CHAPTER XVI

DECLARING WAR ON UNCLE SAM

The broad lower reaches of the Cantwell River, the perfect weather, the smoothly flowing current had made the couple of days prior to the finding of the gold almost a pleasure trip and compensated to Roger for the hardship through which he had gone in the rapids above. But one evening, while at supper, one of the men suddenly smacked the top of one hand with the palm of the other, then held it out silently for inspection. On it was a small mosquito such as are seen in thousands during the summer all over America.

"They've come, then," was the only remark, "but it's early for them yet."

"What is it, just a mosquito?" asked Roger.

"Just a mosquito," repeated Gersup, with a curious inflection in his voice, "just a poor innocent mosquito."

"Do you have many of them up here?" asked the boy, struck by the note of satire in the topographer's voice.

"Yes, we do," he replied curtly.

"Many of them?" put in Magee. "Why, a week from now you can wave a pint pot over your head and catch a quart of mosquitoes in it, and a month from now we'll have to cut our way through them with an ax."

"Oh, come off, now," said Roger, laughing.

"Laugh all you want to," continued the Irishman, "but it's a fact. Why, when they were building the Yukon railroad, during the months of July and August as the men went to work, they had to send the snow plow ahead of the gang in the morning in order to break a way through the banks of mosquitoes, and sometimes they had to put two engines behind the plow--make a double-header of it."

"Pretty good yarn, Magee," said the boy, "but if they're no worse than that I guess I can stand it."

Here Rivers broke in. "You will do well if you do stand it," he said, "because Magee is not so very far out. You will hardly believe it, but I would rather face a country of hostile Indians than hostile mosquitoes. That little mosquito you saw to-night means hundreds to-morrow, thousands the next day, and from that until cold weather hundreds of thousands all the time. Magee isn't exaggerating much, because Baron Munchausen would find it hard to do the Alaskan mosquitoes justice, when they get busy."

"Are they especially venomous, then?" the boy asked, growing serious.

"No, but they are especially numerous. Many a man has gone mad on the trail because he had no protection from them. That, practically, wiped out of existence one of the largest gold-hunting parties that ever came to Alaska."

"Tell us about it, Mr. Rivers," urged Roger.

"Well, I will," the chief replied, "if it is only to give you a due respect for your enemies. This party of which I am speaking had landed on Kotzebue Sound, and having heard of an alleged Indian trail to the Koyukuk, somewhere near the Selawik River, and having found out beside that it was tundra and flat, they thought it would be easy traveling."

Here Magee chuckled audibly at the idea of tundra being easy going.

"It wasn't long," went on the chief, not noticing the interruption, "before they reached the tundra and discovered that it was scarcely as pleasant as they thought. Walking on tundra is like, is like,--tell him what it's like, Magee."

"It's like walking over slippery footballs half-sunk in slime," said the Irishman promptly.

"Well, that will do," said Rivers. "Any way, they were tramping over this and losing heart fast when the mosquitoes began. They had nothing with them which would serve to keep off the insects, and some of the party were stung so fearfully that a superficial form of blood poisoning set in. Others, unable to endure the torture night and day, killed themselves; others again went insane and became violent; of that large party but two returned to the coast, one who by some freak of nature was immune, and his chum, who had become half-witted by the experience."

"You bet," commented the topographer, "the Alaskan mosquito is a matter to be taken very seriously."

In spite of the general opinion so strongly expressed, Roger felt a little scornful about being bothered with a few pesky mosquitoes, and he was inclined to think it an utterly foolish precaution when he was given an arrangement of netting to put over his head and let it hang down well over his shoulders, but his scorn vanished rapidly. Within an hour his hands, unprotected by gloves, became puffed and swollen from bites, and he found it necessary to put on thick buckskin to preserve him from the bites and to keep his sleeves rolled down. Even then he was not entirely free, for in some mysterious way the insects would work themselves into his clothes, and at night, although the tent was placed on a canvas which fastened to its sides like a floor, so that the mosquitoes could not come up from underneath, a few of them always were to be heard--and felt. So that, before many days had passed, Rogers was convinced that the Alaskan mosquito was a very important factor in life on the trail.

Five days after leaving the portage, having covered over one hundred miles of very easy going, the party made camp at Harper's Bend on the Tanana River. So far as buildings went, it was quite an imposing place, no less than nine huts being in evidence, but they were all vacant and deserted and a sense of loneliness and desolation hung over the place. The sight of human habitation, after so many weeks in the wild, ought to have given a sense of homelikeness, but instead the boy was conscious of an eerie sense of estrangement.

At supper that evening Roger mentioned this feeling, and added:

"Somehow I feel as if this place were haunted. It doesn't so much seem abandoned to nothingness as it does given to some uncanny ghost."

Magee crossed himself.

"Saints preserve us!" he said. "Don't talk like that, or ye'll bring the night-riders here."

"Nonsense, Magee," reproved Rivers, "a man of your experience so superstitious! But the boy might be right, for all that."

"By the power of good luck, why?" asked the Irishman.

"You tell the story, Gersup," replied the chief, "you know more about it than I do."

"Alaska's a pretty new country to be starting a ghost crop," the topographer began, "and, so far as I know, there aren't any here yet; but, if any place ought to have one, it should be Harper's Bend, right where we are now, and in this very house in which we are sitting."

Magee shivered and looked about him apprehensively.

"There was once," Gersup continued, "a trader at this place by the name of Bean, William Bean. He came in the year 1879, and established a post for the purpose of trafficking in the furs of the Tanana Indians. He found the tribes peaceful enough, their furs were of high quality and, as he had no competition, he was able to get them cheaply and to make a big profit out of it. The natives seemed to be so friendly and the opportunity for making money was so good that he determined to make it a permanent little settlement; he brought his wife to the place, and made arrangements for other families to follow.

"But it chanced, one day, that some natives from neighboring tribes, who had visited trading posts, came by the Tanana Indian camps, and when they saw how little their allies were getting from Bean for their skins, they suggested either visiting other posts or demanding more from their own trader. But Bean, so far as can be learned, was harsh and arrogant, and instead of offering a little more, which would still yield a handsome profit, he refused to consider the matter at all, and sneeringly pointing out that they were so far from any other post that they would have to come to him, he drove them away with gibes.

"Now the Indian usually has a sense of justice which is peculiar to himself. To us it may at times appear distorted, but it is a sense of justice none the less, and this sense Bean had offended. He made the further mistake of supposing that their quiescence under his sharp rebuff was an evidence either of cowardice or of ignorance of the true values of their furs. So, lulled into a false security by his own conceit, he remained there. One morning, while the whites were at breakfast, a war-party came and attacked the blockhouse, an Indian shooting Mrs. Bean from the doorway. The trader leaped up, seized his small child, and dashed through a rear door to a near-by boat, followed by an Indian servant. Some days later a party came up from the Yukon and buried Mrs. Bean, but the trader never returned.

"The country was not settled enough at that time for any question to be taken up of punishing the Indians for the crime, and there is no doubt of the provocation that the trader had given them. But this single incident in the history of the tribe is all too little to brand them with the reputation of treachery which they have borne ever since."

The following morning the canoes passed through a section of the country which, as Rivers pointed out to Roger, could be made the garden spot of Alaska. Well timbered, well watered, with a favorable climate and easy of access by steamer up the Yukon, the lower Tanana could be made a fruitful agricultural country.

"Some day," the chief of the party said, "an enterprising man will start a big farm here, to supply the posts all along the Yukon with provisions, for which they now have to pay big prices on being brought by steamer all the way from Seattle. That man will make ten times as much money as any of the gold mine operators, and besides, will be living in security and comfort."

They halted for the midday stop, a few miles above the junction of the Tanana with the Yukon, and about four o'clock the canoes shot into that great river of the north. Surprised as the boy had been at the size of the Alaskan rivers, he was by no means prepared for the body of water where the Tanana joins the Yukon.

"Why," he said in amaze, "I had no idea it was as big as this."

"Heap big river," commented Harry, who was in the stern.

The chief was in the boat, and hearing the lad's exclamation he turned to him.

"This is the fifth largest river in North America," he said.

"What are the others, Mr. Rivers?" the boy asked. "The Mississippi comes first of course."

"Yes, and then the Mackenzie, the Winnipeg, and the St. Lawrence, in that order. But the Yukon and the St. Lawrence are just about the same size."

"Well," Roger said, "it certainly is big enough."

Harry grunted. "Plenty big to paddle up," he said.

Then the boy noticed for the first time that there was quite a current in the river and that it was necessary to paddle up against the stream instead of rushing down as they had been able to do on the Tanana, and he buckled to his work. But they had not been breasting the current for more than an hour when one of the men in the rear boat gave a shout and pointed down the stream. Every one looked, and there, far down, could be seen a faint smoke like that of a steamer.

"That looks like a steamer's smoke," said the boy. "I wonder what it can be."

"Why not a steamer?" queried Rivers.

The boy looked bewildered.

"I don't know why not," he said, laughing; "it just didn't occur to me that any people lived about here. Are there any steamers on the Yukon?"

"Lots of them. There's quite a little traffic on the river and it is good for navigation for hundreds of miles, indeed, all the way to the Canadian boundary and above. Now you see, we will get this fellow, whoever he is, to take us up to Fort Hamlin. It's just as well to save one's strength when there is no need to exert it."

So the canoes took it easily, just paddling along quietly, not trying to make much headway, but on the other hand, not drifting down the stream, and commenting on the approaching steamer, as soon as she came in sight. She was a small vessel, but quite trim and ship-shape, and to Roger's eyes had a curious look of being civilized and out of place in the environment.

As soon as the steamer came close, Rivers gave orders for the leading canoe, in which he was, to drop behind, so that he might speak to the captain, and as the steamer forged up beside them the canoes got full way on, to give a chance for the steamer to pick them up.

"Ahoy, there!" shouted Rivers as soon as the little vessel was within hailing distance.

The captain of the vessel picked up his speaking trumpet.

"Well, what's the trouble, what do you want?" he roared back.

"Going up to Fort Hamlin. Take us on board."

"Can't stop," the captain shouted, "this is a government boat."

"So is this," replied Rivers, a little nettled, "slow up and take us on board."

Now, as it chanced, the skipper was a choleric little man with a very quick temper, which had not been improved on the trip by the presence of a party of tourists, who had been grumbling at everything American all the way up the river. So he was anxious to magnify the importance of his post and not be at the beck and call of every tramp on the river. Irritated, therefore, he shouted back:

"Get to Fort Hamlin the best way you can, I can't spare any time."

By this time Rivers was warming up, and he did not want to be discomfited before his party, so he yelled back in an authoritative voice:

"Do as you're told and stop that vessel! I want to go on board."

"Oh, you do, do you," sneered the skipper, "then you can want," and he rang the telegraph for full speed ahead.

Rivers was ready with a retort, but Bulson, who on occasion could become furiously angry, suddenly blazed, and picking up a rifle that lay on the boat, he fired across the bows of the steamer as she forged up to the leading canoe.

The captain picked up his speaking trumpet again.

"What in Creation do you think you are doing?" he roared, with all his force. "This is a United States mail boat," and he pointed to the mail flag flying at the stern.

Bulson made no reply other than sending another shot across the steamer's bows.

Then if any man was wild it was that captain. That a government ship, flying a government flag, should be fired on in American waters by a party of tramps in two battered canoes! And that those tourists should have seen it! He fairly danced with rage. It was too much for flesh and blood to stand.

He swung the ship round sharply, volleying invectives as he did so, and vowing by all his gods that he would put every member of the party in irons until they reached port, and then would see them in jail for treason. And the more he fulminated, the more the tourists chaffed him, until when the boats sheered alongside, he was purple in the face with temper.

"What do you mean, sir," he began, stuttering in his speech; "what do you mean by firing across our bows, sir? Are you aware that this is treasonable conduct, sir? It is infamous, sir, treasonable and infamous! Thirty years have I worn the uniform of the service, sir, and I have never even heard of such insolent and high-handed conduct.

"Do not answer me, sir," he thundered, as Rivers prepared to answer him, a smile lurking behind the shaggy brown beard. "I will not be answered. Consider yourself under arrest, sir, and you will be handed over to the authorities at Fort Gibbon."

"But I think, Captain," said Rivers, enjoying the amusement visible on the faces of his party, "that you will take us to Fort Hamlin. I presume you are going that far."

"Take you to Fort Hamlin? Are you the commander of this vessel, sir, or am I? Answer me that, sir! And," he continued, with unnoticing inconsistency, "if you do so much as answer me, I shall clap you in irons. In irons, sir, and every man Jack of your party with you."

"Your threat does not disturb me in the least," was the unmoved reply, "because you would not dare to do it."

"Not dare?" exploded the little man, and turning, he was about to give an order, when Rivers stopped him.

"You had better wait," he said, "before you do anything for which you may be sorry. I have told you several times to take us to Fort Hamlin, and you reply with threats of arrest and what not. You cannot arrest any man without some cause, and no cause has been given."

"No cause, sir? You have given cause enough to be strung up at the yardarm, sir, strung up without any resort to the civil authority. Did you not fire across my bows, sir? No cause, indeed! Do you not know, sir, that such an action is a declaration of war, sir, and that in times of peace, it is privateering and piracy, and a dozen other things besides, sir?"

"And who has more right to fire across your bows than I have?" queried Rivers with a fine assumption of authority.

"More right," cried the captain, his voice rising to a perfect shriek, "you have no right, no one has any right--"

"Nevertheless I have," continued Rivers, but before he could explain his mission, the little officer broke in again.

"You have? If you were the Czar of Russia, sir, and every one of the scarecrows with you was a crowned head, sir, you would have no right to stop an American vessel in American waters. On American waters, did I say? On any waters, sir. Wherever that flag flies, sir, she shall not be stopped by any one. And whoever fires on that flag, sir, is an enemy to me and my country, and I should have no hesitation in shooting him down like a dog. Like a dog, sir, the dog that he is!"

"Well, Captain," said Rivers, thinking that the matter had gone far enough. "I am sure you would be sorry if you shot me down like a dog, as you say. I am on government service, just as you are, and am just as loyal to the United States as you can be. My name is Rivers, of the Geological Survey."

"Rivers, the head of the Alaskan work?"

"Yes. The navy department was kind enough to place a gunboat at my disposal for the trip from Seattle to Cook Inlet, and a revenue cutter has been ordered to meet us at Point Barrow in the autumn, so I feel sure the Postal authorities will not complain of your affording us facilities as far as Fort Hamlin."

"And why did you not say so before, sir?"

"You didn't give me a chance," answered Rivers, smiling.

"If I had known who you were, sir, that would have been an entirely different matter. I should have esteemed it a pleasure, sir, to have been able to assist you in any way."

He turned to the passengers, who had been listening to the altercation with great zest.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you see that only the American government itself can dare to delay a United States mail boat. Gentlemen, let me introduce Mr. Rivers, chief of the Geological Survey in Alaska."