Читать книгу The Untamed American Spirit: Historical Novels & Western Adventures - Emerson Hough - Страница 96

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Rob’s plans were approved by Alex and Moise, and worked out so well that by noon of the next day the entire party had reassembled at the rendezvous. The Jaybird was the first boat to be loaded, the men getting her down the steep bank with small delay and taking a rapid run of a couple of miles or so down the river soon thereafter. After a little time they concluded to wait for the other men who had gone down the river-bank to secure the dugout of an old Indian, who, it seems, was known as Picheu, or the Lynx.

“I don’t know about a dugout, Moise,” said Rob. “There may be bad water below here.”

“No, not very bad water,” said Moise. “I’ll ron heem on steamboat many tam! But those dugout she’ll been good boat, too. I s’pose she’ll been twenty foot long an’ carry thousand pound all right.”

“Well,” Rob answered, “that will do us as well as a steamboat. I wonder why the old voyageurs never used the dugout instead of the birch-bark — they wouldn’t have had to mend it so often, even if they couldn’t carry it so easily.”

“I’ll tell you, fellows,” said Jesse, who was rather proud of his overland trip by himself, “the fur trade isn’t what it used to be. At those posts you don’t see just furs and traps, and men in blanket-coats, and dog-trains. In the post here they had groceries, and axes, and calico dresses, and hats, just like they have in a country store. I peeked in through the windows.”

Alex smiled at them. “You see,” said he, “you’ve been looking at pictures which were made some time ago perhaps. Or perhaps they were made in the winter-time, and not in the summer. At this season all the fur packets have gone down the trail, and they don’t need dog-trains and blanket-coats. You ought to come up here in the winter-time to get a glimpse of the old scenes. I’ll admit, though, that the fur-posts aren’t what they were when I was a boy. You can get anything you like now, from an umbrella to a stick of toffy.”

“Where?” asked John, suddenly, amid general laughter.

“The toffy? I’m sure we’ll find some at Peace River Landing, along with plows and axes and sewing-machines, and all that sort of thing!”

“But the people pay for them all with their furs?” inquired Rob.

“For the most part, yes. Always in this part of the country the people have lived well. Farther north the marten have longer fur, but not finer than you will find here, so that they bring just as good prices. This has always been a meat country — you’ll remember how many buffalo and elk Mackenzie saw. Now, if the lynx and the marten should disappear, and if we had to go to farming, it still would be the ‘Land of Plenty,’ I’m thinking — that’s what we used to call it. If we should go up to the top of these high banks and explore back south a little bit, on this side of the Smoky, you’d see some of the prettiest prairies that ever lay out of doors, all ready for the plow. I suppose my people some time will have to use the plow too.”

“Yes,” assented Rob, “I remember Mackenzie’s story, how very beautiful he found this country soon after he started west on his trip.”

“My people, the Crees, took this country from others long ago,” said Alex, rather proudly. “They came up the old war-trail from Little Slave Lake to the mouth of the Smoky, where the Peace River Landing is now. They fought the Beavers and the Stoneys clear to the edges of the Rockies, where we are now. They’ve held the land ever since, and managed to make a living on it, with or without the white man’s help. Some of us will change, but men like At-tick, the old Indian who brought Jess across the trail, and like old Picheu, below here, aren’t apt to change very much.”

John was once more puzzling at the map which the boys had made for themselves, following the old Mackenzie records. “I can’t figure out just where Mackenzie started from on his trip, but he says it was longitude 117° 35′ 15″, latitude 56° 09′. Now, that doesn’t check up with our map at all. That would make his start not very far from the fort, or what they call the Peace River Landing to-day, I should think. But he only mentions a ‘small stream coming from the east,’ although Moise says the Smoky is quite a river.”

“Most people think Mackenzie started from Fort Chippewayan,” said Alex, “but as a matter of fact, he wintered far southwest of there, on the Peace River, somewhere between three hundred and four hundred miles south and west of Fort Vermilion, as I gather from the length of time it took him to get to the edge of the Rockies, where we are now. He mentions the banks getting higher as he went south and west. When you get a couple of hundred miles north of the Landing the banks begin to get low, although at the Landing they’re still almost a thousand feet high above the water-level, at least eight hundred feet, I should say.”

“Well,” said Rob, “we know something about this country ourselves now, and we’ll make a map of it some time, perhaps — a better one than we have now.”

“Yes,” said Jesse, “but who can draw in that horse-trail from Hudson’s Hope to the head of the steamboat transport? I’d like to see that trail!”

“I suppose we could get on the steamboat some time before long if we wanted to,” said John.

“No,” said Alex, “hardly again this summer, for she’s made her last trip with supplies up to Fort St. John by now.”

“We don’t want any steamboat, nor anything else,” said Rob, “except to go on down on our own hook, the way we started. Let’s be as wild as we can!”

“We’re apt to see more game from here down than we have any place on the trip,” said Alex. “You know, I told you this was the Land of Plenty.”

“Bimeby plenty bear,” said Moise. “This boy Billy, he’ll tol’ me ol’ Picheu he’ll keel two bear this last week, an’ he’ll say plenty bear now all on river, on the willows.”

“Well, at any rate,” said Alex, “old Picheu himself is coming.”

“How do you know?” asked Jesse.

“I hear the setting-pole.”

Presently, as Alex had said, the dugout showed its nose around the bend. At-tick and Billy, Jesse’s two friends, were on the tracking line, and in the stern of the dugout, doing most of the labor of getting up-stream, was an old, wrinkle-faced, gray-haired and gray-bearded man, old Picheu himself, in his time one of the most famous among the hunters of the Crees, as the boys later learned. He spoke no English, but stood like some old Japanese war-god on the bank, looking intently from one to the other as they now finished their preparations for re-embarking. He seemed glad to take the money which Rob paid him for the dugout and shook hands pleasantly all around, to show his satisfaction.

The boys saw that what Moise had said about the dugout was quite true. It was a long craft, hewed out of a single log, which looked at first crankier than it really was. It had great carrying capacity, and the boys put a good part of the load in it, which seemed only to steady it the more. It was determined that Rob and Moise should go ahead in this boat, as they previously had done in the Mary Ann, the others to follow with the Jaybird.

Soon all the camp equipment was stowed aboard, and the men stood at the edge of the water ready to start. Their old friends made no comment and expressed little concern one way or the other, but as Rob turned when he was on the point of stepping into the leading boat he saw Billy standing at the edge of the water. He spoke some brief word to Alex.

“He wants to say to Mr. Jess,” interpreted Alex, “that he would like to make him a present of this pair of moccasins, if he would take them from him.”

“Would I take them!” exclaimed Jesse; “I should say I would, and thank him for them very much. I’d like to give him something of mine, this handkerchief, maybe, for him to remember me by.”

“He says,” continued Alex, “that when you get home he wishes you would write to him in care of the priest at St. John. He says he hopes you’ll have plenty of shooting down the river. He says he would like to go to the States when he gets rich. He says his people will talk about you all around the camp-fire, a great many times, telling how you crossed the mountains, where so few white men ever have been.”

“I’ll tell you what, boys,” said Rob, “let’s line up and give them all a cheer.”

So the three boys stood in a row at the waterside, after they had shaken hands once more with the friends they were leaving, and gave them three cheers and a tiger, waving their hats in salutation. Even old Picheu smiled happily at this. Then the boys sprang aboard, and the boats pushed out into the current.