The Young Alaskans in the Rockies Part 22

They had gone down the valley only about half a mile, now and then splas.h.i.+ng through the shallow fords of the meandering little stream which spread all over the flat, gravelly floor of the valley, when they heard a shout and saw Moise advancing rapidly toward them. That worthy came up smiling, as usual, and beginning to talk before he came within good ear-range.

"Hollo!" he cried. "Some more bear? Plenty bear now, this tam?"

Uncle d.i.c.k halted and dropped his pack to the ground. "Welcome!

Moise," said he. "I don't know that I ever was gladder to see you in my life--this load is heavy."

"I'll take heem," said Moise. "My faith, she's big bear, heem, too, eh? Two beeg bear"--and he lifted also the other pack which Leo had dropped down. "I hear you shoot when I come on the camp here, and I say to myself, 'Moise, those boy he kill more bear, sure.' Bime-by I come up, help you get load down the hill. George, he's make cup tea on the camp; Rob, he's down below on the big camp, on the boat.

"Didn't I told you, Leo," continued Moise, exultantly, "those boy, she's the most best grizzly-hunter ever come on the Tete Jaune Cache, heem?" And Leo this time grinned his a.s.sent and approval.

They now made their way back to the bivouac camp where they had pa.s.sed the night, and where they were much refreshed by a lunch and a cup of tea all around, after which they made ready to get back down to the valley of the Canoe as rapidly as possible. All the men had particularly heavy loads to carry, and even the boys took on light packs of blankets or camp equipment.

They made the journey around the point of the mountain and down into the Creek Valley which ran into the Canoe without much incident, except that on the side-hill snowdrifts George, carrying one of the bear-hides, slipped by reason of a broken foothold in the thawing snow, and had a considerable roll downhill with his load before he brought up against a little tree. To the others this seemed a dangerous experience; but Leo, like any other Indian, found it only laughable, and he derided George for some time in their own language.

George seemed very much chagrined, for no Indian likes to make a mistake or be humiliated in the presence of others.

As may be supposed, Rob greeted them, on their arrival at the main camp, with the greatest delight in the world.

"Well, what luck!" exclaimed he. "Two more hides--that's one apiece!

Did each of you get one, fellows?"

The three boys now shook hands all around, and for a long time they chatted gaily together, telling one another the many exciting incidents of their hunt. They all agreed that certainly they were the luckiest young hunters that ever had gone after grizzlies.

"I don't know how you all feel about it now," said Rob, finally, "but for my part I would be content to run straight on down and not stop for any more hunting. I've been watching my water-mark here, and this river has risen almost a foot in the last twenty-four hours. That means that the snows are beginning to go on the upper snow-fields.

We've had a big hunt, so let's take out the rest of it in a big run on the old Columbia--they say that's worse than grizzlies."

The others a.s.sented to this readily enough, for, wet, tired, and successful as they were, they welcomed the thought of a night's rest and a journey in the boats, which, taking one thing with another, they knew would be easier than climbing after grizzlies in the mountains.

They all slept soundly that night in their mosquito-proof tent, and in the morning were much refreshed. All bore a hand in breaking the camp and loading the boats, and early in the day they were once more off in their swift journey down the mountain river. The river itself seemed to have changed almost overnight. From being mild and inoffensive it now brawled over its reefs and surged madly through its canons. Many times they were obliged to go ash.o.r.e and line down some of the bad water, and all the time, when running, the paddlers were silent and eager, looking ahead for danger, and obliged constantly to use care with the paddles to dodge this rock or to avoid that stretch of roaring water. There was no accident, however, to mar their progress, and they kept on until in the afternoon they reached a place where the valley seemed to flatten and spread, a wide and beautiful mountain prospect opening out before them. After a time, at the head of a long stretch of water, as both boats were running along side by side, they saw suddenly unfold before them the spectacle of a wide, green flood, beyond which rose a wedgelike range of lofty mountains, the inner peaks of which were topped with snow.

"_La Grande Riviere!_" exclaimed Moise; and Leo turned his head to shout: "Ketch 'um Columby!"

"Yes, there's the Columbia, boys," said Uncle d.i.c.k. And the three young hunters in the boat waved their hats with a shout at seeing at last this great river of which they had heard so much, and which had had so large a place in their youthful dreams.

Steadily the boat swept on down the stained and tawny current of their smaller river, until they felt beneath them the lift of the green flood of the great Columbia, here broken into waves by the force of an up-stream wind. Uncle d.i.c.k called out an order to the lead-boat. Soon they all were ash.o.r.e on a little beach near the mouth of the Canoe River, each feeling that now at last a great stage of their journey had been completed, and that another yet as great still lay before them.

XXIV

THE BOAT ENCAMPMENT

Our party of adventurers were now in one of the wildest and most remote regions to be found in all the northern mountains, and one perhaps as little known as any to the average wilderness goer--the head of the Big Bend of the Columbia River; that wild gorge, bent in a half circle, two hundred miles in extent, which separates the Selkirks from the Rockies. There are few spots on this continent farther from settlements of civilized human beings.

To the left, up the great river, lay a series of mighty rapids, impossible of ascent by any boat. Nearly a hundred miles that way would have been the nearest railroad point, that on the Beaver Mouth River. Down-stream to the southward more than a hundred miles of water almost equally dangerous lay before them. Back of them lay the steep pitch of the Canoe River, down which they had come. Before them reared the mighty wedge of the Selkirks, thrusting northward. Any way they looked lay the wilderness, frowning and savage, and offering conditions of travel perhaps the most difficult to be found in any part of this continent.

"I congratulate you, young men," said Uncle d.i.c.k, at last, as they sat silently gazing out over this tremendous landscape. "This is a man's trip, and few enough men have made it. So far as I know, there has never been a boy here before in the history of all this valley which we see here before us."

Rob and John began to bend over their maps, both those which they had brought with them and that which John was still tracing out upon his piece of paper.

"We can't be far from the Boat Encampment here," said Rob, at last.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BIG BEND OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER]

"It's just around the corner of the Big Bend here," rejoined their leader. "Over yonder a few hundred yards away is the mouth of the Wood River, and the Encampment lies beyond that. That's the end of the water trail of the Columbia going east, and the end of the land trail for those crossing the Athabasca Pa.s.s and going west. Many a bold man in the past has gone by this very spot where we now stand. There isn't much left to mark their pa.s.sing, even at the old Boat Encampment, but, if you like, we'll go up there and have a look at the old place."

Accordingly, they now embarked once more, and, taking such advantage of the slack water as they could, and of the up-stream wind which aided them for a time, they slowly advanced along the banks of the Columbia, whose mighty green flood came pouring down in a way which caused them almost a feeling of awe. Thus they pa.s.sed the mouth of the more quiet Wood River, coming in from the north, and after a long, hard pull of it landed at last at the edge of a sharp bend, where a little beach gave them good landing-room.

Uncle d.i.c.k led them a short distance back toward a flat gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce among the low bushes. Here there was a scattered litter of old tent-pegs and a few broken poles, now and then a tin can. Nothing else remained to mark the historic spot, which had pa.s.sed from the physical surface of the earth almost as completely as the old Tete Jaune Cache.

Uncle d.i.c.k turned away in disgust.

"Some trappers have camped here lately," said he, "or perhaps some of the engineers sent out by another railroad. But, at any rate, this is the old Boat Encampment. Yonder runs the trail, and you can follow that back clear to Timbasket Lake, if you like, or to the Athabasca Pa.s.s."

"Is this where they came in from the Saskatchewan?" demanded Rob.

"No, the old trail that way really came down the Blaeberry, very far above. I presume after they got on the west side, in the Columbia valley, they took to the trail and came down to this point just the same, for I doubt if any of them ran the Columbia much above here.

Many a time old David Thompson stopped here--the first of the great map-makers, my young friends, and somewhat ahead of you, John. And Sir George Simpson, the lord of the fur-traders, came here with his Indian wife, who became a peeress of Great Britain, but who had to walk like any voyageur from here out across the Rockies. I don't doubt old Doctor Laughlin, of Fort Vancouver, was here, as I have told you. In short, most of the great fur-traders came to this point up to about 1825, or 1826, at which time, as we have learned, they developed the upper trail, along the Fraser to the Tete Jaune Cache."

"But didn't any one of them ever go up the Wood River yonder?"

demanded Rob. "That looks like an easy stream."

"The engineer Moberly went up there, and crossed the Rockies to the head of the Whirlpool River on the east side," replied Uncle d.i.c.k, "but that was in modern times--about the same time that Major Rogers discovered the Rogers Pa.s.s through the Selkirks below here, where the Canadian Pacific road crosses the Rockies. It's a great tumble and jumble of mountains in here, my young friends, and a man's job for any chap who picked out any pa.s.s in these big mountains here.

"Yonder"--he rose and pointed as he spoke--"east of us, is the head of the Saskatchewan--the Howse Pa.s.s is far to the south of where we stand here. Northeast of us, and much closer, is the Athabasca Pa.s.s, and we know that by following down the Athabasca we would come to Henry House and Jasper House, not far from the mouth of the Miette River.

"Now, somewhere north of here, down the west side of the mountains, came the trail from the Athabasca Pa.s.s, and it ended right here where we stand. I've never made that trip across the Athabasca Pa.s.s myself.

That old pa.s.s, famous as it is, is in the discard now. With a railroad on each side of it, it will be visited from this time on very rarely by any man, whether he be tourist or bear-hunter. The Rockies will take back their own once more.

"But here, right where we stand, is one of those points comparable to old Fort Benton, or Laramie, on the plains below us, in our own country. This was the rendezvous, the half-way house, of scores of bold and brave men who now are dead and gone. I want you to look at this place, boys, and to make it plain on your map, and to remember it always. Few of your age have ever had the privilege of visiting a spot like this."

Rob and Jesse busied themselves helping John with his map, and meantime Moise and the other two men were making a little fire to boil a kettle of tea.

"Why did they stop here?" asked John, after a time, busy with his pencil. "Couldn't they get any farther up?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COLUMBIA RIVER, ABOVE THE BOAT ENCAMPMENT]

Uncle d.i.c.k pointed to the jutting end of the sh.o.r.e which hid the bend of the river from view above them. "You know that river, Leo?" said he.

Leo spread out his hands wide, with a gesture of respect.

"Me know 'um," said he. "Plenty bad river. Me run 'um, and my Cousin George. And Walt Steffens--he live at Golden, and Jack Bogardus, his partner, and Joe McLimanee, and old man Allison--no one else know this river--no one else ron 'um. No man go up Columby beyond here--come down, yes, maybe-so."

"Last year," said Uncle d.i.c.k, "when I came in from the Beaver Mouth I saw a broken boat not far below Timbasket Lake. Whose was it?"

"My boat," grinned Leo. And George also laughed. "We bust up boat on rock, lose flour, tea, everything. We swim out, and walk trail down to here, swim Wood River, and go up Canoe River, fifty mile. Two day we'll not got anything to eat."

"Well, I don't see how they got up these streams at all," said John.