know what the risk is. Take a band of miners, foolhardy men, and disgust them with tryin’ to get out of this country afoot — and ’tis awful going on foot through here — and a raft is the first thing they think of — ’tis always a tenderfoot’s first idea. There’s nothing so hard to handle as a raft. Now here they come, singin’ and shoutin’, and swing around the bend before they see the Death Rapids, or the Priest, we’ll say. They run till the first cellar-door wave rolls back on them and the raft plunges her nose in. Then the raft goes down, and the men are swept off, and there’s no swimming in the Columbia for most men. There’s not annything left then fer anny man to do except the priest — and belike that’s why they call it the Priest Rapids.”

“I’ve often wondered,” said Rob, “when we were coming down that stream, whether some of those Alaska Indians with their big sea-canoes could not run this river — they’re splendid boats for rough water, and they go out in almost any weather.”

“And where’ll ye be meanin’, my boy?” asked O’Brien.

“Along the upper Alaska coast. You see, we live at Valdez.”

“Alaska? Do ye hear that now! And that’s the place I’ve been wanting to see all me life! They tell me ’tis foine up there, and plenty of gold, too. But tell me, why do ye come down to this country from so good a place as Alaska?”

“Well, we were just traveling about, you know,” said Rob, “and we wanted to see some of this country along the Rockies before it got too common and settled up. You see, this isn’t our first trip across the Rockies; we ran the Peace River from the summit down last summer, and had a bully time. The fact is, every trip we take seems to us better than any of the others. You must come up some time and see us in Alaska.”

“It’s that same I’ll be doin’, ye may depend,” said O’Brien, “the first chance I get. ’Tis weary I get here, all by myself, with no one to talk to, and no sport but swearin’ at a lot of pig-tailed Chinks, and not time to go grizzly-huntin’ even — though they do tell me there’s fine grizzly-huntin’ twelve miles back, in the Standard Basin. So ’tis here I sit, and watch that mountain yonder that they’ve named for pore Sam Boyd — Boyd’s Peak, they call it, and ’tis much like old Assiniboine she looks, isn’t it? Just that I be doin’ day by day, and all the time be wantin’ to see Alaska. And now here comes me friend Leo from the Cache, and brings a lot of Alaskans ye’d be expectin’ annywhere else but here or there! ’Tis fine byes ye are, to come so far, and I’ll be hopin’ to meet ye in Alaska one of these fine days, for I’m a bit of a miner myself, as most of us are up here.”

“She’s good boy,” said Moise, who took much pride in his young friends. “She ain’t scare’ go anywhere on the rivière with Moise and his oncle, or even with Leo and George. I s’pose next year she’ll come see Moise again, maybe-so.”

The boys laughed and looked at Uncle Dick. “I don’t know about that,” said Rob, “but we’ll be wanting to go somewhere next summer.”

“That’s a long time off,” said their uncle.

O’Brien, after they had spent some time in this manner of conversation, began to look at his watch. “Carlson’s pretty prompt,” said he — “that’s the skipper of the Columbia. We’ll be hearin’ her whistle before long.”

“Then this about ends our trip, doesn’t it, Uncle Dick?” said John once more; and his uncle nodded.

“I’m going to give O’Brien one of the boats,” said he, “and I’ll let the title to the other and the cook outfit rest in Leo and George — they may be coming through here again one way or the other some day. As for us, we’ve been lucky, and I think we would better wait here a day rather than go on with our boats.”

They passed out into the bright sunlight to look about at the fine mountain prospect which stretched before them from the top of the bluff. They had not long to wait before they heard the boom of the steamboat’s whistle, and soon the Columbia, thrust forward by her powerful engines, could be seen bucking the flood of the Columbia and slowly churning her way up-stream. She landed opposite the wood-chute of the wood-yard, where a crowd of jabbering Chinamen gathered. Soon our party walked in that direction also, and so became acquainted with Carlson, the skipper of the boat, who agreed to take them down to Revelstoke the following day.