“Wait a little,” said he, “and I’ll give ye new potatoes and all sorts o’ things. ’Tis a good farm we have here.”
“But how came you to have a farm like this, up here in the Selkirks?” inquired Rob.
“Well, you see,” answered O’Brien, “there’s quite a bit of gold-mining up here, and has been more. Those camps at the gold-creeks above here all needed supplies, and they used to pack them in—the pack-trail’s right back of our barn yonder. But Sam Boyd knew that every pound of hay and other stuff he raised fifty miles north of Revelstoke was that much closer to the market. This was his farm, you know—till the river got him, as she will every one who lives along her, in time.
“Ye see, Sam was the mail-carrier here, between Revelstoke and the camps above, and, as the trail is a horror, he mostly went by boat. His partner was Tom Horn, a good riverman too, and the two of them in their canoe went up and down together manny a trip. ’Twas a careful man he was, too, Sam, and no coward. But one time, to save them a little walk, I suppose, they concluded to run the Revelstoke Cañon. Well, they never got through, and what became of them no one knows, except that their boat came through in bits. Ye’re lucky this fellow Leo didn’t want to run ye all through there, with the fine big boats ye’ve got below. But at least Sam and Tom never made it through.
“Well, the old river got them, as she has so manny. Sam’s widow lived on here fer a time, then went to town and died there, and the company took the farm. They have a Chink to keep Mrs. Boyd’s flower-garden going the way she did before, for the boys all liked it in the mines. And back in the woods is a whole bunch of Chinks, wood-cutters that supplies the boats. When my Chink is done his gardenin’ I make him hoe my vegetables fer me.
“So ye’re grizzly-hunters, are ye, all of ye?” continued O’Brien. “And not afraid to take yer own life in your hands? ’Tis well, and anny man must learn that who goes into the wilds. But manny a tale I could tell ye of bould and brave men who’ve not been able to beat this old river here. Take yon cañon above Revelstoke, fer instance. She’d be but a graveyard, if the tale was told. One time six men started through in a big bateau, and all were lost but one, and he never knew how he got through at all. Once they say a raft full of Chinamen started down, and all were swept off and drowned but one. He hung to a rope, and was swept through somehow, but when they found him he was so bad scared he could not say a word. He hit the ties afoot, goin’ west and shakin’ his head, and maybe bound for China. No man could ever get him to spake again!
“Now do ye mind the big rapids up there they call the Death Rapids, above the Priest—I’m thinkin’ ye lined through there, or ye wouldn’t be here at the table now, much as I know how Leo hates to line a boat.”
“We certainly did line,” said Uncle Dick, “and were glad to get through at that. We lost almost a day there getting down.”
“Lucky ye lost no more, fer manny a man has lost his all at that very spot. Once a party of fourteen started down, in good boats, too, and only one man got out alive. Some say sixty men have been drowned in that one rapid; some say a hundred and sixty-five, counting in the Chinamen and Frenchmen who were drowned in the big stampede the time so manny started down to the diggings on rafts. Ye see, they’d shoot right around the head of the bend without sendin’ a man ahead to prospect the water, and then when they saw the rapids, ’twas too late to get to either side. ’Tis a death trap she is there, and well named.
“Wan time a Swede was spilled out on the Death Rapids, and somehow he came through alive. He swam for two miles below there before they could catch him with a boat, and he’d been swimming yet if they hadn’t caught him, he was that scared, and if they hadn’t hit him on the head with a oar. ’Twas entirely crazy he was.