TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
[Illustration: He glanced down the rifle barrel and then as his finger
pressed the trigger the report roared.
(_Page 219_) (_The Border Boys In the Canadian Rockies_)]
THE BORDER BOYS
IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES
By FREMONT B. DEERING
AUTHOR OF
“The Border Boys on the Trail,” “The Border Boys
Along the Frontier,” “The Border Boys with the
Mexican Rangers,” “The Border Boys with the
Texas Rangers,” “The Border Boys Along
the St. Lawrence.”
[Illustration]
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Printed in U. S. A.
Copyright, 1913
BY
HURST & COMPANY
MADE IN U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE BOY FROM NOWHERE 5
II. THE TORRENT 16
III. IN PERIL OF HIS LIFE 25
IV. JIMMIE’S PLUCK 35
V. THE START FOR THE ROCKIES 45
VI. ALONG THE TRAIL 55
VII. TREED BY A LYNX 63
VIII. A WALKING PINCUSHION 72
IX. A MOUNTAIN MYSTERY 81
X. THE PONIES VANISH 96
XI. RALPH’S VOLCANO 103
XII. JUST IN TIME 114
XIII. BOYS AND A GRIZZLY 124
XIV. A CAVERN OF MYSTERY 132
XV. THE HUT IN THE WOODS 140
XVI. “UNDERGROUND!” 149
XVII. A DESPERATE CHANCE 156
XVIII. FACING GRIM DEATH 171
XIX. A STORM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 180
XX. PRISONERS! 192
XXI. INDIANS 200
XXII. AN ENCOUNTER WITH “BLOODS” 210
XXIII. FIGHTING MOUNTAIN LIONS 219
XXIV. “BITTER CREEK JONES” 229
XXV. THE OUTLAW RANCH 243
XXVI. CARTHEW OF “THE MOUNTED” 254
XXVII. THE TROOPER’S STORY 268
XXVIII. AFTER MOUNTAIN GOATS 275
XXIX. JIMMIE FINDS A FATHER 287
XXX. THE MYSTERY SOLVED 300
The Border Boys in the
Canadian Rockies
CHAPTER I.
THE BOY FROM NOWHERE.
“Hold on there a minute! Don’t you think you’re being unnecessarily
rough with that boy?”
“Naw, I don’t. And if I am, it ain’t none of your business that I can
see.”
“Perhaps I mean to make it so.”
“Aw run along and play, kid. Don’t bother me.”
The brakeman glared angrily at the tall, well-built lad who had
accosted him. In so doing, he for an instant ceased belaboring a
dust-covered, cowering lad in pitifully ragged clothing whom, a moment
before, he had been cuffing about the head without mercy.
“Take that, you young tramp!” he had hurled out savagely, as each blow
fell on the quivering form.
The boy receiving this unmerciful punishment had been discovered riding
the blind-baggage on the long, dust-covered train of Canadian Pacific
coaches that had just come to a stop.
Of course the boy had been summarily ejected, and the brakeman was
now engaged in what he would have termed “dusting the young rascal’s
jacket.”
It was a pitiful sight, though, to see the slender, emaciated lad,
whose rags hardly covered his thin body, and who could not have
been much above sixteen, cowering under the punishment of the burly
trainman. The brakeman was not of necessity a brute. But in his eyes
the lad was “a miserable tramp,” and only getting his just dues. To
more humane eyes, though, the scene appeared in a different light.
Some of the passengers, gazing from the windows, had ventured to cry,
“Shame,” but that was all that had come of it till Ralph Stetson, who
had been standing with a group of his friends at the other end of
the platform of the Pine Pass station, in the heart of the Canadian
Rockies, happened to see what was going forward. Without a word he
had hastened from them and come to the rescue. Ralph was a boy whose
blood always was on fire at the sight of cruelty and oppression,
and it appeared to him that the brakeman was being unnecessarily
rough. Besides, there was something in the big, appealing eyes of
the sufferer, and his ragged, ill-clad form, that aroused all his
sympathies. So it came about that he had tried to check the punishment
with the words quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
Now he stood facing the brakeman who appeared quite willing for a
minute to drop the lad he was maltreating and turn on the newcomer.
Perhaps, though, there was something in Ralph’s eye that held him back.
Old “King-pin” Stetson’s son looked thoroughly business-like in his
broad-brimmed woolen hat, corduroy jacket and trousers, stout hunting
boots and flannel shirt, with a handkerchief loosely knotted about the
neck. Evidently he had come prepared to rough it in the wild country in
the midst of which the train had come to a halt.
His life and experiences in the strenuous country along the Mexican
border had toughened Ralph’s muscles and bronzed his features, and he
looked well equipped physically to carry out the confidence expressed
in his cool, clear eyes.
“Who are you, anyhow?” the brakeman hurled at him, growing more
aggressive as he saw some of his mates running toward him from the head
of the long train where the two big Mogul locomotives were thundering
impatiently.
“Never mind that for now. Drop that boy and I’ll pay his fare to
wherever he wants to go.”
“Well, you are a softy! Pay a tramp’s fare? Let me tell you,
mister----”
“Say, going to hold this train all day?” demanded the conductor
bustling up. “What’s all this?”
“This kid got on the train in the night some place. Bin ridin’ the
blind baggage. I was giving him ‘what for’ when this other kid butts
in,” explained the brakeman.
“I said I was willing to pay this boy’s fare rather than see him
abused,” struck in Ralph, flushing slightly.
“Well, that’s fair and square,” said the conductor, “so long as he pays
his fare, that’s all I care. But I ain’t goin’ to hold my train. Where
d’ye want to go, boy?”
“This is Pine Pass, ain’t it?” demanded the ride stealer, whom the
brakeman had now released.
“This is the Pass,--yes. Come, hurry up.”
“Then I’ve come all the fur I’m goin’.”
As if to signify that his interest was over, the conductor waved his
hand to the engineers peering from their cabs ahead. The brakemen
scampered for their cars. The locomotives puffed and snorted and the
long train began to move. As the conductor swung on he called back
sarcastically:
“Sorry we couldn’t wait while you fixed it up. Wish you joy of your
bargain.”
In another instant the train was swinging around into a long cut
between deep, rocky walls. In yet another instant it was gone, and
Ralph Stetson, with a rather puzzled expression on his good-looking
face, stood confronting the scarecrow-like object he had rescued from
the brakeman. In the tenement-house district of any large city the
pitiful figure might not have looked out of place.
But here, in the Canadian Rockies, with a boiling, leaping torrent
racing under a slender trestle, great scraps of rocks and pine and
balsam-clad mountains towering above, and in the distance the mighty
peaks of the Selkirks looming against the clean-swept blue, the
spectacle that this waif of the big towns presented seemed almost
ludicrous in its contrast. Ralph felt it so at least, for he smiled a
little as he looked at the disreputable figure before him and asked:
“What are you doing at Pine Pass?”
The question was certainly a natural one. Besides the tiny station,
no human habitation was in sight. Above it, threatening to crush it
seemingly, towered a precipice of dark colored rock. Beyond this rose
mighty pines, cliffs, waterfalls and, finally, climbing fields of snow.
Everywhere peaks and summits loomed with a solitary eagle wheeling far
above. In the air was the thunderous voice of the torrent as it tumbled
along under the spidery trestle beyond the station, and the sweet,
clean fragrance of the pines.
“What’m I doin’ at Pine Pass?” The ragged youth repeated the question.
“I-I’m sorry, mister, but I can’t tell yer.” He paused, and a strange,
wistful look came into his eyes as he gazed at the distant peaks, “I
thought some time I’d get up among them mountains; but there’s a heap
more of ’em than I calculated on.”
“How did you get here? Where did you come from?” pursued Ralph.
“Frum Noo York.” And then, answering the unspoken question, he
continued, “You kin call me Jimmie, and ef you want ter know how I got
yere, I jes’ beat it.”
“Beat it, eh? Tramped it, you mean?”
“Yep. Stole rides when I could. Walked when I couldn’t. Bin two munts
er more, I reckin. Steamboats, freights, blin’ baggage, anyting.”
“And what did you think you’d do when you got here?”
“Work till I got some coin togedder. But it don’t look much as if there
was any jobs fer a kid aroun’ here, does it?”
“It does not. What can you do?”
“Anyting; that’s on the level.”
“Hum; you wait here a minute, Jimmie. I don’t quite understand what
brought you here, and if you don’t want to tell me I won’t ask you. But
you wait here a minute and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Say, you will? Kin you put me to woik? Say, you’re all right, you are,
mister. I’ll bet you’d have put that braky away in a couple of punches,
big as he wuz.”
And the boy gazed admiringly after Ralph’s athletic form as the latter
hastened toward the group at the end of the platform. They were
standing beside what appeared to be a small mountain of baggage and
they had just noticed his absence.
“Well, what under the sun----?” began Harry Ware, whose full name, H.
D. Ware, was, of course, shortened at Stone fell College to Hardware.
“Simpering serpents, Ralph,” broke in Percy Simmons, who, equally,
of course, was known to his boyish chums as Persimmons, “grinning
gargoyles, we knew this was to be a collecting trip, but you appear to
have started by acquiring a scarecrow!”
“Hold on a minute, boys,” cried Ralph, half laughingly, for Persimmons’
odd way of talking and explosive exclamations made everyone who knew
him smile. “Hold on; listen to what happened.”
The eldest member of the group, a tall and angular, but withal
good-natured and kindly looking man with a pair of shell-rimmed
spectacles perched across his bony nose, now struck in.
“Yes, boys; let us hear what Ralph has been up to now. I declare, since
our experience along the Border I’m prepared for anything.”
“Even what may befall us in the Canadian Rockies, eh, Professor
Wintergreen?” asked Ralph. “Well, that lad yonder, if I’m not much
mistaken, is our future deputy cook, bottlewasher, and midshipmate.”
They all stared at him. Persimmons was the first to recover his voice.
“Giggling gophers,” he gasped, “as if Hardware hadn’t brought
along enough patent dingbats without your adding a live one to the
collection!”