Chapter 8

So it came about for many years that the natural barrier interposed by the Big Falls successfully turned the idle tide of anglers' exploration. Beyond them lay an unknown country, but you had to climb cruelly to see it, and you couldn't gain above what you already had in any case. The nearest settlement was nearly sixty miles away, so even added isolation had not its usual quickening effect on camper's effort. The River is visited by few, anyway. An occasional adventurous steam yacht pauses at the mouth, fishes a few little ones from the shallow pools there, or a few big ones from the reefs, and pushes on. It never dreams of sending an expedition to the interior. Our own people, and two other parties, are all I know of who visit the River regularly. Our camp-sites alone break the forest; our blazes alone continue the initial short cut of the Fur Trail; our names alone distinguish the various pools. We had always been satisfied to compromise with the frowning Hills. In return for the delicious necks and points and forest areas through which our clipped trails ran, we had tacitly respected the mystery of the upper reaches.

This year, however, a number of unusual conditions changed our spirit. I have perhaps neglected to state that our trip up to now had been a rather singularly damp one. Of the first fourteen days twelve had been rainy. This was only a slightly exaggerated sample for the rest of the time. As a consequence we found the River filled even to the limit of its freshet banks. The broad borders of stone beach between the stream's edge and the bushes had quite disappeared; the riffles had become rapids, and the rapids roaring torrents; the bends boiled angrily with a smashing eddy that sucked air into pirouetting cavities inches in depth. Plainly, fly-fishing was out of the question. No self-respecting trout would rise to the surface of such a moil, or abandon for syllabubs of tinsel the magnificent solidities of ground-bait such a freshet would bring down from the hills. Also the River was unfordable.

We made camp at the mouth and consulted together. Billy, the half-breed who had joined us for the labour of a permanent camp, shook his head.

"I t'ink one week, ten day," he vouchsafed. "P'rhaps she go down den. We mus' wait." We did not want to wait; the idleness of a permanent camp is the most deadly in the world.

"Billy," said I, "have you ever been above the Big Falls?"

The half-breed's eyes flashed.

"Non," he replied simply. "Bâ, I lak' mak' heem firs' rate."

"All right, Billy; we'll do it."

The next day it rained, and the River went up two inches. The morning following was fair enough, but so cold you could see your breath. We began to experiment.

Now, this expedition had become a fishing vacation, so we had all the comforts of home with us. When said comforts of home were laden into the canoe, there remained forward and aft just about one square foot of space for Billy and me, and not over two inches of freeboard for the River. We could not stand up and pole; tracking with a tow-line was out of the question, because there existed no banks on which to walk; the current was too swift for paddling. So we knelt and poled. We knew it before, but we had to be convinced by trial, that two inches of freeboard will dip under the most gingerly effort. It did so. We groaned, stepped out into ice-water up to our waists, and so began the day's journey with fleeting reference to Dante's nethermost hell.

Next the shore the water was most of the time a little above our knees, but the swirl of a rushing current brought an apron of foam to our hips. Billy took the bow and pulled; I took the stern and pushed. In places our combined efforts could but just counterbalance the strength of the current. Then Billy had to hang on until I could get my shoulder against the stern for a mighty heave, the few inches gain of which he would guard as jealously as possible, until I could get into position for another shove. At other places we were in nearly to our armpits, but close under the banks where we could help ourselves by seizing bushes.

Sometimes I lost my footing entirely and trailed out behind like a streamer; sometimes Billy would be swept away, the canoe's bow would swing down-stream, and I would have to dig my heels and hang on until he had floundered upright. Fortunately for our provisions, this never happened to both at the same time. The difficulties were still further complicated by the fact that our feet speedily became so numb from the cold that we could not feel the bottom, and so were much inclined to aimless stumblings. By-and-by we got out and kicked trees to start the circulation. In the meantime the sun had retired behind thick, leaden clouds.

At the First Bend we were forced to carry some fifty feet. There the River rushed down in a smooth apron straight against the cliff, where its force actually raised the mass of water a good three feet higher than the level of the surrounding pool. I tied on a bait-hook, and two cartridges for sinkers, and in fifteen minutes had caught three trout, one of which weighed three pounds, and the others two pounds and a pound and a half respectively. At this point Dick and Deuce, who had been paralleling through the woods, joined us. We broiled the trout, and boiled tea, and shivered as near the fire as we could. That afternoon, by dint of labour and labour, and yet more labour, we made Burned Rock, and there we camped for the night, utterly beaten out by about as hard a day's travel as a man would want to undertake.

The following day was even worse, for as the natural bed of the River narrowed, we found less and less footing and swifter and swifter water. The journey to Burned Rock had been a matter of dogged hard work; this was an affair of alertness, of taking advantage of every little eddy, of breathless suspense during long seconds while the question of supremacy between our strength and the stream's was being debated. And the thermometer must have registered well towards freezing. Three times we were forced to cross the River in order to get even precarious footing. Those were the really doubtful moments. We had to get in carefully, to sit craftily, and to paddle gingerly and firmly, without attempting to counteract the downward sweep of the current. All our energies and care were given to preventing those miserable curling little waves from over-topping our precious two inches, and that miserable little canoe from departing even by a hair's-breadth from the exactly level keel. Where we were going did not matter. After an interminable interval the tail of our eyes would catch the sway of bushes near at hand.

"Now," Billy would mutter abstractedly.

With one accord we would arise from six inches of wet and step swiftly into the River. The lightened canoe would strain back; we would brace our legs. The traverse was accomplished.

Being thus under the other bank, I would hold the canoe while Billy, astraddle the other end for the purpose of depressing the water to within reach of his hand, would bail away the consequences of our crossing. Then we would make up the quarter of a mile we had lost.

We quit at the Organ Pool about three o'clock of the afternoon. Not much was said that evening.

The day following we tied into it again. This time we put Dick and Deuce on an old Indian trail that promised a short cut, with instructions to wait at the end of it. In the joyous anticipation of another wet day we forgot they had never before followed an Indian trail. Let us now turn aside to the adventures of Dick and Deuce.

Be it premised here that Dick is a regular Indian of taciturnity when it becomes a question of his own experience, so that for a long time we knew of what follows but the single explanatory monosyllable which you shall read in due time. But Dick has a beloved uncle. In moments of expansion to this relative after his return he held forth as to the happenings of that morning.

Dick and the setter managed the Indian trail for about twenty rods. They thought they managed it for perhaps twice that distance. Then it became borne in on them that the bushes went back, the faint knife-clippings, and the half weather-browned brush-cuttings that alone constitute an Indian trail had taken another direction, and that they had now their own way to make through the forest. Dick knew the direction well enough, so he broke ahead confidently. After a half-hour's walk he crossed a tiny streamlet. After another half-hour's walk he came to another. It was flowing the wrong way.

Dick did not understand this. He had never known of little streams flowing away from rivers and towards eight-hundred-foot hills. This might be a loop, of course. He resolved to follow it up-stream far enough to settle the point. The following brought him in time to a soggy little thicket with three areas of moss-covered mud and two round, pellucid pools of water about a foot in diameter. As the little stream had wound and twisted, Dick had by now lost entirely his sense of direction. He fished out his compass and set it on a rock. The River flows nearly north-east to the Big Falls, and Dick knew himself to be somewhere east of the River. The compass appeared to be wrong. Dick was a youth of sense, so he did not quarrel with the compass; he merely became doubtful as to which was the north end of the needle--the white or the black. After a few moments' puzzling he was quite at sea, and could no more remember how he had been taught as to this than you can clinch the spelling of a doubtful word after you have tried on paper a dozen variations. But being a youth of sense he did not desert the streamlet.

After a short half-mile of stumbling the apparent wrong direction in the brook's bed, he came to the River. The River was also flowing the wrong way, and uphill. Dick sat down and covered his eyes with his hands, as I had told him to do in like instance, and so managed to swing the country around where it belonged.

Now here was the River--and Dick resolved to desert it for no more short cuts--but where was the canoe?

This point remained unsettled in Dick's mind, or rather it was alternately settled in two ways. Sometimes the boy concluded we must be still below him, so he would sit on a rock to wait. Then, after a few moments, inactivity would bring him panic. The canoe must have passed this point long since, and every second he wasted stupidly sitting on that stone separated him farther from his friends and from food. Then he would tear madly through the forest. Deuce enjoyed this game, but Dick did not.

In time Dick found his farther progress along the banks cut off by a hill. The hill ended abruptly at the water's edge in a sheer rock cliff thirty feet high. This was in reality the end of the Indian trail short cut--the point where Dick was to meet us--but he did not know it. He happened for the moment to be obsessed by one of his canoe up-stream panics, so he turned inland to a spot where the hill appeared climbable, and started in to surmount the obstruction.

This was comparatively easy at first. Then the shoulder of the cliff intervened. Dick mounted still a little higher up the hill, then higher, then still higher. Far down to his left, through the trees, broiled the River. The slope of the hill to it had become steeper than a roof, and at the edge of the eaves came a cliff drop of thirty feet. Dick picked his way gingerly over curving moss-beds, assisting his balance by a number of little cedar trees. Then something happened.

Dick says the side of the hill slid out from under him. The fact of the matter is, probably, the skin-moss over loose rounded stones gave way. Dick sat down and began slowly to bump down the slant of the roof. He never really lost his equilibrium, nor until the last ten feet did he abandon the hope of checking his descent. Sometimes he did actually succeed in stopping himself for a moment; but on his attempting to follow up the advantage, the moss always slipped or the sapling let go a tenuous hold and he continued on down. At last the River flashed out below him. He saw the sheer drop. He saw the boiling eddies of the Halfway Pool, capable of sucking down a saw-log. Then, with a final rush of loose round stones, he shot the chutes feet first into space.

In the meantime Billy and I repeated our experience of the two previous days, with a few variations caused by the necessity of passing two exceptionally ugly rapids whose banks left little footing. We did this precariously, with a rope. The cold water was beginning to tell on our vitality, so that twice we went ashore and made hot tea. Just below the Halfway Pool we began to do a little figuring ahead, which is a bad thing. The Halfway Pool meant much inevitable labour, with its two swift rapids and its swirling, eddies, as sedulously to be avoided as so many steel bear-traps. Then there were a dozen others, and the three miles of riffles, and all the rest of it. At our present rate it would take us a week to make the Falls. Below the Halfway Pool we looked for Dick. He was not to be seen. This made us cross. At the Halfway Pool we intended to unload for portage, and also to ferry over Dick and the setter in the lightened canoe. The tardiness of Dick delayed the game.

However, we drew ashore to the little clearing of the Halfway Camp, made the year before, and wearily discharged our cargo. Suddenly, upstream, and apparently up in the air, we heard distinctly the excited yap of a dog. Billy and I looked at each other. Then we looked upstream.

Close under the perpendicular wall of rock, and fifty feet from the end of it, waist deep in water that swirled angrily about him, stood Dick.

I knew well enough what he was standing on--a little ledge of shale not over five or six feet in length and two feet wide--for in lower water I had often from its advantage cast a fly down below the big boulder. But I knew it to be surrounded by water fifteen feet deep. It was impossible to wade to the spot, impossible to swim to it. And why in the name of all the woods gods would a man want to wade or swim to it if he could? The affair, to our cold-benumbed intellects, was simply incomprehensible.

Billy and I spoke no word. We silently, perhaps a little fearfully, launched the empty canoe. Then we went into a space of water whose treading proved us no angels. From the slack water under the cliff we took another look. It was indeed Dick. He carried a rod-case in one hand. His fish-creel lay against his hip. His broad hat sat accurately level on his head. His face was imperturbable. Above, Deuce agonized, afraid to leap into the stream, but convinced that his duty required him to do so.

We steadied the canoe while Dick climbed in. You would have thought he was embarking at the regularly appointed rendezvous. In silence we shot the rapids, and collected Deuce from the end of the trail, whither he followed us. In silence we worked our way across to where our duffel lay scattered. In silence we disembarked.

"In Heaven's name, Dick," I demanded at last, "how did you get _there_?"

"Fell," said he, succinctly. And that was all.

XIII.

THE HILLS.

We explained carefully to Dick that he had lit on the only spot in the Halfway Pool where the water was at once deep enough to break his fall and not too deep to stand in. We also pointed out that he had escaped being telescoped or drowned by the merest hair's-breadth. From this we drew moral conclusions. It did us good, but undoubtedly Dick knew it already.

Now we gave our attention to the wetness of garments, for we were chilled blue. A big fire and a clothes-rack of forked sticks and a sapling, an open-air change, a lunch of hot tea and trout and cold galette and beans, a pipe--and then the inevitable summing up.

We had in two and a half days made the easier half of the distance to the Falls. At this rate we would consume a week or more in reaching the starting-point of our explorations. It was a question whether we could stand a week of ice-water and the heavy labour combined. Ordinarily we might be able to abandon the canoe and push on afoot, as we were accustomed to do when trout-fishing, but that involved fording the river three times--a feat manifestly impossible in present freshet conditions.

"I t'ink we quit heem," said Billy.

But then I was seized with an inspiration. Judging by the configuration of the hills, the River bent sharply above the Falls. Why would it not be possible to cut loose entirely at this point, to strike across through the forest, and so to come out on the upper reaches? Remained only the probability of our being able, encumbered by a pack, to scale the mountains.

"Billy," said I, "have you ever been over in those hills?".

"No," said he.

"Do you know anything about the country? Are there any trails?"

"Dat countree is belong Tawabinisáy. He know heem. I don' know heem. I t'ink he is have many hills, some lak'."

"Do you think we can climb those hills with packs?"

Billy cast a doubtful glance on Dick. Then his eye lit up.

"Tawabinisáy is tell me 'bout dat Lak' Kawágama. P'rhaps we fine heem."

In so saying Billy decided the attempt. What angler on the River has not discussed--again idly, again academically--that mysterious Lake alive with the burnished copper trout, lying hidden and wonderful in the high hills, clear as crystal, bottomed with gravel like a fountain, shaped like a great crescent whose curves were haunted of forest trees grim and awesome with the solemnity of the primeval? That its exact location was known to Tawabinisáy alone, that the trail to it was purposely blinded and muddled with the crossing of many little ponds, that the route was laborious--all those things, along with the minor details so dear to winter fire-chats, were matters of notoriety. Probably more expeditions to Kawágama have been planned--in February--than would fill a volume with an account of anticipated adventures. Only, none of them ever came off. We were accustomed to gaze at the forbidden cliff ramparts of the hills, to think of the Idiot's Delight, and the Halfway Pool, and the Organ Pool, and the Burned Rock Pool, and the Rolling Stone Pool, and all the rest of them even up to the Big Falls; and so we would quietly allow our February plannings to lapse. One man Tawabinisáy had honoured. But this man, named Clement, a banker from Peoria, had proved unworthy. Tawabinisáy told how he caught trout, many, many trout, and piled them on the shores of Kawágama to defile the air. Subsequently this same "sportsman" buried another big catch on the beach of Superior. These and other exploits finally earned him his exclusion from the delectable land. I give his name because I have personally talked with his guides, and heard their circumstantial accounts of his performances. Unless three or four woodsmen are fearful liars, I do Mr. Clement no injustice.

Since then Tawabinisáy had hidden himself behind his impenetrable grin.

So you can easily see that the discovery of Kawágama would be a feat worthy even high hills.

That afternoon we rested and made our cache. A cache in the forest country is simply a heavily constructed rustic platform on which provisions and clothing are laid and wrapped completely about in sheets of canoe bark tied firmly with strips of cedar bark, or withes made from a bush whose appearance I know well, but whose name I cannot say. In this receptacle we left all our canned goods, our extra clothing, and our Dutch oven. We retained for transportation some pork, flour, rice, baking-powder, oatmeal, sugar, and tea, cooking utensils, blankets, the tent, fishing-tackle, and the little pistol. As we were about to go into the high country where presumably both game and fish might lack, we were forced to take a full supply for four--counting Deuce as one--to last ten days. The packs counted up about one hundred and fifteen pounds of grub, twenty pounds of blankets, ten of tent, say eight or ten of hardware including the axe, about twenty of duffel. This was further increased by the idiosyncrasy of Billy. He, like most woodsmen, was wedded to a single utterly foolish article of personal belonging, which he worshipped as a fetish, and without which he was unhappy. In his case it was a huge winter overcoat that must have weighed fifteen pounds. The total amounted to about one hundred and ninety pounds. We gave Dick twenty, I took seventy-six, and Billy shouldered the rest.

The carrying we did with the universal tump-line. This is usually described as a strap passed about a pack and across the forehead of the bearer. The description is incorrect. It passes across the top of the head. The weight should rest on the small of the back just above the hips--not on the broad of the back as most beginners place it. Then the chin should be dropped, the body slanted sharply forward, and you may be able to stagger forty rods at your first attempt.

Use soon accustoms you to carrying, however. The first time I ever did any packing I had a hard time stumbling a few hundred feet over a hill portage with just fifty pounds on my back. By the end of that same trip I could carry a hundred pounds and a lot of miscellaneous traps, like canoe-poles and guns, without serious inconvenience and over a long portage. This quickly-gained power comes partly from a strengthening of the muscles of the neck, but more from a mastery of balance. A pack can twist you as suddenly and expertly on your back as the best of wrestlers. It has a head lock on you, and you have to go or break your neck. After a time you adjust your movements, just as after a time you can travel on snow-shoes through heavy down timber without taking conscious thought as to the placing of your feet.

But at first packing is as near infernal punishment as merely mundane conditions can compass. Sixteen brand-new muscles ache, at first dully, then sharply, then intolerably, until it seems you cannot bear it another second. You are unable to keep your feet. A stagger means an effort at recovery, and an effort at recovery means that you trip when you place your feet, and that means, if you are lucky enough not to be thrown, an extra tweak for every one of the sixteen new muscles. At first you rest every time you feel tired. Then you begin to feel very tired every fifty feet. Then you have to do the best you can, and prove the pluck that is in you.

Mr. Tom Friant, an old woodsman of wide experience, has often told me with relish of his first try at carrying. He had about sixty pounds, and his companion double that amount. Mr. Friant stood it a few centuries and then sat down. He couldn't have moved another step if a gun had been at his ear.

"What's the matter?" asked his companion.

"Del," said Friant, "I'm all in. I can't navigate. Here's where I quit."

"Can't you carry her any farther?"

"Not an inch."

"Well, pile her on. I'll carry her for you."

Friant looked at him a moment in silent amazement.

"Do you mean to say that you are going to carry your pack and mine too?"

"That's what I mean to say. I'll do it if I have to."

Friant drew a long breath.

"Well," said he at last, "if a little sawed-off cuss like you can wiggle under a hundred and eighty, I guess I can make it under sixty."

"That's right," said Del imperturbably. "_If you think you can, you can_."

"And I did," ends Friant, with a chuckle.

Therein lies the whole secret. The work is irksome, sometimes even painful, but if you think you can do it, you can, for though great is the protest of the human frame against what it considers abuse, greater is the power of a man's grit.