“Well, when the river goes up the scows can run the Grand Rapids, down below here, without unloading, or at least without unloading everything. If the river is low so that the rocks stand out, the men have to portage every pound of the brigade stuff. The Grand Rapids are bad, let me tell you that! It is only within the last fifty years that any one has ever tried to run them. I’ll show you the man who first went through—an old man now over seventy; but he was a young chap when he first tried it. Well, he found that he could get through, so he tried it over again. He and others have been guiding on those rapids ever since. That cuts off the old Clearwater trail from here to Fort McMurray, which used to be their old way of getting north.
“So now you see,” he continued, “why these breeds like high water. It means less work for them. It’s hard work for them at best, but a breed would rather risk his life than do any work he could escape. They know there is danger—there is hardly a brigade goes north which brings back all its men again.
“But come on now,” he added. “It’s almost time for supper. We’ll go fix up our camp for the night.”
The boys, each stoutly picking up his own pack-bag, followed their tall leader as he strode away. Their camp was far enough removed from the noise of the hotel bar to leave them in quiet and undisturbed.
“My, but the mosquitoes are thick!” said Jesse, brushing at his face with the broken bough which he had caught up. “I never saw them so bad.”
“Well, Jesse,” said Uncle Dick, smiling, “just you wait. Before you get back you’ll say you never saw mosquitoes before in your life. The traders tell me that they are worse the farther north you go. They say it takes about two or three years for a new man to get used to them so that he can sleep or work at his best—it’s a sort of nervousness that they stir up, though in time that wears off. I think also when they keep on biting you you get immune to the poison, so that it doesn’t hurt so much.”
“Don’t they bite the half-breeds and Indians?” asked John.
“Certainly they bite them. You watch the breeds around a camp at night. Every fellow will cover up his head with his blanket, so that he can sleep or smother, as it happens. As for us, however, we’ve got our black headnets and our long-sleeved gloves. Dope isn’t much good. No one cares much for mosquito dope in the Far North; you’ll see more of it in the States than you will in here, because they have learned that it is more or less useless.