CHAPTER XIX.—WHY THERE WAS NO VENISON.
A golden morning followed the day of storm. A golden morning on the Columbia river! Still, the lads were in no mood to enjoy the beauties of Nature as shown in her wilder moods. The Rambler, as has been said, was stuck fast in the mud, some distance from the ever-receding water.
“The rocks are showing again,” Alex observed, looking down the river with the glasses, “and it looks as if there were falls ahead.”
“The Columbia river,” Case grumbled, “seems to me to be pretty sudden. She climbs up a couple of rods one day and drops down the next. I wish she’d kept up until we got through this valley.”
“That’s all the fun of it!” Alex insisted. “If you want to live a life of idle pleasure, just you go and get into a scow on a country mill-pond. We came out here for adventures, didn’t we?”
“From the looks of things,” Case continued, “we ought to have brought a house-moving machine with us. How are we ever going to get this boat back into the river. We might hunt and fish here until another flood comes along,” he added with sarcasm in his tone.
“That would suit me, all right,” Alex returned. “I don’t care how long we remain here. There’s plenty of game in the woods, and, now that you have learned to make bread, we are not likely to starve to death.”
Clay who had been roaming around in the sticky soil which the river had deposited on the inundated lands, now came rushing up to the boat.
“Get out the rifle!” he said, speaking softly to Case. “There’s a fine deer back there in the thicket. We’ll have venison for dinner.”
All was excitement in a moment. Case brought out the magazine rifle, and all three started for the thicket where Clay had seen the deer. Captain Joe was left in the cabin, with instructions to devour any stranger who should try to scrape his acquaintance.
The boys walked cautiously for a short distance, then Clay stopped and pointed to a dense growth of bushes and brambles just ahead. Out of the tangle lifted the head of a deer.
“Why doesn’t she run?” asked Alex in a whisper.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Clay replied. “She stood just like that when I went away to get the rifle. She must have heard me working my way through the undergrowth. Maybe she’s dead—killed standing!”
“Dead!” Alex grinned. “Don’t you see her move her head? There, she’s pulled it down now, so there’s nothing to be seen of her. Did you ever see handsomer eyes in a creature’s head?” he added.
“Looked like she was asking us to come and help her,” Case declared.
“I noticed that,” Clay mentioned. “I wonder what is the matter with her. I’m going in there to see. Keep still, you fellows.”
Clay crawled through the thicket on his hands and knees, parting the bushes right and left, and making as little noise as possible. Directly he lifted a hand out of the undergrowth and motioned for Case and Alex to follow him. The deer had again raised her head above the tangle and stood looking at the boys with pleading eyes.
“Never saw anything like that!” Alex muttered as he made his way through the bushes. “I never knew a deer could look a fellow in the face that way. I though they’d run away. Maybe she’s hurt.”
When they came up to where Clay lay in the thicket they found the deer only a few feet away, standing over something lying on the ground.
“Why doesn’t she run?” asked Case. “What kind of a deer is that? She must be foolish in the head most of the time.”
“Slang! You’ll wash dishes!” declared Alex.
“No slang about it,” reiterated Case. “That’s just plain talk.”
“Can’t you see what the trouble is?” asked Clay. “There is a young fawn there, caught in the briars, and the mother won’t leave it.”
“I can see it now!” Alex cried. “Pretty little thing!”
“That will make good eating, too,” Clay observed, turning his face away as he spoke. “Come, now, who’s going to shoot first? Better shoot to kill, for the deer may run away when she hears the report.”
Case and Alex looked at each other an instant and then sat down on the ground and watched Clay, who was still looking the other way.
“I don’t believe I want any venison,” Alex exclaimed.
“I never did like venison!” was Case’s comment on the situation.
Clay turned and looked his chums over in mock anger.
“Just when I find a deer for you!” he cried. “Just when you’ve got a chance you may never have again, you go and back out. What’s the matter with you boys? Think the deer is not fit for food?”
“I’ve lost my appetite for venison, that’s all,” Case explained. “You can shoot if you want to. Shoo! Shoo! Shoo, deer!”
He arose and waved his hands at the animal, shouting at the top of his voice. The deer stepped away a few paces but came back at the bleat of the fawn. Clay regarded the boy with an amused smile.
“You tell me I can shoot, and then you go and scare her away,” he complained. “What is getting into you boys?”
“Did you see her eyes?” asked Alex. “If you shoot her we’ll leave you here in the wilderness. I’m going to see what’s the matter with the little fawn. Is this the time of year for fawns?”
The other boys answered that they did not know, and Alex said that he didn’t think it was. But there was the fawn, with the mother watching over it, whether it was the baby deer season or not. The deer bounded away as Alex approached, but stood watching as he lifted the fawn.
“Just got wound up in vines!” the boy cried. “Come and see what a clever little chap it is! Wish I could keep it.”
“Nix! Not on our boat! Not with the mother looking at us like that!” declared Case, who had stepped up to the fawn.
The little creature was soon untangled, and set down in a clear space as near to the mother as the boys could get. The deer did not seem to fear the boys, for she stood nosing over the baby for a long time. Then she led him away into the forest. Clay insists to this day that she bowed her thanks as the bushes closed behind her!
“There!” Clay shouted, in pretended anger. “You’ve gone and let many a supper get away from us. What do you mean by letting that deer run away in that manner? You’re nice fellows to go hunting with!”
“Run after her and murder her if you want to,” Alex remarked. “The woods are open to you, and you have the rifle. Go on and do it!”
Clay laughed in a bashful manner. Someway boys never do like to let others know that they are possessed of sentiment!
“I wouldn’t shoot that deer, not if I was starving!” he said. “I would always see her eyes looking out of the shade at me!”
“Don’t you ever think I didn’t know that!” Alex answered. “I guess we are a lot of babies, after all. Now we’ll have to eat bear meat for dinner, I can eat bear, for the bear would have eaten us if he had had half a chance. But the next thing is to get the Rambler into the river. That won’t be no merry picnic, I can tell you. Wish we had left her in.”
The boys made the boat as light as possible and then worked her along with handspikes cut from the woods. It was slow work, and many a time they stopped to breathe and joke over the job. Alex finally suggested that they put the wheels under and so make easier work of it.
“In this muck!” laughed Clay. “Why, those wheels would sink into this mess up to the hubs, and we should never be able to move them. No, we’ve just got to nudge her along in this way until we get to the slope that leads down to the river, and then she’ll go easier.”
It was noon before the prow dropped into the water. The boys were tired and disgusted, but they had been taught a lesson which they did not soon forget. They were lifted to banks by floods after that, but they did not permit the Rambler to lie there until the current ran out from under her! After dinner they started the motors again and speeded down stream.
The country was still wild on both sides of the Columbia, and the boys took plenty of time passing through it. There were many things to see and, besides, they still had half-hearted hopes that Gran would come back to them before they left that valley.
But Gran never showed up. The last thing they had seen that reminded them of him—aside from the half-conscious remembrance of the boy that was always in their minds—was the wreck of the rowboat which had drifted down the river during that day of the flood.
It was a week before they came to the great bend of the Columbia. Here they found stores and traders’ houses. They camped out on the batik of Canoe river and remained there two days, laying in provisions and getting acquainted with the people. During their stay there many came to look over the Rambler, and every one lifted brows in disbelief when told that the beat had found her way through the two long and dangerous rapids which lay above.
The boys made no attempt to remove the disbelief from their minds. It really did look like a pretty stiff yarn, so they let it go, loaded in their purchases, and turned the boat south on the great river, about two hundred miles above Upper Arrow lake.
At Boat Encampment the boys had asked, quietly, of course, if any man answering the description of the long-armed fellow who had appeared and disappeared so suddenly had been seen thereabouts, but no one seemed to have seen him, or to have seen a boy answering Gran’s description. It was said that any one passing the place would be certain to be observed, so the boys sailed away with the notion that the two were still up the river.
There followed a number of restful days on a smooth river. There were rapids and falls, of course, but nothing to bring the lads into peril of their lives. They loitered along with the current, stopping at night and often not starting on again until the middle of the day.
The boys will never forget those golden days. They fished and hunted, sat around roaring campfires at night, slept in the warm sunshine when inclined, and read stories of that wonderful land. There was only one trouble over which they brooded.
Gran had disappeared. During the time he had shared the cabin with the boys, since he had come to them so mysteriously at the summit pass, he had endeared himself to them all. Beside the loneliness they felt at his sudden departure, there was always the undefinable feeling that he might be in serious trouble and expecting them to come to him.
“If we knew that he had left us voluntarily,” Clay said, one day, “we might be able to drop him out of our minds, but we don’t know that. In fact, it seems to me that he was forced away.”
“But he wasn’t tied in the boat,” Alex argued. “I guess he might have jumped out when he came to the Rambler. We would have shot that long-armed humbug to pieces if he had tried to stop him.”
“There are ways of forcing a fellow along besides tying him up and carrying him off,” Clay replied. “The man we saw him with may have some grip on him which we do not understand. We’ll have to wait.”
“That old train robber!” cried Alex. “What kind of a hold could he have on Gran? I just believe the boy was afraid to stir when he passed the Rambler that day. Wish I’d shot that big stiff!”
“Besides,” Clay went on. “Gran passed us that note. It was hastily ended, as if he had been interrupted in writing it. And when he threw it out into the river he made sure that the man who was rowing did not see the movement.”
“The sneaking hold-up man!” Case broke in, angrily.
“We don’t know anything about him,” Clay concluded. “We have no proof that he assisted in robbing the train. In fact, we know that he did not, for he was on the train that carried us into Donald.”
“But he might have put up the job,” insisted Alex.