Buch lesen: «The Border Boys in the Canadian Rockies»

CHAPTER I
THE BOY FROM NOWHERE

“Hold on there a minute! Don’t you think you’re being unnecessarily rough with that boy?”

“Naw, I don’t. And if I am, it ain’t none of your business that I can see.”

“Perhaps I mean to make it so.”

“Aw run along and play, kid. Don’t bother me.”

The brakeman glared angrily at the tall, well-built lad who had accosted him. In so doing, he for an instant ceased belaboring a dust-covered, cowering lad in pitifully ragged clothing whom, a moment before, he had been cuffing about the head without mercy.

“Take that, you young tramp!” he had hurled out savagely, as each blow fell on the quivering form.

The boy receiving this unmerciful punishment had been discovered riding the blind-baggage on the long, dust-covered train of Canadian Pacific coaches that had just come to a stop.

Of course the boy had been summarily ejected, and the brakeman was now engaged in what he would have termed “dusting the young rascal’s jacket.”

It was a pitiful sight, though, to see the slender, emaciated lad, whose rags hardly covered his thin body, and who could not have been much above sixteen, cowering under the punishment of the burly trainman. The brakeman was not of necessity a brute. But in his eyes the lad was “a miserable tramp,” and only getting his just dues. To more humane eyes, though, the scene appeared in a different light.

Some of the passengers, gazing from the windows, had ventured to cry, “Shame,” but that was all that had come of it till Ralph Stetson, who had been standing with a group of his friends at the other end of the platform of the Pine Pass station, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, happened to see what was going forward. Without a word he had hastened from them and come to the rescue. Ralph was a boy whose blood always was on fire at the sight of cruelty and oppression, and it appeared to him that the brakeman was being unnecessarily rough. Besides, there was something in the big, appealing eyes of the sufferer, and his ragged, ill-clad form, that aroused all his sympathies. So it came about that he had tried to check the punishment with the words quoted at the beginning of this chapter.

Now he stood facing the brakeman who appeared quite willing for a minute to drop the lad he was maltreating and turn on the newcomer. Perhaps, though, there was something in Ralph’s eye that held him back. Old “King-pin” Stetson’s son looked thoroughly business-like in his broad-brimmed woolen hat, corduroy jacket and trousers, stout hunting boots and flannel shirt, with a handkerchief loosely knotted about the neck. Evidently he had come prepared to rough it in the wild country in the midst of which the train had come to a halt.

His life and experiences in the strenuous country along the Mexican border had toughened Ralph’s muscles and bronzed his features, and he looked well equipped physically to carry out the confidence expressed in his cool, clear eyes.

“Who are you, anyhow?” the brakeman hurled at him, growing more aggressive as he saw some of his mates running toward him from the head of the long train where the two big Mogul locomotives were thundering impatiently.

“Never mind that for now. Drop that boy and I’ll pay his fare to wherever he wants to go.”

“Well, you are a softy! Pay a tramp’s fare? Let me tell you, mister – ”

“Say, going to hold this train all day?” demanded the conductor bustling up. “What’s all this?”

“This kid got on the train in the night some place. Bin ridin’ the blind baggage. I was giving him ‘what for’ when this other kid butts in,” explained the brakeman.

“I said I was willing to pay this boy’s fare rather than see him abused,” struck in Ralph, flushing slightly.

“Well, that’s fair and square,” said the conductor, “so long as he pays his fare, that’s all I care. But I ain’t goin’ to hold my train. Where d’ye want to go, boy?”

“This is Pine Pass, ain’t it?” demanded the ride stealer, whom the brakeman had now released.

“This is the Pass, – yes. Come, hurry up.”

“Then I’ve come all the fur I’m goin’.”

As if to signify that his interest was over, the conductor waved his hand to the engineers peering from their cabs ahead. The brakemen scampered for their cars. The locomotives puffed and snorted and the long train began to move. As the conductor swung on he called back sarcastically:

“Sorry we couldn’t wait while you fixed it up. Wish you joy of your bargain.”

In another instant the train was swinging around into a long cut between deep, rocky walls. In yet another instant it was gone, and Ralph Stetson, with a rather puzzled expression on his good-looking face, stood confronting the scarecrow-like object he had rescued from the brakeman. In the tenement-house district of any large city the pitiful figure might not have looked out of place.

But here, in the Canadian Rockies, with a boiling, leaping torrent racing under a slender trestle, great scraps of rocks and pine and balsam-clad mountains towering above, and in the distance the mighty peaks of the Selkirks looming against the clean-swept blue, the spectacle that this waif of the big towns presented seemed almost ludicrous in its contrast. Ralph felt it so at least, for he smiled a little as he looked at the disreputable figure before him and asked:

“What are you doing at Pine Pass?”

The question was certainly a natural one. Besides the tiny station, no human habitation was in sight. Above it, threatening to crush it seemingly, towered a precipice of dark colored rock. Beyond this rose mighty pines, cliffs, waterfalls and, finally, climbing fields of snow. Everywhere peaks and summits loomed with a solitary eagle wheeling far above. In the air was the thunderous voice of the torrent as it tumbled along under the spidery trestle beyond the station, and the sweet, clean fragrance of the pines.

“What’m I doin’ at Pine Pass?” The ragged youth repeated the question. “I-I’m sorry, mister, but I can’t tell yer.” He paused, and a strange, wistful look came into his eyes as he gazed at the distant peaks, “I thought some time I’d get up among them mountains; but there’s a heap more of ’em than I calculated on.”

“How did you get here? Where did you come from?” pursued Ralph.

“Frum Noo York.” And then, answering the unspoken question, he continued, “You kin call me Jimmie, and ef you want ter know how I got yere, I jes’ beat it.”

“Beat it, eh? Tramped it, you mean?”

“Yep. Stole rides when I could. Walked when I couldn’t. Bin two munts er more, I reckin. Steamboats, freights, blin’ baggage, anyting.”

“And what did you think you’d do when you got here?”

“Work till I got some coin togedder. But it don’t look much as if there was any jobs fer a kid aroun’ here, does it?”

“It does not. What can you do?”

“Anyting; that’s on the level.”

“Hum; you wait here a minute, Jimmie. I don’t quite understand what brought you here, and if you don’t want to tell me I won’t ask you. But you wait here a minute and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Say, you will? Kin you put me to woik? Say, you’re all right, you are, mister. I’ll bet you’d have put that braky away in a couple of punches, big as he wuz.”

And the boy gazed admiringly after Ralph’s athletic form as the latter hastened toward the group at the end of the platform. They were standing beside what appeared to be a small mountain of baggage and they had just noticed his absence.

“Well, what under the sun – ?” began Harry Ware, whose full name, H. D. Ware, was, of course, shortened at Stone fell College to Hardware.

“Simpering serpents, Ralph,” broke in Percy Simmons, who, equally, of course, was known to his boyish chums as Persimmons, “grinning gargoyles, we knew this was to be a collecting trip, but you appear to have started by acquiring a scarecrow!”

“Hold on a minute, boys,” cried Ralph, half laughingly, for Persimmons’ odd way of talking and explosive exclamations made everyone who knew him smile. “Hold on; listen to what happened.”

The eldest member of the group, a tall and angular, but withal good-natured and kindly looking man with a pair of shell-rimmed spectacles perched across his bony nose, now struck in.

“Yes, boys; let us hear what Ralph has been up to now. I declare, since our experience along the Border I’m prepared for anything.”

“Even what may befall us in the Canadian Rockies, eh, Professor Wintergreen?” asked Ralph. “Well, that lad yonder, if I’m not much mistaken, is our future deputy cook, bottlewasher, and midshipmate.”

They all stared at him. Persimmons was the first to recover his voice.

“Giggling gophers,” he gasped, “as if Hardware hadn’t brought along enough patent dingbats without your adding a live one to the collection!”

CHAPTER II
THE TORRENT

Vacation time had rolled around once more at Stonefell College, which accounts for our finding Professor Wintergreen, Ralph Stetson, and the latter’s chums at this isolated spot in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. Readers of former volumes of this series will at once recall the eccentric professor and his young companion Ralph. Harry Ware and Percy Simmons, however, we have not met before. Jack Merrill and Walt Phelps, the two young ranchmen who shared Ralph’s adventure on the Mexican border, could not be with him on the present vacation, both boys being required at their western homes.

So it had come about that when Professor Wintergreen received a commission to hunt specimens in the Canadian Rockies, Ralph jumped at the chance to accompany him. His father, the railroad magnate, and Ralph’s mother had planned a trip to Europe, but the boy, being given the choice of the Rocky Mountain expedition or the trip across the Atlantic, had, with his characteristic love of adventure, chosen the former without hesitation. His mother grieved rather over this, but his father approved. “King-pin Stetson,” as Wall Street knew the dignified railroad magnate, approved of boys roughing it. He had seen how much good Ralph’s western experiences had done the boy. His shoulders had broadened, his muscles hardened, and his eyes grown brighter during his strenuous times along the border. Not less noteworthy had been his mental broadening. From an indolent attitude toward studies, a condition caused, perhaps, by his former rather delicate health, Ralph’s appetite for learning had become as robust as the rest of him.

There is no space here to detail all that had happened during Ralph’s vacation on the Mexican border. But briefly, as told in “The Border Boys on the Trail,” it included the exciting experiences attendant upon the capture of his chums and himself by a border bandit, and their sharing many perils and adventures on both sides of the frontier. In the second volume, called “The Border Boys Across the Frontier,” the boys discovered the Haunted Mesa, and stumbled by the merest accident upon a subterranean river. The finding of this latter plunged them into a series of accidents and thrilling adventures, exciting beyond their wildest dreams. It is no laughing matter to be captured and suspected as spies by Mexican revolutionists, as the boys found out. But they managed to stop the smuggling of arms across the Border, as readers of that volume know.

“The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers” showed how courage and skill may be more than a match for villainy and duplicity. With the “Rurales” the boys lived a life brimming to the full with the sort of experiences they had grown to love. The finding of a hidden mine, too, enriched them all and gave each lad an independent bank account of no mean dimension. The following book, which was entitled “The Border Boys with the Texas Rangers,” found the three lads sharing the perils and hardships of the body that has done so much to keep law and order in a much vexed region. Brave, resourceful, and skillful, as their former experiences had trained them to be, the boys found full scope for all their faculties with the Rangers. A band of cattle thieves made trouble for them, and Jack Merrill’s climb out of the Hidden Valley furnished the most thrilling experience of his life.

Dearly would Ralph have loved to share with his former companions the exciting times which he was sure lay ahead of him in the Canadian Rockies. But it was not to be, and so, when young Ware and Percy Simmons both begged to be “let off” from Bar Harbor and Newport, Professor Wintergreen had, on their parents’ request, decided to allow them to come along. The professor’s interests in the Canadian Rockies were purely scientific. His duty was to collect specimens of minerals, and also of animal life, for one of the best known scientific bodies in the east. Ralph, with his knowledge of hunting and woodcraft, was to be relied upon as a valuable aide. Young Ware and Percy Simmons were more or less Tenderfeet, though both had been camping before.

When Ralph had finished relating Jimmie’s story to the others, the professor said:

“I’ll talk to the lad myself. If he proves all that he appears to be from your description, Ralph, we might manage to use him. A boy willing to make himself useful around camp might come in handy.”

So the professor stalked off on his long legs to interview Jimmie, who viewed his approach with awe, while the boys stood in a chattering group about the pile of baggage. It was to be remarked that most of it bore the initials H. D. Ware, of which more anon.

“Wonder what’s become of that guide and the ponies?” spoke up Ralph, while the Professor interrogated the awe-struck Jimmie.

“Don’t know,” responded Hardware, gazing at a dusty track that wound itself up the cliff back of the station for a few yards, and was then lost around a scrap of rock that glittered with “fool’s-gold.” “Ought to be here by now, though.”

“Fiddling fish,” struck in Persimmons at this moment, “there ought to be trout in that stream below there, boys. I’m going down to have a look.”

“All right. We’ll wait for you and give you a hail when the ponies show up. Look out you don’t fall in, though. Those rocks look slippery where the water has dashed over them,” warned Ralph.

“I’m all right,” responded Persimmons airily, and he set out, clambering down the rocky path leading to the brink of the foaming, brown torrent that roared through Pine Pass.

Shortly afterward, the Professor came back with his arm on Jimmie’s shoulder. The man of science, childlike in some things and absorbed in study for the most part, was yet a fairly accurate reader of human nature.

“I’ve been talking to Jimmie, boys,” he said, as he approached, “and he’ll do. He’s been officially engaged as general assistant to our guide with the Wintergreen expedition.”

“Good for you, Jimmie,” smiled Ralph, “and so now your troubles are at an end for a time, anyhow.”

The eyes of the waif filled with tears.

“I dunno jes how ter thank you, boss,” he said, addressing all of them, “but I kin promise you that I’ll make good.”

“Sure of that,” said the Professor kindly, “but I can’t make out why you won’t tell us what brought you to such an out-of-the-way, not to say remote, part of the world as this.”

“I’d tell yer if I could; honest I would, boss,” spoke Jimmie; “but – but I can’t jes’ yet. Some time maybe – ”

The lad broke off, and once more his wistful eyes sought the distant peaks.

“Is them the Selkirks over yonder?” he asked presently.

“Yes; those far peaks are,” said the Professor, also gazing toward the giant ranges in the distance whose crests glimmered with the cold gleam of never-melting snow, “those are the Selkirks.”

“Goin’ that way?” asked Jimmie, his eyes still riveted on the far-flung ranges.

“Yes; we hope to penetrate as far as that. Why?”

“Oh, nuttin’. I hoped you was, that’s all.”

A smile played over Ralph’s lips. He was about to ask Jimmie some bantering question about what he, the New York waif, expected to find in the distant mountains, but at that instant there came a piercing cry.

“Help! Guzzling grasshoppers! H-e-l-p!”

“Gracious! It’s Persimmons!” cried Ralph, an alarmed look coming over his countenance. Well did he know his friend’s capacity for getting into trouble.

“Run, boys, run! He must be in a serious predicament!” cried the Professor, as the cry came once more.

At top speed they ran toward the end of the platform and the rocky path leading to the thundering mountain torrent.

“If he’s fallen in that creek, he’s a goner!” shouted the station agent, rushing out of the depot. “The falls are right below, and he’ll be swept into them!”

CHAPTER III
IN PERIL OF HIS LIFE

Just how they clambered down that rocky, slippery track none of the party was ever able to recall in after life. But, burned deep on each boy’s mind for as long as he should live was the picture they saw as they came in full view of the swirling, madly dashing torrent. Above a foam-flecked eddy, beyond which the main current boiled and seethed, towered the black, spider-like outlines of the trestle. On the other shore was a rocky steep covered with big pines and balsams.

Between the two, his white, frightened face showing above the current as he clung with might and main to a log, was Persimmons. This log, evidently the trunk of a tree which had fallen from its foothold beside the path on the depot side of the torrent, reached out some twenty feet above the devil’s caldron of the stream. The roots and the main part of the trunk rested on the shore. That portion that projected over the water was nothing more than a slender pole. The freshets of spring had swept it clean of branch or limb. It was as bare as a flag-staff.

Under it the green water rushed frantically on toward a fall that lay beyond the trestle. The voice of the cataract was plainly audible in their ears, although in the extremity of their fear for Persimmons they gave it no heed. It was almost at the end of this frail support that the boy was clinging. Only his head and shoulders were above the water, which dragged malignantly at him, trying to tear loose his hold. It was plain at once that flesh and blood could not stand the strain long. If they did not act to save him, and that quickly, Percy Simmons was doomed speedily to be swept from his hold and hurtled to the falls and – but they did not dare dwell upon that thought.

How the boy could have got where he was, was for the present a mystery. But there he was, almost at the end of the slender tree trunk, which whipped under the strain of his weight.

“Can you hold on?” shouted Ralph, using the first words that came into his head.

They saw Persimmons’ lips move, but could not hear his reply.

“Don’t make him speak; he needs every ounce of breath he has,” said the professor, whose face was ashen white under his tan. The boys were hardly less pale. They looked about them despairingly.

“We must find a rope and get it out to him,” cried Harry Ware.

“But how? Nobody could maintain a foothold on that log,” declared Ralph.

“We might drift it down to him,” suggested the station agent; “get on the bank further up and allow the current to carry down a loop that he could grab.”

“That’s a good idea,” cried the professor, hailing any solution of their quandary with joy, “have you got a rope?”

“Yes, in the shack above. I’ll get it in a jiffy.”

Before he had finished speaking, the man was off, racing up the rocky path as fast as his legs could carry him.

“Hold on, Perce!” cried Ralph encouragingly, waving his hand. “We’ll get you out of that in no time.”

They saw poor Persimmons’ lips try to frame a pitiful smile, but the next instant a wave of foam dashed over him. After what seemed an agony of waiting, but which was in reality only a few minutes, the agent reappeared with several yards of light but strong rope.

“Now we shan’t be long,” he said encouragingly, as he rapidly formed a loop in it.

No sooner was this done, than Ralph seized the rope and tried to throw it over Persimmons’ head like a lasso. He had learned to throw a rope like a cowboy on the Border, but this time either the feat was beyond his skill, or he was too unnerved to do it properly. At any rate, at each attempt the throw fell short, and the current whirled the lifeline out of their comrade’s reach.

Fortunately, Persimmons had managed, by this time, to brace his feet against an out-cropping rock, and so give his overstrained arms some relief. But it was obvious that, even with this aid, he could not hold on much longer.

Nothing remained but to try the plan that the agent had suggested, namely, to carry the rope up the bank a little and try to drift it down stream. With a prayer on his lips, Ralph made the first cast. The rope fell on the water in what appeared to be just the spot for the current to carry it down to the boy they were trying to rescue.

But their joy was short lived. Having carried the loop a short way, a viciously swirling eddy caught it and sucked it under the surface. It became entangled in a rock, and they had much ado to get it back ashore at all.

A sigh that was almost a groan broke from Ralph as he saw the futility of his cast. It looked like the last chance to save the boy whose life depended on their reaching him quickly. It was out of the question to get out on the slender, swaying end of the trunk to which young Simmons was clinging. Not one of them but was too heavy to risk it. And, in the event of the trunk snapping, they knew only too well what would ensue. A brief struggle, and their comrade would be swept to the falls, from which he could not possibly emerge alive.

“We must save him!” panted Ralph, “but how – how?”

“The only way is to get the rope to him,” said the professor.

“And we can’t accomplish that unless – I think I can do it, professor,” broke off Ralph suddenly.

“What do you mean to do?”

“To straddle that log and get the rope out to him in that way.”

“Nonsense, it would not bear your weight even if you could balance on it.”

But Ralph begged so hard to be allowed to put his plan into execution that the professor was at last forced to give way and consent to his trying the perilous feat.

“But come back the instant you are convinced you are in danger,” he commanded; “remember, I am in charge of you boys.”

Ralph eagerly gave the required bond. Fastening the rope to his waist, he straddled the narrow trunk and gingerly began working himself forward toward his imperiled chum.

He got along all right till he was in a position where his feet began to be clawed at by the hurrying waters below. He swayed, recovered himself by a desperate effort, and then once more began his snail-like progress. The sight of Persimmons’ blue lips and white cheeks, for in that land the waters are almost as cold in midsummer as in the depth of winter, gave him fresh determination to continue his hazardous mission.

But even the most determined will cannot always overcome material obstacles. A chunk of driftwood was swept against Ralph’s feet. He was almost overbalanced by the force of the blow. The watchers on shore saw him strive wildly for an instant to recover his equilibrium, and then a cry of alarm broke from their lips as they saw the boy suddenly lose his balance completely and topple off the trunk into the stream.

“The rope! Haul on the rope!” shouted the professor, as Ralph vanished, to reappear an instant later fighting for his life in the relentless torrent.

Well it was for the boy then, that he had tied the rope to his waist. Had he not done so, the moment might have been his last, for even the strongest swimmer that ever breasted water would have been but a helpless infant in that titanic current.

They all laid hold of the rope and pulled with every ounce of muscle their combined forces could command. But, even then, so strongly did the swiftly dashing stream suck at its victim that it was all they could do to get him ashore. Blue and shivering from cold, however, Ralph finally found footing and scrambled up the bank. Then, and not till then – such had been the strain – did they recollect Persimmons.

For an instant they hardly dared to look up. They feared that the end of the long log might prove to be tenantless. But, to their unspeakable relief, Persimmons still was clinging there. But even as they gave a shout of joy at the sight of him, another thought rushed in. Of what avail was it that the boy was there, when there appeared no possible way of getting him out of his predicament?

Were they to stand there helplessly and see him swept to his death before their very eyes? Was there nothing they could do? No untried way of getting that precious rope to him?

It appeared that the answer to these questions must be in the negative.

“Great heaven!” burst from the professor’s pale lips, and his voice sounded harsh and rough as if his throat was as dry as ashes. “Can’t we do anything? Can none of you suggest a way?”

“I tink I can get dat rope out dere, if you’ll gimme a chanct, boss,” piped a voice at his elbow.

They all looked around. It was Jimmie, whom, in the stress of the last minutes, they had forgotten as completely as if he had never existed. But now here he was, repeating, with calm assurance, but no braggadocio, his offer:

“I tink I can get it to him, if you’ll gimme a chanct.”