him boat-steerer. Shorty was no less pleased, and volunteered to
continue cooking and leave the boat work to the other.
Between Linderman and Lake Bennet was a portage. The boat, lightly
loaded, was lined down the small but
violent connecting
stream, and
here Kit
learned a vast deal more about boats and water. But when
it came to packing the
outfit, Stine and Sprague disappeared, and
their men spent two days of back-breaking toil in getting the
outfitacross. And this was the history of many
miserable days of the
trip--Kit and Shorty
working to
exhaustion, while their masters
toiled not and demanded to be waited upon.
But the iron-bound
arctic winter continued to close down, and they
were held back by numerous and avoidable delays. At Windy Arm,
Stine arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within
the hour wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore. Two days were
lost here in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as
they came down to
embark, on stern and bow, in large letters, was
charcoaled 'The Chechaquo.'
Kit grinned at the appropriateness of the invidious word.
"Huh!" said Shorty, when accused by Stine. "I can sure read and
spell, an' I know that Chechaquo means tenderfoot, but my education
never went high enough to learn me to spell a jaw-breaker like
that."
Both employers looked daggers at Kit, for the
insult rankled; nor
did he mention that the night before, Shorty had
besought him for
the
spelling of that particular word.
"That's 'most as bad as your bear-meat slam at 'em," Shorty confided
later.
Kit chuckled. Along with the
continuous discovery of his own powers
had come an ever-increasing
disapproval of the two masters. It was
not so much
irritation, which was always present, as
disgust. He
had got his taste of the meat, and liked it; but they were teaching
him how not to eat it. Privily, he thanked God that he was not made
as they. He came to
dislike them to a degree that bordered on
hatred. Their malingering bothered him less than their helpless
inefficiency. Somewhere in him, old Isaac Bellew and all the rest
of the hardy Bellews were making good.
"Shorty," he said one day, in the usual delay of getting started, "I
could almost fetch them a rap over the head with an oar and bury
them in the river."
"Same here," Shorty agreed. "They're not meat-eaters. They're
fish-eaters, and they sure stink."
III.
They came to the rapids, first, the Box Canyon, and, several miles
below, the White Horse. The Box Canyon was
adequately named. It
was a box, a trap. Once in it, the only way out was through. On
either side arose
perpendicular walls of rock. The river narrowed
to a
fraction of its width, and roared through this
gloomy passage
in a
madness of
motion that heaped the water in the centre into a
ridge fully eight feet higher than at the rocky sides. This ridge,
in turn, was crested with stiff, up
standing waves that curled over,
yet remained each in its unvarying place. The Canyon was well
feared, for it had collected its toll of dead from the passing gold-
rushers.
Tying to the bank above, where lay a score of other
anxious boats,
Kit and his companions went ahead on foot to
investigate. They
crept to the brink and gazed down at the swirl of water. Sprague
drew back shuddering.
"My God!" he exclaimed. "A
swimmer hasn't a chance in that."
Shorty touched Kit significantly with his elbow and said in an
undertone:
"Cold feet. Dollars to doughnuts they don't go through."
Kit scarcely heard. From the
beginning of the boat trip he had been
learning the stubbornness and inconceivable viciousness of the
elements, and this
glimpse of what was below him acted as a
challenge.
"We've got to ride that ridge," he said. "If we get off of it we'll
hit the walls--"
"And never know what hit us," was Shorty's
verdict. "Can you swim,
Smoke?"
"I'd wish I couldn't if anything went wrong in there."
"That's what I say," a stranger,
standingalongside and peering down
into the Canyon, said mournfully. "And I wish I were through it."
"I wouldn't sell my chance to go through," Kit answered.
He spoke
honestly, but it was with the idea of heartening the man.
He turned to go back to the boat.
"Are you going to
tackle it?" the man asked.
Kit nodded.
"I wish I could get the courage to," the other confessed. "I've
been here for hours. The longer I look, the more afraid I am. I am
not a
boatman, and I have only my
nephew with me, who is a young
boy, and my wife. If you get through
safely, will you run my boat
through?"
Kit looked at Shorty, who delayed to answer.
"He's got his wife with him," Kit suggested. Nor had he mistaken
his man.
"Sure," Shorty affirmed. "It was just that I was stopping to think
about. I knew there was some reason I ought to do it."
Again they turned to go, but Sprague and Stine made no movement.
"Good luck, Smoke," Sprague called to him. "I'll--er--" He
hesitated. "I'll just stay here and watch you."
"We need three men in the boat, two at the oars and one at the
steering sweep," Kit said quietly.
Sprague looked at Stine.
"I'm
damned if I do," said that gentleman. "If you're not afraid to
stand here and look on, I'm not."
"Who's afraid?" Sprague demanded hotly.
Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of
a squabble.
"We can do without them," Kit said to Shorty. "You take the bow
with a
paddle, and I'll handle the steering sweep. All you'll have
to do is just to keep her straight. Once we're started, you won't
be able to hear me, so just keep on keeping straight."
They cast off the boat and worked out to middle in the quickening
current. From the Canyon came an ever-growing roar. The river
sucked in to the entrance with the smoothness of
molten glass, and
here, as the darkening walls received them, Shorty took a chew of
tobacco, and dipped his
paddle. The boat leaped on the first crests
of the ridge, and they were deafened by the
uproar of wild water
that reverberated from the narrow walls and multiplied itself. They
were half-smothered with flying spray. At times Kit could not see
his comrade at the bow. It was only a matter of two minutes, in
which time they rode the ridge three-quarters of a mile, and emerged
in safety and tied to the bank in the eddy below.
Shorty emptied his mouth of
tobacco juice--he had forgotten to spit-
-and spoke.
"That was bear-meat," he exulted, "the real bear-meat. Say, we want
a few, didn't we, Smoke, I don't mind tellin' you in confidence that
before we started I was the gosh-dangdest scaredest man this side of
the Rocky-Mountains. Now I'm a bear-eater. Come on an' we'll run
that other boat through."
Midway back, on foot, they encountered their employers, who had
watched the passage from above.
"There comes the fish-eaters," said Shorty. "Keep to win'ward."
IV.
After
running the strangers' boat through, whose name proved to be
Breck, Kit and Shorty met his wife, a
slender, girlish woman whose
blue eyes were moist with
gratitude. Breck himself tried to hand
Kit fifty dollars, and then attempted it on Shorty.
"Stranger," was the latter's rejection, "I come into this country to
make money outa the ground an' not outa my fellow critters."
Breck rummaged in his boat and produced a demijohn of whiskey.
Shorty's hand half went out to it and stopped
abruptly. He shook
his head.
"There's that blamed White Horse right below, an' they say it's
worse than the Box. I
reckon I don't dast
tackle any lightning."
Several miles below they ran in to the bank, and all four walked
down to look at the bad water. The river, which was a
succession of
rapids, was here deflected toward the right bank by a rocky reef.
The whole body of water, rushing crookedly into the narrow passage,
accelerated its speed
frightfully, and was upflung unto huge waves,
white and wrathful. This was the dread Mane of the White Horse, and
here an even heavier toll of dead had been exacted. On one side of
the Mane was a corkscrew curl-over and suck-under, and on the
opposite side was the big whirlpool. To go through, the Mane itself
must be ridden.
"This plum rips the strings outa the Box," Shorty concluded.
As they watched, a boat took the head of the rapids above. It was a
large boat, fully thirty feet long, laden with several tons of
outfit and handled by six men. Before it reached the Mane it was
plunging and leaping, at times almost
hidden by the foam and spray.
Shorty shot a slow, sidelong glance at Kit, and said:
"She's fair smoking, and she hasn't hit the worst. They've hauled
the oars in. There she takes it now. God! She's gone! No; there
she is!"
Big as the boat was, it had been buried from sight in the flying
smother between crests. The next moment, in the thick of the Mane,
the boat leaped up a crest and into view. To Kit's
amazement he saw
the whole long bottom clearly outlined. The boat, for the
fractionof an
instant, was in the air, the men sitting idly in their places,
all save one in the stern who stood at the steering sweep. Then
came the
downwardplunge into the
trough and a second disappearance.
Three times the boat leaped and buried itself, then those on the
bank saw its nose take the whirlpool as it slipped off the Mane.
The steersman,
vainly opposing with his full weight on the steering-
gear, surrendered to the whirlpool and helped the boat to take the
circle.
Three times it went around, each time so close to the rocks on which
Kit and Shorty stood, that either could have leaped on board. The
steersman, a man with a
reddish beard of recent growth, waved his
hand to them. The only way out of the whirlpool was by the Mane,
and on the round the boat entered the Mane obliquely at its upper
end. Possibly out of fear of the draw of the whirlpool, the
steersman did not attempt to
straighten out quickly enough. When he
did, it was too late. Alternately in the air and buried, the boat
angled the Mane and sucked into and down through the stiff wall of
the corkscrew on the opposite side of the river. A hundred feet
below, boxes and bales began to float up. Then appeared the bottom
of the boat and the scattered heads of six men. Two managed to make
the bank in the eddy below. The others were drawn under, and the
general flotsam was lost to view, borne on by the swift current
around the bend.
There was a long minute of silence. Shorty was the first to speak.
"Come on," he said. "We might as well
tackle it. My feet'll get
cold if I stay here any longer."
"We'll smoke some," Kit grinned at him.
"And you'll sure earn your name," was the rejoinder. Shorty turned
to their employers. "Comin'?" he queried.
Perhaps the roar of the water prevented them from
hearing the
invitation.
Shorty and Kit tramped back through a foot of snow to the head of
the rapids and cast off the boat. Kit was divided between two
impressions: one, of the caliber of his comrade, which served as a
spur to him; the other,
likewise a spur, was the knowledge that old
Isaac Bellew, and all the other Bellews, had done things like this
in their
westward march of empire. What they had done, he could do.
It was the meat, the strong meat, and he knew, as never before, that
it required strong men to eat such meat.
"You've sure got to keep the top of the ridge," Shorty shouted at
him, the plug
tobacco lifting to his mouth, as the boat quickened in
the quickening current and took the head of the rapids.
Kit nodded, swayed his strength and weight tentatively on the