Colonel Howell being a far from hard taskmaster, especially in his dealings with the Indians, it was not until the morning of the second day that Moosetooth and La Biche led their men out of camp on the three-hundred mile tramp to Athabasca Landing. But the beginning of work in the camp did not await their departure. Colonel Howell took time to explain his plans so far as they concerned his young friends, and the morning after the arrival of the boats work at once began with the regularity of a factory.
The things to be done included a substantial addition to the present cabin, to be made in the main out of the straight poplar timber. The roof of this was to be of sod and the new bunk house formed a "T" with the old cabin. A clay floor was packed within and on this a board floor was made of some of the inside timber from one of the scows. New timber and poplar posts were used to make the bunks, which, packed heavily with shredded balsam, soon provided clean and fragrant sleeping berths. Colonel Howell had learned of a sheet-iron stove to be had in the McMurray settlement, and this was to be installed before cold weather arrived.
The other cabin was renovated and thoroughly cleaned. A provision storehouse was added in the rear, and the clay fireplace was enlarged and extended into the room. This work under way, Norman and Roy, assisted by Paul, undertook to construct a rough but adequate aerodrome. The open space in front of the cabin was not sufficient for a landing and a large part of the clearing in the rear of the cabin was leveled for the airship shed. To decrease the size of the structure, it was also made in "T" shape, the extension for the tail of the machine reaching back toward the cabin, for the new shelter faced away from the cabin so that there might be no obstacle in starting and landing the machine.
In spite of its simple character, the boys made elaborate sketches for this shed and used in the main small uniform poplar trees easily carried on their shoulders. The entire frame of the building was made of this timber. The front of it was to be made of the colonel's three enormous tarpaulins. The sides and top being of heavy hemlock bark, this feature of the work required many days and it was often tiresome.
In the three weeks that this work went on, Colonel Howell appeared to be in no hurry to resume his prospecting. The boys learned that the old Kansas oil men had not been wholly idle in this respect and that they had located several good signs, all of which Colonel Howell took occasion to examine.
The boys also learned that the best prospects were not those found where the derrick had been erected. From their experience, the men who had been left in camp strongly urged another location in a dip of land farther inland.
"It's as good a surface sign as I ever saw," Colonel Howell explained to the young men. "It's a rock cut, but there's enough tar floating loose to show that there's oil mighty close. But there's no use getting excited about it and tapping a gusher. We'd only have to cap it and wait for the tank cars. Everything around here is prospective, of course. All we can do is to cover the field and establish our claim. And I guess that's a good winter's job."
"Ain't you goin' to work this derrick?" asked Paul, indicating the one erected near the camp.
"Looks like there might be gas around here," was the colonel's laughing response. "We'll sink a shaft here an' maybe we can find a flow of natural gas. That'd help some when she gets down to forty below."
It was surprising how all these preparations consumed time. It was nearly the end of August when these plans had been worked out and with the setting up of the Gitchie Manitou in its novel aerodrome and the storing away of its oil and gasoline in a little bark lean-to, the camp appeared to be ready for serious work.
For a week Ewen and Miller had been setting up the wood boiler and engine for operating the derrick. From the night he unceremoniously left camp, Chandler, the Englishman, had not been heard from.
Each Sunday all labor ceased in camp and Ewen and Miller invariably spent the day, long into the night, in Fort McMurray. The boys also visited this settlement, which had in it little of interest. There was no store and nothing to excite their cupidity in the way of purchases. They heard that Chandler had gone down the river, but the information was not definite and, although Colonel Howell left messages for his discharged employee, the man did not reappear and sent no word.
Colonel Howell's other workmen, Ewen and Miller, were not companionable and did not become comrades of the boys. Now and then, in the month's work, Norman and Roy had heard Colonel Howell freely criticize them for the method of their work or for some newly omitted thing they had failed to do during the winter.
When the stores and supplies had been compactly arranged in the rear of the living room and the new storehouse, the cabin and its surroundings seemed prepared for comfortable occupancy in the coldest weather.
The only man retained out of the river outfit was a Lac la Biche half-breed, a relative of Moosetooth, who was to serve both as a cook and a hunter. At least once a week, the entire party of young men went with Philip Tremble, the half-breed hunter, for deer or moose. This usually meant an early day's start, if they were looking for moose, and a long hike over the wooded hills to the upland.
One moose they secured on the second hunt and to the great joy of the boys Philip brought the skin of the animal back to camp. The antlers, being soft, were useless. This episode not only afforded a welcome change in meat which, as Colonel Howell had predicted, could not be told from tender beef, but it sadly interfered with the work on the aerodrome.
When the Indian had prepared a frame for dressing the skin and lashed the green hide with heavy cord between the four poplar sides and had produced a shaving knife from somewhere among his private possessions, the boys fought for the opportunity to work upon the hide.
For almost two days, Norman, Roy and Paul, by turns, scraped at the muscle, sinews and fat yet adhering to the skins until at last their first trophy shone as tight and clean in the sunshine as a drumhead. Philip had also brought, from the upland, the animal's brains tied up in his shirt. In the tanning process he then took charge of the cleaned skin and buried it until the hair had rotted, and in this condition the outside of the skin was also cleaned. Then came a mysterious process of scouring the skin with the long preserved brains.
At Colonel Howell's suggestion, and with the complete approval of the boys, this part of the process was carried on at some distance from the cabin. Thereafter, when the weather was clear, Philip exposed the skin to the smoke of a smouldering fire, devoting such time as he had to rubbing and twisting the hide while it turned to a soft, odorous yellow.
Before the real winter began, the skin, which is the wealth of the Canadian Indian, began to make its appearance in strong moccasins, which were usually worn around the fireplace and often in bed.
From somewhere in the outfit a calendar had made its appearance, and this had found a lodging place in the front of the fireplace. The morning that Colonel Howell made a mark on September 1, with a bit of charred stick, he remarked:
"Well, boys, the postman seems to have forgotten us. What's the matter with running up to Athabasca and getting our mail? A piece of beef wouldn't go bad, either. How about it?"
So intense had the interest of Norman and Roy been in the hundreds of things to be done in camp that the aeroplane, although not out of mind, was not always foremost in their thoughts. No reply was needed to this suggestion. Instantly, the proposition filled the air with airship talk.
This first trip had been discussed many times. It required no particular planning now.
"I like to travel about fifty miles an hour," exclaimed Norman, "and it's three hundred miles to the Landing. We'll leave to-morrow morning at five o'clock and land on the heights opposite the town at eleven. One of us'll go across in the ferry—"
"Both of us," broke in Roy. "There's no need to watch the machine—everybody's honest in this country."
"Let me go and watch it?" asked Paul, who was now the constant associate of the other boys in their work and pleasures.
"Not this time," answered Norman. "It isn't exactly a bus, you know. We can take care of it all right."
"Then we'll have dinner at the good old Alberta," suggested Roy with his features aglow, "do our errands, and start back about three o'clock. It's a cinch. With the river for our guide, we ought to give you a beefsteak about nine o'clock."
"And don't forget a few magazines," put in Paul.
This flight, which began promptly on time the next morning, after an early breakfast of toasted bannock, bacon and the inevitable tea, which Philip never spoiled with smoke, however, was made with all the ease of the exhibitions at the Stampede.
The Gitchie Manitou was wheeled out of the hangar for a thorough inspection. Then the boys climbed in and the engines were started. With a wave of the hand they were off.
For a short time after the yellow-winged monoplane had mounted and turned south and westward over the vapory river, the boys had a new sensation. The rising fog started air currents which for a time they did not understand. Perhaps Norman's hand was a little out of a practice and at times Roy showed nervousness.
When Norman finally guessed the cause, he mounted higher and took a course over the uplands where, as the sunshine cleared the atmosphere, the Gitchie Manitou became more easily manageable. The line of vapor rising from the river some distance on their left was sufficient guide. This at last disappeared in turn and Norman threw the car back on its old course.
Once again above the river, whose brown, oily surface now shone clearly beneath them, Roy especially busied himself with the many attractions of the stream. Animal life was plentiful and, despite Norman's renewed protests, his companion insisted now and then in fruitlessly discharging his rifle at small game.
They made better time than fifty miles and made a safe landing on the heights opposite Athabasca some time before eleven o'clock. What had seemed to them, from Athabasca, to be an uninhabited bluff, was now found to contain several poor cabins. Afraid to leave the car alone near those who would certainly be curious, Norman decided to stay with the monoplane and Roy undertook to visit the town across the river. But dinner at the Alberta was eliminated and Roy, in addition to his mail and meat and magazines, was to bring back luncheon for both the aviators.
Norman accompanied him to the brow of the hill and saw him scramble down the winding road to the ferry landing below. Here, also, he saw him wait nearly a half hour before the cumbersome gravity flatboat put out from the other shore, and then he devoted himself to picking and eating Saskatoon berries, with which the hills were covered.
It was two o'clock when Roy returned, burdened with packages. For an hour Norman had been asleep in the invigorating hill air. Roy had certainly gone the limit in the matter of meat. He had two roasts and six thick steaks and, what was more to his own taste, he proudly displayed a leg of lamb. His mail, of which there seemed to be a great deal for everyone, he had tied in one end of a flour sack. In the other end he had six loaves of fresh bread. On his back in another bag he had a weight of magazines.
"I thought we'd take what we could," he began, "and I guess it's a good thing we came when we did. Somebody's been pounding telegrams in here for several days for Colonel Howell. I got a half dozen of 'em and I sent all he gave me. I got off some messages to the folks, too, but I wonder what the colonel's so busy about."
"This ain't the only iron he has in the fire," answered Norman drowsily. "But where's our own eats?"
Roy dumped his bags and bundles on the grass and then began to explore his own capacious pockets. From one he took a can of salmon and from another a box of sardines.
"And here's the lemon for 'em," he explained, producing it from his shirt pocket. "Help yourself to the bread."
"Is that all?" complained Norman. "I'll bet a nickel you had dinner at the Alberta!"
"All but this," went on Roy, and he began unbuttoning the front of his flannel shirt. "It feels kind of soft."
While Norman watched him, he extracted a greasy bag, flat and crumpled, and tore it open to expose what was left of an originally fine hot raisin pie.
His companion turned up his nose in disgust.
"I fell down on the hill," explained Roy, "but if you don't want it, don't bother. It's just a little squashed. I'll eat it all right."
Norman began to straighten out the crumpled pieces with his finger, when his chum added, with some exultation: "And these."
Then, from within his unbuttoned shirt, he began to unload a dozen large sugar-coated doughnuts.
As Norman's mouth began to water, and he turned to the bread bag, a new odor caught his nostrils.
"What's this?" he exclaimed, pulling another greasy bag from among the bread loaves.
"Oh, I forgot," sputtered Roy, a part of one of the doughnuts already in his mouth; "that's some baked ham I found at the butcher shop. I guess that's some eats."
"Didn't you get any pop?" was Norman's only answer, a look of added disgust spreading over his face.
Roy turned, with a startled look: "I couldn't carry any more," he answered a little guiltily, "but I drank a couple o' bottles myself."
"I knew I'd get stung if I let you go!" growled his companion.
Norman looked at him with indignation. Then, having already appropriated a doughnut, he mounted quickly on the side of the car and sprang down again with the aluminum basin in his hand.
"Now you go down to the river and get me a drink. You've had it soft enough."
The return trip was almost a duplicate of the morning flight. In this, however, the aviators were able to follow the stream itself, and they flew low, protected from the evening breeze by the river hills. The ride did not seem long, and the boys were particularly interested in another view of the Rapids, which they had been unable to study in the morning flight. Not a single human being, going or coming, had they seen on the long stretch of river.
In Athabasca, Roy had learned that their boat crew had not all returned, but that La Biche and Moosetooth had reached town and that both were already serving as pilots on the new Hudson's Bay Company steamer that had been launched in their absence and was now making its first trip up the river. They were almost passing the oil camp when the sound of a shot attracted their attention and then, guided by Paul's worn and faded hat, they banked and landed in the rear of the aerodrome at ten minutes of nine.