“Plenty, I should say!” said Alex, smiling. “But we came through it. The boys have acted like sportsmen, and I couldn’t say more.”
“I suppose perhaps you got some game then, eh?”
All three now began to speak at once excitedly, and so fast that they could scarcely be understood.
“Did you really get a grizzly?” inquired Uncle Dick of Alex, after a while.
“Yes, sir, and a very good one. And a black bear too, and a moose, and some sheep, and a lot of small stuff like that. They’re hunters and travelers. We gave them a ‘lob-stick’ to mark their journey—far back in the Rockies.”
“Well, Alaska will have to look to its laurels!” said Uncle Dick, taking a long breath and pretending not to be proud of them. “It seems to me you must have been pretty busy shooting things, from all I can learn, young men.”
“Oh, we know the country,” interrupted Rob, “and we’ve got a map—we could build a railroad across there if we had to.”
“Well, to tell the truth, I’m mighty glad you got through all right,” said Uncle Dick. “I’ve been thinking that maybe I oughtn’t to have let you try that trip, for it’s dangerous enough for men. But everything’s well that ends well, and here you are, safe and sound. You’ll have to be getting out of here before long, though, in order to make Valdez in time for your fall school—you’d be running wild if I left you on the trail any longer.
“The boat will be going back to the Landing in a couple of days, I suppose,” he added after a time, as he gathered their hands in his and started along the path up the steep bank; “but there are a few things here you ought to see—the post and the farms and grains which they have—wonderful things in their way. And then I’ll try to get Saunders to fix it so that you can see the Vermilion Chutes of the Peace River.”
“I know right where that is,” said Rob, feeling in his pocket for his map—“about sixty miles below here. That’s the head of navigation on the Peace, isn’t it?”