Adventure, August 1917 — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Northwoman machinery and equipment to the falls, on the ice. “Your work has been thorough, and I imagine your figures are all right, even if you have gathered them in so short a time,”’ Madison said the second night as they sat beside the camp-fire. ‘‘The only thing that bothers me now is the falls itself. I have been interested in a half-dozen water-power-sites but never have I heard of anything like this. In a way, it is better than Niagara. ‘“‘But—” and he made an effort to impress every word upon the engineer—‘“‘it must be all you say, every bit of it. If the turbines can be installed without more expense than ‘you have estimated, if the water is unlimited and unfailing, if there is no necessity to put in expensive dams, dig long canals or tunnels or install long pentstocks, even at this distance from the railroad the plant can be built at less than the usual cost per horse-power. “Y’ve been looking into this aluminum businéss too, and there is a future in it. With the power-plant and the clay beds so close together, and so much of them both, there is no reason why ¥ e can’t turn out a large quantity. And you’re right about the world needing more of it. A big war would eat it up. Where did you get all this future stuff, young fellow? It seems to me you are pretty young to have done so much looking around and looking ahead.” It was the opportunity for which Wallace had waited many years. Toa hard-headed, experienced, successful man he could tell the visions which had only discredited his father. He told them briefly, simply, but no manner of telling could hide the pathos or the beauty of the real story of David Searles and his son. Business, that impersonal thing, posing always as being cold, heartless, unfeeling, was forced to drop its mark, if even for an instant. But in that instant it showed that it, too, like everything else human, every- thing else with which man is connected, has a heart and a soul. ““Manana is what we have always had to contend with in Central America,’’ com- mented Madison. ‘The American business man hates ‘tomorrow.’ And yet if some few men, like your father, hadn’t been thinking of tomorrow, and not today, there would have been precious little business left for the rest of us. I wonder if the 29 dreamer ever will receive due credit.” Despite the severe physical exertion of the previous four days, Wallace was up early the next morning and rushing prep- arations for the start. Some time that afternoon he would lead Madison out on to the bare rock at the top of the gorge and show him the falls, the falls that gave so immense an impression of power with the great lake stretching out behind. He knew that one look would win. From there everything essential could be seen, and Madison had committed himself sufficiently already to assure success. Wallace could not restrain his impatience or elation. Madison, recalling the young man’s story of the night before, smiled as he watched him hurrying the Indians through the packing and into the canoes. “Youth and dreams,” he _ thought. ‘Youth and dreams. They are the sparks that light the gas that make the wheels go round.” Wallace’s route lay straight north. By a long lake it would carry him to a short portage across which he would strike the river opposite the mouth of the slough on which he had first camped. The river would be the first surprise to Madison. He would come upon it unexpectedly at the last bend in the trail, although the roar of the falls would be in his ears for some time before that. Deep, strong and swift, smoothing itself out after the catapult from the heights and the hissing, angry, tossing dash through the rapids, it was a fitting indicator of other things to follow. Then, according to the engineer’s plan, they would paddle up the slough and take the trail Wallace himself had made up to the top of the ridge and out to the flat rock at the top of the gorge. It was done. He had kept faith with his father. He could go to Joan, perhaps that very night. It was two o’clock of the third day out from the railroad when they began the portage from the lake into the river. There was an easier, shorter portage into the bay of the great lake on which Fleenor had his trading-post, but Wallace wanted Madison to see the falls first from the top of the gorge. : As they landed he told Frank and the other two canoemen to bring the packs and the second canoe and make camp on the slough. With the lighter of the canoes on cCoMmiclsoo (© 5}