“Mayhap ye remember the cabin on the west side, where they’re sluicing—that’s Joe Howard’s cabin. Well, Howard, like everywan else on the river, finds it easiest to get in and out by boat. Wan time he and his mate were lining down a boat not far from shore when she broke away. Howard jumped on a rock, but ’twas so far out he dared not try to swim ashore, fer the current set strong. The other man grabbed the boat and got through the edge of the rapids somehow, but ’twas half a mile below before he got ashore. Then he cuddn’t get the boat up again to where Howard was, and ’twas two or three hours of figgerin’ he did before Howard dared take the plunge and try to catch the pole which his mate reached out to him. ’Twas well-nigh crazy he was—a man nearly always goes crazy when he’s left out on a rock in the fast water that way.
“The Priest Rapids is another murderer, and I’ll not say how many have perished there. You tell me that your boats ran it at this stage of water? ’Twas wonderful, then, that’s all. Men have come through, ’tis true, and tenderfeet at that, and duffers, at that. Two were once cast in the Priest, and only one got through, and he could not swim a stroke! They say that sixty miners were lost in that rapid in one year.
“To be sure, maybe these are large tales, for such matters grow, most like, as the years go by, but ye’ve seen the river yerselves, and ye know what the risk is. Take a band of miners, foolhardy men, and disgust them with tryin’ to get out of this country afoot—and ’tis awful going on foot through here—and a raft is the first thing they think of—’tis always a tenderfoot’s first idea. There’s nothing so hard to handle as a raft. Now here they come, singin’ and shoutin’, and swing around the bend before they see the Death Rapids, or the Priest, we’ll say. They run till the first cellar-door wave rolls back on them and the raft plunges her nose in. Then the raft goes down, and the men are swept off, and there’s no swimming in the Columbia for most men. There’s not annything left then fer anny man to do except the priest—and belike that’s why they call it the Priest Rapids.”
“I’ve often wondered,” said Rob, “when we were coming down that stream, whether some of those Alaska Indians with their big sea-canoes could not run this river—they’re splendid boats for rough water, and they go out in almost any weather.”
“And where’ll ye be meanin’, my boy?” asked O’Brien.
“Along the upper Alaska coast. You see, we live at Valdez.”
“Alaska? Do ye hear that now! And that’s the place I’ve been wanting to see all me life! They tell me ’tis foine up there, and plenty of gold, too. But tell me, why do ye come down to this country from so good a place as Alaska?”
“Well, we were just traveling about, you know,” said Rob, “and we wanted to see some of this country along the Rockies before it got too common and settled up. You see, this isn’t our first trip across the Rockies; we ran the Peace River from the summit down last summer, and had a bully time. The fact is, every trip we take seems to us better than any of the others. You must come up some time and see us in Alaska.”
“It’s that same I’ll be doin’, ye may depend,” said O’Brien, “the first chance I get. ’Tis weary I get here, all by myself, with no one to talk to, and no sport but swearin’ at a lot of pig-tailed Chinks, and not time to go grizzly-huntin’ even—though they do tell me there’s fine grizzly-huntin’ twelve miles back, in the Standard Basin. So ’tis here I sit, and watch that mountain yonder that they’ve named for pore Sam Boyd—Boyd’s Peak, they call it, and ’tis much like old Assiniboine she looks, isn’t it? Just that I be doin’ day by day, and all the time be wantin’ to see Alaska. And now here comes me friend Leo from the Cache, and brings a lot of Alaskans ye’d be expectin’ annywhere else but here or there! ’Tis fine byes ye are, to come so far, and I’ll be hopin’ to meet ye in Alaska one of these fine days, for I’m a bit of a miner myself, as most of us are up here.”