"What is it, Moise?" whispered Rob, eagerly.
"Moose!" He pointed down the bank. For a long time the boys could discover nothing, but at last they caught sight of a little splash of water four or five hundred yards below, where a trickling stream entered the main river at a low place.
"He"ll stood there an" fight the fly, maybe so," said Moise. "Ha-hum!
Why he"ll don" see us I don" know, me. Why the boat he"ll not scare heem I"ll don" know, me, too. How we"ll get heem I don" know, me. But we"ll try. Come!"
The boys now found that Moise was once more turned hunter, and rather a relentless and thoughtless one at that, for he seemed to pay no attention to the weakness of other members of his company. They scarcely could keep him in sight as he made his way through the heavy cover to an upper bench, where the forest was more open. Here he pointed to the steep slope which still rose above them.
"We must make surround," said he, in a whisper.
Not so bad a general was Moise, for, slight as was his chance to approach so wary an animal as a moose under these conditions, he used the only possible plan by which success might have been attained.
The little trickle of water in which the moose stood at the beach below came down out of a steep _coulee_, which at the point where they stood ran between deep banks, rapidly shallowing farther up the main slope. Fortunately the wind was right for an approach. Moise left John at a rock which showed on an open place pretty well up the hill, and stationed Jesse a little closer to the _coulee_. Moise and Rob scrambled across the steep slopes of the ravine, and hurried on as fast as they could go, to try to get below the moose in case it should attempt to take the water. Thus they had four rifles distributed at points able to cover the course of the moose should it attempt to escape up the bank, and close enough to hear it if it pa.s.sed beneath in the forest growth.
Rob and Moise paused only long enough partly to get their breath before Moise motioned to Rob to remain where he was, while he himself hastened to the right and down toward the beach.
For some time the half-breed hunter remained at the edge of the cover, listening intently. Apparently he heard no sound, and neither he nor Rob could detect any ripple on the water showing that the moose was going to undertake escape by swimming. Thus for a time, for what indeed seemed several minutes, all the hunters continued in their inaction, unable to determine upon a better course than simply to wait to see what might happen.
What did happen was something rather singular and unexpected. Suddenly Rob heard a rifle-shot at the left, and turning, saw the smoke of Jesse"s rifle, followed by a second and then a third report. He saw Jesse then spring to his feet and run up to the slope, shouting excitedly as he went and waving his cap. Evidently the hunt was over in very unexpected fashion. Moise, Rob, and John also ran up as fast as their legs and lungs would allow them.
They saw lying almost at the head of the _coulee_, which here had shallowed up perceptibly, a great, long-legged, dark body, with enormous head, tremendously long nose, and widely palmated antlers--the latter in the velvet, but already of extreme size.
For a time they could hardly talk for fatigue and excitement, but presently each could see how the hunt had happened to terminate in this way. The moose, smelling or hearing Moise when he got on the wind below, at the edge of the cover, had undertaken to make its escape quietly under the cover of the steep _coulee_ down which it had come.
With the silence which this gigantic animal sometimes can compa.s.s, it had sneaked like a rabbit quite past Rob and almost to the head of the _coulee_. A little bit later and it might have gained the summit and have been lost in the poplar forest beyond. Jesse, however, had happened to see it as it emerged, and had opened fire, with the result which now was obvious. His last bullet had struck the moose through the heart as it ran and killed it almost instantly.
"Well, Jess," said Rob, "I take off my hat to you! That moose must have pa.s.sed within a hundred yards of me and I never knew it, and from where you killed him he must have been three hundred yards at least."
"Those boy she"ll be good shot," said Moise, approvingly, slapping Jesse warmly on the shoulder. "Plenty meat now on the boat, _hein_?"
"When I shot him," said Jesse, simply, "he just fell all over the hill."
"I was just going to shoot," said John, "but I couldn"t see very well from where I was, and before I could run into reach Jesse had done the business."
"Well," said Moise, "one thing, she"ll been lucky. We"ll make those deck-hand come an" carry in this meat--me, I"m too proud to carry some more meat, what?"
He laughed now as he began to skin out and quarter the meat in his usual rapid and efficient fashion.
They had finished this part of their work, and were turning down the hill to return to the steamer when they were saluted by the heavy whistle of the boat, which echoed in great volume back and forth between the steep banks of the river, which here lay at the bottom of a trough-like valley, the stream itself several hundred yards in width.
"Don"t hurry," said Moise; "she"ll wait till we come, an" she"ll like plenty moose meat on his boat."
All of which came out as Moise had predicted, for when they told Captain Saunders that they really had a dead moose ready to be brought aboard the latter beamed his satisfaction.
"That"s better than bear meat for me!" said he. "We"ll just lie here while the boys go out and bring in the meat."
"Now," said Rob to his friends, as, hot and dusty, they turned to their rooms to get ready for dinner, "I don"t know what you other fellows think, but it seems to me we"ve killed about all the meat we"ll need for a while. Let"s wait now until we see Uncle d.i.c.k--it won"t be more than a day or so, and we"ve all had a good hunt."
x.x.x
FARTHEST NORTH
As they had been told, our travelers found the banks of their river at this far northern lat.i.tude much lower than they had been for the first hundred miles below the Landing. Now and again they would pa.s.s little scattered settlements of natives, or the cabin of some former trading-station. For the most part, however, the character of the country was that of an untracked wilderness, in spite of the truth, which was that the Hudson Bay Company had known it and traded through it for more than a century past.
By no means the most northerly trading-posts of the great fur-trading company, Fort Vermilion, their present destination, seemed to our young friends almost as though it were at the edge of the world.
Their journey progressed almost as though they were in a dream, and it was difficult for them to recall all of its incidents, or to get clearly before their minds the distance back of them to the homes in far-off Alaska, which they had left so long ago. The interest of travelers in new land, however, still was theirs, and they looked forward eagerly also to meeting the originator of this pleasant journey of theirs--Uncle d.i.c.k Wilc.o.x, who, as they now learned from the officers of the boat, had been summoned to this remote region on business connected with the investigation of oil-fields on the Athabasca River, and had returned as far as Fort Vermilion on his way out to the settlements.
When finally they came within sight of the ancient post of Fort Vermilion, the boys, as had been the case in such other posts as they previously had seen, could scarcely identify the modest whitewashed buildings of logs or boards as really belonging to a post of the old company of Hudson Bay. The scene which they approached really was a quiet and peaceful one. At the rim of the bank stood the white building of the Company"s post, or store, with a well-shingled red roof. Beyond this were some houses of the employes. In the other direction was the residence of the factor, a person of considerable importance in this neighborhood. Yet farther up-stream, along the bank, stood a church with a little bell; whereas, quite beyond the scattered settlement and in the opposite direction there rose a tall, two-story building with projecting smoke-stack. Rob inquired the nature of this last building, which looked familiar to him.
"That is the grist-mill," said Captain Saunders to him. "You see, we raise the finest wheat up here you"ll find in the world."
"I"ve heard of it," said Rob, "but I couldn"t really believe it, although we had good vegetables away back there at Peace River Landing."
"It"s the truth," said Captain Saunders; "yonder is the Company"s wheat-field, a hundred acres of it, and the same sort of wheat that took the first prize at the Centennial, at your own city of Philadelphia, in 1876. I"ll show you old Brother Regnier, the man who raised that wheat, too. He can"t speak any English yet, but he certainly can raise good wheat. And at the experimental farm you shall see nearly every vegetable you ever heard of."
"I don"t understand it," said Rob; "we always thought of this country as being arctic--we never speak of it without thinking of dog-trains and snowshoes."
"The secret is this," said Captain Saunders. "Our summers are short, but our days are very long. Now, wheat requires sunshine, daylight, to make it grow. All right; we give it more hours of sunshine in a month than you do in a month in Dakota or Iowa. The result is that it grows quicker and stronger and better, as we think. It gets ripe before the nights become too cold. This great abundance of sunlight is the reason, also, that we raise such excellent vegetables--as I"m sure you will have reason to understand, for here we always lay in a supply for our return voyage. I am thinking, however," added the captain, presently, as the boat, screaming with her whistle, swung alongside of her landing-place, "that you"ll see some one in this crowd here that you ought to know."
All along the rim of the bank there was rather a gaily-clad line of Indians and half-breeds, men and women, many of whom were waving salutations to members of the boat"s crew. The boys studied this line eagerly, but for some time none of them spoke.
"I see him!" said Jesse at last. "That"s Uncle d.i.c.k sitting up there on the bench."
The others also identified their relative and friend as he sat quietly smoking and waiting for the boat to make her landing. At length he arose and came to the staging--a rather slender, bronzed man, with very brown face and eyes wrinkled at the corners. He wore an engineer"s garb of khaki and stiff-brimmed white hat.
The three boys took off their hats and gave a cheer as they saw him standing there smiling.
"How are you, Uncle d.i.c.k?" they all cried; and so eager were they that they could scarcely wait for the gang-plank to be run out.
Their uncle, Mr. Richard Wilc.o.x, at that time employed in the engineering department of one of the Dominion railways, laughed rather happily as he bunched them in his arms when they came ash.o.r.e. There was little chance for him to say anything for some time, so eager were the boys in their greeting of him.
"Well, you"re all here!" said he at length, breaking away to shake hands with Alex and Moise, who smiled very happily also, now coming up the bank. "How have they done, Alex?"
"Fine!" said the old hunter. "Couldn"t have been better!"
"This was good boys, all right," affirmed Moise. "We"ll save her life plenty tam, but she"s good boy!"
"Did you have any trouble getting across, Alex?" asked Uncle d.i.c.k.
"Plenty, I should say!" said Alex, smiling. "But we came through it.
The boys have acted like sportsmen, and I couldn"t say more."
"I suppose perhaps you got some game then, eh?"
All three now began to speak at once excitedly, and so fast that they could scarcely be understood.