The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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cold, and if even a man got out into the rapids he couldn’t swim at all, it would tumble him over so. We’ll line down on the Parle Pas, yes, depend on that. But that’s down-stream a couple of days if we go slow.”
“When do we get that bear hunt, Alex?” asked John, who loved excitement almost as much as Moise.
“Almost anywhere in here,” answered Alex; “but I think we’d better put off the hunt until we get below all the worst water. No use portaging bear hides.”
“It looks like good bear country here,” said Rob. “We must be in the real Rockies now, because the mountains come right down to the river.”
“Good bear country clear to Hudson’s Hope, or beyond that,” assented Alex.
“All right,” said Rob; “we’ll have a good hunt somewhere when we get below the Parle Pas. If we have to do any more portaging, we don’t want to carry any more than we can help, that’s true. And, of course, we’re going to get that grizzly.”
Having by this time reloaded the boats, they re-embarked, and passed merrily on down the river, which now seemed wholly peaceful and pleasant. The mountains now indeed were all about them, in places rising up in almost perpendicular rock faces, and the valley was very much narrower. They were at last entering the arms of the great range through which they later were to pass.
The character of the river changed from time to time. Sometimes they were in wide, quiet reaches, where they needed the paddles to make much headway. Again there would be drops of faster water, although nothing very dangerous. Relieved as they were now of any thought of danger for the next sixty or seventy miles ahead, this part of their journey seemed delightful in every way. They did not pause to hunt, and saw no game excepting one band of four timber wolves, upon which they came as they swept around a bend, but which hastened under cover before any one could get a shot. Once in a while they stopped at little beaches or bars, and almost always saw the trails of large game in the sand or mud. Always they felt that now they were deep in the wilderness, and every moment was a pleasure to them.
They did not really know how far below the Finlay rapids they traveled that day, for continually they discovered that it is difficult to apply map readings to the actual face of a new country. They made no great attempt at speed, but sometimes drifted down-stream, the boats close together. Sometimes when the wind was fair Rob or John would raise the corner of a tent or blanket to act as a sail. Thus, idling and chatting along, they made perhaps forty miles down-stream before they made their next evening camp. The country seemed to them wilder now, since the bold hills were so close in upon them, though of course they knew that each day was bringing them closer to the settlements on the eastern side of the range.
That night was cold, and they had no trouble with mosquitoes. Feeling no need of hurry, they made a late start and idled on down the river through a very interesting mountain region, until the afternoon. Toward evening they began to feel that they might perhaps be near the dreaded Parle Pas rapids, and they approached each bend with care, sometimes going ashore for a prospecting trip which proved to be made only on a false alarm. They had, however, now begun to learn the “feel of the water,” as the voyageurs called it. Rob, who was ahead, at length noted the glassy look of the river, and called back to Moise that he believed there were rapids ahead.
“Parle Pas!” cried Moise. “On shore, queek!”
Swiftly they paddled across, to the north side of the river, where presently they were joined by the other boat.
“She’s the Parle Pas, all right,” laughed Moise; “look at heem!”
From their place of observation they could see a long ridge, or rim, the water falling in a sort of cascade well out across the stream. There seemed to be a chute, or channel, in midstream, but the back-combing rollers below it looked ominously large for a boat the size of theirs, so that they were glad enough to be where they were, on dry land.
Moise was once more for running the boats through the chute on the north shore, but Alex’s cautious counsel prevailed. There was not more than thirty or forty feet of the very worst water, rather a cascade than a long rapid, but they discharged the cargo and lined both boats through light. This sort of work proved highly interesting and exciting to all hands, and, of course, when superintended by such men as Alex and Moise had no great danger, although all of them were pretty wet when at length they had their boats reloaded at the foot of the rapids.
“I know how Sir Alexander got across the mountains,” said John. “He had good voyageurs to do the work! About all he had to do was to write the story each night, and he didn’t do that any too well, it seems to me — anyhow, when you come to read his story backward you can’t tell where you are very well.”
“That’s right,” said Rob. “I don’t much blame Simon Fraser for finding fault with Mackenzie’s narrative. But maybe if we had written the story they’d have found fault with us the same way. The same country doesn’t look alike to different people, and what is a mile to one man may be two miles to another when both are guessing. But anyhow, here we are below the ‘Polly’ rapids — as the traders call them to-day — and jolly glad we ought to be we’re safe, too.”
“Plain sailing again now for a while,” said Jesse. “Let’s see the map.”
They all bent over the different maps they had, especially one which Rob had made up from all the sources of information he had.
“Yes,” said Rob, “it ought to be about sixty miles of pretty good water now until we get to the one place on this river which the boldest voyageur never tried to run — the Cañon of the Rocky Mountains, as the very first travelers called it.”
“Those map she’ll not been much good,” said Moise, pointing to the government maps of which Rob had a store. “The only good map she’ll been made by the Injun with a stick, s’pose on the sand, or maybe so on a piece of bark. My onkle she’ll made me a map of the Parle Pas. He’ll show the place where to go through the middle on the Parle Pas. S’pose you’ll tell my onkle, Moise he’ll walk down the Parle Pas an’ not ron on heem, he’ll laugh on me, heem! All right, when you get to the Grand Portage sixty miles below, you’ll get all the walk you want, Alex, hein?”
Alex answered him with a pleasant smile, not in the least disposed to be laughed into taking any risks he did not think necessary.
“We’d better drop down a few miles farther before we make camp,” said he. “En avant, Moise. En roulant, ma boule!”
Moise turned to his paddle and broke into song gaily as they once more headed down the stream. They did not tarry again until the sun was behind the western ridges. The mountain shadows were heavy when at last their little fire lighted up the black forest which crowded close in all around them.
“I think this is fine,” said Jesse, quietly, as they sat about the camp-fire that night.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world,” said John; and Rob gave his assent by a quiet nod of satisfaction.
“I feel as if we were almost home now,” said Jesse. “We must have come an awfully long way.”
Alex shook his head. “We’re a long way from home yet,” said he. “When the Klondike rushes were on some men got up as far north as this place, and scattered everywhere, hoping they could get through somehow to the Yukon — none of them knew just how. But few of them ever got up this river beyond Hudson’s Hope, or even Fort St. John, far east of there. Some turned back and went down the Mackenzie, others took the back trail from Peace River landing. A good many just disappeared. I have talked with some who turned back from the mountains here, and they all said they didn’t think the whole world was as big as it seemed by the time they got here! And they came from the East, where home seems close to you!”
“Well,” said Rob, “as it’s probably pretty rough below here, and good grizzly country, why not stop here and make that little hunt we were talking about?”
“All right,” said Alex; “I suppose this