The Boy With the U. S. Survey

"I'd be afraid to tackle it alone, Mr. Rivers," the boy said truthfully, "but I feel that with Harry in the stern I could take the rapids of Niagara, and the whirlpool into the bargain."

CHAPTER XV
FACING DEATH IN A CANOE

"Right you are, Harry," sung out Roger cheerily, and a moment later the canoe shot into the mouth of the canyon, the other members of the party watching them with some anxiety, as, aside from the question of danger, the loss of one of the boats would mean a great deal of extra work on the trip. As the canoe entered the canyon Roger could feel the whole frame of his companion quiver with the intensity of attention, and he heeded every move of the canoe so closely that he felt as though he knew before every movement of the stern paddle just in what direction it would be, and of what weight.

The boy had learned well the lesson of following orders, and his confidence in his companion was so absolute that he was untroubled in mind, which went far to make him alert and able. Suddenly, the boat gave a little jump and the current leaped to double its speed, and for two hundred feet they rushed down a smooth plane of dark water with a seethe of foam awaiting them at the bottom. Just as they reached it, Harry shouted:

"Now!" and bore outward with all his strength.

"Sure!" came Roger's ready answer, as he followed the action almost simultaneously, but his confidence received a sudden check when they plunged into blinding foam which drove across the boat so that the Indian could hardly discern the lad kneeling in the bow. Angry little cross-waves leaped at them, naked scarps of rocks thrust bared fangs at them, but threading, this way and that, a channel of almost unbelievable intricacy and appalling narrowness, the little boat went through.

At the base of the second of these, in a moment of comparatively still water, the Indian called:

"Plenty heap good paddle," he said, "but too much beefsteak. More easy stroke." He broke off suddenly, "Ah!"

The warning was needed, for the vicious spite of this rapid began at its very mouth, and once the boy heard Harry grunt as he put his whole strength into a double stroke which, Roger could have sworn, made the frame of the canoe bend and wriggle like a snake. There followed then a greater rapidity of current again, and the walls of the gorge closed in until it seemed to the boy that if they got any nearer the boat would be shooting through a tunnel, and the prospect of a subterranean tunnel was not pleasant.

Just at the narrowest part, when it was difficult sometimes to avoid the paddles striking the rock on the side, the torrent boiling through and both men backing water, the canyon took a sharp turn to the right. Harry threw her head round, but not far enough, for there, not fifteen feet away from the angle of the bend, a black rock rose sheer from the water, with a spur sticking out, exactly like the spur of a fighting cock. The boat could not clear, and though Roger got the bow by, the current crushed the side of the canoe against the rock, and with a cry the Indian leaped for the spur.

"Jump!" he yelled to Roger.

But Harry's leap from the stern of the boat, just as she crashed, threw the canoe off sufficiently to prevent its entire demolition, so, though the frail craft grazed the sharp edge of the rock with the speed of an express train, crushing in its upper part, it was still seaworthy. Roger noted that the Indian had not reached a footing on the spur, but was hanging by a hand-hold to a ledge which it would be almost impossible to climb.

The thought passed through Roger's mind that Rivers would blame himself for having let him go, in the event of anything happening, but there was little time for speculation. From the bow he could see the dangers that were before him, but not being in the stern, the canoe was hard to paddle, and almost as in a desperate nightmare, he paddled and swerved and dodged rocks that sprang at him out of the water as though they were alive. Though his heart was in his mouth, and he expected every moment to be his last, the training of the past year stood him in good stead, and his eye never wavered nor did his hand become unsteady until, five minutes later, he reached in safety the gravel flat below the last rapid.

There he held the boat to regain his breath, and found time to wonder whether Harry had managed to climb on the spur, and if he had, how the party would be able to release him. But scarcely had this question formulated itself in his mind than, close by the canoe, two hands thrust themselves out of the water, followed by a shock of coarse black hair, and with one side of his head bleeding profusely from a scalp wound he had received on his way down the rapid, the Indian made his way to the boat. Roger helped him in over the stern and they paddled to the shore.

"Heap fine," he commented, "thought you gone sure, that time."

"You were politer than I was," replied the boy, laughing with a catch in his voice, "I was too busy even to think of you till I got down here." He went on laughing, but harshly and with a curious clang in the tones.

The Indian looked up sharply.

"Stop," he said, "you no laugh."

Roger, brought to a pause by the abrupt command, found he was choking over his laugh, and that his nerves were badly shaken. He felt a wild desire to laugh and cry alternately, but he gulped down a few times, straightened up and looked Harry squarely in the eye.

"I'm all right now," he said.

The Indian looked back over the rapid down which they had just come, and shook his head.

"Well, we got through any way," commented Roger.

"Yes," answered Harry slowly, "but we heap near not get through."

"Oh, well," replied the boy with all the recklessness of youth concerning a danger which is past and over, "a miss is as good as a mile, any way."

"So," replied the Indian, "but when it is my scalp," pointing to his head, "I like mile, every time."

This drawing attention to the cut on Harry's head, Roger looked at it, and found that although it had bled freely, it was but a superficial cut, and would afford no trouble, at least until they got back to the camp, where the chief would see that it was attended to. But they were a long way from the camp, as the two speedily found when they started on their homeward journey.

The trip down the rapids, Roger found, had taken a little less than fifty minutes, and he thought that perhaps it might take a couple of hours for them to make their way home. But even Harry underestimated the distance that they had come, and the way back, climbing over fallen trees, scrambling through thickets, stopped by underbrush, scratched by thorns, and caught in brambles, was a fearful task, and it was eleven o'clock at night before they got into camp, having taken fourteen hours to come back the twelve miles they had done in the canoe in fifty minutes.

They found the camp waiting for them, and Rivers growing very anxious at their non-return. He realized, of course, that the rapid might have proved far longer than had been expected, and that the two would have some difficulty getting back, but there was a fear of possibly worse consequences. The cut on Harry's head revealed that everything had not gone well, and the Indian, nothing loath, told in his short and jerky way the story of the perilous passage, giving the boy due credit for bringing the boat through the last few hundred yards of the rapids, and averring that he was all that could be desired as a comrade.

Roger's exhaustion from the long tramp back to camp was such that the chief of the party gave orders that he was not to be awakened early, and it was eight o'clock before the boy rolled over and sleepily opened his eyes to find the camp work well advanced and breakfast over. He jumped up hurriedly, looking for the various members of the party, but found only Harry and the cook there.

"Why, where's the crowd?" he asked.

"Waal, son," said the cook, "Mr. Rivers he reckoned that a good sleep wouldn't do any harm, seeing the job you tackled yesterday, and you won't have much to do to-day. The rest of them have started packing the grub over the carry to where you left the first boat. They're loaded down good and proper, for I don't believe one of 'em has less than eighty pounds, and Bulson's got one hundred and ten, all right."

"There's a lot of stuff here yet," commented Roger, looking around, "and that's no small walk. How many trips do you suppose it will take to get it all down there?"

"Just one trip more, to-morrow. You see on to-morrow's trip Harry and you and I will have a load, and three extra men can tote a lot."

"But why were we let out of it to-day?" queried the boy.

"We take other boat down," put in the Indian, who had been listening, "this time we do it heap easy. No get knocked on the head."

"I hope not, for your sake," said Roger, who, though no coward, had been secretly hoping that some one else would look after the other boat. "But it's quite a trick to have to tackle again."

"No," replied Harry, with a quick negative shake of the head. "Heap easy now. I draw map every rock, know when stop canoe."

"Yes," said the cook thoughtfully, "it isn't much of a job to run a rapid when you know what's ahead of you; the trouble is generally that some fool rock shows up when you least expect it."

"That's true," said the boy thoughtfully, "even the rock we nearly went to smash on,—the one you jumped, you know,—we could have dodged that if we had known that it was there and had hugged the right-hand shore."

"No strike rock this time. You no want try jump?"

"Not on your life, Harry," laughed Roger. "I'm not aching for excitement as much as that. Going through that rapid again will give me enough to think of for one day, at least."

In the meanwhile, the boat having been got ready, the two shoved out into the stream and headed for the rapid. As the other men had suggested, the passage lost some of its terrors when it was known what lay beyond, but Roger found that his companion possessed a memory for every little turn of the river which was to him incredible. He felt that he would have to go through it a dozen times before he could begin to act as a pilot through, but Harry had the whole stretch of boiling water as clearly in his mind as though an immense chart were stretched out before him.

The second rapid with its smother of foam, moreover, looked almost as bad to the boy on the second trial as it had on the first, and his heart beat more rapidly as the boat shot into the narrow gorge, in the midst of which, a little lower down, the sharp and jagged spur lay awaiting the unready traveler. But the Indian was on the alert, and just at the right moment he drove the canoe over beside the bank, so close that Roger feared a slight eddy might crush in the eggshell sides of the canoe. But even with every inch gained at the turn, the old black spur suddenly appeared around the bend, grim and perilous athwart their path. Then Harry put his muscle into the paddle, Roger following suit, and they flew across the river with such speed that the current driving them on the rock had little chance to catch the boat, and they shaved the danger with about two feet to spare. The rapid beyond, which Roger had run himself, was none too easy, and as the boy noted its difficulty, he felt a thrill of pride that he had managed to take the first boat through that alone.

"Heap bad rapid," said Harry, when the second boat had been drawn up beside the first, and he had examined both the canoes carefully to see how much damage they had sustained on the trip.

"Have you ever run any that were worse than this?" queried Roger.

"No. Plenty longer, rougher, but rock in middle much bad."

Questioning his companion Roger heard many stories of difficult and dangerous canoe trips, told with the unimpassioned utterance of the Indian, and in his broken English, and he was able to see that the canyon through which they had passed was almost as bad as any of them. They did not have to wait long for the arrival of the party from the upper camp, for the latter had cut the trail the preceding day, while Harry and Roger were taking the first boat down and returning, so that when they started the next morning before breakfast, it was fairly good going. Shortly before noon, the canoeists, waiting beside the boats, heard shouts to which they responded, and a few minutes later the packing party came crashing through the trees to the riverside.

The next day the entire remainder of the supplies and equipment of the camp were made up into packs and the party started over the portage to where the boats had been left lower down on the river. Roger, being accommodated with a pack weighing about ninety pounds, felt as though he were back in the Minnesota swamps, with the tump strap over his forehead. His familiarity with packing, and his ability to take the trip without feeling any physical inconvenience, was a source of gratification, as Roger's pride was keen not to be thought in any sense a less able member of the party than the oldest and most seasoned hand. The journey down to the lower end of the canyon did not seem so long, and, as on the previous day, the party reached the lower camp about noon. In the afternoon Gersup and Bulson, taking Roger with them, took advantage of the half day to make a survey before descending into the beaches of the lower Cantwell River.

As it was expected that the going would be easy for a while lower in the stream, Rivers readily acceded to Roger's petition that he should take his rifle along. There had been such a lot of caribou about, that the boy felt he ought at least to get one.

"We haven't space for the head as a trophy, of course, you know," he said, "and I don't approve of shooting for sport, but caribou is good eating, and it is always wise to conserve supplies."

"I've never had a chance at any big game, before, Mr. Rivers," joyfully said the boy.

"All right, then," said the chief, smiling, "I guess you won't reduce the visible supply of caribou in Alaska enough to hurt."

Immediately after dinner the three started, and Roger's luck was with him, for as they rounded the corner of a mountain slope, Gersup halted, and pointed with his finger to four specks about three miles away. Raising his field glasses, he said:

"There you are, Doughty; there are your caribou. You've worked pretty hard and ought to have some fun out of it. We can get along all right, and you go after them. You can't very well get lost, but don't try to track them after dark."

Roger nodded, and skirting the slope until he was hidden from the animals' view, he started on a run for a couple of miles, until he thought it would be necessary to exert more prudence. A long and weary progress through the rough country, with the endeavor not so much as to crack a twig or rustle a leaf, brought the lad at last to the little valley where he had seen the caribou, and there the shelter stopped, except for sundry large boulders, which did not afford a complete cover. Roger had worked round, of course, so that he was coming up wind. He had come within about half a mile of them, when he found cover absolutely gone, so lying prone on his face, and just wriggling forward by movements of his knees a foot or so at a time, he spent at least an hour advancing a quarter of a mile on the objects of his quest.

Suddenly, when he was about four hundred yards away, though he was not conscious of having made a sound, and though he had not been able to discern any change in the direction of the wind, the nearest of the four stopped feeding and threw up his head. The boy had been careful, throughout his crawl, to change the sight on his rifle to the distance he estimated he was from the game, and so, when the caribou stopped, he was ready. He waited a moment, hoping that the animal, seeing and hearing nothing, would resume feeding, but instead, the alarm seemed to communicate itself to the others, and they appeared to prepare for flight.

Like a flash the thought shot through Roger's mind that if they once started to run he would not be able to stalk them again that night, and determining to risk a long shot, rather than none at all, he laid his rifle across a boulder which he had been using as a cover, and taking a careful aim, fired. The distance seemed to him tremendous, and as the rifle cracked the four leaped into full career, but the one at which the boy had fired gave a jump, which, to his excited idea, seemed to show that he had been hit. Away started Roger at full tilt after them, but they were speedily out of sight. Tearing along at topmost speed over the uneven ground, Roger's breath began to give out and little black spots danced before his eyes, but when he reached the trail of the fleeing caribou and found a spot of blood in the tracks of one of them, he would not have changed places with the Director of the Survey. On he went, following this track, and noting that the leaps were growing shorter and shorter, but his endurance was beginning to give out, when he saw before him, not more than half a mile away, a solitary caribou. Knowing that those which had not been hit were probably four or five miles distant at this time, and that they would not stop under fifteen miles or so, the boy knew that this was his victim and he redoubled his energies.

The sight of the pursuer seemed to revive the flagging energies of the deer, and for half an hour he increased the distance. Then Roger saw that he was gaining, although the dusk was coming on fast. Fearing to lose his game, he decided for another long shot, and was again successful, for at the crack of the rifle the caribou fell, staggered to his feet, gave a few convulsive leaps, and fell again, and when, ten minutes later, the boy stood beside the object of his quest, a magnificent Barren Ground Caribou, the animal was dead. Roger knew that it was no use trying to skin the caribou, and greatly though he desired its head, he had been told that the party could not bother with it, so cutting off as much of the meat as he could carry, he started for the camp, which he reached four or five hours later, and displayed his evidence, and told his hunting story with infinite zest and relish.

A couple of days later, while the men were enjoying an after-dinner smoke, Roger noticed Rivers stooping by the edge of one of the river bars, flicking water out of a gold pan in regular cadenced jerks. Seeing the boy, he beckoned to him, and carefully pointing to two or three tiny particles of metal that lay on the rock beside him, he held out his hand to the boy.

"Gold!" he said.

"You have found a gold mine?" Roger inquired excitedly.

The geologist smiled at the boy's sudden conclusion that unimagined wealth lay exposed before them.

"Gold does not come in quarries like building stone," he said with a laugh. "Did you think it came in great masses of rock?"

"No," answered Roger, "but I thought it came in veins through the rocks."

"So it does, but you can find it in sand. What is sand?"

The boy thought a moment. "Why," he said, at length, "sand is rocks ground small by the action of wind and water."

"Very well," said his chief. "Now if some of the rocks ground small contained a vein of gold, what would happen to it?"

"The gold would be turned into sand, too," answered the boy.

"Only in part," said the older man. "The gold is hard and heavy, and when it is eroded from the rocks it comes in flakes rather than small particles. Then, you see, when sand is washed this way," illustrating by a cradling motion, "the gold sinks to the bottom as the sand is washed away from it, and you can take out the pieces of gold with comparative ease."

"Then it ought to be very easy to get gold!" exclaimed the boy with visions of Arabian Nights wealth floating before his eyes.

"Don't you believe it. There is gold on this river bar, as I have shown you, and, indeed, gold has been reported by the Survey on nearly all the bars of the Tanana River and its tributaries; but the geological history of the region is far from perfectly known yet, and the tracing to their original sources the débris of the Cantwell and Tanana Rivers is an excessively complicated subject. Of course, if you found the original vein of gold from which these flakes came, it would pay big, but near its source it may be in sufficient quantity to pay well, even in placer form."

"But if you can wash it right out of the sand," objected Roger, his imagination fired by the sight of the particles of metal, "why not get it that way?"

"Nothing easier," replied the geologist. "Thousands of people might come up here and wash the sands of this and other rivers, the White River in particular, but it doesn't follow that they would get enough to pay them for their trouble. Just think what it would cost to get up here! I suppose from the 'colors' in this sand, each one of us could wash from six to ten dollars' worth of gold a day through the summer, but what use would that be? It wouldn't pay the expenses of the trip; still hundreds have made small fortunes by such methods."

"Then prospecting for gold's not so easy after all?"

"It's one of the hardest lives I know," was the reply, "and the most dissatisfying. If you happen to strike a 'pay-streak,' as it is called, it may be very profitable."

"But if you strike the original vein?" asked Roger. "Isn't it pretty good then?"

"Only under certain conditions," answered the older man. "You can't crush the quartz rock except with heavy machinery, and you can easily see that it's no light job getting huge crushers up here. And that's not all: after you have spent thousands of dollars in buying the machinery and more thousands in moving it to this forsaken spot, you then have to spend tens of thousands building up a water power development, or else face the still more difficult problem of transporting coal to run your engines. Then high wages are a big factor, too!"

"Then, if it's so hard to get at, what drew the crowds at the time of the Yukon and Nome 'strikes?'" asked Roger.

"The desire to get rich quick," was the reply. "It is safe to say that not more than ten per cent. of the thousands of people who came to Alaska in the gold rush succeeded. Alaska is no Eldorado to pick up wealth idly, though the gold industry, properly capitalized, is important and worth $20,000,000 annually to the country."

"But surely some one made money in the Klondike and Nome fields?"

"There was a lot of gold near the surface, and the first-comers got that without much trouble, as well as getting the richest claims. There is plenty more there, but it is in frozen gravels and hard to get out. Prospecting for gold is the best thing I know to keep away from, unless you are willing to live in solitude and disappointment all your life, living on the bare hope that some time you may be lucky enough to strike a rich 'pocket.'"

CHAPTER XVI
DECLARING WAR ON UNCLE SAM

"Do you have many of them up here?" asked the boy, struck by the note of satire in the topographer's voice.

"Yes, we do," he replied curtly.

"Many of them?" put in Magee. "Why, a week from now you can wave a pint pot over your head and catch a quart of mosquitoes in it, and a month from now we'll have to cut our way through them with an ax."

"Oh, come off, now," said Roger, laughing.

"Laugh all you want to," continued the Irishman, "but it's a fact. Why, when they were building the Yukon railroad, during the months of July and August as the men went to work, they had to send the snow plow ahead of the gang in the morning in order to break a way through the banks of mosquitoes, and sometimes they had to put two engines behind the plow—make a double-header of it."

"Pretty good yarn, Magee," said the boy, "but if they're no worse than that I guess I can stand it."

Here Rivers broke in. "You will do well if you do stand it," he said, "because Magee is not so very far out. You will hardly believe it, but I would rather face a country of hostile Indians than hostile mosquitoes. That little mosquito you saw to-night means hundreds to-morrow, thousands the next day, and from that until cold weather hundreds of thousands all the time. Magee isn't exaggerating much, because Baron Munchausen would find it hard to do the Alaskan mosquitoes justice, when they get busy."

"Are they especially venomous, then?" the boy asked, growing serious.

"No, but they are especially numerous. Many a man has gone mad on the trail because he had no protection from them. That, practically, wiped out of existence one of the largest gold-hunting parties that ever came to Alaska."

"Tell us about it, Mr. Rivers," urged Roger.

"Well, I will," the chief replied, "if it is only to give you a due respect for your enemies. This party of which I am speaking had landed on Kotzebue Sound, and having heard of an alleged Indian trail to the Koyukuk, somewhere near the Selawik River, and having found out beside that it was tundra and flat, they thought it would be easy traveling."

Here Magee chuckled audibly at the idea of tundra being easy going.

"It wasn't long," went on the chief, not noticing the interruption, "before they reached the tundra and discovered that it was scarcely as pleasant as they thought. Walking on tundra is like, is like,—tell him what it's like, Magee."

"It's like walking over slippery footballs half-sunk in slime," said the Irishman promptly.

"Well, that will do," said Rivers. "Any way, they were tramping over this and losing heart fast when the mosquitoes began. They had nothing with them which would serve to keep off the insects, and some of the party were stung so fearfully that a superficial form of blood poisoning set in. Others, unable to endure the torture night and day, killed themselves; others again went insane and became violent; of that large party but two returned to the coast, one who by some freak of nature was immune, and his chum, who had become half-witted by the experience."

"You bet," commented the topographer, "the Alaskan mosquito is a matter to be taken very seriously."

In spite of the general opinion so strongly expressed, Roger felt a little scornful about being bothered with a few pesky mosquitoes, and he was inclined to think it an utterly foolish precaution when he was given an arrangement of netting to put over his head and let it hang down well over his shoulders, but his scorn vanished rapidly. Within an hour his hands, unprotected by gloves, became puffed and swollen from bites, and he found it necessary to put on thick buckskin to preserve him from the bites and to keep his sleeves rolled down. Even then he was not entirely free, for in some mysterious way the insects would work themselves into his clothes, and at night, although the tent was placed on a canvas which fastened to its sides like a floor, so that the mosquitoes could not come up from underneath, a few of them always were to be heard—and felt. So that, before many days had passed, Rogers was convinced that the Alaskan mosquito was a very important factor in life on the trail.

Five days after leaving the portage, having covered over one hundred miles of very easy going, the party made camp at Harper's Bend on the Tanana River. So far as buildings went, it was quite an imposing place, no less than nine huts being in evidence, but they were all vacant and deserted and a sense of loneliness and desolation hung over the place. The sight of human habitation, after so many weeks in the wild, ought to have given a sense of homelikeness, but instead the boy was conscious of an eerie sense of estrangement.

At supper that evening Roger mentioned this feeling, and added:

"Somehow I feel as if this place were haunted. It doesn't so much seem abandoned to nothingness as it does given to some uncanny ghost."

Magee crossed himself.

"Saints preserve us!" he said. "Don't talk like that, or ye'll bring the night-riders here."

"Nonsense, Magee," reproved Rivers, "a man of your experience so superstitious! But the boy might be right, for all that."

"By the power of good luck, why?" asked the Irishman.

"You tell the story, Gersup," replied the chief, "you know more about it than I do."

"Alaska's a pretty new country to be starting a ghost crop," the topographer began, "and, so far as I know, there aren't any here yet; but, if any place ought to have one, it should be Harper's Bend, right where we are now, and in this very house in which we are sitting."

Magee shivered and looked about him apprehensively.

"There was once," Gersup continued, "a trader at this place by the name of Bean, William Bean. He came in the year 1879, and established a post for the purpose of trafficking in the furs of the Tanana Indians. He found the tribes peaceful enough, their furs were of high quality and, as he had no competition, he was able to get them cheaply and to make a big profit out of it. The natives seemed to be so friendly and the opportunity for making money was so good that he determined to make it a permanent little settlement; he brought his wife to the place, and made arrangements for other families to follow.

"But it chanced, one day, that some natives from neighboring tribes, who had visited trading posts, came by the Tanana Indian camps, and when they saw how little their allies were getting from Bean for their skins, they suggested either visiting other posts or demanding more from their own trader. But Bean, so far as can be learned, was harsh and arrogant, and instead of offering a little more, which would still yield a handsome profit, he refused to consider the matter at all, and sneeringly pointing out that they were so far from any other post that they would have to come to him, he drove them away with gibes.

"Now the Indian usually has a sense of justice which is peculiar to himself. To us it may at times appear distorted, but it is a sense of justice none the less, and this sense Bean had offended. He made the further mistake of supposing that their quiescence under his sharp rebuff was an evidence either of cowardice or of ignorance of the true values of their furs. So, lulled into a false security by his own conceit, he remained there. One morning, while the whites were at breakfast, a war-party came and attacked the blockhouse, an Indian shooting Mrs. Bean from the doorway. The trader leaped up, seized his small child, and dashed through a rear door to a near-by boat, followed by an Indian servant. Some days later a party came up from the Yukon and buried Mrs. Bean, but the trader never returned.

"The country was not settled enough at that time for any question to be taken up of punishing the Indians for the crime, and there is no doubt of the provocation that the trader had given them. But this single incident in the history of the tribe is all too little to brand them with the reputation of treachery which they have borne ever since."

The following morning the canoes passed through a section of the country which, as Rivers pointed out to Roger, could be made the garden spot of Alaska. Well timbered, well watered, with a favorable climate and easy of access by steamer up the Yukon, the lower Tanana could be made a fruitful agricultural country.

"Some day," the chief of the party said, "an enterprising man will start a big farm here, to supply the posts all along the Yukon with provisions, for which they now have to pay big prices on being brought by steamer all the way from Seattle. That man will make ten times as much money as any of the gold mine operators, and besides, will be living in security and comfort."

They halted for the midday stop, a few miles above the junction of the Tanana with the Yukon, and about four o'clock the canoes shot into that great river of the north. Surprised as the boy had been at the size of the Alaskan rivers, he was by no means prepared for the body of water where the Tanana joins the Yukon.

"Why," he said in amaze, "I had no idea it was as big as this."

"Heap big river," commented Harry, who was in the stern.

The chief was in the boat, and hearing the lad's exclamation he turned to him.

"This is the fifth largest river in North America," he said.

"What are the others, Mr. Rivers?" the boy asked. "The Mississippi comes first of course."

"Yes, and then the Mackenzie, the Winnipeg, and the St. Lawrence, in that order. But the Yukon and the St. Lawrence are just about the same size."

"Well," Roger said, "it certainly is big enough."

Harry grunted. "Plenty big to paddle up," he said.

Then the boy noticed for the first time that there was quite a current in the river and that it was necessary to paddle up against the stream instead of rushing down as they had been able to do on the Tanana, and he buckled to his work. But they had not been breasting the current for more than an hour when one of the men in the rear boat gave a shout and pointed down the stream. Every one looked, and there, far down, could be seen a faint smoke like that of a steamer.

"That looks like a steamer's smoke," said the boy. "I wonder what it can be."

"Why not a steamer?" queried Rivers.

The boy looked bewildered.

"I don't know why not," he said, laughing; "it just didn't occur to me that any people lived about here. Are there any steamers on the Yukon?"

"Lots of them. There's quite a little traffic on the river and it is good for navigation for hundreds of miles, indeed, all the way to the Canadian boundary and above. Now you see, we will get this fellow, whoever he is, to take us up to Fort Hamlin. It's just as well to save one's strength when there is no need to exert it."

So the canoes took it easily, just paddling along quietly, not trying to make much headway, but on the other hand, not drifting down the stream, and commenting on the approaching steamer, as soon as she came in sight. She was a small vessel, but quite trim and ship-shape, and to Roger's eyes had a curious look of being civilized and out of place in the environment.

As soon as the steamer came close, Rivers gave orders for the leading canoe, in which he was, to drop behind, so that he might speak to the captain, and as the steamer forged up beside them the canoes got full way on, to give a chance for the steamer to pick them up.

"Ahoy, there!" shouted Rivers as soon as the little vessel was within hailing distance.

The captain of the vessel picked up his speaking trumpet.

"Well, what's the trouble, what do you want?" he roared back.

"Going up to Fort Hamlin. Take us on board."

"Can't stop," the captain shouted, "this is a government boat."

"So is this," replied Rivers, a little nettled, "slow up and take us on board."

Now, as it chanced, the skipper was a choleric little man with a very quick temper, which had not been improved on the trip by the presence of a party of tourists, who had been grumbling at everything American all the way up the river. So he was anxious to magnify the importance of his post and not be at the beck and call of every tramp on the river. Irritated, therefore, he shouted back:

"Get to Fort Hamlin the best way you can, I can't spare any time."

By this time Rivers was warming up, and he did not want to be discomfited before his party, so he yelled back in an authoritative voice:

"Do as you're told and stop that vessel! I want to go on board."

"Oh, you do, do you," sneered the skipper, "then you can want," and he rang the telegraph for full speed ahead.

Rivers was ready with a retort, but Bulson, who on occasion could become furiously angry, suddenly blazed, and picking up a rifle that lay on the boat, he fired across the bows of the steamer as she forged up to the leading canoe.

The captain picked up his speaking trumpet again.

"What in Creation do you think you are doing?" he roared, with all his force. "This is a United States mail boat," and he pointed to the mail flag flying at the stern.

Bulson made no reply other than sending another shot across the steamer's bows.

Then if any man was wild it was that captain. That a government ship, flying a government flag, should be fired on in American waters by a party of tramps in two battered canoes! And that those tourists should have seen it! He fairly danced with rage. It was too much for flesh and blood to stand.

He swung the ship round sharply, volleying invectives as he did so, and vowing by all his gods that he would put every member of the party in irons until they reached port, and then would see them in jail for treason. And the more he fulminated, the more the tourists chaffed him, until when the boats sheered alongside, he was purple in the face with temper.

"What do you mean, sir," he began, stuttering in his speech; "what do you mean by firing across our bows, sir? Are you aware that this is treasonable conduct, sir? It is infamous, sir, treasonable and infamous! Thirty years have I worn the uniform of the service, sir, and I have never even heard of such insolent and high-handed conduct.

"Do not answer me, sir," he thundered, as Rivers prepared to answer him, a smile lurking behind the shaggy brown beard. "I will not be answered. Consider yourself under arrest, sir, and you will be handed over to the authorities at Fort Gibbon."

"But I think, Captain," said Rivers, enjoying the amusement visible on the faces of his party, "that you will take us to Fort Hamlin. I presume you are going that far."

"Take you to Fort Hamlin? Are you the commander of this vessel, sir, or am I? Answer me that, sir! And," he continued, with unnoticing inconsistency, "if you do so much as answer me, I shall clap you in irons. In irons, sir, and every man Jack of your party with you."

"Your threat does not disturb me in the least," was the unmoved reply, "because you would not dare to do it."

"Not dare?" exploded the little man, and turning, he was about to give an order, when Rivers stopped him.

"You had better wait," he said, "before you do anything for which you may be sorry. I have told you several times to take us to Fort Hamlin, and you reply with threats of arrest and what not. You cannot arrest any man without some cause, and no cause has been given."

"No cause, sir? You have given cause enough to be strung up at the yardarm, sir, strung up without any resort to the civil authority. Did you not fire across my bows, sir? No cause, indeed! Do you not know, sir, that such an action is a declaration of war, sir, and that in times of peace, it is privateering and piracy, and a dozen other things besides, sir?"

"And who has more right to fire across your bows than I have?" queried Rivers with a fine assumption of authority.

"More right," cried the captain, his voice rising to a perfect shriek, "you have no right, no one has any right—"

"Nevertheless I have," continued Rivers, but before he could explain his mission, the little officer broke in again.

"You have? If you were the Czar of Russia, sir, and every one of the scarecrows with you was a crowned head, sir, you would have no right to stop an American vessel in American waters. On American waters, did I say? On any waters, sir. Wherever that flag flies, sir, she shall not be stopped by any one. And whoever fires on that flag, sir, is an enemy to me and my country, and I should have no hesitation in shooting him down like a dog. Like a dog, sir, the dog that he is!"

"Well, Captain," said Rivers, thinking that the matter had gone far enough. "I am sure you would be sorry if you shot me down like a dog, as you say. I am on government service, just as you are, and am just as loyal to the United States as you can be. My name is Rivers, of the Geological Survey."

"Rivers, the head of the Alaskan work?"

"Yes. The navy department was kind enough to place a gunboat at my disposal for the trip from Seattle to Cook Inlet, and a revenue cutter has been ordered to meet us at Point Barrow in the autumn, so I feel sure the Postal authorities will not complain of your affording us facilities as far as Fort Hamlin."

"And why did you not say so before, sir?"

"You didn't give me a chance," answered Rivers, smiling.

"If I had known who you were, sir, that would have been an entirely different matter. I should have esteemed it a pleasure, sir, to have been able to assist you in any way."

He turned to the passengers, who had been listening to the altercation with great zest.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you see that only the American government itself can dare to delay a United States mail boat. Gentlemen, let me introduce Mr. Rivers, chief of the Geological Survey in Alaska."

CHAPTER XVII
CLAWED BY AN ANGRY BEAR

"The incident is closed, sir," he said, "and I wish you good luck on your trip to the Arctic Ocean. I am only sorry that my duty will not permit me to take you at least part of the way to Dall City, but, sir, I am due in Fort Yukon on the sixth of the month."

An appropriate answering expression of good wishes having been made by Rivers, the little steamer started off and in a few minutes was only visible as a cloud of smoke around a bend in the river. A busy day was spent at Fort Hamlin, making the last preparations for the next lap of the journey, namely to Bettles, at the junction of the John and Koyukuk Rivers, a long and by no means easy trip.

But the days were growing long, indeed the nights were excessively short, and as everything was ready for the trip by a little after three o'clock, Rivers gave the word to start, and a few hours' paddling brought the voyagers to the Dall River, where it plunged its muddy waters into the north fork of the Yukon. There, immediately across from an Indian village, the party made its first camp on the third stage of the journey.

The Dall River was full to overflowing, as the spring floods had not all come down, and, so far as the boy could see, it hardly looked like a river at all, but a large flat marsh, with a sluggish current. Over this the boats made good time, sometimes following a blind channel only marked by the trees sticking up out of the water, and sometimes making a short cut over the submerged land. Several times, in the doing of this, the canoes grounded, but the bottom was of mud and no harm was done, the men jumping into the icy water to pull them clear.

Higher up the stream, however, the ground rose a little and these short cuts no longer became possible, so that the tortuous channel had to be followed, and as the valley of the Dall is extremely wide and the stream winds from side to side, a long day's traveling did not cause so great an advance. Twenty miles of this irregular going was rarely more than ten or twelve miles of progress, and the eighty-five miles between the mouth of the river and Coal Creek consumed an entire week. Here Rivers called a halt, as he desired to examine the lignite or soft coal of the region.

Taking Roger with him, the geologist ascended Coal Creek for a little over a mile above its confluence with the Dall, and there they found a large outcrop of lignite, of which one half the thickness of the seam showed coal of a firm, bright quality.

"I should think," said Roger, "that this ought to be more valuable than a gold mine, for Alaska would be all right to live in during the winter, if coal was cheap and easily obtained."

"It would make an immense difference," his chief rejoined, "for coal will go further to build up the greatness of a country than any other factor. That was largely the cause of England's rise, and the United States would never be what they are to-day if it were not for the anthracite and bituminous beds of Pennsylvania. If we could lay bare a big anthracite field, Doughty, it would be better for Alaska than all the gold that's ever been struck, though the soft coking coals, used in steel-making, etc., also are extremely valuable."

"Perhaps we may," suggested the boy, his eyes alight with the thought of a possible discovery.

"I think not," was the conservative reply. "This is the only coal-bearing horizon, and though it does crop up all over the country it is a soft coal strata. You see anthracite is a coal much older and subjected to much greater pressure, so it does not usually occur in the same strata with soft coal."

Returning to camp in time to complete the remaining five miles assigned for that day's trip, Rivers told the boy that they would spend the night in Dall City. When a couple of hours later the canoes stopped in front of three or four abandoned prospectors' cabins, the boy was correspondingly disappointed.

"Is this Dall City?" he said aloud in disgust.

"Sure, this is Dall City," said Magee. "The Mayor would have come out to present us with the freedom of the city on a silk cushion, but as he couldn't get a quorum of the aldermanic council, he decided to go away and let us take all the freedom we can lay our hands on. On to freedom!" and the jokester jumped out of the canoe to aid in running her up on the bank.

Above Dall City the river becomes absolutely impassable, and there was no thought of trying it, but Rivers knew that there was a long and heavy portage from Dall City, although it was over a well-made and often-used trail. But the pass was immensely steep, the mosquitoes were incomparably bad, Roger's feet were tender, and that two days' portage nearly crumpled him up.

At the end of the first day he felt pretty well exhausted, but he had not shown a sign of letting up throughout the work. He hoped to be toughened up by next morning, but when daylight came his muscles were so sore and tender that he could not bear to touch them with his finger. None the less, he gritted his teeth and settled down to his work, remembering from past athletic experience that in an hour or so he would limber up.

The noon day stop was what nearly finished the boy. The moment he sat down to rest before dinner, he felt as though he could never get up, and even the food seemed unable to revive his flagging energies. When the start was called, however, he caught a glance that Rivers cast first on him and then to Gersup, the topographer. That was the stimulant he needed, his pride was touched, and he leaped to his feet although he felt as though it were the last effort he would ever make.

But he was fortunate in having a considerate crowd, and though all could see that the lad was nearly beaten out, they admired his pluck and grit in saying nothing about it, and would not dishearten him by letting him see that they realized how near he was to giving up. On the trail, however, his pack on his back, and nothing to do but walk, following Bulson, who was immediately in front of him, his will-power showed stronger than his legs and back, and though he felt numb and without the power of thought, he still went on. For the first time he realized how brutalizing exhausting physical labor can be. On and on until a shout from the cook, who had been left at the further end of the portage the night before, told Roger that the carry was over and supper ready. As they reached the spot and Bulson turned to help the boy unstrap his pack, he said briefly:

"Bully good work, Doughty; that was a long, hard carry."

"But I had nothing like your load," answered the boy, remembering that his companion had toted at least forty pounds more in his pack.

"You're not quite so old yet," answered the other, then with a smile, "maybe I'm a little stronger than you are, too."

Supper was very welcome and the boiling hot tea seemed to put new life into the boy, but a proposal made by the topographer for a hunting trip fell on deaf ears.

"If you don't mind, Mr. Gersup," he said, "I think I'd rather not. Now that the portage is over, I don't mind confessing that I'm a little tired, and I think a good night's sleep will seem a whole lot better than any kind of shooting you can think of. I want to be ready for work to-morrow, and any way, I wouldn't walk half a mile to-night to shoot wild elephant."

"You're wise," answered the older man. "I wouldn't have taken you any way, but I wanted to see if you'd have the nerve to say, 'No.' I reckon for your size and age, son, you're about as good an article as I've ever seen on a first trip."

"You've been over this ground before, then?" asked the boy, lying down and resting his head on his elbow.

"Right over this trail. I made a reconnoissance once from Fort Yukon to Kotzebue Sound, and it's because I know the ground so well that we're making such good time now. That portage often takes three days."

"What a wonder Bulson is on the trail," said Roger, trying to stifle a yawn, "he must have had a hundred and thirty pounds in his pack to-day."

"Well, he's as strong as a grizzly," replied the older man, "and he just eats up the trail. You're stronger in a canoe. By the way, there are some rapids on the Kanuti River, down which we start to-morrow, and I suppose you'll have a chance to shine there. But it's nothing like that fearful mess on the Cantwell."

"It's a pretty wild country up here, just the same," suggested the boy, "and, speaking of hunting, there must be lots of big game in these forests."

"Plenty of it. It's not more than ten miles from where we are now that I came across the only man I ever met who had been thoroughly clawed by a bear and yet lived to tell the tale."

"The story!" demanded Roger peremptorily.

"It wasn't so much of a yarn. I got it from the half-breed guide. It was quite early in the season," he began, leaning back against the trunk of a tree, "and we had just made camp, a little further on than we are now, because the water in the Kanuti River was not as high as it is this season, when we heard a shot fired, then after a regular interval another, and another, and so on."

"Meaning a signal of distress?" questioned the boy.

"Right," rejoined the older man. "Well, of course, we responded the same way, and half an hour later there staggered into the camp a wounded man on horseback, and a half-breed holding him in the saddle. The injured man was a sight, and as I know quite a little about surgery, I looked after his wounds, took a few stitches here and there, pretty much all over at that, and started them off on the trail to Fort Hamlin, a couple of days' ride away, and thence to Rampart, a couple of hours down the Yukon.

"But before they left I learned in a vague sort of way how the whole thing had come about. It appeared that the poor fellow had gone up to Caribou Mountain to shoot some big game, and had taken the half-breed along as a guide. The luck had been bad, nothing had been shot, or even sighted, and the two of them had started for home.

"One day, however, the same day that he met us, on turning the corner of a rock, the half-breed being a little distance away, the hunter saw a bear. Not knowing much of the bears in this part of the world, it simply seemed to him like a smaller species, and, dropping on one knee he pumped three shots into the brute and it fell a few steps away. Then, foolishly laying his rifle down and taking out his hunting knife, he walked up to the beast to see what his prize was like.

"Stooping down, he saw that it was but a large well-grown cub, and he stood looking at it for a moment, when a sudden feeling of danger flashed into his mind. A cub—then the old bears must be near by; he turned swiftly to get and reload his rifle. As he turned, he saw, charging upon him from the direction in which his rifle was lying, the mother of the cub. The bear, which was coming like an express train, was not seventy-five yards away, and the rifle was ten.

"Then the fellow did what seemed to me a mighty plucky thing. He knew he could not outstrip the bear, and he was sure that if he were treed that would be the end of it, so instead of running from the bear he tore up the hill to meet her face to face."

"Did he expect to get to the rifle first?" asked Roger, full of interest.

"He thought that when the bear saw him charging for her it would cause her to pause, and a few seconds' delay would enable him to get his rifle and he ran a chance of dropping her in her tracks. It was his only hope. But the brute never stopped in her rush, and when the hunter reached the gun she was only twenty feet away.

"Bringing the rifle to his shoulder with a single motion, he pumped three steel-jacketed bullets into her at point-blank distance, then, throwing his rifle up, he caught it by the barrel, prepared to club the bear over the head with an aim to catch her in the eyes and blind her, so that he could make a get-away."

"That was plucky," said the boy, "to face a mad bear with a clubbed gun."

"Plucky enough, but foolish. He knew nothing of the strength of a bear, and even as he brought down the clubbed rifle with all his force, she rose suddenly upon her hind legs and swept away the descending gun with her paw. I found it later, bent almost double with the force of that blow. The hunter jumped aside, but as the bear rushed past she threw out her other paw with claws outstretched, which, catching him on the neck, laid open his right arm from shoulder to wrist.

"Dazed and incapacitated, he was an easy mark for the bear, who turning, with a growl at the pain of her wounds from the three bullets, seized him in her teeth. Then, apparently suffering acutely herself, she dropped him to give a vicious bite at the blood dripping from her side, where one of the bullets had entered.

"The hunter, who had been thrown several feet when the bear dropped him, was still game. He staggered up with some vague idea of finding and using the rifle, when, with an angry snort, she rushed at him again. But one of the steel-coated messengers of death had found a vital part and her eyes were growing dim, so that though her claws lacerated his thigh, her jaws came together a foot from him, and in her overreaching rush she knocked him down without further injury.

"There, then, crouched bear and man, almost within striking distance of each other, and yet both too weak to get up. Prudence bade the hunter lie still, but seeing that the eyes of the bear were glazing fast, he thought he might make shift to defend himself in the event of a final rush, and he reached out his hand for his hunting knife, which had fallen a few feet away. But the brute was still conscious of danger, and she reared with a roar of pain and thundered down upon the man, who struck with the knife as she fell upon him, the blade striking the snout, the tenderest part of the whole body. She buried her teeth in his shoulder, but relaxed the pressure almost instantly from her own pain and rolled over him leaving him free.

"Once more she lurched heavily to her feet, and the man lying on the ground in a frenzy of pain, closed his eyes, only hoping that the end might come quickly. Once he opened them, and there, not three feet away, stood the bear, apparently blind from the approach of death, rocking and sawing unsteadily on her feet, and then toppled over, dying. Three or four times, even then, she tried to rise, but fell back each time with a low growl, her bloody jaws snapping with fury scarcely a yard from the hunter's face, but the bullets had not failed to do their work, and with a last roar she fell back, dead.

"The hunter declared, but is not sure whether he was conscious or no, that hardly had the she-bear fallen dead, than out from the woods stepped another immense bear, almost twice the size of the female. Quietly he walked to the cub, and smelt it with a growl, next smelt the body of the she-bear with another growl, and with his hair bristling, walked to where the hunter was lying. The man was paralyzed by fear and pain and did not move, whereon the bear, showing no hurry, shambled into the woods again and was gone.

"The whole affair, from the first shooting of the cub to the appearance and disappearance of the parent bear, had not taken five minutes, and when the half-breed, who had heard the shooting and the growls, reached the place, it was all over. The hunter, dazed and scarcely conscious, was lying beside a stone with the dead cub a few feet behind him and the dead mother a few feet in front of him. Apparently the man had not moved since the bear died, and probably was not aware of his escape, but was lying there, awaiting death in a most horrible form, not realizing that his foe had passed beyond revenge."

"But how did he get to you?" asked the boy.

"The half-breed brought him, as I told you. In some unexplained way he lifted him to the saddle, and had the good judgment to let him fall forward on the neck of the horse, thereby closing the wounds in the neck and shoulder, which were the worst of all. But the hunter was terribly lacerated, for the claws of a bear rip right to the bone, sinews, tendons, veins, everything being shorn clean through.

"I doctored up his wounds as well as I could, but he did not regain consciousness all night, and I thought he would never pull through. But just as he had shown plenty of pluck in his fight with the bear, so he also showed a good deal of vitality in his fight with death. Though time was very precious to us, we stayed there three days to give him a chance, and then we sent him down to Rampart."

"I should have thought that the ride would kill him," said the boy.

"There was certainly a chance that it would," replied the topographer. "But he could not have gone down the Kanuti River with us, and he could not stay up there alone with the half-breed. Then I thought there was less danger of some blood poisoning or infection setting in if he was somewhere that he could be watched by a doctor, and the journey was worth the risk."

"Did you ever hear of him afterwards?"

"Oh, yes. He is recovering, though, of course, he will never be the same man again."

"That," mumbled Roger, his voice thick with sleep, "was a close shave," and a moment later his heavy breathing told the topographer that his audience was asleep.

"He's a plucky little customer himself," he commented, as he left the tent.