by Zane Grey
It was high time, Keven thought, as he labored and floundered up the sandy bank with his pack. The valley widened here, in confluence with the intersecting valley, down which the clear creek babbled. Huge pine trees stood upon the bench, and back of them a rudely fenced garden and a log cabin. Here dwelt Whitehall, a prospector, and a lover of the wilds.
The barking of his dogs brought him down to welcome his visitors, a stalwart man, still in the prime of life, rugged and weather-beaten, with the still clear eyes of the backwoodsman.
“Hullo, Whitey,” Garry greeted him. “Guess who’s with me this run.”
“Kev Bell, or I’m a lonely sinner!” replied the prospector.
The meeting was not without its gladness and pathos for Keven. He had stopped often with, this hospitable dweller of the mountains. Yet how far back in the irrevocable past! Keven could not get rid of a horrible, immeasurable span of years.
“Boys, don’t make camp,” he went on. “Come up to the cabin. I haven’t seen a white man since last fall.”
“How’s the gold pannin’ out?” asked Garry.
“I’m on the track of a strike.”
“Whitey, you’ve been on thet for ten years I know of.”
“Yes. But there’s gold in these hills. I’ll show you. I’ve struck it at last.”
He led them into his one-room cabin, most comfortable wilderness quarters, with its rude furniture and trophies of the chase, its wide yellow stone fireplace and neat cupboard and shelves. A ham of jerked venison hung on the wall. Sight of that made Keven’s mouth water, and he frankly announced the fact.
“Take it along. An’ if you want a deer get up early. You’ll find some in my garden patch…. But look ahere, Garry.”
Whitehall showed them gold—in dust, in nuggets, in quartz. He handled it lovingly, not as one who thought of what gold could buy, but for the hazard and the glory of its discovery.
“Jumpin’ silversides!” ejaculated Garry, his eyes alight, as he scratched his sandy hair. “You didn’t have this on my last run.”
“No. I’ve struck it, Garry. An’ I won’t be here on your next,” replied the prospector significantly.
“By gosh, I’m glad fer your sake—sorry fer us fellers who have to come down the Rogue…. Whitey, you musta made thet strike over around Tyee Bar somewhere?”
“No, I wasted years on Tyee, just because the Chinks took millions off that bar in years gone by. Garry, the gold on the bars came down the river, in floods. I found mine in the hills, back of here…. But that’s enough about myself. Tell me the news from upriver. What’re you doin’ down here, Kev? It’s too early for steelhead, if they ever come again.”
While the prospector got supper for them he talked incessantly, as one thirsty for communication with the outside world. When Keven’s story came out, as it soon flowed from Garry’s voluble lips, he did not voice the sadness his face expressed, and his only comment was: “Kev, you’re wise to take to the river. But pass up the salmon. Garry hasn’t sense enough to see the day of the salmon is almost done. But you’re young. Hunt for gold!”
His words sunk deeply home to Keven. The idea of hunting for the yellow metal had never before seriously crossed his consciousness. How fascinating it was now! It far outweighed the fruit farm in satisfying romance, in other appeal that he could not analyze on the moment. Was it not food for thought? Best of all it meant living away from people!
In the morning Whitehall accompanied them down to the river and bade them a cheery farewell. “Good-by, boys. Good luck. Have a care at Mule Creek.” And as they shoved off into the current he called: “Send me word by the trail packers about the fish-hog business down there.”
“Well send you one of Brandeth’s ears. Haw! Haw!” shouted Garry.
Then the current of the Rogue caught them. Whitehall waved from the high bank, until the swift curving channel raced them round a timbered comer into the long chute that ended in Tyee Bar.
“Garry, oughtn’t we go ashore and look the rapids over?” called Keven, as the sullen thunder floated up the river.
“Sure, but I can run Tyee with one hand tied,” was the gay reply.
“But a river changes with every winter flood.”
It mattered not to Garry. His shoulders squared, his neck bulged, as he faced the unknown around the rocky bend, whence lifted swelling menace. Then it seemed to Keven that the famous Tyee leaped at their faces until he was blind and deaf. When they flashed out of the big waves, on to the long glistening, glassy runway, something of Garry’s wild spirit had taken permanent hold of Keven. He screamed his freedom to the soaring eagles above the crags. He laughed at the black rock-studded Russian Bar. And the frothy China Bar lent only added power to the oars and lustier voice. So they ran the Corkscrew, Devil’s Ribs, Black Bar, and on down sunlit lanes past the meadows, and the gentle lingering, rippling Winkle Bar, on and on through still gorge to the boulder-jumbled constriction of the river at Blossom, where not even a saw log could have passed unscathed. A shattered mountain had obstructed the river in this cool dark melodious left angle, where the firs stood up, and the amber brooks poured off the mossy cliffs, and the current hissed its way. They packed the outfit round this rapid and slid the boat over rocks and between rocks to the open channel below.
Then on into an endless murmuring solitude the voyagers drifted, rested, rowed and glided, silent under the cool gleaming walls and the fern-covered cliffs, until at last the solemn roar of Mule Creek Canyon assailed their ears and shocked the flint into their veins.
In the open sunlight, at the head of a wall of bronze rock which barred the valley, they rowed ashore on the left side, to beach the skiff on a gravel bar.
“Well climb up an’ take a look,” said Garry, as if reluctantly forced. A hundred yards beyond, the sliding sullen Rogue abruptly turned into a bronze break, from whence it sent forth a terrific bawl, enough to quake the stoutest heart.
They climbed up and out across the rock to the split, where far below the river waved like a white ribbon in the wind. Garry walked half a mile farther, ever and anon taking a peep over the brink, and halted above the Narrows.
“It ain’t no joy ride,” he remarked soberly, “but since we gotta run it, let’s hurry back an’ pile into her.”
Whereupon they swiftly retraced their steps. Before Garry shoved off he said: “You never run Mule Creek?”
“No,” replied Keven seriously. “We brought wheels and dragged our boat down the trail.”
“Damn good idee…. Well, there ain’t nothin’ till we hit the Narrows an’ then there ain’t nuthin’. If we don’t fill when she jumps off here we’ll be okay till we come to the Narrows. There it’s jest luck. If thet whirlpool’s open you gotta pull your very guts out until it closes. Com mon.”
No beauty or music in the river here! Even under the sun it had a steely glare. Beyond the bronze corner of wall an appalling spectacle riveted Keven to his seat. The boat poised on a green curve, then plunged, suddenly to be lifted by colossal power, to smash over the backlashing wave, into a seething maelstrom, out of which she was propelled as if by a catapult. Then she rode a swelling ridge of green, between sinister overhanging walls, against which the water curled and boiled with millions of bubbles. Garry held his oars poised. They drifted like a feather. The sky appeared as a blue flowing stream above. The green slopes were hidden. Soon the thunder of the rapid at the entrance lulled and ceased. The river sped on, almost quiet. Little sucking gurgling sounds rose from the chafing margin, where the bubbled circles eddied. How sinister these boils! Then the crest of current in the center spread, and great eddies caught the boat, turning her round.
“Let her turn!” boomed Garry, as the amazed Keven dipped an oar. And so they whirled, sometimes several times in one giant eddy, before they were released and sent on. The poised oars scraped the walls.
Soon a strange sound struck Keven. It came from water. But water doing what? Hollow, deep, mocking, subterranean, it ended in a stupendo
us suck.
Round a jut of wall they swept. Keven saw a jagged ledge crossing diagonally to within ten feet of the opposite cliff. This was the Narrows. He had only seen it from above. Down in the canyon how monstrously different!
Garry began to row in desperation. Keven caught his stroke and bent with every ounce of weight and strength. They checked the speed, they held her back, so that inch by inch she drifted toward the hellish hole now visible. It was the whirlpool, open and engulfing. The current did not look so terribly swift. But it was the swell of the river, passing that obtruding corner, that caused the whirlpool.
Keven’s terror broke when he saw the hole closing and filling. But the resistless and unbeatable current carried the boat past the corner, through the narrow gateway, right upon that whirlpool. It gave a horrible gurgle, as if a demon below emitted sullen anger. Keven’s right oar was wrenched out of his hand. It stood upright. It whirled as if upon a rapid lathe. It sank straight down before his eyes; and the boat, caught in the toils, whirled and whirled. Suddenly then the river bulged where the suckhole had been.
Garry pulled the bow from threatened collision with the wall, and on the skiff drifted, slower and slower, round more corners, at last out again into the sunlight of the open valley.
“Jest an incident in a riverman’s life,” remarked Garry facetiously, “Thet’s all thet’s bad today. We’ll camp below Solitude.”
Keven fished out one of the extra oars from under the packs and put it in place. But not soon did he row.
Indeed there appeared little need of rowing. The river ran in every mood, except that of fury; and each succeeding vista gathered beauty, until the gleam of water and the glory of the slopes seemed supernatural. The sun was westering; the ripple took on a golden sheen, and the rocks over which they glided were gold; black and dense rose the forested mountains to the white clouds, and ever the river seemed flowing on into endless solitude.
On they traveled through a narrow gorge above white water, where at the brink natives had gathered to watch the voyagers pass their lonely homes, and down a long swift beautiful racecourse of shimmering water, and on still into wide peaceful reaches, to turn the curve which led into the river lane ending in magnificent Solitude.
Keven knew the long lovely lane. It pierced his heart with strange unsatisfied emotion. This was the wildest stretch, the sweetest and shadiest, that ran down to the bend of Solitude—a mining camp of early days—and to the finest pools and ripples, for steelhead, of all the Rogue. Yet it was not only the fishing that had chained Keven. The beauty of the great bend, perhaps, the loneliness, and that for which it had been so perfectly named, and yet for some vague and poignant thing, illusive and haunting—this caught at Keven’s heart.
The boat went on, and no longer lingeringly, much to Keven’s regret. He was all eyes, all senses. Still he did not see.
“There’s Aard,” said Garry. “Let’s stop an’ have a word with him. Best feller on the river.”
Keven espied a man at a sand-bar edge. High above the green-gold bank a column of blue smoke curled against the background of forest fir.
Garry rowed ashore, to step out and shake hands with a tall lithe man, dark as an Indian, whose piercing eyes stirred that chary chord of remembrance in Keven’s brain.
“Hello, Aard. Glad to see you. I’m late on the run this season. Shake hands with my new pard.”
“Keven Bell. Reckon I know him,” replied the other, extending a hand that slapped Keven heartily on the shoulder. “He stayed with us once…. How are you, boy? You growed some—an’ changed. We heerd you’d been killed in France. An’ then read you was hurt at some army camp.”
“How do, Aard?” replied Keven ponderingly, trying to remember. “Wasn’t it you who first put me on to Solitude steelhead? … Years ago, it was.”
“Not so long, at thet, Keven,” replied Aard, with a smile that brightened his dark face. “But I wasn’t your first guide here at Solitude.”
“No? … Doggone, but I hate that crack I got in the Army. It’s ruined my memory…. But, Aard, I do remember you—and the river—and the steelhead.”
“Thet’s fine, boy. But come up to the cabin, an’ mebbe you’ll remember more.”
Keven looked at his comrade. Garry spoke for both: “Thanks, Aard. But not tonight. We want to make camp at the spring below Solitude. Mebbe in the marnin’.”
“Aard, how has the steelhead fishing been these last years?” queried Keven eagerly.
“Poorer all the time. Never a big steelhead gets up here till after October first.”
“Hell you say!” ejaculated Garry meaningly, with a gleam in his eye, as he hitched up his belt.
“That’s funny,” added Keven, puzzled. “Till after October first!”
“Nuthin’ funny about it,” replied Aard. “You’ll see if you’re goin’ through to Gold Beach. Are you?”
“Yes. I’m Garry’s fishing partner now. See the net?”
“Reckon I seen thet right off an’ thought Garry had made a raise. Well, I don’t want to discourage you, but thet nettin’ down at the mouth is bad medicine for upriver fishermen.”
“What’ll they do to us, Aard?” asked Garry.
“Reckon they’ll kill you,” replied Aard grimly. “I was down to Gold Beach with my winter’s catch of fur. An’ I heerd some things.”
“Ahuh. Well, don’t discourage my young pard here,” replied Garry, as he resumed his seat in the boat. “How was the trappin’ this last winter?”
“Fair to middlin’. Mink an’ coon plenty. Otter scarce, same as other fur.”
“Aard, I jest wonder about you,” rejoined Garry sagely, as he wagged his head. “By gosh, I’ll spend a winter with you sometime…. Shove her off, Kev.”
“Sorry you won’t come up,” said Aard, his fine eyes on Keven. “Someone will be disappointed.”
Keven laughed that off, as he bent to the oars, but somehow Aard’s words, his look, struck him strangely. Kind and hospitable man, trapper Aard. Probably he meant his folk, whom Keven did not recall.
And straightway Keven, looking to the river below, was again gripped by the enchantment of Solitude, and after waving a hand to the watching Aard forgot all about him. Scarcely did he hear Garry, who was remarking: “Thet Jim Aard is a queer duck. I mean mysterious. Always has money. His cabins are the best on the river. He sends his family out often. An’ he never packs enough fur to Gold Beach to make thet much money.”
When they shot the last incline, over the rocky shelves that gleamed under the water, and turned the blue bend where the old mill stood moldering under its moss, and the great fir trees, Garry said they had time yet to make Missouri Bar, and as that was important, Keven reluctantly bit his tongue to keep from objecting. So they ran on, through the beautiful canyon, down to Missouri, where at sunset they hauled ashore and made camp.
Next morning at dawn they went whistling on their way, by the hamlets Illahe and Agness, to get through Two Mile Rapids and Clay Hill, both of which they ran. As they cleared the last wild plunge, Garry threw up his cap and let it go. From there on the mountains melted back, the valley widened, the river slowed and spread. Its fury was spent. It had cut and plowed through the Cascades. It ran now over wide shingles, between sandy bars and around gravelly islands. Shacks and huts, and high up on a grassy ridge a farmhouse, heralded the return of the habitations of men. The wilderness had been passed. The river flowed wearily, on into a wide bay, from whence it cut its way through low dunes of sand to the sea. On the fresh salt breeze floated the boom-boom of the surf.
CHAPTER SIX
HIGH on the pine-fringed south shore of the bay stood the town, picturesque and inviting, its white houses shining in the sunlight. Low on the north shore, in a deep bight, the long flat piers and canning factories showed gray against the green. A mile stretch of sand curved out from the wooded hill and was cut by the river, where it had its narrow deep outlet to the sea. Across on the other shore sand dunes piled their monotonous g
ray. Inland, through the haze, rose the blue domes of the Cascades.
“Looks peaceful as it’s pretty now,” said Garry. “But wait till the salmon begin to run! Reckon we’re early an’ thet’s good. I don’t see many fishin’ boats.”
“Where’s the netting done?” asked Keven.
“Out in thet bay, everywhere an’ anywhere, except across the mouth of the river. Law against thet. But it’s done on the sly, an’ not by upriver fishermen, by gosh.”
Garry made a deal with an Indian he knew to camp on his land and have a mooring. “If we strike fish I can hire a big flatboat from Stemm,” said Garry. “Let’s unload an’ put up our tent under thet tree. Me an’ Bill Malone camped there last year. Better fer us not to board uptown. Lord knows we’ll blow our dough fast enough. Kev, are you strong on poker?”
“Nope. I’m too unlucky to gamble.”
“Humph. Luck ain’t mithin’ to do with nuthin’ but fishin’. What’d you learn in the Army, anyhow?”
“To drink and cuss, for two things.”
“Well, they ain’t so bad, to start market fishin’ on. Fightin’ comes est natural then.”
“Say, Garry, don’t they have any law and order here?”
“Sure. Finest little town on the coast. But in the salmon season there’s crowds of fishermen an’ oodles of money. Gamblin’ an’ bootleggin’ on the sly. An’ there’s a couple of joints as tough as any frontier dive ever was. They’re a hard crowd, these fishermen. Seafarin’ men from Portland an’ Seattle. Canucks from Puget Sound. Half-breeds from the Cascades. Coast fishermen from Crescent. From May till October first Gold Beach is sure prosperous.”
“October first? Then that ends the netting season, and the fishermen leave?”
“You said it, bucko.”
“Aard told us no big steelhead ever got up the river until after October first. Remember that, Garry?”
“Sure do. Your mind’s operatin’. You may have a rotten memory, Kev, old top, but you can sure figger.”
