CHAPTER XVII

CLAWED BY AN ANGRY BEAR

The first day of June saw the party safely in Fort Hamlin, having landed from the mail boat. The captain had shown a very great eagerness to be rid of them, as their presence reminded him of an incident in his trip which he preferred to forget.

"I am glad to have met you, sir," said the little officer to Rivers, as the geological party went over the side to their two canoes, "and to have been able to a.s.sist you thus far. But, sir, I trust the next time you have occasion to board a United States vessel, sir, you will not deem it necessary to adopt such summary proceedings."

"I am sorry, Captain," said Rivers, "but there really did not seem to be any other way of stopping you, and it was necessary."

The little skipper waved his hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and the jokester jumped out of the canoe to aid in running her up on the bank.

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

At the end of the first day he felt pretty well exhausted, but he had not shown a sign of letting up throughout the work. He hoped to be toughened up by next morning, but when daylight came his muscles were so sore and tender that he could not bear to touch them with his finger.

None the less, he gritted his teeth and settled down to his work, remembering from past athletic experience that in an hour or so he would limber up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The story!" demanded Roger peremptorily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He thought that when the bear saw him charging for her it would cause her to pause, and a few seconds' delay would enable him to get his rifle and he ran a chance of dropping her in her tracks. It was his only hope.

But the brute never stopped in her rush, and when the hunter reached the gun she was only twenty feet away.

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

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

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