The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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must, at this camp, have been somewhere between twelve and twenty miles east of the mouth of the Parle Pas rapids, and they had made perhaps a dozen miles more that evening when they began to come to a place where again the mountains approached the stream closely. Here they could not see out at all from their place at the foot of the high banks which hedged them in. At nightfall they encamped in a wild region which seemingly never had known the foot of man. The continuous rush of the waters and the gloom of the overhanging forests now had once more that depressing effect which sometimes is not unknown even to seasoned voyageurs. Had they been asked, the young travelers must truthfully have replied that they would be glad when at last the mountains were passed and the prairie country to the eastward reached.
On the next day they continued among the high hills for several hours, although at length the river expanded into a wide reach which gave them a little free paddling. In such contractions of the stream as they met it seemed to them that the rocks were larger, the water deeper, and each hour becoming more powerful than it had been. Advancing cautiously, they perhaps had covered thirty miles when they came to a part of the stream not more than three hundred yards wide, where the current was very smooth but of considerable velocity. Below this the mountains crowded still closer in to the stream, seeming to rise almost directly from the edge of the banks and to tower nearly two thousand feet in height.
“We must be getting close to the big portage now,” said Rob to Moise, as they reached this part of the river.
“Yes,” said Moise, “pretty soon no more water we’ll could ron.”
Moise’s speech was almost prophetic. In less than half an hour after that moment they met with the first really serious accident of the entire journey, and one which easily might have resulted disastrously to life as well as to property.
They were running a piece of water where a flat rapid dropped down without much disturbance toward a deep bend where the current swung sharply to the right. A little island was at one side, on which there had been imbedded the roots of a big tree, which had come down as driftwood. The submerged branch of this tree, swinging up and down in the violent current, made one of the dangerous “sweepers” which canoemen dread. Both Rob and Moise thought there was plenty of room to get by, but just as they cleared the basin-like foot of the rapid the Mary Ann suddenly came to a stop, hard and fast amidships, on a naked limb of the tree which had been hidden in the discolored waters at the time.
As is usual in all such accidents, matters happened very quickly. The first thing they knew the boat was lifted almost bodily from the water. There was the cracking noise of splintering wood, and an instant later, even as the white arm of the tree sunk once more into the water, the Mary Ann sunk down, weak and shattered, her back broken square across, although she still was afloat and free.
Rob gave a sudden shout of excitement and began to paddle swiftly to the left, where the bank was not far away. Moise joined him, and they reached the shore none too soon, their craft half full of water, for not only had the keel to the lower ribs of the boat been shattered by the weight thus suspended amidships, but the sheathing had been ripped and torn across, so that when they dragged the poor Mary Ann up the beach she was little more than the remnant of herself.
The others, coming down the head of the rapid a couple of hundred yards to the rear, saw this accident, and now paddled swiftly over to join the shipwrecked mariners, who luckily had made the shore.
“It’s bad, boys,” said Rob, hurrying down to catch the prow of the Jaybird as she came alongside. “Just look at that!”
They all got out now and discharged the cargo of the Mary Ann, including the heavy grizzly hide, which very likely was the main cause of the accident, its weight having served to fracture the stout fabric of the plucky little boat. When they turned her over the case looked rather hopeless.
“She’s smashed almost to her rail,” said Rob, “and we’ve broken that already. It’s that old grizzly hide that did it, I’m sure. We lit fair on top of that ‘sweeper,’ and our whole weight was almost out of the water when it came up below us. Talk about the power of water, I should say you could see it there, all right — it’s ripped our whole ship almost in two! I don’t see how we can fix it up this time.”
Moise by this time had lighted his pipe, yet he did not laugh, as he usually did, but, on the contrary, shook his head at Alex.
“Maybe so we’ll could fix heem,” was all he would venture.
“Well, one thing certain,” said Rob, “we’ll have to go into camp right here, even if it isn’t late.”
“Did you have any fun in the other rapids above here?” asked John of Rob.
“No,” said Rob; “it was all easy. We’ve run a dozen or twenty a lot worse than this one. Not even the Parle Pas hurt us. Then I come in here, head paddler, and I run my boat on a ‘sweeper’ in a little bit of an easy drop like this. It makes me feel pretty bad, I’ll tell you that!”
They walked about the boat with hands in pockets, looking gloomy, for they were a little bit doubtful, since Moise did not know, whether they could repair the Mary Ann into anything like working shape again.
Alex, as usual, made little comment and took things quietly. They noticed him standing and looking intently down the river across the near-by bend.
“I see it too,” said Rob. “Smoke!”
The old hunter nodded, and presently walked on down the beach to have a look at the country below, leaving Moise to do what he could with the broken boat. The boys joined Alex.
Presently they saw, not far around the bend, a long dugout canoe pulled up on the beach. Near by was a little fire, at which sat two persons, an old man and a younger one. They did not rise as the visitors approached, but answered quietly when Alex spoke to them in Cree.
XIX
NEW PLANS
“These men say,” interpreted Alex, as he turned to the boys, “that it’s sixteen to twenty miles from here to the end of the portage out of the hills, across the north bank, which cuts off the thirty miles of cañon that nobody ever tries to run. They say for a little way the river is wide, with many islands, but below that it narrows down and gets very bad. They’re tracking stuff up-stream from the portage to a surveyors’ camp which depends on their supplies. They say they will not sell their canoe, because they couldn’t get up-stream, but that if we can get east of the portage there’s a man, a sort of farmer, somewhere below there, who has a boat which perhaps he would sell.”
“What good would that do us?” demanded John. “A boat twenty or thirty miles east of here across the mountains isn’t going to help us very much. What we want is a boat now, and I don’t see how we can get along without it. Won’t they sell their canoe?”
“No, they don’t want to sell it,” said Alex; “they say they’re under employment, and must get through to the camp from Hudson’s Hope on time. We couldn’t portage a dugout, anyhow. But they say that we can go on up there with them if we like, and then come back and go around by the portage. What do you say, Mr. Rob?”
Rob answered really by his silence and his tight-shut jaw. “Well,” said he, “at least I don’t much care about turning back on a trail. But we’ll have to split here, I think, unless we all go into camp. But part of us can go on through by the river, and the rest come on later. Maybe we can cache some of our luggage here, and have it brought on across by these men, if they’re going back to Hudson’s Hope.”
“That sounds reasonable,” said Alex, nodding. “I believe we can work it out.”
He turned and spoke rapidly in Cree to the two travelers, with many gestures, pointing both up and down the stream, all of them talking eagerly and at times vehemently.
“They