Part 25 (2/2)

”Well, Death Eddy up there, and we come through, but no see 'um! I s'pose maybe high water has change'. I go look ahead.”

He went down the stream for a little way until he could see into the next bend, but came back shaking his head.

”No can make that canon,” said he. ”Water she's too high--bad, very bad in there now. Must line down.”

”What place did you call this, Leo?” inquired Uncle d.i.c.k.

”Call 'um Methodist Canon. Low water she's all right, now she's bad.”

”Out you go, boys,” said Uncle d.i.c.k. ”We've got to line through. How far, Leo?”

”Maybe-so one mile,” rejoined the Indian. ”S'pose low water, we paddle through here all right!”

Uncle d.i.c.k sighed. ”Well, I hate to take the time, but I suppose that's what we'll have to do. You boys go on along the sh.o.r.e the best you can, while we let the boats down.”

The boys struggled up now on the side of the shelving beach, which was nothing but a ma.s.s of heavy rock that had rolled down from the mountainsides. It was a wild scene enough, and the roar of the waters as they crashed through this narrow pa.s.s added to the oppressive quality of it.

After a time the water became so bad even close to sh.o.r.e that it was impossible to let the boat down on the line without danger of swamping it. So each boat was lifted out bodily and carried out along the beach for two or three hundred yards until it was safe to launch it again.

Part of the time the men were in and part of the time out of the water, guiding the boats among the boulders which lay along the edge.

To make a mile at this work took as much time as twenty miles had the day before, and they were glad enough when Moise proposed to boil the kettle. They did this just above the head of Death Rapids, in a very wild and beautiful spot. Just across the river from them they could see a beautiful cascade some two or three hundred feet in height, and they christened this the Lottie Falls, after a sister of Uncle d.i.c.k, which name it has to-day. Now and again the boys would look down the raging stream ahead of them, wondering that any man should ever have tried to run such a rapid.

”Hunderd sixty men drown right here, so they say,” commented Leo. He pointed out to them the most dangerous part of the Death Rapids, where the strong current, running down in a long V, ended at the foot of the rapids in a deep, back-curving roller or ”cellar-door” wave, sure to swamp any boat or to sweep over any raft.

”S'pose raft go through there, round bend,” said Leo, ”it must go down there in that big wave. Then her nose go under wave, and raft she sink, and all mans come off in the water. No can swim. No can hang on raft. Many men drowned there. Plenty Chinaman he'll get drowned there, time my father was young man. Chinaman no can swim, no can paddle, no can ron on land--no good. All he do is drown.”

”Well, one thing is sure,” said Uncle d.i.c.k. ”I'll not try that rapid, even with our boats, to-day. We'll just line on down past here.”

”Plenty glad we didn't stop hunt grizzlum no more,” said Leo. ”She's come up all day long.”

Soon they resumed their slow progress, letting the boats down, foot by foot, along the sh.o.r.e, usually three or four men holding to the one line, and then returning for the other boat after a time. Moise did not like this heavy work at all.

”This boat she's too big,” said he. ”She pull like three, four oxens.

I like small little canoe more better, heem.”

”Well,” said Rob, ”you can't get a boat that looks too big for me in here. Look over there at that water--where would any canoe be out there?”

Thus, with very little actual running, and with the boys on foot all the way, they went on until at length they heard coming up from below them the roar of a rapid which sounded especially threatening.

”Priest Rapids!” said Leo. ”And he's bad this time too.”

”Why do they call this the Priest Rapids, Leo?” inquired Rob.

”I don' know,” said Leo.

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