The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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Uncle Dick sitting up there on the bench.”
The others also identified their relative and friend as he sat quietly smoking and waiting for the boat to make her landing. At length he arose and came to the staging — a rather slender, bronzed man, with very brown face and eyes wrinkled at the corners. He wore an engineer’s garb of khaki and stiff-brimmed white hat.
The three boys took off their hats and gave a cheer as they saw him standing there smiling.
“How are you, Uncle Dick?” they all cried; and so eager were they that they could scarcely wait for the gang-plank to be run out.
Their uncle, Mr. Richard Wilcox, at that time employed in the engineering department of one of the Dominion railways, laughed rather happily as he bunched them in his arms when they came ashore. There was little chance for him to say anything for some time, so eager were the boys in their greeting of him.
“Well, you’re all here!” said he at length, breaking away to shake hands with Alex and Moise, who smiled very happily also, now coming up the bank. “How have they done, Alex?”
“Fine!” said the old hunter. “Couldn’t have been better!”
“This was good boys, all right,” affirmed Moise. “We’ll save her life plenty tam, but she’s good boy!”
“Did you have any trouble getting across, Alex?” asked Uncle Dick.
“Plenty, I should say!” said Alex, smiling. “But we came through it. The boys have acted like sportsmen, and I couldn’t say more.”
“I suppose perhaps you got some game then, eh?”
All three now began to speak at once excitedly, and so fast that they could scarcely be understood.
“Did you really get a grizzly?” inquired Uncle Dick of Alex, after a while.
“Yes, sir, and a very good one. And a black bear too, and a moose, and some sheep, and a lot of small stuff like that. They’re hunters and travelers. We gave them a ‘lob-stick’ to mark their journey — far back in the Rockies.”
“Well, Alaska will have to look to its laurels!” said Uncle Dick, taking a long breath and pretending not to be proud of them. “It seems to me you must have been pretty busy shooting things, from all I can learn, young men.”
“Oh, we know the country,” interrupted Rob, “and we’ve got a map — we could build a railroad across there if we had to.”
“Well, to tell the truth, I’m mighty glad you got through all right,” said Uncle Dick. “I’ve been thinking that maybe I oughtn’t to have let you try that trip, for it’s dangerous enough for men. But everything’s well that ends well, and here you are, safe and sound. You’ll have to be getting out of here before long, though, in order to make Valdez in time for your fall school — you’d be running wild if I left you on the trail any longer.
“The boat will be going back to the Landing in a couple of days, I suppose,” he added after a time, as he gathered their hands in his and started along the path up the steep bank; “but there are a few things here you ought to see — the post and the farms and grains which they have — wonderful things in their way. And then I’ll try to get Saunders to fix it so that you can see the Vermilion Chutes of the Peace River.”
“I know right where that is,” said Rob, feeling in his pocket for his map — “about sixty miles below here. That’s the head of navigation on the Peace, isn’t it?”
“It is for the present time,” said Uncle Dick. “I’ve been looking at that cataract of the Peace. There ought to be a lock or a channel cut through, so that steamboats could run the whole length from Chippewayan to the Rockies! As it is, everything has to portage there.”
“We don’t know whether to call this country old or young,” said Rob. “In some ways it doesn’t seem to have changed very much, and in other ways it seems just like any other place.”
“One of these days you’ll see a railroad down the Mackenzie, young man,” said Uncle Dick, “and before long, of course, you’ll see one across the Rockies from the head of the Saskatchewan, above the big bend of the Columbia.”
“Why couldn’t we get in there some time, Uncle Dick?” asked Jesse, who was feeling pretty brave now that they were well out of the Rocky Mountains and the white water of the rapids.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Uncle Dick, suddenly looking around. “It might be a good idea, after all. But I think you’d find pretty bad water in the Columbia if you tried to do any navigation there. Time enough to talk about that next year. Come on now, and I’ll introduce you to the factor and the people up here at the Post.”
They joined him now, and soon were shaking hands with many persons, official and otherwise, of the white or the red race. They found the life very interesting and curious, according to their own notions. The head clerk and they soon struck up a warm friendship. He told them that he had spent thirty years of his life at that one place, although he received his education as far east as Montreal. Married to an Indian woman, who spoke no English, he had a family of ten bright and clean children, each one of whom, as John soon found to his satisfaction, appreciated the Imperial Toffy which made a part of the stock of the Hudson Bay Company at that post also.
All of these new friends of theirs asked them eagerly about their journey across the Rockies, which was a strange region to every one of them, although they had passed their lives in the service of the fur trade in the north. As usual, in short, they made themselves much at home, and asked a thousand questions difficult enough to answer. Here, as they had done at Peace River Landing, they laid in a stock of gaudy moccasins and gloves and rifle covers, all beautifully embroidered by native women in beads or stained porcupine quills, some of which work had come from the half-arctic tribes hundreds of miles north of Vermilion. They saw also some of the furs which had been sent down in the season’s take, and heard stories in abundance of the ways of that wild country in the winter season. Even they undertook to make friends with some of the half-savage sledge-dogs which were kept chained in the yard back of the Post. After this they made a journey out to the farm which the Dominion government maintains in that far-off region, and there saw, as they had been promised by Captain Saunders, wheat and rye taller than any one of them as they stood in the grain, and also vegetables of every sort, all growing or in full maturity.
“Well, we’ll have stories to tell when we get back,” said Rob, “and I don’t believe they’ll believe half of them, either, about the wildness of this country and the tameness of it. Anyhow, I’m glad we’ve come.”
The next day they put in, as Uncle Dick suggested, in a steamer trip down to the Vermilion Chutes. They did not get closer than three or four miles, but tied up while the party went down on foot to see the big cataract of the Peace — some fifteen feet of sheer, boiling white water, falling from a rim of rock extending almost half a mile straightaway across the river.
“I expect that’s just a little worse than the ‘Polly’ Rapids,” said John. “I don’t think even Moise could run that place.”
Even as they stood on the high rim of the rock at the edge of the falls they saw coming up from below the figure of a half-breed, who was dragging at the end of a very long line a canoe which was guided by his companion far below on the swift water. Had the light line broken it must, as it seemed to these observers, have meant destruction of the man in the canoe. Yet the two went on about their work calmly, hauling up close to the foot of the falls, then lifting out their canoe, portaging above, and, with a brief salutation, passing quickly on their way up the stream.
“That’s the way we do it, boys,” said Uncle Dick, “in this part of the world — there goes the fast express. It would trouble the lightest of you to keep up with that boy on the line, too, I’m thinking. Some day,” added Uncle Dick, casting a professional eye out over the wide ridge of rock which here blocked the river, “they’ll blow a hole through that place so that a boat can get through. Who knows but one of you will be the engineer in charge? Anyhow,