The Outdoor Chums After Big Game Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness

CHAPTER XV

IN THE RAPIDS

“Give him an­oth­er call, Frank!”

“That fel­low beats all cre­ation for lag­ging! I be­lieve he'd rather snap off his old cam­era than eat, any day. If he doesn't look out, that pan­ther may get--Glo­ry to good­ness! What's that, Red­dy?” cried Jer­ry.

“Sounds like a bit of an avalanche, though this here is a queer time of year for that. Gen­er­al­ly comes, you know, in snow time, or when the rains ar­rive,” was the cow­boy's ready an­swer.

“But--Will--he may have start­ed it, and gone down in­to one of these beast­ly holes!” ob­served Bluff un­easi­ly.

“Let's go back, fel­lows, and make sure,” re­marked Frank in­stant­ly.

They re­traced their steps, Red­dy lead­ing the way, and ev­ery one on the look­out for any signs of an un­usu­al hap­pen­ing.

“There's where it fell, and it looks like quite a lot of stuff had gone down the slope,” said their guide present­ly.

“Hel­lo, Will! Will!” shout­ed Frank.

“Well, I'm wait­ing for you,” said a qui­et voice close at hand.

“Where in the world are you, pard?” burst out Jer­ry.

“Oh, here,” came the re­ply.

“Gin­ger! I be­lieve he's down the bank!” cried Bluff.

“Just what he is! Come here, fel­lows! Did you ev­er see any­thing to beat that? Talk to me about your lucky dogs! Here's one that takes the cake ev­ery time!” sang out Jer­ry, as he thrust his head out be­yond the edge of the plat­form where the slope be­gan.

“Oh, I don't know. There have been cas­es where peo­ple have been saved from all sorts of dis­as­ters by the for­tu­nate pres­ence of a rope. Chuck us a loop, Red­dy, will you, please?” said Will, and Jer­ry be­came as dumb as an oys­ter.

No won­der Frank laughed, even while he watched the cow­boy drop­ping his lar­iat down as the oth­er so cool­ly re­quest­ed. Will had slid some twen­ty feet down the steep bank, along with the loose sur­face stuff, which gath­ered force as it pro­ceed­ed. Then a pro­ject­ing stone had caught the bag of his coat, and he was sup­port­ed in this fash­ion by the stout fab­ric.

“What are you try­ing to do down there? Ex­pect to cut me out of my job as the cliff climber of the par­ty?” asked Frank jok­ing­ly.

“Not so that you'd no­tice. Thought I might get a bet­ter view down along here. But first of all, save my pre­cious cam­era, be­fore I con­sent to come up,” an­swered Will, and he in­sist­ed up­on fas­ten­ing the same to the dan­gling rope.

Bluff saw his chance to get back at his chum for more than one in­dig­ni­ty along the same line that he had suf­fered in the past, so he called out:

“Here, you! Just hold your hors­es! I'm go­ing over yon­der and strike you off as you hang there. It will do to amuse the girls when we get home. We don't of­ten have a chance to bring the pho­tog­ra­pher in­to these pic­tures. Now, here you are. Look pleas­ant! There! That job's done! Now yank him up, fel­lows, and don't be too easy with him. He de­serves a good dig­ging for scar­ing us so.”

But Will had suf­fered no ma­te­ri­al harm from his lit­tle slide.

“Glad I stopped part way,” he ob­served, look­ing down, “for it's quite some dis­tance to the bot­tom, and then those rocks would have bruised me more than a lit­tle. Yes, I agree with Bluff, there; it's bet­ter to be born lucky than rich.”

Af­ter that they saw to it that Will did not lag be­hind. He was not to be trust­ed any more than could be helped.

Red­dy was as good as his word. He even­tu­al­ly brought them with­in sight of sev­er­al feed­ing elk. They car­ried out his fur­ther di­rec­tions to the let­ter, and were thus en­abled to ap­proach with­in easy gun­shot of the un­sus­pi­cious an­imals.

A pro­gram had been ar­ranged, and ev­ery one knew just what part in it he was ex­pect­ed to play. Con­se­quent­ly, there was no con­fu­sion. Frank, Jer­ry and Bluff had their chance to aim. To each was as­signed a dif­fer­ent quar­ry, though af­ter the first shot they were to fire as they pleased.

“Ready?” whis­pered the mas­ter of cer­emonies, af­ter Will had per­formed his lit­tle, nec­es­sary op­er­ation with his cam­era that would pro­duce hap­py re­sults.

“Yes,” said Frank.

“Dit­to!” from Jer­ry.

“Same here,” came from Bluff.

“Then go!”

There fol­lowed a crash of firearms. In­stant­ly con­fu­sion broke out among the lit­tle herd of feed­ing elk. One was down, an­oth­er went limp­ing off, to fall as Frank sent in a sec­ond hasty shot; while the bal­ance fair­ly flew off in their fright.

“Hur­rah!” shout­ed the hunters, as they saw that they had met with splen­did suc­cess, since two of the big an­imals had fall­en to their guns.

Bluff looked grim­ly dis­ap­point­ed.

“I hit my buck, for I saw him go down on his knees,” he as­sert­ed mood­ily.

“Oh, that ain't any­thing. An elk of­ten runs off with sev­er­al bad wounds. I on­ly hope he don't die in the woods some­where,” said Red­dy, ex­am­in­ing the tracks of those that had es­caped.

“Will it pay us to fol­low them up and see if Bluff's buck fell?” asked Frank, more to please his chum than be­cause they need­ed the game.

“Nope. The buck runs like he wasn't even hurt much. No ketchin' up with them fellers af­ter that ri­ot call. We'd best pay at­ten­tion to what we've got, and re­turn to camp,” replied the guide; and Bluff shrugged his shoul­ders, say­ing:

“But I hit him, any­how, I'll tell you that, fel­lows.”

Frank found that all Red­dy meant to do was to hang the two elk up, af­ter they had cut some choice por­tions for im­me­di­ate use. The oth­er cow­boys would come with the hors­es, on their way down the riv­er, on the mor­row, and se­cure the game.

“We got fooled out of elk steaks once and don't mean to again, I tell you,” said Jer­ry, as he shoul­dered his por­tion of the load.

So they re­turned to camp.

“What's this?” said Mr. Ma­bie as they came fil­ing in. “Back al­ready, and on­ly out two hours? Got some meat, too, I see. That's good. Such ap­petites as you boys are de­vel­op­ing threat­en to eat us out of house and home soon, un­less we eke out with game. Who cut up the elk?”

“The boys all took a hand. They want­ed to learn,” smiled Red­dy.

“I kind of thought they had,” nod­ded the stock­man, who could eas­ily see that it was not the work of an ex­pe­ri­enced hand.

Bluff failed to catch the twin­kle of hu­mor in the oth­er's eyes.

“Yes, and I could have made even a bet­ter job if I'd had the knife along I fool­ish­ly went and left at home,” he re­marked dis­con­so­late­ly, where­at Jer­ry, Will and Frank ex­changed looks, and shrugged their shoul­ders, but said noth­ing; for in a case of that kind words are use­less.

They were all very en­thu­si­as­tic that night over the feast. The cook had du­ti­ful­ly pound­ed the steaks be­fore plac­ing the same on the fire, so that if they seemed tough it was not his fault.

The meat, how­ev­er, was sweet and tasty; and be­sides, with hunger serv­ing as the best-​known sauce, who could com­plain?

Bluff kept on the look­out for the mate of his pan­ther, but if the old fel­low was prowl­ing around he had more dis­cre­tion than to show him­self while these hunters were near by.

With the morn­ing the camp was to be aban­doned. Tents came down while they were eat­ing break­fast, and ev­ery­thing was packed away in as small a com­pass as pos­si­ble, for car­ry­ing on the backs of the pack hors­es, which were brought in from the pen, or cor­ral, where they had been kept all this while, in charge of a guard.

The three bull­boats await­ed the ad­ven­tur­ous ones. These were of the type much used in this far re­gion of the North­west, be­ing fash­ioned of tough hides of bulls, and im­per­vi­ous to wa­ter.

Be­sides their guns, which were strapped to their backs, the voy­agers car­ried lit­tle or noth­ing. In case of an up­set they did not stand to wor­ry over any­thing ex­cept sav­ing their own lives.

So they quit­ted the camp un­der the cataract, where they had spent sev­er­al very en­joy­able days.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: IM­ME­DI­ATE­LY THE TWO AD­VEN­TUR­OUS CRUIS­ERS WERE IN THE RAPIDS.--_Page 141_. _The Out­door Chums Af­ter Big Game_.]

Swift­ly they de­scend­ed the stream for sev­er­al miles. Then, ac­cord­ing to agree­ment, they hauled in at the head of the rapids for a lit­tle rest and con­sul­ta­tion be­fore mak­ing the rif­fle.

Will had de­clared his in­ten­tion of go­ing down the shore and tak­ing up his po­si­tion about mid­way of the drop, so as to snap off the two de­scend­ing bull­boats as they came fly­ing along in the midst of the churn­ing wa­ter. Af­ter­ward he and Mr. Ma­bie would en­ter the last boat and make the plunge.

When he was ready, with his cam­era fo­cused, he waved his arm as a sig­nal. Im­me­di­ate­ly one of the boats start­ed forth, con­tain­ing Bluff and Red­dy. When they got ful­ly in­to the swirl the sec­ond craft ap­peared in sight.

Jer­ry sat in the bow of this, and Frank in the stern, the more re­spon­si­ble po­si­tion. Im­me­di­ate­ly the two ad­ven­tur­ous cruis­ers were in the rapids, and shoot­ing down with in­cred­ible swift­ness.

The lead­ing boat man­aged to pull through all right, for Red­dy knew the route; but dis­as­ter await­ed that con­tain­ing the two chums. Whether they struck a half-​sub­merged rock, and were cap­sized, or made a mis­cal­cu­la­tion, and found them­selves seized by the cross-​cur­rent, no one ev­er knew.

“Look out!” shout­ed Jer­ry, and the next in­stant both he and Frank were over­board, and try­ing to keep away from the threat­en­ing snags while they went whirling down the rapids.