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and, as Uncle Dick had predicted, for many miles the river was much more mild, although the current was steady and strong. They had run perhaps four hours when they came to the mouth of a creek which Leo and George said was called either Nagel Creek or End Creek, they did not know which. They went ashore for a time at a little unfinished log cabin which had been started perhaps two years before by some unknown person or persons.
“That way,” said Leo, “up creek ten mile, fine bear country; plenty caribou too. S’pose we hunt?”
“Certainly not,” said Uncle Dick. “It would take us a day to hunt and another day to get back. What do you say about that, boys?”
“Well,” said Rob, “of course we’d like to hunt a little more, but I don’t myself much like the thought of walking out of this country with a pack on my back and nothing to eat but a little flour. Besides, I’ve a feeling that this river is rising all the time now.”
“She’ll rise five inch last night,” said Moise. “I’ll mark heem on the stick.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Dick, “the June rise is going to chase us out, that’s sure. All those great snow-fields which you see up there on the Selkirks and the Rockies have got to melt and come right down here where our boat is now. So, Leo, you and George go on ahead — we’ll run late to-night and make forty miles to-day, at least, if we can. How far are we from Revelstoke?”
“S’pose ’bout hunderd mile,” said Leo. “Long way.”
“Not long if it was all clear water like this. But it isn’t. A pack-train on an unknown trail is one thing, but a boat on an unknown river is something mighty different. As I’ve told you, every foot of rise changes the river absolutely in the narrows. Therefore all I can allow you for lunch to-day is a piece of bannock — and we’ll eat that as we run.”
They found milder water now for twenty-five miles, and made steady progress. The wind had shifted a little bit, and Rob managed to get assistance out of it by rigging a sail from a corner of the tent. This brought the lead-boat ahead so steadily that Leo and George protested and made Rob take down his sail. But soon the long reach of slack water was passed. More and more they could hear, coming up-stream from perhaps a mile ahead, the low, sullen roar of rapids.
The water began to set faster and faster, and seemed each mile to assume more and more malicious habits. Great boils, coming up from some mysterious depth, would strike the boat as though with a mighty hammer so hard as to make the boys look around in consternation. At times they could see the river sink before them in a great slide, or basin, a depression perhaps two hundred feet across, with white water at its edges. Deep boils and eddies came up every now and then without warning, and sometimes the boat would feel a wrench, as though with some mighty hand thrust up from the water. Their course was hardly steady for more than a moment or so at a time, and the boats required continual steering. In fact, it seemed to them that never was there a stream so variable and so unaccountable as this they were now descending.
“She’s worse than the Peace River, a whole lot,” said Rob; and all the boys agreed with him. In fact, by this time all of them were pretty well sobered down now, for they could see that it was serious work which lay ahead of them. Now and again Uncle Dick would see the boys looking at the black forests which covered these slopes on each side of the river, foaming down between the Selkirks and the Rockies.
Late in the afternoon they passed a little settlement of a few cabins, where a discolored stream came down into the river through a long sluice-box whose end was visible.
“This Howard’s camp,” shouted Leo. “Them mans wash gold here. Some mans live there now.”
Two or three men indeed did come to the bank and wave an excited greeting as the boats swept by. But there was no going ashore, for directly at this place a stretch of rapids demanded the attention of every one in the boats.
And still Uncle Dick urged the Indians of the first boat to go on as far as they could that night. They ran until almost dark, and made camp on the top of a high bank on the left side of the river where once an old lumber camp had been. Here they found the breeze good and the mosquito nuisance much diminished.
“How far now to Revelstoke, Leo?” inquired Uncle Dick, as they sat at their frugal supper that night.
“Maybe-so forty mile, maybe-so sixty,” said Leo.
“Can we make it in one day?”
Leo shook his head soberly.
“Two days?”
Leo shook his head.
“Three days?”
“Maybe-so,” said he, at last. “Plenty bad water below here,” said he.
“Well, I haven’t seen any of these awful cañons yet that you’ve been telling about,” said John.
Leo smiled. “To-morrow see ’um plenty,” said he. “Pretty soon come Death Eddy, then Death Cañon, then Death Rapids, then Priest Rapids. All them bad places. Maybe-so can’t run, water too high.”
“We’ll not get out of here any too soon, that’s sure,” said Uncle Dick. “The best time to run any of these mountain rivers is in the fall, for then the water is lowest. But a day or two more will tell the tale for us. So, Moise, please don’t starve us any more than you have to — I could eat a whole porcupine now myself if I had one.”
That night at the fireside Uncle Dick saw the boys bending over close together, and looked at them curiously, for they seemed to be writing.
“What’s up, young men?” said he.
“Well, we’re making our wills,” said Rob. “We haven’t got much to give to anybody, of course, but you know, in case of any accident, we thought the folks ought to know about it. Not that we’re afraid. I was just thinking that so many people were lost here that never were heard of again.”
Uncle Dick did not smile at Rob’s frank confession, but liked the boys all the more for it.
“Well,” said he, “that’s all right, too. I’m willing to admit that when I ran the Rock Cañon above the Boat Encampment last year I did a little writing myself and put it in my pocket, and I tied one leg to the boat with a rope, too. But please don’t be too much alarmed over anything we’ve said, for if the cañons should prove too bad we will line down with the boat; and if we can’t line down, then we will all take to the woods.”
None the less, the boys were all very quiet that night and slept but little.
“I don’t like that water at all,” whispered Jesse to John. “You can hear it growling and groaning all night long, as though it were gnashing its teeth — I don’t like it at all.”
And, indeed, even on top of their high bank they could hear the strange noises that come up always from the Columbia River when the high water is on. The stream where they were encamped was several hundred yards in width, but now the run-off waters of the mighty snow-sheds were making the river each day more and more a torrent, full of danger even for experienced men.
XXVII
ON THE RAPIDS
It was cool that night, almost cool enough for frost, and the morning was chill when they rolled out of their blankets. A heavy mist rose from over the river, and while this obtained Leo refused to attempt to go on. So they lost a little time after breakfast before the sun had broken up the mist enough to make it safe to venture on the river. They were off at about nine o’clock perhaps, plunging at once into three or four miles of very fast water.
The boats now kept close together, and at times they landed, so that their leaders could go ahead and spy out the water around the bend. In making these landings with heavy boats, as the boys observed, the men would always let the stern swing