CHAPTER XIV

BREAKING THE ICE JAM

Roger speedily realized the wisdom shown by Rivers in forcing the march through the entire first part of the trip, for whereas the weather had been favorable, two days after the argument with the mountain goat, the sky, which had been dark and gray for days, suddenly seemed to drop to within a few hundred feet of the heads of the travelers, and a tinge of slaty blue came into the over-hanging masses. A hollow booming sound filled the air, and the Alaskan old-timers hastened to make everything fast, laying provision close to hand and insuring all the outfit against the coming storm.

All through the day the clouds hung so low that it seemed to Roger that he could touch them, and the stillness and silence became painful; it was so quiet that the weight grew oppressive, yet speech or sound of any kind grated on the nerves. Throughout the entire day Rivers scanned the sky closely, and the afternoon was well advanced when he called out suddenly:

"It'll be a little east of northeast!" and pointed to the direction.

Roger's gaze followed and turning, he saw a little swirl of the clouds. Then, as though some gigantic hand had suddenly unclenched and pointed an accusing finger at the little group that had defiantly dared the dangers of its domain, a spume of snow was whipped from the gray above, and with a shriek whose vindictiveness seemed almost personal the tempest struck.

"Get under, Doughty," called Rivers, who, standing in the lee of one of the small trees, was closely watching the nature of the storm, "get into the tent!"

But Roger did not want to miss the sight of his first big gale in the northern mountains, so risking a reproval for not obeying, he crawled along the ground against the wind to where Rivers stood.

"I never saw a real blizzard before," he shouted in his chief's ear, as an excuse for his presence.

The older man smiled grimly, but seeing that there was as yet no danger, permitted the boy to remain. He pointed, however, to the peak above them, which sheltered the camp from the full fury of the storm.

"How would you like to stand up there and watch it?" he shouted back.

Roger's reckless spirit prompted him to reply that he wouldn't mind, but before he could formulate the words a sudden gust tore up a large tree whose roots had been too near the edge of a precipice and sent it thundering down into the chasm below.

"I'd like to," he yelled, "but I guess I'd have to be chained down."

Then one blast, stronger than any that had come before, eddied back from the cliff and struck Roger full in the face just as he had stepped forward to reply to Rivers. Some instinct led him to throw both hands over his face, which, leaving him at the mercy of the wind, caused him to be knocked flat like a ninepin, with the same feeling as though he had been struck by a solid object. But it was the last impulse of the squall, and before Roger had arisen to his feet, the white glint at the point where the gale had been born had disappeared, the clouds fell together, and quietly and without hurry the snow began to fall.

"Not hurt, I suppose?" queried Rivers as Roger scrambled to his feet.

"Not a bit," said Roger breathlessly, "but it seems like a week and a half since I got my wind."

"But why did you let go?"

"I don't know, Mr. Rivers; it felt as though some one was going to hit me in the face, and I just threw up my hands to defend myself."

"A man's got to be a pretty good prize-fighter who will go in the ring with an Alaskan blizzard," said the geologist, amusedly, "and the worst of it for you is that all your wounds are in the back. I should think you would have a few bruises in the morning, for you went down like a Jack-in-the-Box goes up."

The snow was falling steadily and heavily as the two walked back to the tent, and Roger remarked:

"This will make the trails heavy going, won't it?"

"It looks to me," replied the other, "as though it would make all travel impossible. If this storm had struck a few days earlier, or had we been a few days later in getting here, the chances are that the delay would have been considerable."

"How much, do you suppose?" asked the boy.

The leader of the party shrugged his shoulders.

"If it should prove a heavy snowfall," he said, "and had it struck us on the Sushitna, it might have gone far to spoil the entire season's work. You see a snowfall of four or five inches on the level can be whipped up into drifts fifteen and twenty feet in height, not only hiding the trail, but making conditions through which the dogs cannot flounder until a crust is formed.

"Then you see, Doughty, it's getting late for a good snow-crust, and we might have had to wait down there until the break-up. Then, instead of going on down the Jack River as we shall be able to do now, we would have had to track our way up Indian Creek against all the force of the spring floods, portage across the pass with the ground in bad condition, and then find little water in the Jack River instead of reaching here comfortably by 'mushing.'"

"It's lucky then," said Roger, "that we're not later in getting here."

"It's not," objected Rivers. "It may be lucky that the storm didn't strike earlier, but it isn't luck that brought us to this place in so much shorter time than had been allotted. That wasn't luck, that was work. I've noticed, too, that luck and labor go together oftener than luck and loafing."

On reaching the tent they found everything snuggled down for winter quarters, and Roger was subjected to some mild chaffing over what Magee called his "one round bout with a gale," but the lad took it good-naturedly enough, knowing from previous experience that his turn might come. He promised himself, however, that before the trip was over he would notice some slight misadventure on the part of others which would enable him to return the compliment of banter.

But while Roger had been out when the snow started and had seen the dense clouds and felt the weight behind them, he was not prepared to see, the following morning, a sheet of snow several inches deep over the entire landscape. Other members of the party had been up during the night, but the boy had not wakened, and when, stepping outside the tent, his foot sank in soft snow halfway to his knee, his amaze was great. Twelve and a half inches of snow had fallen in the single night, and the bright May sun shining over the glittering expanse made necessary the snow glasses with which each member of the party was hastily equipped.

"I should not like to be without glasses to-day," said the boy to Gersup, as they stood by the door of the tent.

"There would be fewer skeletons on the Alaskan hillsides," replied the other, "had it not been for the madness caused by the intense pain of snow-glare on the eyes."

"Is it so acute?"

"It is torture unendurable, because any light, no matter how faint, aggravates it, and it is not possible to live without light. Don't make any mistake, snow-blindness is an awful thing."

This gave Roger pause, for he saw at once how many fatal errors he had been saved by being connected with a party wherein all the details of travel had been so carefully arranged, and all sorts of contingencies, which would have been unforeseen to him, provided against. He had been inly contemptuous of the smoked glasses, when a pair had been given him at the beginning of the trip, but now he realized their immense importance, for by this time the May sun had begun to make itself felt with intense heat and the days grew long.

It seemed as though the snowstorm had been the last effort of winter, a sample to show what it could do if necessary, a comparison against the heat of the summer days to come. The rays of the sun soon honeycombed the snow and Roger realized how rotten it had become and saw that Rivers's thankfulness that they did not have to travel over it was well founded. Keenly alive to the interests of the expedition, and not having learned the patience of later life, he chafed a good deal under the delay and was continually asking the chief when they should start.

"Doughty," said the chief to him on one of these occasions, when the boy's restlessness was intense, "you can't expend energy until you have accumulated it. Now in worrying and fretting over not being able to start you are expending energy at a time when, as far as possible, you should be gathering your strength for the time when you will need it. And, what's more, every one reckons on losing a couple of weeks during the break-up; that is a part of the consumption of time on the trip."

But the rapid advance of spring added a new source of surprise to the lad. From the stillness and silence of the days when they first made camp at the head of the pass, the air became filled with the myriad voices of life, and the primal solitude became vibrant with tiny songsters. The golden sparrow was there with his piercing plaint, made musical by distance, and the trilling warble of Townsend's fox sparrow, and the varied strain of the hermit thrush, seemed quite homelike. Before the snow was gone the rosy finch was to be seen, his quick flight giving a gay spot of color to the landscape, and that the more utilitarian side might not be omitted, the snowy ptarmigan formed a welcome addition to the larder of the camp.

Quite a torrent was beginning to flow over the ice in the Jack River, and on the morning of May 16th, when Roger had gone out with Gersup the topographer, to map out with greater detail a little piece of country which had been passed by on a previous expedition, he saw that the center of the ice in the river was bulging up like a hog-backed bridge.

"What makes it bulge that way?" asked the boy.

"You should have been able to figure that out," was the response. "When the ice thaws it increases the volume of water under the ice. The edges are frozen solid to the land, the middle is more or less elastic, and so of course the sides stay solid and the middle heaves up. In warmer climates, it is the edge that thaws out first, but up here the rivers, strictly speaking, do not thaw free, the ice is forced from them by the spring floods. It is strictly a break-up rather than a thaw, although it gets warm thereafter very rapidly."

"It certainly does," replied Roger, mopping his forehead. "It's hot enough now, and this is only the middle of May; while two weeks ago it was snowing like Billy O."

On May 18th the ice broke, moved down about a mile and jammed, and a few hours later broke again, finally clearing from the upper reaches of the Jack River on the 19th. Rivers was delighted at the opportunity to get out so soon, as he had feared it might be as late as the first week in June before he could get away.

"I think, Doughty," he said to Roger, "that we can count easily now on accomplishing what we set out to do, and probably get into the Arctic Ocean in good time for an early return."

"That is, barring accidents," put in the topographer.

"We will make up our minds not to have any," replied the chief of the party.

The following morning, therefore, the canoes being all packed, the party bade good-by to the little camp on Broad Pass, where they had spent so many quiet, uneventful days, and plunged into the grinding forced march that was to occupy every waking moment for so many months to come. The stern reality of Alaskan work became potent to Roger before they had been half an hour on the trail. The Jack River, though swollen by the spring currents, had worn an erratic bed, and was filled with bars on which the canoes stranded. Then there was nought to do but wade into the snow-fed stream, with large chunks of ice roaring down at him, and the chill of the water such as to make the boy gasp and turn everything black before his eyes, while his legs became numb and hurt cruelly. But he gritted his teeth and buckled to it, well aware that the other members of the party were watching him, awaiting a sign of weakening.

The entire morning was spent wading, helping the canoes over a series of small bars with a fairly steep gradient, but the work was slow, and Rivers seized eagerly any chance to increase the pace. Shortly after the midday halt, a reach fairly free from obstacles presented itself, and the party climbed into the boats and shot down the stream. Although Roger had not done any canoe work since he had been on the Survey, he was brought up beside a stream and had handled a paddle nearly all his life, and his delight was great when he found that he had not lost the knack. Not only was he quite at home in a few moments, but he found that his toughness and maturer strength told in every stroke. Harry, the Indian, who was in the stern, nodded approvingly, after ten minutes' work.

"Heap nice," he said, as he found how keenly the boy judged the weight of the stern paddle and followed his intentions; "light weight and good paddle, go through rapids all right, sure."

And Rivers, who had kept a close eye on the boy, gave a snort of satisfaction.

"I guess you did learn what I bade you," he said, referring to their conversation in Washington a year before; "I think I told you that you should know how to handle a canoe."

"Yes, Mr. Rivers," said Roger, smiling at the remembrance, "but you implied that the Alaskan streams were a whole lot worse than Niagara."

"You won't complain of their not being bad enough, before long," said the chief grimly, "and from the general look of the place right now, I think we are going to run into rough water."

The warning served to sharpen the boy's wits, and it was time. The river was rushing about ten miles an hour over a winding bed, where the bow could not see ahead for more than twenty or thirty yards, a space covered in a few seconds' time. Suddenly Harry gave a mighty back stroke, and Roger following suit almost instantaneously, the canoe was brought up with a jerk as though some mechanical brakes had been set. There was not much room to spare, for across the river a big tree had fallen, and behind it the ice had jammed, not enough to dam the water absolutely, but affording no possible passage for a canoe.

A landing was made, though it was extremely difficult, and the canoes portaged past the obstruction, Rivers having found that the tree had jammed on a harsh and shallow rapid, over which they could not have taken the boats. Then the chief ordered two of the men to cut through the jammed tree so as to break the dam.

"Why?" queried Roger of Bulson, as he was cutting and shaping a gigantic wooden crowbar for himself, while a couple of the other men were hacking through the tree; "why is it necessary to take all that trouble after we have got by?"

"Supposing we got some distance down the river," was the reply, "where it wasn't easy to make a landing, and this jam broke above us and came pounding down the river, where would we be?"

"But it wouldn't be going any faster than the stream, and we could keep ahead of it with paddles."

"And if you came to a portage?"

"That's true," said Roger, "I hadn't thought of that. We might get nipped between the ice behind and rocks in front."

"You see," said Bulson, as he stepped on to the jam, "it's never wise to leave dangers at your heels."

The tree having been cut through, all save a few inches, one of the choppers returned to the shore, while the other stood ready, watching Bulson. The latter, who was standing on the blocks of ice behind the tree, was studying their positions, how they were jammed, and what was the best way to free them without getting caught himself in the resultant turmoil.

Presently he seemed satisfied for, inserting his huge crowbar between two pieces of ice, he yelled:

"Cut!"

The axman brought down his blade with his full strength three times, and the fibers of the tree cracked and began to give way. Back over the slowly moving tree came Magee, leaving Bulson alone on the jam. Suddenly the tree parted with a sharp crack and as it did so there arose a grinding roar, and the blocks of ice which had been jammed behind the tree seemed to leap up and fling themselves over the rapid. It did not seem possible that any man could ride that furious clashing of the jam, but Roger noticed that Bulson, making his way to shore over the grinding ice, yet had coolness to stop and give a shove here and a heave there, unlocking the jam, as it were, until, standing on the ice nearest the shore, he gave one last mighty shove and sprang to the bank just as with a seeming disappointed roar the whole jam broke and sped down the foaming river.

"That, Mr. Rivers," said the boy, as Bulson quietly threw his impromptu crowbar into the river, "is one of the things I did not learn to do."

"Bulson's very good at that sort of thing," was the chief's quiet comment.

But the river below the jam was far less kind to the travelers than it had been above. Progress was only possible by careful paddling and short portages. Half the time was spent in the icy water and half on the frozen bank, and though the water was cold beyond belief, and hands and feet were heavy and numb, the sun burned fiercely upon head and shoulders as though it were the height of midsummer, a condition the harder to be borne because it was so early in the season that no one was as yet acclimatized to the heat.

It was the most fatiguing day Roger had yet spent on the Survey, not even excepting the famous trip across the Grand Canyon, for in the latter the pace had been his own, while in this he had to play an equal part with exceptionally vigorous and seasoned men, coping with a mountain torrent. The dusk was falling as, once more in boats, and passing through a small gorge, the party reached the confluence of the Jack and Cantwell Rivers. Although the distance traversed had been but twenty-eight miles, and the party had been traveling with the current, so arduous and rough had been the way that eleven hours had been spent in making the journey.

After supper Rivers came to Roger and said to him, not with criticism, but in a kindly manner:

"Are you tired, Doughty?"

The boy would have longed to be able to reply "No," but he knew he could not do so with any pretense at honesty, and so he replied fairly:

"Yes, Mr. Rivers, I am a little tired, but I'll soon get toughened up."

"Well," said the chief of the party, "I just wanted to let you know that this really has been a hard day, and that no one need be ashamed of feeling tired. We are all conscious of having done a day's work. I thought perhaps you might worry a little at the thought that, if it was to be all like this, you would not be able to keep up. But it won't, and you did well."

So Roger lay down to sleep and tucked himself in his sleeping bag with absolute happiness. The next day proved to the boy how right the chief had been. For the first forty miles of its passage the boy found the Cantwell River, into which they had run, to have a fair channel and good banks; and of course, at this season of the year it was full to overflowing, so that the only difficulty of its upper reaches, shoals, was set aside by the volume of water in the stream. That day's trip was rapid and easy. Camp was made that night beside the river, just where another tributary called the Yanert joins, leaping a twenty-foot fall just before reaching the main stream.

The turbulent manner of the Yanert's union, however, was an augury of trouble. It seemed as though the larger river had been led into bad habits by the new arrival, for it became a wild scramble of water, rushing through the canyons and gorges of the Alaskan Range with terrifying speed. Two or three nasty rapids had been shot, in each of which Roger acquitted himself very creditably, but the water had grown rougher and harder to deal with at each successive step, so that when a short beach a few miles long closed in a harsh and ragged-edged canyon, Rivers called a halt and went forward to reconnoiter from the summit of the gorge whether it were safe for passage. Taking Roger and Magee with him, he followed the west bank of the river, sending Gersup, Bulson, and Harry, along the other bank to determine the possibility of the rapid below, and also to find out which was the better side for a portage, should that be deemed necessary.

To Roger's uninitiated eye, the water below seemed a seething witches' caldron of confusion, but he could see that the chief did not regard it as being impossible. Suddenly the geologist turned to him:

"Doughty," he said, "do you think you could run that rapid?"

"If you told me to," answered the boy sturdily.

"You mean that you would try to do it, whether you thought it possible or no, if I told you?"

"No," said Roger, "that would be unreasonable. What I mean is that if you told me to go it would be possible, and if it is possible I am quite ready to try it at any time."

The older man said no more, but tried to force his way along the dense growth by the gorge's edge. The underbrush was very thick, and if a portage was to be made on that side the road would have to be cut almost the entire distance. So the three turned back to the canoes and waited the return of the topographer.

"Well?" inquired the chief as the party hove in view.

"I shouldn't care to tackle it," said Gersup, "but Harry says he can take the boats through, but not loaded. They would have to go down light and the loads portaged. There is a fair carry on that side, but it's through small trees pretty close together, and the canoes would be awkward to take through. It's about a twelve-mile portage, too, as I should judge, before we can strike a place where the boats could land."

"That's just about what I expected you to say," commented the geologist. "I thought so, too, but there's a bad carry on this side. Well, I suppose Harry and Bulson had better take the boats through."

But when the canoeists were approached Bulson shook his head.

"Of course, if you say so, Mr. Rivers," he replied, "there's no more to be said, but as I understand it, the boats have got to go through light. Now I tip the scale at a trifle over two hundred and twenty pounds, and you couldn't very well call that light. Besides, if it comes to a portage, I can carry a whole lot more than any one else could do. If I might suggest----"

"Go ahead, man," said Rivers impatiently.

"Send the boy, then. He knows just as much about a canoe as I do and he's seventy-five pounds lighter. That's an awful difference in the bow of a canoe. Then, too, he isn't as hefty for the carry. I think you'd better let Harry and the boy try it."

"But it's a man's job. What do you think, Harry--because, after all, you will lead the way?"

"Bulson heap good in canoe. Boy all right. Boy light, man heavy, take boy."

"You think you can take the boat through all right?" The Indian nodded. "I'd like to go with you myself, but I'm nearly as heavy as Bulson. All right, then, let it go that way; it's only a chance, but we'd better try it with one boat, rather than spend a week or two cutting a twelve-mile road through the timber for the boats."

Orders having been given for the unpacking of the canoes, an early stop was made, and Harry went off with Bulson to con the rapid from the other bank. He did not come back till after dark, and then, simply saying to Rivers:

"Sure, can do it all right," he tumbled off to the tent and rolled up for the night.

The chief of the party then turned to Roger, and said kindly:

"I don't want you to do this, Doughty, unless you feel quite up to it, because confidence is one of the most important things needed. However, I have great faith in Harry's knowledge of rapids, and if he says they are passable I don't think there is any cause to fear. But if you are in the least afraid of it, don't hesitate to say so."

"I'd be afraid to tackle it alone, Mr. Rivers," the boy said truthfully, "but I feel that with Harry in the stern I could take the rapids of Niagara, and the whirlpool into the bargain."