V

      WHITE-WATER DAYS

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      For three days the work of portaging on the Grand Island continued steadily, boat after boat going down to the head of the island to discharge, then taking the run through the channel of the right-hand side. Some excitement was shown when in the still water at the head of the murderous left-hand chute, which never was attempted by the voyageurs, a roll of bedding with a coat tied to it was seen floating in the current. It was supposed that somewhere up the river an accident had occurred, but, as it was impossible to tell when or where, no attempt was made to solve the mystery, and the labor of advancing the brigade northward went on without further delay.

      As the boys watched the river-men at their hard and heavy work, they came more and more to respect them. Throughout long hours of labor — and in this northern latitude the sun did not set until after nine o’clock — there was never a surly word or a complaint heard from any of them.

      John, who seemed to care for facts and figures, began to ask about the wages which these men received for this hard labor. He was told that they were paid by the trip from Athabasca Landing to McMurray, which covered the bad water to the head of steamboat transport. The steersmen for the round trip received about eighty dollars and their board, and the river-men forty to fifty dollars. All walked back across country, a shorter distance than that by water. Some of the men had along on the scows the large dogs which they used in the winter-time, and which they now purposed to employ in packing a part of their loads on the return journey.

      John also discovered that the cargo of a scow averaged about twenty-five hundred dollars in value, and that it would cost sometimes almost a third of that amount to deliver the freight at its destination. For instance, the charge of the Hudson’s Bay Company for freight from Athabasca Landing to Fort McPherson was thirteen dollars and fifty cents per hundred pounds. For the use of the little railroad a quarter of a mile in length on the island itself the charge to outsiders was one dollar a ton, and ten dollars for every boat taken across on the cars.

      All the boys now began to learn more of the extreme risk and waste of this, the north-bound transit. It was not unusual, as they learned, for a scow to be lost with all its cargo, in which case the post for which it was destined would need to go without supplies until the brigade came north in the following year. Damage to goods from wetting, damage to boats from collisions — all these things went into the large figures of cost which were to be set against the figures of the large gain in this commerce of the Far North.

      John got many of his figures from the Hudson’s Bay Company clerk, a young man stationed here on Grand Island throughout the season, who was very friendly to all the strangers in the country. He expressed himself as very glad to see the brigade come north, for it was the only interesting time in his season’s work. He and one associate remained here, cut off from the world, all through the summer season, and he was not very happy, although, as he said, he was president and general traffic-manager, as well as superintendent and board of directors, of his railroad, and section boss as well. His duties were to have general charge of the transport of cargoes at the island, and to keep a record of the day’s doings.

      Boat after boat now went through, as has been said, but without accident, although one or two hung up at The Turn, as the dangerous passage between the two great rocks in midstream now was called by all. Below that, as Rob expressed it, the bottom dropped out of the river and the boat traveled very fast.

      John timed some of the boats through, and found that it took about eight minutes from the head of the eddy to the bottom of the chute. This Rob could hardly believe, as he said that when he went through it seemed not more than two minutes at the outside.

      John and Jesse grew very grumpy over the prestige Rob had gained by his journey through the rapids, and besought Uncle Dick to allow them also to make the passage. Late in the third day, when most of the boats were through, they renewed their importunities, and he finally replied:

      “Well, young men, I’ve about concluded to let you go through with the last boat. François says that he has been watching you all, and believes that you would not get ‘some scares.’ He says he will take you through in your own boat, which will be the last one of the brigade. The river has come up three or four inches since we struck in, and he says we can run through without unshipping much, if any, of our cargo, which doesn’t amount to very much. Rob has made the trip, and I figure now that we are all in the same boat together. Sometimes it is necessary to be either a man or a mouse. I want to see you grow up men. Well, are you ready now?”

      All the boys gladly said that they were, Rob insisting on accompanying the boat once more, as indeed was necessary, since there would be no transport after that.

      They took ship at the head of the island, and were tooled across the shallow water to the head of the rapids on the farther shore. Here the men all disembarked and sat silently along the edge of the bluff, taking one of the pipe-smokes which make so regular a part of the voyageur’s day’s employment. They seemed to get some sort of comfort out of their pipes, and almost invariably when undertaking any dangerous enterprise a quiet smoke was a part of the preparation.

      François talked to them, meantime, seeing that they were eager to learn about the customs of this strange and wild country into which they now were going. He told them, motioning to the steep hillside on the right of the channel, that in the old times he used to pack stuff across the mile-and-a-half portage there for fifty cents a hundred pounds. It was hard work, and yet he made it pay. When they began to portage on the island, and not along the mountain-side, he had made as much as fifty dollars a day, for he got five dollars for taking a boat through the rapids, or thirty dollars for running it down to Fort McPherson; so that a season’s work would bring him, in very good years, over a thousand dollars, if he worked.

      “But yong man, she spend the mon’,” said he, smiling.

      John set down in his book the facts and figures, the date of 1871, which was the time when old Cap. Shott first ran a boat through the Grand Rapids. Since that time a few other pilots had come on who proved able to handle scows in white water. But old Cap. Shott and his long-time friend, Louis La Vallee, were now both of them old — “h’almost h’eighty year, she is, each of him,” said François.

      “Well, now,” he added at length, “we will ron h’on the rapide.”