“Yes,” replied Jalap. “They said as it were the only navigable channel.”
“Well, it isn’t, for I know of another that is equally good, and two hundred miles or so shorter. You see, there is a big river coming from the southeast and emptying into the Yukon somewhere in this vicinity, called the Tanana.”
“That’s right,” assented the sailor, “for I’ve already passed its mouth twice about half-way between here and where the St. Michaels is friz in.”
“Good enough,” said Phil. “Now by following this Tanana for two or three hundred miles, and taking up one of its eastern branches that is called the Gheesah, or some such name, and crossing a divide, we can strike the headwaters of Forty Mile Creek.”
“And sail down with the current, run into port under a full press of canvas, and capture the market afore the enemy heaves in sight!” exclaimed Jalap Coombs, enthusiastically, his practical mind quick to note the advantages of Phil’s scheme. “But what’s to become of me?” he added, anxiously. “Kin ye fit me out with a new pair of feet?”
“Certainly we can,” replied Phil, promptly. “We can fit you out with fourteen new pair, and will guarantee that, thus provided, you will be able to travel as fast as the rest of us.”
“Fourteen pair o’ feet?” repeated Jalap Coombs, reflectively, “and slow-shoes on every pair? Seems to me, son, you must be calkilating to run me under a kind of a santipede rig, which it looks like the strain on the hull would be too great. As for navigating fourteen pair of slow-shoes all to once, I don’t reckin old Kite hisself could do it. Still, if you think it can be did, why go ahead and try it on. I’m agreeable, as the cat said after he’d swallowed the cap’n’s wife’s canary.”
So Phil’s plan was adopted without a dissenting voice, and from that moment Jalap Coombs said nothing more about a return to St. Michaels.
That very evening, leaving Serge to see what could be done for the sailor-man’s lameness, and taking Kurilla with him to act as interpreter, Phil visited several Indian huts. At these he finally succeeded in purchasing enough furs and moose-hide for a huge sleeping-bag, which the several squaws, who, under promise of a liberal recompense in tea, undertook its construction, promised should be ready by morning. Phil also bought an immense pair of arctic sleeping-socks and an extra supply of snow-goggles.
When he told Kurilla of their change of plan, and that they intended going up the Tanana, the latter replied, dubiously, “Me plenty don’t know um. Maybe git lose. Yaas.”