VI

      FOLLOWING MACKENZIE

       Table of Contents

      “Well,” said Alex, “now we’ve got all these fish, we’ll have to take care of them. Come ahead and let’s clean them, Moise.”

      The boys all fell to and assisted the men at this work, Moise showing them how to prepare the fish.

      “How are we going to keep them?” asked John, who always seemed to be afraid there would not be enough to eat.

      “Well,” explained Alex, “we’ll put them in between some green willow boughs and keep them that way till night. Then I suppose we’ll have to smoke them a little — hang them up by the tail the way the Injuns do. That’s the way we do whitefish in the north. If it weren’t for the fish which we catch in these northern waters, we’d all starve to death in the winter, and so would our dogs, all through the fur country.”

      “By the time we’re done this trip,” ventured Rob, “we’ll begin to be voyageurs ourselves, and will know how to make our living in the country.”

      “That’s the talk!” said Alex, admiringly. “The main thing is to learn to do things right. Each country has its own ways, and usually they are the most useful ways. An Injun never wants to do work that he doesn’t have to do. So, you’ll pretty much always see that the Injun ways of keeping camp aren’t bad to follow as an example, after all.

      “But now,” said he at length, after they had finished cleaning and washing off their trout, “we’ll have to get on across to the other lake.”

      As before, Moise now took the heavier pack on his own broad shoulders, and Alex once more picked up the canoe.

      “She’s a little lighter than the other boat, I believe,” said he, “but they’re both good boats, as sure’s you’re born — you can’t beat a Peterborough model in the woods!”

      The other boys noticed now that when he carried his canoe, he did so by placing a paddle on each side, threaded under and above the thwarts so as to form a support on each side, which rested on his shoulders. His head would have been covered entirely by the boat as he stood, were it not that he let it drop backward a little, so that he could see the trail ahead of him. Rob pointed out to Jesse all these different things, with which their training in connection with the big Alaskan sea-going dugouts had not made them familiar.

      “Have we got everything now, fellows?” asked Rob, making a last search before they left the scene of their disembarkation.

      “All set!” said John. “Here we go!”

      It required now but a few moments to make the second traverse of the portage, and soon the boats again were loaded. They found this most easterly of the three lakes on the summit to be of about the same size as the one which they had just left. It was rather longer than it was wide, and they could see at its eastern side the depression where the outlet made off toward the east. Again taking their places at the paddles in the order established at the start of the day, they rapidly pushed on across. They found now that this lake discharged through a little creek which rapidly became deep and clear.

      “It’s going to be just the way,” said Rob, “that Sir Alexander tells. I say, fellows, we could take that boat and come through here in the dark, no matter what Simon Fraser said about Sir Alexander.”

      They found the course down this little waterway not troublesome, and fared on down the winding stream until at length they heard the sound of running water just beyond.

      “That’s the Parsnip now, no doubt,” said Alex, quietly, to his young charges. Already Moise had pushed the Mary Ann over the last remaining portion of the stream, and she was floating fair and free on the current of the second stream, not much larger than the one from which they now emerged.

      “Voila!” Moise exclaimed. “She’ll been the Peace River — or what those voyageur call the Parsneep. Now, I’ll think we make fast ride, yes.”

      Jesse, leaning back against his bed-roll, looked a little serious.

      “Boys,” said he, “I don’t like the looks of this. This water sounds dangerous to me, and you can’t tell me but what these mountains are pretty steep.”

      “Pshaw! It’s just a little creek,” scoffed John.

      “That’s all right, but a little creek gets to be a big river mighty fast up in this country — we’ve seen them up in Alaska many a time. Look at the snow-fields back in those mountains!”

      “Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Jess,” said Alex; “most of the snow has gone down in the June rise. The water is about as low now as it is at any time of the year. Now, if we were here on high water, as Simon Fraser was, and going the other way, we might have our own troubles — I expect he found all this country under water where we are now, and the current must have been something pretty stiff to climb against.”

      “In any case,” Rob added, “we’re just in the same shape that Sir Alexander and old Simon were when they were here. We wouldn’t care to turn back, and we’ve got to go through. If they did it, so can we. I don’t believe this stream’s as bad, anyhow, as the Fraser or the Columbia, because the traders must have used it for a regular route long ago.”

      “I was reading,” said John, “in Simon Fraser’s travels, about how they did in the rapids of the Fraser River. Why, it was a wonder they ever got through at all. But they didn’t seem to make much fuss about it. Those men didn’t know where they were going, either — they just got in their boat and turned loose, not knowing what there