“Swimming it, eh?” said Uncle Dick. “Well, that means swimming the horses across. Also it means freighting the packs. Off with the loads, then, boys, and let’s get busy.”
The Indian and Uncle Dick now examined the boat and found that it would ferry something like five hundred pounds besides two men acting as oarsmen. As they had something like three-quarters of a ton in the pack-loads, this meant several trips in the boat.
Meantime Moise, singing and laughing as usual, proceeded to build a fire and to make a little midday camp, for he knew they would tarry here for some time.
“We’ll wouldn’t took all the grub over right way first thing,” said he. “Better eat plenty first.”
“All right, Moise,” said John; “I’m hungry right now, and I’ll eat any time you say. But I think we’d better wait until we see how they come out with the boat.”
With the first load of supplies in the skiff, Uncle Dick and the Indian had a good stiff pull of it, for the current of the Athabasca here is at least six or eight miles an hour. But by heading up stream they managed to land nearly opposite the place where they had started. By the time they had returned for the second load all the packs were off and the horses were ready for the crossing. Uncle Dick thought that it would be best to cross the horses at once, as any mountain stream is lower in the early part of the day than it is in mid-afternoon, when the daily flood of melting snow is at its height.
The boys had often heard of this way of getting a pack-train across a river too deep to ford, and now they were to see it in actual practice. The Indian, wading out, showed that there was a shallow hard bar extending some distance out and offering good footing. He pushed the boat out some distance from shore and sat there, holding it with an oar thrust into the sand. Uncle Dick rode his saddle-pony out a little way, and led the white bell-mare, old Betsy, along behind him, passing Betsy’s rope to the Indian as he sat in the boat. Betsy, as may be supposed, was a sensible and courageous horse, well used to all the hardships of mountain work.
It is the way of all pack-horses to be given to sudden frights, but, still, if they see that another horse has gone ahead they nearly always will try to follow. All the other horses now stood looking out at Betsy. As they did so the others of the party made a sort of rope corral behind them and on each side. All at once Moise and Uncle Dick began to shout at the horses and crowd them forward toward the water. Although they plunged and tried to break away, they were afraid of the rope, and, seeing Betsy standing there, one after another they splashed out into the shallow water.
Uncle Dick sprang on top of his horse, Danny, once more, and headed off those which undertook to come back to the bank. Then, once more riding out to the boat, he sprang off nearly waist-deep into the water and climbed into the boat, leaving Danny to take his chances with the others. Both men now bent to the oars. Old Betsy, seeing her rope fast to the boat for the time, swam toward it so strongly that they were almost afraid she would try to get into it, so at length Uncle Dick cut off the rope as short as he could and cast everything loose. By that time, as good-fortune would have it, all the horses were swimming, following the white lead-mare, which, seeing the shore on ahead, and not seeing the shore behind, and, moreover, seeing human beings in the boat just ahead, struck out sturdily for the other side.
The swift icy current of the Athabasca carried the animals far down-stream, and this time Uncle Dick did not try to keep the boat up-stream, but allowed it to drift with the horses, angling down. It seemed to those left on the hither shore at least half an hour before a call from the other side announced that the boatmen had reached shallow water. Of course it was not so long; but, whether long or short, it certainly was fortunate that the journey had been made so quickly and so safely. For now, one after another, they could see the horses splashing and struggling as they found solid footing under them, so what had lately been a procession of heads and ears became a line of pack-horses straggling up the bank; and a very cold and much-frightened train of pack-horses they were, too, as Uncle Dick could have told his young companions. But what he did was to give a great shout which announced to them that all was safe.