CHAPTER I.—CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS IN A MOTOR BOAT.
The motor boat Rambler lay at the very summit of the Rocky Mountains. She was not in a lake, either, although there were lakes of ice not far away. She was not in motion, and there was a great silence all around her.
She lay, propped upright, on a platform car, and the car, with two broken wheels, stood on a make-shift spur of track on the right-of-way of the Canadian Pacific railroad. An unusual place to find a motor boat. But listen.
The Rambler was en route from the South Branch, Chicago, to the headwaters of the Columbia river. She had passed without serious accident down Lake Michigan, through the Straits of Mackinaw, through the Sault Ste. Marie river and canal, and over the crystal waters of old Superior to Port Arthur, where she had been coaxed to the deck of the platform car upon which she now stood.
Almost exactly on the boundary line between Alberta and British Columbia, the flat car had come to grief, and the trainmen had bunted it to the spur and gone on about their business, promising to order a wrecker at the nearest telegraph office. The disabled car tilted frightfully to the rear as it stood on the shaky track, giving the platform a twenty-five per cent. pitch, and causing the Rambler to take on a rakish air, like a swaggering person with his hat set on the back of his head.
A few miles to the east was Laggan, sometimes called Lake Louise, which is 2,368 miles from Montreal and 5,032 feet above the level of the Pacific ocean, 500 miles away. About the same distance to the west was Field, sometimes called Emerald Lake, 2,387 miles from Montreal and over 4,000 feet above tidewater. The highest altitude on the boundary at that point is 5,200 feet above the ocean, and the motor boat was just about there.
It was close to sunset of an April day, and the mountain pass was cold and desolate. There was snow on the peaks, and a cold wind blew whistling through the narrow cut in the gray rock. There was no living figure in sight from the sidling platform of the car, or from the foot-square windows of the Rambler’s tiny cabin. The silence was broken only by the uneasy wind.
Decidedly it was anything but cheerful outside. Inside, there was a glowing fire in a small coal stove, and a shaded electric light brought out the cozy furnishings of the place. The electric generators were not working, the motors being silent, but there was in the accumulators sufficient current for the light and the little electric stove upon which a supper was cooking.
Those who have followed the fortunes of the Rambler to the headwaters of the Amazon will understand without further detail exactly what kind of a craft she was. After returning from the South American expedition, the lads had planned a trip to the Columbia river, and they were now on their way to Donald, where the motor boat was to be launched into the waters of that interesting stream.
The boys had worked hard in Chicago all through the winter, and when April came they were ready for the journey, although their supply of money was not as large as they had hoped to make it. Of the five who had visited Cloud island and secured the store of gold hidden in that semi-volcanic heap of rocks, however, only three were in shape to set out on the proposed voyage.
Frank Porter, who owned the gold taken from Cloud island, had insisted on financing the trip, but this the self-reliant boys would not listen to, preferring to depend upon their own exertions. Julian Shafer, in the interest of whose health the Amazon trip had originally been planned, had acquired a little property through the exertions of Dr. Holcomb, the physician who was treating him for tuberculosis, and had decided to spend the winter and summer at Los Angeles.
So, of the five, there remained only Clayton Emmett, Cornelius Witters, and Alexander Smithwick to carry out the exploration of the Columbia the following spring. It was hoped, however, that both Frank and Julian would be able to join their friends at some point lower down. The story of the boys’ adventures on the Amazon may be found in the first volume of this series.
On this night, then, “Clay,” “Case,” and “Alex,” as they were familiarly called, were gathered around the coal heater in the cabin of the Rambler, high up in a rocky pass on a mountain range, the range forming the backbone of the continent of North America. There was plenty of coal on the platform car, and so they had no fear of passing a chill as well as a desolate night on the great divide. Also, the boys had plenty of provisions, as there were numerous boxes on the car which were to be emptied of their eatables and carried on board the motor boat whenever the great river was reached.
The leasing of the car had eaten into the finances of the boys quite seriously, but they anticipated living mostly on game and fish during the run down the Columbia to the Pacific ocean. They had made no calculations for the return ride to Chicago, believing that they would be able to find employment at Portland.
Boy-like, they had figured on the future only so far as the end of the river journey was concerned. A motor boat trip down the Columbia was too fascinating, they declared, to be mixed up with any prosaic monetary calculations!
“If we go broke,” Case had said, when the closing details were under discussion, “we can walk back! I’d rather swim around Cape Horn and walk back to little old Chicago than miss the days and nights we are going to have on the Columbia!”
“You’re light headed!” Alex had responded.
“That will be an aid in swimming!” Case had replied. “Anyway, it is the Columbia first. The future may take care of itself!”
This night in the mountain pass should have been spent on the Columbia at or near Donald, but the boys were by no means discouraged. Case was inclined to express annoyance and disgust at unfavorable conditions, but really he was as courageous in the face of difficulties as either of his companions. They had been left on the spur early that morning, and had anticipated relief in the shape of a wrecking outfit before noon.
While the supper of bacon, beans, pancakes and coffee sputtered and steamed on the electric stove and the heater sent out generous waves of warmth, Clay arose and opened the cabin door, which faced to the west. The wind immediately chased itself into the room, played tag with everything movable, and went whistling cheerily out again.
At a shout of remonstrance from Alex, Clay drew the door shut and stepped out on the deck of the Rambler. He stood for a second with the wind from the Pacific keen on his face, the ruddy light of the setting sun bright in his eyes, and then beckoned through the glass panel of the door to the boys inside. Case was too busy over the pancakes to notice the signal, but Alex increased Case’s anger by opening the door again and forcing his body out against the wind.
The sun dropping lower, the pencils of light which touched the crags were slipping away, leaving them indistinct in the gathering night, as if the sunlight had brought them into existence with a touch and condemned them to obliteration by withdrawing itself from their angular sides. The boys stood for a second in silence, Clay listening.
“Huh!” Alex grinned, catching Clay by the arm and pointing to the wild country to the west. “This makes me feel queer! Why, we might be the sons of Noah, looking out of the Ark after it stranded on Mt. Ararat! Here we are, in a boat up on the mountains, and there, below, is the lifeless world! I wonder,” he continued, nudging Clay in the ribs to give emphasis to his observation, “if we had a dove, and the dove should be sent out, whether it would bring back an engine with a car fitted up to drag this old hulk to the railroad hospital?”
“No dove would mind bringing a wrecking train back in his bill!” replied Clay. “Of course not!”
“Well,” Alex insisted, “we’ve got to get help from some source. Two trains have passed us to-day without a whisper of help. A steamer on the ocean wouldn’t pass a wrecked boat like that!”
Clay bent his head and shielded his ears with cupped palms.
“There’s a train coming now,” he declared.
“That’s the wind!” Alex answered.
“Can’t you hear it pounding, pounding up the grade to the east?” demanded Clay. “There!” he added, as a sharp whistle was borne faintly to their ears against the rush of the wind, “didn’t you hear that?”
“Sure!” Alex replied. “And it isn’t a passenger, either. A loaded freight, all right. Here’s where we get out!”
The roaring of the train wheels, the sharp hissing of the laboring exhaust, the pounding of the straining drivers, came nearer and nearer, then only the wind was heard.
“Phantom train!” Alex laughed. “Nothing doing!”
Case came out of the cabin and stood holding the edge of the door in his hand, his eyes fixed on his chums.
“Do we get away now?” he asked. “I hear a train coming.”
“She is stalled on the grade, I guess,” Clay replied. “Anyway, she isn’t coming any nearer.”
“Oh, well,” Case grumbled, “I suppose we can stay out here until the railroad gets a new wrecking crew and a new machine made! Old Rip Van Winkle’s little mountain stunt was a summer night on a sleeping porch compared with this. If anybody should come along in the next hundred years, just wake me up, will you?”
“Going to bed?” asked Clay, with a laugh.
“You bet he isn’t!” shouted Alex. “He hasn’t had his supper yet. Catch him going to bed without pancakes and bacon!”
“And the pancakes are burning, too!” cried Case, entering the cabin and slamming the door after him.
“Come on, Case,” urged Alex. “Let’s go down the grade and see what’s the matter, and what sort of a train it is.”
“We’ll find out soon enough if we remain here,” Clay answered. “Besides, we ought to be getting things propped up in the cabin, so there will be a little furniture left when we get bumped out on the main track.”
“Oh, they’ll just pry the truck up with a jack, put in new wheels, and we’ll sail away like a ship on a summer sea!” Alex grinned. “If you won’t go. I’ll go alone.”
Before Clay could utter the remonstrance that was on his lips, the boy was away down the grade to the east, his cap bobbing along the ties ahead of his leaping feet, his hair flying in the gale.
Before he was well out of sight around an angle in the pass the rumble of a heavy train was heard again, and directly the round, red eye of a headlight met the ruddy illumination of the sun in the narrow pass. Clay could see the smutty face of the engineer peering out of the cab window as the engine toiled, panting, upward, and then he saw the fireman looking over his shoulder.
Both were gazing, with no little wonder showing on their faces, at the unusual sight of a motor boat perched on a platform car at the summit of the Rocky Mountains. Clay stood hopeful for a moment, and then the train roared toward the grade to the east, winding down like a snake in the fading light.