The dark-skinned creature looked up into the face of his boss. Then he turned away, for the white man was still gazing at the wreck below.
“You’ll beat it up the river and fetch Mr. Loby right down here. You’ll beat it quick. You’ll tell him to have an outfit ready at the camp to go into the hills. He’ll know just what I mean. But he’s to come right—No. I’ll write it. I’ll give you a ‘brief’ to take to Mr. Loby. It’s nearly low water now. You can ride up on the tide.”
He turned to pass into the hut. But the half-breed detained him.
“Boss, you think dat ship all time. Yes, I know. I see him in your eye. Dam’ ship no good. Bad. I go, yes. You not go by dam’ ship with no man? You not go? No? It bad. So bad.”
The man’s tone was almost beseeching.
“You’re a damned coward, Sasa, as I told you before,” McLagan laughed as he turned away. “You’re a damned coward about everything but the big water. You get busy right away. You’ve got to have Mr. Loby down here early to-morrow. I’ll write that brief for you.”
The Alsek River had none of the greatness or splendour of its southern neighbour, the Lias. But then it flowed through a far different territory as it approached its mouth. Its lower reaches were marsh and tundra-bounded. It was a deep, sluggish channel occupying the lowest level in the heart of a wide muskeg, some thirty or forty miles in extent. Higher up, however, amidst the great hills, where lay the camp of the Mountain Oil Corporation, it lacked nothing of the scenic beauty of the hundreds of mountain creeks and rivers which scored the coast territory of the Alaskan Hills. In spring, under the fierce freshets, it was a roaring, blustering watercourse without mercy for any obstructions in its path. In summer it was a shallow, shoaly stream of guile and treachery.
Cy Liskard regretted the river he had made his own as his light craft passed out of the hill country and entered upon the flat of muskeg, which would continue until the barrier hills of the coast were reached. The Alsek River was not only ugly to him. It was a good deal more. He knew that the vivid, brilliant green of this limitless plain was one of Nature’s vilest snares. It was one vast, treeless swamp, thinly disguised by an alkali crust, and as bottomless as only a northern muskeg can be. It was without life, animal or human. Only was it swarming with wildfowl for whom it was a never-failing refuge from trap and gun.
But he laboured indefatigably. He was running with the stream, his muscles at ease, but with mind and eye alert and uneasy. He knew the dangers of this dreary channel. It was deep enough. Oh, yes. He knew that. At times it was monstrously deep. But its sodden, reed-grown banks yielded no footing for landing; there were mud banks dotted throughout its course; and in its open channels masses of submerged weed flourished abundantly. So his vigilance was unceasing, and he drove a course whose constant zig-zag suggested incompetence.