The Greater Power
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“If you want to see any more of it, you’ve got to do it alone. I’ve had enough,” he declared. “A man who runs a pulp-mill has no use for paddling under that kind of fall. I’m not going back again.”
Mattawa and Gordon set the tent up in the hollow of the ravine, while Wheeler hewed off spruce branches with which to make the beds; but Nasmyth did nothing to assist any of them. Thinking hard, he sat on a boulder, with his unlighted pipe in his hand. The throbbing roar of water rang about him; and it was then that the great project crept into his mind. It was rapidly growing dark in the bottom of the great rift, but he could still see the dim white flashing of the fall and the vast wall of rock and rugged hillside that ran up in shadowy grandeur, high above his head, and as he gazed at it all he felt his heart throb fast. He was conscious of a curious thrill as he watched and listened to that clash of stupendous forces. The river had spent countless ages cutting out that channel, hurling down mighty boulders and stream-driven shingle upon the living rock; but it was, it seemed to him, within man’s power to alter it in a few arduous months. He sat very still, astonished at the daring of his own conception, until Wheeler strolled up to him.
“How much does the river drop at the fall?” he asked.
“About eight feet in the fall itself,” answered Wheeler. “Seems to me it falls much more in the rush above. Still, I can’t say I noticed it particularly–I had something else to think about.”
“It’s a short rapid,” remarked Nasmyth reflectively. “There is, no doubt, a great deal of the hardest kind of rock under it, which is, in one or two respects, unfortunate. I suppose you don’t know very much about geology?”
“I don’t,” confessed the pulp-miller. “Machines are my specialty.”
“Well,” said Nasmyth, “I’m afraid I don’t either, and I believe one or two of these cañons have puzzled wiser folks than I. You see, the general notion is that the rivers made them, but it doesn’t seem quite reasonable to imagine a river tilting at a solid range and splitting it through the middle. In fact, it seems to me that some of the cañons were there already, and the rivers just ran into them. One or two Indians have come down from the valley close to the fall, and they told me the river was quite deep there. The rock just holds it up at the fall. It’s a natural dam–a dyke, I think they call it.”
“I don’t quite understand what all this is leading to,” observed Wheeler.
Nasmyth laughed, though there was, as his companion noticed, a curious look in his eyes. “I’ll try to make it clearer when we get into the valley. We’re going there to-morrow.”
It was almost dark now, and they went back together to the little fire that burned redly among the spruces in the ravine. There Mattawa and Gordon had a simple supper ready. The others stretched themselves out, rolled in their blankets, soon after they had eaten, but Nasmyth lay propped up on one elbow, wide awake, listening to the roar of water until well into the night. The stream drowned the faint rustling of the spruces in a great dominant note, and he set his lips as he recognized its depth of tone and volume. He had once more determined to pit all his strength of mind and body against the river. Still, he went to sleep at last, and awakening some time after it was dawn on the heights above, roused his comrades. When breakfast was over he started with them up the ravine to cross the range.
It was afternoon before they accomplished the climb, though the height was not great and a ravine pierced the crest, and they had rent most of their clothes to tatters when they scrambled down the slope into the valley. Those pine-shrouded hillsides are strewn with mighty fallen trees, amid which the tangled underbrush grows tall and rank, and, where the pines are less thickly spaced, there are usually matted groves of willows, if the soil is damp. They pitched camp on the edge of the valley, and Gordon and Nasmyth prepared supper, while Wheeler cut firewood and Mattawa went out to prospect for the tracks of feeding deer. The axeman came back to say there were no signs of any wapiti, though the little Bush deer were evidently about, and it was decided to try for one that night with the pitlight, a mode of shooting now and then adopted when the deer are shy.
They ate their supper, and afterwards lay down with their blankets rolled about them, for it grew very cold as darkness crept up the valley. Like most of the other valleys, this one was walled in by steep-sided, pine-shrouded hills; but in this case there were no trees in the bottom of it, which, while very narrow, appeared several miles long. It was also nearly level, and the river wound through it in deep, still bends. There are not many valleys in that country in which heavy timber fails to grow, and those within reach of a market have been seized upon; for all ranch produce is in excellent demand, and the clearing of virgin forest is a singularly arduous task. In fact, there was only one reason why this strip of natural prairie had not already been claimed. Most of it was swamp. Nasmyth, who was quieter than usual, watched the filmy mist creep about it as the soft darkness rolled down the hillsides.
Gordon rose and hooked a pitlight into his hat. This pitlight consists simply of a little open miner’s-lamp, which has fixed beneath it a shield cut out of any convenient meat-can. The lamp is filled with seal oil. Once a man has fastened it upon his head, the light is cut off from his person, so that he stands invisible, and the little flame appears unsupported. Deer of any kind are endued with an inquisitiveness which frequently leads to their destruction, and when they notice the twinkling light flitting through the air they approach it to ascertain the reason for such an unusual thing. Then the rancher shoots, as soon as their shining eyes become visible.
The party divided. Gordon and Nasmyth, who kept near each other, fell over several rotting trees, and into what appeared to be crumbling drains. They floundered knee-deep through withered timothy, which is not a natural grass. For an hour or two nobody saw any deer. Then Gordon, who was cautiously skirting another drain, closed in on Nasmyth until he touched his comrade. Nasmyth heard a crackling rustle among the withered grass. Gordon made a little abrupt movement.
“If we both blaze off, we double the odds on our getting it,” he said.
Nasmyth only just heard him, for his heart was beating with excitement; but as he stood knee-deep in the grass, with both hands ready to pitch the heavy rifle up, it seemed to him that Mattawa could not have been correct when he said that there were only the Bush deer about. Judging by the noise it was making, the approaching beast, he thought, must be as big as a wapiti. Then he saw two pale spots of light, which seemed curiously high above the ground.
“I’m shooting,” he said, and in another moment the butt was into his shoulder.
He felt the jar of it, but, as usual in such cases, he heard no detonation, though the pale flash from Gordon’s rifle was almost in his eyes. He, however, heard the thud of the heavy bullet, and a moment or two later, a floundering amidst the grass.
“That can’t be a Bush deer!” he cried.
“It sounds ’way more like an elephant,” said Gordon, with a gasp.
They ran forward until they stopped a few yards short of something very big and shadowy that was still struggling in the grass. Gordon cautiously crept up a little nearer.
“Those aren’t deer’s horns, anyway,” he announced. “Plug it quick. The blamed thing’s getting up.”
Nasmyth flung the rifle up to his shoulder, and twice jerked a fresh cartridge into the chamber, but this time there was silence when the crash of the heavy Marlin died away among the woods. They crept forward a little further circumspectly, until Gordon stopped again with a gasp of consternation.
“Well,” he said, “I guess it couldn’t be either a Bush deer or a wapiti.”
They were still standing there when their comrades came running up, and Mattawa, who took down his light, broke into a great hoarse laugh.
“A steer!” he said, and pointed to a mark on the hide. “One of Custer’s stock. Guess he’ll charge you quite a few dollars for killing it.”
Nasmyth smiled somewhat ruefully, for he was by no means burdened with wealth, but he was, after all, not greatly astonished. Few of the small ranchers can feed their stock entirely on their little patches of cleared land, and it is not an unusual thing for most of the herd to run almost wild in the Bush. Now and then, the cattle acquire a somewhat perilous fondness for wrecking road-makers’ and prospectors’ tents, which explains why a steer occasionally fails to be found and some little community of axemen is provided with more fresh meat than can well be consumed.
“I’m afraid it’s rather more than likely I’ll have to pay a good price,” said Nasmyth. “Do you feel anxious for any more shooting to-night, Wheeler?”
“No,” said the pulp-miller, with a grin, as he surveyed his bemired clothes. “Guess it’s going to prove expensive, and I’ve had ’most enough. I don’t feel like poling that canoe any farther up-river, either. What’s the matter with camping right where we are until we eat the steer?”
There was, however, as Mattawa pointed out, a good deal to be done before they could make their first meal off the beast, and none of them quite relished the task, especially as they had only an axe and a couple of moderately long knives. Still, it was done, and when they carried a portion of the meat out of the swamp, and had gone down to wash in the icy river, they went wearily back to their tent among the firs.
CHAPTER XI
THE GREAT IDEA
The night was cold, and a frost-laden wind set the fir branches sighing as Nasmyth and his comrades sat about a snapping fire. The red light flickered upon their faces, and then grew dim again, leaving their blurred figures indistinct amid the smoke that diffused pungent, aromatic odours as it streamed by and vanished between the towering tree-trunks.
The four men were of widely different type and training, though it was characteristic of the country that they sat and talked together on terms of perfect equality. Two of them were exiles, by fault and misfortune, from their natural environment. One had forced himself upwards by daring and mechanical genius into a station to which, in one sense, he did not belong, and Mattawa, the chopper, alone, pursued the occupation which had always been familiar to him. Still, it was as comrades that they lived together in the wilderness, and, what was more, had they come across one another afterwards in the cities, they would have resumed their intercourse on exactly the same footing. After all, they were, in essentials, very much the same, and, when that is the case, the barriers men raise between themselves do not count for much in the West, at least. Wheeler, the pulp-mill builder, who had once sold oranges on the railroad cars, led up to a conversation that gave Nasmyth an opportunity for which he had been waiting.
“You and Mattawa are about through with that slashing contract,” he said. “You will not net a great pile of money out of it, I suppose?”
“My share is about thirty,” answered Nasmyth, with a little laugh. “My partner draws a few dollars more. He got in a week when the big log that rolled on my cut leg lamed me. I seem to have a particularly unfortunate habit of hurting myself. Are you going back to Ontario when we get that money, Mattawa?”
“No,” the big axeman replied slowly; “anyway, not yet, though I was thinking of it. The ticket costs too much. They’ve been shoving up their Eastern rates.”
“You ought to have a few dollars in hand,” remarked Nasmyth, who was quite aware that this was not exactly his business. “Are you going to start a ranch?”
Mattawa appeared to smile. “I have one half cleared back in Ontario.”
“Then what d’you come out here for?” Gordon broke in.
“To give the boy a show. He’s quite smart, and we were figuring we might make a doctor or a surveyor of him. That costs money, and wages are ’way higher here than they are back East.”
It was a simple statement, made very quietly by a simple man, but it appealed forcibly to those who heard it, for they could understand what lay behind it. Love of change or adventure, it was evident, had nothing to do with sending the grizzled Mattawa out to the forests of the West. He had, as he said, merely come there that his son might be afforded opportunities that he had never had, and this was characteristic, for it is not often that the second generation stays on the land. Though teamsters and choppers to the manner born are busy here and there, the Canadian prairie is to a large extent broken and the forest driven back by young men from the Eastern cities and by exiled Englishmen. Their life is a grim one, and when they marry they do not desire their children to continue it. Yet, they do not often marry, since the wilderness, in most cases, would crush the wives they would choose. The men toil on alone, facing flood, and drought, and frost, and some hate the silence of the winter nights during which they sit beside the stove.
“Then,” inquired Wheeler, “who runs the ranch?”
“The wife and the boy. That is, when the boy’s not chopping or ploughing for somebody.”
There were reasons why Nasmyth was stirred by what he had heard, and with his pipe he pointed to Mattawa, as the flickering firelight fell upon the old axeman’s face.
“That,” he said, “is the man who didn’t want his wages when I offered them to him, though he knew it was quite likely he would never get them afterwards unless I built the dam. He’d been working for me two or three months then, in the flooded river, most of the while. Now, is there any sense in that kind of man?”
Mattawa appeared disconcerted, and his hard face flushed. “Well,” he explained, “I felt I had to see you through.” He hesitated for a moment with a gesture which seemed deprecatory of his point of view. “It seemed up to me.”
“You’ve heard him,” said Gordon dryly. “He’s from the desolate Bush back East, and nobody has taught him to express himself clearly. The men of that kind are handiest with the axe and drill, but it has always seemed to me that the nations are going to sit round and listen when they get up and speak their mind some day.”
He saw the smile in Nasmyth’s eyes, and turned to Wheeler, who was from the State of Washington. “It’s a solid fact that you, at least, can understand. It’s not so very long since your folks headed West across the Ohio, and it’s open to anyone to see what you have done.” Then he flung his hand out towards the east. “They fancy back yonder we’re still in the leading-strings, and it doesn’t seem to strike them that we’re growing big and strong.”
It was characteristic that Wheeler did not grin, as Nasmyth certainly did. What Gordon had said was, no doubt, a trifle flamboyant, but it expressed the views of others in the West, and after all it was more or less warranted. Mattawa, however, gazed at them both as if such matters were beyond him, and Wheeler, who turned to Nasmyth, changed the subject.
“Well,” he said, “what are you going to strike next?”
Nasmyth took out his pipe, and carefully filled it before he answered, for he knew that his time had come, and he desired greatly to carry his comrades along with him.
“I have,” he said quietly, “a notion in my mind, or, anyway, the germ of one, for the thing will want some worrying out. It’s quite a serious undertaking. To begin with, I’ll ask Gordon who cut these drains we’ve been falling into, and what he did it for?”
“An Englishman,” Gordon answered. “Nobody knew much about him. He was probably an exile, too. Anyway, he saw this valley, and it seemed to strike him that he could make a ranch in it.”
“Why should he fix on this particular valley?”
“The thing’s plain enough. How many years does a man usually spend chopping a clearing out of the Bush? Isn’t there a demand for anything that you can eat from our miners and the men on our railroads and in our mills? Why do we bring carloads of provisions in? Can’t you get hold of the fact that a man can start ranching right away on natural prairie, if he can once get the water out of it?”
“Oh, yes,” assented Nasmyth. “The point is that one has to get the water out of it. I would like Mattawa and Wheeler to notice it. You can go on.”
“Well,” said Gordon, “that man pitched right in, and spent most of two years cutting four-foot trenches through and dyking up the swamp. He went on every day from sun-up to dark, but every time the floods came they beat him. When he walked over the range to the settlement, the boys noticed he was getting kind of worn and thin, but there was clean grit in that man. He’d taken hold of the contract, and he stayed with it. Then one day a prospector went into the valley after a big freshet and came across his wrecked shanty. The river had got him.”
Wheeler nodded gravely. “It seems to me this country was made by men like that,” he commented. “They’re the kind they ought to put up monuments to.”
There was silence for a moment or two after that, except for the sighing of the wind among the firs and the hoarse murmur that came up, softened by the distance, from the cañon. It was not an unusual story, but it appealed to those who heard it, for they had fought with rock and river and physical weariness, and they could understand the grim patience and unflinching valour of the long struggle that had resulted, as such struggles sometimes do, only in defeat. Still, the men who take those tasks in hand seldom capitulate. Gordon glanced at Nasmyth.
“Now,” he said, “if you have anything to say, you can get it out.”
Nasmyth raised himself on one elbow. “That Englishman put up a good fight, but he didn’t start quite right,” he said. “I want to point out that, in my opinion, the river has evidently just run into the cañon. It’s slow and deep until you reach the fall, where it’s merely held up by the ridge of rock the rapid runs across. Well, we’ll call the change of level twelve to sixteen feet, and, as Gordon has suggested, a big strip of natural prairie is apt to make a particularly desirable property, once you run the water out of it. You can get rid of a lot of water when you have a fall of sixteen feet.”
“How are you going to get it?” asked Wheeler.
“By cutting the strip of rock that holds the river up at the fall. I think one could do it with giant-powder.”
Again there was silence for a few moments, and Nasmyth looked at his comrades quietly, with the firelight on his face and a gleam in his eyes. They sat still and stared at him, for the daring simplicity of his conception won their admiration. Mattawa slowly straightened himself.
“It’s a great idea,” he declared. “Seen something quite like it in Ontario; I guess it can be done.” He turned to Nasmyth. “You can count me in.”
Wheeler made a sign of concurrence. “It seems to me that Mattawa is right. In a general way, I’m quite open to take a share in the thing, but there’s a point you have to consider. Most of the work could be done only at low water, and a man might spend several years on it.”
“Well?” said Nasmyth simply.
Wheeler waved his hand. “Oh,” he said, “you’re like that other Englishman, but you want to look at this thing from a business point of view. Now, as you know, the men who do the toughest work on this Pacific slope are usually the ones who get the least for it. Well, if you run the river down, you’ll dry out the whole valley, and you’ll have every man with a fancy for ranching jumping in, or some d– land agency’s dummies grabbing every rod of it. It’s Crown land. Anybody can locate a ranch on it.”
“You have to buy the land,” said Nasmyth. “You can’t pre-empt it here.”
“How does that count?” Wheeler persisted. “If you started clearing a Bush ranch, you’d spend considerably more.”
Nasmyth smiled. “I fancy our views coincide. The point is that the Crown agents charge the usual figure for land that doesn’t require making, which is not the case in this particular valley. Well, before I cut the first hole with the drill, they will either have to sell me all I can take up on special terms, or make me a grant for the work I do.”
Gordon laughed. “Are you going to hammer your view of the matter into the Crown authorities? Did you ever hear of anyone who got them to sanction a proposition that was out of the usual run?”
“Well,” said Nasmyth, “I’m going to try. If they won’t hear reason, I’ll start a syndicate round the settlement.”
Wheeler, leaning forward, dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Count on me for a thousand dollars when you want the money.” He turned and looked at Gordon. “It’s your call.”
“I’ll raise the same amount,” said Gordon, “though I’ll have to put a mortgage on the ranch.”
Mattawa made a little diffident gesture. “A hundred–it’s the most I can do–but there’s the boy,” he said.
Nasmyth smiled in a curious way, for he knew this offer was, after all, a much more liberal one than those the others had made.
“You,” he said severely, “will be on wages. Yet, if we put the thing through, you will certainly get your share.”
He looked round at the other two, and after they had expressed their approval, they discussed the project until far into the night, and finally decided to recross the range, and look at the fall again, early next morning. It happened, however, that Mattawa, who went down to the river for water, soon after sunrise, found a Siwash canoe neatly covered with cedar branches. This was not an astonishing thing, since the Indians, who come up the rivers in the salmon season, often hew out a canoe on the spot where they require it, and leave it there until they have occasion to use it again. After considering the matter at breakfast, the four men decided to go down the cañon. They knew that one or two Indians were supposed to have made the hazardous trip, but that appeared sufficient, for they were all accustomed to handling a canoe, and an extra hazard or two is not often a great deterrent to men who have toiled in the Bush.
They had a few misgivings when the hills closed about them as they slipped into the shadowy entrance of the cañon. No ray of sunlight ever streamed down there, and the great hollow was dim and cold and filled with a thin white mist, though a nipping wind flowed through it. For a mile or two the hillsides, which rose precipitously above them, were sprinkled here and there with climbing pines, that on their far summits cut, faintly green, against a little patch of blue. By-and-by, however, the canoe left these slopes behind, and drifted into a narrow rift between stupendous walls of rock, though there was a narrow strip of shingle strewn with whitened driftwood between the side of the cañon and the river. Then this disappeared, and there was only the sliding water and the smooth rock, while the patch of sky seemed no more than a narrow riband of blue very high above.
Fortunately, the river flowed smoothly between its barriers of stone, and, sounding with two poles lashed together, the men got no bottom, and as the river swept them on, they began to wonder uneasily how they were to get back upstream. Once, indeed, Wheeler suggested something of the kind, but none of the others answered him, and he went on with his paddling.
At last a deep, pulsating roar that had been steadily growing louder, swelled suddenly into a bewildering din, and Mattawa shouted as they shot round a bend. There was a whirling haze of spray into which the white rush of a rapid led close in front of them, and for the next minute they paddled circumspectly. Then Mattawa ran the canoe in between two boulders at the head of the rapid, and they got out and stood almost knee-deep in the cold water. The whirling haze of spray which rose and sank was rent now and then as the cold breeze swept more strongly down the cañon, and it became evident that the rapid was a very short one. The walls of rock stood further apart at this point, and there was a strip of thinly-covered shingle and boulders between the fierce white rush of the flood and the worn stone. Mattawa grinned as the others looked at him.
“I’m staying here to hang on to the canoe,” he said. “Guess you don’t feel quite like going down that fall.”
They certainly did not, and they hesitated a moment until Nasmyth suddenly moved forward.
“We came here to look at the fall, and I’m going on,” he said.