The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound
by Harold Bindloss · English · Gutenberg #38087 · 574,782 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound
Author: Harold Bindloss
Release date: November 22, 2011 [eBook #38087]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38087
Credits: Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND ***
Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND
[Illustration: "'DESERTED!' JAKE SAID SHORTLY"--Page 282]
THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND
BY HAROLD BINDLOSS
Author of "Alton of Somasco," "Winston of the Prairie," "Lorimer of the
Northwest," "Thurston of Orchard Valley," etc.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1910, By
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
_September, 1910_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FRANK GOES WEST 1
II. THE BUSH 14
III. THE RANCH 28
IV. TARGET PRACTICE 39
V. THE MYSTERIOUS SCHOONER 51
VI. AT THE HELM 62
VII. A WARNING 71
VIII. SALMON SPEARING 82
IX. A PLAIN HINT 93
X. A BREEZE OF WIND 106
XI. MR. BARCLAY JOINS THE PARTY 118
XII. THE STRANGER 127
XIII. THE SCHOONER REAPPEARS 137
XIV. A TEST OF ENDURANCE 148
XV. A MIDNIGHT VISITOR 157
XVI. FRANK KILLS A DEER 166
XVII. MR. WEBSTER'S GUNS 174
XVIII. RUNNING A CARGO 184
XIX. THE CACHE 195
XX. MR. WEBSTER'S SLASHING 206
XXI. A NIGHT ON THE SANDS 216
XXII. THE ULTIMATUM 228
XXIII. MR. OLIVER OUTWITS HIS WATCHERS 237
XXIV. A FAST RUN 249
XXV. THE UNITED STATES MAIL 259
XXVI. MR. BARCLAY LAYS HIS PLANS 268
XXVII. THE DERELICT 277
XXVIII. A GRIM DISCOVERY 285
XXIX. THE RAID 294
XXX. THE RELIEF OF THE RANCH 305
XXXI. FRANK BECOMES A RANCH OWNER 315
THE BOY RANCHERS OF PUGET SOUND
CHAPTER I
FRANK GOES WEST
It was the middle of an afternoon in May. An old side-wheeler was
steaming south toward Puget Sound across the land-locked waters that lie
between Vancouver Island and the state of Washington. A little astern on
one hand Mount Baker lifted its heights of eternal snow. On the other,
and a little ahead, the Olympians rose white and majestic; and between,
vast, dim forests rolled down to the ruffled, blue water. It seemed to
Frank Whitney, sitting on the steamer's upper deck in the lee of her
smokestack, that it was a wild and wonderfully beautiful country he had
reached at last; for since leaving Vancouver, British Columbia, they had
steamed past endless rocks and woods, while island after island faded
into the smoke trail down the seething wake and great white mountains
opened out, changed their shapes, and closed in on one another as the
steamer went by. He had, however, not come there to admire the scenery,
and as he watched the wonderful panorama unroll itself he looked back
upon the troubles that had befallen him since he set out from Boston a
little less than a year ago.
When he left that city he was but sixteen, and was, as he had cause to
realize during the following twelve months, merely an average American
boy, with a certain amount of alertness, self-reliance and common sense;
though he might, perhaps, have had more of these desirable qualities,
had he not been a trifle spoiled by his widowed mother before he went to
Gorton school. He had, quite apart from his lessons, learned a few
useful things there which probably he would never have learned at home,
but he had been suddenly recalled, and his mother had informed him that
it was now impossible for him to enter the profession for which he had
been intended. Frank did not understand all the reasons for this, but he
knew that they were connected with the fall in value of some railroad
stock and the failure of a manufacturing company in which his mother
held shares. She had, as she pointed out, his two younger sisters to
provide for, and he must earn his living at once.
Frank found this much harder than he had expected. The subjects in which
he excelled did not seem to be of the least use to business men, and the
fact that he could play several games moderately well did not seem to
count at all. There were people who were ready to give him a trial, but
they seemed singularly unwilling to pay him enough to live in a way that
he considered fitting; and this somewhat astonished as well as troubled
him. In the end, a relative, who said that a young man with any grit and
snap had better chances in the West, found him a position with a big
milling company in Minneapolis. Frank accepted the position, but soon
found it not much to his liking. The people he met were not like his
Boston friends. They were mostly Germans and Scandinavians, and their
ways were not those to which he had been accustomed. What was worse,
they hustled him in the milling company's offices, and instead of
teaching him the business kept him busy licking stamps, copying letters
and answering telephones, which did not seem to him a fitting occupation
for an intellectual lad.
He bore it, nevertheless, because he had to, until one day there came a
climax, when a clerk who had bullied him all along assigned to him a
particularly disagreeable task which was really outside his duties. In
return, in a fit of very foolish anger, Frank screwed the clerk's new
hat down tight in a copying-press, and it happened that the secretary
came upon the scene during the trouble that followed. The secretary had
an unpleasant temper, and when he walked out of the general office Frank
sat down at his desk boiling with indignation and almost stupefied.
There was, however, not the least doubt that he was fired.
He spent a very dismal evening afterward, for one thing, at least, was
clear--he could not go home to Boston and become a burden on his mother.
But the flour trade was bad in Minneapolis just then, and business in
St. Paul did not seem much better, so eventually he found employment in
the offices of a milling company in Winnipeg. He suffered from the
extreme cold during the winter there. The cold of Massachusetts, as he
discovered, is very different from the iron frost which shuts down on
the Canadian prairie and never slackens its grip for months together.
The clothing he had brought from Boston was not warm enough, and his
small earnings would only provide him with shelter in the cheapest
quarters. Still, he held on until trade grew slack in the early spring
and he was turned adrift again. This time he felt that he had had enough
of business. He had heard and read of men who burrowed for treasure in
the snow-clad ranges, broke wild horses, and cleared the forests, out in
the farthest West. There was a romance in that life surpassing anything
that seemed likely to be got out of the addition of flour invoices or
the licking of stamps, and he wrote a letter to an old friend of his
dead father, who lived on a ranch near Puget Sound. It was some time
before he got an answer telling him rather tersely to come along.
Frank started the day after he received it, and was now, he supposed,
within a short distance of his journey's end. He had never seen his
father's friend, and knew nothing of what he would be required to do at
the ranch, though he fancied that all that was necessary could readily
be learned by an intelligent lad. In this, however, he was wrong.
Suddenly the steamer's whistle hurled a great blast out across the
waters, and, looking around, Frank saw, not far ahead, a long point
strewn with rocks and streaked with wisps of pines. There was, however,
no sign of life on it, and he turned to a deck-hand who strode by.
"Can that be Bannington's?" he asked.
"Yes," the man informed him. "I guess that's just what it is."
"But there's nobody about," objected Frank.
The deck-hand grinned.
"Did you expect it was like Seattle or Port Townsend? There's a store to
the place, and they've got a post-office back among the rocks. We lay
off and whistle, and if there's no sign of a shore boat she goes on
again."
He went forward with a jump as a man came out of the pilot house with a
pair of glasses in his hand.
"Run up slow," he ordered. "There's nothing coming yet."
The big side-wheels beat more slowly and the whistle called again, but
there was still only the ruffled blue water with white flecks on it and
the rapidly rising pines. Frank watched them anxiously, for he had only
about two dollars in his pocket, and it seemed quite possible that he
might be carried on to Seattle, in which case he had not the faintest
notion as to how he was to get back. It was quite certain that he could
not pay any more steamboat fares.
A minute or two later the man with the glasses raised his hand as a sail
crept out around the point, and the big wheels stopped. The strip of
canvas grew into a gaff mainsail and a jib; the hull beneath it emerged
at intervals from the little tumbling seas; and it became apparent to
Frank for the first time that it was blowing rather hard. The sail
seemed to be dripping and he could see the spray flying about the
shapeless figure at the helm. Then the steamboat officer motioned to
him.
"Are you getting off here?" he asked.
Frank answered rather dubiously that this was his intention.
"Then you'd better get down on to the wheel-case bracings with your
grip. I don't know how they're going to take you off, but I guess
they'll shoot her up head to wind and you'll have to jump."
Frank got out on the guard-framing on the after side of the wheel and
watched the boat drive by, swung up on a little sea some distance away.
Half of her hull seemed to be under water, though the fore part of it
was hove up streaming into the air. She rolled wildly with her big
mainsail squared right out and the jib, which hung slack, dripping
water. Then she came round and headed for the steamer, lying down all
slanted to one side, while the water sluiced along her lee deck, and
Frank made out a boy crouching under the sail with a rope in his hand.
It seemed to him that the boat must inevitably ram the steamer and smash
in her bows. Then a hail reached him.
"Hello, pilot house! Shove her astern soon as we're clear of you!"
Somebody shouted an answer, and the steamer swung out, lifting a row of
wet plates out of the water and burying them again with a gurgling
splash. A glance around showed Frank a deck-hand standing behind him
with a long, spiked pole and a crowd of passengers leaning over the
rails of the deck above. How he was to get into the boat he did not
know, for the thing was beginning to look difficult. Then there was
another shout from the figure at her helm:
"That you, Whitney?"
Frank waved his hand in answer, hastily grabbing up the small bag which
contained his few possessions. The wheel-casing sank again into a ridge
of frothing brine which swirled about his feet, and he felt that it
would be a good deal wiser to climb back to the deck above and go on to
Seattle. This, however, was out of the question, even if there had not
been so many passengers looking on, and it was comforting to remember
that he could swim a little. The next moment the deck-hand touched his
arm.
"I'll sling your grip aboard her as she shoots," he said. "Then jump,
and stick to anything you get your hands on."
The boat was now only seven or eight yards away, nearer the steamer's
stern, but as Frank gazed at her she suddenly swayed upright with a
frantic thrashing of canvas, and shot forward head to wind beneath the
vessel's side. The next moment his bag went hurtling through the air,
and he heard the deck-hand shout something in his ear. Then he set his
lips and jumped.
He struck something hard with his knees, and was conscious of a sudden
chill as the brine washed over one leg, but he had his hands clenched
tight on a strip of wet wood, and somebody seized him by the shoulder.
Making a determined effort he dragged himself up on the narrow side
deck, and fell in a heap into the bottom of the boat. When he scrambled
to his feet again the big side-wheel was splashing amidst a welter of
churned-up foam as the steamer pushed away from them, and, in the boat,
the boy he had already noticed was tugging desperately at a rope.
"Get hold and heave!" he cried.
Frank did as the boy directed. Then the helmsman waved his hand.
"Not too flat! Belay at that! Get down here aft, both of you!"
Frank staggered aft a pace or two, and sitting down breathless and
dripping gazed about him. The boat looked a good deal bigger than she
had appeared from the steamer, and, as a matter of fact, she was a
half-decked sloop of about twenty-four feet in length. Just then she was
slanted well down on one side, with the water foaming along her
depressed deck and showers of spray beating into her over her weather
bow, while the jib above her bowsprit every now and then plunged into
the short, white-topped seas. There seemed to be some water inside her,
for it washed up above the floorings at every heave. In a few moments
Frank had recovered his breath sufficiently to look around at his
companions. One was a boy of about his own age who smiled at him. He had
a bronzed skin and a kindly expression, and looked lean and wiry.
"You're Frank Whitney?" asked the boy.
Frank acknowledged that this was his name, and the other proceeded to
introduce himself and his companion.
"I'm Harry Oliver, and, as you're going to stay with us, we've got to
hit it off together."
Then he turned and indicated the ruddy-faced, red-haired man who held
the helm.
"This is Jake, one of the smartest choppers and trailers on the Pacific
Slope. There aren't many of the boys who could have picked you off that
steamboat in a breeze of wind as he did."
"Oh, pshaw!" said the helmsman with a grin.
Neither of them had said anything striking in the way of welcome, but
Frank felt quickly at ease with them. As a rule, the new acquaintances
he had made in business farther east seemed to expect him to recognize
their superiority, or, at least, to understand that it was a privilege
to be admitted into their society. His present companions, however,
somehow made it plain that as long as he was willing to be commonly
civil there was no reason why they should not get on well together, for
which he was thankful, though he felt that any attempt to put on airs
with them would probably lead to trouble.
"How far is it to your father's ranch?" he asked presently.
"Twelve miles," responded Harry. "With a head wind like this one, it
means from eighteen to twenty-four miles' sailing. It depends, for one
thing, on Jake's steering."
"Thirty, sure," broke in the helmsman, "if you had the tiller."
"How's that?" asked Frank.
"Know anything about sailing?"
Frank confessed his ignorance, and Jake nodded to Harry.
"Show him," he said. "He has got to learn and you can teach the fellow
who'll allow he doesn't know anything. The kind we've no use for is the
one that knows too much."
Harry laid a wet finger on the hove-up weather deck.
"Now," he began, "a boat or a ship under sail can go straight to the
place she's bound for as long as she has the wind anywhere from right
behind her to a little forward on her side. In fact, as she'll lie up
within a few points of the wind, there's only a small segment of the
circle you can't sail her straight into."
He traced a circle on the deck and then placed his finger over about a
quarter of the circumference of it.
"She won't go there."
"But supposing you want to?"
"Then, if the wind's ahead, you have to beat." He drew two lines across
the circle at right angles to each other and laid his finger at the end
of one. "Say we're here at north and the cove we're going to lies about
south. Well, you get your sheets in flat--same as we have them now--and
you sail up this way, at this angle to the wind." He ran a slanting line
across the circle until it touched the rim. "That brings you here; then
you come round, and go off at the same angle on the opposite tack, which
brings you right up to the cove. You can do it in two long tacks,
or--and it's the same thing--in a lot of little ones, each at the same
angle to the wind; but how many degrees there are in that angle and when
you get there depends on how your sails are cut and how smart you are at
steering her."
Frank understood the gist of it, but there were one or two difficulties,
and he was not ashamed to ask a question:
"What makes her go slantways against the wind? Why doesn't it blow her
back, or sideways?"
"It does," Jake broke in dryly, "if you don't sail her right, or it
blows hard enough."
"What makes a kite go up slantways against, or on, the wind, which is
the same thing in sailing?" continued Harry. "Because with the wind and
the string both pulling her, that's the line of least resistance." He
paused, and added deprecatingly, "I was at school at Tacoma and as I'd a
notion I might take up surveying, they pounded some facts into me that
made this kind of thing easier to get hold of. A boat goes ahead on the
wind because, considering the shape of her, it's the easiest way; and
this is what stops her going off sideways to lee." He kicked a high
narrow box which ran along the middle of the boat. "It holds the
centerboard--a big plate that's down deep in the water now. Before the
wind could shove her off sideways--and it does a little--it would have
to press that flat plate sideways through the water."
Frank made a sign of comprehension.
"That's about the size of it," said Jake. "Now I guess it would be more
useful if you got some of the water out of her."
Harry, who explained that there was something wrong with the pump,
pulled up one of the flooring boards and invited Frank to dip a bucket
into the cavity and hand it up to him when it was full. Frank endeavored
to do so, but found it difficult, for the water which surged to and fro
as the sloop plunged left the bottom of the hole almost dry one moment
and the next came splashing back so rapidly that before he could get a
fair scoop with the bucket it had generally gone again. Besides, the
motion every now and then flung him off his knees; but he toiled on with
his head down for nearly half an hour, when a horrible nausea mastered
him and he staggered to the foam-swept lee coaming. For the next ten
minutes he felt desperately unhappy, and when he turned around again
there was a grin on the faces of his companions.
"She'll do," said Harry. "You want to look to weather and get the wind
on your face. That's the best way to keep a hold on your dinner."
Frank suddenly remembered that he had had no dinner. He had had only a
dollar or two left in his possession, and after considering the
steamboat tariff he had decided to dispense with the meal. In spite of
this fact and the unpleasant sensations he felt, he was conscious of a
certain satisfaction with his new surroundings. The seasickness would
pass, and grappling with the winds of heaven and the charging seas
seemed a finer thing than adding up the price of flour or sticking
stamps on letters. Here man's skill, nerve and quickness were pitted
against the variable elements, and Frank had a suspicion--which, as it
happened, was quite justified--that if Jake made a blunder the next
white-topped comber would come foaming across the bows of the craft. It
was only his cool judgment and ready hand on the tiller that swung her
safely over them.
Raising himself a little he glanced ahead. The steamer and her smoke
trail had vanished some time ago, and the white Olympians had faded,
too. Evening was drawing on. The sky was now a dismal, dingy gray, and
the leaden-blue water was streaked with flecks and curls of foam. It
seemed to him that the sea was steadily getting higher, and there was
not the least doubt that the sloop was slanting more sharply and
throwing the spray all over her.
"It looks bad up yonder, doesn't it?" he queried in anxious tones.
"I allow we might have more wind by and by," Jake answered laconically.
"Seems to me she has about all the sail she can stand up to on her now."
He had scarcely finished speaking when a comber curled over at its top
rose up close ahead, and the boat went into it to the mast. Part of it
poured over the forward head ledge into the open well, and the rest
sluiced foaming down the slanted deck to lee, through which she lurched
clear, with the water splashing and gurgling inside her.
"We'll heave another reef down right away," said Jake. "Get forward,
Harry, and claw that headsail off her."
The boy seized a wet sail that lay in the well, and as he crawled
forward with it the sloop rose almost upright, with her mainsail banging
and thrashing furiously. When he loosed a rope the jib ran partly down
its stay, and then jammed, filling out and emptying with sudden shocks
that shook the stout spar beneath it and the reeling mast. Harry,
however, crawled out on the bowsprit with his feet braced against a
wire--a lean, dripping figure that dipped in the tumbling seas--and
Frank, seeing that he was struggling vainly with the sail, scrambled
forward to help him, sick as he was. Water flowed about his knees on the
plunging deck, flying ropes whipped him, and the spray was hurled into
his face, but he could think of no reason why the Western boy should do
more than he could. He crouched down, hauling savagely on a rope at
which Harry pointed, and by and by the sail fell upon both of them. They
dragged it in, made it fast, and set a smaller one in place of it,
after which they floundered aft to where Jake was struggling with the
mainsail.
He had hauled down what Frank afterward learned was the leach of it, and
was now standing with his toes on the coaming and his chest upon the
boom, pulling down the hard, drenched canvas and tying the little bits
of rope that hung in a row from it around the boom.
"Hustle!" he shouted. "Get those reef-points in!"
Frank took his place with his companion, and tried not to look at the
frothing water close beneath him as he leaned out on the jerking boom.
For the most part, the big spar lay fairly quiet, but now and then the
canvas above it shook itself with a bang. It cost him a strenuous effort
to drag each handful of it down in turn, and he discovered afterward
that he had broken two of his nails. He lost his breath, the
perspiration started from every pore in his skin, and he was sick and
dizzy, but he managed to hold on. At last it was finished, and soon
afterward Jake, driving the sloop on her course again, turned to Harry.
"She'll make nothing of it against this breeze," he said. "We'll up-helm
and look for shelter under Tourmalin."
Harry, bracing himself against the strain, let a rope run through the
clattering blocks, the bow swung around, and the motion became a little
easier.
"We'll be snug beneath the pines in an hour," said Jake, nodding
reassuringly.
Frank found the time quite long enough. He was wet and dizzy, and the
way the big frothing ridges came tumbling up out of the growing darkness
was rather terrifying. They heaved themselves up above the boat, and
every time that one foamed about her she slanted alarmingly over to
leeward. At last, when it had grown quite dark, a shadowy blur that grew
into a wisp of tall pines rose up ahead, and a minute or two later
there was an almost bewildering change from the rolling and plunging as
the sloop ran into smooth water. Her sails dropped, the anchor chain
rattled out, and by and by they were all sitting in the little cabin,
which was scarcely three feet high, and Jake was cramming bark and
kerosene rags into the stove.
Half an hour later Frank forced himself to eat a little canned beef and
drink some coffee, and then Harry told him he could lie down on what
seemed to be a moderately dry sail. He had scarcely done so when he fell
asleep. Jake, who had been watching him, turned the lantern so that the
light fell on his face.
"He was mighty sick," he observed, a kindly smile lighting up his rugged
features, "but he stayed with it through the reefin'. Your father should
make something of him. I guess he'll do."
CHAPTER II
THE BUSH
Frank awoke a little before daylight, feeling considerably better. The
nausea and dizziness had gone, and the sloop seemed to be lying almost
still, which was a relief to him. Then he noticed by the light of a lamp
that his companions' places were empty, and presently he heard them
talking in the well. Crawling out through the narrow doorway, he stood
up shivering in the coldness of the dawn.
There were dim black trees and shadowy rocks close in front of him, with
a white wash about the latter, for a smooth swell worked in around a
point from open water. He could hear the rumble of the surf upon the
reefs, and though he could scarcely feel a breath of wind upon his face
the wailing of the black pines suggested that it was blowing still. He
could smell the clean resinous scent of them and it seemed to him that
they were singing wild, barbaric songs. Afterward, when he knew them
better, he learned that the pines and their kin, the cedars and balsams
and redwoods, are never silent altogether. Even when their fragrance
steals out heavy and sweet as honey under the fierce sunshine of a
windless day, one can hear faint elfin whisperings high up among their
somber spires. Then he saw that Jake was standing on the side deck,
apparently gazing at the white surf about the end of the point.
"No," he mused, "she wouldn't face it. The breeze hasn't fallen any, and
the sea'll be steeper. Guess you'd better leave me here, and take the
Indian trail."
Harry agreed with this.
"We'll get off as soon as we've had breakfast; and, as I did the cooking
yesterday, it's your turn this morning. There's still a little fire in
the stove."
Jake disappeared into the cabin, and presently came out again and was
filling his pipe when Harry sprang up suddenly on the deck.
"Hello!" he cried. "There's a schooner yonder!"
It was growing a little clearer and Frank, turning around, saw a tall
black spire of canvas cutting against the sky. He made out a frothy
whiteness beneath it where the swell broke on the vessel's bows, and the
sight of her singularly stirred his imagination. She had appeared so
suddenly, probably from behind the point, and she looked ghostly in the
uncertain light. She ran in under her headsails and boom-foresail with
her mainmast bare, rising higher and growing clearer all the while. By
and by there was a splash, and a voice broke through the wailing of the
trees.
"Three fathom," it said. "You can luff her in a little."
Harry seemed about to hail her, but Jake gripped his arm, and they all
stood silent while the schooner crept up abreast of them. The little
sloop, lying with the shadowy land close behind her, had evidently not
been seen. Then the vessel commenced to fade again, and in a few minutes
she had vanished altogether.
"It looks as if there might have been some truth in old Sandberg's
tale," Harry remarked thoughtfully. "It's kind of curious that halibut
fisherman from Bannington's said he saw her too."
"He said she'd a white stripe round her. Sandberg allowed it was green,"
objected Jake.
"That wouldn't prove anything. They could soon paint the stripe another
color."
"What would they want to do it for?"
"What does a schooner want running in here? There's no freight to be
picked up nearer than Port Townsend."
"That," said Jake dryly, "is just what I don't know. What's more, I
don't want to. She might have run in for bark for cooking, or maybe for
water."
Harry laughed. "If she has come down from Seattle they'd get plenty
cordwood or, if they wanted it, stove coal there, and I guess a skipper
wouldn't waste a fair wind like this one to save two or three dollars.
The thing's mighty curious. That vessel's been seen twice, anyway, and
nobody seems to know where she comes from or where she goes."
"Well," Jake observed stolidly, "she doesn't belong to you or me, and if
you want your breakfast it should be ready."
They crawled into the cabin, and when they had made a meal Jake sculled
the sloop in near enough to the steep beach for them to jump. Then he
flung a small packet after them.
"It's the most I can spare you, as I mayn't get a slant round the reefs
until to-morrow," he said. "Anyway, it will do you two meals, and you
ought to fetch the ranch by sundown. You want to head right up the
valley until you strike a big log that lies across the river. When you
get over, cross the neck of the ridge where it's lowest. You'll see the
clearing from the top of it."
Harry said this was plain enough and moved away across the shingle,
Frank following him cautiously when they reached the fringe of driftwood
which divided beach from bush. Whitened logs and barked branches were
scattered about in tangled confusion where the water had left them, and
it was with difficulty that the lads scrambled over the barrier. Then
Frank stopped breathless, with one leg wet to the knee and a rent in his
trousers.
"It's pretty rough going, if this is an average sample," he panted.
"You'll find it a good deal worse before we reach the ranch," Harry
answered with a laugh.
He strode forward, and Frank looked around with wonder when they plunged
into the bush, for he had never seen a wood of that kind except in
pictures of the giant Californian Sequoia. There are, of course, pines
in the eastern states, but they seemed pigmies by comparison with these
tremendous conifers which were already tall and stately when Columbus
sailed from Spain. They ran up far above the boy in huge cylindrical
columns before they flung out their first great branches, which met and
crossed like the ribs of high-vaulted arches, holding up a roof of dusky
greenery. Beneath, there was a dim shadow, and a tangle of such
luxuriant vegetation as is seen, excepting in the tropics, probably only
upon the warm, damp Pacific Slope.
There was another difference which struck Frank. The eastern woods that
he had seen were clear of wreckage, for lumber and fuel are valuable
there, and the ax had kept them clean, but this forest was strewn with
huge logs and branches, some of which evidently had fallen years ago.
Thickets of all kinds had sprung up between, and these were filled with
tufts of unrolling fern which Harry told him would grow six or eight
feet high. Through the midst of it all there twisted a narrow path which
Frank remembered Jake had mentioned as the Indian trail.
"Have you Indians here?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," said Harry, "we have a few Siwashes, though there are more of
them up in Canada. They seem fond of Indians there."
"Are they quiet?"
Harry chuckled. "You don't want to get them mixed with the redskins of
the plains, though I suppose where they're not wiped out they're pretty
quiet too. These fellows are a different breed. Most of them are
sailors and fishermen, and they dress much the same as you and I do.
They come up these rivers now and then after the salmon, and they made
this trail. You can tell that by the looks of it."
"How?"
"It goes in and out, and where there's an obstacle it winds around.
That's the difference between a white man's and an Indian's nature. The
Siwash strikes a big fir log, and he walks around it, if he has to keep
on doing it for months. It doesn't seem to worry him that he's wasting a
minute or two every time. Then the white man comes along and gets to
work with his ax. He goes right straight through. It's born in him."
Frank had made a sign of understanding. He knew something of the history
of the old great nations as well as that of his own country, and he
remembered another dominant race that ages ago blazed its trails from
Rome across all Europe and far into Asia. It was characteristic of those
men that, turning aside for no obstacle, they went straight, and long
after their power had perished their roads remained, running, as the
crow flies, through morasses and over mountains and rivers. His own
people had done much the same, whittling west with the axes through the
eastern woods, and then pushing on with their wagons across the lonely
plains, until they drove the steel track through the snow-clad Rockies
and over the Sierras. They died in shoals on the journey, but it was the
march of a nation, and always more came on, the lumberman after the
trapper, the track-grader on the cowboy's heels, with ranches and farms
and factories growing up along the line. Now they had reached the
Pacific, and Frank wondered vaguely whether that would be the limit, or
where they were going then. It was, however, a question that seemed too
big for him.
"This country's rough on one's clothes," he said ruefully, looking down
at a second tear in his trousers.
Harry laughed. He was dressed in old duck overalls, long boots, and a
battered gray hat.
"That's a fact. What you want to wear is leather. There were two sports
from back East came out to hunt last fall, and they had their things
made of some patent cloth warranted to turn water and resist any thorns.
Jake went along to cook for them." He paused with a chuckle and added,
"They were wearing their blankets because they hadn't any clothes left
when he brought them back."
They went on for an hour or so until they came out upon the bank of a
frothing river which roared among the rocks in a shallow canon. There
was no way of reaching the water, had they desired it, and, as Harry had
predicted, the trail they followed grew rapidly worse. In places it
wound perilously along narrow ledges beneath a dripping wall of rock, in
others it led over banks of stones which had slipped down from the
heights above. The boys made very slow progress until noon, when they
stopped for a meal from the package Jake had thrown them. While they ate
it Frank looked down again at his boots, which were already badly
ripped.
"They were new just before I left Winnipeg," he said. "In some ways the
people in Europe are ahead of us. There are one or two countries where
they make their shoes of wood."
Harry was too busy to make an answer, and when he had finished eating he
carefully tied up the packet, which was now considerably smaller, before
he turned to his companion.
"We'd better be hitting the trail," he said. "Unless we can make the
ranch by sundown, we'll get mighty little supper."
They pushed on for a couple of hours, still floundering and stumbling
among the rocks. Harry stopped for a moment where the bush was thinner
and pointed to a big gap in a ridge of hillside three or four miles
away.
"That's the neck," he said. "The log we cross the river on is somewhere
abreast of it. We surely can't have passed the thing."
They went on a little farther, but there was no sign of the log.
Presently Harry stopped again with an exclamation, catching a glimpse of
a great branchless fir which rose out of a welter of foam in the bottom
of the canon.
"There she is," he exclaimed, "jammed in where we certainly can't get
down to her. It will be difficult to go straight this time, but we'll
have to try."
Frank drew a pace or two nearer the edge of the canon, and felt a creepy
shiver run through him as he looked down. The rock he stood upon arched
out a little over the shadowy hollow, through the bottom of which the
wild waters seethed and clamored. He supposed that he stood at least
sixty feet above them. The rock on the opposite side also projected, so
that the rift was wider at the bottom than at the top. In one place,
however, the crest of it had broken away and plunged into the gulf,
leaving a short slope down which stones and soil had slid. Its lower
edge lay about twelve feet beneath him, though the distance would have
been rather less if it could have been measured horizontally.
"How are we to get across?" he asked hesitatingly.
"Jump," said Harry curtly. "Can't you do it?"
"No," Frank answered with some reluctance.
"Scared?" asked Harry, looking at him curiously.
"I am, but it's not that altogether."
"You didn't seem to want sand when you jumped into the boat."
Frank stood silent a moment or two with a flush on his face. Had he been
forced to make the choice a year earlier, he probably would have jumped
and chanced it from shame of appearing afraid or of owning his
inferiority to another, but he had learned a little sense since then.
"It was different then," he explained. "I was scared--badly scared--but
I felt I could do the thing if I forced myself to it. Now I'm almost
certain that I can't."
"Yes," owned Harry, thoughtfully, "that's quite right. One hasn't much
use for the fellow whose great idea is to keep himself from getting
hurt, but when a thing's too big for you it's best to own it." He
dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "The question is how
we're going to get across, and my notion is that we'd better head right
up into the bush. The river will be getting smaller, and it forks
somewhere. Each branch will probably be only half the size, and I guess
the canon can't go on very far."
It occurred to Frank that considering the nature of the country it would
be singularly inconvenient if the canon went on for another league or
two, particularly as they had only a handful of provisions left, but he
followed his companion, and they stumbled and floundered forward all the
afternoon. There was now no trail to follow, and where they were not
forced to scramble over slippery rock, fallen trees and thorny brakes
barred their way. Still, there was nothing to indicate that the canon
was dying out, and where they could have reached the water it either
foamed furiously between rocky ledges or spun round in horrible black
eddies on the verge of a wild, yeasty turmoil. They looked at these
spots and abandoned any thought of swimming.
Evening came at length, and they sat down beneath a big cedar where the
roar of the river rang about them in deep pulsations. A chilly wind was
wailing in the tops of the pines, and trails of white mist commenced to
drift in and out among their trunks, which showed through it
spectrally. Harry gazed about him with a rueful grin on his face.
"If I'd an ax, one or two matches, and a couple of blankets, I'd make
you quite snug. Then with a few groceries, a kettle, and a spider, we'd
have all any one could reasonably want."
"You haven't got them," Frank commented. "Wouldn't it save time if you
wished for a furnished house?"
"I'd 'most as soon have an ax. Then I could make a shelter that would,
anyway, keep us comfortable enough, and when I'd cut you a good layer of
spruce twigs you wouldn't want a better bed. If I'd a rifle I might get
a blue grouse for supper. Still"--and he laughed--"as you say, we
haven't got them, and we couldn't do any cooking without matches.
Curious, isn't it, what a lot of things you want, and that in most cases
you have to get another fellow to make them?"
Frank agreed with this, but he had never realized the truth of it as he
did just then. It was clear that the man who made all he wanted must
live as the Indians or grosser savages did, and that it was only the
division of employments that provided one with the comforts of
civilization. Every man, it seemed, lived by the toil of another, for
while on the Pacific Slope they turned the forests into dressed lumber
and raised fruit and wheat, the clothes they wore, and their saws and
plows and axes, came from the East. One could clear a ranch on Puget
Sound only because a host of other men puddled liquid iron or pounded
white-hot steel in the forges of, for instance, Pennsylvania. Frank
would very much have liked to provide his companion with the fruit of
somebody else's labor in the shape of a few matches, which would have
made a cheerful fire possible.
In the meanwhile Harry had opened the packet and divided its contents
equally.
"There's not enough to keep any over," he observed. "We have got to make
the ranch to-morrow."
They ate the little that was left them, and then set to work to search
for a young spruce from which they might obtain a few branches, but they
failed to find one small enough even to climb. Coming back they lay down
among the cedar sprays, which seemed rather wet, and it was some time
before Frank could go to sleep. He was still hungry, and the roar of the
river and the strangeness of his surroundings had a peculiar effect on
him. The mist, which was getting thicker, rested clammily on his face,
and crawled in denser wreaths among the black trunks which stood out
here and there from the encircling gloom. Drops of moisture began to
fall upon him from the branches, and once or twice he cautiously moved
an elbow until it touched his companion. It was consoling to feel that
he was not alone.
At length, however, he fell asleep, and awaking in the gray light of
dawn staggered to his feet when Harry called him, feeling very
miserable. He was chilled to the bone. His shoulders ached, his knees
ached, and one hip-joint ached worse than all, while his energy and
courage seemed to have melted out of him. As a matter of fact, nobody
unused to it feels very animated on getting up before sunrise from a bed
on the damp ground.
"As we have to reach home to-night, we may as well get a move on,"
announced Harry. "It's about four o'clock now, and it won't be dark
until after eight."
The prospect of a sixteen hours' march with nothing to eat all the while
did not appeal to Frank. It was the first time in his life that he had
felt downright hungry, and this fast had made him the more sensitive to
an unpleasant pain in his left side.
"If you're not sure about the way, wouldn't it be better if we went
back to Jake?" he suggested. "It seems a pity we didn't think of it
earlier."
"I did," Harry answered smilingly. "The trouble is that Jake would clear
out the minute the wind dropped a little or shifted enough to let him
get round the head. Besides, he'd have mighty little to eat if he were
still lying behind the point when we got there. When your letter reached
us we'd hardly time to run down to Bannington's to meet the steamer, so
I just grabbed what I could find, and we sailed in a few minutes."
Frank said nothing further, and they pushed on doggedly into the shadowy
bush. It was wrapped in a thick white mist, and every brake they smashed
through dripped with moisture. Except for the clamor of the river,
everything was wonderfully still--so still, indeed, that the heavy
silence was beginning to pall upon Frank, who suddenly turned to his
companion.
"Isn't there anything alive besides ourselves in this bush?" he asked.
"That," replied Harry, "is more than I can tell you. We have bears, and
a few timber wolves, besides two kinds of deer and several kinds of
grouse, and some of them are quite often about, but there are belts of
bush where for some reason you can't find one."
They went on again, following up the river for an hour or two. In the
meanwhile the mist melted, and Frank could see the endless ranks of
mighty trees stretch away before him until they merged into a blurred
columnar mass. At last the canon, which was growing shallower, forked
off into two branches, and they followed one branch until a broken rocky
slope led them down to the water. It was a dull greenish color and
foamed furiously past them among great stones. There was no means of
ascertaining how deep it was and the boys looked at each other dubiously
for a moment or two. Then Harry made a little gesture.
"We have to get across," he said.
Frank, without waiting for his resolution to fail him, plunged in on the
instant, and a couple of steps took him well above his knees. The water
seemed icy cold. As a matter of fact, it was mostly melted snow, and the
drainage from the glaciers had given it the curious green color. The
gravel commenced to slide away beneath Frank's feet, and by the time the
foam was swirling round his waist he was gasping and struggling
savagely. There was a big, eddying pool not far away and, though he
could swim a little, he had no desire to be swept into it. A moment or
two later he was driven against a rock with a violence that shook all
the breath out of him. He clung to it desperately until Harry came
floundering by and held out his hand. They made a yard or two together
and then Harry slipped suddenly, jerking Frank off his feet as he rolled
over in the flood. Frank went down overhead and as he felt himself being
swept along toward the eddy he exerted all his energy in a struggle to
regain his footing. He clutched at a rock, but the swirling waters only
carried him past. Half dazed and breathless he was flung against another
rock. This time, with a great effort, he managed to hold on, and when he
stood up, gasping, he found that the water now reached only to his
knees. In another minute he and Harry were safe on dry land.
Half an hour later they crossed the other creek, and soon afterward
Frank sat down limply in the warm sunlight, which at last came filtering
between the thinner trees.
"I must have a rest," he gasped.
"There's just this trouble," Harry pointed out. "If you rest any time
you won't want to get up again."
"If I go on now I'll drop in another few hundred yards," declared Frank.
It was probably no more than the truth. He had been clever at athletics
and open air games, but, as it happened, he had been able to learn them
easily. Besides, he had been indulged by his mother and had been rather
a favorite at school, and as one result of it he fell short of the
hardihood usually acquired by the boy who has everything against him.
After all, an hour's exercise in a gymnasium or an hour and a half spent
over a game amidst applause and excitement is a very different thing
from the strain of unrelaxing effort that must be made all day when
there is nobody to cheer. He did not want to rest, but his worn-out body
rebelled and mastered him.
"Aren't--you--played out?" he stammered weakly.
"Oh, yes," replied Harry with a grin. "Still, in this country you're
quite often dead played out and have to go on again."
"But if you can't?"
"Then," said Harry dryly, "you have to keep on trying until you're able
to."
It struck Frank that this might be painful and his heart sank. After a
while he tried another question:
"Don't people get lost in the bush every now and then?"
"Why, yes," was the answer. "There was a man strayed off from a picnic
just outside one of the cities not long ago and they didn't find him
until a month or two afterward. He was lying dead not a mile from a
graded road."
Frank shivered inwardly at this.
"Still, I suppose you generally have something to guide you--the moss on
the north side of the trees? I've heard that people who don't know about
it walk around in rings."
"I must have gone pretty straight the only time I was lost," laughed
Harry; "and it's mighty hard to find moss in some parts of the bush. In
others it's all around the trees. I'd rather have a big peak as a guide.
You have heard about people walking round, but I wonder whether you have
heard that when they're badly scared they'll walk right across a trail
without seeing it?"
"Is that a fact?" Frank asked in astonishment.
"Sure!" said Harry. "A lost man will sometimes walk across a logging
road without the slightest idea that he's doing it. Anyway, I know where
the homestead lies. It's only a question of holding out until we reach
it."
Frank was sincerely pleased to hear this, and by and by he rose with an
effort and they went on again.
CHAPTER III
THE RANCH
Dusk was not far away when the boys, stumbling down a low hillside, came
into sight of an oblong clearing in the forest with a wooden house
standing on one side of it. That was all Frank noticed, for he found it
difficult to keep himself on his feet, and his sight seemed hazy.
Indeed, he fell down once or twice in the steeper places, and had some
trouble in getting up; and after that he had only a confused
recollection of crossing an open space and entering a dwelling. A man
shook hands with him, and a woman in a print dress made him sit down in
a low chair before she set out a bountiful meal. Soon after he had eaten
a considerable share of it Harry led him into a very little room where a
bed like a shelf with a side to it was fixed against one wall. Five
minutes later he was blissfully unconscious of his recent painful
experience.
The sun was streaming in through the window when he awoke, feeling
wonderfully refreshed, and, dressing himself in some overalls which had
been laid across the foot of his bed, he walked out into the larger
general room. It had uncovered walls of logs and a very roughly boarded
floor, and there seemed to be little in it besides a stove, a table and
several chairs.
A brown-faced man with a little gray in his hair sat at one end of the
table and at the other end sat a woman resembling him and of about the
same age. Harry, sitting between them, was apparently engaged in
narrating their adventures. Frank, who took the place laid out for him,
found that his supper had not spoiled his breakfast, for he fell upon
the pork, potatoes, dried apricots, hot cakes and syrup with an
excellent appetite. When the meal was over, the man led Frank into
another room and filling his pipe asked him to sit down.
"We'd better have a talk," he said. "You can take the chair yonder."
Frank looked at him more closely when he sat down. Mr. Oliver, who was
dressed in duck overalls, was rather spare in figure, though he looked
wiry. His manner was quiet, and his voice was that of an educated man,
but he had somewhat piercing gray eyes.
"I had a sincere regard for your father," he began. "On that account
alone I should be glad to have you here; but first of all we had better
understand each other. You mentioned that you had been in business in
Minneapolis and afterward in Winnipeg. Didn't you like it?"
"No, sir," replied Frank, who felt that it would be wiser to answer
carefully any questions this man might ask. "Still, that wasn't exactly
why I gave it up, though"--and he hesitated--"to say I gave it up isn't
quite correct."
"If I remember, you called it being fired, in your letter," Mr. Oliver
suggested with a twinkle in his eyes. "What led up to that?"
"Slack trade in the last case. I'd like to think it was only the grudge
a bullying clerk had against me in the other."
"Then, if you had been allowed, you would have stayed with the milling
business, though you didn't care for it?"
"Yes," responded Frank. "Anyway, I'd have stayed until I could have got
hold of something I liked better."
Mr. Oliver nodded in a way which suggested that he was pleased with the
answer.
"Well," he said, "that brings us to the question why you came out here.
Was it because you had heard that it was a good country for hunting and
fishing?"
Frank's face flushed. "No, sir," he replied, "I wanted to earn a living,
and I understood that a"--he was going to say a live man, but thought
better of it--"any one who wasn't too particular could generally come
across something to do quickest in the West. In fact, I'd like to begin
at once. After buying my ticket and getting odd meals I've only two or
three dollars left."
"Two-fifty, to be precise. My sister took your clothes away to mend.
Now, it's possible that I might manage to get you into the office of
some lumber or general trading company in one of the cities. How would
that do?"
"I'd rather go on to the land. I'd like to be a rancher."
"How much do you know about ranching?"
"Very little, but I could soon learn."
It was Frank's first blunder, and he realized it as he saw the gleam of
amusement in Mr. Oliver's eyes.
"It's by no means certain," commented the latter. "There are men who
can't learn to use the ax in a lifetime. We'll let it go at that, and
say you're willing to learn. Have you any idea of making money by
ranching?"
Frank thought a moment. "Well," he said finally, "I'd naturally wish to
make some, but I don't think that counts for most with me. I'd rather
have the kind of life I like."
"The trouble with a good many men is that when they get it they find out
they like something else. Quite sure that hunting and fishing aren't
taking too prominent a place in your mind? If they are, I'd better tell
you that the favorite amusement in this country is chopping down big
trees. There's another fact that you must consider. It takes a good deal
of money to buy a ranch and, unless it's already cleared, you have to
wait a long while before you get any of the money back. This place cost
me about nine thousand dollars, one way or another, and in all
probability there's not a business on the Pacific Slope in which I
wouldn't get twice as much as I'm getting here for the money, though
I've been here a good many years. Now what do you expect to do with two
dollars and a half?"
What he had heard had been somewhat of a shock to Frank, and the
question was difficult to answer.
"I might earn a little more by degrees, sir," he said hopefully.
Mr. Oliver smiled at him encouragingly.
"It's possible; and there's cheaper land than mine, while a smart man
used to the country can often get hold of a small contract of some kind.
Now I'll tell you what we'll do. Wait a month, and then if you find that
you like the life I'll hire you for what anybody else would give you."
With that he arose, signifying that the discussion was over, and Frank
went out of doors and joined Harry in the clearing. The latter held a
big handspike with an arched iron hook hinged to it, and he invited
Frank to assist him in rolling logs.
"It will give you some idea how a ranch is cleared," he said. "To begin
with, you had better take a look around."
Frank did so and first of all noticed the rather rambling house, part of
which was built of logs notched into one another at the ends, though the
rest, which had evidently been added to it later, was of sawed lumber.
It was roofed with what he fancied were red cedar shingles. On the other
side of it, carefully fenced off with tall split rails, stood orderly
ranks of trees, some in delicate pink and white blossom. Harry told him
they were apples and prunes and peaches. Nearer him were one or two
fields of timothy grass and fresh green oats, and then more of the
latter growing among fern-engirdled stumps sawed off some six feet above
the ground. Beyond them, in turn, half-burned branches were strewn
among another stretch of stumps, then there was a narrow belt where
great trees lately chopped lay in tremendous ruin, and behind them again
the forest rose in an unbroken wall.
"Now," explained Harry, "you have the whole thing in front of you, if
you'll begin at the bush and work back toward the house. First you chop
down the trees, then you burn them up and raise your first crop or two
round the stumps. Afterward by degrees you grub up the stumps and get
the clean, tilled land. When it's been worked a few years it will grow
almost anything."
"But where's the stock?" Frank asked. "I had a notion that a ranch was a
place where you raised no end of horses or cattle."
"That's on the plains," laughed Harry. "On this side of the Rockies it's
any piece of cleared land with a house on it. At quite a few of the
ranches they raise nothing but fruit. As you asked the question, though,
our cattle are in the bush. They run there and live on what they can
find until we round them up. Now we'll get to work."
He turned away after a pair of brawny oxen that were plodding leisurely
across the clearing, and in a little while they halted on the edge of
what Harry called the slashing. This was a belt of fallen timber which
ran around most of the open space. As Frank gazed at the chaos of great
trunks and mighty branches he felt inclined to wonder how Mr. Oliver had
managed to get them down.
"What will you do with these?" he asked.
"Saw or chop off the bigger branches," Harry answered. "Then we'll wait
until the trunks are good and dry in the fall and put a fire to them. It
will burn up all the small stuff, and leave them like this."
He pointed to the rows of blackened and partly burned logs which lay
between the slashing and the half-cleared soil, and Frank noticed that
most of them had been sawed into several pieces.
"Couldn't you sell them for lumber?" he inquired.
"No," replied Harry. "For one thing, it's quite a long way to the
nearest mill and we'd have to build a skidway for a mile or two down to
the water. Besides, in a general way, it's only the redwood and red
cedar that the mills have much use for."
Then he gave Frank a handspike that lay close by, and between them they
prized up one end of a log so that he could slip a chain sling under it.
The other end of the chain was attached to the yoke of the oxen, and
when he called them the big white and red beasts hauled the log away
until he stopped them and went back for another. Frank did not find much
difficulty in this, but it was different when they had drawn six or
seven of the logs together and laid them side by side. Harry said that
the next lot must go on top of the others, and Frank was wondering how
they were to get them there, when his companion laid two or three stout
skids some distance apart against the first of the row. These, it was
evident, would serve as short, slanting bridges, but Frank was still not
clear as to how the next log could be propelled up them.
When Harry brought it up he slipped the chain along toward its middle,
though it cost the boys an effort to prize the mass up with their
handspikes, after which he made one end of the chain fast on the
opposite side of the row, around which he led the oxen. The other end he
hooked to their yoke, so that it now led doubled across the row and
around the trunk they wished to raise. He said that when the chain was
pulled the log would roll up it. He next shouted to the oxen, who
plodded forward straining at the yoke, while he and Frank slipped their
handspikes under opposite ends of the log.
"Heave!" he cried. "Send her up!"
Frank did his utmost, with the perspiration dripping from him and the
veins on his forehead swelling, but the ponderous mass rolled very
slowly up the skids, and several times he fancied it would drag the oxen
backward and slide down on him. Indeed, for about half a minute it hung
stationary, though Harry, who dared not draw out his handspike, shouted
frantic encouragement to the straining beasts. Then it moved another
inch or two, and one released skid shot up as though fired out of a gun
when the log rolled upon the first of the preceding ones. They worked it
well across them, and then freeing the chain went back for another,
though Frank's arms felt as if they had been almost pulled out of their
sockets.
"You want somebody to keep the oxen up to it as well as two to heave,
when the logs are as big as these," said his companion. "Still, some of
the small ranchers do the whole thing alone."
Frank could not help wondering what kind of men these were, but in the
meanwhile he was obliged to bend all his thought on his difficult task,
which grew heavier when, having ranged the logs in two layers, they
commenced the third. The skids were now too short to reach the top of
the second tier without making the slope rather steep and Harry said
that they must cut some new ones. A couple of axes lay close by, and
handing one to Frank he strode into the bush and stopped in front of a
young fir.
"The butt ought to make a skid," he said. "I'll leave you to get it down
and I'll look for another. You do it like this."
Spreading his feet apart and balancing himself lightly, he swung the
heavy, long-hafted ax above his head. The big blade, descending, buried
itself in the trunk, and rose with a flash when he wrenched it clear.
This time he struck horizontally and a neat wedge-shaped chip flew out.
"Now," he said, handing the ax to Frank, "you can go ahead."
He turned away and Frank swung the ax experimentally once or twice. The
thing looked easy. Whirling up the blade, he struck with all his might.
It came down into the notch Harry had made, but it was the flat of it
that struck, and, while the haft jarred his hands, the blade glanced and
just missed his leg. This appeared somewhat extraordinary, and he was a
little more cautious when he tried again. He hit the tree fairly this
time, but almost a foot above the cut, and he was commencing to feel
indignant when he dragged the steel out again, which in itself was not
particularly easy. He then struck horizontally, but the blade did not
seem to go in at all, and at the next attempt the ax buried itself in
the soil, just grazing his boot. This steadied him, for he had no desire
to lame himself for life. Shortening his hold upon the haft, he used it
after the manner of a domestic chopper, until at length, when his hands
were blistered and he was very hot, the tree went down with a crash.
Then turning around he saw Harry watching him with a look of amusement.
"Have you got yours down?" Frank asked.
"Oh, yes," Harry replied, "and another. I've chopped them through for
skids." He pointed to the hacked and splintered log. "Looks as if
something had been eating it, doesn't it?"
Frank's face grew rather red. "You couldn't expect me to drop into it
all at once. Give me a week or two to pick up the swing and balance of
it."
"A week or two!" Harry seemed to address the clustering firs. "They sure
raise smart folks back East."
"How long were you learning?" retorted Frank.
"Well," said Harry thoughtfully, "you could call it most of twelve
years. I used to go whittling with a toy tomahawk soon after I could
walk. Of course, they confiscated the thing now and then. Once it was
after I'd just brought down a one-leg round table."
"Did you ever cut yourself?"
Harry rolled up his trousers and pointed to a big white mark below his
knee.
"I could show you two or three more of them," he commented dryly. "There
are quite a few bush ranchers who haven't got all their toes on."
He cut a skid from the butt of the log, and when they went back to the
pile the work which before had been hard now became more or less
dangerous. They had to prize and sometimes shoulder up the ponderous
masses of timber three-high, and Frank was far from feeling over the
effects of the previous two-days' march. Still, if his companion could
manage it, he was determined that he could, and he toiled on, soaked in
perspiration, straining and gasping over one of the heaviest tasks
connected with clearing land, until to his vast relief Miss Oliver
appeared in the doorway, jingling a cowbell as a signal that dinner was
ready.
They went back to work after the meal, and Frank somehow held out until
the middle of the afternoon. It seemed very hot in the clearing and the
scorching sunrays beat down upon the back of his neck and shoulders. One
of his horribly blistered hands commenced to bleed, he was almost afraid
to straighten his back, and his arms were sore all over. At last as they
were heaving up a heavy log it stuck just on the edge of the tier and
Frank, who felt his breath failing him and his heart beating as though
it would burst, could hear the oxen scuffling furiously on the other
side of the pile.
"Heave!" Harry shouted. "Another inch will land her!"
"I can't!" Frank panted, with his hands slipping upon the lever.
"Then look out!" warned Harry. "Let go of the thing and jump!"
Frank did not remember whether he let go or whether the handspike was
torn from his grasp, but he jumped backward as far as he could and
staggered a few paces farther when he saw the big log rolling down after
him. Then he fell headlong, there was a crash and a great trampling of
hoofs, and he wondered whether the log would crush the life out of him.
When he scrambled to his feet, however, it had stopped not far away; and
in a few moments Harry appeared from behind the pile.
"It pulled the oxen backward right up to the logs," he explained. Then
he looked sharply at Frank. "We haven't done badly for one day, and Aunt
Sophy wants me to haul in some stovewood. You sit there and rest
yourself awhile."
He went away with the oxen, and Frank was thankful to do as he was told,
for his heart was heavy and he was utterly worn out. His hands were torn
and blistered and the logs that he had partly lifted with his body had
bruised his breast and ribs. If this was ranching, it was horrible work,
and he felt that he would break down altogether if he attempted much
more of it. It was nothing like his dream of riding through the bush on
spirited horses after half-wild cattle. Then the troublesome question as
to what he should do if he gave it up had to be faced. He had found that
he had no aptitude for business, and he had a suspicion that work would
be quite as hard in a logging camp or in a sawmill. It was clear that he
could not go home, even if he had the money for his fare, which was not
the case, and he felt very forlorn and miserable.
In the meanwhile the twigs he lay upon were pleasantly soft, and it was
cool and peaceful in the lengthening shadow of the firs. There was a
curious rhythmic drumming sound which he found most soothing and which
he afterward learned was made by a blue grouse not far away. The pungent
smell of withering fir and cedar sprays in the slashing dulled his
senses, until at last his troubles seemed to melt away and he fancied
that he was back in Boston where nobody had ever required him to heave
ponderous logs upon one another.
It was a couple of hours later when Mr. Oliver, walking back that way
with Harry, stopped and looked at the pile.
"You have put all those up since this morning?" he asked.
Harry said that they had done so, and Mr. Oliver glanced down with a
little smile at Frank, who lay fast asleep.
"It's rather more than I expected. The lad must have done his share, but
it might have been better if you had started him at something easier."
"He stood it all right until a while ago, and I think he'd have seen me
through if it hadn't been for the walk yesterday. Shall we crosscut some
of those branches to-morrow instead?"
"No," replied Mr. Oliver after a moment's reflection. "It might be wiser
to let him see the worst of it. If he stands a week's logging there's no
doubt that he'll do." He paused a moment and looked down at Frank again.
"I don't think he'll back down on it. He's very much like his father, as
I remember him a good many years ago."
Then he laid his hand on Frank's shoulder.
"Get up, boy. Supper's ready."
CHAPTER IV
TARGET PRACTICE
The two boys spent most of the following week rolling logs and they were
busy among them one hot afternoon when Mr. Oliver walked out of the bush
nearby. As they did not immediately see him, he stopped and stood
watching them in the shadow for a few minutes. Frank was feeling more
cheerful by this time, though his hands were still very sore and, as a
good many of the logs were burned on the outside, he was more or less
blackened all over. He was getting used to the work, and Jake, who had
arrived with the sloop in the meanwhile, relieved him and his companion
of the heaviest part of it. Turning around presently at a sound, Frank
saw Mr. Oliver smiling at him.
"If I were as grimy as you I think I'd go in for a swim," he said. "It's
hot enough, and there's a nice beach not far away. I dare say Harry will
go along with you while Jake and I put up these logs."
Harry lost no time in throwing down his handspike, and they set out
together down a narrow trail through the woods, which led them out by
and by upon a head above the cove in which the sloop lay moored.
Standing on the edge of the crag, Frank looked down upon the clear,
green water which lapped smooth as oil upon a belt of milk-white shingle
and broke into little wisps of foam beneath the gray rocks at the mouth
of the cove. Beyond this the sea flashed silver in the sunlight like a
great mirror, except where a faint, fitful breeze traced dark blue
streaks across it. Dim smudges of islands and headlands broke the
gleaming surface here and there, and high above it all was a cold white
gleam of eternal snow.
In a few minutes they had scrambled down a winding path, and Frank,
stripping off his clothes, waded into the water abreast of the sloop
which lay swinging gently about a dozen yards from the beach.
"Can you swim off to her?" shouted Harry.
Frank said that he thought he could, and set about it with a jerky
breast stroke, for he was not very proficient in the art. The water was
decidedly cold and he was glad when he reached the sloop. Clutching her
rail where it was lowest amidships he endeavored to pull himself out. To
his disgust he found that his feet would shoot forward under the bottom
of her, with the result that he sank back to the neck after each effort.
When he had made two or three attempts he heard a shout:
"Hold on! You'll never do it that way."
Harry shot toward him, his limbs gleaming curiously white through the
shining green water, though his face and neck showed a coffee-brown, as
did his lower arms, which he swung out above his head, rolling from side
to side at every stroke. He grasped Frank's shoulder and pushed him
toward the stern of the sloop.
"Now," he said when he clutched it, "there are just two ways of getting
out of the water into a boat. If she has a flat stern you make for there
and get your hands on the top of it spread a little apart. Then you
heave yourself up by a handspring--though that isn't very easy."
Frank smiled at these instructions, but said nothing. It was easy for
him, because he had learned the trick in a gymnasium. Suddenly jerking
down his elbows, which ever since he had grasped the stern were as high
as his head, he shot his body up until his hands were down at his hips.
Then, as his waist was level with the sloop's transom, he quietly
crawled on board. Harry, however, had to make two or three attempts
before he succeeded, and then he looked at his companion with
undisguised astonishment.
"I've never done it right away yet," he said admiringly. "Say, do you
know how to dive?"
"No," replied Frank; "that is, I've scarcely tried."
Harry led him forward where the boat's sheer was higher and he could
stand a couple of feet or so above the water.
"You only get half the fun out of swimming unless you can dive," he
said. "Let's see what kind of a show you make."
Frank stiffened himself and jumped. At least, that was what he meant to
do, but as it happened, he merely threw himself flat upon the water, and
the result was rather disconcerting. He felt as though all the breath
had been knocked out of him, and in addition to this all the front of
his body was smarting. He was about to swim toward the stern again when
Harry stopped him.
"Hold on!" he called. "You may as well learn the other way of getting
out, and if she's a sailing craft with a bowsprit it's much the easiest
one. Swim forward to the bow."
Frank did so and saw that a wire ran from the end of the bowsprit,
dipping a little below the water where it was attached to the boat. He
had no difficulty in getting his foot upon it, and after that it was a
simple matter to crawl on board. His chest and limbs were still smarting
and were very red when he joined Harry. The latter regarded him with a
look of amusement.
"You'll get hurt every time, if you dive like that," he said. "Look
here," and he stood up on the boat's deck. "You want to get your weight
on the fore part of your feet all ready to shove off before you go. Then
you must shoot as far forward as you can--falling on it won't do--and
hollow your back and stiffen yourself once you're under. That is, when
you want to skim along just below the surface. Watch me."
Leaning forward a little he sprang out from the boat, a lithe, tense
figure, with hands flung straight forward over his head. They struck the
water first, and he went in with an impetus which swept him along
scarcely a foot beneath the top. Then his speed slowly slackened and he
had stopped altogether about a length of the boat away when he raised
his head and swam back to her.
"You don't want to try that in less than four feet until you're sure you
can do it right," he said when he had climbed on board. "The other kind
of diving's different." Then, taking up a galvanized pin, he threw it
in. "See whether you can fetch it. There's about eight or nine feet of
water here. You can open your eyes as soon as your head's in, and you
won't have any trouble in coming up again. Jump, and throw your legs
straight up as you go."
Frank managed this time not to drop in a heap as he had done before. He
also opened his eyes under water for the first time and found it
perfectly easy to see. It was like looking through green glass. He could
make out the pin lying a long way down beneath him. It was, however,
impossible to reach it. The water seemed determined on forcing him back
to the top, and when he abandoned the struggle to get down he seemed to
reach the surface with a bound.
"How far did I go?" he gasped.
"About six feet. It's quite as far as I expected."
Harry plunged, and Frank, who had climbed out in the meanwhile, saw him
striking upward with his feet until he turned and came up with a rush,
holding the pin in one hand. Flinging it on board he headed for the
beach and was standing on the shingle rubbing himself with his hands
when Frank joined him.
"I guess you had two towels when you went swimming back East?" he
laughed.
Frank looked up inquiringly, acknowledging that he usually had taken
one.
"Well," said Harry, "we have them at the homestead, but there are
ranches in this country where you wouldn't get even one."
"No towels!" exclaimed Frank in some astonishment. "What do they use
instead?"
"Some of them cut a very little bit off of a cotton flour bag. Those
bags are valuable because they keep them to mend their shirts with. I've
a notion that the other fellows sit in the sun."
Frank laughed and scrambled into his clothes after rubbing himself with
his hands. He was commencing to realize that whether Harry was joking
with him or not it was unavoidable that they should have different ways
in different parts of so big a country. Indeed, now that he was some
four thousand miles from Boston, he felt that instead of its being
curious that the people were slightly different it was wonderful that
they were so much the same. If one measured four thousand miles across
Europe and Asia one would get Frenchmen at the one end and wild Cossacks
or nomad Tartars at the other, with perhaps a score of wholly different
nations, speaking different languages, between.
They had an excellent appetite for supper when they went back to the
ranch, and after the meal was over, Mr. Oliver took down a rifle from
the wall.
"You can bring yours along, Harry," he said, and then turned to Frank.
"In a general way, a rancher doesn't get much time for hunting, and he
seldom goes out for the fun of the thing, but an odd deer or grouse
comes in handy now and then. Anyway, before you can hunt at all you must
learn to shoot and you may as well begin."
"Dad's a pot-hunter," chuckled Harry. "At least, that's what the two
smart sports we had round here last fall said he was."
A gleam of amusement crept into his aunt's eyes, but Mr. Oliver's face
contracted into a slight frown.
"Harry knows my views, but you had better hear them, too," he said to
Frank. "I'm certainly what those fellows called a pot-hunter, though
they very foolishly seemed to think that one ought to be ashamed of it.
Most of the ranchers in this district take down the rifle only when they
want something to eat, and that's the best excuse there is for shooting.
Is it a desirable thing to destroy a dozen harmless beasts for the mere
pleasure of killing, and leave them in the bush for the wolves and
eagles?"
"Don't the game laws prevent that, sir?" Frank asked.
"They limit a man to so many head of this and that, and in a general way
he brings no more out with him, but it doesn't by any means follow that
he hasn't killed a bear or a deer that he doesn't mention in some lonely
ravine. The sport who hasn't a conscience is as big a pest in a game
country as the horn and hide hunter used to be, and we have to thank him
for practically exterminating several of the finest beasts in North
America."
"Wouldn't the clearing of virgin country and the way the farms and
ranches spring up account for it?"
"Only to some extent. It's my opinion that there are more deer and bears
about the smaller ranches than you could find anywhere else. All this is
no reason why you shouldn't learn to shoot; that is, to hit your game
just where you want to and kill it there and then."
He walked out with his rifle and the boys followed him across the
clearing. Here Harry fixed a piece of white paper about two feet square
with a black dab in the middle of it on the trunk of a big fir, after
which he came back to where the others were standing.
"How far do you make it?" his father asked.
"About a hundred yards."
Mr. Oliver now turned to Frank.
"As I think you told me you couldn't shoot, I'll give you a short
lecture on the principles of the thing. When they're after birds most
men use a scatter gun. It will spread an ounce of shot--several hundred
pellets--over a six-foot circle at a distance of about forty yards; but
the rifle is the great weapon of western America. Take this one and open
the breach--now look up the barrel."
"I can see little grooves twisting round it like a screw," said Frank.
"That's the rifling. It serves two purposes. The bullet--you use only
one--has to screw round and round to get out, and that gives the
explosion time to act upon it. It increases the muzzle velocity. Then it
gives the bullet a rotary motion, and anything spinning on its axis
travels very much straighter than it would do otherwise. It's the
twisting motion that keeps a top from falling over."
Frank could readily understand this, and he remembered what he had read
about the gyroscope.
"Now," continued Mr. Oliver, "we have to consider the pull of the earth
upon the bullet, which would bring it down, and to counteract this you
have to direct it rather upward. The slight curve it makes before it
reaches its mark is called the trajectory, and it naturally varies with
the distance. You arrange it by the sights. There are two of them, one
on the muzzle and one near the breach. The last one slides up and down
like this. The farther off the mark is the higher it must go. As you
have to get them both in line, it's evident that pushing the back one up
will raise the muzzle. You can understand that?"
Frank said that he could, and Mr. Oliver pushed the rearsight down and
snapped a lever.
"It's cocked, though it hasn't a shell in it. At a hundred yards or less
the sight goes down about the limit." He handed Frank the rifle. "Stand
straight, left foot a little to the left and forward--that will do. Now
bring the rifle to your shoulder--left hand under the barrel near the
rearsight, elbow well down, right hand round the small of the butt,
thumb on the top. Try to hold it steady."
Frank found it difficult. The rifle was heavy and the muzzle seemed to
want to drop, but Mr. Oliver stopped him when he let his left elbow fall
in toward his side.
"Bring it down and wait a moment before you throw it up again," he
advised.
Frank did so once or twice, and at length his instructor seemed
satisfied.
"Now we'll aim," he said. "Drop your left cheek on the stock--you'd
better shut your left eye. Try to see the target through the hollow of
the rearsight, with the front one right in the middle of it."
It seemed singularly difficult. The square of paper now looked
exceedingly small and the sights would wobble across it. After several
attempts, however, Frank got them comparatively steady.
"Put your forefinger on the trigger," Mr. Oliver directed. "Don't pull,
but squeeze it slowly and steadily, holding your breath in the
meanwhile."
This was worst of all, for Frank found that he pulled the sight off the
target when he tightened his forefinger. After he had made an attempt or
two, Mr. Oliver told him to put the rifle down.
"See what you can do, Harry," he said.
"Standing?"
"Yes," said Mr. Oliver, turning to Frank again. "Standing's hardest,
kneeling easier, and lying down easiest of all, but when you're hunting
in thick bush you generally have to stand."
Harry slipped a shell into his rifle, and pitched it to his shoulder. It
wobbled for a moment and then grew still. After that there was a
spitting of red sparks from the muzzle, which suddenly jerked, followed
by a sharp detonation. A second or two later there was a thud, and Harry
laughed as he stood gazing at the mark while a little blue smoke curled
out of the muzzle and the opened breach.
"It's well up on the left top corner," he said.
Frank was blankly astonished. He could certainly see the square of
paper, but it seemed impossible that anybody could tell whether there
was a mark on it. As a matter of fact, very few people who had not been
taught how to use their eyes could have done so.
Then Mr. Oliver took up his rifle, and Frank noticed that his whole body
and limbs seemed to fall into the best position for holding it steady
without any visible effort on the man's part. The blue barrel did not
seem to move at all until at length it jerked, and Harry grinned
exultantly at Frank when a thin streak of smoke drifted past them.
"That's the pot-hunter's way. He's about two inches off the center."
Mr. Oliver gave Frank the rifle, and this time he slipped in a shell.
"If you can't get the sights right bring it down," he directed. "Don't
dwell too long on your aim."
Frank held his breath and stiffened his muscles, but the foresight would
wobble and the target seemed to dance up and down in a most exasperating
manner. At length he pressed the trigger. He felt a sharp jar upon his
shoulder, but to his astonishment he heard no report. After what seemed
quite a long time there was a faint thud in the forest.
"You've got something, but I guess it's the wrong tree," laughed Harry.
After that Frank tried several shots, finally succeeding in hitting the
tree a couple of feet above the mark. Mr. Oliver, who had taken out his
pipe in the meanwhile, nodded at him encouragingly.
"You only need to practice steadily," he said. "For the rest, anything
that tends toward a healthy life will make you shoot well. Whisky and
tobacco most certainly won't."
Harry's eyes twinkled as he glanced at his father's pipe.
"One of them hasn't much effect on him. I don't know whether I told you
about the bag the two sports who were round here last fall nearly made.
I got the tale from Webster on the next ranch."
Frank said that he would like to hear it, and Harry laughed.
"Well," he began, "Webster was sitting on a log in the bush just outside
his slashing, looking around kind of sorrowful at the trees. It seemed
to him they looked so big and nice it would be a pity to spoil them.
When I've been chopping until my hands are sore I sometimes feel like
that."
"It doesn't lead to riches," interrupted his father dryly.
"By and by," Harry continued, "Webster heard a smashing in the
underbrush. It kept coming nearer, but it wasn't in the least like the
sound a bear makes or a jumping deer. You don't know they're around
unless they're badly scared. Anyway, Webster sat still wondering what it
could be, until he saw a man crawling on the ground. He was coming along
very cautiously, but you couldn't have heard him more than half a mile
away. By and by he disappeared behind a big tree, and as there hadn't
been a deer about for a week Webster wondered if the man was mad, until
there was a blaze of repeater firing in the bush. Then Fremont, his
logging ox, came out of it like a locomotive and headed for the range so
fast that Webster couldn't see how he went. He grabbed his logging
handspike, and found a sport abusing another for missing in the bush.
"'What in the name of wonder are you after?' he asked.
"'We've been trailing a deer two hours,' one of them declared. 'A mighty
big deer. Must have been an elk.'
"'An elk, sure. I saw it,' added the other.
"'There isn't a blamed elk in the country,' said Webster.
"'You'll see,' persisted the other. 'I tell you I pumped the cylinder
full into him.'
"'Quite sure of that?' Webster asked.
"The other man said that he was, and Webster waved his handspike.
"'Then it's going to cost you sixty dollars, and I'll take a deposit
now,' he said. 'It's my ox Fremont you've been after.'"
"Did they give it to him?" Frank broke in.
"Five dollars," Harry answered. "Webster looked big and savage, and they
compromised on that."
"But had they hit the ox?"
Harry chuckled. "Give a man who isn't a hunter a repeater and he'll
never hit anything--unless it's what he isn't shooting at."
"Anyway, it's better to stick to the single shot at first," Mr. Oliver
remarked. "Then you take time and care, and it's more likely that when
you shoot you kill. No humane person has any use for the man who leaves
badly wounded beasts wandering about the woods."
He rose, and shook out his pipe.
"We'll be getting back," he added. "There's only one way of making it
easy to rise at sun-up."
They walked toward the house together, and it seemed to Frank that there
was a good deal to be said for this rancher's views. He did not tell
tall stories and boast of what he had shot, but Frank had seen enough
to realize that it was most unlikely that he left any sorely wounded
animal to die in misery. It was not often that Mr. Oliver molested the
beautiful wild creatures of the woods, but when he fixed the sights on
one of them he killed it clean.
CHAPTER V
THE MYSTERIOUS SCHOONER
Three or four weeks slipped by uneventfully, and Frank was commencing to
like the simple, laborious life at the ranch. He and Harry were standing
together one evening on the shingle down in the cove. It was close upon
high water and a long swell worked in, breaking noisily upon the
pebbles, while they could see the blue undulations burst into snowy
froth about the dark rocks at the entrance. The sun had just dipped; it
was wonderfully fresh and cool, and a sweet resinous smell drifted out
of the forest behind them.
Harry glanced at a canoe which lay close by. It was about fourteen feet
long and just wide enough to sit in, and had been hollowed out of a
cedar log by a Siwash Indian. The bow, which swept sharply upward, had
been rudely cut into the likeness of a bird's head. The craft was kept
there so that anybody who wished to reach the sloop could go off in her.
"I don't think it's quite high water yet, and the breeze is dropping,"
Harry was saying. "There's just enough to take us a mile or two down the
beach over the tide with the spritsail set. Then we could lower the mast
and paddle home."
"Wouldn't she sail back?" Ray asked.
"No," was the answer, "only with a fair wind. You can't beat a thing
like that to windward. There's not enough of her in the water."
Frank said that he would like to go, and after running the canoe down
they lifted the short mast into place and set the little sail. It filled
when a few strokes of the paddle had driven them out of the cove, and
they slid away, rising and falling smoothly, with the swell running
after them. Harry took hold of the rope that held the foot of the sail
fast to a peg.
"You want to keep the sheet handy in a very small craft," he instructed.
"Then if a hard puff of wind strikes her you can slack it up, or let it
go altogether, when the sail will blow out loose. There's more weight in
this breeze than I expected."
It seemed to Frank from the gurgle at the bows and the way the foam
slipped by them that they were sailing very fast, but for a while he
watched the rocky heads that dipped to the water open out one after
another and then close in again behind them. The woods that crept
between them down to the strips of shingle were rapidly growing shadowy,
and the ridges of water that followed them seemed to be getting darker,
though here and there one of them was flecked with bright wisps of
froth. At length Harry let the sheet go and brought the canoe around.
"We'll have the mast down and get back," he said.
They had no trouble in rolling up the sail and laying the mast in the
bottom of the craft, but when they dipped the paddles, Harry kneeling in
the stern and Frank toward the bow, the latter realized that their next
task would not be quite so easy. A chilly wind which seemed considerably
stronger than before they turned struck his face, the bows splashed
noisily, throwing up little spurts of spray, and now and then the narrow
craft lurched rather wildly over the top of a swell. He worked hard for
about twenty minutes, and then glancing astern was a little astonished
to see that a rock which had been opposite them was now a remarkably
small distance behind. Harry, who had evidently followed his glance,
scowled disapprovingly.
"We'll have to paddle, that's a cold fact," he declared. "The tide seems
to have turned quite a while before it ought to have, and the breeze is
getting up again. We might find slacker water right inshore."
They edged close in to the rocks, the sight of which did not add to
Frank's comfort, though the boat crept on a little faster. The swell
broke in long white swirls about their feet, and it was evident that any
attempt to land there was out of the question. Besides, even if they
managed to reach the bush, there was no trail to the ranch, and he had
no desire to struggle through the tangle of fallen branches and dense
thickets in the darkness. His knees and hands were getting sore, but he
toiled on patiently with the single-ended paddle, while the canoe
lurched more viciously and little showers of spray flew in over her bow.
It was becoming exceedingly hard work to drive the craft into the rising
head sea. The foam-girt rocks were, however, slowly crawling by, and at
length, after laboring, panting and breathless, around a somewhat larger
head, Harry suddenly stopped paddling.
"Hold on!" he exclaimed. "Just keep her from swinging, and look yonder!"
Frank, glad of a brief rest, gazed astern. It was neither light nor
dark, for a pale moon hung low in the sky, casting a faint silvery track
upon the water, which was now flecked with white froth a little off
shore. Across the sweep of radiance there moved a tall black spire of
slanting canvas, with the foam leaping up about the shadowy strip of
hull beneath.
"The schooner!" said Harry significantly. "She's beating up over the
tide and she'll probably stand close in, but I don't think they could
see us against the land."
He spoke as if he did not wish to be seen, and for no very clear reason
Frank felt glad that they lay in the shadow of a big black head. The
schooner was coming on very fast, rising, it seemed to him, bodily,
until he could make out the curl of piled-up water that flowed away
beneath her depressed side. The mass of straining sailcloth hid most of
her slanted deck, and he could see nobody on board her, but it seemed
curious that she carried no lights. Then it occurred to him that she was
heading straight for them, and he was about to dip his paddle when Harry
stopped him.
"Keep still!" he commanded. "They'll have to come round before they
reach us."
Frank could now hear the roar of water about the bow of the vessel, and
in a minute or two she swayed suddenly upright and there was a great
thrashing of canvas as, shooting forward, she came round. She was very
near them and as her boom-foresail and mainsail swung across, leaving
clear the side of the deck they had shrouded, he saw two or three
shadowy figures busy forward. They became more distinct as she drove
back into the moonlight, which fell upon the form of her helmsman. Frank
could see him clearly, and there was, he fancied, something peculiar
about the man.
The splashing top of a sea slopped into the canoe as they got way on
her, and they taxed their strength to the utmost during the next hour.
The craft bucked and jumped as they laboriously drove her over the
confused swell, which was rapidly getting higher, and there was already
a good deal of water washing about inside her. Once or twice Frank held
his breath as a threatening mass of water heaved up ahead, but in each
case she lurched across it safely, and presently they found smoother
water under another crag. He gave a sigh of relief when at length they
reached the cove and beached her upon the shingle. They turned her over
to empty before they ran her up, and then Harry sat down upon a boulder.
Frank already had discovered that he seldom talked of anything they had
done as though it were an exploit.
"I'm quite puzzled about that schooner," he said presently.
"Why?"
Harry paused and thought a moment. "Well, it's a sure thing she's the
vessel that crept past us the morning we were lying beneath the point,
and though she's been seen three or four times now there's no notice in
the papers of any arrival that seems to fit her. She has the look of
being built for the Canadian sealing trade, and most of the craft in
that business are mighty smart vessels."
"Doesn't a ship have to carry papers saying where she's from and where
she's going?"
"Oh, yes," assented Harry. "Still, she might clear from somewhere in
Canada, say for the halibut fishing--I've heard they're trying to start
it there--or something that would keep her out a month or so. Then, as
there is no end of quiet inlets in British Columbia and a good many
here, she could run up and down from one to another and go back with a
few fish, and there'd be nothing to show what she had been doing in the
meanwhile."
"You think it's something illegal?"
"If it is anything honest I don't see why she was beating up without her
lights in the strength of the tide, when she'd have slacker water over
toward the other side, only there'd be a chance of her being seen from
the Seattle boat if she ran across yonder. Now it's a general idea that
there's a good deal of dope--that's opium--smuggled into this country,
and now and then Chinamen, too. Our people won't have any more of them,
but though they have no trouble in getting into Canada, they seem to
like the States better. I guess wages are higher."
"Have you talked to your father about it?"
"I told him what we'd seen the other time and he looked kind of amused,
or as if he didn't want to be bothered about the thing; though that may
not have been it, either. Unless he tells you right out, you can never
figure on what he's thinking. Anyway, I'll say nothing more to him
unless there's some particular reason."
Harry was afterward sorry that he had arrived at this decision, and, for
that matter, so was his father, but it was the next morning before this
came about. In the meanwhile the boys went back to the ranch, and soon
afterward retired to rest in the room they now shared. Frank went to
sleep at once, and it was some time later when, awaking suddenly, he
fancied that Harry had left his bed, which was fixed against the
opposite wall. A faint light from outside crept into the room, and Frank
made out a black figure standing by the open window. Slipping softly to
the floor he moved toward it and Harry raised his hand warningly when he
joined him.
"What are you doing here?" Frank inquired.
"Well," answered Harry, "since you ask me, I don't quite know, but I
fancied I heard somebody about the ranch. Keep still and listen."
He spoke in a low and rather strained voice, and Frank, who was uneasily
impressed by it, leaned out of the window. There was a moon somewhere in
the sky, but it was obscured by clouds, and only a dim, uncertain light
filtered down. It showed the great black firs which rose, a rampart of
impenetrable darkness, beyond the rather less shadowy clearing, across
part of which the fruit trees stretched. Then ran back, in regular rows,
little clumps of deeper obscurity which presently grew blurred and faded
into one another. The wind had apparently dropped again, for it was
impressively still.
"I can't hear anything," whispered Frank.
"I'm not sure that I did," rejoined Harry. "It may be that seeing that
schooner put the thing into my head, but we'll wait a little now that
we're up."
For a couple of minutes they waited in silence. Then Harry suddenly
gripped his companion's arm.
"Look!" he whispered. "Across the clearing--yonder!"
Frank fancied that he could make out a shadowy object in the open space
between the fruit trees and the forest. It was very dim and indistinct,
and he realized that he would not have noticed it only that it moved.
Shortly afterward it disappeared and a faint rattle like that made by
two pieces of wood jarring together came out of the deep gloom beneath
the firs.
"The fence," suggested Harry. "It sounded like the top rails going
down."
The fence was made of split rails interlocked together in the usual
manner without the use of nails, and it seemed to Frank very probable
that anybody climbing over it in the darkness would be apt to knock one
or two of them down. The question was who would be likely to climb over
it, since there was no one living within some miles of the ranch. Then
he caught another sound which seemed farther off. It suggested the
crackle of rotten branches or torn-down undergrowth, but it ceased
almost immediately.
"Slip on your things," whispered Harry. "I'm going down."
In a few moments they crept softly down the stairway barefooted, and
Harry opened the outer door very cautiously. He picked up an ax outside,
and they moved silently around the house, stopping now and then to
listen. There was only a deep stillness. Nothing seemed to move; though
Frank wished that he had at least a good thick stick in his hand. He had
an uncomfortable feeling that they might come upon a man hiding in some
strip of deeper gloom as they slowly crept along the wall. When at
length they had satisfied themselves that there was nobody about, Harry
sat down.
"I can't figure out this thing," he mused. "It seems to me that whoever
those strangers were they haven't been near the house, and it's a quiet
country, anyway." He glanced down at his bare feet. "I'd go along and
look around the barn and stables only that I'd certainly stub my toes,
and it wouldn't be any use. Nobody steals horses around here. They
couldn't get rid of them if they did."
The outbuildings stood at some little distance from the house, and
Frank, who remembered that they had strewn the trail to them with broken
twigs in dragging some branches from the slashing, agreed with his
companion that it would not be wise to traverse it in the darkness with
unprotected feet.
"Couldn't you slip into the kitchen and get our boots?" he suggested.
"Not without waking dad," answered Harry. "He's in the next room, and he
sleeps lightly. I'm not anxious to bring him out if no harm's been
done."
"He'd get angry?"
"No, he'd only smile; and somehow that makes you feel quite cheap and
small. Besides"--and he hesitated--"there was another time, when I
roused them for nothing; and I don't want to do it again. You wouldn't
either, if you had stood as much about it from Jake as I've had to ever
since."
They decided to say nothing about the matter unless some reason for
doing so appeared in the morning, and creeping back through the house as
silently as possible they went to bed. They awoke a little later than
usual, and going down found Mr. Oliver standing at one side of the
kitchen table rather grave of face, with Jake, who also looked
thoughtful, opposite him. A strip of paper with some writing on it lay
between them. Mr. Oliver looked around as the boys came in.
"Did either of you hear anything suspicious last night?" he asked.
"Yes," said Harry hesitatingly. "In fact, we came down."
He briefly related why they had done so, and Jake broke in:
"Then why in the name of wonder didn't you call somebody?"
"It's a reasonable question," said Mr. Oliver.
Harry explained with some diffidence that they were afraid of being
laughed at, and Frank felt a little uncomfortable under the rancher's
steady gaze.
"Well," said the latter dryly, "I suppose your idea was natural, and
we'll let it go at that. It's perhaps scarcely worth while to point out
that most people get laughed at now and then, and there's no reason for
believing that it hurts them. I wonder if you will be surprised to hear
that my team has gone?"
They were certainly somewhat startled.
"I found this stuck up on the stable door," said Jake, pushing the strip
of paper across toward them.
The boys read the straggling writing: "_If you want your team back keep
your mouth shut._"
For a moment they looked at each other in silence, and then Mr. Oliver
turned to them.
"It's all we know in the meanwhile. Have you anything more to tell us?"
Harry diffidently mentioned the schooner, and his father drew down his
brows.
"Whether her appearance has any connection with the matter is more than
I can say, but I'll sail up to the settlement this morning. You and
Frank can go on with the drain cutting while I am away."
Just then Miss Oliver came in to get breakfast ready, and when the meal
was finished the two boys made for the clearing where they were cutting
a trench. When they reached their destination Harry sat down and pushed
back his hat.
"This thing isn't very clear to me, but I'm beginning to get the drift
of it," he announced. "It's quite likely that dad knows a good deal more
about it than I do, but until he has it all worked out he won't tell.
First of all, we'll allow that they're smugglers on that schooner. They
borrowed two of our horses and that fixes it."
"You couldn't smuggle a great deal on two horses," Frank pointed out.
"Sure," admitted Harry. "Still, they might have picked up another team
somewhere else, and you want to remember that it only pays to smuggle
things that are valuable and can be easily moved. Now one packhorse load
of dope would be worth a good many dollars, and you can't move anything
much easier than a man. He's got feet."
This was incontestable, but Frank considered the matter.
"If you turned a number of Chinamen loose in the bush wouldn't they be
recognized as strangers at any settlement they reached and have to give
an account of themselves to somebody?"
"The trouble is that, although I believe they have to carry papers of
some kind, it's mighty hard to tell one Chinaman from another and they
all work into each other's hands."
"Your idea is that the smugglers have confederates?"
"They have them, sure," said Harry. "There's some diking being done on a
salt marsh not far away, and the last time I was there it struck me
there were some hard-looking white toughs on the workings. Then there's
a small Chinese colony behind the settlement, and it's thick bush with
only a few ranches for some leagues beyond. Just the kind of country for
running dope through."
"Are the ranchers likely to stand in?"
"No, not in a general way, but it's possible that a man here and there
living by himself in the bush would say nothing if they borrowed a
horse or two. It's not nice to have a gang of toughs up against you."
"Your father doesn't seem inclined to look at it that way."
Harry laughed. "I'll allow that there's a good deal of sense in dad. It
would be clear to him that he couldn't well give them away afterward if
he did nothing this time. They'd certainly have got him; and dad's not
the man to let a gang of dope runners order him round." He paused a
moment, and added significantly: "If they try any bluffing in this case
there'll be trouble."
Frank asked no further questions and they set about the trenching.
CHAPTER VI
AT THE HELM
Mr. Oliver did not come back until nightfall. He said nothing about his
visit to the settlement and several days passed before the boys heard
anything further of the matter. In the meanwhile they went on with the
drain they were cutting across a swampy strip of clearing, and one
afternoon they stood in the bottom of the four-foot trench. Harry was
then busy with a grubhoe, cutting through the roots and breaking up the
wet soil, which his companion flung out with a long-handled shovel. It
was unpleasantly hot, and the flies were troublesome. Frank's hands were
too muddy to brush them away and they crawled about his face and into
his ears. He had already decided that draining was about the last
occupation he would have chosen for a scorching afternoon, had the
choice been open to him.
He stood, stripped to shirt and trousers, in about a foot of water, and
because he had not learned the trick of pitching out the soil, part of
every shovelful fell back upon him. His shirt was spattered all over,
and patches of sticky mire glued it to his skin. There was no doubt that
ranching was considerably less romantic than he had supposed it to be,
and logging and ditching struck him as particularly uninteresting and
somewhat barbarous work, but he was beginning to realize that all the
agricultural prosperity of his country was founded on toil of a very
similar kind. The wheat and the fruit trees would not grow until man
with patient labor had prepared the soil for them, and, what was more
significant, Mr. Oliver had made it plain that their yield varied in
direct proportion with the work bestowed on them. Nature's alchemy, it
seemed, could transmute the effort of straining muscle into golden
sheaves, glowing-tinted apples, and velvet-skinned peaches and prunes.
It was clear to Frank that if he meant to become a rancher he must make
up his mind to face a good many unpleasant tasks, and he swung up the
mire shovelful by shovelful, though his back and limbs were aching and
he had to work in a horribly cramped position. He was young, and though
there were times when the work seemed almost too much for him, it was
consoling to feel when he laid down his tools at night that he was
growing harder and tougher with every day's toil, for his muscles were
now beginning to obey instead of mastering him. He could go on for
several hours after they commenced to ache, without its costing him any
great effort.
By and by, however, there was an interruption, and Frank was by no means
sorry when Mr. Oliver came up with a stranger and called them out of the
trench.
"This is Mr. Barclay whose business is connected with the collection of
the United States revenue," he said. "I believe he would like a little
talk with you."
He walked away and left them with the stranger, who sat down on a log
and took out a cigar. He was a little man and rather stout, dressed
carelessly in store clothes, with a big soft hat and a white shirt which
bulged up above the opening in his half-buttoned vest. It occurred to
Frank that he looked like a country doctor. From out rather bushy
eyebrows shone a pair of whimsical, twinkling eyes. When he had lighted
his cigar he indicated the trench with a large, plump hand.
"Been making all that hole yourselves?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," replied Harry.
"Interesting work?"
"That depends on how you look at it," said Harry flippantly. "Would you
like to try?"
Mr. Barclay waved his hand. "It isn't necessary. Did something of the
same kind years ago--only, if I remember, it was rather wetter."
"Where was that?" Harry inquired with an air of languid politeness, at
which Frank felt inclined to chuckle.
"Place called Forks Butte Creek. It was a twenty-foot trench."
Harry seemed astonished and his manner suddenly changed.
"You were with the boys at Forks Butte when they swung the creek?"
"Sure," assented Mr. Barclay with a laugh. "I didn't expect you'd have
heard of it. You certainly weren't ranching then."
"I've heard of it lots of times," declared Harry, turning excitedly to
Frank. "It was one of the biggest things ever done by a few men this
side of the Cascades. The old-timers talk about it yet. A mining
row--there were about a dozen of them working some alluvial claims on a
disputed location. I don't know the whole of it, but the thing turned
upon the frontage, and they stood off a swarm of jumpers while they
shifted the creek."
"Something like that," said Mr. Barclay. "In those days they interpreted
the mining laws with a certain amount of sentiment, which--and in some
respects it's a pity--they don't do now." He paused and flicked the ash
from his cigar. "I understand you have been seeing a mysterious
schooner."
His tone was sufficiently ironical to put Harry on his mettle, and he
furnished a full and particular account of the vessel. When he had
finished Mr. Barclay glanced at him with amusement in his eyes.
"You have an idea there might be smugglers on board of her?" he
suggested.
"It's more than an idea. I'm sure."
"I wonder if you could tell me why?"
It was rather difficult to answer, but Harry made the attempt,
furnishing his questioner with half a dozen reasons which did not seem
to have much effect on him.
"Well," he persisted, "you're convinced she had opium and Chinamen on
board her?"
"Aren't you?"
Mr. Barclay looked up with a smile. "At the present moment I can't form
an opinion. After all, it's possible."
He rose, and as he was strolling away toward the house Harry's face
contracted into an indignant frown.
"That man must have been cooking, or something of the kind, at Forks
Butte," he broke out contemptuously. "Anyway, it was the last time he
ever did anything worth talking about. Did you ever run up against such
a stuffed image?"
Frank was far from certain that this description was altogether
applicable to the stranger, but Harry seemed so much annoyed that he did
not express his opinion, and they got down into the trench again. When
they went back to the ranch an hour later they heard that Mr. Oliver and
Mr. Barclay had gone to a neighboring ranch and intended to make a
journey into the bush if they could borrow horses. When the boys were
eating breakfast the next morning Miss Oliver turned to Harry.
"We have run out of pork, and the flour is almost gone," she said. "I
meant to ask your father to bring some when he went up to the
settlement, but I forgot it, and Jake must bring in those steers
to-day."
"We'll go," broke in Harry quickly. "There's a nice sailing breeze."
His aunt looked doubtful. "You have never been so far with the sloop
unless Jake was with you; and isn't there a nasty tide-rip somewhere?
Still, I don't know what I shall do unless I get the flour."
She yielded when Harry insisted; and shortly afterward the boys paddled
off to the sloop and made the canoe fast astern. They set the big gaff
mainsail and Harry sculled her out of the cove before he hoisted the
jib. Then he made Frank take the helm.
"It's a head wind until we're round the point yonder, but you'll have to
learn to sail her sometime," he said. "The first thing to remember is
that she'll only lie up at an angle to the wind and if you make it too
small she won't go through the water. You want to feel a slight strain
on the tiller."
He hauled the sheets in until the boom hung just over the boat's
quarter, and while Frank grasped the tiller she slid out into open
water. Bright sunshine smote the little tumbling green ridges that had
here and there crests of snowy foam, and she bounded over them with a
spray cloud flying at her bows. She seemed to be making an excellent
pace, but Harry shook his head.
"No," he objected, "you're letting her fall off. That is, the angle
you're sailing her at is too big. She'll go faster that way, but she
won't go so far to windward. Don't pull so much on your tiller and
she'll come up closer."
Frank tried it, but the boat sailed more slowly, and presently her
mainsail flapped.
"Now you're too close," warned Harry. "You're trying to head her right
into the wind. Pull your helm up again."
Frank did so, and when the boat gathered speed he ventured a question.
"If you keep her too close to the wind she won't sail, and if you let
her fall off she's not going where you want. How do you find out the
exact angle she ought to make?"
Harry laughed. "It depends on the boat, the cut of her sails, and how
smart you are at the helm. One man would shove her to windward a point
closer than another could and keep her sailing faster, too. It's a
thing that takes time to learn, and there are men you couldn't teach to
sail a boat at all."
Frank found that it became easier by degrees, though his companion did
not appear altogether satisfied. The sloop had dipped her lee rail just
level with the water now, and she rushed along, bounding with a lurch
and splash over the small froth-tipped seas. He began to understand how
one arrived at the proper angle by the slant at which the wind struck
his face as well as by watching the direction of the seas which came
charging down to meet her in regular formation. Then Harry said that as
they had stretched out far enough to clear the point they would go about
upon the other tack.
"Shove your helm down--that's to lee--not too hard!" he ordered, and as
Frank obeyed him there was a sharp banging of sail cloth and the boat,
swinging around, swayed upright.
In another moment the wind was on her opposite side, and she was heading
off at an angle to her previous course, while Harry with one foot braced
against the lee coaming struggled to flatten in the sheet on the jib.
The big mainboom had swung over of its own accord amidst a great clatter
of blocks. By and by when the point slid away to lee of them Harry told
Frank to pull his helm up, and then he pointed to a confused mass of
gray rocks and trees rising above the glistening water several miles
away.
"Now," he said, "she'll go there straight, and all you have to do is to
keep her bowsprit on yonder head. It's a fair wind, and when you've got
that you want to slack out the sheets until the sails are as far
outboard as they'll go and still keep full. If your sheets are too
tight, you'll know it by the weight on the tiller."
He let a couple of ropes run out through the clattering blocks, and the
sloop, slanting over a little farther, seemed to leap forward. The
sparkling green ridges which came tumbling up on one side of her swung
her aloft with the foam boiling along the edge of her lee deck, and
then surged away in turn and let her drop while another came rolling up.
Instead of being a mere thing of wood and canvas she seemed to become
animate, charged with vitality. The springy way she rushed along was
strangely exhilarating. Frank became fascinated watching her bows go up
and the snowy, straining sail sweep across the dazzling blue at every
lurch, while he became conscious of a sense of control and mastery as he
gripped the tiller. He felt that he could do what he wanted with this
wonderful rushing thing.
For she was certainly wonderful. There was no doubt of that, because
among all of man's works and inventions there is none that more nearly
approaches the simplicity of perfection and adaptability to its purpose
than the modern sailboat. It has taken centuries to evolve her, each
builder adding a little to the work of those who went before, and
balancing in her making, often without knowing it, the great natural
forces one against another, until at last science justified what man
did, so that with this frail creation one may brave the untrammeled
winds of heaven and the onslaught of the seas.
By and by the headland they had been nearing thrust them off their
course, and outside it lay a nest of islets, with a strong stream
running up between. As it ran to windward it broke up the regular,
breeze-driven waves into short, foaming combers with hollowed breasts
and tumbling tops which flung up wisps of spray. Frank glanced at this
tumult with some anxiety, and it was a relief to him when his companion
offered to take the tiller.
"You had better let me have her," Harry said. "She wants handling in a
jump like that. I'd heave a reef down to reduce the sail, only that it
would take us some time to tie it in and there'll be smoother water once
we're past the islands. As we'll have to beat through, you can get the
sheets in."
Frank found this no easy task, for he had no idea that the sails could
pull so hard, and Harry had to help him with one hand. Then the latter's
face became intent as they plunged into the turmoil. The seas looked big
and angry now. In fact, as usually happens, they looked a good deal
bigger than they really were, but they were breaking in a threatening
manner and came on to meet the sloop in white-topped phalanxes. She went
over some with a disconcerting plunge and swoop, but she rammed a few of
the rest, driving her jib and bows in and flinging the brine all over
her when she swung them up. Her deck was sluicing, and every now and
then a green and white cascade came frothing over the coaming into the
well. Frank, however, noticed that, instead of letting the boat meet the
combers, his companion occasionally pulled his tiller up, so that,
swinging round a little, she brought the ridge of frothing water farther
on her side as she plunged over it.
"I thought you had to face a nasty sea head-on," he said.
"Did you?" Harry responded. "Then watch that smaller one."
A slope of water came tumbling on some yards ahead, and as the boy eased
his helm down an inch or two the bows came up to meet the sea. They
struck it full in its hollowed breast, and the next moment there was a
shock and half the deck was lost in a rush of foam.
"Like me to plug another?" laughed Harry.
Frank begged him not to do it. The result of the experiment was rather
alarming, and Harry let her fall off a little to dodge the onslaught of
the succeeding combers, until at last they grew smaller as the stream
spread itself out in open water. Then he gave Frank some further
instruction.
"If you were pulling or paddling a small craft it would be safer to
bring her head-on, because you have to remember that she'd be going
mighty slow, but when you're sailing a boat that's carrying her speed
it's evident that you don't want to ram her right at a comber. If you
do, she's bound to go bang into it. When you see one that looks
threatening you let her fall off slightly and she goes over slanting."
He broke off for a moment with a laugh. "Seems to me I'm always on the
'teach.' You come here and take the tiller while I get some of the water
out of her. You can head for that point to starboard."
He busied himself with the bucket while Frank steered the boat, and an
hour or so later they ran into a little sheltered inlet where they
brought her head to wind and pitched the anchor over. After that they
bailed out the half-swamped canoe, and, dropping into her, paddled
ashore.
CHAPTER VII
A WARNING
Frank looked about him with some curiosity when they reached the
settlement, which struck him as a singularly unattractive place. In a
hole chopped out of the forest that crept close to the edge of the water
stood a few small log houses and several roughly boarded shacks. Tall
fir stumps surrounded them, and here and there provision cans and old
boots lay among the fern, in which a few lean hogs were rooting. Farther
on, however, there was an opening in the bush, for the boy could catch
the gleam of water between the trees, and in one place the great
columnar trunks cut against the soft green of a meadow. The grass was
bright with sunshine, but dim shadow hung over the forest-shrouded
settlement.
"A forlorn spot," said Harry. "I don't know why the folks first pitched
here, but they raise a little fruit, and now and then a Seattle boat
comes along. It's thin gravel soil on this strip, and that's probably
the reason they haven't done any more chopping--there are salt meadows
farther along--but if they'd any hustlers among them they'd have got out
their axes and let a little daylight in." He waved his hand
contemptuously. "They're a mean crowd, anyway, except the storekeeper,
and I've wondered how he makes a living out of them. Now we'll go along
and get that flour."
They moved on down the trail, which was torn up by the passage of jumper
sledges, until they reached a frame building which Frank had not noticed
at first. It stood back a little and was larger and neater than any of
the rest. A veranda ran along the front of it and in one window small
flour bags and more provision cans were displayed. A couple of men in
blue shirts and overalls lounged smoking on the veranda in a manner
which suggested that they had never hurried themselves in their lives,
and they seemed to be the only inhabitants of the place. As the boys
walked up the stairway Harry pointed to a notice pasted up in the
window. Frank stopped and read it aloud.
"_Twenty dollars will be paid to any one identifying
the man who recently drove a pair of horses off the
Oliver ranch._"
With a laugh Harry looked up defiantly at the lounging men. "That's
Oliver's answer," he said. "They told him to keep his mouth shut."
One of the men grinned. "Seems to me it was good advice. Do you figure
any one round here is going to earn those twenty dollars?"
Harry shook his head. "I don't," he answered. "Still, my only reason for
believing it is that the money isn't big enough. Anyway, that notice
will serve its purpose. It makes it clear that we mean to fight."
The lounger grinned again and Harry, marching past him with his head up,
entered the store. A man who was sitting behind the counter rose when
the boys came in and raised his hand in a manner which seemed to
indicate that caution was desirable.
"You're wanting some groceries?" he asked.
"Flour," Harry answered. "A seventy-pound bag, if you've got it. Some
pork, too--you know the piece we take. You might send them down to the
beach, if there's anybody in the place who's not afraid of carrying a
flour bag."
The storekeeper smiled and strolled casually toward the window. Coming
back he leaned upon the counter.
"Your aunt's mighty particular about her pork," he said, raising his
voice a little. "Better come along into the back store and see what I've
got."
They followed him into a smaller room, where he first of all threw
several big slabs of pork down upon a board, making, it seemed to Frank,
as much noise as possible.
"Twelve pounds in this lot," he said loudly, then lowering his voice:
"Those fellows outside haven't gone and I don't want them to hear. You
haven't found your horses yet?"
Harry admitted that they had not done so, and the man nodded gravely.
"Well," he said, "I guess they'll turn up presently. I couldn't tell
your father that because there were other folks in the store when he
handed me the notice. What I want to say is that he's not wise in
bluffing the boys. You had better tell him that's my opinion."
"How much do you know about the thing?" Harry asked directly.
"Very little, but I can guess a good deal. Quite enough, anyway, to
convince me that you folks had better lie quiet, and let the boys
alone."
Harry glanced scornfully toward the veranda.
"Pshaw!" he growled. "We don't want to meddle, but it's another matter
to let those slouches drive off our team. That's my view, though I don't
know what my father means to do about it. He hasn't told me."
"He never does tell folks," the storekeeper answered with a trace of
dryness. "I guess he'll wait, and kick when he's ready, but you tell him
from me that he's up against quite a big thing." He raised his voice:
"Well, I'll send that pork and flour along."
The boys went out and met one of the loungers strolling casually across
the store, though Frank had a suspicion that he had come in softly some
time earlier. As they were walking down to the beach Harry glanced up
the strip of sheltered water.
"There's a Chinese camp a little way up the creek," he said. "Nothing
much to see there, but we may as well take a look at it."
They paddled across a strip of shadow where the reflections of spreading
cedar and towering fir floated inverted in the still, green water until
the ripple from the bows broke across and banished them. After that they
slid out into the sunlight where a narrow belt of cultivated land ran
back on either hand. On one side it was partly hidden by a bank of soil,
at the end of which three or four men were leisurely working. They
merely looked down as the canoe slid past.
"Hard cases!" said Harry presently. "If I was sheriff I'd clean this
hole right out. There are decent folks here, but the curious thing is
that when you let two or three toughs into a place they seem to get on
top."
Frank made no comment, and soon they were once more paddling into the
shadow of the forest. The creek was growing smaller, and at length they
ran the canoe ashore and struck into a narrow trail through the bush.
It was now getting on into the afternoon and Frank felt sorry that they
had not eaten the lunch Miss Oliver had prepared for them before they
left the sloop. It was very hot, and very still, except when now and
then the drumming of a blue grouse came sharply out of the shadows. By
and by, however, the wood became a little thinner, and Harry pointed
toward an opening between the trees.
"That's the place," he said. "Not much to look at, but it's good land.
You can see the maples yonder--that's always a favorable sign--and
somebody with money has lately bought quite a piece of it to start a
fruit ranch on. The Chows have taken the contract for clearing it, and
if any dope has been landed in the neighborhood they're probably mixed
up with the thing."
Frank glanced toward the opening, and sitting, as he was, in dim
shadow, the open space he looked out upon seemed flooded with dazzling
brightness. In the background, and some distance away, little, blue-clad
figures were toiling with axes that flashed as they swung amidst a
confusion of branches and fallen logs, the staccato chunk of the blades
ripping through the heavy stillness. Nothing else, however, seemed to
move, and the air was filled with a languorous, resinous smell. Rows of
stumps stretched out from the spot on which the Chinamen were working,
breaking off before a cluster of bark and split-board shacks that stood
beneath the edge of the forest. A man dressed in loose, blue garments
was seated motionless outside one of the shacks, before two logs, from
between which a little smoke curled straight up into the air. Presently
the man stood up, and just then Harry seized Frank's shoulder.
"Look round a little--to the left," he whispered.
Frank did so and was astonished to see another man slip quietly out of
the forest and approach the shack. His face was not discernible, but
there was something peculiar in the way he walked, and his dress made it
evident that he was a white man.
"Have you seen him before?" Harry asked softly.
"I can't locate him, but I've an idea that he's not quite a stranger,"
said Frank.
"Well," said Harry, "I'm open to make a guess at him. Just as the
schooner went about that night I had a look at her helmsman. He had his
back to me, but it was moonlight, and I could see that one shoulder
hunched up in a kind of curious manner."
Frank looked again and it seemed to him that there was something unusual
in the way the man held his shoulder. It was somewhat higher than the
other, though it hardly amounted to a deformity.
"Slip in behind that tree," whispered Harry, pointing toward the bush.
"We'll creep up through the shadow if he goes into the shack."
They spent some minutes moving forward in and out among the trees, and
in the meanwhile Frank saw the stranger enter the shack and the Chinaman
follow him. Then he and Harry walked out of the bush scarcely a score of
yards from the rude building, and headed straight for it. As they
approached, the Chinaman became visible in the doorway, where he stood
waiting for them. He appeared to be an old man, for his face was lined
and seamed, but it was absolutely expressionless, an impassive yellow
mask, and Frank felt baffled and repelled by it. As soon as it was
evident that the boys intended to enter his dwelling, he moved aside,
and when they stood in the little, shadowy room Frank was astonished to
see that there was nobody else in it. This seemed incomprehensible, for
there was only one door in the place. In the meanwhile the Chinaman was
looking at them quietly.
"It's quite hot," observed Harry.
"Velly hot," assented the other, who did not seem in any way disturbed
by the fact that they had so unceremoniously marched in.
Harry appeared embarrassed after this, as though he did not know what to
say next, until he was evidently seized by an inspiration.
"Got any chow, John?" he asked.
"Velly good chow," answered the Chinaman. "Lice, blue glouse, smokee
fishee."
"Blue grouse!" said Harry disgustedly aside to Frank. "It's the nesting
season, but I guess that wouldn't count for much with them." He turned
to his host. "I'm not a heathen. Savvy cook American? Got any flour you
can make biscuits or flapjacks of?"
"You leavee chow to me," said the other. "Cookee all same big hotel
Seattle, Tacoma, San F'lisco."
"It's quite likely," said Harry, looking round at Frank. "You can trust
a Chinaman to turn out a decent meal. I'll walk round a bit in the
meanwhile; you can sit here and rest."
Frank did not particularly wish to rest, but he fancied that his
companion had given him a hint, and while the Chinaman busied himself
with his pots and pans he sat down outside the shack. He had been up
early that morning, and after the steady, arduous work at the ranch it
was pleasant to sit still in the strip of shadow and let his eyes wander
idly about the clearing. Among other things, he noticed that a little
trickle of water flowed across it, and that the soil was quaggy in the
neighborhood. He concluded that the stranger, who had so mysteriously
disappeared, must have crossed the wet place.
It was some little time before Harry came back and the Chinaman then set
out their dinner. Frank had no idea what some of it consisted of and his
companion was unable to enlighten him, but it was excellent. When they
had finished, the man turned to Harry.
"One dolla," he said gravely.
Harry handed it over readily and smiled at Frank when they strolled back
into the bush.
"It wasn't what I'd figured on when I first walked in, but I had to make
some excuse," he said. "Just now I'd very much like to know how far it
went with him." He paused and looked thoughtful. "I guess it wasn't a
very long way. The image is ahead of us by a dollar."
Frank laughed. "You had some reason for going for that walk?"
"Oh, yes," replied Harry. "I wanted to make sure of things, and the
ground was soft. There were some footprints in it--going from the
shack--and they'd been made quite lately by a white man's boot. John
sticks to his slipper things in a general way. Anyhow, it was the man we
saw who left those tracks."
"How do you know that?"
"There were a lot of others about, but they'd been made earlier. The
water had got into them, but there was very little in those I was
interested in."
Frank was conscious that this was a point which would probably have
escaped his notice, but he had not lived in the bush and learned to use
his eyes.
"It's very curious how the fellow got out of the shack without our
seeing him," he said.
"It looks curious until you begin to think. Now, though I tried to keep
my eye on it all the while, the trees kept getting between me and the
shack as we made for it, and what I couldn't see you couldn't see
either. You were close behind me, which, in one way, was where we were
wrong. If we had crept in well apart, the same tree wouldn't have
bothered both of us, though if we'd done that it would have doubled the
chances of our being seen."
"A tree isn't such a very big thing," Frank objected.
"No," said Harry. "The point is that it will shut an object a good deal
bigger than itself out of your sight." He stopped a moment and pointed
toward a neighboring cedar. "We'll say that one's three feet in
diameter, but, as you're standing, it will shut off a good deal more
than a track three feet wide through the bush. You want to run a line
from your eye to both edges of the trunk and then carry them out behind
it. The farther you run them, the farther they get apart, and as you
can't see round a corner, everything in the wedge they enclose is shut
out from view. Got that into you? It will come in useful when you're
trailing a deer."
It was quite clear to Frank now that it had been explained, but his
companion went on.
"Well," he added, "it wouldn't have taken that fellow more than a few
seconds to slip out of the shack and in behind it. Then if he kept it
between him and us he'd be hidden until he reached the bush."
"Yes," said Frank. "It must mean that he saw us, and didn't want us to
see him."
"You're getting quite smart," said Harry with a grin. "I don't know if
you noticed it, but you trod on a rotten branch that smashed. He didn't
want us to know him again, but I'd pick that fellow anywhere by his back
and walk. Now why was he so anxious that we shouldn't see him talking to
the Chinaman?"
It was a suggestive question, but Frank could not answer it, and Harry
said nothing further. Reaching the canoe they paddled down the creek
until they came abreast of the sloop and saw the provisions lying upon
the shingle some little distance from the water, for the tide had ebbed
since their arrival. When they had run the canoe in Frank assisted Harry
in getting the flour bag on his back, but gave a sudden cry of dismay as
a white cloud flew all over him.
"Hold on!" he cried. "Put it down. It's running out!"
Harry dropped the bag and drew down his brows as he gazed at the little
pile of flour which lay at his feet. Then he suddenly stooped down.
"The bag seemed a sound one," Frank suggested.
"Oh, yes," said Harry shortly. "There's only one thing the matter with
it. See here," and he laid his finger on a long slit. "Somebody has
stuck a knife into it."
"A mean trick!" Frank broke out wrathfully.
Harry stood up with a flash in his eyes. "It's rather more than that.
It's a hint. Anyway, if you'll get hold of the other end we'll pack the
bag down with the cut uppermost."
In spite of this precaution they spilled a good deal of the flour before
they got it on board the sloop, but Harry said no more about the matter,
and hoisting sail they slid out of the inlet with a faint breeze abeam
of them. They found it fair and the breeze only a little stronger when
they had left the woods behind, and Frank sat at the tiller while the
sloop glided rapidly through the smooth blue water with no more than a
drowsy gurgle beneath her bows. The tide was running down with them now
and it was only when he glanced toward the beach that he realized how
fast they were going.
A pleasant salt odor of drying weed was mingled with the scent of the
firs. In front of them a wonderful vista of white snow mountains emerged
from fleecy cloud, and far beneath the silvery vapor appeared the faint
and shadowy blurs of distant hillsides clothed with mighty forest.
Overhead the big white sail swayed languidly to and fro, cutting sharply
into the blue, and Frank felt that he would like to sail on like this
for hours, lounging at the helm, and listening to the water as it
slipped along the sides. With a light fair wind he could guide the boat
wherever he wished by the slightest touch of the tiller, and it was
pleasant to see how steadily he could keep her bowsprit pointing to a
low rocky head that rose, a patch of soft blue shadow, against the
evening light.
The voyage, however, came to an end almost too soon, and the rocks and
firs were growing dim when they ran into the cove and picked up their
mooring buoy. After they had stowed and covered the sails they went
ashore, and both boys were very tired and warm when they reached the
homestead. Harry's clothes were covered with flour, which had left a
white trail along the way. Miss Oliver was standing in the lamplight
when they came in and noticed the white patches on their clothes.
"You have let him give you a burst bag!" she exclaimed.
Harry looked meaningly at Frank. "No," he said, "I think it was all
right when it left the store and I don't think we have spilled more than
a few pounds. Perhaps we had better skip it into the barrel. It will
save the stuff from running out when you move it."
They managed to carry it away between them; and when they had emptied it
Harry turned to Frank.
"If she starts talking about that bag, head her off on to something
else," he said. "I don't want her to get imagining trouble every time we
leave the ranch."
When Miss Oliver resumed the subject at supper Frank attempted to divert
her attention, and fancied that he succeeded, though he wondered why she
smiled at times. When the boys had gone to their room she picked up the
bag and stretched it out under the light. Then her face grew grave as
she saw the slit in it. Being a clever woman, however, she decided not
to mention her suspicions.
CHAPTER VIII
SALMON SPEARING
When the boys came in for breakfast next morning Jake was standing in
the kitchen, and Miss Oliver sat opposite him looking unusually
thoughtful.
"What's the matter?" Harry asked.
Jake turned toward him slowly.
"I don't know that there's anything very wrong," he said. "Leader's come
back."
Leader was the name of one of the missing horses, and Frank started as
he remembered what the storekeeper had said, but feeling Miss Oliver's
eyes upon him, turned his head and looked out into the clearing.
"Where's Tillicum?" inquired Harry.
"That," replied Jake, "is more than I can tell. Leader was standing
outside the stable when I went along and I can't make out why the other
horse wasn't with him. He'd have come with Leader if anybody had turned
them into the trail together."
Harry called to Frank and went out of the door. Jake followed them to
the stable, where they found the horse looking rather jaded, but except
for that very little the worse. Jake nodded reassuringly when Harry had
felt him over.
"No sign of anything wrong," he said. "There was a good deal of dried
mud on him before I fixed him up, and he seemed mighty keen on his corn.
They hadn't given him very much."
"What do you make of it?" Harry asked.
"About as much as you do," answered Jake. "They turned him loose on the
trail when they'd done with him, and that's all there is to it. I guess
the question is what they've done with Tillicum. One thing's certain. If
he doesn't turn up, your father's going to be mighty mad."
Harry agreed that this would be very probable, though he did not think
his father would show it. As there was nothing more to be said they went
back to the house, where, somewhat to their relief, Miss Oliver made no
allusion to the affair, and they proceeded quietly to eat breakfast.
"Are there any spring salmon in the river?" she asked presently, looking
across at Harry.
"Yes," he responded, "there are a few coming up."
"Then you might take Frank with you this morning and try to get me one.
I dare say Jake will smoke it." Miss Oliver smiled at Frank. "You don't
get salmon prepared that way back East."
"We have it canned," said Frank. "I've an idea I've seen some smoked,
but I can't remember. Is it very nice? I thought you didn't care for
salmon here."
"Fresh salmon," Jake said curtly, "is only good for hogs, and if you
keep it long enough, for growing potatoes with. Still," he added
thoughtfully, "I don't know that you call it fresh then."
Miss Oliver laughed. "Wait until you try it smoked--as Jake does it. He
can prepare it as some of the Siwash do. I believe they taught him in
British Columbia."
Jake shook his head solemnly. "No," he said, "I can't cure salmon as
some of the Indians do. You'd get nothing like it in a New York hotel,
but I guess I can dress it 'most as well as any white man. You go along
and get me a fish, Harry. I'd try the pool by the big fall."
They set out a few minutes later, taking with them a pole which had a
big iron hook lashed to it and a long Indian salmon spear. There was a
small fork at one end of the latter on which were placed two nicely
made bone barbs attached to the haft by strips of sinew. Harry removed
them to show Frank that they would slip off their sockets easily.
Leaving the clearing, they struck into a narrow trail through the bush,
and after half an hour's scramble over fallen logs and through thick
fern they reached the river.
It poured frothing out of shadowy forest and leaped over a rock ledge in
a thundering fall, beneath which it swirled around a deep basin, and
then after sweeping down a white rapid, spread out over a wide belt of
stones. There were rocks on either side of it, and, as the trees could
find no hold on them, warm sunlight streamed down upon the foaming
water. Harry sat down on a ledge above the pool with the spear beside
him and pointed to a great bird wheeling on slanted wings above the
shallow.
"A fish eagle," he said. "Here are salmon making up."
Frank watched the circling of the majestic bird, which did not seem much
afraid of them. It had a white head and a cruel beak, and once when it
swept over him he noticed the fixed gaze of its cold, impassive eye.
Splendid as it was, he somehow shrank from the thing. It looked so
powerful and utterly merciless. When it stopped in the air, dropped, and
struck, he saw a splash as a writhing, silvery creature was snatched up
in its talons.
"Got him wrong!" cried Harry. "You watch. He'll have to let go again."
So far as Frank could see, the eagle had seized the salmon by the middle
of its back, the fish twisting itself crossways as it was carried up
into the air. The next moment there was a splash in the water and the
bird swooped down again. When it rose it held its prey differently, and
Frank fancied he could see one wicked claw gripping the fish close by
the back of its neck, while the other was spread out toward its tail.
In any case, the salmon did not seem able to wriggle now, and the eagle
flew off with it and vanished among the tops of the black firs.
"Not a big fish, but I've a notion the eagle could lift a thing as heavy
as itself," said Harry. "They're mighty powerful. It might be the one he
dropped, though I think it's another."
Frank had no idea how much an eagle weighed, but he realized something
of the capabilities of a bird that could carry off this fish apparently
without an effort, and, what was more astonishing, drag the tremendously
muscular creature out of the water which was its home. Then his
companion touched his shoulder.
"Watch those two fellows in the eddy," said he. "They're going to rush
the fall."
Frank saw two slim shadows shoot out beneath a wreath of circling foam
and flash--which seemed the best word for it--through the crystal depths
of the slacker part of the pool. They were lost in the snowy turmoil
near the foot of the fall, and a few minutes passed before he saw them
again. Then one shot out of the water like a bow that had suddenly
straightened itself, gleamed resplendent with silver, and plunged into
the foam again. Harry pointed him out the other, and though it was a
moment or two before he could see it he marveled when he did. It had its
dusky back toward him, for now and then the dorsal fin rose clear, and
it was swimming up a thin cascade which poured down a steep slope of
stone. That any creature should have strength enough to stem that rush
of water seemed incredible, but there was no doubt that the fish was
ascending inch by inch. Then it found a momentary harbor in a little
pool just outside the main leap of the fall, and shot out of it again
with its curious uncurving spring. Frank watched it eagerly when it
dropped into the fall, and it was with a sense of sympathy that he saw
its gallant efforts wasted as it was suddenly swept down. Before
reaching the bottom, however, it had evidently rallied all its powers,
for it flashed clear into the sunlight, and had recovered a fathom when
he lost sight of it once more.
After that he glanced back toward the shallows and saw that other birds
had appeared. He did not know what they were, and Harry could only tell
him that they were fishhawks of some kind. As he watched them wheeling
or stooping, dropping upon the sparkling stream, and screaming now and
then, the boy began to form some idea of the desperate battle for
existence that is fought daily and hourly by the lower creation.
"There don't seem to be a great many salmon," he remarked.
"It's a thin run," said Harry. "There'll probably be more of them in the
next one. Once upon a time, as I expect you've heard, these rivers were
so thick with fish that you could walk across their backs, though I'll
allow I've never seen anything of that kind."
Frank was not astonished at the last admission. This brown-skinned,
clear-eyed boy, who could sail a boat and hold the rifle straight, was
not one to talk of the wonderful things he had seen and done. He left
that to the whisky-faced sports of the saloons who were probably capable
of butchering a crippled deer at fifty yards with the repeater.
"I suppose the salmon have plenty enemies," he suggested.
"Oh, yes," said Harry. "In the sea the seals and porpoises get their
share of them. Then, as they head for the rivers, there are the fish
traps, and in Canada the seine-net boats along the shore. After that
when they're in fresh water they have to run the gauntlet of the
Indians, birds, and bears."
"Bears?" Frank interrupted.
"Sure," said Harry. "They're quite smart fishers. Even the little minks
get some of the salmon stranded in the shallow pools. The Indians set
long baskets, narrow end downward, for them near the top of the falls.
These, of course, are fresh from salt-water--you can see they're
silvery--but they lose that brightness as they go up the larger rivers,
and on the Columbia and Fraser they push on hundreds of miles, up
tremendous canons, up falls and rapids, toward the Rockies. Those that
fetch headwaters are scarred and battered, with the bright scales and
most of their fins and tails worn right off them. Once they're through
with the spawning they die."
"Then they go straight to the place where they spawn?"
"Yes, the salmon's really a seafish. It's born in fresh water, but it
goes down to the ocean as soon as it's big enough, and it's generally
believed that it stays there three or four years, though it's a fact
that we know mighty little about the salmon yet. Then it comes back to
the same place and spawns and dies. You see, there's a constant
succession coming up." He broke off with a laugh. "Now we'll try to get
one. There are three or four big fellows yonder. All you have to do is
to slash at them with the hook."
Frank perched himself upon a jutting shelf of rock, and presently two or
three swift shadows flitted by. He swung up the pole and made a sudden
sweep at them, only to see the hook splash two or three feet behind the
last one's tail. Incidentally, he came very near to going headforemost
into the pool. Then another fish swept toward him, and this time he
landed the hook some inches in front of its nose, after which he made
several more attempts, succeeding only in splashing himself all over. He
was beginning to discover that his hands and eyes needed a good deal of
training. One, it seemed, must judge speed and distance and strike
simultaneously, but the trouble was that he needed a second or two to
think, and, naturally, while he thought the fish got away.
By and by he turned and watched Harry, who had not struck once yet. He
stood upon a ledge, alert, strung-up, and steady-eyed, but absolutely
motionless, with the long spear running up above his shoulder. At last,
however, he drove his right arm down and the beautiful, straight shaft
sank into the pool. It stopped suddenly for a second, quivering, and
then bent and twisted upward in the boy's clenched hands.
Frank ran toward him, wondering that the slender shaft did not
immediately break, when he observed that one barb had slipped off its
socket and that the fish, struck by it, was now held by the short length
of sinew. A moment or two later Harry jerked it out upon the bank by a
quick vertical movement and knocked it on the head. It lay still after
this, a beautiful creature of some seven or eight pounds, with the
sunlight gleaming on its silver scales. Frank glanced once more at the
long spear. It occurred to him that this was also perfect in its way and
could not have been better adapted to its purpose.
"It's curious that an Indian should be able to make a thing like that,"
he remarked. "I don't think a white man could turn out anything as
handy, unless, of course, he had one to copy."
"The point is that it took the Siwash a mighty long while to make the
salmon spear," said Harry. "It's quite likely they spent two hundred
years over it. Their spears are all on the same pattern, so are their
traps and canoes." Seeing a puzzled look cross Frank's face, he smiled.
"An Indian is no smarter than a white man--in fact, when you stop to
think of it, he's not half as smart, though most everything he makes is
excellent. It's this way. If we want a saw for a new purpose or a
different kind of wood, we write to the Disston people or somebody of
the kind and they set their boss designer to work. He considers, and
then because he knows all about the physical sciences he draws the thing
on paper and sends it to the forges or grinding shops. In a general way,
that saw does its work, though I guess if the designer had to use it for
a year or two he'd make the next one better."
"Of course," agreed Frank.
"It's different with the Indians," Harry continued. "One fellow made a
fish spear ever so long ago and found that it wouldn't do. He made the
next one different and was satisfied with it, but his son made it a
little longer and thinner. Then his grandson altered the barb, and his
son added another one. After that each fellow made it a little handier,
until nothing more could be done to it, and they stuck to the pattern."
He turned and glanced at the spear. "This thing is the product of the
skill of ever so many generations."
It was simple but convincing, for it explained the efficiency of the
Indian's tools, and also why he had not progressed. He worked along the
same line, sticking to one simple implement until he had perfected it,
and, though this was his greatest disadvantage, the man who killed the
fish generally made the spear. He got so far and stopped, content, and
incapable of going any farther. The white man, on the other hand,
changed his methods continually with his changing needs and, what
counted more than all, he very seldom made the tools he used, because he
had discovered that somebody who did nothing else could make them
better. When the Americans of the Pacific Slope wanted salmon they did
not whittle spears, but sent east to the cordage factories, whose owners
brought in fibers from all over the world and spun the netting with
which to build gigantic fish traps.
"We could do with another fish," ventured Harry. "Let's see if you can
get one."
Frank took up his pole again. It was a heavy and clumsy affair, but
Harry had told him that he would probably break the Indian spear. They
waited awhile until another swift shadow swept around with the eddy
beneath their feet.
"Hold on!" cried Harry. "Wait till the stream heads him and then strike
as quick as you can."
The fish's speed was checked for a moment as it entered the furious rush
beneath the fall, and Frank, who could just see its dusky back amidst
the foam, swung his pole. There was a splash and then a curious shock
which sent a thrill through him, and the haft jerked sharply in his
hands.
"Heave him out!" cried Harry. "That thing won't break."
Frank tugged with all his might and the salmon flew up over his
shoulder. The next moment he had seized it and was almost reluctant to
let it go when his companion clubbed it on the head.
"Two's as many as we have any use for and we'll go along," said the
latter. "We haven't made much of a show at that draining lately."
Frank would have preferred to stay where he was, but he followed Harry
toward the bush, and soon after they struck a cleared trail to the
ranch, which was, however, not the way they had come. A little later
they were somewhat astonished to see a group of figures among the trees,
and hurrying forward they found Mr. Oliver and Mr. Barclay talking to
Jake, who apparently had been driving home two or three steers.
Mr. Oliver, looking unusually grave, nodded to the boys. "We have just
met Jake," he said. "He tells me Tillicum's back a little way up the
trail with a broken leg."
"I guess he's done," murmured Jake, adding significantly, "I wouldn't
have left him like that if I'd had a gun."
"Go on with the steers," said Mr. Oliver. "We'll turn back."
The boys accompanied him and Mr. Barclay, and leaving the trail by and
by where the bush was thinner they stopped before a pitiable sight. It
was Tillicum who stood awkwardly before them, his head lowered and one
leg that seemed distorted out of its usual shape hanging limp. Caked
mire was spattered about the poor animal, its coat was foul, and every
line of its body seemed expressive of pain and exhaustion. As it raised
its drooping head and looked at them pitifully, Frank felt a thrill of
hot anger against the outlaws who were responsible for its condition.
Mr. Oliver stepped up to the horse and gently felt of its injured limb,
after which he turned abruptly toward Mr. Barclay and Frank noticed that
his face was set.
"There's only one thing to be done," he said. "Have you a pistol?"
"Haven't _you_?" his companion asked with a slight trace of astonishment
in his tone.
"If I'd had one would I have wanted to borrow yours?" retorted Mr.
Oliver.
"Well," said Mr. Barclay, "it's seldom I carry one, but in this case it
seemed advisable." He put his hand into his pocket. "Here you are. It's
a big caliber."
Mr. Oliver took the weapon and held it behind him, and turning back
toward the horse, gently stroked its head. Then there was a flash and
detonation, and the beast dropped like a stone. After a moment the
rancher turned around with a very curious look in his eyes, with the
smoking weapon clenched hard in his hand.
"I've had that faithful animal six years," he said in a harsh voice.
"We'll get away."
They walked on in silence for a while, and then Mr. Barclay spoke.
"The breaking of its leg was probably an accident," he suggested.
"Yes," said Mr. Oliver. "It's possible he broke it after they turned him
loose, but that doesn't seem to affect the case." He paused and looked
around at his companion. "You understand that I'm with you right through
this thing."
Nothing more was said until they approached the ranch, when Mr. Oliver
turned to the boys.
"I'll take the fish," he said. "You can go on with whatever you were
doing."
They moved away toward the drain, and when they reached it Harry stood
still a moment or two.
"It's a long while since I've seen dad look half so mad," he said. "When
he sets his face that way it's sure to mean trouble. Anyway, when I saw
Tillicum I felt kind of boiling over--as well as sorry."
"Did you notice what Mr. Barclay said about the pistol?" Frank asked.
"Why, of course," said Harry thoughtfully. "Now I don't know what
they've been after, but it's plain enough that there was some danger in
the thing. Mr. Barclay doesn't seem extra smart, but there's something
in his look that suggests he wouldn't be easy scared, and he took a
pistol along." Then he laughed in a significant manner and jumped down
into the trench. "It's my idea those dope fellows are going to be sorry
before dad gets through with them, and now we'll go on with the
draining."
He fell to with the grubhoe and for the next half hour worked furiously,
after which Jake appeared and called them in to dinner.
CHAPTER IX
A PLAIN HINT
Mr. Oliver bought another horse from one of his scattered neighbors, and
a few days afterward he and Jake set off for an inlet along the coast
near which a few ranchers lived. Harry explained to Frank that as they
clubbed together and bought their supplies from Seattle a little steamer
from the latter place called at the inlet now and then to deliver the
goods, and his father had ordered a mower which was to be sent down by
her.
Mr. Oliver did not come back until late in the evening a couple of days
later, but as soon as he arrived he and Jake set to work to put the
machine together, and it was getting dusk when at last they left it
standing beneath the trees near the edge of a ravine. Early on the
following morning the boys went back with them to see if it would work
satisfactorily in cutting a little green timothy, but as they crossed
the clearing Jake, who was leading the team a little distance in front
of his companions, stopped suddenly.
"You didn't go back and move that machine after we left it?" he asked.
"No," replied Mr. Oliver. "What made you think I did?"
Jake looked at his employer rather curiously. "Well," he said, "somebody
must have moved it. The thing's gone."
Mr. Oliver broke into a run and the rest followed. When they reached the
clump of trees they could discover no sign of the mower, except for the
track of wheels among the withered needles and undergrowth. This led
toward the ravine, at the bottom of which a little water flowed, and
Frank saw Mr. Oliver's face harden as he followed this guide. A minute
later they stood on the brink of the declivity and saw the mower lying
upon its side among the stones thirty or forty feet below them. The
slope was almost precipitous, but Mr. Oliver went down sliding amidst a
rush of loosened soil, and Frank and Harry with some difficulty
scrambled down after him. A glance was sufficient to show them that the
implement was not likely to be of the least use to its owner. Mr. Oliver
examined it quietly and then clambered back up the side of the ravine,
after which he sat down and took out his pipe before he turned to Jake.
"Every bit of cast-iron in it is smashed," he said. "The pinion wheels
are broken, and the other parts are bent. I'll have to order another
one."
Jake made a gesture of sympathy.
"If I could get hold of the folks who did the thing it would be a
consolation, but I haven't the least notion how to trail them."
"One man couldn't have moved it," said Mr. Oliver.
"There were three of them. The question is, what brought them here? I
guess they didn't come just to smash the machine."
Mr. Oliver seemed lost a moment in contemplation.
"I think you're right," he said at length. "They probably came because
this is the easiest way of getting through to the settlements in the
Basker district and the beach behind the head makes a handy landing.
We'll go along and look around. I don't think they'd try the cove. It's
too near the house."
They turned into a bush trail together, and when they reached the beach
a little while later Jake, stooping over a furrow in the smooth shingle
by the water's edge, looked up at Mr. Oliver.
"A sea canoe grounded here soon after last high water," he said. "You
can see where they ran her down when it had ebbed a little."
Mr. Oliver, who was still quietly smoking, nodded.
"Yes," he said, "it's very much as I expected. With a sheltered landing
here and as good a trail inland as they could find, it's not difficult
to understand why those fellows were anxious that I should stand in with
them, or, at least, leave them alone. This thing, of course, was meant
as a warning." Then he addressed the boys: "You needn't wait. You can
get some more of those branches sawed off in the slashing."
They moved away and left him talking to Jake, and it was not until they
had reached the bush that Harry made any observation.
"I've a notion that we're up against the meanest kind of toughs, but in
the long run I'll back dad," he said. "It's quite likely that if we lie
low you and I may get a hand in later on."
Frank made no answer, though the prospect his companion suggested was
not unpleasant to him. Going back to their work they sawed up branches
until nightfall. On the following afternoon they were still engaged at
the same task at some distance from the house when they saw Jake, who
had set out for a neighboring ranch in the morning, enter the clearing,
dragging a big and evidently very unwilling animal after him. He sat
down upon a log, and Harry dropped his ax.
"It's Webster's dog," he said to Frank. "I heard that somebody had given
him one. We'll go along and look at him."
They found Jake rather breathless and very red in face, holding the end
of a chain fastened to the collar of the dog, who crouched close by
watching him with wicked eyes and white fangs bared. A serviceable club
lay beside Jake, but it seemed to Frank that he had got as far away from
the animal as the chain permitted. The lad was, however, not astonished
at this, for he fancied he had never seen as intractable and generally
unprepossessing a dog as this one.
"Dad's borrowed him from Webster?" Harry suggested.
"It seemed to me Webster was mighty glad to get rid of him and didn't
want him back," said Jake. "Guess if he was mine I wouldn't be anxious
to keep him either."
Frank moved a pace or two nearer the dog, holding out his hand, but
speedily retired when it growled at him savagely. After that Jake turned
to Harry.
"You're fond of dogs," he suggested. "Wouldn't you like to pat him?"
"No," said Harry, edging away. "I wouldn't try it for five dollars. What
kind of a brute is he?"
"Well," said Jake, "I figure that fellow has a considerable mixture of
ancestors, though there's a strain of the bull in him. That's where he
got his stylish mouth from. He's about as amiable as a timber-wolf, and
he has the gait of a bear, while it's my opinion there's more sense in a
plow ox than there is in him."
"When did you leave Webster's?" Harry next inquired.
"Soon as dinner was over," responded Jake dryly.
"And supper will be ready soon. What in the name of wonder have you been
doing?" Harry looked around at Frank. "It's about three miles."
Jake grinned. "Coming along--and resting. This fellow kind of decided
he'd sit down every now and then, and I let him. He's a dog that's been
accustomed to doing just what he wants."
"Did you have to cross the creek?" asked Frank, who noticed that the
man's long boots and part of his trousers were wet.
"No," said Jake curtly. "The critter took a notion he'd like to go in,
and as I couldn't let him loose, I had to go in, too. We splashed
around in it for quite a few minutes."
Harry broke into a burst of laughter and Jake handed him the club. "I
want to get in by supper. Suppose you put a move on him."
He stood up and jerked the chain, but the dog bared his teeth again and
declined to stir. Harry, getting behind him, tapped him with the club,
and he swung round savagely, straining at the chain.
"Now," said Jake, "I know how we'll fix him. You make him mad and then
head for the ranch while he gets after you, and I'll try to hold him."
"No," said Harry decisively, "I don't think we'll try that way. Go on
and lead him."
The animal moved off at last and shambled toward the house, looking
bigger and considerably more clumsy than the largest bulldog Frank had
ever seen. He walked into the kitchen docilely, but when Miss Oliver
approached him Harry cried out in dismay.
"Keep away!" he warned. "He isn't safe."
"Loose the chain," said Miss Oliver, and to their vast astonishment the
dog walked up to her, wagging his disreputable tail, and crouching down,
licked her hands. She patted his great head gently and then turned
smilingly to the boys.
"I'm afraid Webster has been rough with him," she said. "It's clear that
he's a woman's dog."
"A woman's dog?" echoed Harry scathingly. "Well, the man who gave that
beast to a woman must have been crazy."
During the next few days the dog made himself at home at the ranch,
though with the exception of Miss Oliver he still eyed its inhabitants
suspiciously. Jake said that though almost fully grown he was young and
had no sense yet. Then the dog commenced to follow the boys about at a
distance, and once fell upon and destroyed their overall jackets which
they had taken off when they went to work. They found him sitting upon
the tatters, evidently feeling proud of himself, for he wagged his tail
and barked delightedly when they approached. As a rule, he did not make
much noise, but his growl was deep and ominous, with something in it
that discouraged any attempt at undue familiarity.
While they were ruefully inspecting their ruined garments Jake came up
and leaned against a neighboring tree.
"He wants training, Harry," he observed. "If he was my dog, I'd break
him in."
"The question," retorted Harry indignantly, "is how it's to be done.
I'll own up that I know very little about training dogs, and that's not
the kind of one I'd like to begin on." He turned to Frank. "Considering
that a good many of the ranchers live almost alone, it's rather a
curious thing that there are very few dogs in this part of the country."
Jake fixed his eyes dubiously upon the animal, who trotted up a little
nearer and growled at him.
"Well," he said, "he's sure a daisy, but I guess he can be taught, and
the first thing is to let him see you're not afraid of him."
Harry snickered. "Then suppose you try to prove it. Haul him up by the
ear and teach him he's not to eat my jacket."
Jake judiciously disregarded this suggestion. "There's one trick most
dogs learn quite easy. It's to guard. You put down some of your clothes,
for instance, and make him see that nobody's to touch them until you
come back. Then he'll sit tight until you do, and I guess in this
fellow's case there'd be mighty little wrong with the nerves of the man
who'd put a hand on them."
"If it's to be clothes they'll have to be somebody else's," said Harry.
"Anyway, I'll mention it to my aunt. It's my opinion she's the only
person who could teach him anything."
How Miss Oliver taught the dog they did not know, but she succeeded, for
when the boys walked up to the house at supper time one evening a week
or two later Harry, who reached the door first, came out hurriedly.
"The brute won't let me in," he explained. "I confess it sounds kind of
silly, but perhaps you'd like to try."
Frank approached the door cautiously and stopped when he reached it. The
dog crouched near the center of the kitchen floor, with a woman's straw
hat in front of him from which there trailed a couple of chewed-up
feathers. He looked up at Frank with a low, warning growl which said
very plainly, "Come no farther!"
They called him endearing names, which, so far as they could see, had
not the least effect, but neither of them felt equal to entering the
kitchen until Miss Oliver walked in by another door. Then the dog let
her take the hat, wagging his tail with satisfaction.
"He's a good deal more intelligent than you seem to think," she said.
"Give him your hat, Harry, and then go out and wait for a few minutes
before you come back for it."
Harry did so, and the dog made no trouble when he picked up the hat, but
he would not let Frank go near it in the meanwhile. After that they
tried two or three more experiments of the same kind, though Frank took
no part in them, which was a thing he regretted when he went for a swim
an evening or two later.
On this occasion the tide was almost full, the water in the cove was
pleasantly warm and bright sunlight streamed down upon it, showing the
white shingle a fathom beneath the surface. Now and then Frank went down
toward it, for he had learned to swim under water and look about him
while he did so, but by and by he headed for the entrance to the cove
with the overhand side stroke which Harry had taught him. Swinging his
left arm forward over his head, his face dipped under and then rose in
the midst of a ripple as his hollowed palm swept backward under his
crooked elbow to his thigh, while his legs swung across each other like
a pair of scissors. The brine gleamed and sparkled as it slipped past
him, and when he reached the entrance to the cove he slid up and down
the smooth, green undulations with a pleasant lift and fall. It was so
exhilarating that he went farther than he had intended, and he was
feeling a little breathless when at last he turned back, but when he
reached the spot where he had undressed trouble awaited him.
The dog was seated upon his clothing, watching him with suspicious eyes,
and it growled when he stood up knee-deep. Frank hesitated. The dog did
not look amiable, but he was beginning to feel cold, and he walked
slowly forward a pace or two. Then the creature raised itself on its
forepaws, with white fangs bare, and once more broke into a deep,
ominous growl. There was no doubt that it intended to guard his clothes.
He threw a piece of shingle at it and was glad on the whole that he had
not succeeded in hitting it when it stood up with bristling hair and a
most determined look in its eyes. Frank floundered back into the water,
wondering uneasily if it was coming in after him, and then standing
still up to his waist considered what he should do. It was evident that
he could not stay where he was much longer, and the dog showed no sign
of going away. It was equally impossible for him to walk back to the
ranch without his clothes, and in the meanwhile he was growing
unpleasantly chilly. Then he noticed that although the shadow of the
crags above rested upon the spot where he stood the sunshine fell upon a
boulder which rose out of the water not far away. Swimming to it he
crawled out and found it a little warmer there, but this brought him no
nearer to finding a way out of the difficulty.
He did not remember how long he lay shivering upon the stone, but the
shadow had crept across it and the tall firs above him showed up more
blackly against the evening light, when at last Harry came clattering
over the shingle and stopped in astonishment on seeing him.
"Whatever are you doing there?" he asked.
"Waiting until your dog goes home," said Frank. "He won't let me have my
clothes. If you hadn't come I expect I'd have to stay here until
to-morrow."
Harry couldn't help grinning when he observed the resolute animal.
"Wouldn't it have been easier to come out and whack him off?"
"No," said Frank decidedly. "If you were in my place you wouldn't want
to try."
Harry walked up to the creature and picked up the clothes, whereat it
rose immediately and wagged its tail as though satisfied in having done
its duty.
"He doesn't seem to mind me," Harry observed dryly. "Anyway, there's no
reason why you shouldn't come out now unless, of course, you're happier
where you are."
Frank swam across, dressed, and ran all the way to the ranch, but it was
half an hour before he was moderately warm again. The next day he set
about teaching the dog to guard. It occurred to him that it was not
desirable that Harry and Miss Oliver should be the only ones to whom the
animal would give any stray article of clothing he might come across.
A week or two later Miss Oliver went away on a visit to Tacoma, and Mr.
Oliver, who had bought a new mower, commenced to cut his timothy hay.
The machine could only work on the cleared land, and where the stumps
were thick he set the boys to mow with the scythe. Frank found it
troublesome work, for the big roots ran along the surface of the ground.
The fern had grown up among these roots, and it was their task to cut
and pick it out from the grass, while every few minutes the scythe point
struck a root and sometimes stuck in it. In places it struck gravel,
which made dents in it, and the blade often got entangled among shooting
willows and young fir saplings. Frank decided that while it was
evidently a costly and difficult thing to clear a ranch, it must be
almost as hard for its owner to keep what he had won, since the forest
persistently crept back again.
"Suppose you left this place alone for a couple of years?" he asked,
stopping to whet his dinted scythe.
"You wouldn't know it again," Harry answered with a smile. "It would be
a waste of willows, with young firs growing up between them. You
couldn't tell it from the bush, only that the trees all round would be
higher."
Frank dropped his scythe blade and leaned upon the haft. He had been
mowing since sunrise, and the shadows were now rapidly lengthening. His
back ached and his hands were sore, and he found it a relief to stand
still a moment and look about him. On one side of the clearing the
slanting sunrays struck deep into the forest, forcing up great columnar
trunks out of the shadow. On the other, the fretted pinnacles of the
firs cut sharp against the sky, and between stretched long swathes of
fallen timothy and fern already turning yellow. Not far away, Mr.
Oliver, sitting in the mower's saddle, was guiding his team along the
edge of the grass which fell beneath the rasping knife, and the clink
and rattle of the machine rang sharply through the still, evening air.
Frank, stripped to blue shirt and trousers, found everything his eyes
rested on pleasant, and he felt that, after all, he had done wisely when
he left the cities.
Then he noticed Jake, who had been to the settlement, crossing the
clearing with some letters in his hand. He gave them to Mr. Oliver, who
pulled his team up and sat still for some minutes reading them. After
that he stepped out and walked toward the boys.
"You might take the team along, Harry, and put the kettle on the stove,"
he said. "We'll have supper as soon as it's ready."
Harry moved away and Mr. Oliver leaned against a neighboring stump with
his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Frank.
"I've a letter from your mother," he said. "She wants to know if I'm
satisfied with you." He paused a moment and added with a smile: "That's
a question I think I can answer in the affirmative."
"Thank you, sir," said Frank.
"Then," Mr. Oliver continued, "she goes into one or two other matters on
which she seems to want my opinion. In the first place, somebody has
offered to find you an opening in the office of a Philadelphia business
firm. You'll have to decide about it, and it seems to me that the choice
is rather a big one. You see, if you stay out here ranching two or three
years it will probably spoil you for a business life in the eastern
cities."
Frank thought hard for a minute or two. There was no doubt that
ranching, when it included clearing land, as it generally seemed to do,
was remarkably arduous work. In the case of a man with little money it
evidently meant almost incessant toil, for it was only by persistent
effort that one could chop and saw up the great trees and grub the
stumps out. Still, he was growing fond of it, and, what was more, he was
conscious that he was gaining a resolution and muscular vigor that in
all probability he would never have acquired in the crowded cities.
Finally he looked up. "I don't think I would care to go back to them
now," he said.
Mr. Oliver nodded gravely. "Your mother doesn't seem to think a great
deal of this opening, but, on the other hand, you want to bear in mind
that if you expect to make money in ranching you must be able to invest
it. Raising cattle and fruit for sale is a trade, and a trader gets no
more than a certain interest on his money and the wages which an equally
capable managing clerk or foreman in the same profession would receive.
There are few respectable businesses in which that interest is a very
big one. As the result of this, the trader must be content with a little
unless he has the money to earn him more."
"Yes," said Frank somewhat ruefully, "that's clear. I'm afraid I can
hardly count on much."
"Your mother mentions that when you are three or four years older she
might perhaps be able to raise you about two thousand dollars."
"I suppose that wouldn't go very far, sir?"
"It certainly wouldn't buy you a ranch anywhere near a city, but you
might get land enough to make a small one back in the bush. If you
bought such a place, you would probably have to go out and work at one
of the sawmills or logging camps now and then. It would be several years
before you could make much of a living, because it would cost you so
much to bring your stock to market."
"Yes," said Frank. "I suppose that is why the land would be cheap?"
Mr. Oliver made a sign of assent. "It's a difficulty which is, however,
usually got over in this country. You hold on and cultivate your land,
and by and by the market comes to you. Somebody starts a sawmill or a
pulp mill in the locality, or, if there's ore about, a smelter. New
trails are cut, settlements spring up, and presently a branch railroad
comes along, and the rancher can sell everything he can raise." He broke
off for a moment, and smiled rather dryly. "In such a case you may get
big prices, but if you average them out over the years of working and
waiting, you'll find you have earned them, and that, after all, the
stuff you sell is mighty cheap."
Then he handed Frank the letter. "I'd consider it carefully. The mail
won't leave for the next three days, and now we'll go along to supper."
Harry had managed to prepare a meal, and when it was over Mr. Oliver
turned to the boys.
"A friend of mine in Victoria has written asking me to look at a big
piece of bush land he thinks of buying on the west coast of Vancouver
Island. He offers to pay my expenses and a fee, and I've an idea that we
might run across in the sloop if we get moderately fine weather after
the hay is in. I wonder if you would like to go with me?"
There was no doubt that the prospect appealed to them and Mr. Oliver
smiled his approval.
"Then," he said, "you had better hustle that hay in. We'll start as soon
as we're through with it."
CHAPTER X
A BREEZE OF WIND
The hay was almost in when Frank and Harry stood one evening close under
the apex of the roof in the log barn. The crop was heavy and because the
barn was small it had been their business during the afternoon to spread
and trample down the grass Jake flung up to them. They had been working
at high pressure at one task or another since soon after daylight that
morning, and now the confined space was very hot, though the sun was
low. Its slanting rays smote the cedar shingles above their bent heads,
and the dust that rose from the grass floated about them in a cloud and
clung to their dripping faces. Frank felt that the veins on his forehead
were swollen when they paused a moment for breath, leaning on their
forks.
"I suppose we could get a couple more loads in, and there can't be more
than that," said Harry dubiously. "I wouldn't mind a great deal if the
next jumperful upset."
Frank devoutly wished it would, for he felt that he must get out into
the open air, but a few moments later they heard the plodding oxen's
feet and the groaning of the clumsy sled. The sounds ceased abruptly and
Jake's voice reached them.
"Tramp it down good!" he called. "You've got to squeeze in this lot and
another."
Frank choked down the answer which rose to his lips. But the hay must be
got in, and the boys fell with their forks upon the first of the
crackling grass Jake flung up to them. There seemed to be more dust in
it than usual, and before the jumper was half unloaded they were
panting heavily. When at last the oxen hauled the sled away they stood
doubled up knee-deep in the hay with their backs close against the roof.
"I can't see how we're to make room for the last lot," Harry gasped.
"Still, I guess it has to be done."
They set to work again, packing the hay into corners and stamping it
down, and his occupation reminded Frank of what he had heard about
mining in a thin seam of coal. It seemed hotter than ever, the dust was
choking, and at every incautious move he bumped his head or shoulders
against the beams. The last sled arrived before they were ready for it,
and they crawled about half buried, dragging the grass here and there
with their hands and ramming it with their feet and knees into any odd
spaces left. At length the work was finished, and wriggling toward the
opening in the wall, Harry caught at the edge of it and finding a
foothold on a log beneath boldly leaped down. Frank was, however, less
fortunate when he followed his companion, for some of the hay slipped
away beneath him, and, without the least intention of leaving the barn
in that undignified fashion, he suddenly shot out through the hole. He
felt the air rush past him, and then, somewhat to his astonishment,
found himself on the ground, none the worse except for the jar of the
fall.
"If I'd tried to do that it's very likely I'd have broken my leg," he
panted.
He sat down and threw off his hat. It was delightful to feel the breeze
upon his dripping face and to be out in the fresh air again. He had been
at work for fourteen hours, and was aching all over, but that did not
trouble him. The hay was safely in, and there was some satisfaction in
the feeling that he had done his part in a heavy piece of work. Looking
about him he noticed that the shadow of the firs had crept half across
the clearing, and that thin wisps of fleecy cloud were streaming by
high above their tall black tops. Then he heard Harry speaking to his
father.
"There's a smart southerly breeze, and the tide is running ebb," he was
saying. "What's the matter with starting for Victoria right away?"
"Haven't you done enough for to-day?" Mr. Oliver asked with a smile.
"I don't feel as fresh as I did this morning," Harry admitted. "Anyway,
when we've got a fair wind and three or four hours' ebb going with us,
it would be a pity not to make the most of them."
Mr. Oliver looked doubtful. "I'm anxious to get away, because, as I've
arranged to meet a man in Victoria, we'll have to take the steamer
unless we can slip across very shortly. I've an idea that we may get
more wind than we'll have any use for before sun-up. Still, we could run
in behind the point at Bannington's, if it was necessary."
Then Jake broke in: "If you're going, I'll get supper and pack some
bread and pork along to the sloop."
Mr. Oliver assented, and an hour later they paddled off to the sloop.
The dog jumped into the canoe with them, and when they got on board he
quietly sat down on the floorings while Jake helped the boys to hoist
the mainsail. When they came to the jib Mr. Oliver stood up on the deck
looking about him.
"I think we'd better have the smaller one," he advised.
They were ready at length, and Jake, who was to stay behind, called the
dog as he was about to jump into the canoe. Harry was busy forward just
then with the mooring chain in his hand and the loose jib thrashing
about him, while the big mainboom jerked over Mr. Oliver's head as he
sat at the helm. The dog, however, showed no signs of moving.
"Give him a shove," said Jake, addressing Frank. "When he gets up on
deck, pitch him in."
Frank turned toward the dog, and then stopped abruptly when it showed
its teeth and growled.
"It looks as if he meant to go along," Jake remarked with a grin. "Prod
him with the boathook if he won't move."
Frank was dubious, as he imagined the dog might resent the prodding. At
that moment Harry, who had been too busy to notice what was going on,
hauled up the weather sheet of the jib.
"I'm clear," he called to his father. "I'll cant her head to lee when
you're ready."
Mr. Oliver put the helm up as the bows swung around, and when the sloop
slanted over Jake made a futile grab at the dog. Then shouting to Frank,
he dropped into the canoe and clutched the rail as the sloop forged
ahead, but the boy was busy with the mainsheet and did not look up. In
another moment Jake let go. Almost immediately afterward the sloop came
round, and when she stretched away toward the mouth of the cove the
canoe dropped astern.
"Stand by your jibsheets," called Mr. Oliver. "We'll have to come round
again."
They were very busy during the next few minutes, for the cove was narrow
and the wind was blowing in. When at length they swept out into the open
water the dog crawled up to Harry and licked his hands. Harry looked at
his father, who made a little sign of assent.
"I suppose he'll have to stay," he sighed. "When that dog decides on
doing anything it's wise to let him do it. Now we'll square off the
mainboom."
They let the sheet run until the big mainsail swung right out, and the
sloop drove away, rolling viciously. Short, foam-flecked seas came
tumbling after her, but as the tide was running the same way under them,
lessening the resistance, very few broke angrily. Frank had learned
enough by this time, however, to realize that it would probably be
different when the stream turned. In the meanwhile the boat was sailing
very fast, with a little ridge of frothing water washing by on either
side when she lifted, and a thin shower of spray blowing all over her.
Now and then the great sail with the heavy boom beneath it swung upward
in an alarming fashion. Frank noticed that Mr. Oliver's eyes were gazing
intently before him, and that his hands were clenched tightly upon the
tiller.
"She seems rather bad to steer," he said.
"Yes," said Mr. Oliver, without looking up. "You have to be careful when
you're running before a fresh breeze. It's remarkably easy to bring the
mainsail over with a bang if you let her fall off too much, and the
result of that would probably be to tear the mast out of her. It's
considerably worse when there's a big sea coming along behind."
Frank glanced astern. The sun had gone and the sky was strewn with ranks
of hurrying clouds, while the sea was flecked with smears of white.
"Aren't you pressing her a little?" Harry asked. "She'd be easier on the
helm if we lowered the peak or tied a reef in."
"I'd like to pick up the Hootalquin reef before it's dark," answered Mr.
Oliver. "I'm not sure we'll get very much farther to-night. You wanted a
sail, and I fancy you're going to be gratified."
During the next hour Frank had to admit that this remark was warranted.
The breeze steadily freshened, and there was no doubt that the sea was
rising. It frothed in a white hillock on either side of the boat, and
little trails of foam swirled about her deck. Frank could see that she
was overburdened by the sail she was carrying, but Mr. Oliver still sat
with a set face at the tiller and showed no desire to leave his post. In
the meanwhile it was getting dark. Forest and beach had faded to a
faint, shadowy blur and there was only a steadily narrowing stretch of
foaming water in front of them. Frank was very wet and the spray beat
upon him continually. At length, when the light had almost gone, a dusky
patch of something grew out of the gathering gloom ahead, and fancying
it to be a rocky point, he felt considerably relieved, because there
would be shelter behind it. A minute or two later Mr. Oliver called to
the boys.
"Get forward and ease the peak down," he ordered. "Then back the jib.
We'll tie two reefs in."
"Aren't we going in here?" Harry asked.
His father shook his head. "No, it's too dark. I could take her through
in the daylight, but there are one or two rocks in the channel. We'll
have to try for Bannington's."
Frank felt a twinge of disappointment. Bannington's was still a good way
off, and it seemed to him that the gale was increasing every moment. He
scrambled forward with Harry, however, and when they loosened the rope
the tall peak of the sail swung down. Soon after they had done this Mr.
Oliver put down his helm, causing the mainboom to jerk and thrash to and
fro furiously, while as the boat came up head to wind a white sea struck
her side and foamed on board her.
"Handy with the throat!" shouted Mr. Oliver. "I don't want to leave the
helm."
They slacked another rope, making the gaff sink farther down, after
which they tied up about a yard of the inner bottom corner of the sail
to the foot of the mast. This was comparatively easy, but it was
different when, standing in the water on the lee deck, they grabbed the
tackle beneath the boom and endeavored to pull the leach, or outer edge,
of the mainsail down. It would not come, and the heavy spar struck them
as it jerked in board, flinging Frank off into the well.
"Get another pull on your topping lift," ordered Mr. Oliver.
They jumped forward to do it, but it proved no easy task, for they had
to raise the outer end of the heavy boom. They were struggling with the
tackle again when Mr. Oliver laid both hands on the rope.
"Now," he shouted, "heave, and bowse her down!"
They succeeded this time, and afterward hung out over the water while
they knotted the reef-points beneath the spar. Then when they had
trimmed the jib over Mr. Oliver put up his helm and the sloop drove on
again into the darkness with shortened sail.
The boys sat down as far under the side deck as they could get, out of
the worst of the spray, with the dog crouching in the water which washed
about the floorings at their feet.
"Why didn't your father help us more than he did?" Frank asked
presently.
"He couldn't leave the tiller for more than a moment or two," said
Harry. "When Jake and I reefed her the day we took you off the steamer
there wasn't as much wind. Of course, there are boats in which you can
lash the helm, but that's not always possible. If dad had let go the
tiller she'd have fallen off and started sailing, which would have
dragged the tackle from our hands or pitched us in, and then she'd have
come up again banging and shaking. He kept her heading so that the
mainsail was lifting slack with no weight in it."
Frank was commencing to realize that the handling of a sailboat was
rather a fine art. It is as much of a machine as a steamer, but it is
also of the kind whose efficiency depends directly upon the human eye,
hand and brain. Man has evolved a number of such instruments, and in the
right hands they are far more wonderful than the others. Any one, for
instance, can learn the pianola, but to extract fine music from a
Cremona violin is a very different matter.
It blew steadily harder, and there was, as Frank noticed, a difference
in the sea, for the flood stream was now setting up against them and
was growing shorter and more turbulent. There was a smaller interval
between the waves, which seemed to become steeper and less regular. They
curled over and broke about the boat with a sound that reacted
unpleasantly upon Frank's nerves, and he was thankful that he could,
after all, see very little of them. The sloop's motion also changed. One
moment she seemed to be moving almost slowly, and the next she swung up
in a quick, savage rush, with her bows in the air and the white foam
boiling high about her. Sometimes, too, there was a thud and a splash
astern, and the decks were swept by a deluge of seething water.
In the meanwhile the boys had contrived to light a lamp in a little box
which held a compass, and they laid it on the thwart before Mr. Oliver,
though, as he explained in a word or two, it was particularly difficult
to steer an exact course in a sea of that kind. It was on the boat's
quarter, that is, she was traveling with the wind almost behind her at a
long slant across the course of the waves, but each time an extra big
wave foamed up astern Mr. Oliver let her fall off and run right down
wind with it to prevent its breaking on board.
Frank wondered how he did it, for the seas were following them and it
was quite dark, but Mr. Oliver had no need to look around. He had for
guides the sound of the oncoming seas, the pull of the tiller, and the
motion of the boat, and, besides, from long experience his brain worked
sub-consciously. He did not pause to consider when the bows climbed out
and the stern sank down in a rush of foam, and had he done so, in all
probability he would have brought the big mainboom smashing over. To run
a fore-and-aft rigged craft, and a sloop in particular, before a badly
breaking sea, is a difficult and somewhat perilous thing, and the
ability to do it comes only from long acquaintance with the water, and,
perhaps, from something in the helmsman's nature.
The boat sped on furiously, though they presently lowered the peak down
to reduce the sail further, and by degrees Frank became conscious of an
unpleasant nervous tension that seemed to sap away his hardihood. There
was nothing to do in the meanwhile, but he felt that if he were called
upon for any difficult or hazardous service he would find himself
incapable of it. He was drenched and shivering, and he did not want to
move. He only wished to cower beside Harry under the partial shelter of
the coaming. This was, however, a feeling that other folks occasionally
experience who go to sea in small vessels, which they have to grapple
with and overcome. It is when there is no particular call on him, and he
can only stand by and watch, that terror gets its strongest hold on the
heart of a man.
At length Mr. Oliver called to the boys. "We must be close abreast of
Bannington's," he said. "The end of the point should be to leeward. Get
forward, Harry, where you can see out beneath the jib."
Frank followed his companion as he crawled up on the little deck. He did
not want to seem afraid, but he held on tight with one hand when they
knelt in the water that splashed about them. He could see the frothy
seas beneath the black curve of the jib, but for what seemed a very long
while there was nothing else. Then Harry suddenly raised his voice.
"Point's right ahead!" he sang out, and the next moment jumped to his
feet. "There's a black patch a little to weather."
"Up peak for your lives!" cried Mr. Oliver.
He left the helm with a bound, and all three struggled desperately with
a rope, while as the bagged mainsail extended and straightened out a sea
broke on board the boat. Then they floundered aft and dragged in the
mainsheet with all their might, after which Mr. Oliver jumped for the
helm again, while the boys flattened in the jib.
"We're the wrong side of the point," gasped Harry. "I'm not sure she'll
beat round it."
There was no difficulty in imagining what was likely to happen if she
failed to do so, and Frank, who did not think she would last long if she
washed up among the boulders before the sea that was running, clung to
the coaming in a state of tense suspense. What seemed to be a continuous
sheet of spray whirled about him, the boat slanted over at an alarming
angle with half her lee deck in the sea, and the tops of the confused
breaking waves through which she plunged washed all over her. This was
sailing with a vengeance, and a very different thing from lounging at
the tiller while she swung smoothly across the water before a fair wind.
She was now thrashing to windward for her life, with the full weight of
the sea on her weather bow and a foam-swept reef lying in wait close to
lee of her, and whether she would claw off it or not depended largely
upon her helmsman's skill.
Frank could see him dimly, a black shape gripping the tiller, and he was
unpleasantly aware of the fact that there would speedily be an end of
them all if he lost his nerve for a moment or made a blunder. It happens
now and then at sea that the safety of crew and vessel hangs upon the
brute strength of human muscle and the simple valor which enables a man
to do what is required of him on the moment without flinching; empty
assurance and a consequential air are of uncommonly little service then.
Such occasions are a very grim test of manhood, and, as a rule, it is
not the loud talker who best stands that strain.
Frank admitted afterward that he was badly scared, which was not in the
least unnatural. It was more important that he should nevertheless
realize that it was his business to trim the jib over when this was
necessary. His companion, who was gazing to leeward, presently raised
his voice.
"Broken water close ahead," he announced.
"Stand by your jib!" shouted Mr. Oliver. "We must try to heave her
around."
Frank let the lee sheet run, groping deep in the water for it as Mr.
Oliver put down the helm, and with a frantic thrashing of canvas the
sloop came up into the wind. There was a moment of suspense during which
she seemed to stop, and the boy felt his heart thumping furiously. He
knew that if she fell off again on the previous tack nothing could save
her from going ashore. Suddenly he heard Harry call to him.
"Haul it up!" he shouted. "We have to box her off."
Frank hauled with all his might, and the thrashing of the head sail
ceased. It caught the wind, and a sea fell upon the boat as the bows
swung around. Then they jumped to the opposite side of her and struggled
desperately to haul the lee sheet in as she forged ahead again, after
which there was nothing to do but wait and wonder if she was driving in
toward the shore or working out toward open water. They stood on for
half an hour, seeing nothing, and then came round half-swamped, only to
stagger away on the opposite tack, running once more into horribly
broken water. As they did so Harry shouted that there were boulders, the
end of the point, he fancied, close to lee.
"She won't come about in the rabble," said Mr. Oliver.
It was evident that they must now either scrape around the point on that
tack or go ashore, and Frank felt his nerves tingle as he gazed into the
spray. He fancied that there was something black and solid beyond it,
but could distinguish nothing further. Then the blackness faded, the sea
seemed to become a little more regular, and Harry cried out hoarsely,
"We're round!"
"Down peak!" called Mr. Oliver. "We'll have to jibe her."
Frank had learned that to jibe a boat is to turn her around stern to
wind, instead of head-on, which is the usual way, and scrambling forward
with Harry he helped lower the peak. After that they again floundered
aft, leaving the mainsail reduced in size, and grabbed the sheet as Mr.
Oliver put up his helm. The bows swung around as the boat went up with a
sea, and the big boom tilted high up into the darkness above the boys.
They struggled savagely with the sheet, which slightly restrained it,
until the boat rolled suddenly down upon her side as the sail jerked
over and the rope was torn swiftly through their hands. There was a
crash and a bang, and Frank was conscious that the water was pouring
over the coaming. He clung to the sheet, however, and while Mr. Oliver
helped them with one hand they got a little of it in, after which the
sloop, rising somewhat, drove forward. A few minutes later the sea
suddenly became smoother, the wind seemed cut off, and Frank made out a
black mass of rock rising close above t
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