CHAPTER XVIII

FIGHTING FIRE IN THE TUNDRA

The next day, June 12th, with Roger at the bow and Harry at the stern of the leading canoe, they started down the Kanuti River. The stream was swift, shallow, and full of boulders, and for the first couple of days more of the work was done wading in the stream than by paddling. The second day, particularly, it seemed to the boy that he had not been out of the water at all during the fourteen hours of the march, except for the brief halt at noon.

The next day, however, was travel of the kind that he liked. Two small tributaries of the Kanuti, mere mountain streams, flowed in and raised the water to a height where it was possible to shoot the rapids instead of wading them, carrying the canoes. Ever since the canoe slide on the Cantwell, Roger had felt quite proud of his powers as a canoeist, and this pride was considerably heightened as he found how able he was to handle the boat on this new stream. It was different, too, for while the first set of rapids had been a torrent foaming between jagged upstanding crags of rock, this was a swift river running over heaps of boulders, and the Indian had to judge by the swirl of the water just what was below.

A broad valley, through which the river wound in a very crooked way, afforded a quick day's journey, but bad rapids were then met with, which taxed the resources of the party to the utmost, and proved all in vain to prevent the boats from being swamped. Twice the boats went over, once the leading boat to Roger's great chagrin, and the second time the second boat, which in consequence made the boy feel much better. No serious harm resulted as the supplies were always packed in watertight bags. There was a fall of eight hundred feet in the thirty miles of these rapids, so that, as Magee said, "it was a case of whistling for brakes all the time."

The mosquitoes became very bad in the lower reaches of the river, the only redeeming feature of which part of the trip was the immense abundance of ducks and geese, which, being shot, were a welcome and toothsome addition to the larder. With this to aid the quiet progress, the party soon arrived at Arctic City, at the junction of the Kanuti and Koyukuk rivers, and thence one day's paddling up the latter broad stream brought them to Bergman. This is a central trading post, and there again they secured supplies for the last stage of the journey.

As it was already June 23d, and the hardest stretch was yet to come, little time was lost at Bergman, and three days later the voyagers crossed the Arctic Circle and touched at Bettles, at the junction of the Koyukuk and John (or Totsenbet) rivers. There Roger saw the last white face he would see, other than the members of the party, until he had crossed the great Arctic Divide, made his bow to the not-distant North Pole, reached the frozen ocean, and returned to civilization.

But when they came to the John River and Roger saw the force of the waters of the stream, and learned that there was one hundred and forty-five miles of up-stream work against that current, he realized that all his previous experience of labor had been child's play compared to it.

"That's going to be a pretty stiff pull, Mr. Rivers, isn't it?" said Roger to the geologist, as he was standing by the edge of the river just as the boats were being launched.

"It would be, Doughty," was the answer, "that is, if it wasn't for the milking."

"Milking?" questioned the boy in surprise, doubting if he had heard the word aright.

Just then Magee replied over his shoulder.

"Yes, milking, of course. Didn't you know they had cows here to do all the work? Sure! You've read of the cleverness of ants? Well, they're no better than fools compared to John River cows. They have a regular system. The cows up here have immensely long horns and two of them catch the end of one horn in the bow of the canoe, and another one, a mooley cow, shoves behind, and there you are. That's what they call milking--milking the brush, up here. Don't you expect to go up the John by milking the brush?" he added, turning to Rivers.

"Certainly," replied the geologist, then, seeing the lad's confusion, he continued, "but you mustn't mind Magee; milking the brush isn't quite that. It's a term used to specify that way of traveling which consists of pulling the canoes up stream by the boughs of branches along the bank. You see the John River is so swift that, if we were to depend only on paddling and poling, progress would be extremely slow."

"But how about tracking?" suggested the boy. "What is to prevent the canoes being pulled along by ropes from the shore?"

"The timber and brush come right down to the water's edge," was the reply. "There are no bars and level banks such as there were in the upper part of the Dall River, just before we came to the portage, and of course it is almost out of the question to pull or tow a canoe, when the banks are so thick that you would have to cut a trail in order to get through yourself. The trees and undergrowth overhang the river for quite a distance. Therefore all that can be done is to pull the boats up along the branches, hand over hand, one man poling in the stern. Of course, every few yards the boats get entangled and have to be pushed and pulled out. It's the only way, but it's back-breaking work."

It was, there was no doubt about that, and Roger added another chapter to his ideas of what hard work meant. The current of the river was so swift that it was useless to try and paddle up against it, while keeping in the middle of the stream, the banks were so thick and wooded that tracking was impossible, and "milking the brush" required incredible labor, because it meant keeping the canoe so near the bank that it was grounding or striking snags or becoming entangled in roots constantly, or misbehaving itself in some way.

Then to make a change, a long rapid would appear, and the only way to negotiate it was to lift the canoes shoulder-high, all the party together under the one canoe, and climb up that rapid with the ice water perhaps up to the waist, and a cruel, drenching spray whipping into their faces. In the meantime, if the mosquito veils were thrown back--and few things are more uncomfortable than a wet mosquito veil flopping about the face, why, then those torturing pests got in a full day's work; the while that a hot Alaskan summer sun blazed above them and blistered face, arms, and neck, exposed alternately to vivid sun and icy spray.

On July 5th, the spruce, which had thinned out rapidly during the couple of days preceding, came to a sudden end, the northern limit of timber having been reached. Nothing seemed to impress on Roger so clearly the fact that he was now in the Arctic Circle as the thought that he was in a climate so rigorous and gale-swept in winter that no tree could grow. A few stunted willow bushes, here and there, still remained, when sheltered on the bank of the river, but trees, as such, worthy of the name, there were none of any sort whatever.

"I never realized," said Roger, "that there was no timber of any kind in the far north. What do the Eskimos burn for fuel?"

"Have you ever seen pictures of stoves or fireplaces in the Eskimo snow hut?" was the answer. "They depend on the heat of their own bodies in a hut without any ventilation, on the flame of blubber lamps, and occasionally, on a little driftwood which may have come down into the Arctic Ocean from some immense stream like the Mackenzie, which, flowing thousands of miles, has passed in its upper reaches through a timbered country."

But by the time that the boy had reached this northern limit of spruce he had lost all idea of time. The days and nights seemed one perpetual nightmare. When asleep he dreamed that he was wading, or tracking, or poling, and when awake he felt as though he were working in his sleep. It seemed to him that he had spent years and years on an icy river, and that fate had tied him to it for ever and ever. By the time that two full weeks of it had passed by, the boy no longer had any thought of reaching the summit, that this toil could stop was a thought incredible, and though his muscles, stiffened and well-trained, continued to do their full man's share of the work, the mental strain was intense.

Rivers and Gersup were considerably troubled over the fact that the boy's strength showed no signs of giving way, and they would almost rather have seen him break down physically than continue his work doggedly, yet like a machine. It became hard, toward the end of the trip, to make him answer a question, and it would have to be repeated several times before the boy could grasp it. Orders regarding the work he seemed to understand at once, but other matters fell on deafened ears.

The older men tried to sting him into life in many ways. They attacked his pride, they endeavored to insult him, they reasoned with him, but there was no response, the heavy and sunken eyes regained no luster, the hard-set jaw never relaxed, and the channels of speech seemed frozen. This went on as the river shallowed until, when the John had become so small that further work by water was impossible, Rivers gave word for a portage.

But the chief was far too wise a leader not to be prudent as well as urgent, and he knew that there were times when a rest would be wise for most of the party, and imperative for Roger. He had not dared to give anything to the boy, because of the need of travel the next day, but now that a short rest was in sight, he mixed up from the little medicine chest a sleeping draught of triple strength, and made the boy take it down. Through the entire night and the whole of the next day Roger slept unmoving, and when evening came, Rivers and Gersup discussed whether they should wake him.

"Let him sleep, if he wants to," put in Magee, who had heard the talk; "sure he can't be gettin' into any harm while he's asleep, an' if it's rest he wants, I think it's better not to wake him."

"But, Magee," said the chief, "sometimes a man gets into one of those sleeps and nothing will rouse him after."

"Of course, there's a risk, but if the boy's brain needs sleep so bad as all that, I should think the shock of waking him would be bad."

And so it was decided to let the lad sleep as long as he would. All through that second night he slept, though it was almost full daylight the whole night through, and all the next morning, till about three o'clock in the afternoon, when he stirred, looked around languidly, and fell to sleep again. He woke at five o'clock, and sat right up, his eye clear and the leaden weight upon his tongue loosened.

The men crowded round with questions, and Roger learned that they had reached the head of the pass, but he had retained no memory whatever of the last ten days of the trip. He buckled to and ate steadily for an hour and a half, to the huge joy of the cook, and then curled up for some more sleep, awakening the next morning bright and chipper as though he were in Washington before the trip had been begun.

On July 17th, therefore, the lad being quite himself again, three days after their arrival at Anaktuvuk Pass, at the head of the John River, Rivers gave the word for the portage to be begun. It was a twelve-mile portage and hard going, for though, unlike all the previous carries, there was no timber to intercept, and through which a trail must be cut, the entire work was over the tundra.

The moss-plains of the Arctic slopes, brilliant with wild flowers and fragrant with heather and gorse, which surround the Polar Seas the world around, come almost first in the list of objectionable travel. Even in the blazing heat of a summer where the sun shines for twenty-two hours out of twenty-four and the heat is nothing short of tropical, two feet below the surface the spade would touch perpetual frost, a factor of no importance to the branching-rooted tundra moss. Centuries of centuries of growth and decay have created a network of roots, rotten, spongy, and wet, so that walking over it resembles treading on soaked sponges two feet deep.

But that nothing may remain to be thought of in the viciousness of that footing, every six or eight inches apart, tufts of grass and moss, known as "niggerheads," hard and round, stick up a foot high. If the unwary traveler decides to walk on these as on the stones of a ford crossing, he finds them slippery and insecure, they turn under his foot, and give him the experience of a twisted ankle; while, on the other hand, if he should endeavor to walk between them he runs a fair chance of tripping upon those hummocks and falling headlong in the oozy moss. Indeed, he can hardly walk at all.

The portage took two days, Rivers making a forced march, and the cook was left at the new camp with the first day's supplies, the carry being to Cache Lake, a large slough which forms the headwaters of the Anaktuvuk River. Early the next morning the rest of the party returned to the old camp, where they had left the canoes, to bring them over to the Lake for their trip down to the Arctic Ocean.

Towards evening, as they were returning, and had just ascended a little knoll, Roger hurried up to the chief of the party.

"Mr. Rivers," he said, "there seems to be a lot of smoke over there, in the direction of the camp."

The geologist looked up sharply and then turned.

"Quick, boys," he said, "take the boats to that pond"--the tundra was dotted with small stretches of water--"and anchor them in the middle. The tundra is on fire, and if it's going to spread the boats must be saved. Harry, you go ahead to the camp." He dropped his pack and broke into a run.

Bulson, grasping the situation, stuck one of the punting poles deep into the shallow bottom and made fast the canoes to it in the middle of the slough. Then, with the rest of the men he followed the Indian and the chief for the camp. Roger's light weight and his training on the track had made him a good runner, but he did not try to outdistance the other men, and of course Harry was out of sight.

Plunging over and through the tundra, however, with veins swollen almost to bursting with the heavy going, the men kept on, no one speaking, though once, as a sheet of flame shot up, Gersup pointed with his finger. It was a welcome sight, on topping a small rise, to see in the distance that two of the three tents were still standing, though ringed round with a smoldering fire; in the foreground the blackened figures of the cook and the Indian, working for their lives, and the chief just pounding into the camp. With never a pause, save when some fellow tripped and fell, the men tore over the rough ground until they reached the flames. Under the vigorous work of all hands an impression began to be made, and two hours later the fire was under control.

"How did it happen, George?" the chief asked.

Twice the cook tried to answer, but the pungent smoke and the exertion had made him almost speechless, and he could only whisper hoarsely. Though the fire was officially out, every few minutes a puff of smoke would reveal a smoldering root of moss, and all night through two men watched, two hours apiece, to see that it did not break out anew. And these men never had five minutes' quietude, for the fire, which had been burning unseen in the network of roots for hours, would suddenly send up a flame, and the whole line of that smoldering glow would have to be beaten and drenched out.

As the cook described it later, the fire did not appear for over an hour after the party had left, and when the smoke first arose, he did not pay much attention to it, merely thinking that it was one of the circles of "smudges" which had been lighted the night before all round the camp to keep the mosquitoes away, and which had not been properly put out. He looked up a couple of times, but not for another hour did he notice any change, and then he saw a faint vapor rising near the first.

Thinking by this time that it might be as well to go and keep the fire from spreading, he strolled over to the column of smoke. But he had not come within thirty feet of the place when he found that he was walking over a glowing furnace, the tundra being red hot between the green moss above, which would not burn, and the wet roots below. Each step he took, of course, put out the fire under his footstep by pressing the glowing moss into the substratum of water, but it created a current of air to the moss around that footstep, and looking behind he saw smoke arising from every impress of his foot.

At this point he became alarmed, and instead of making a circle around the camp of moss thoroughly beaten down and soaked, he started to try to beat out the existing fire, an almost hopeless task, for the reason that the flames crept under the surface unseen and almost unfelt, only betraying their presence by a faint film of vapor. By the time that he realized that he should have devoted his energy to making a fireguard around the camp, the tundra was burning too close to the tents for him to be able to dare stop checking it long enough to start protective remedies.

In spite of all his labor, however, the fire reached one of the smaller tents, where some of the maps were kept, and the dry canvas and mosquito netting, catching alight suddenly, went up in the air as though it had been a fire balloon, and blazing fragments of the tent, falling on the tundra about, gave source to a dozen more fires. George rushed over the red-hot tundra and carried the maps, which, though scorched, were not badly injured, to the main tent, and then devoted himself to encircling that tent thoroughly with beaten and wetted moss, watching to see that no spark crossed and that no treacherous fire crept along between the roots of the moss.

Matters were at this point when the Indian appeared, and with one man watching the tents and the other beating out the fire progress was made, the danger being entirely averted when the whole party arrived. The peril over, the other members of the party went back for the canoes, bringing them into the camp late in the evening.

The next morning all boarded the canoes to cross Cache Lake, which, connected with a score of other sloughs, led to the initial streams of the Anaktuvuk, the main tributary of the Colville, which latter river flows into the Arctic Ocean. They had paddled perhaps two miles when the Indian gave a guttural grunt and pointed to the shore that they had left. There, rising high in the clear air, was a column of faint blue smoke.

"They say you can't put out a tundra fire," said Rivers, "and I begin to believe it."

"Then how long do you suppose that will burn?" asked Roger.

"Until the winter puts about a foot of snow over it, I suppose," the geologist answered, "and it'll hate to quit even then."