XXX

      THE END OF THE TRAIL

       Table of Contents

      Although O’Brien offered them beds in his house, and Carlson bunks on board the Columbia, Rob, John, and Jesse all preferred to sleep out-of-doors as long as they could, and so made their beds on the grass-plot at the top of the bluff, not putting up any tent, as the mosquitoes here were not bad. They were rather tired; and, feeling that their trip was practically over, with little excitement remaining, they slept soundly and did not awake until the sun was shining in their faces.

      “Come on, fellows,” said Jesse, kicking off his blankets. “I suppose now we’ll have to get used to washing in a real wash-basin and using a real towel. Somehow I feel more sorry than happy, even if it was rather rough work coming down the river.”

      This seemed to be the feeling of both the others, and they were not talkative at the breakfast-table, where O’Brien had supplied them with a fine meal, including abundance of fresh-laid eggs from his own farm-yard.

      After breakfast they employed themselves chiefly in making themselves as tidy as they could and in packing their few personal possessions in shape for railway transportation. Most of their outfit, however, they gave away to the men who were to remain behind them. Toward noon the whistle of the steamboat announced that she was ready to take up her down-stream trip; so the young Alaskans were obliged to say good-by to O’Brien, in whose heart they had found a warm place.

      “Good luck to ye, byes,” said he, “and don’t be diggin’ all the gold up in Alaska, for ’tis myself’ll be seein’ ye wan of these days — ’tis a foine country entirely, and I’m wishin’ fer a change.”

      Leo and George, without any instructions, had turned in to help the boat crew in their work of pushing off. Moise, once aboard the boat, seemed unusually silent and thoughtful for him, until Rob rallied him as to his sorrowful countenance.

      “Well,” said Moise, “you boy will all go back on Alaska now, and Moise she’s got to go home on the Peace River. I’ll not been scare’ of the horse or the canoe, but this steamboat and those railroad train she’ll scare Moise plenty. All the time I’m think she’ll ron off the track and bust Moise.”

      “You mustn’t feel that way,” said Rob, “for that’s Uncle Dick’s business — finding places for railroads to run. That’s going to be my business too, sometime, as I told you. I think it’s fine — going out here where all those old chaps went a hundred years ago, and to see the country about as they saw it, and to live and travel just about as they did. Men can live in the towns if they like, but in the towns anybody can get on who has money so he can buy things. But in the country where we’ve been, money wouldn’t put you through; you’ve got to know how to do things, and not be afraid.”

      “S’pose you boys keep on,” said Moise, “bime-by you make voyageur. Then you come with Moise — she’ll show you something!”

      “Well, Moise,” continued Rob, “if we don’t see you many a time again it won’t be our fault, you may be sure.”

      “I’m just wondering,” said Jesse, “how Leo and George are going to get back up to the Tête Jaune Cache. They told us they meant to go up the Ashcroft trail and home by way of Fort George and the Fraser River and the ‘choo-choo boat.’ But that seems a long way around. I suppose you’ll come to the hotel with us, down to Revelstoke, won’t you Leo?” he added.

      “No like ’um,” said Leo. “My cousin and me, we live in woods till time to take choo-choo that way to Ashcrof’.”

      “Well, in that case,” said John, “I think we’d better give you our mosquito-tent; you may need it more than we will, and we can get another up from Seattle at any time.”

      “Tent plenty all right,” said Leo. “Thank.” And when John fished it out of the pack-bag and gave it to him he turned it over to George with a few words in his own language.

      George carried it away without comment. They were all very much surprised a little later, however, to discover him working away on the tent with his knife, and, to their great disgust, they observed that he was busily engaged in cutting out all the bobbinet windows and in ripping the front of the tent open so that it was precisely like any other tent! John was very indignant at this, but his reproof had little effect on Leo.

      “Tent plenty all right now,” said he. “Let plenty air inside! Mosquito no bite ’um Injun.”

      When they came to think of it this seemed so funny to them that they rolled on the deck with laughter, but they all agreed to let Leo arrange his own outfit after that.

      They passed steadily on down between the lofty banks of the Columbia, here a river several hundred yards in width, and more like a lake than a stream in many of its wider bends. They could see white-topped mountains in many different directions, and, indeed, close to them lay one of the most wonderful mountain regions of the continent, with localities rarely visited at that time save by hunters or travelers as bold as themselves.

      Carlson, the good-natured skipper of the Columbia, asked the boys all up to the wheelhouse with him, and even allowed Rob to steer the boat a half-mile in one of the open and easy bends. He told them about his many adventurous trips on the great river and explained to them the allowances it was necessary to make for the current on a bend, the best way of getting off a bar, and the proper method of making a landing.

      “You shall make good pilot-man pratty soon,” he said to Rob, approvingly. “Not manny man come down the Colomby. That take pilot-man, too.”

      “Well,” said Rob, modestly, “we didn’t really do very much of it ourselves, but I believe we’d have run the rapids wherever the men did if they had allowed us to.”

      “Batter not run the rapid so long you can walk, young man,” said Carlson. “The safest kind sailorman ban the man that always stay on shore.” And he laughed heartily at his own wit.

      The boat tied up at the head of the Revelstoke Cañon, and here the boys put their scanty luggage in a wagon which had come out to meet her, and started off, carrying their rifles, along the wagon-trail which leads from above the cañon to the town, part of the time on a high trestle.

      When they came abreast of the cañon they were well in advance of the men, who also were walking in, and they concluded to go to the brink of the cañon and look down at the water.

      It was a wild sight enough which they saw from their lofty perch. The great Columbia River, lately so broad and lakelike, was compressed into a narrow strip of raging white water, driven down with such force that they could see very plainly the upflung rib of the river, forced above the level of the edges by the friction on the perpendicular rock walls. From where they peered over the brink they could see vast white surges, and could even distinguish the strange, irregular swells, or boils, which without warning or regularity come up at times from the depths of this erratic river. They quite agreed that it would have been impossible for a boat to go through Revelstoke Cañon alive at the stage of the water as they saw it. Rob tried to make a photograph, which he said he was going to take home to show to his mother.

      “You’d better not,” said John. “You’ll get the folks to thinking that this sort of thing isn’t safe!”

      The boys stood back from the rim of the cañon after a while and waited for the others to come up with them.

      “We think this one looks about as bad