CHAPTER XVII.

JALAP COOMBS'S FOURTEEN PAIR OF FEET.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Decorative O]

f course, Mr. Coombs, you can't expect us to go back to St. Michaels now," began Phil, as a preliminary to unfolding his scheme for the discomfiture of Simon Goldollar and his unprincipled companion.

"Why not?" demanded the sailor, who had not for a moment expected anything else. "As soon as I found ye I were to bring ye to St.

Michaels, and keep ye there till your father comes. Them's orders, and to disobey 'em would be mutiny, nigh as I kin make out."

"That would be all right if you had found us; but you haven't."

"Eh?" queried Jalap Coombs. "I hain't found ye?"

"Certainly not," laughed Phil. "Instead of you finding us, we have found you. If you had struck us at Anvik, it is possible that we might have gone back with you, but as we have found you some four hundred miles from there, we shall certainly do nothing of the kind. You see, to begin with, we are under the greatest of obligations to Captain Hamer, who, by-the-way, is one of the finest men I ever met."

Here Phil told of the terrible experience he and Serge had undergone in Bering Sea, and of their gallant rescue by Gerald Hamer, all of which the absorbed listener now heard for the first time.

"Now," continued the lad, "we have left him just recovering from a dangerous illness, and unfitted to travel for some months. If he can't get word out to the coast before spring he will be a heavy loser. So Serge and I have undertaken to carry and deliver the message for him.

Our entire outfit, down to the very clothing we wear, was furnished by him on that condition. It is also our duty to try and defeat the plans of his enemies, who are also our enemies, and now seem to have become yours as well. So you see we are in honor bound to push on with all speed. Besides all this, we certainly ought to be able to reach Sitka long before my father can get away from there, and so save him a long, tedious, and useless journey."

"I'm not so sartain of that," demurred Jalap Coombs. "For ye've been trying to make Sitka long's ever I've knowed ye, which is going on a year now, and hain't come anywhere nigh to it yet. Still, as my old friend Kite Roberson useter say, 'Jalap, my son, allers steer by sarc.u.mstances; for as a gineral thing they'll p'int straighter'n a compa.s.s,' and I am free to admit that your present sarc.u.mstances is p'inting pretty direct towards Sitka. But how do ye propose to sarc.u.mvent the villyans what run off with my dogs?"

"Now you are talking straight business," laughed Phil. "As I understand it, the main object of those fellows is to capture the next season's trade of the Yukon Valley, and especially of the diggings at Forty Mile, by taking advance orders at lower rates than the old company has ever before offered. Even then their prices are certain to be exorbitant, and with Gerald Hamer's list I am certain I can underbid them. But that won't be of any use unless we can be first in the field, for after the orders are given and contracts signed those other chaps could laugh at us and our prices. So our only hope is to reach Forty Mile ahead of them."

"Which ye can't do it without wings or steam," objected Jalap Coombs, "seeing they's got two good days' start."

"I wouldn't care if they had six days' start," answered Phil. "I am confident that we could still beat them with just ordinary snow-shoes and sledges and plain every-day North American dogs. They have gone around the great arctic bend of the Yukon, haven't they? And so have a journey of at least seven hundred miles ahead of them before they reach Forty Mile."

"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 Tananah."

"That's right," a.s.sented the sailor, "for I've already pa.s.sed its mouth twice about half-way between here and where the _St. Michaels_ is friz in."

"Good enough," said Phil. "Now by following this Tananah 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 head-waters 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 reckon 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 Tananah, the latter replied, dubiously: "Me plenty don't know um. Maybe git lose. Yaas."

"Oh, that'll be all right," answered Phil, cheerfully. "You'll plenty know um before we get through with um, and whenever you don't know which way to go, just come and ask me."

When he returned to the house he found Serge boiling with indignation.

"Do you know," he cried, "that Mr. Coombs has walked all the way from St. Michaels without pads in his boots, because those other fellows told him his feet would toughen quicker if he didn't use them? The consequence is they are simply raw from blisters, and every step he takes must be like treading on knives."

"It has been tedious at times," admitted Jalap Coombs. "And under the sarc.u.mstances I don't know but what I'd rather have one pair of feet than fourteen, or even half the number."

"Isn't it good to have old Jalap with us once more?" asked Phil of Serge, after they had turned in that night.

"Indeed it is; but do you notice how he has changed?"

"I should say I had. He is like a salt-water fish suddenly dropped into a fresh-water pond. He'll come out all right, though, especially if we can only get his feet into shape again."

That night the mercury fell to 59 below zero, and the next morning even Phil, impatient as he was to proceed, had not the heart to order men or dogs out into that bitter air before sunrise. With that, however, the mercury began slowly to rise, and when it had crept up 19, or to only 40 below, the young leader declared the weather to be warm enough for anybody. So he ordered the sledges to be got ready, and when the one drawn by his own team came dashing up to the door, he announced that Mr.

Coombs's fourteen pair of feet were at his service. He also politely requested the sailor-man to crawl into a big fur-lined bag with which the sledge was provided, and make himself comfortable.

"But, Phil," demurred the other, "I ain't no pa.s.senger to be tucked up in a steamer-cheer on deck. I'm shipped for this v'y'ge as one of the crew."

"Very well," replied Phil. "Then of course you will obey orders without a murmur, for I remember hearing you say, when we were aboard the _Seamew_, that even if a captain were to order his whole crew to knit bedquilts or tidies, they'd be bound to obey to the best of their ability."

"Sartain," admitted the other. "I got that from old Kite Roberson, which bedquilts _and_ tidies were his very words." Then, without further remonstrance, the crippled sailor stepped to the sledge, slid feet first into the big bag, and lay there like an animated mummy, with the hood of his parka drawn close about his face. Its encircling fringe of long wolf hair, added to his preternatural gravity of countenance, gave him such a comical expression that the boys could not help shouting with laughter as Kurilla cracked his great whip and the dogs sprang away with their new burden.

Phil took the lead, as usual, and when they reached the mouth of the Tananah, which, on account of its broad expanse, there was no chance of mistaking, he turned into it without hesitation, and in a few minutes they had taken their last view of the Yukon for many a long day.

At its mouth the Tananah is nearly three miles broad, or as wide as the Yukon itself, and is filled with islands, on which are stranded quant.i.ties of uprooted trees of greater size than any seen on the Yukon above that point.

The bitterness of the cold continued unabated, and the sledge party had hardly lost sight of the Yukon ere the young leader heard himself hailed from the rear, and paused to see what was wanted.

"I say, Cap'n Phil," began Jalap Coombs, with chattering teeth, "is it your orders or desire that your men should freeze to death?"

"Certainly not," laughed the lad.

"Then, sir, I has the honor to report that this member of the crew is already froze solid half-way up, with ice making fast through the remainder of his system."

"That is entirely contrary to orders," replied Phil, sternly, "and must be stopped at once. So, sir, put your helm to port, and run for yonder timber."

Half an hour later poor Jalap was being outwardly thawed by a roaring fire of great logs, and inwardly by cupful after cupful of scalding tea, which moved him to remark that, according to his friend Kite Roberson, tea and coffee were the next best things to observations of the sun for determining lat.i.tude.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHRISTMAS ON THE TANANAH.

"Look here," said Phil, referring to the mate's last surprising statement, "wasn't your friend Mr. Robinson in the habit of drawing the long bow?"

"No," replied Jalap Coombs, in surprise at the question; "he couldn't abide 'em."