A golden morning followed the day of storm. A golden morning on the
Columbia river! Still, the lads were in no mood to enjoy the beauties of
Nature as shown in her wilder moods. The _Rambler_, as has been said,
was stuck fast in the mud, some distance from the ever-receding water.
“The rocks are showing again,” Alex observed, looking down the river
with the glasses, “and it looks as if there were falls ahead.”
“The Columbia river,” Case grumbled, “seems to me to be pretty sudden.
She climbs up a couple of rods one day and drops down the next. I wish
she’d kept up until we got through this valley.”
“That’s all the fun of it!” Alex insisted. “If you want to live a life
of idle pleasure, just you go and get into a scow on a country
mill-pond. We came out here for adventures, didn’t we?”
“From the looks of things,” Case continued, “we ought to have brought a
house-moving machine with us. How are we ever going to get this boat
back into the river. We might hunt and fish here until another flood
comes along,” he added with sarcasm in his tone.
“That would suit me, all right,” Alex returned. “I don’t care how long
we remain here. There’s plenty of game in the woods, and, now that you
have learned to make bread, we are not likely to starve to death.”
Clay who had been roaming around in the sticky soil which the river had
deposited on the inundated lands, now came rushing up to the boat.
“Get out the rifle!” he said, speaking softly to Case. “There’s a fine
deer back there in the thicket. We’ll have venison for dinner.”
All was excitement in a moment. Case brought out the magazine rifle, and
all three started for the thicket where Clay had seen the deer. Captain
Joe was left in the cabin, with instructions to devour any stranger who
should try to scrape his acquaintance.
The boys walked cautiously for a short distance, then Clay stopped and
pointed to a dense growth of bushes and brambles just ahead. Out of the
tangle lifted the head of a deer.
“Why doesn’t she run?” asked Alex in a whisper.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Clay replied. “She stood just like that
when I went away to get the rifle. She must have heard me working my way
through the undergrowth. Maybe she’s dead—killed standing!”
“Dead!” Alex grinned. “Don’t you see her move her head? There, she’s
pulled it down now, so there’s nothing to be seen of her. Did you ever
see handsomer eyes in a creature’s head?” he added.
“Looked like she was asking us to come and help her,” Case declared.
“I noticed that,” Clay mentioned. “I wonder what is the matter with her.
I’m going in there to see. Keep still, you fellows.”
Clay crawled through the thicket on his hands and knees, parting the
bushes right and left, and making as little noise as possible. Directly
he lifted a hand out of the undergrowth and motioned for Case and Alex
to follow him. The deer had again raised her head above the tangle and
stood looking at the boys with pleading eyes.
“Never saw anything like that!” Alex muttered as he made his way through
the bushes. “I never knew a deer could look a fellow in the face that
way. I though they’d run away. Maybe she’s hurt.”
When they came up to where Clay lay in the thicket they found the deer
only a few feet away, standing over something lying on the ground.
“Why doesn’t she run?” asked Case. “What kind of a deer is that? She
must be foolish in the head most of the time.”
“Slang! You’ll wash dishes!” declared Alex.
“No slang about it,” reiterated Case. “That’s just plain talk.”
“Can’t you see what the trouble is?” asked Clay. “There is a young fawn
there, caught in the briars, and the mother won’t leave it.”
“I can see it now!” Alex cried. “Pretty little thing!”
“That will make good eating, too,” Clay observed, turning his face away
as he spoke. “Come, now, who’s going to shoot first? Better shoot to
kill, for the deer may run away when she hears the report.”
Case and Alex looked at each other an instant and then sat down on the
ground and watched Clay, who was still looking the other way.
“I don’t believe I want any venison,” Alex exclaimed.
“I never did like venison!” was Case’s comment on the situation.
Clay turned and looked his chums over in mock anger.
“Just when I find a deer for you!” he cried. “Just when you’ve got a
chance you may never have again, you go and back out. What’s the matter
with you boys? Think the deer is not fit for food?”
“I’ve lost my appetite for venison, that’s all,” Case explained. “You
can shoot if you want to. Shoo! Shoo! Shoo, deer!”
He arose and waved his hands at the animal, shouting at the top of his
voice. The deer stepped away a few paces but came back at the bleat of
the fawn. Clay regarded the boy with an amused smile.
“You tell me I can shoot, and then you go and scare her away,” he
complained. “What is getting into you boys?”
“Did you see her eyes?” asked Alex. “If you shoot her we’ll leave you
here in the wilderness. I’m going to see what’s the matter with the
little fawn. Is this the time of year for fawns?”
The other boys answered that they did not know, and Alex said that he
didn’t think it was. But there was the fawn, with the mother watching
over it, whether it was the baby deer season or not. The deer bounded
away as Alex approached, but stood watching as he lifted the fawn.
“Just got wound up in vines!” the boy cried. “Come and see what a clever
little chap it is! Wish I could keep it.”
“Nix! Not on our boat! Not with the mother looking at us like that!”
declared Case, who had stepped up to the fawn.
The little creature was soon untangled, and set down in a clear space as
near to the mother as the boys could get. The deer did not seem to fear
the boys, for she stood nosing over the baby for a long time. Then she
led him away into the forest. Clay insists to this day that she bowed
her thanks as the bushes closed behind her!
“There!” Clay shouted, in pretended anger. “You’ve gone and let many a
supper get away from us. What do you mean by letting that deer run away
in that manner? You’re nice fellows to go hunting with!”
“Run after her and murder her if you want to,” Alex remarked. “The woods
are open to you, and you have the rifle. Go on and do it!”
Clay laughed in a bashful manner. Someway boys never do like to let
others know that they are possessed of sentiment!
“I wouldn’t shoot that deer, not if I was starving!” he said. “I would
always see her eyes looking out of the shade at me!”
“Don’t you ever think I didn’t know that!” Alex answered. “I guess we
are a lot of babies, after all. Now we’ll have to eat bear meat for
dinner, I can eat bear, for the bear would have eaten us if he had had
half a chance. But the next thing is to get the _Rambler_ into the
river. That won’t be no merry picnic, I can tell you. Wish we had left
her in.”
The boys made the boat as light as possible and then worked her along
with handspikes cut from the woods. It was slow work, and many a time
they stopped to breathe and joke over the job. Alex finally suggested
that they put the wheels under and so make easier work of it.
“In this muck!” laughed Clay. “Why, those wheels would sink into this
mess up to the hubs, and we should never be able to move them. No, we’ve
just got to nudge her along in this way until we get to the slope that
leads down to the river, and then she’ll go easier.”
It was noon before the prow dropped into the water. The boys were tired
and disgusted, but they had been taught a lesson which they did not soon
forget. They were lifted to banks by floods after that, but they did not
permit the _Rambler_ to lie there until the current ran out from under
her! After dinner they started the motors again and speeded down stream.
The country was still wild on both sides of the Columbia, and the boys
took plenty of time passing through it. There were many things to see
and, besides, they still had half-hearted hopes that Gran would come
back to them before they left that valley.
But Gran never showed up. The last thing they had seen that reminded
them of him—aside from the half-conscious remembrance of the boy that
was always in their minds—was the wreck of the rowboat which had drifted
down the river during that day of the flood.
It was a week before they came to the great bend of the Columbia. Here
they found stores and traders’ houses. They camped out on the batik of
Canoe river and remained there two days, laying in provisions and
getting acquainted with the people. During their stay there many came to
look over the _Rambler_, and every one lifted brows in disbelief when
told that the beat had found her way through the two long and dangerous
rapids which lay above.
The boys made no attempt to remove the disbelief from their minds. It
really did look like a pretty stiff yarn, so they let it go, loaded in
their purchases, and turned the boat south on the great river, about two
hundred miles above Upper Arrow lake.
At Boat Encampment the boys had asked, quietly, of course, if any man
answering the description of the long-armed fellow who had appeared and
disappeared so suddenly had been seen thereabouts, but no one seemed to
have seen him, or to have seen a boy answering Gran’s description. It
was said that any one passing the place would be certain to be observed,
so the boys sailed away with the notion that the two were still up the
river.
There followed a number of restful days on a smooth river. There were
rapids and falls, of course, but nothing to bring the lads into peril of
their lives. They loitered along with the current, stopping at night and
often not starting on again until the middle of the day.
The boys will never forget those golden days. They fished and hunted,
sat around roaring campfires at night, slept in the warm sunshine when
inclined, and read stories of that wonderful land. There was only one
trouble over which they brooded.
Gran had disappeared. During the time he had shared the cabin with the
boys, since he had come to them so mysteriously at the summit pass, he
had endeared himself to them all. Beside the loneliness they felt at his
sudden departure, there was always the undefinable feeling that he might
be in serious trouble and expecting them to come to him.
“If we knew that he had left us voluntarily,” Clay said, one day, “we
might be able to drop him out of our minds, but we don’t know that. In
fact, it seems to me that he was forced away.”
“But he wasn’t tied in the boat,” Alex argued. “I guess he might have
jumped out when he came to the _Rambler_. We would have shot that
long-armed humbug to pieces if he had tried to stop him.”
“There are ways of forcing a fellow along besides tying him up and
carrying him off,” Clay replied. “The man we saw him with may have some
grip on him which we do not understand. We’ll have to wait.”
“That old train robber!” cried Alex. “What kind of a hold could he have
on Gran? I just believe the boy was afraid to stir when he passed the
_Rambler_ that day. Wish I’d shot that big stiff!”
“Besides,” Clay went on. “Gran passed us that note. It was hastily
ended, as if he had been interrupted in writing it. And when he threw it
out into the river he made sure that the man who was rowing did not see
the movement.”
“The sneaking hold-up man!” Case broke in, angrily.
“We don’t know anything about him,” Clay concluded. “We have no proof
that he assisted in robbing the train. In fact, we know that he did not,
for he was on the train that carried us into Donald.”
“But he might have put up the job,” insisted Alex.