The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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The boys looked after him and made no comment. They saw that they were in a country of men. They were beginning to learn the ways of the breed of men who, in the last century or so, have conquered the American continent for their race — a race much the same, under whatever flag.
Even on the railway train they found plenty of new friends who were curious to learn of their long journey across the Rockies. The boys gave a modest account of themselves, and were of the belief that almost any one could have done as much had they had along such good guides as Alex and Moise.
The Rockies and the Selkirks impressed them very much, and they still consulted their maps, especially at the time when they found themselves approaching the banks of the Columbia River.
“This river and the Fraser are cousins,” said Rob, “like the Athabasca and the Peace. Both of these rivers west of the Rockies head far to the south, then go far to the north, and swing back — but they run to the Pacific instead of to the Arctic. Now right here” — he put his finger on the place marked as the Yellowhead Pass — “is the head of the Saskatchewan River, and the fur-traders used to cross here from the Saskatchewan to the Columbia just the way Mackenzie and Fraser and Finlay used to cross to the Peace from the Fraser. I tell you what I think, fellows. I’d like to come back next year some time, and have a go at this Yellowhead Pass, the way we did at that on the head of the Peace — wouldn’t you? We could study up on Alexander Henry, and Thompson, and all those fellows, just as we did on Fraser and Mackenzie for the northern pass.”
“Well,” said John, “if we could have Alex and Moise, there’s nothing in the world I’d like better than just that trip.”
“That’s the way I feel, too,” added Jesse. “But now we’re done with this trip. When you stop to think about it, we’ve been quite a little way from home, haven’t we?”
“I feel as though I’d been gone a year,” said John.
“And now it’s all over,” added Rob, “and we’re really going back to our own country, I feel as if it would be a year from here to home.”
Jesse remained silent for a time. “Do you know what I am thinking about now? It’s about our ‘lob-stick’ tree that our men trimmed up for us. We’ll put one on every river we ever run. What do you say to that?”
“No,” replied Rob, “we can’t do that for ourselves — that has to be voted to us by others, and only if we deserve it. I’ll tell you what — let’s do our best to deserve it first!”
The others of the Young Alaskans agreed to this very cheerfully, and thus they turned happily toward home.
THE END
YOUNG ALASKANS IN THE FAR NORTH
I. The Start for the Midnight Sun
I
THE START FOR THE MIDNIGHT SUN
“Well, fellows,” said Jesse Wilcox, the youngest of the three boys who stood now at the ragged railway station of Athabasca Landing, where they had just disembarked, “here we are once more. For my part, I’m ready to start right now.”
He spoke somewhat pompously for a youth no more than fifteen years of age. John Hardy and Rob McIntyre, his two companions, somewhat older than himself, laughed at him as he sat now on his pack-bag, which had just been tossed off the baggage-car of the train that had brought them hither.
“You might wait for Uncle Dick,” said John. “He’d feel pretty bad if we started off now for the Arctic Circle and didn’t allow him to come along!”
Rob, the older of the three, and the one to whom they were all in the habit of looking up in their wilderness journeyings, smiled at them both. He was not apt to talk very much in any case, and he seemed now content in these new surroundings to sit and observe what lay about him.
It was a straggling little settlement which they saw, with one long, broken street running through the center. There was a church spire, to be sure, and a square little wooden building in which some business men had started a bank for the sake of the coming settlers now beginning to pass through for the country along the Peace River. There were one or two stores, as the average new-comer would have called them, though each really was the post of one of the fur-trading companies then occupying that country. Most prominent of these, naturally, was the building of the ancient Hudson’s Bay Company.
A rude hotel with a dirty bar full of carousing half-breeds and rowdy new-comers lay just beyond the end of the uneven railroad tracks which had been laid within the month. The surface of the low hills running back from the Athabasca River was covered with a stunted growth of aspens, scattered among which here and there stood the cabins or board houses of the men who had moved here following the rush of the last emigration to the North. There were a few tents and lodges of half-breeds also scattered about.
“Well, Uncle Dick said we would be starting right away,” argued Jesse, a trifle crestfallen.
“Yes,” said Rob, “but he told me we would be lucky if ‘right away’ meant inside of a week. He said the breeds always powwow around and drink for a few days before they start north with the brigade for a long trip. That’s a custom they have. They say the Hudson’s Bay Company has more customs than customers these days. Times are changing for the fur trade even here.
“Where’s your map, John?” he added; and John spread out on the platform