“Chicago?” was the brief answer. “He looks like Halstead street.”
“Alex stole him, or bought him, or abducted him, or shanghaied him, at Para, down near the mouth of the Amazon,” Case put in, “and came near getting his head knocked off. Let her go, Clay!”
This last was called out to the boy busy at the motors, and the next moment the voyage had begun. The Rambler’s nose was turned down the Columbia!
CHAPTER VIII.—A WRECK AND A BABY BEAR.
Donald, British Columbia, where the Rambler was introduced to the waters of the Columbia river, is pretty well up toward the Arctic circle, about in the same degree of latitude, in fact, as the Great Glacier of the Cascade range, still it is not so cold there in April as one would naturally suppose. There is splendid summer grazing land between the Fraser river, in that latitude, and the Pacific ocean.
Being so far to the North, one would expect the river, like a well-behaved body of water, to run south at Donald, especially as the mouth of the great stream is hundreds of miles in that direction, near the thriving city of Portland, in the state of Oregon. But rivers in mountainous countries have notions of their own, like wayward boys, as to the proper course to pursue, and so the Columbia pours its waters toward the North Pole for more than a hundred miles beyond Donald.
At Beaver the Canadian Pacific leaves the valley of the Columbia and winds south to cross Dog Tooth mountains, a parallel ridge of the long Rocky mountain system at Glacier House pass, while the Columbia pursues its turbulent way to the northwest for a hundred miles or more, as the river runs, until it rounds a great mountain peak and receives the waters of the Wood and Canoe rivers at Boat Encampment. This is the farthest point north for the Columbia, as the stream turns abruptly to the south there and makes for Arrow lakes.
Between Beaver and Boat Encampment the river valley is narrow, and there are no settlements to speak of. In many places the two ridges of the Rocky mountains press down to the waters of the river. The country is wild, and in April the summits to the east and west show snowy caps, like stalwart nurses out in the city parks, guarding perambulators and leading toddling youngsters.
The Rambler passed Beaver long before sunset and entered the wild region between the crowding mountain ridges. It was dim and uncanny there long before it was time for the sun to withdraw his face from that part of the world for the day, as the western summits shut out much of the light that fell. The three lads, Clay, Case, and Alex who had visited the wild places of Peru during the Amazon trip, were wild with joy at coming back to the heart of Nature, but Gran, who was evidently taking his first degree in the wonderful order of Mountain, Life, did not take so readily to the dark shadows and the swirling eddies which threatened to tear the Rambler into bits in punishment for her intrusion into the secret places.
When it became too dark to see the river for any distance ahead, the boys anchored in a little cove cut out of the foot of a mountain by the beating of waters, covering hundreds of years, and built a roaring fire in the coal stove. As it might be some days before they would be able to secure more gasoline, the motors were shut off, together with the electric generators, and supper was started on the top of the coal stove.