Next day the gale still blew. Lake Linderman was no more than a narrow
mountain gorge filled with water. Sweeping down from the mountains
through this funnel, the wind was irregular, blowing great guns at
times and at other times dwindling to a strong breeze.
"If you give me a shot at it, I think I can get her off," Kit said,
when all was ready for the start.
"What do you know about it?" Stine snapped at him.
"Search me," Kit answered, and subsided.
It was the first time he had worked for wages in his life, but he was
learning the discipline of it fast. Obediently and cheerfully he
joined in various vain efforts to get clear of the beach.
"How would you go about it?" Sprague finally half-panted, half-whined
at him.
"Sit down and get a good rest till a lull comes in the wind, and then
buck in for all we're worth."
Simple as the idea was, he had been the first to evolve it; the first
time it was applied it worked, and they hoisted a blanket to the mast
and sped down the lake. Stine and Sprague immediately became cheerful.
Shorty, despite his chronic pessimism, was always cheerful, and Kit was
too interested to be otherwise. Sprague struggled with the steering
sweep for a quarter of an hour, and then looked appealingly at Kit, who
relieved him.
"My arms are fairly broken with the strain of it," Sprague muttered
apologetically.
"You never ate bear-meat, did you?" Kit asked sympathetically.
"What the devil do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing; I was just wondering."
But behind his employer's back Kit caught the approving grin of Shorty,
who had already caught the whim of his simile.
Kit steered the length of Linderman, displaying an aptitude that caused
both young men of money and disinclination for work to name him
boat-steerer. Shorty was no less pleased, and volunteered to continue
cooking and leave the boat work to the other.
Between Linderman and Lake Bennet was a portage. The boat, lightly
loaded, was lined down the small but violent connecting stream, and
here Kit learned a vast deal more about boats and water. But when it
came to packing the outfit, Stine and Sprague disappeared, and their
men spent two days of back-breaking toil in getting the outfit across.
And this was the history of many miserable days of the trip--Kit and
Shorty working to exhaustion, while their masters toiled not and
demanded to be waited upon.
But the iron-bound arctic winter continued to close down, and they were
held back by numerous and avoidable delays. At Windy Arm, Stine
arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within the hour
wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore. Two days were lost here
in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as they came
down to embark, on stern and bow, in large letters, was charcoaled 'The
Chechaquo.'
Kit grinned at the appropriateness of the invidious word.
"Huh!" said Shorty, when accused by Stine. "I can sure read and spell,
an' I know that Chechaquo means tenderfoot, but my education never went
high enough to learn me to spell a jaw-breaker like that."
Both employers looked daggers at Kit, for the insult rankled; nor did
he mention that the night before, Shorty had besought him for the
spelling of that particular word.
"That's 'most as bad as your bear-meat slam at 'em," Shorty confided
later.
Kit chuckled. Along with the continuous discovery of his own powers
had come an ever-increasing disapproval of the two masters. It was not
so much irritation, which was always present, as disgust. He had got
his taste of the meat, and liked it; but they were teaching him how not
to eat it. Privily, he thanked God that he was not made as they. He
came to dislike them to a degree that bordered on hatred. Their
malingering bothered him less than their helpless inefficiency.
Somewhere in him, old Isaac Bellew and all the rest of the hardy
Bellews were making good.
"Shorty," he said one day, in the usual delay of getting started, "I
could almost fetch them a rap over the head with an oar and bury them
in the river."
"Same here," Shorty agreed. "They're not meat-eaters. They're
fish-eaters, and they sure stink."