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DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
TO KIEL IN THE * 'HERCULES'*
SEA-HOUNDS
IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES
HELL'S HATCHES
DOWN THE COLUMBIA
© /. E. Haynes, St. Paul
THE YELLOWSTONE
s* j» r* » / # '«• • ' f*
DOWN THE
YELLOWSTONE
BY
LEWIS R. FREEMAN
Author of "In the Tracks of the Trades," "Down the
Columbia,'* etc., etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1922
COPTKIGHT, 1922,
By DODD, mead AND COMPANY, Ino.
PBINTED IN U. S. A.
hf-i^-UUj HrKiAAiA
t. * * * ^ *
r. •..:
VAIL.BAUOU COMPANY
aiNBHAMTON AND NIW YORK
To
**MY FRIENDS ALONG THE YELLOWSTONE,
WHO HAVE KEPT ALIVE ALL THAT IS BEST
IN THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD WEST'*
500380
INTRODUCTION
It must have been close to twenty years ago that
I first started to boat from the head of the Yellow-
stone to*the Gulf of Mexico. On that occasion I
covered something over a hundred miles from the
source of the Yellowstone — a good part of it on the
ice, on the bank, or floundering in the water. As
a start it was not auspicious, nor was it destined
to be anything more than a start.
Shrouded in the mists of comparative antiquity,
the reason for my embarking on this voyage is only
less obscure than my reason for failing to continue
it. As nearly as I can figure it today, it was a se-
ries of tennis tournaments in Washington and British
Columbia that lured me to the North-west in the first
place. Then a hunting trip in eastern Washington
merged into an enchanting interval of semi-vagabon-
dage through the silver-lead mining camps of the
Coeur d'Alene and the copper camps of Montana,
at that time in the hey-day of their glory.
From Butte to the Yellowstone was only a step.
That it was still winter at those altitudes, and that the
Park, under from ten to forty feet r)f snow, would
not be opened to tourists for another two months,
INTRODUCTION
were only negligible incidentals. That deep snow,
far from being a hindrance, actually facilitated travel
over a rough country, I had learned the previous
year in Alaska.
I should have known better than to expect that
permission would be granted me to make a tour of
the Park out of season, and, as a matter of fact, it
doubtless would not have been had I proceeded by
the proper official channels via Washington. Know-
ing nothing of eithei* propriety or officialdom at my
then immature age (would that I could say the same
today!), I simply journeyed jauntily up to Fort
Yellowstone and told the U. S. Army officer in com-
mand that I was a writer on game protection, and
that I wanted the loan of a pair of ski in order to
fare forth and study the subject at first hand. When
he asked me if I knew how to use ski, adding that he
could not let me proceed if I did not, I replied that
I did.
Now eachi of these confident assertions was made
with a mental reservation. I was really only a po-
tential writer on game protection, just ns I was only
a potential ski-runnei'. I knew that I could write
something about game protection, just as surely as
I knew I could do something with the ski. As to
just what I should write about game protection I
was in some d*oubt, never having written about any-
INTRODUCTION
thing at all up to that time. Similarly, in the mat-
ter of the ski, never having seen a ski before. But
I knew I could use them, for something, and hoped
it would be as aids to linear progression over snow.
Thanks to some previous experience with web
snowshoes, I came through fairly well with the ski,
but at the cost of many bumps and bruises and
strained muscles. What it cost me to make good that
game protection scribe boast would require some
figuring. I recall that there was one old shark of
an editor of a yellow-covered outdoor magazine in
New York who quoted me advertising rates for the
article I submitted him, but I believe we compro-
mised by my taking twenty paid-in-advance subscrip-
tions. Another editor sent me a bill for the cost of
the cuts, and offered to include my own photograph
— in evening clothes if desired — for five dollars extra.
I still have several game protection articles on hand.
It must have been sometime previous to the two
or three weeks that I spent mushing about the val-
leys of the upper Yellowstone on the ice and snow that
the idea came to me that it would be a nice thing to
float down on the spring rise to the Missouri, the Mis-
sissippi and the Gulf. In any event, I knew that
the thought came to me before arriving at the Park.
I have a distinct recollection of pre-empting for my
own use a big iron staple which some soldier had
INTRODUCTION
put in the mineral-charged water of Mammoth Hot
Springs to acquire a frosty coating. I purposed
driving it into the bow of my boat to bend the painter
to.
The boat I secured about ten miles down river
from the Park boundary. The famous "Yankee
Jim" gave it to me. This may sound generous on
Jim's part, but seeing the boat didn't belong to him it
wasn't especially so. Nor was the craft really a boat,
either. It had been built by a coal miner from Al-
dridge, with the intention of using it to float down the
Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi to his child-
hood home in Hickman, Kentucky. It had done
such strange things in the comparatively quiet ten-
mile stretch below Gardiner that the miner
abandoned it a good safe distance above "Yankee
Jim's" Canyon, went brack to Cinnabar and bought
a ticket to Hickman by rail. I knocked the top-heavy
house off the queer contraption, and in, under and
round about the shell-hke residue bumped and bat-
tered my way through the Canyon, and about twenty
miles beyond. The last five miles were made astride
of the only three remaining planks. I walked
the ties the intervening fifteen miles to Living-
ston.
It was undoubtedly my intention to build a real
boat in Livingston and proceed on my voyage before
INTRODUCTION
the spring rise went down. Just why I came to fal-
ter in my enterprise I can't quite remember, but I am
ahnost certain it was because the local semi-pro
baseball team of the Montana League needed a first
baseman the same day that the editor of the local
paper was sent to the Keeley Institute with delirium
tremens. Never having been an editor before, there
was a glamour about the name that I must confess
hardly surrounds it in my mind today. I can see
now, therefore, how I came to fall when a somewhat
mixed delegation waited upon me with the proposal
that I edit the Enterprise five days of the week and
play ball Saturdays and Sundays. I would fall for
the same thing again today, that is, without the
editor stuff. At any rate, summer and the tide of
the Yellowstone waxed and began to wane without
my boating farther seaward than the timberless
bluffs of Big Timber, to where, with a couple of com-
panions, I went slap-banging in a skiff one Sunday
morning when the team was scheduled for a game
there in the afternoon.
Finally, it seems to me, it was tennis and some
challenge mugs that had to be defended that took
me back to Washington, and so to California. I was
destined to form more oi* less intimate boating ac-
quaintance with practically every one of the great
rivers of South America, Asia, and Africa before re-
INTRODUCTION
turning to resume my interrupted voyage down the
Yellowstone.
• ••••••
There were several moving considerations opera-
tive in bringing about my decision to attempt a Yel-
lowstone-Missouri-Mississippi voyage last summer.
Not the least of these, doubtless, was the desire to
complete the unfinished business of the original ven-
ture. A more immediate inspiration, however, was
traceable to a voyage I had made down the Colum-
bia the previous autumn. Second only to the scenic
grandeur and the highly diverting sport of running
the rapids of this incomparable stream, was the dis-
covery that the supposedly long-quenched flame of
frontier kindliness and hospitality still flickered in
the West, that there were still a few folk in exist-
ence to whom the wayfarer was neither a bird to be
plucked nor a lemon to be squeezed. It wasn't quite
a turning of the calendar back to frontier day^, but
rather, perhaps, to about those not unhappy pre-war
times before the yellow serum of profiteering was in-
jected into the red blood of so many Americans.
Living well off the main arteries of travel, these river
folk seemed to have escaped the corroding infection
almost to a man, and it was a mightily reassuring ex-
perience to meet them, if no more than to shake hands
INTRODUCTION
and exchange greetings in passing. So few will have
had the experience of late, that I quite despair of be-
ing understood when I speak of the good it does one
to encounter a fellow being whom one knows wants
and expects no more than is coming to him. Meet-
ing a number of such was like going into a new world.
I fold myself frankly that I could do with a lot
more people of that kind, and perhaps come out
rather less of an undesirable myself as a consequence
of the contact. If I found them all along the Colum-
bia, why not along the Yellowstone, and perhaps the
Missouri and the Mississippi? And what wouldn't
four or five months' association with such do in the
way of eradicating incipient Bolshevism? And so I
planned, embarked upon, and finally completed the
journey from the snows of the Continental Divide
where the Yellowstone takes its rise, to New Orleans
where the Mississippi meets the tide of the Gulf of
Mexico. I trust the dedication to this rambling vol'
ume of reminiscence may give some hint of the extent
to which my hopes for the voyage were justified.
To maintain perspective, I am beginning my story
by sketching in a few high lights from my earlier
jaunt to the sources of the Yellowstone. I saw
things then that few have had the opportunity to see
since, just as I embarked light somely on several little
INTRODUCTION
enterprises that I have neither the nerve nor the wind
to attempt today. Also, I had fairly intimate
glimpses in the course of that delectable interval of
vagabondage of several notable frontier characters
whom no present-day wanderer by the. ways of the
Yellowstone can ever hope to meet. The priceless
"Yankee Jim" was inextricably -mixed up with my
rattle-headed attempt to flounder through the canyon
to which he had given his name. He really belongs
in the picture. "Calamity Jane" is more of an ex-
otic (to shift my metaphorio gear), so that the chap-
ter I have devoted to the most temperamental lady
of a tempestuous epoch will have to be its own justi-
fication.
Frequent historical allusions will be found in the
pages of the narrative of my later down-river voyage.
I am sorry about this, but it couldn't be helped. His-
tory-makers have boated upon, and camped by, the
Missouri for a hundred years, just as the Mississippi
has known them for thrice a hundred. Most of
the things that path-finders leave behind them lare
imponderable. In the thousands of miles between the
mouth of the Missouri and the mouth of the Colum-
bia a few practically obliteracted scratches on a rock
in Montana are all that one can point to as left by the
Lewis and Clark expedition; yet memories of those
two lurk in the shadows of every cliff, spring to meet
INTRODUCTION
one across the sandy bars of every muddy tributary.
And so with all who came after them, from Hunt and
his trapper contemporaries on down to Custer, "Buf-
falo Bill" and Sitting Bull. And so on the Missis-
sippi, from Marquette and La Salle to Grant and
Mark Twain. You can't ignore them, try as you
will ; that is, if you're going to write at all about your
voyagings. I've done the best I could on that score.
For the rest, I have written freely of rivers and
mountains, of adventure -and misadventure, and some-
what of cities and towns; much of men and little of
institutions. In short, I seem to have picked on about
the same things that a commuter on his summer vaca-
tion would choose to write of to a fellow-commuter
who has staid at home. I only hope that my view-
point has been half as fresh.
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Yellowstone Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Elk in gathering storm, Jackson's Hole 14
Elk stalled in snow 18
As we pulled up close behind him 18
The Falls in winter from Point Lookout 30
The Giant is the biggest geyser in North America . . .38
"Yankee Jim's" cabin 56
"Yankee Jim" with a trout from his canyon 68
Just above the first drop in "Yankee Jim's" Canyon . . 68
Foot of "Yankee Jim's" Canyon 72
"Calamity Jane" in 1885 80
I found "Calamity" smoking a cigar and cooking breakfast 80
Golden Gate Canyon and Viaduct 104
Emigrant Peak, Yellowstone River, near Livingston, Mont. 108
Tower Fall and Towers 110
Yellowstone Park Headquarters 116
Director Mather, Secretary of the Interior Fall, and Super-
intendent Albright camping 116
Superintendent Albright and Mule Deer 116
Gate of the Mountains, Yellowstone River 122
ILLUSTRATIONS
FAOINa PAGE
Where Custer fell 126
The blacksmith shop where my boat was set up . , . .142
We launched the boat below the Livingston bridge . .142
A difficult riffle below Springdale 142
Pete Holt and Joe Evans 150
Hauled out at the foot of a rough rapid 150
A sharp pitch on the upper Yellowstone 150
Joe Evans who piloted me the first half day 156
Pete Holt and Joe Evans with their inflated life preservers 156
"Chickens, children and hogs" 156
Round-up outfit at dinner 172
A savage riffle near the site of Captain Clark's boat camp 176
Sunrise on a quiet reach of the lower Yellowstone . . .176
The Yellowstone below the outlet of the Lake . . . .180
Rough water and a bad bend 180
Herd, Powder River Valley , 202
Sheep by the water, Big Powder River 202
The County bridge over the Yellowstone 206
Pompey's Pillar ^ , , , 212
The Yellowstone from the top of Pompey's Pillar . . .212
Custer's Pillar, Bad Lands .216
The grating which protects the initials carved by Captain
Clark on the side of Pompey's Pillar . . .. . .216
Stockyards, Miles City . . . . 224
ILLUSTRATIONS
TAOINa PAGK
"Freightin' ".....•-...-... 224
One of the famous school bands of Glendive . • * .240
Buffalo stampede * * . . 242
The dam across the Yellowstone at Intake . • • • . 246
Portaging my boat round the Intake Dam 246
Completing the portage 246
The "Old-N" crossing the Powder River ...... 254
The Yellowstone just above Livingston .*...* 270
The Yellowstone just after receiving the Big Horn . . . 270
The broad stream of the Yellowstone below Glendive . . 280
The last bridge above the Missouri 280
Where the Yellowstone takes possession of the Missouri . 280
PART I
TWENTY YEARS BEFORE
DOWN THE
YELLOWSTONE
CHAPTER I
THE YELLOWSTONE IN WINTER
The present-day Indian inhabitants of the Yellow-
stone and Big Horn valleys, whose ancestors hunted
bear, buffalo and elk in the Devil's Land now known
as Yellowstone Park, preserve a legend to the effect
that when the world was made, because this region
was the most desirable section of Creation, Mog the
God of Fire, and Lob the God of rains and snows,
contended for the control of it. After some prelimin-
ary sku-mishing, the disputants carried the matter to
the court of the Great Spirit for settlement. Here
the ruling was that Mog should occupy the land for
six moons, when Lob should follow with possession
for a similar interval, thus dividing the year equally
between them.
But Mog, being a bad god as well as a tricky one,
spent his first six moons in connecting the valleys with
hell by a thousand passages, and thus bringing up fire
and sulphur and boiling water wherever it suited his
2 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
fiendish fancy. Then he threw dust on all of the
beautiful colored mountains, dried up the grass and
shook the leaves from the trees, so that when it came
to his rival's turn to take charge, Lob found affairs in
a very sad way indeed.
But Lob set himself to work, like the good god that
he was, and dusted and furbished up the mountains,
watered the grass and trees, and heaped the snow in
mighty drifts on geyser and hot spring in an effort
to stop their mouths and force their boiling waters
back from whence they came. But the latter task
was too much for him. When the end of his allotted
time came, though the grass was springing green and
fr^sh and the trees were bursting into leaf again, the
geysers and hot springs spouted merrily on. All the
incoming Mog had to do was to kick up a few clouds
of dust and turn the sun loose on the grass and trees
to have the place just as he had left it.
And so for some thousands of alternating tenancies
the fight has gone on, all the best of it with the bad
god. Although Lob is gaining somewhat year by
year, and has already dried many a spouting geyser
and bubbling hot spring and reduced countless pots
of boiling sulphur to beds of yellow ciystals, he still
has many a moon to work before he can force hell to
receive its own and leave him free to complete his
mighty task of reclamation.
THE YELLOWSTONE IN WINTER 3
In strong support of this legend is the fact that at
the time of year when the Indians say that Lob is
compelled to abdicate, and before Mog begins his an-
nual dust-throwing — the middle of April or there-
abouts,— the Yellowstone Park is incomparably more
beautiful than at any other season. And moreover,
there are those who maintain that even at other sea-
sons it is still more beautiful than any other place in
the world, just as it was in the beginning when it
aroused the jealousies of the rival gods and precipi-
tated their eternal conflict.
What the Yellowstone is in the early spring only
those who have seen it at that season cfan reahze, and
only those who have made the summer tour are in a
position to imagine. Let one who has breasted the
sweltering heat-waves- that radiate from Obsidian
Cliff in July, trying to picture the impressive beauty
of that massive pile of volcanic glass through the
translucent dust-clouds raised by the passage of two
or three score cars — let him fancy that cliff, its sum-
mit crowned with a feathered crest of snow, huge
drifts at its base, and its whole face, washed and
polished by the elements, glittering as though pan-
elled with shining ebony. Let him think of the time
his car was halted on the Continental Divide and
the driver endeavoured to point out one of the dis-
tant eminences, guessed dimly through the smoke-
4 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
clouds rising beyond Shoshone Lake, as the Grand
Teton, and then fancy himself standing at the same
point and looking out across the valley through air
that, windowed and cleansed by the winds and snows
of the winter, is so clear that the bottle-green in
the rims of the glaciers is discernible at forty miles.
Let him who has admired the transcendent beauty of
the steam-clouds swirling above Old Faithful in the
summer imagine these clouds increased two-fold in
whiteness and density, and ten-fold in volume, by
the quicker condensation of a zero morning. Let
him picture the black gorge of the Fire Hole Canyon,
where the river plunges down to the Upper Geyser
Basin, forming Kepplar Cascade, transformed to a
shining fairyland of sparkling crystal and silver, ev-
erything in range of the flying spray spangled and
plated and jewelled by the ice and frost, as though
a whole summer day's sunshine had been shaken up
with a winter night's snowfall, and then fashioned by
an army of elfin workmen into a marvellous million-
pieced fretwork, adorned with traceries ethereal and
delicate, and of a fragile loveliness beyond words to
describe.
All these things, and many more, the summer tour-
ist will have to picture in coming near to a concep-
tion of what the wizardry of winter has effected.
There is the novelty of seeing a rim of ice around
THE YELLOWSTONE IN WINTER 5
the Devil's Frying Pan, and the great hole that the
up -shooting gush of a geyser tears in a cloud of driven
snow. There is the massive beauty of the ice
bulwark upon Virginia Cascade, and then, in win-
ter as in summer the scenic climax, the lower falls
and the Grand Canyon.
And nowhere more than in the incomparable Can-
yon is the general effect heightened by the presence
of the ice and the snow and the clean-washed air.
The very existence of the brilliant streaks and patches
of yellow and umber and a dozen shades of red de-
pends upon the water from the rain and melting snow
dissolving the colouring matters from the rocks of the
upper levels and depositing them upon the canyon
walls as it trickles down to the river. Clear and sharp
in the early springtime, the bright pigments are
bleached and blended by the sun and winds of the
summer until, by the time the fall storms set in, the
contrast between streak and streak is far less marked
than when, chrysalis like, they first burst from their
snow cocoons of winter.
It is in the spring, when the blaze of the great col-
our-drenched diorama is set off by patches of dazzling
snow, when every vagrant sunbeam glancing from
the canyon side is caught and refracted in the mazes
of glittering icicles that fringe every jutting cornice
and battlement till it reaches the eyes of the beholder
6 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
like a flash from a thousand-hued star; when the sHde
from the mountainside forms a snow dam in the river,
and the angry torrent, leaping like a lion at the bars
of its cage, brushes away the obstruction and rages
onward in renewed fury to the valley ; when the great
mouth under the snow-cap at the top of the falls is
tearing itself wider day by day in its frantic efforts
to disgorge the swollen stream that comes surging
down from the over-flowing lake — it is at this time,
when Nature has whipped on her mightiest forces to
the extreme limit of their powers in a grandstand fin-
ish to her spring house-cleaning, that the Grand Can-
yon of the Yellowstone has a beauty and a depth of
appeal beyond all other seasons.
From the time that I first conceived the idea of an
early springtime trip through the Yellowstone Park
the difficulties in the way of carrying out such a plan,
like rolled snowballs, seemed to grow as my inquiries
progressed. Every objection was urged, from the
possibility of snow-blindness to the certainty of death
from cold, snow-slides, or wild animals, from the
probability of opposition from the Fort to the improb-
ability of securing provisions en route. Old "Yankee
Jim" even told me that the spirits of the hot springs
and geysers, while peaceable enough in the mild days
of summer, were not to be trusted after they had
been "riled and fruz" by the winds and snows of win-
THE YELLOWSTONE IN WINTER 7
ter. That was about the last straw. I felt that I
was literally between the devil and the deep snow.
But when I reached Fort Yellowstone, at the en-
trance to the Park, I learned that nearly the whole
of the hundred and fifty miles of road followed on
the summer tour were patrolled by soldiers, and that
the scouts made a complete round several times dur-
ing the winter. The officer in command received me
most kindly. He had no objection at all to my go-
ing out with the scouts or the soldiers on game patrol.
If I would satisfy him that I could conduct myself
properly on ski he would see that all necessary equip-
ment and facilities were provided me for the winter
tour.
I learned later that the sergeant who was detailed
to test me out had boasted that he intended to break
me of my fool notion if he had to break my fool
neck. From the way he started, I am acutally in-
cKned to believe he meant it. He led me on foot up
the road to Golden Gate, circled round to the west,
ordered me to put on my ski, and then started down
through the timber toward the terraces of Mammoth
Hot Springs. I, of course, fell at the end of ten
feet. Having little way on, my worst difficulty was
getting my head out from under the toe of my left
ski the while that same toe was held down by the rear
end of my right ski. It was just the usual ski be-
8 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
ginner's mix-up. My instructor, however, had de-
scended about five hundred feet right side up when a
loop of willow caught the toe of one of his ski and
sent him spinning the next Bye hundred end over
end. It was only by the greatest of good luck that
he kissed lightly off five or six trees in passing instead
of colliding with one head-on. Even as it was they
had to send a sled up from the fort to bring down his
much-abused anatomy. The remainder of my ski no-
vitiate, thank heaven, was served under the skilful
and considerate tutelage of Peter Holt, the scout.
Thanks to my Alaska snow-shoe work and the fact
that I was hard as nails physically, I was pronounced
ready to take the road at the end of a couple of days.
It was intensive training, and accompanied by many
bumps and thrills. I shall probably always be in
Holt's debt for the bumps. Most of the thrills I
paid back last June when, finding him the Chief of
Police of Livingston, I took him along as passenger
for the first fifty miles of my run down the Yellow-
stone.
The morning after I was adjudged sufficiently ski-
broke to attempt the winter tour of the Park with a
fair chance of finishing I was attached to a party
of troopers detailed to pack in bacon to the station
at Norris Basin. The memories of the doings of the
delectable weeks that followed, which I spent with
THE YELLOWSTONE IN WINTER 9
bear and elk and spouting geysers and bubbling mud
springs as my daily play-fellows, are still tinged with
rose at the end of a score of years. I am appending
here — in the form of verbatim extracts from my re-
ligiously kept diary — some account of a few of the
more amusing episodes. The wording follows hard
upon the original; the spelling, I regret to say, I
have just had to go over with a dictionary and de-
phonetize. If the view-point is a bit naive in spots,
please remember that you are reading the babblings
of a very moony and immature youth, more or less
tipsy with his first draughts of life, who had just dis-
covered that he was standing on the verge of a world
full of innumerable things and imagining that they
were aU put there for his own special entertainment.
CHAPTER II
SKI SNAPS
Lake Station, April 13.
Corporal Hope and I set out this morn-
ing from the Patrol Station, going after elk
and buffalo pictures. Heading in the direction
of Hayden Valley, we encountered two buffalo
cows and their calves crossing a half -bare opening in
the trees near the Mud Geyser. We had little diffi-
culty in heading them as they tried to break away and
driving them off on a course that offered me a favour-
able exposure. The calves were a month or more
old, but tottered on their thin legs and seemed very
weak, the consequence, no doubt, of continued in-
breeding. The rapidly thinning herd is badly in
need of an infusion of new blood.
We came upon the main herd farther down the
valley, making some long-distance snap-shots on va-
rious individuals and sections of it as they went lung-
ing off through the drifts at our approach. It was
old "Tuskegee," reputed to be the largest specimen of
the Bison Americanus in existence, whose picture I
most cared for. The old fellow is estimated to weigh
over 3000 pounds, is covered with a net-work of scars
10
SKI SNAPS 11
from his lifetime of fighting, and has only one eye
and the remnant of a tail left. He has been seen
to give battle to three pugnacious bull elk at
once, and has killed numbers of them in single com-
bat.
It was but a few summers ago that old "Tuskegee"
left the herd, charged a coach full of tourists, goring
one of the horses so badly that it had to be shot. The
big vehicle was nearly overturned by the plunging
horses, while its occupants — a party of New England
school-teachers — ^were driven into frenzies of terror.
Neither the bullets from a nickel-plated revolver in
the hands of one of the schoolmarms, nor the long
stinging whip of the driver, nor even his equally long
and stinging oaths, affected "Tuskegee" in the least.
He continued butting about among the frightened
horses as though the wrecking of a six-in-hand coach
was a regular part of his daily routine. At last, how-
ever, the sustained hysteria of the females seemed to
get upon the old fellow's nerves. Wheeling about,
he turned the stub of his tail to the swooning tourists
and galloped, bellowing, over the hill.
An order was at once issued that "Tuskegee" should
be shot on sight, and for a month a special detail from
the Fort scoured the hills and valleys in search of
the renegade. But all to no purpose. The old
warrior, as though understanding that he was per-
12 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
sona non grata with the authorities, retreated into the
impenetrable fastnesses of the mountain spurs above
Thorofare Plateau, and nothing was seen or heard
of him for many months.
For two years there was an interregnum in buf-
falodom, during which the big herd gradually
dropped to pieces and wandered about in leaderless
fragments. Then, one day, a big bull elk was found,
crushed and torn, trampled into the mud of Violet
Springs, and the scouts told each other that the King
had returned. A few days later a soldier of the
game patrol, on a run through Hayden Valley, saw
the reunited herd debouch from a canyon, with old
"Tuskegee" puffing proudly in the lead. His tail
was stubbier than ever, the grizzled red hair was more
patchy on the rump and more matted on the neck,
and a new set of scars was criss-crossed and etched
into the old ones upon his flanks. The old fighting
spirit still flamed, however, and the trooper owed his
life to the fact that the snow was deep, the crust firm,
the slope down and his ski well waxed. But a new
superintendent was in charge, and his satisfaction at
seeing the scattered herd once more united was so
great that he stayed the order of execution. Since
that time, strangely enough, "Tuskegee" has ap-
peared to show his appreciation of this official clem-
ency by behaving in a most exemplary manner.
SKI SNAPS 13
I was endeavouring to get a picture of the main
herd before it broke up, when Hope espied old "Stub
Tail" in the rear of a bunch of young cows who were
heading away for the hills. Shouting for me to join
him, he gave chase. We gained on them easily in
the heavy snow of the valley, and almost overtook
them where they floundered, belly-deep, on their er-
ratic course. Then they struck the wind-swept slopes
of the lower hills, where the agile cows drew away
from us rapidly and scampered out of sight. But
not so old "Tuskegee." Whether it was rheumatism
in his stiff old joints that made him stop, or simple
weariness, or, as is most likely, the unconquerable
pride that would not permit him to turn his back
upon an enemy, I shall not attempt to say. In any
case, he wheeled and faced us, head low, hoofs paw-
ing the moss, and snorting in angry defiance.
As he stood with his rugged form towering against
the white background of the snowy hillside, two jets
of steam rushing from his nostrils, his jaws flecked
with bloody foam, his one eye gleaming green as the
starboard light of a steamer, and his bellows of rage
so deep that they seemed to come from beneath the
earth, old "Tuskegee" might have been the vindic-
tive incarnation of the spirit of all the geysers and
hell holes in the Yellowstone bent on an errand of
wrath and destruction.
14 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
Right then and there I forgot what I came for,
forgot the picture I had intended to take, forgot
everything but that snorting colossus in front of me
and the fact that the hillside sloped invitingly in the
opposite direction. Wherefore I tried to swing
around, and in swinging turned too short, crossed my
ski, and fell in a heap with my face in the snow.
They say that an ostrich will snuggle its head con-
tentedly into the sand and let a band of Arabs with
drawn scimitars charge right into its tail feathers.
This may be quite true. Perhaps the climate of the
Sahara has something to do with it. But it won't
work with a man, a bull buffalo and a snowdrift, par-
ticularly if the man is strapped to two ten-foot-six
strips of hickory and the bull buff'alo has a bad repu-
tation.
The faith, folly, foohshness, or whatever it is of
the ostrich would have saved me a lot of unpleasant
apprehensions. Every moment of the time I strug-
gled to unsocket my head from under the nose of one
of my ski I was sure I was going to be gored the next.
And I am certain I was down all of five minutes,
notwithstanding Hope's assertion that he had me
straightened out and on my feet inside of ten seconds.
"Steady, young feller," I heard him saying as I
rubbed the snow from my eyes; "don't lose your head
like that again." (I wonder if he meant that liter-
SKI SNAPS 15
ally.) ''Old 'Tusky' won't hurt a fly nowadays.
He's just posing for his picture. Gimme that cam-
era. Hold up there; tain't nothing to be scared of I"
That last was shouted at me as I gave a push with
my pole and began to slide off down the hill out of
the danger zone. Swinging round to a reluctant
standstill, I meekly unslung my camera as Hope
came down for it. Then, all set for a start, I watched
him as he zigzagged back up the hill toward the buf-
falo. "Tusky" was blowing like a young Vesuvius,
but the nervy fellow, not a whit daunted, edged up
to within twenty feet of the steaming monster, waited
calmly for the sun to come out from behind a cloud,
and snapped the camera. Then we coasted back to
the valley — I well in the lead, — leaving the resolute
old monster in full possession of the field.
Our chase of the fleet-footed wapita was attended
by less excitement but more exertion than was our
pursuit of the bison. Following a trail from Violet
Springs, we were lucky in encountering a herd of
from four to five hundred grazing where the spring
sunshine was uncovering the grass on a broad expanse
of southerly sloping upland. We circled to the
higher hills in an endeavour to drive a portion of the
herd to the deeper snow of the valley, where we could
overtake them on our ski. In the course of our
climb we came upon a fine young bull of two years
16 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
or thereabouts, lying in an alder thicket badly
wounded from fighting. One of his graceful horns
was snapped squarely off a foot from the head, his
sides were frightfully bruised and torn, and so weak
was he from loss of blood that he took no notice what-
ever of our approach. Hope said that few bulls are
killed outright in their fights, but that most of the
badly wounded ones ultimately die from "scab."
Our efforts to turn the elk to the valley was only
partially successful, for the main herd, as though di-
vining our purpose, set off on a mad stampede for
the mountains, and on a course which made it impos-
sible to head them. Hope, however, at imminent
risk of his neck, dropped like a meteor over the rim
of the mesa, negotiated a precarious serpentine curve
among the butts of a lot of deadfalls, and just suc-
ceeded in cutting, off a large bunch of cows, half a
dozen "spike" bulls, and a fine old fourteen-pointer.
The bulls were brave enough at the beginning of
the chase, where the snow was light and the going
easy. The old fellow in particular kept well to the
rear of his flying family, stopping every now and
then to brandish his horns and give voice to clear,
penetrating cries of defiance and anger. But as the
herd wallowed into the coulee that skirted the foot
of the hills his courage deserted him. He, in turn.
SKI SNAPS IT
deserted his family, and it was sauve qui pent for the
lot of them. By the time our glistening hickories
pulled us up on the flank of the bunch of heaving,
sobbing cows, old "Fourteen Points" was a good hun-
dred yards ahead, with the "spikes" scattered in be-
tween.
We easily headed the frightened cows as they floun-
dered shoulder-deep, and I snapped them several
times without much trouble. Then we turned our
attention to the big bull. He, in his terror, had
charged straight on down the coulee, going into in-
creasingly deep snow at every bound. His efforts
were magnificent to behold. At times only the tips
of his shining antlers were visible; again, he would
break through with his fore feet and fall with his
muzzle in the snow, only his hind quarters showing
above the crust. At times he would be down fore
and aft, disappearing completely from sight, only the
sound of his mighty limbs as they churned the honey-
combed snow telling the story of the struggle.
His agility was wonderful. Every ounce of bone,
every shred of muscle, every fiber of nerve was
strained to its utmost. Time and again I saw his
rear hoofs drawn as far forward and as high as his
shoulders in an effort to gain a solid footing. When
the hold of his hind legs was lost he would reach out
18 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
and bmy his fore hoofs and nose in the sinking crust,
and then, arching his back, try to drag his great body-
up to them.
As we pulled up close behind him he wallowed into
the shadow of some tall pines where the crust, imex-
posed to the sun, was hard and firm. He struggled
to the surface, tottered across the shadowed space
and began to break through on the farther side.
Backing up, he tried a fresh place, but only to break
through with all fours. Finally, all his former cour-
age seeming to return with a rush, he staggered back
against a tree, lowered his head, and with a shrill
trumpet of defiance dared us to come on.
That was just what we had hoped and planned for.
Circling on the soft snow, well beyond the reach of
a rush, I made several snaps before we coasted away
and left him free to return to his family and explain
his desertion as best he might. The grating of his
teeth, as he ground them together in elk-ish fury, fol-
lowed us for some distance as we shd away down the
coulee.
• ••••••
My attempt to secure some mountain sheep pic-
tures by following the same methods employed with
the bison and elk was brought to a sudden termina-
tion by what came so near to proving a serious dis-
aster to the quarry that it quite destroyed my zest for
/. E. Ilayncs, St. Paul
ELK STALLED IN SNOW (AboVe)
AS WE PULLED UP CLOSE BEHIND HIM (Below)
J. E. Haynes. St. Paul
SKI SNAPS 19
the new sport and made me decide with regret to
give it up as incompatible with my career as a writer
on game protection. This occurred on the moun-
tains above the Gardiner River not long after I had
returned to Mammoth Hot Springs from my circu-
lar tour on ski. Hope, whose time in the Army was
about up, was my fellow culprit. Both of us doubt-
less deserved to be clapped in the guard-house, as
we surely would have been had the true account of
what happened come put at the time. Now, at the
end of twenty years, probably it won't matter a lot.
Certainly not to Hope in any event. After serving
out three or four more re-enhstments, he was killed
in the Argonne in one of the last actions of the war.
I quote again from my diary.
Mammoth Hot Springs, April 23.
Hope and I came within a hair of wiping out the
cream of the Yellowstone Park herd of Ovis Mon-
tana this morning while trying to take its picture. I
took the picture all right, but as a consequence of it
the herd took a header into the river. I think all of
them got out, but it was a narrow squeeze at the best.
If there is ever an official inquiry into our operations,
I am afraid my reputation as a game protector will
be gone beyond all hope. This was the way the
thing happened:
20 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
We had located with our glasses a large flock of
fine animals several hundred yards below our look-
out on Gardiner Moimtain. Hope set off along the
ridge to the windward of them, holding their interest
so successfully in that direction that I was able to
coast down from the opposite side and bring up
almost in their midst before one of them knew what
had happened. I had time for one hurried snap be-
fore they were off, and another when a swift quarter-
mile coast brought me up almost on the heels of the
vanguard of the flying flock.
Down a couple of hundred yards of easy slope I
held even with the tail of the flock, and was manoeu-
vring for another exposure when they came out up-
on a stretch of almost level bench above the river and
began to beat me three-to-one. The leaders had all
but reached the shelter of the timber when Hope,
brandishing his pole and whooping like a wild Indian,
dropped with the suddenness of a thunderbolt from
somewhere among the snowy cliffs above and turned
them back. The unexpected appearance of a new
enemy sent glimmering such wits as the grizzled old
leader still had. With one frightened glance to where
I came labouring down on him from the rear, he
turned and went plunging over the rim of the cliff
onto the honey-combed ice and snow that bridged the
river torrent, the whole flock following in his wake.
SKI SNAPS 21
Hope, wide eyed with consternation, was peering
over the edge of the cliff as I came up, and together
we watched the various members of the flock pull
themselves together, flounder through to the opposite
bank and make oflf into the alder thicket beyond.
The game struggle of the old patriarch was splendid.
The first to leap, his unfortunate anatomy, half
buried in the yielding snow, had received the impact
of more than a few of the flying hoofs and horns that
followed. For four or five long minutes after the
last of his mates had struggled through to safety he
lay, stunned and bleeding, on a slender peninsula of
firm snow that jutted out over the surging stream.
As the sound of our voices, loud and tense with guilty
anxiety, floated down to him, he roused, pulled him-
self together, and at almost the first flounder broke
through and went whirling off in the clutch of the
angry current.
At the lower end of the cave-in his high-flung horns
caught against the rim of soft ice, giving him a brief,
but what we felt sure could be no more than a tem-
porary, respite from an apparently certain fate.
But we underrated the mettle of the brave old vet-
eran, for even while his sturdy hind quarters drew
down in the grip of the powerful undercurrent, one
sharp fore hoof after the other gained hold on the
trembling crust, and his sinewy body was almost
22 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
lifted to safety before the sagging mass gave way
again and left him struggling in the water. Twice,
and then once again, was this same plucky manoeuvre
repeated, but only to end each time in the same heart-
breaking failure. Every fibre of rippling muscle
seemed strained to the limit in his final effort, and
when the soggy ice broke away it looked certain that
the river was to be the victor after all.
And such, no doubt, would have been the end had
not the last cave-in carried the resolute old patriarch
to a submerged bar of shingle. Here, rallying his
seemingly inexhaustible strength, he gathered him-
self and leaped cleanly to a solid stretch of crust. A
moment later he was off in the wake of the rest of
his flock.
With long-drawn breaths of relief we turned and
tightened up the thongs of our ski for the climb out
of the canyon. It was not until half an hour later,
when we paused for rest on the mesa rim, that Hope's
drawling voice broke the silence that had held be-
tween us.
"Young feller," he said jerkedly between breaths,
"if the old one had drownded down there, the best
thing you and I could do would be to jump in and
be drownded with him. Even as it is, if the Super
gets wind of that monkey show, it's me for a dison-
erable discharge and you for over the border."
SKI SNAPS 23
But as neither Hope nor I is inclined to do any-
talking, the chances seem good that we'll steer clear
of the trouble we were so surely asking for. But no
more ski-snapping for me, just the same.
CHAPTER III
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS
Grand Canyon Station, April 9.
We made a three o'clock start from Norris this
morning and castne all the way to the Canyon on the
crust. Carr, one of the troopers accompanying me,
took a fearful tumble on the winding hill that leads
down to the Devil's Elbow, breaking his "gee-pole"
and badly wrenching one of his ankles. A fierce
thunderstorm overtook us about seven. The vivid
flashes of the lightning produced a most striking ef-
fect in illuminating the inky clouds as they were
blown across the snowy peaks. A flock of mountain
sheep, driven from the upper spurs by the fury of
the storm, crossed close to the road. I snapped a
very unusual silhouette of them as they paused on the
crest of a hill, with the blown storm-clouds in the
background.
We reached the hotel before the storm was over.
Bursting into the rear entrance, we were just in time
to find Clark, the winter keeper, picking himself up
from the middle of the floor, where he had been
thrown after coining in contact with an electric cur-
24
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 25
rent brought in on the telephone wire while he was
tinkering with the receiver. The chap seems to be
an inventive genius. He has, so the soldiers told
me, dissected over a dozen clocks in an effort to se-
cure the machinery for a model of an automobile sled
he is working on. His last model was destroyed by
his dog, which took the strangely acting thing for a
bird or a rat and shook it to pieces before any one
could interfere. A few days later the brute essayed
to follow Clark on one of his wild slides down the side
of the canyon to the brink of the falls, but lost his foot-
ing and went over into the scenery. The inventor
considers this a propitious sign from heaven.
"For why should that dog go over the very first
time he tried the slide after he did that destruction,"
he asked us, "if it wasn't because the Lord thought
he stood in the way of good work? Now, with
nothing to bother me, I shall build another model
and reap my reward."
"But was the dog your only obstacle?" I asked.
"By no means," was the reply; "but all the others
will be brushed away just as was the dog."
Hearken to that, oh ye of little faith I If faith
will move mountains there surely ought to be no
trouble about the movement of Clark's automobile
sled.
Clark took me down the sidling snow-choked trail
26 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
to the top of the falls this afternoon, saying that he
wanted to show me how he did his famous "Devil's
Slide." Utterly unable, in my comparative inex-
perience, to keep the road, I was about to beg off
when Clark suggested that I remove my ski and ride
the rest of the way by standing on the back of his.
It was a hair-raising coast, but we made the brink
without a spill. More important still — a point re-
specting which I had been most in doubt, — we stopped
there.
Already considerably shaken in nerve, I tried to
dissuade Clark from attempting his slide. Reply-
ing that the stunt was a part of his daily routine for
keeping his wits on edge, he "corduroyed" off up
the side of the canyon, which at that point has a slope
of about forty-five degrees. When he was perhaps
a hundred feet above my head, he laid hold of a sap-
ling, swung quickly around, and shot full-tilt for
the icy brink. I was sure he intended to kill him-
self, just as so many cracked inventors do. A sud-
den numbness seized me. The roar of the fall grew
deafening, and I involuntarily closed my eyes.
There was a thud and a crash, a shower of fine
snow flew over me. Then the roar of the fall re-
sumed.
When I mustered up the courage to open my eyes,
it was to discover my mad companion cautiously
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 27
drawing himself back from the brink. He had
stopped, as usual, by throwing himself on his side
and digging the edges of his ski into the frozen snow.
Although he wouldn't admit it, I am certain he kept
going an inch or two more than was his wont, for
one long strip of hickory was swinging free beyond
the icy edge and the other held by only a thin ridge
of hard snow.
While he was still thus poised on the brink of King-
dom Come, or rather the Falls of the Yellowstone,
Clark insisted on explaining to me the principle of
a parachute cape he had devised for use in such an
emergency. He reckoned that it would not only
help in checking his momentum at the proper mo-
ment, but would also have a tendency to make his
landing much less painful in the event he went over.
I am wondering tonight if all inventors are like that.
Clark is the first genius I have ever known, so I can't
be quite sure.
Grand Canyon Station, April 10.
Clark and Smith took me out for a ski-jumping
lesson this morning. Clark seems to be rather a star
performer in all departments of ski work, but he
claims that he is better at jumping than at anything
else. What the long, straight drive, hit cleanly from
the tee, is to the golfer, what the five rails, fairly
28 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
taken, is to the cross-country rider, what the dash
down a rocky -walled canyon is to the river boatman,
the jump is to the ski-runner. But what the foozle
is to the golfer, the cropper to the rider, the spill in
midstream to the boatman, the fall at the end of the
jump is to the ski-man. I saw both the jump and
the fall today. Or rather, I saw the jump and felt
the fall. If I saw anything at all, it was stars.
The jump is made from a raised "take-off" at the
foot of a hill. The steeper the hill the better. The
snow slopes up from the foot of the hill to the brink
of the "take-off," where it ends abruptly. The
jumper goes off up the hill for a quarter of a mile
or so, turns round and coasts down at full speed.
Leaving the "take-off" at a mile or more a minute,
it is inevitable that he must be shot a considerable
distance through the air. If he is well balanced at
the proper moment he naturally sails a lot farther
than if he is floundering and Dutch-windmilling with
his arms. Also, he messes himself and the snow up
a lot less when he lands.
Considering their short runway and crudely built
"take-off," the sixty feet Clark cleared this morning
was a fairly creditable performance, though prob-
ably less than half what some of the cracks do in Nor-
way. Naturally, I could hardly be expected to do
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 29
as well as that. It was only on the last of a dozen
trials that I managed to coast all the way to the brink
of the "take-off" without falling, and even then I
was not sufficiently under control to stream-line prop-
erly and so minimize air resistance. Under the cir-
cumstances, therefore, I am rather pleased with
Clark's verdict anent my maiden effort. He said I
hit harder and showed less damage from it than any
man in the Park.
Grand Canyon Station, April 11.
This morning we went down to Inspiration Point
to watch the sunrise. Never before did I realize how
inadequate the most pretentious descriptions of the
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone all are. The
greatest of the world's word painters have only suc-
ceeded in stringing together a lot of colours like the
variegated tags on a paint company's sample sheet,
throwing in a liberal supply of trope and hyperbole,
making a few comparisons to heaven and hell, sun-
rise and sunset and a field of flowers, and mixing the
whole together and serving it up garnished with ad-
jectives of the awful, terrible, immense and stupen-
dous order.
It is not in singling out each crag and pinnacle,
or in separating each bright streak of colour from its
30 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
neighbour and admiring it alone, that one comes to
the fullest appreciation of the grandeur and beauty
of the canyon. It is rather in being gradually taken
possession of by the spirit of the place, an influence
that lasts long after you have ceased to look, a feeling
far deeper than the mere transient delight of gazing
on a beautiful picture.
Yesterday's thaw must have raised the water in
the Lake. The river is much higher today, and the
snow-bridges above the falls, as well as the heaped-in
drifts below, are breaking away in huge masses.
The snow-cap on the brink, with the water gushing
forth from under it, has much the appearance of a
gigantic alabaster gargoyle. The river shoots down
under the snow and leaps out over the chasm in a
clean compact stream of bottle-green. Half-way
down the resistance of the air has whitened the jet,
and as it disappears behind the great pile at its foot
it is dashed to a spray so snowy that, from a distance,
the line between water and drift defies the eye to
fi[X.
As we edged our way out to a better position the
sun rose and threw a series of three rainbows in the
mist clouds as they floated up out of the shadowed
depths. The lowest and clearest of these semi-circles
of irised spray seemed to spring from a patch of
bright saffon sand, where it was laid bare by the melt-
I
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 31
ing snow. Now I know where the story of the gold
at the end of the rainbow came from.
Lake Station, April 12.
Carr and I tried to come through from the Canyon
by moonlight last night and had rather a bad time
of it. First a fog obscured the moon. Then we tried
to take a short cut by following the telephone line,
got lost in the dark, and staid lost till the moon set
and made it darker still. In cutting across the hills
to get back into Hayden Valley, Carr fell over a
snow-bank and landed right in the middle of the road,
where it had been laid bare by the heat of hot springs.
Starting again, we came to the top of a hill and
coasted down at a smart gait. As we sped to the
bottom I became aware of a dark blur beyond the
white of the snow. Then there was a sudden stop-
page, and I seemed to see a re-risen moon, with a
whole cortege of comets in its wake, dancing about
the sky. I came to at the touch of a handful of
snow on my face, to learn that I had coasted right
onto a bare spot in the road and stopped in half a ski-
length. My heavily loaded knapsack, shooting along
the line of least resistance up my spine, had come into
violent contact with the back of my head, producing
the astronomical pyrotechnic illusion.
After a while we were lost again, this time in a
level space bounded on four sides by a winding creek.
32 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
I know it was on four sides of the place, for we care-
fully walked off toward each point of the compass
in rotation, and each time landed in the creek. We
finally escaped by wading. How we got in without
wading will always be a mystery. Carr said the
stream was called Trout Creek. Doubtless he is
right ; but if there were any trout over six inches long
there last night they must have been permanently
disjointed at more than one vertebral connection by
having to conform to those confounded bends.
We passed the famous and only Mud Geyser an
hour before daybreak. Things were in a bad way
with him, judging from the noise. The mutterings
of the old mud-slinger in his quieter moments reminds
me very much of a Chilkat Mission Indian reciting
the Lord's Prayer in his native tongue — just a rapid
succession of deep gutturals. But when some par-
ticularly indigestible concoction — served, possibly by
subterranean dumb-waiter from the adjacent Devil's
Kitchen — interferes with the gastronomies of the old
epicure, his voice is anything but prayerful. Carr
said it reminded him of something between a mad bull
buffalo and a boat load of seasick tourists when the
summer wind stirs up the Lake. But Carr was too
tired and disgusted to be elegant. Indeed, we were
both pretty well played out. Personally, I felt just
about like the Mud Geyser sounded.
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 33
After about an hour's groping in the dark, we found
an emergency cabin near the Mud Geyser. Building
a fire, we warmed and ate a can of salmon. When
it was light enough to see, we slipped on the ski
and came through on the crust in short order.
Thumb Emergency Cabin, April 15.
Making a start before daybreak, we crossed Yel-
lowstone Lake on the ice. It was a wonderful op-
portunity to watch the light and shade effects on the
encircling mountains. Far to the southwest there is
a very striking pyramidal peak. Two flat snow-
paved slopes of the mighty pile, divided by an even
ridge of black rock that rears itself in sharp contrast
to the beds of white that bulwark the base, form the
sides of the pyramid. The southeastern side so lies
that it catches the first rays of the morning sun and
sends them off in shimmering streamers across the
lake — Nature's heliographic signal of the coming
day.
An hour or more later the sun itself appears above
the eastern hills, silvering the tops of the frosted fir
trees and whitening the vaporous clouds above Steam-
boat Point and Brimstone Basin. The green ice in
the little glaciers near the sunmiit of the big mountain
kindle and sparkle like handfuls of emeralds, and the
reflected sun-flashes play in quivering motes of danc-
34 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
ing light on the snowy flanks of Elephant Back.
Meanwhile the south-west face of the great pyra-
mid, lying in heavy shadow, sleeps dull and black
until the morning is well advanced. Then, suddenly,
without a perceptible premonitory fading of the sha-
dow plane, the whole snow-field becomes a shining
sheet, as white and clear-cut as thought carved from
alabaster. At noon the sun, standing full above the
black dividing line of rock, sheds an impartial light on
either side of the mountain. PerspectivQ is lost for
the moment, and there appears to be but one broad
field of snow, with a black line traced down its mid-
dle.
Toward midaf ternoon the eastern side draws on its
coat of black as suddenly as that of the other was cast
aside in the morning. Now the former is almost in-
discernible, while the latter, gleaming in the sunlight
like a great sheet of white paper, seems suspended in
the air by invisible wires. And there it continues to
hang, while the shadows deepen along the shores and
creep out over the ice in wavering lines as night de-
scends upon the frozen lake. Gradually the white
sheet fades to nothingness, until at last its position is
marked only by a blank blur unpricked by the twinkle
of awakening stars.
It is as though the page of the day, new, bright,
pure and unsullied in the morning, had at last been
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 35
turned to the place reserved for it from the dawn of
creation, blackened and blemished and stained by the
sins of a world of men.
( 1922 — I am considerably moved — I won't say how
or to what — by that little "sins-of-a-world-of-men"
touch. It is something to have begim life as a moral-
ist, anyhow.)
Fountain Station, April 17.
This morning it was colder again, and we were wit-
ness of a most wonderful sight when a snow squaU
chanced along while the Fountain Geyser was in full
eruption. The storm swooped down with sudden fury
while we were watching the steam jets in the Mam-
moth Paint Piot throw evanescent lilies and roses
in the coloured mud. We were waiting for the Great
Fountain, most beautiful of aU the geysers of the
Bark, to get over her fit of coyness and burst into ac-
tion. The Fountain, by the way, is one of the few
geysers always spoken of in the feminine gender. I
asked if this was on account of her beauty, but Carr,
who had a wife once, thinks her uncertainty of temper
had more to do with it.
The imperious advance of the Storm King seemed
still further to intimidate the bashful beauty, and at
first she only shrank the deeper into her subterranean
bower. But when the little snowflakes, like gentle
36 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
but persistent caresses, began to shower softly upon
the bosom of the pool the silver bubbles came surging
up with a rush. In a moment more, as a maid over-
come with the fervour of her love springs to the arms
of her lover, the queenly geyser leaped forth in all
her splendour, eight feet of beaming, bubbling green
and white thrown with precipitate eagerness upon the
bosom of the Storm King. Whereupon the latter
threw all restraint to the winds and responded with
a gust of bold, blustering, ungovernable passion.
Roaring in his triumph, beating and winding her in
sheets of driven snow, he grappled her in his might and
bent her back and down until the great steam-clouds
from her crest, like coils of flowing hair, were blown
in curling masses along the earth.
For a full half hour they struggled in reckless aban-
don, granting full play to the ardour of their elemen-
tal passions, reeling and swaying in advance and re-
treat, as the mighty forces controlling them alter-
nated in mastery. When the gusts fell light the gey-
ser played to her full height, melting a wide circle in
the snow that had been driven up to her very mouth.
When the wind came again she bent, quivering to his
will, but only to spring back erect as the gust weak-
ened and died down.
Presently the storm passed, the sun came out and
the north wind ceased to blow. Full of the gladness
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS ST
of her love, the queenly geyser reared, rippling, to her
full height, held for a moment, a coruscating tower
of brilliants, and then, with little sobs and gasps of
happiness and contentment, sank back into her crys-
tal chamber to dream and await the next coming
of her impetuous northern lover. Or so I fancied,
at any rate, as we watched the water sink away into
the beryline depths of its crater. But I failed to
reckon with the sex of the beauty. This afternoon,
returning from a visit to Fairy Falls, we passed over
the formation. An indolent young breeze, just awak-
ened from his siesta among the southern hills, came
picking his way up the valley of the Madison, and
the fickle Fountain was fairly choking in her eager-
ness to tell how glad she was to see him. But her
faithlessness had its proper reward. The blase blade
passed the flirtatious jade by without deigning even
to ruffle her steam-cloud hair. The soldiers said he
had probably gone on to keep an engagement at the
Punch Bowl, where he has been in the habit of stirring
things up a bit with a giddy young zephyr who blows
in to meet him there from down Snake River way.
Norris Station, April 18.
This has been a memorable day, for in
the course of it I have seen two of the most
famous manifestations of the Yellowstone in ac-
38 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
tion — ^the Giant Geyser erupting and Bill Wade
swearing. The Giant is the biggest geyser in Amer-
ica, and Bill Wade is reputed to have the largest
vocabulary of one-language profanity in the North-
west. True, there is said to be a chap over in the
legislature at Helena that can out-cuss Wade under
certain conditions, but he is college bred, speaks four
languages and has to be under the influence of liquor
to do consistent work. Wade requires no artificial
stimulants, but he does have to get mad before he
can do himself full justice. Today something hap-
pened to make him sizzUng mad. The eruption of
the Giant is startling and beautiful, the river, as it
takes its three-hundred-foot leap to the depths of the
Grand Canyon, is subhme and awe-inspiring, but for
sheer fearsomeness Wade's swearing — ^viewed dispas-
sionately and with no consideration of its ethical
bearing — ^is the real wonder of the Yellowstone.
We were climbing the hill back of the Fountain
Hotel — ^Wade, two troopers and myself. Wade, who
is the winter keeper of the hotel and not too skilled
with ski, tried to push straight up the steep slope.
Half-way to the top he slipped, fell over a stump,
gained fresh impetus and came bounding to the bot-
tom over the hard crust, a wildly waving pin-wheel of
arms, legs and clattering ski. He was torn, bruised
and scratched from the brush and trees, and one of
':'. Ilaynes. St. Paul
THE GIANT IS THE BIGGEST GEYSER IN NORTH AMERICA
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 39
his long "hickories" was snapped at the instep. For
the moment he uttered no word, but the soldiers, who
knew what was coming, held their breath and waited
in trembling anticipation. The air was charged as be-
fore a thunderstorm. A hush fell upon us all, a hush
like the silence that settles upon a ring of tourists
around Old Faithful as the boiling water, sinking
back with gurgling growls, heralds the imminent erup-
tion.
Wade removed his ski, laid the fragments on the
snow and folded his coat across them, as a pious Mus-
sulman spreads his prayer-mat. Seating himself
cross-legged on the coat, he cast his eyes heavenward,
on his face an expression as pure and passionless as
that on the countenance of the Sistine Madonna.
For a few moments he was silent, as though putting
away earthly things and concentrating his mind on
the business in hand. Then he began to simMnon the
powers of heaven and the powers of hell and call them
to reckoning. He held them all accountable. Then
came the saints — every illustrious one in the calendar.
Saint by saint he called them and bade them witness
the state they had brought him to. Spirits of light,
imps of darkness — all were charged in turn.
His voice grew shriller and shriller as his pent-up
fury was unleashed. He cursed snow, hill, snags,
stumps, trees and ski. He cursed by the eyes, as the
40 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
sailor curses, and by the female progenitor, as the
cowboy. He cursed till his face turned from white to
red, from red to purple, from purple to black; he
cursed till the veins in knots and cords seemed burst-
ing from his forehead; he cursed till his voice sunk
from a bellow to a raucous howl, weakened to con-
vulsive gasps and died rattling in his throat, till brain
and body reeled under the strain and he sank into a
quivering heap at our feet.
I shall always regret that the eruption of the Park's
greatest geyser came after, rather than before, that
of Wade. Frankly, the spouting of the mighty
Giant seemed a bit tame after the forces we had just
seen unleased over behind the hotel.
• ••••••
Wade, coming through to Norris with us this aft-
ernoon, got into more trouble. Unfortunately, too,
it was under conditions which made it impracticable
to relieve his feelings in a swear-fest. The snow
around the Fountain was nearly all gone when we
started, and we found it only in patches along the
road down to, the Madison. After carrying our ski
for a mile without being able to use them, we de-
cided on Holt's advice, to take the old wood trail over
the hills. This, though rough and steep, was well
covered with snow. We all took a good many tum-
bles in dodging trees and scrambling through the
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 41
brush, Wade being particularly unfortunate. Fi-
nally, however, we reached the top of the long wind-
ing hill that leads back to the main road by the Gib-
bon River. Here we stopped to get our wind and
tighten our ski-thongs for the downward plunge.
At this point we discovered that the snow of the old
road had been much broken and wallowed by some
large animals.
"Grizzlies," pronounced Holt, as he examined the
first of a long row of tracks that led off down the
hill. "Do you see those claw marks? Nothing like
a grizzly for nailing down his footprints. Doesn't
seem to care if you do track him home."
The last words were almost lost as he disappeared,
a grey streak, around the first bend. Carr and I
hastened to follow, and Wade, awkwardly astride of
his pole, brought up the rear. I rounded the turn at
a sharp clip, cutting hard on the inside with my pole
to keep the trail. Then, swinging into the straight
stretch beyond, I waved my pole on high in the ap-
proved manner of real ski cracks, and gathered my
breath for the downward plunge. And not until
the air was beginning to whip my face and my speed
was quite beyond control, did I see two great hairy
beasts standing up to their shoulders in a hole in
the middle of the trail. Holt was on them even as I
looked. Holding his course until he all but reached
42 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
the wallow, he swerved sharply to the right against
the steeply sloping bank, passed the bears, and then
eased back to the trail again. A few seconds later
he was a twinkling shadow, flitting down the long
lane of spruces in the river bottom.
The stolid brutes never moved from their tracks.
I made no endeavour to stop, but, adopting Holt's
tactics, managed to give a clumsy imitation of his
superlatively clever avoidance of the blockade. Ven-
turing to glance back over my shoulder as I regained
the trail, I crossed the points of my ski and was
thrown headlong onto the crust. Beyond filling my
eyes with snow I was not hurt in the least. My ski
thongs were not even broken.
My momentary glance had revealed Wade, eyes
popping from his head and face purple with frantic
effort, riding his pole and straining every muscle to
come to a stop. But all in vain. While I still strug-
gled to get up and under way again, there came a
crash and a yell from above, followed by a scuffle
and a gust of snorts and snarls. When I regained
my feet a few seconds later nothing was visible on
the trail but the ends of two long strips of hickory.
Scrambling up the side of the cut and faUing over
each other in their haste, went two panic stricken griz-
zlies.
Wade kicked out of his ski, crawled up from the
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 43
hole, and was just about to spread his swear-mat and
tell everything and everybody between high heaven
and low hell what he thought of them for the trick
they had played on him when, with a rimibling, quiz-
zical growl, a huge hairy Jack-in-the-Box shot forth
from a deep hole on the lower side of the road. Bur-
rowing deep for succulent roots sweet with the first
run of spring sap, the biggest grizzly of the lot had
escaped the notice of both of us until he reared up
on his haunches in an effort to learn what all the
racket was about. A push with my pole quickly put
me beyond reach of all possible complications. Poor
Wade rolled and floundered for a hundred yards
through the deep snow before stopping long enough
to look back and observe that the third grizzly was
beating him three-to-one — in the opposite direction.
So profound was his relief that he seemed to forget
all about the swear-fest. My companions claim they
never knew anything of the kind to happen before.
Norris Station, April 19.
There are a number of things that are for-
bidden in Yellowstone Park, but the worst one
a man can do, short of first degree murder, is
to "soap" a geyser. Because the unnatural activity
thus brought about is more than likely to re-
sult in the destruction of a geyser's digestive system.
44 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
this offence — and most properly so — is very heavily
penalized. Wherefore we are speculating tonight
as to what will happen to little Ikey Einstein in case
the Superintendent finds out what he did this after-
noon.
Ikey has had nothing to do with my tour at any
time. That is one thing to be thankful for. Dis-
charged from the Army a few days ago, he had been
given some kind of job at the Lake Hotel for the
summer. He is on his way there now, he says, and
is holding over here for the crust to freeze before
pushing on. Time was hanging rather heavily on his
hands this afternoon, which is probably the reason
that he cooked up a case of laundry soap in a five-
gallon oil can and poured the resultant mess down
the crater of "The Minute Man." The latter won
its name as a consequence of playing with remarkable
regularity practically upon the sixtieth tick of the
minute from its last spout. Or, at least, that was
what was claimed for it. Ikey maintains that he
clocked it for half an hour, and that it never did
better than once in eighty seconds, and that it was
increasing its interval as the sun declined. He held
that a geyser that refused to recognize its duty to
live up to its name and reputation should be disci-
plined— ^just like in the Army. Perhaps it was dis-
couraged from getting so far behind schedule. If
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 45
that was the case, plainly the proper thing to do
was to help it to make up lost time in one whale of
an eruption, and then it might start with a clean slate
and live up to its name. He was only acting for the
geyser's own good. Thus Ikey, but only after he
had put his theory into practice.
Ikey waited until he had the station to himself be-
fore cooking up his dope. Holt had pushed on to
Mammoth Hot Springs and Carr and I had gone
out to watch for the eruption of the Monarch. With
no scout and non-com present, he doutless figured he
would run small chance of having his experiment in-
terfered with. Carr and I, sitting on the formation
over by the crater of the Monarch, saw him come
down with an oil can on his shoulder and start fus-
sing round in the vicinity of "The Minute Man."
Suddenly a series of heavy reverberations shook the
formation beneath our feet, and at the same instant
Ikey turned tail and started to run. He was just in
time to avoid the deluge from a great gush of water
and steam that shot a hundred feet in the air, but not
to escape the mountainous discharge of soapsuds that
followed in its wake. Within a few seconds that
original five gallons of soft soap had been beaten to
a million times its original volume, and for a hun-
dred yards to windward it covered the formation in
great white, fluffy, iridescent heaps. Pear's Soap's
46 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
original "Bubbles" boy wasn't a patch on the sput-
tering little Hebrew who finally pawed his way to
fresh air and sunshine from the outermost of the
sparkling saponaceous hillocks. Carr, whose mother
had been a washer-woman, almost wept at the visions
of his innocent childhood conjured up by the sight
of such seas of suds.
For a good half hour "The Minute Man" retched
and coughed in desperate efforts to spew forth the
nauseous mess that had been poured down its throat.
Then its efforts became scattering and spasmodic,
finally ceasing entirely. For an hour longer a dimin-
uendo of gasps and gurgles rattled in its racked
throat. At last even these ceased, and a death-bed
silence fell upon the formation. There has not been
the flutter of a pulse since. It really looks as though
"The Minute Man," his innermost vitals torn asunder
by the terrific expansion of boiling water acting upon
soft soap, is dead for good and all. I only hope I
am not going to be mixed up in the inquest.
Crystal Springs Emergency Cabin, April 20.
Wade and I had a long and heated session of reli-
gious argument at Norris last night, of which I am in-
clined to think I had a shade the best. A half hour
ago, however, he pulled off a coup which he seems to
feel has about evened the score. At least I just over-
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 47
heard him telling Carr that, while that "dern'd repor-
ter was a mighty slippery cuss," he reckoned that he
finally got the pesky dude where he didn't have noth-
ing more to say. This was something the way of it :
Wade is a sort of amateur agnostic, and, next to
swearing, his favourite pastime is arguing "agin the
church." He has read Voltaire and Bob IngersoU in
a haphazard way, and also sopped up some queer odds
and ends from works on metaphysics and philoso-
phy. These give him his basic ideas which, alche-
mized in the wonderworking laboratory of his mind,
produce some golden theories. He holds, for in-
stance, that no wise and beneficent being would cast
a devil out of a woman and into a drove of hogs, be-
cause hogs were good to eat and women wasn't.
Making the hogs run off a cut-bank into the sea
meant spoiling good meat, and no wise and beneficent
being would do that. He reckoned the whole yarn
was just a bit of bull anyhow, and if it really did
happen, wasn't modern science able to account for
it by the fact that the girl was plain daffy and the
hogs had "trichiny" worms and stampeded?
Little touches like that go a long way toward
brightening the gloom of a winter evening, and for
that reason I have done what I could to keep Wade
on production. Unfortunately, my knowledge of
theology is not profound, while Wade, with his wits
48 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
sharpened on every itinerant sky-pilot who has ever
endeavoured to herd in the black sheep of the Yellow-
stone, has all his guns ready to bear at a moment's no-
tice. Naturally, therefore, in a matter of straight
argument, he has had me on the run from his opening
salvo. But always at the last I have robbed his vic-
tories of all sweetness by ducking back into the cita-
del of dogma, and telling him that I can't consent to
argue with him unless he sticks to premises — that the
Church cannot eliminate the element of faith, which
he persists in ignoring. Then, leaving him fuming, I
turn in and muiHe my exposed ear with a pillow.
That was about the way it went last night at Nor-
ris, except that both of us, very childishly, lost our
tempers and indulged in personalities. Wade re-
fused to accept the fact of my retirement and violated
my rest by staying up and poking the stove. When
I uncovered my head to protest, he took the occasion
to ask me how I reconciled the theory of the **conser-
vashun" of matter with the story of the loaves and
the fishes. I snapped out pettishly that I could rec-
oncile myself to the story of the loaves and fishes a
darn site easier than I could to the stories of a fish
and a loafer. It was a shameful and inexcusable
lapse of breeding on my part, especially as Wade, be-
ing a hotel watchman without active duties, was ab-
normally sensitive about being referred to as a
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 49
loafer. At first he seemed to be divided between
rushing me with a poker and sitting down for a
swear-fest. Finally, however, he did a much more
dignified thing than either by serving flat notice that
he would never again speak to me upon any
subject whatever.
Wade made a brave effort to stand by his resolve.
To my very contrite apology in the morning he turned
a deaf ear. Getting himself a hasty breakfast, he
kicked into his ski and pushed off down the Mammoth
Springs road at four o'clock. When Carr and I
started an hour later a drizzling rain had set in,
making the going the hardest and most disagreeable
of the whole trip. The snow, honeycombed by the
rain, offered no support to our ski, and we wallowed
to our knees in soft slush. The drizzle increased to
a steady downpour as the morning advanced, drench-
ing our clothes till the water ran down and filled our
rubber shoes. Buckskin gauntlets soaked through
faster then they could be wrung out. It was not
long before chilled hands became almost powerless to
grasp the slippery steering poles and numbing fmgers
fumbled helplessly in their efforts to tighten the
stretching thongs of rawhide that bound on our ski.
Wade was spitting a steady stream of curses where
we pulled up on his heels at the mud flats by Beaver
Lake, but sullenly refused to make way for me to
50 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
take the lead and break trail. Past Obsidian Cliff,
on the still half-frozen pavement of broken glass, the
going was better, and I managed to pass and cut in
ahead of the wallowing watchman just before we
came to the long avenue of pines running past Crys-
tal Springs. He seemed barely able to drag one sag-
ging knee up past the other, and his half -averted face
was seamed deep with lines of weariness. Only the
spasmodic movement of his lips told of the unborn
curses that his overworked lungs lacked the power to
force forth upon the air.
Realizing from the fact that he lacked the breath to
curse how desperately near a collapse the fellow must
be, I whipped up my own flagging energies with the
idea of pushing on ahead to the cabin and getting a
fire started and a pot of coffee boiling. Shouting to
Carr to stand by to bring in the remains, I spurted
on as fast as I could over the crust which was still
far from rotted by the rain. I was a good three hun-
dred yards ahead of my companions when I turned
from the road to cross Obsidian Creek to the cabin.
A glance back before I entered the trees revealed
Wade reeling drunkenly from side to side, with Carr
hovering near to catch him when he fell.
A large fir log spanned the deep half-frozen pool
beyond which stood the half -snow-buried cabin. The
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 51
near bank was several feet higher than the far, so
that the log sloped downward at a sharp angle.
Since, on our outward trip, we had crossed success-
fully by coasting down the snow-covered top of the
log, I assumed that the feat might be performed
again, especially as I was far more adept of the ski
now than then. But I failed to reckon on the soft-
ening the snow had undergone in the elapsed fort-
night. Half-way over the whole right side of the
slushy cap sliced off and let me flounder down into
the waist-deep pool.
Wade, so Carr says, seemed to sense instantly the
meaning of the wild yell that surged up from the
creek, and the realization of the glad fact that his tor-
mentor had come a cropper at the log acted like a
galvanic shock to revive his all-but-spent energies.
I had just got my head above the slushy ice and
started cutting loose my ski thongs when he appeared
on the bank; above. There was triumph in his fa-
tigue-drawn visage, but no mirth. Such was the in-
tensity of his eagerness to speak that for a few mo-
ments the gush of words jammed in his throat and
throttled coherence. Then out it came, short, sharp
and to the point.
"Now, gol dern ye — ^what d'ye think o' God now?"
was aU he said. Then he kicked out of one of his
52 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
ski and reached it down for me to climb out by. We
did not, nor shall, resume the argument. The man
is too terribly in earnest. He has the same spirit —
with the reverse English on it, of course — that I had
taken for granted had died with the early martyrs.
Mammoth Hot Springs, April 25.
The outside world of ordinary people has pushed in
and taken possession of Fort Yellowstone in the fort-
night since I left here, and the invasion of the rest of
the Park will speedily follow. Two hundred labourers
for road work and the first installment of the hotel help
arrived last night and today they are swarming over
the formations, gaping into the depths of the springs,
and setting nails and horseshoes to coat and crust in
the mineral-charged water as it trickles down the ter-
races. Irish and Swedes predominate among both
waitresses and shovel-wielders, and as they flock
about, open-mouthed with wonder and chattering at
the tops of their voices, they remind one of a throng
of immigrants just off the steamer. More of the
same kind are due today, and still more tomorrow.
Then, worst of all, in another week will come the
tourists. But Lob, the good god of the snows and all
his works will be gone by then, thank heaven, and so
shall I. Today there has come a letter from "Yan-
kee Jim" stating that he has located a boat which he
HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS 53
reckons will do for a start down the Yellowstone.
He fails to say what he reckons it will do after it
starts, but I shall doubtless know more on that score
at the end of a couple of days.
CHAPTER IV
RUNNING "YANKEE JIM's CANYON"
Thirty or forty years ago, before the railway came,
"Yankee Jim" held the gate to Yellowstone Park
very much as Horatius held the bridge across the
Tiber. Or perhaps it was more as St. Peter holds
the gate to heaven. Horatius stopped all-comers,
while Jim, like St. Peter, passed all whom he deemed
worthy — ^that is to say, those able to pay the toll.
For the old chap had graded a road over the rocky
cliffs hemming in what has since been called "Yankee
Jim's Canyon of the Yellowstone," and this would-
be Park tourists were permitted to travel at so much
per head. As there was no other road into the Pkrk
in the early days, Jim established more or less inti-
mate contact with all visitors, both going and com-
ing. As there were several spare rooms in his com-
fortable cabin home at the head of the Canyon, many,
like Kipling, stopped over for a few days to enjoy
the fishing. The fishing never disappointed them,
and neither did Jim.
But people found Jim interesting and likable for
very diverse reasons — that became plain to me before
54
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON " 55
ever I met the delicious old character and was able to
form an opinion of my own. A city official of Spo-
kane who had fished at Jim's canyon sometime in the
nineties characterized him to me as the most luridly
picturesque liar in the North-west. A few days later a
fairly well known revivalist, who shared my seat on
the train to Butte, averred that "Yankee Jim" was
one of the gentlest and most saintly characters he
ever expected to meet outside of heaven. This same
divergence of opinion I found to run through all the
accounts of those who had written of Jim in connec-
tion with their Park visits. He had undoubtedly
poured some amazingly bloodthirsty stories into the
ready ears of the youthful Kipling when the latter,
homeward bound from India, visited the Yellowstone
in the late eighties. Some hint of these yarns is
given in the second volume of "From Sea to Sea."
Yet it could not have been much earlier than this
that Bob Ingersoll and Jim struck sparks, when the
famous orator endeavoured to expound his atheistic
doctrines on the lecture platform in Livingston. And
the witty Bob admitted that on this occasion he found
himself more preached against than preaching.
It remained for the Sheriff of Plark County, whom
I met in Livingston on my way to the Park, to reveal
the secret spring of Jim's dual personality. "It all
depends upon whether old 'Yankee' is drinking or
/
56 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
not," he said. "He puts in on an average of about
five days lapping up corn juice and telling the whop-
pingest lies ever incubated on the Yellowstone and ten
days neutralizing the effects of them by talking and
living religion. Latterly he's been more and more
inclining to spiritualism and clairvoyance. Tells you
what is going to happen to you. Rather uncanny,
some of the stuff he gets off ; but on the whole a young
fellow like you that's looking for copy will find him
to pan out better when the black bottle's setting on
the table and the talk runs to Injun atrocities. But
you're sure to get spirits in any event — if old 'Yankee'
isn't pouring 'em he'll be talking with 'em."
"Spirits are good in any form," I said, nodding
gravely and crooking a finger at the bar-keeper of
the old Albermarle; "but — yes — ^without doubt the
black bottle promises fcetter returns from my stand-
point."
But it was not to be, either sooner or later. Silver
of beard and of hair and lamb-gentle of eye, old * Yan-
kee' fairly swam in an aura of benevolence when I
dropped in upon him a couple of days later — and the
table was bare. He raised his hands in holy horror
when I asked him to tell me Injun fighting stories,
and especially of the tortures he had seen and had in-
flicted. He admitted that such stories had been at-
tributed to him, but couldn't imagine how they had
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON " 57
got started. He had lived with the Crows and the
Bannocks, it was true, but only as a friend and a
man of peace, never as a warrior. Far from ever
having been even a passive spectator of torture, he
had always exerted himself to prevent, or at least
to minimise it. And he flattered himself that his ef-
forts along this line had not been without success.
He felt that no village in which he had lived but had
experienced the civilizing effect of his presence.
Of course all this was terribly disappointing to a
youth who had read of the hair-raising exploits of
"Yankee Jim, the White Chief," in yellow-backed
shockers, and who had looked forward for weeks to
hearing from his thin, hard lips the story of the burn-
ing of the squaw at the stake, immortalized by Kip-
ling. Forewarned, however, that it was something
like ten to five against my stumbling upon the felici-
tude of a black-bottle regime, I philosophically de-
cided to go ahead with my ski trip through the Park
on the chance that the process of the seasons might
bring me better luck on my return. After inducing
Jim to undertake either to find or to build me a boat
suitable for my contemplated down-river trip, I
pushed on to Fort Yellowstone.
Whether the sign of the black bottle wheeled into
the ascendant according to calendar reckoning during
the three weeks of my absence I never learned. Cer-
58 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
tainly there was no sign of it either above or below
the horizon on my return. Jim was more benevolent
than ever, and also (so he assured me almost at once)
in direct communication with his "little friends up
thar." He tried hard to dissuade me from tackling
the river, urging that a fine upstanding young fel-
ler like myself ought to spend his life doing good to
others rather than going outer his way to do harm
to hisself . I chaffed him into relinquishing that line
by asking him if he was afraid I was going to bump
the edges off some of his canyon scenery. Finally
he consented to take me up-river to where an aban-
doned boat he had discovered was located, but only
on condition I should try to get another man to help
me run the Canyon. He said he would give what
help he could from the bank, but didn't care to expose
his old bones to the chance of a wetting. He thought
"Buckskin Jim" Cutler, who owned a ranch nearby,
might be willing to go with me as far as Livingston.
He was not sure that Cutler had run the Canyon, but
in any event he knew it foot by foot, and would be
of great help in letting the boat down with ropes at
the bad places.
We found the craft we sought about a mile up-
stream, where it had been abandoned at the edge of
an eddy at the last high-water. It was high and dry
on the rocks, and the now rapidly rising river had
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 59
some ten or twelve feet to go before reaching the
careened hull. Plain as it was that neither boat-builder
nor even carpenter had had a hand in its construc-
tion, there was still no possible doubt of its tremen-
dous strength arid capacity to withstand punishment.
Jim was under the impression that the timbers and
planking from a wrecked bridge had been drawn
upon in building it. That boat reminded me of the
pictures in my school history of the Merrimac, and
later, on my first visit to the Nile, the massive Temple
of Karnak reminded me of that boat.
Jim said that a homesick miner at Aldridge had
built this fearful and wonderful craft with the idea
of using it to return to his family in Hickman, Ken-
tucky. He had bade defiance to the rapids of the Yel-
lowstone with the slogan "HICKMAN OR BUST."
The letters were still discernible in tarry basrelief.
So also the name on bow and stern. (Or was it stern
and bow? I was never quite sure which was which.)
Kentucky Mule he had called it, but I never knew why
till years later. And sorry I was I ever learned, too.
The fellow was lacking in heart, Jim said. He had
run no rapids to speak of in the Mule, and if she had
hit any rocks in the five or six miles of comparatively
open water above she had doubtless nosed them out
of the way. The principal trouble appeared to have
been that she preferred to progress on her side or
60 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
on her back rather than right side up. This had
caused her to fill with water, and that, while appar-
ently not affecting her buoyancy greatly, had made
her cabin uncomfortable. Her owner abandoned her
just as soon as she could be brought to bank, selling
what was salvable of his outfit and leaving the rest.
What Jim complained of was the chap's failure to
live up to his slogan. Nothing had busted except his
nerve. He hoped that in case I did push off I
wouldn't disgrace myself — and him, who was sponsor-
ing me, so to speak — by not keeping going. Old
Jim had good sound basic instincts. No doubt about
that.
Working with ax and crowbar, we finally suc-
ceeded in knocking off the cabin of what had been
intended for a houseboat, leaving behind a half -un-
decked scow. It was about twenty-five feet in
length, with a beam of perhaps eight feet. The in-
side of this hull was revealed as braced and double-
braced with railroad ties, while at frequent intervals
along the water lines similar timbers had been spiked,
evidently for the purpose of absorbing the impact of
rocks and cliffs. She was plainly unsinkable what-
ever side was upward, but as it was my idea to bal-
last her in an endeavour to maintain an even keel,
I went over her caulking of tarry rags in the hope of
reducing leakage to a minimum. We also hewed out
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 61
and rigged a clumsy stern-sweep for steering pur-
poses, and it was my intention to have a lighter one
at the bow in the event I was able to ship a crew to
man it. I didn't care a lot for looks at this juncture
as I was going to rebuild the Mule at Livingston in
any case.
With the aid of a couple of chaps from a neighbour-
ing ranch, we launched her down a runaway of Cot-
tonwood logs into the rising back-current of the eddy.
It was not yet sunset, so there was still time to stow
a heavy ballasting of nigger-head boulders before
dark. Water came in for a while, but gradually
stopped as the dry pine swelled with the long-denied
moisture. She still rode high after receiving all of a
thousand pounds of rocks, but as I did not want to re-
duce her freeboard too much I let it go at that. She
was amazingly steady withal, so that I could stand
on either rail without heaving her down more than
an inch or two. She looked fit to ram the Rock
of Gibraltar, let alone the comparatively fragile
banks and braes of "Yankee Jim's Canyon."
Never again has it been my lot to ship in so staunch
a craft.
Returning at dusk to Jim's cabin, we had word that
"Buckskin Jim" Cutler was away from home and not
expected back for several days. That ended my
search for a crew, as there appeared to be no other
62 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
eligible candidates. Of "Buckskin Jim" I was not
to hear for twenty years, when it chanced that he was
again recommended to me as the best available river-
man on the upper Yellowstone. How that grizzled
old pioneer fought his last battle with the Yellow-
stone on the eve of my pyush-off from Livingston for
New Orleans I shall tell in proper sequence.
Jim insisted on casting my "horryscoop" that night,
just to give me an idea how things were going to
shape for the next week or two. Going into a dark
room that opened off the kitchen, he muttered away
for some minutes in establishing communication with
his "little friends up thar." Finally he called me in,
closed the door, took my hand and talked balderdash
for a quarter of an hour or more. I made note in
my diary of only three of the several dozen things he
told me. One was: "Young man, you have the
sweetest mother in all the world"; another: "I see you
struggling in the water beside a great black boat";
and the third : "You will meet a dark woman, with a
scowling face, to whom you will become much at-
tached."
Now that "sweetest mother" stuff was ancient stock
formula of the fortune-telling faker, and considering
what Jim knew of my immediate plans it hardly
seemed that he needed to get in touch with his "little
friends up thar" to know that there was more than
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 63
an even break that I was going to be doing some floun-
dering around a big black boat ; but how in the deuce
did the old rascal know that I was going to meet the
one and only "Calamity Jane" the following week
in Livingston?
Jim was bubbling with reminiscence when he came
out of his averred trance, but only in a gentle and
benevolent vein. He claimed that he was able to
prove tlfat Curley, the Crow Scout, was not a real
survivor of the Custer massacre, but only witnessed
a part of the battle from concealment in a nearby
coulee. When I pressed him for details, however, he
seemed to become suspicious, and switched off to a
rather mild version of his meeting with Bob Inger-
solL
"Bob and his family stopped a whole day with me,"
he said, "and we got to be great friends. His girls
came right out here into this* kitchen where you are
sitting now and helped me wash the dishes. They
was calling me *Uncle Jim' before they had been here
an hour. Well, the people down there persuaded
Bob to give a lecture in Livingston, and I drove down
the whole forty miles to hear it. When the lecture
was over Bob came up to me in the Albermarle and
asked me what I thought of it. *Mr. Ingersoll,' said
I, *I don't like to tell you.' 'I like a man that speaks
his mind,' says he; 'go on.' 'Well, Mr. Ingersoll,'
01 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
said I, *I think you're making a grevious mistake in
standing there and hurting the feelings, and shaking
the faith, of almost the whole audience, just for the
sake of the one or two as thinks as you do.' At first
I thought he was going to come back at me, but all
of a sudden he laughed right out in his jolly way,
and took my arm and said, *Mr. George, let's have
a drink.' Bob, in spite of his pernishus doctrines,
was the most lovable man I ever met."
Now this was a very different account of the clash
from the one I had heard in Livingston. There I
was assured that the debate took place at the Albe-
marle bar about midnight, and that Jim had Bob's
hide on the fence at the end of five minutes of verbal
pyrotechnics. But it was characteristc of Jim that
he would neither boast nor talk of Injuns during his
non-drinking periods. Doubtless, therefore, he was
far from doing himself justice in relating the IngersoU
episode. I surely would like to have heard it when
the sign of the black bottle was in the ascendant.
Jim admitted a clear remembrance of Kipling's
visit, but was chary of speaking of it, doubtless on
account of the squaw- at-the-stake story. (His atroc-
ity yarns troubled him more than any other when
they came home to roost, so they assured me in Liv-
ingston.) Of Roscoe Conkling his impressions were
'^YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 65
not friendly, even in the benevolence of his present
mood. "Conkling caught the biggest fish a tourist
ever caught in the Canyon," he said. "He was a
great hand with a rod, but, in my candid opinion,
greatly over-rated as a public man. He had the
nerve to cheat me out of the price of a case of beer.
Ordered it for a couple of coachloads of his friends
and then drove off without paying for it. Yes, pos-
sibly a mistake; but these politicians are slippery
cusses at the best."
Our plan of operation for the morrow was some-
thing like this: Bill and Herb, the neighbouring
ranchers, were to go up and help me push off, while
Jim went down to the first fall at the head of the
Canyon to be on hand to pilot me through. If I
made the first riffle all right, I was to try to hold up
the boat in an eddy until Jim could amble down to
the second fall and stand-by to signal me my course
into that one in turn. And so on down through.
Once out of the Canyon there were no bad rapids
above Livingston. I was to take nothing with me
save my camera. My bags were to remain in Jim's
cabin until he had seen me pass from sight below the
Canyon. Then he was to return, flag the down train
from Cinnabar, and send the stuff on to me at Living-
ston. Looking back on it from the vantage of a
66 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
number of years' experience with rough water, that
decision to leave the luggage to come on by train was
the only intelligent feature of the whole plan.
Steering a boat in swift water with any kind of
a stern oar is an operation demanding a skill only to
be acquired by long practice. For a greenhorn to
try to throw over the head of a craft like Kentucky
Mule was about comparable to swinging an elephant
by the tail. This fact, which it took me about half a
minute of pulHng and tugging to learn, did not bother
me a whit however. I felt sure the Mule was equal
to meeting the Canyon walls strength for strength,
I knew I had considerable endurance as a swimmer,
and I was fairly confident that a head that had sur-
vived several seasons of old style mass-play football
ought not to be seriously damaged by the rocks of
the Yellowstone. Well, I was not right — only lucky.
Not one of the considerations on which my confidence
was based really weighed the weight of a straw in my
favour. That I came out at the lower end compara-
tively unscathed was luck, pure luck. Subsequently
I paid dearly for my initial success in running rapids
like a bull at a gate. In the long run over-confidence
in running rough water is about as much of an as-
set as a millstone tied round the neck. Humility is
the proper thing ; humility and a deep distrust of the
wild beast into whose jaws you are poking your head.
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 67
As I swung round the bend above the head of the
Canyon I espied old Jim awaiting my coming on a
rocky coign of vantage above the fall. A girl in a
gingham gown had dism'ounted from a calico pony
and was climbing up to join us. With fore-blown hair
and skirt she cut an entrancing silhouette against the
sun-shot morning sky. I think the presence of that
girl had a deal to do with the impending disaster, for
I would never have thought of showing off if none
but Jim had been there. But something told me that
the exquisite creature could not but admire the sang
froid of a youth who would let his boat drift while
he stood up and took a picture of the thundering
cataract over which it was about to plunge. And so
I did it — just that. Then, waving my camera above
my head to attract Jim's attention to the act, I tossed
it ashore. That was about the only sensible thing
I did in my run through the Canyon.
As I resumed my s-teering oar I saw that Jim was
gesticulating wildly in an apparent endeavour to at-
tract my attention to a comparatively rock-free chute
down the left bank. Possibly if I had not wasted
valuable time displaying my sang froid I might have
worried the Mule over in that direction, and headed
right for a clean run through. As it was, the con-
trary brute simply took the bit in her teeth and went
waltzing straight for the reef of barely submerged
68 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
rock at the head of the steeply cascading pitch of
white water. Broadside on she sunk into the hollow
of a refluent wave, struck crashingly fore and aft, and
hung trembling while the full force of the current
of the Yellowstone surged against her up-stream gun-
wale.
Impressions of what followed are considerably con-
fused in my mind, but it seems to me things hap-
pened in something hke the following order: The
pressure on her upper side heeled the Mule far over,
so that her boulder ballast began to shift and spill
out at the same time the refluent wave from below
began pouring across the down-stream gunwale. The
more she heeled the more ballast she lost and the
more water she shipped. Fortunately most of the
boulders had gone before the pin of the stern-sweep
broke and precipitated me after the ballast. The few
niggerheads that did come streaming in my wake
were smooth and round and did not seem to be f alhng
very fast when they bumped my head and shoulders.
Certainly I hardly felt them at the time, nor was
I much marked from them afterwards.
Sticking to my oar I came up quickly and went
bobbing down the undulating stream of the rapid,
kissing off a rock now and then but never with sharp
impact. I had gone perhaps a hundred yards when
the lightened boat broke loose above and started to
"YANKEE JIM" WITH A TROUT FROM HIS CANYON {AboVe)
JUST ABOVE THE FIRST DROP IN "yANKEE JIM's" CANYON (JBelow)
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 69
follow me. Right down the middle of the riffle she
came, wallowing mightily but shipping very little ad-
ditional water. Holding my oar under one arm and
paddling lightly against the current with my other,
I waited till the Mule floundered abreast of me and
clambered aboard. She was about a third full of
water, but as the weight of it hardly compensated
for the rocks dumped overboard she was riding con-
siderably higher than before, though much less stead-
iiy-
Looking back up-stream as the reeling Mule swung
in the current, I saw Jim, with the Gingham Girl
in his wake, ambling down the bank at a broken-
kneed trot in an ^apparent endeavour to head me to
the next fall as per schedule. Poor old chapt He
was never a hundred-to-one shot in that race now that
the Mule had regained her head and was running
away down mid-channel regardless of obstacles. He
stumbled and went down even as I watched him with
the tail of my eye. The Gingham Girl pulled him to
his feet and he seemed to be leaning heavily against her
fine shoulder as the Mule whisked me out of sight
around the next bend. That was the last I ever saw
of either of them. Jim, I understand, died some
years ago, and the Gingham Girl. , . . Dear me, she
must be forty herself by now and the mother of not
less than eight. Even ten is considered a conserva-
70 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
tive family up that way. They are not race suicidists
on the upper Yellowstone.
With the steering oar permanently unshipped there
was more difficulty than ever in exercising any con-
trol over the balkiness of the stubborn Mule, After
a few ineffectual attempts I gave up trying to do
anything with the oar and confined my navigation to
fending off with a cottonwood pike-pole. This
really helped no more than the oar,, so it was rather by
good luck than anything else that the Mule hit the
next pitch head-on and galloped down it with consid-
erable smartness. When she reeled through an-
othei* rapid beam-on without shipping more than a
bucket or two of green water I concluded she was
quite able to take care of herself, and so sat down to
enjoy the scenery. I was still lounging at ease when
we came to a sharp right-angling notch of a bend
where the full force of the current was exerted to
push a sheer wall of red-brown cliff out of the way.
Not unnaturally, the Mule tried to da the same thing.
That was where I discovered I had over-rated her
strength of construction.
I have said that she impressed me at first sight as
being quite capable of nosing the Rock of Gibraltar
out of her way. This optimistic estimate was not
borne out. That little patch of cliff was not high
enough to make a respectable footstool for the guard-
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 71
ian of the Mediterranean, but it must have been
quite as firmly socketed in the earth. So far as I
could see it budged never the breadth of a hair when
the Mule, driving at all of fifteen miles an hour,
crashed into it with the shattering force of a bat-
tering-ram. Indeed, everything considered, it speaks
a lot for her construction that she simply telescoped
instead of resolving into cosmic star-dust. Even the
telescoping was not quite complete. Although there
were a number of loose planks and timbers floating
in her wake, the hashed mass of wood that backed
soddenly away from the cliff and off into the middle
of the current again had still a certain seeming of a
boat — that is, to one who knew what it was intended
for in the first place. With every plank started or
missing, however, water had entered at a score of
places, so that all the buoyancy she retained was
that of floating wood.
The Mule had ceased to be a boat and become a
raft, but not a raft constructed on scientific princi-
ples. The one most desirable characteristic of a prop-
erly built raft of logs is its stability. It is almost
impossible to upset. The remains of the Mule had
about as much stability as a toe-dancer, and all of the
capriciousness. She kept more or less right side up
on to the head of the next riffle and then laid down
and negotiated the undulating waves by rolling.
72 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
It was not until some years later, if I remember
aright, that stout women adopted the expedient of
rolling to reduce weight. The Mule was evidently
well in advance of the times, for she reduced both
weight and bulk by all of a quarter in that one series
of rolls. I myself, after she had spilled me out at
the head of the riffle, rode through on one of her
planks, but it was a railroad tie, with a big spike
in it, that rasped me over the ear in the whirlpool at
the foot.
And so I went on through to the foot of "Yankee
Jim's Canyon." In the smoother water I clung to a
tie, plank or the thinning remnants of the Mule her-
self. At the riffles, to avoid another clout on the head
from the spike-fanged flotsam, I found it best to
swim ahead and flounder through on my own. I was
not in serious trouble at any time, for much the worst
of the rapids had been those at the head of the Can-
yon. Had I been really hard put for it, there were
a dozen places at which I could have crawled out.
As that would have made overtaking the 3Iule again
somewhat problematical, I was reluctant to do it.
Also, no doubt, I was influenced by the fear that Jim
and the Gingham Girl might call me a quitter.
Beaching what I must still call the Mule on a bar
where the river fanned out in the open valley at the
foot of the Canyon, I dragged her around into an
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 73
eddy and finally moored her mangled remains to a
friendly cottonwood on the left bank. Taking stock
of damages, I found that my own scratches and bruises,
like Beauty, were hardly more than skin deep,
while the Mule, especially if her remaining spikes
could be tightened up a bit, had still considerable
rafting potentialities. As the day was bright and
warm and the water not especially cold, I decided to
make way while the sun shone — to push on as far to-
ward Livingston as time and tide and my dissolving
craft would permit. But first for repairs.
Crossing a flat covered with a thick growth of
willow and cottonwood, I clambered up the railway
embankment toward a point where I heard the clank
of iron and the voices of men at work. The momen-
tary focus of the section gang's effort turned out to
be round a bend from the point where I broke through
to the right-of-way, but almost at my feet, lying across
the sleepers, was a heavy strip of rusty iron, pierced
at even intervals with round holes. Telling myself
that I might well go farther and fare worse in my
quest for a tool to drive spikes with, I snatched it up
and returned to the river. Scarcely had my lusty
blows upon the Mule's sagging ribs begun to re-
sound, however, than a great commotion broke forth
above, which presently resolved itself into mingled
cursings and lamentations in strange foreign tongues.
74 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
Then a howling-mad Irish section-boss came crashing
through the underbrush, called me a train-wrecker,
grabbed the piece of iron out of my hand, and, shout-
ing that he would "sittle" with me in a jiffy, rushed
back to the embankment.
The fellow seemed to attach considerable impor-
tance to that strip of rusty iron. Why this was I
discovered a couple of minutes later when I found
him and three Italians madly bolting it to the loose
ends of a couple of rails before the down-bound train
hove in sight up the line.
"I'll lam ye to steal a fish-plate, ye snakin' spal-
pheen," he roared as the train thundered by and dis-
appeared around the bend.
"I didn't steal any fish-plate," I remonstrated qua-
veringly, backing off down the track as the irate navvy
advanced upon me branidshing a three-foot steel
wrench; "I only borrowed a piece of rusty iron. I
didn't see any fish-plate. I didn't even know where
your lunch buckets are. I wish I did, for I've just
swum through the Canyon and I'm darned hungry."
Gad, but I was glad the Gingham Gown and "Yan-
kee Jim" couldn't see me then !
With characteristic Hibernian suddenness, the bel-
low of rage changed to a guffaw of laughter. "Sure
an' the broth o' a bhoy thot a fish-plate wuz a contryv-
ance fer to eat off uvl An' it's jest through the Can-
"YANKEE JIM'S CANYON" 75
yon he's swam! An' it's hoongry an' wet thot he
is I Be jabbers then, we won't be afther murtherin'
him outright; we'll jest let him go back to the river
an' dhrown hisself 1" Stip lively, ye skulkin' dagoes,
an' bring out the loonch."
And so while I sat on the bank quaffing Dago Red
and munching garlic-stuffed sausages, Moike and his
gang of Eyetalians abandoned their four-mile stretch
of the Northern Pacific to drive more spikes in the
Mule's bulging sides and render her as raft-shape as
possible for a further run. The boss led his. gang
in a cheer as they pushed me off into the current, and
the last I saw of him he was still guffawing mightily
over his httle fish-plate joke. As a matter of fact,
since Mike in his excitement appeared to have neg-
lected to send out a flagman when he discovered his
fish-plate was missing, I have always had a feeling
that the northbound train that morning came nearer
than I did to being wrecked in "Yankee Jim's Can-
yon of the Yellowstone."
The rest of that day's run was more a matter of
chills than thrills, especially after the evening shad-
ows began to lengthen and the northerly wind to
strengthen. The Mule repeated her roU-and-reduce
tactics every time she came to a stretch of white water.
There were only three planks left when I abandoned
her at dusk, something over twenty miles from the foot
76 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
of the Canyon, and each of these was sprinkled as
thickly with spike-points as a Hindu fakir's bed of
nails. One plank, by a curious coincidence, was the
strake that had orginally borne the defiant slogan,
"HICKMAN OR BUST." Prying it loose from
its cumbering mates, I shoved it gently out into the
current. There was no question that Kentucky Mule
was busted, but it struck me as the sporting thing to
do to give that plank a fighting chance to nose its
way down to Hickman. If I had known what I
learned last summer I should not have taken the trou-
ble. Hickman has had more "Kentucky Mule" than
is good for it all the time; also a huge box factory
where soft pine planks are cut up into shooks. The
last of my raft deserved a better fate. I hope it
stranded on the way.
Spending the night with a hospitable rancher, I
walked into Livingston in the morning. There I
found my bags and camera, which good old "Yankee
Jim" had punctually forwarded by the train I had
so nearly wrecked. The accompanying pictures of
Jim and his Canyon are from the roll of negatives
in the kodak at the time.
CHAPTER V
"calamity JANE^"*
Thrilled with the delights of swift-water boating
as they had been vouchsafed to me in running the
Mule through "Yankee Jim's Canyon," I hastened to
make arrangements to continue my voyage imme-
diately upon arriving in Livingston. A capenter
called Sydney Lamartine agreed to build me a skiff
and have it ready at the end of three days. Hour by
hour I watched my argosy grow, and then — on the
night before it was ready to launch — came "Calam-
ity."
In every man's life there is one event that tran-
scends all others in the bigness with which it bulks in
his memory. This is not necessarily the biggest
thing that has really happened to him. Usually, in-
deed, it is not. It is simply the thing that impresses
most deeply the person he happens to be at the time.
The thunderbolt of a living, breathing "Calamity
Jane" striking at my feet from a clear sky is my
biggest thing. One does his little curtsey to a lot of
queens, real and figurative, in the course of twenty
years' wandering, but not the most regal of them has
77
78 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
stirred my pulse like the "Queen of the Plains."
Queens of Dance, Queens of Song, and Queens of
real kingdoms, cannibalistic and otherwise, there have
been, but only one "Queen of the Rockies." And
this was not because "Calamity Jane" was either
young, or beautiful or good. ( There may have been
a time when she was young, and possibly even good,
but beautiful — never.) So far as my own heart-
storm was concerned, it was because she had been the
heroine of that saifron-hued thriller called "The Beau-
tiful White Devil of the Yellowstone," the which I
had devoured in the hay-mow in my adolescence. The
fragrance of dried alfalfa brings the vision of "Calam-
ity Jane" before my eyes even to this day. She
is the only flesh-and-blood heroine to come into my
life.
My initial meeting with "Calamity" was charac-
teristic. It was a bit after midnight. On my way
home to the old Albemarle to bed I became aware
of what I thought was a spurred and chap-ed cowboy
in the act of embracing a lamp-post. A gruff voice
hailed me as I came barging by. "Short Pants I" it
called; "oh. Short Pants — can't you tell a lady where
she lives?"
"Show me where the lady is and I'll try," I replied,
edging cautiously in toward the circle of golden glow.
"CALAMITY JANE" 79
"She's me, Short Pants — Martha Cannary — ^Mar-
tha Burk, better known as 'Calamity Jane.' "
"Ahl" I breathed, and again "Ah 1" Then: "Sure,
I'll tell you where you live; only you'll have to tell
me first." And thus was ushered in the greatest mo-
ment of my life.
"Calamity," it appeared, haS arrived from Bozeman
that afternoon, taken a room over a saloon, gone out
for a convivial evening and forgotten where she lived.
She was only sure that the bar-keeper of the saloon
was named Patsy, and that there was an outside stair-
way up to the second story. It was a long and
devious search, not so much because there was
any great number of saloons with outside stairways
and mixologists called Patsy, as because every
man in every saloon to which we went to inquire
greeted "Calamity" as a long-lost mother and in-
sisted on shouting the house. Then, to the last man,
they attached themselves to the search-party. When
we did locate the proper place, it was only to find that
"Calamity" had lost her room-key. After a not-too-
well-ordered consultation, we passed her unprotest-
ing anatomy in through a window by means of a fire-
ladder and reckoned our mission finished. That was
the proudest night on which I am able to look back.
When, agog with delicious excitement, I went to
80 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
ask after Mrs. Burk's health the following morning,
I found her smoking a cigar and cooking breakfast.
She insisted on my sharing both, but I compromised
on the ham and eggs. She had no recollection what-
ever of our meeting of the previous evening, yet
greeted me as "Short Pants" as readily as ever. This
name, later contracted to "Pants," was suggested by
my omnipresent checkered knickers, the only nether
garment I possessed at the time.
The "once-and-never-again 'Calamity Jane,' " was
about fifty-five years of age at this time, and looked it,
or did not look it, according to where one looked.
Her deeply-lined, scowling, sun-tanned face and the
mouth with its missing teeth might have belonged to
a hag of seventy. The rest of her — well, seeing those
leather-clad legs swing by on the other side of a sign-
board that obscured the wrinkled phiz, one might well
have thought they belonged to a thirty-year-old cow-
puncher just coming into town for his night to howl.
And younger even than her legs was "Calamity's"
heart. Apropos of which I recall confiding to Patsy,
the bar-keep, that she had the heart of a young god
Pan. "Maybe so," grunted Patsy doubtfully (not
having had a classical education he couldn't be quite
sure, of course) ; "in any case she's got the voice of an
old tin pan." Which was neither gallant nor quite fair
to "Calamity." Her voice was a bit cracked, but not
^^^^^^B> ^^^^^vlB^^H^r 1' II 1 Mil
"calamity jane" in 1885 (Above')
1 FOUND "calamity" SMOKING A CIGAR AND COOKING BREAKFAST
{Below)
"CALAMITY JANE" 81
so badly as Patsy had tried to make out. Another
thing: that black scowl between her brows belied the
dear old girl. There was really nothing saturnine
about her. Hers was the sunniest of souls, and the
most generous. She was poor all her life from giving
away things, and I have heard that her last illness was
contracted in nursing some poor sot she found in a
gutter.
Naturally, of course, after a decent interval, I
blurted out to "Calamity" that I had come to hear
the story of her wonderful life. Right gamely did
the old girl come through. "Sure, Pants," she re-
plied. "Just run down and rush a can of suds, and
I'll rattle off the whole layout for you. I'll meet
you down there in the sunshine by those empty beer
barrels."
It was May, the month of the brewing of the fra-
grant dark-brown Bock. Returning with a gallon
tin pail awash to the gunnels, I found "Calamity" en-
throned on an up-ended barrel, with her feet comfort-
ably braced against the side of one of its prostrate
brothers. Depositing the nectar on a third barrel at
her side, I sank to my ease upon a soft patch of lush
spring grass and budding dandelions. "Calamity"
blew a mouth-hole in the foam, quaffed deeply of the
Bock, wiped her lips with a sleeve, and began without
further preliminary:
82 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
"My maiden name was Martha Cannary. Was
born in Princeton, Missouri, May first, 1848." ,Then,
in a sort of parenthesis: "This must be about my
birthday. Pants. Drink to the health of the Queen of
May, kid." I stopped chewing dandelion, lifted the
suds-crowned bucket toward her, muttered "Many
happy Maytimes, Queen," and drank deep. Imme-
diately she resumed with "My maiden name was
Martha Cannary, etc." . . . "As a child I always had
a fondness for adventure and especial fondness for
horses, which I began to ride at an early age and con-
tinued to do so until I became an expert rider, being
able to ride the most vicious and stubborn horses.
"In 1865 we emigrated from our home in Missouri
by the overland route to Virginia City, Montana.
While on the way the greater part of my time was
spent in hunting along with the men; in fact I was
at all times with the men when there was excitement
and adventure to be had. We had many exciting
times fording streams, for many of the streams on
the way were noted for quicksand and boggy places.
On occasions of that kind the men would usually se-
lect the best way to cross the streams, myself on more
than one occasion having mounted my pony and
swam across the stream several times merely to amuse
myself and had many narrow escapes; but as pio-
neers of those days had plenty of courage we over-
'^CALAMITY JANE" 83
came all obstacles and reached Virginia City in safety.
^'Mother died at Blackfoot in 1866, where we bur-
ied her. My father died in Utah in 1867, after which
I went to Fort Bridger. Remained around Fort
Bridger during 1868, then went to Piedmont, Wyo-
ming, with U. P. railway. Joined General Custer as
a scout at Fort Russell, Wyoming, in 1870. Up to
this time I had always worn the costume of my sex.
When I joined Custer I donned the uniform of a
soldier. It was a bit awkward at first but I soon got
to be perfectly at home in men's clothes.
"I was a scout in the Nez Perce outbreak in 1872.
In that war Generals Custer, Miles, Terry and Cook
were all engaged. It was in this campaign I was
christened 'Calamity Jane.' It was on Goose Creek,
Wyoming, where the town of Sheridan is now lo-
cated. Captain Egan was in command of the post.
We were ordered out to quell an uprising of In-
dians, and were out several days, had numerous skir-
mishes during which six of the soldiers were killed
and several severely wounded. On returning to
the post we were ambushed about a mile from our
destination. When fired upon Captain Egan was
shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the
firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reel-
ing in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned
my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side
84 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
and got there in time to catch him as he was falling.
I hfted him onto my horse in front of me and suc-
ceeded in getting him safely to the fort. Captain
Egan on recovering laughingly said: 'I name you
"Calamity Jane," the Heroine of the Plains.' I
have borne that name up to the present time."
Here, little dreaming what the consequence would
be, I interrupted, and for this reason : I had felt that
"Calamity" had been doing herself scant justice all
along, but in the "christening" incident her matter-
of-fact recital was so much at variance with the facts
as set down in "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yel-
lowstone" that I had to protest. "Excuse me, Mrs.
Eurk," I said, "but wasn't that officer's name Major
Ficrcy Darkleigh instead of Egan? And didn't you
cry *For life and love!' when you caught his reeling
form? And didn't you shake your trusty repeater
and shout 'To hell with the redskins!' as you turned
and headed for the fort? And didn't you ride with
your reins in your teeth, the Major under your left
arm and your six-shooter in your right hand? And
when you had laid the Major safely down inside the
Fort, didn't he breathe softly, "I thank thee Jane
from the bottom of a grateful heart. No arm but
thine shall ever encircle my waist, for while I honour
my wife—' "
Here "Calamity" cut in, swearing hard and point-
"CALAMITY JANE" 85
edly, so hard and pointedly, in fact, that her remarks
may not be quoted verbatim here. The gist of them
was that "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellow-
stone" was highy coloured, was a pack of blankety-
blank lies, in fact, and of no value whatever as his-
tory. I realize now that she was right, of course, but
that didn't soften the blow at the time.
Trying to resume her story, "Calamity," after grop-
ing about f alteringly for the thread, had to back up
again and start with "My maiden name was Martha
Cannary." She was in a Black Hills campaign
against the Sioux in 1875, and in the spring of '76 was
ordered north with General Crook to join Generals
Miles, Terry and Custer at the Big Horn. A ninety-
mile ride with dispatches after swimming the Platte
brought on a severe illness, and she was sent back in
General's Crook's ambulance to Fort Fetterman.
This probably saved her from being present at the
massacre of the Little Big Horn with Custer and
the 7th Cavalry.
"During the rest of the summer of '76 I was a pony
express rider, carrying the U. S. mails between Dead-
wood and Custer, fifty miles over some of the rough-
est trails in the Black Hills. As many of the riders
before me had been held up and robbed of their pack-
ages, it was considered the most dangerous route in
the Hills. As my reputation as a rider and quick shot
86 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
were well known I was molested very little, for the
toll-gatherers looked on me as being a good fellow and
they knew I never missed my mark.
"My friend William Hickock, better known as
as *Wild Bill,' who was probably the best revolver shot
that ever lived, was in Deadwood that summer. On
the second of August, while setting at a gambling
table of the Bella Union Saloon, he was shot in the
back of the head by the notorious Jack McCall, a des-
perado. I was in Deadwood at the time and on hear-
ing of the killing made my way at once to the scene
of the shooting and found that my best friend had
been killed by McCall. I at once started to look for
the assassin and found him at Shurdy's butcher shop
and grabbed a meat cleaver and made him throw up
his hands, through excitement on hearing Bill's death
having left my weapons on the post of my bed. He
was then taken to a log cabin and locked up, but he
got away and was afterwards caught at Fagan's
ranch on Horse Creek. He was taken to Yankton,
tried and hung."
Here, forgetting myself, I interrupted again in an
endeavour to reconcile the facts of "Wild Bill's" death
as just detailed with the version of that tragic event
as depicted in "Jane of the Plain." "Calamity's" lan-
guage was again unfit to print. "Wild Bill" had
not expired with his head on her shoulder, muttering
"CALAMITY JANE" 87
brokenly "My heart was yours from the first, oh my
love!" Nor had she snipped off a lock of Bill's yel-
low hair and sworn to bathe it in the heart-blood of
his slayer. All bankety-blank lies, just like the
"White Devil." Then, as before, in order to get going
properly, she had to back up and start all over with:
"My maiden name was Martha Cannary." This
time I kept chewing dandelions and let her run on
to the finish, thereby learning the secret of her some-
what remarkable style of delivery. This is the way
the story of her life concluded:
"We arrived in Deadwood on October 9th, 1895.
My return after an absence of so many years to the
scene of my most noted exploits, created quite an
excitement among my many friends of the past, to
such an extent that a vast number of citizens who
had heard so much of ^Calamity Jane' and her many
adventures were anxious to see me. Among the many
whom I met were several gentlemen from eastern cit-
ies, who advised me to allow myself to be placed be-
fore the public in such a manner as to give the people
of the eastern cities the opportunity of seeing the lady
scout who was made so famous during her daring ca-
reer in the West and Black Hills countries. An
agent of Kohl and Middleton, the celebrated museum
men, came to Deadwood through the solicitation of
these gentlemen, and arrangements were made to
88 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
place me before the public in this manner. My first
engagement to begin at the Palace Museum, Minnea-
polis, January 20th, 1896, under this management.
Hoping that this history of my life may interest all
readers, I remain, as in the older days,
"Yours,
"Mrs. M. Burk,
"Better known as "Calamity Jane."
"Calamity" had been delivering to me her museum
tour lecture, the which had also been printed in a lit-
tle pink-covered leaflet to sell at the door. That was
why, like a big locomotive on a slippery track, she
had had to back up to get going again every time she
was stopped. Oh, well, the golden dust from the
butterfly wing of Romance has to be brushed off some-
time ; only it wasr rather hard luck to have it get such
a devastating side-swipe all at once. That afternoon
for the first time I began to discern that there was
a more or less opaque webbing underlying the rain-
bow-bright iridescence of sparkling dust.
With "Calamity Jane," the heroine, evanishing
like the blown foam of her loved Bock, there still re-
mained Martha Burk, the human document, the living
page of thirty years of the most vivid epoch of North-
western history. Compared to what I had hoped from
my historic researches in the pages of "The Beauti-
"CALAMITY JANE" 89
ful White Devil of the Yellowstone," this was of com-
paratively academic though none the less real inter-
est. Reclining among the dandelions the while "Ca-
lamity" oiled the hinges of her memory with beer, I
conned through and between the lines of that record
for perhaps a week. Patiently diverting her from her
lecture platform delivery, I gradually drew from the
strange old character much of intimate and colourful
interest. Circulating for three decades through the
upper Missouri and Yellowstone valleys and gravi-
tating like steel to the magnet wherever action was
liveliest and trouble the thickest, she had known at
close range all of the most famous frontier charac-
ters of her day. Naturally, therefore, her unre-
strained talk was of Indians and Indian fighters,
road-agents, desperadoes, gamblers and bad men gen-
erally—from "Wild Bill" Hickock and "Buffalo Bill"
Cody to Miles and Terry and Custer, to "Crazy
Horse," "Rain-in-the-Face," Gall and "Sitting
Bull." She told me a good deal of all of them, not
a little, indeed, which seemed to throw doubt on a
number of popularly accepted versions of various
more or less historical events. I made notes of all
of her stories on the spot, -and at some future time of
comparative leisure, when there is a chance to cross-
check sufficiently with fully established facts from
other sources, I should like to make some record of
90 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
'them. These pages are not, of course, the place for
controversial matter of that kind.
One morning I kept tryst among the dandelions
in vain. Inquiry at the saloon revealed the fact that
""Calamity," dressed in her buckskins, had called for
her stabled horse at daybreak and ridden off in the
direction of Big Timber. She would not pay for her
room until she turned up again. Patsy said. It was
a perfectly good account, though; she never failed
to settle up in the end. I never heard of her again
until the papers, a year or two later, had word of
her death.
With Romance and Historical Research out of the
way, my mind returned to the matter of my river
voyage. Giving the newly built skiff a belated trial
with Sydney Lamartine, we swamped in a compara-
tively insignificant rapid and shared a good rolling
and wetting. Agreed that the craft needed higher
sides, we dragged it back to the yards for alterations.
Sydney thought he might find time to complete them
inside of a week. Before that week was over I had
one foot in a newspaper editorial sanctum and the
other on the initial sack of a semi-professional base-
ball team. As both footings seemed certain to de-
velop into stepping-stones to the realization of the
most cherished of my childhood's ambitions (I had
never cared much about being President), the
"CALAMITY JANE" 91
river voyage to the Gulf went into complete discard
— or rather into a twentj^^-year postponement.
I became an editor as a direct consequence of
making good on the ball team ; I ceased to be an edi-
tor as a direct consequence of betraying a sacred
trust laid upon me by the ball team. This was some-
thing of the way of it: Livingston had high hopes of
copping the championship of the Montana bush
league, which, at the time of my arrival, was just bud-
ding into life with the willows and cottonwood along
the river. For this laudable purpose a fearful and
wonderful aggregation had been chivvied together
from the ends of baseballdom, numbering on its
roster about as many names that had once been fam-
ous in diamond history as those that were destined to
become so. Of the team as finally selected three or
four of us were known to the police, and at least two
of us came into town on brake-beams. One of us
was trying to forget the dope habit, and another —
our catcher and greatest star — ^had just been gradu-
ated from a rum-cure institute.
All of us were guaranteed jobs — sinecural in char-
acter of course. Paddy Ryan, one of the pitchers,
and two or three others were bar-keepers. There
was also one night-watchman, one electrician and one
compositor. I was rather a problem to the manage-
ment until the editor of the Enterprise was sent to
92 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
the same institute recently evacuated by our bibulous
catcher. Then I was put in his place — I mean that
of the editor. I don't seem to recall much of my edi-
torial duties or achievements, save that one important
reform I endeavoured to institute — that of getting a
roll of pink paper and publishing the Enterprise as
a straight sporting sheet — somehow fell through.
They tried me out at centre in the opening game
against Billings, and after the second — at Bozeban —
I became a permanency at first-base, my old corner
at Stanford. Besides holding down the initial bag,
I was told off for the unofficial duty of guarding the
only partially rum-cured catcher — seeing that he was
kept from even inhaling the fumes of the seductive
red-eye, a single seance with which meant his inevit-
able downfall for the season.
I played fairly promising ball right along through
that season, and but for the final disaster which over-
took me in my unofficial capacity as Riley's keeper
might have gone on to the fulfillment of my life
ambition. Up to the final and deciding series with
Butte I kept my thirsty ward under an unrelax-
ing rein, with the result that he played the greatest
baseball of his career. Then a gang of Copper City
sports, who had been betting heavily on the series,
contrived to lure Riley away for a quarter of an hour
while I was taking a bath. He was in the clouds by
"CALAMITY JANE" 93
the time I located him, and rapidly going out of
control into a spinning nose-dive. He crashed soon
after, and when I left him just as the dawn was
breaking through the red smoke above the copper
smelters he was as busy chasing mauve mice and pur-
ple cockroaches as the substitute we put in his place
that afternoon was with passed balls. To cap the
climax — in endeavouring to extend a bunt into a two-
bagger, or some equally futile stunt — I strained an
old "Charley Horse" and went out of the game in
the second inning. We lost the game, series and
championship, and I, incidentally, ceased to be a ris-
ing semi-pro ball player and a somewhat less rising
country editor.
I have failed to mention that I did have one more
fling at the Yellowstone that summer. Lamartine
remodelled his skiff as we had planned, and one Sun-
day when Livingston had a game on at Big Timber
we decided to make the run down by river. JPushing
off at daybreak we arrived under the big bluff of
Big Timber a good hour or two before noon. I find
this run thus celebrated in an ancient clipping from
the Livingston Post, contemporary of the Enterprise.
*'Mr. L. R. Freeman, Mr. Armstrong and Sydney Lam-
artine made the trip from this city to Big Timber last Sun-
day in a flat-bottomed boat. The river course between this
city and Big Timber is fully 50 miles, and the gentlemen
94 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
made the trip without mishap in six hours. Several times
the boat had narrow escapes from being turned over, but
each time the skill of the boatmen prevented any trouble.
Quite a crowd assembled on the Springdale bridge and
watched the crew shoot the little craft through the boiling
riffle at that point, cheering them lustily for the skill they
displayed in swinging their boat into the most advantageous
places. The trip is a hazardous one, but full of keen enjoy-
ment and spice and zest. The time made is without doubt
the fastest river boating ever done on the Yellowstone, and
it is extremely doubtful if the record has been duplicated on
any other stream. Mr. Freeman, who has had considerable
experience in boating in Alaska, says that he never has seen
a small boat make such splendid time."
I don't remember a lot about that undeniably
speedy run save that we stopped for nothing but
dumping water out of the boat. Last summer, with
a number of seasons of swift-water experience to help,
I took rather more than nine hours to cover the same
stretch. I suppose it was because the river and I
were twenty years older. Age is a great slower
down, at least where a man is concerned. I do seem
to recall now that I stopped a number of times on
this last run to see which was the smoother channel.
Doubtless the old Yellowstone was just as fast as
ever.
PART II
DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
CHAPTER I
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE PAEK
In embarking anew on a jom*ney from the Con-
tinental Divide to the mouth of the Mississippi I was
influenced by three considerations in deciding to start
on the Yellowstone rather than on one of the three
forks of the Missouri. There was the sentimental de-
sire to see again the land of geysers and hot springs
and waterfalls, no near rival of which had I ever dis-
covered in twenty years of travel in the out-of-the-
way places of the earth. Then I wanted to go all
the way by the main river, and there was no question
in my mind that the Yellowstone was really the main
Missouri, just as the Missouri was the main Missis-
sippi. John Neihardt has put this so well in
his inimitable "River and I" that I cannot do
better than quote what he has written in this con-
nection.
"The geographer tells us that the mouth of the
Missouri is about seventeen miles above St. Louis,
and that the mouth of the Yellowstone is near Bu-
f ord, North Dakota. It appeared to me that the fact
is inverted. The Missouri's mouth is near Buford,
97
98 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
and the Yellowstone empties directly into the Missis-
sippi. I find that I am not alone in this opinion.
Father de Smet and other early travellers felt the
truth of it ; and Captain Marsh, who has piloted river
craft through every navigable foot of the entire sys-
tem of rivers, having sailed the Missouri within sound
of the Falls and the Yellowstone above Pompey's
Pillar, feels that the Yellowstone is the main stem
and the Missouri a tributary.
"Where the two rivers join, even at low water, the
Yellowstone pours a vast turbulent flood, compared
with which the clear and quieter Missouri appears an
overgrown rain-water creek. The Mississippi after
some miles obliterates all traces of its great western
tributary; but the Missouri at Buford is entirely lost
in the Yellowstone within a few hundred yards. All
of the unique characteristics by which the Missouri
River is known are given it by the Yellowstone — its
turbulence, its tawniness, its feline treachery, its giant
caprices."
I cannot agree with Mr. Neihardt that the Missis-
sippi obliterates the Missouri within a few hundred
yards, or even a few hundred miles; for in all but
name it is the latter, not the former, that mingles its
mud with the Gulf of Mexico. But in his contention
that the Yellowstone is the dominant stream where
it joins the Missiouri he is borne out by all that I saw
TRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 99
and the opinion of every authority I talked with, from
a half-breed river-rat at Buford to the Army engi-
neers at Kansas City.
My third reason for choosing the Yellowstone was
the technical consideration of superior "boatability."
The head of continuous small-boat navigation on the
Yellowstone is about at the northern boundary of
of the Park, at an elevation of over five thousand
feet. On the Missouri it is at Fort Benton, below
the cataracts of Great Falls, whose elevation is less
than half that of Gardiner. As the distance from
these respective points to the junction of the two
rivers near the Montana-North Dakota line is about
the same, it is evident that the rate of fall of the Yel-
lowstone is many times greater than that of the Up-
per Missouri below Benton. Indeed, the figures are,
roughly, 3000 feet fall for the former and 500 for the
latter. This means that the Yellowstone is much the
swifter stream and, being also of considerably greater
volume, is infinitely preferable to the boatman who
does not mind more or less continuous white water.
In addition to these points, the fact that the Yellow-
stone, from the Park to its mouth, flows through one
of the most beautiful valleys in America while the
Missouri meanders a considerable distance among the
Bad Lands, makes the former route the pleasanter
as well as the swifter one. These considerations.
100 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
pretty well in my mind before I started, were more
than borne out in every respect by my subsequent
experience. There are two or three large rivers down
which boats (by frequent linings and portagings) can
be taken which are of greater fall than the Yellow-
stone, but I know of none anywhere in the world on
which such fast time can be made as on the latter —
this because its rapids are all runnable.
As I was not out for records of any description upon
this trip, it was no part of my plan to start from the
remotest source of the Yellowstone, some twenty-
five miles south of the southern boundary of the Park,
but rather simply to follow down from the most con-
venient point where the Continental Divide tilted to
that river's upper water-shed. Following the river as
closely as might be by foot through the Park, it was
then my purpose to take train to Livingston and re-
sume my voyage from about where it had been aban-
doned two decades previously. As the steel skiff I had
ordered was extremely light, and of a type quite new
to me, I did not care to make my trial run through
"Yankee Jim's Canyon."
I entered the Park on June 21st, the second day
of the season, by the West Yellowstone entrance.
This route, following up the valley of the Madison,
was hardly more than opened up on the occasion of
my former visit. At that time the nearest railway
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 101
point was Monida, on the Oregon Short Line. Now
I found the Union Pacific terminus chock-ablock with
the boundary at West Yellowstone, and fully as many
tourists coming in by this entrance as by the northern
gateway at Gardiner. The eastern entrance, by
Cody, was also regularly served by the transporta-
tion company, while a southerly road to the Snake
was open for auto traffic. The accessibility of the
Park had been increased many-fold.
Probably more than ninety-five per cent, of the
tourists visiting the Yellowstone are fluttered folk
and wild being rushed through on a four-day schedule.
This imposes a terribly hectic program, which, how-
ever, is not the fault of the transportation or hotel
people, (who offer all facilities and inducements for
a calmer survey), but of the tourist himself, who
seems imbued with the idea that the more he sees in
the day the more he is getting for his money. The
American tourist, doubtless a quite mild-demeanoured
and amenable person on his native heath, when ob-
served flagrante delicto touring is by long odds the
worst-mannered of all of God's creatures. Collec-
tively, that is; individually many of him and her
turn out far from offensive. Strangely — perhaps be-
cause, for the moment, they are all more or less in-
fected with the same form of hysteria — they never
seem to get much on each other's nerves. To a wan-
102 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
derer, however, habituated to the kindness, considera-
tion, dignity and respect for age commonly displayed
by such peoples as the Red Indian, the South Sea Is-
lander and the Borneo Dyak, the tourist at close
range is rather trying. I proceeded with the regular
convoy to Old Faithful, then took a car to the crest of
the Continental Divide, and proceeded from there
down the Yellowstone on foot in comparative peace
and contentment.
With the large and rapidly increasing number of
railway tourists coming to the Park every year, each
intent upon making the round and getting away in
the minimum of time, there is probably no better plan
devisable than the present one of shooting them in
and out, and from camp to camp, in large busses.
The most annoying and unsatisfactory feature of
this system is the great amount of time which the
tourist must stand by waiting for his bus-seat and
room to be allotted. This, however, can hardly be
helped with daily shipments numbering several hun-
dred being made from and received at each camp and
hotel. Under the circumstances the most satisfactory
way of touring the Park is in one's own car, stopping
at either hotel or camp, according to one's taste and
pocketbook. Delightful as the auto camping grounds
are, tenting is hardly to be recommended on account
of the mosquitoes.
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 103
Allowing for the difference in season, there was
little change observable in the natural features of the
Park since my former visit. Things looked different,
of course, but that was only because there was less
snow and more dust. The only appreciable natural
changes were in the hot spring and geyser areas,
where here or there a formation had augmented or
crumbled to dust according to whether or not its
supply of mineral-charged water had been maintained
or not. The cliffs and mountains, waterfalls, and
gorges could have suffered no more than the two de-
cades, infinitesimal geologic modifications — ^mostly
erosive. Even in the geyser basins the changes of a
decade are such as few save a scientific observer would
note. The first authentic written description of the
Fire Hole geysers basins was penned nearly eighty
years ago by Warren Angus Ferris, a clerk of the
American Fur Company. It describes that region
of the present as accurately as would the account of
a last summer's tourist.
Not unless we are prepared to accept those delec-
table yarns of old Jim Bridger as the higher truth
is there any evidence that the natural features of the
Park have suffered material change since its discov-
ery. But even in his own credulous time people were
hardly incHned to swallow the story of that cliff of
telescopic glass which tempted Jim into shooting
104 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
twenty-five-miles-distant elk under the impression
that it was grazing within gunshot. Nor would those
ancient sceptics believe the story of the way the hoofs
of Bridger's horse were shrunk to pin-points in cross-
ing the Alum Creek, or of how those astringent wa-
ters actually shrunk the land and reduced the distance
he had to travel. Indeed, it is hard to believe these
stories even today. And yet Bridger is credited with
being the greatest natural topographer in frontier his-
tory— ^he was said to be able to draw an accurate map
of the Rocky Mountains on a buffalo hide.
But if the natural changes in the Yellowstone ap-
peared inappreciable, the artificial, the evolutionary
changes were very striking. Roads and trails had
been greatly improved and extended, horse-drawn
vehicles had given place to motors, and the Rangers
of the National Park Service had taken over policing
and patrol from the Army. Most heartening of all,
Administration seemed at last to have found itself.
In the decade or two following the creation of the
Park, there were two Superintendents, Langford
and Norris, who gave the best that was in them to
an all but thankless task. Greatly hampered by lack
of co-operation and even by actual obstruction in
Washington the achievement of neither was commen-
surate wifh his effort.
Besides Langford and Norris these earlier years
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 105
saw two or three political appointees at the head of
Park affairs, men whom no less an authority than
Captain Chittenden intimates were either incompe-
tent or corrupt. It was largely the lamentable re-
sults of the administration or these latter that was
responsible for turning the Yellowstone over to the
Army, just as was done in the construction of the Pan-
ama Canal. The Army, subject to the limitations
of military administration for this kind of work, came
through as usual with great credit to itself. A mili-
tary Superintendent — Capt. George W. Goode — was
in charge on the occasion of my first visit, and at that
time it seemed probable that the army regime might
be continued indefinitely. It was plain, however, that
an officer who might be sent from the Philippines to
the Yellowstone one year, and from the Yellowstone
to Alaska the next, was not in a position, no matter
what his abihty and enthusiasm, to do full justice to
the task in hand. What appeared to be needed was
a civil administration, with the right sort of men,
backed up with sympathy and vigour at Washington.
That is the desideratum which seems to have been
arrived at, both as to men and the support at the Na-
tional Capital.
If I were going to pay adequate tribute to what the
National Park Service is doing and trying to do I
should want the rest of this volume in which to express
106 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
myself. So I shall only say in passing that, judging
from the members of that service I have met, includ-
ing the Superintendent and Assistant Superintend-
ent of the Yellowstone, it seems to me to be develop-
ing a type that does not suffer in comparison with
that fine idealist, the British Civil Servant, whom I
have always admired so unreservedly where I have
found him at work in India, the Federated Malay
States, and other outposts of empire — an official of
ability and experience giving his lifetime for the good
of others for very modest pay. If I knew how to pay
a higher compliment I should do so. In concluding
this chapter I shall touch briefly on the future plans
and policy of the National Park Service for the Yel-
lowstone.
It was a comparatively modest affluent of Yellow-
stone Lake that I followed down from the two-ways-
draining marsh on the Continental Divide. I did not
come upon the Yellowstone proper until I reached the
outlet of the Lake. It is a splendid stream even there
— broad, deep, swift and crystal-clear. At a point
very near where the bridge of the Cody road crosses
the river is the site of the projected Yellowstone Lake
Dam, a dangerous encroachment of power and irriga-
tion interests which the energetic efforts of the Na-
tional Park Service appear now to have disposed of
for good.
PRESENT-DAY YELL0WST0NE5 107
From my previous recollection of the river from
the outlet to the Upper Falls I had the impression
that perhaps the first six or eight miles of this stretch,
with careful lining at one or two rapids, might be run
with an ordinary skiff. Finding a number of small
fishing boats moored just below the outlet I endea-
voured to hire one with the idea of settling this point
in my mind. The boatman refused to entertain my
proposition for a moment, not even when I offered to
deposit the value of the skiff in question. "I don't
care if you reckon you can swim out of one of them
rapids," he said with finality. "My boat can't swim,
and a boat earns its value three times over in a good
season." He was a practical chap, that one. Why,
indeed, shouldn't it worry him more to have his boat
go over the Falls than it would to have me do it?
Walking down from the Lake to the Canyon I used
the road only where it ran close to the river. Thus I
not only came to a more intimate acquaintance with
the latter, but also avoided the blended dust and gaso-
line wakes of the daily Hegira of yellow busses. At
the first rapid — an abrupt fall of from three to six
feet formed by a ledge of bedrock extending all the
way across the river — I found countless millions of
trout bunched where that obstacle blocked their up-
ward movement to the Lake. I had seen salmon
jumping falls on many occasions, but never before
108 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
trout. These seemed to be getting in each other's
way a good deal, but even so were clearing the bar-
rier like a flight of so many grasshoppers. Many that
got their take-off correctly gauged made a clean jump
of it. Others, striking near the top of the fall, still
had enough kick left in their tails to drive on up
through the coiling bottle-green water. But most of
those that struck below the middle of the fall were
carried back and had their leap for nothing.
Immediately under the fall the fish were so thick
that thrusting one's hand into a pool near the bank was
like reaching into the bumper haul of a freshly-drawn
seine. Closing a fist on the slippery creatures was
quite another matter, however. I was all of twenty
minutes throwing half a dozen two and three-pound-
ers out onto the bank. Stringing these on a piece of
willow, I carried them up to the road and offered
them as a present to the first load of campers that
came along. They appeared to be from Kansas, or
Missouri or thereabouts, and so had quite a discus-
sion before accepting them — didn't seem quite agreed
as to whether the fish were fresh or not. Finally I
handed one of them the string and went back to the
trail by the river. They were still so engrossed in their
debate that it never occurred to them to say "Thank
you." Ford owners are nearly always suspicious I
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 109
have found, and notably so when they come from Pike
County or environs.
There is a magnificent stretch of rapids for a
quarter of a mile or more above the Upper Falls,
where the river takes a running start for its two
major leaps. I spent all of an hour lounging along
here, speculating as to just how far a man might get
in with a boat — and then get out. On a quiet, sunny
day, with the mind at peace with the world, I am cer-
tain I would not venture beyond the first sharp pitch
above the bridge. Fleeing from Indians, tourists or
a jazz orchestra, however, I am inclined to think I
would chance it for all of three hundred yards. Pos-
sibly even, in the event it were either of the two latter
that menaced, I would chance the Falls themselves.
To me the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is
more inspiring — in a perfectly human, friendly sort of
way — ^than any other of the great sights of the world.
There are others that are on a bigger scale and more
awesome — the Grand Canyon of the Colorado or the
snows of Kinchin junga from Darjeeling, for exam-
ples,— but to the ordinary soul these are too stupen-
dous for him to grasp, they appeal rather than thrill.
There may be a few exalted, self -communing souls, like
Woodrow Wilson and William Randolph Hearst,
who could look the Grand Canyon of the Colorado
110 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
right between the eyes and feel quite on a par with it
— ^nay, even a bit condescendinT perhaps. Lesser
mortals never quite get over catching their breath at
the more than earthly wonder of it. I have never seen
any one save a present-day flapper gaze for the first
time on the sombre depths of the great gorge of the
Colorado with untroubled eyes.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is not like
that — it exhilarates like a glass of old wine, a fresh
sea breeze, a master-piece of painting. There are
no darksome depths to awaken doubt. You can see
right to the bottom of the gorge from almost any
vantage point you choose. But it is the rainbow-
gaiety of the brilliant colour streaking that gives the
real kick. That gets over with all and sundry — and
grows on them. The ones to whom the Canyon ap-
peals most are those who have seen it most frequently.
Twenty years ago I attempted, in the diary of my
winter ski tour, some description of the snow-choked
gorge of the Yellowstone as I glimpsed it from the
rim. One learns a vast quantity of various kinds of
things in two decades, among them a realization of the
numerous occasions on which he has been an ass. I
shall try not to offend again by attempting to describe
Grand Canyons.
I descended to the river at several points in the
Canyon, but found it quite impossible to proceed
© /. E. Haynes, St. Paul
TOWER FALL AND TOWERS
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 111
down stream any distance in the bottom of the gorge.
The fall is tremendous all the way through and I
doubt if there are many stretches of over a few hun-
dred yards in length in which a boat could live. The
total fall from the Lake to the foot of the Grand Can-
yon is something like three thousand feet, probably
not far from a hundred feet to the mile. I cannot
recall offhand a river of so great a volume anywhere
in the world that has so considerable a fall. The
Indus, in the great bend above Leh, in Ladakh, may
approximate such a drop, and so may the Brahma-
putra, where it cleaves the main range of the Himal-
ayas after passing Lhassa. The Yangtse, where it
comes tumbling down from the Tibetan plateau into
Szechuan, is hardly more than a mountain torrent.
With the possible exception of the main affluents of
the Upper Amazon in the Peruvian Cordillera, these
are the only great rivers in the running for a record
of this kind.
In walking from the Grand Canyon to Mammoth
Hot Springs I followed the road over Mount Wash-
burn, stopping for the night at Camp Roosevelt, be-
low Tower Falls. This most recently established of
the Park camps takes its name from the fact that it
is located on the spot where Roosevelt and John Bur-
roughs made headquarters on the occasion of their
winter tour of the Yellowstone a decade and a half
112 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
ago. The best fishing in the Park is found in this
section, and for that reason the management has de-
veloped and maintained it very largely as a sporting
camp. Only those with a really genuine love of the
out-of-doors stop there, while the regular ruck of the
tourists pass it by. Those facts alone set it apart in
a class by itself as the pleasantest spot in the Park
for a prolonged sojourn.
On account of the class of people it attracts, Roose-
velt has been made rather a pet of the management
from its inception. This is especially true of person-
nel. The wholly charming couple — a Kentucky gen-
tleman and his wife — whom I found in charge last
summer presided over the camp as over a country
home in the Blue Grass. The staff — all college boys
and girls — was practically a complete Glee Club in
itself. Good sports, too. Roosevelt was the only
camp at which I did not find myself consumed with
longing for the primeval solitude of the Park as I had
known it on my winter tour — during the closed season
for tourists.
Mammoth Hot Springs, in spite of the passing of
Fort Yellowstone, I found to have augmented greatly
since my former visit. Most of my old friends were
gone, however. Assistant Superintendent Lindsay be-
ing the only one remaining who recalled my coming
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 113
and going. In company with a couple of officers
from the Post we had, I believe, enjoyed an after-
noon of fearful and wonderful tennis on the still ice-
and snow-covered court. Federal Judge Meldrum,
terror of poachers, had been in the party twenty years
ago, but said he did not remember me. I was rather
glad he had had no occasion to. Had I ever been
connected with the geyser that Private Ikey Einstein
soaped, or with aiding and abetting Sergeant Hope
to drive a flock of sheep over the bluffs into the Gar-
diner River, the Judge would doubtless have been
able to refer to the official memoranda to jog his mem-
ory— possibly some thumb prints and a side and front
view of my criminal phiz.
To my great regret I learned that F. Jay Haynes,
official photographer of the Park, had died but a few
months before. In his place I found Jack Haynes,
his son, who is brilliantly maintaining the reputation
of his illustrious father, both as an artist and as a
factor in forwarding the destiny of the Yellowstone.
What the intrepid Kolb Brothers are doing in photo-
graphing the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, what
Byron Harmon is doing in the Canadian Rockies,
that the Haynes family have done for the Yellow-
stone Park. I say "have done," because their work,
having been carried on during nearly four decades, is
114 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
much more nearly complete than that of the others
who have worked a shorter time in a rather less con-
centrated sphere.
But F. Jay Haynes was far more than a great pho-
tographic artist. He was a great lover of the out-
of-doors generally and of that of Yellowstone Park
particularly. In his organization of the transporta-
tion companies to serve respectively the east and west
entrances to the Park, it was the bringing of the lat-
ter to the people that was the main consideration in
his mind; the financial success of his ventures was
secondary. I believe these were successful on both
counts, however. I know that Mr. Haynes is given
the credit for inducing the late E. H. Harriman to
build a branch of the Union Pacific to the western
entrance of the Park, now the principal portal so far
as number of tourists is concerned. They have re-
cently done the memory of Mr. Haynes the honour
of naming a mountain after him. This is a fitting
tribute, and well deserved. Far more impressive a
monument, however, are his pictures. Mount
Haynes may be seen for a distance of perhaps a hun-
dred miles; the Yellowstone photographs of F. Jay
Haynes may be seen at the ends of the world.
Jack Haynes is trying to do everything his father
did, both as an artist and as a friend of the Yellow-
stone. He was on the ground early. He claims to
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 115
have had his first ride over the Park roads some thirty-
years ago — in a baby carriage. Now he burns up
those same roads in a Stutz roadster, taking hours to
make the Grand Circuit where his father took days
or weeks. A Ranger at the Canyon told me that
Jack made the round so fast that he often headed
back into Norris before the dust from his outward
trip had settled down. I think that is somewhat ex-
aggerated; yet Judge Meldrum, who trundled Jack
on his knee, has figured that the latter's time for some
of his rounds averages about twice the speed limit.
The old judge swears that it is his dearest ambition
to soak the boy good and plenty for his defiance of
Uncle Sam's laws — when he catches him at it. So
far, however, the only times that the Judge has had
any really unimpeachable evidence in point was when
he himself was a passenger in Jack's car! Then, he
confesses, he couldn't take out his watch because
he was using both hands to hold on. Nor would the
watch have been of any use anyhow, he further ad-
mits, for they were going so fast that the mile-posts
looked just like a white stone wall, with a very im-
pressionistic black streak along near the top where
the numbers came!
Not so far behind Jim Bridger and his telescopic
glass cliff, that little touch about the mile-posts.
And it proves that John Colter's dash from his In-
116 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
dian captors can't always hope to stand as a speed
record. Surely it is good to know that the best of
ancient Yellowstone tradition is being so well main-
tained.
Jack Haynes drove me down to meet Superintend-
ent Horace M. Albright, who had only returned to
Mammoth a couple of hours before I had to leave
to catch my train at Gardiner. I had Mr. Albright
very much in mind when I tried to pay the most fit-
ting compliment I could to the type of men that are
being drawn to the National Park Service. An ever-
ready sneer from the common run of political heelers
for the man in office who is trying to accomphsh some-
thing for the common good in a decent and honour-
able manner is "impractical idealist." The words are
all but inseparably linked from long usage. Indeed,
it seems rarely to occur to anybody that there might
be such a thing as a practical idealist. And yet just
that is what Horace M. Albright impressed me as
being; and such, I would gather from all I can learn,
is his Chief, Stephen T. Mather, Director of the Na-
tional Park Service. No one will question that they
are idealists, I daresay. That they are also practical,
I doubt not that very strong affirmative admissions
might be secured from a number of baffled politicians
who have tried to encroach upon Yellowstone Park
with power and irrigation schemes.
YELLOWSTONE PARK HEADQUARTERS {AboVc)
DIRECTOR MATHER^ SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR FALL, AND SUPERIN-
TENDENT ALBRIGHT CAMPING (Center)
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 117
Captain Chittenden, writing of the early days of
the Yellowstone, speaks of the menace of the rail-
ways— attempts on the part of certain companies to
build into or through the Park itself. That threat
was disposed of in good time. The railways accepted
the "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther !" as final,
built as close as practicable to the boundaries, and
rested content with allowing transportation within
the Park to be carried on by horse-drawn vehicles,
later to be replaced by motor busses. The menace
of the railways was no longer heard of, but in time
a new one arose — that of the power and irrigation in-
terests. This hydra-headed camel tried to crawl un-
der the flap of the Park tent in the form of a dam
at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake for the ostensible
purpose of preventing floods on the lower river. The
bill to authorize the project was introduced in Con-
gress by Senator Thomas P. Walsh and bears his
name. Two very practical idealists, called to step
into the breach almost at a moment's notice, were able
to demolish every claim made for the measure after
scarcely more than a hurried reading of it. These
two were Superintendent Albright and George E.
Goodwin, Chief Engineer of the National Park Serv-
ice. Mr. Albright, practically offhand, showed the
falsity or the fallacy of every contention made in the
bill as regards the Park itself, but perhaps the solar
118 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
plexus was delivered by Mr. Goodwin, when he in-
troduced figures to show that all of the floods on the
lower river came a month previous to high water in
Yellowstone Lake — that they were directly due in
fact, not to the latter, but to the torrential spring dis-
charges of the Big Horn, Tongue, Powder and other
tributaries of the main stream.
This blocked the measure at the time, and equally
telling action from the Department of Interior has
checked every subsequent attempt to advance it. I
should really like to know the particular practical
idealist of that Department who dissected a circular
letter sent out under Mr. Walsh's signature to his
Congressional colleagues. Perhaps it was Stephen
T. Mather himself, head of the National Park Serv-
ice. At any rate, the blows dealt were so sharp and
jolting that reading the statement somehow made
me think of a man walking down a row of plaster
images and cracking them with a hammer. If I was
not certain this insincere and maladroitly handled bill
would not be at rather more than its last gasp before
these pages appear in print I would write more about
it — that is, against it. As things have shaped, how-
ever, this will hardly be necessary.
In explaining why it was that the National Park
Service had rallied its forces for so vigorous a de-
fence of the citadel against the Walsh Bill, Mr. Al-
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE 119
bright quoted the words of John Barton Payne, Sec-
retary of the Interior under Wilson, in pushing the
Jones-Esch Bill, which returned the national parks
and monuments to the sole authority of Congress.
Said Mr. Payne : "When once you establish a prin-
ciple that you can encroach on a national park for
irrigation or water power, you commence a process
which will end only in the commercialization of them
all. . . . There is a heap more in this world," he con-
cluded, "than three meals a day."
I was sorry not to be able to see more of Horace
M. Albright. One can put up with a good deal of
his kind of practical idealism.
CHAPTER II
LIVINGSTON TWENTY YEARS AFTER
The train on which I journeyed from the Park to
Livingston was a bit late in getting started for some
reason, as a consequence of which it was trying to
make up the lost time all the way. It was a decidedly
rough passage, especially on the curves through the
rocky walls of "Yankee Jim's Canyon." Even
so, however, I reflected that the careening obser-
vation car was making a lot better weather of it
than did the old Kentucky Mule twenty years
before.
Although past the crest of its spring rise by nearly
a fortnight, the Yellowstone was considerably higher
than the early May stage at which I ran it before.
Even glimpsed from the train the Canyon impressed
me as having a lot of very rough water — much too
rough for a small open boat to run right through.
With frequent landing and careful lining, however,
it looked quite feasible; indeed, on arrival at Living-
ston I learned that a couple of men had worked
through with a light canoe the previous Sunday.
Letting down with a line over the bad places, they
took about an hour for the passage of the roughest
120
LIVINGSTON 121
two miles of the Canyon. My jaunt through in and
about the Mule was not clocked. Although the live-
liness of the action made it seem longer, I doubt if
it was much over ten minutes. Nevertheless I was
quite content not to have to chance it again, especially
as a trial trip for a new type of boat.
Livingston is located at the bend where the Yel-
lowstone, after running north from the Park for fifty
miles, breaks from the mountains and begins its long
easterly course to the Missouri through a more open
valley. This was the point at which Captain Clark,
temporarily separated from Lewis on their return
journey from the mouth of the Columbia, first saw
the upper Yellowstone. He had, of course, passed
its mouth when proceeding westward by the Missouri
the previous year. It was now his purpose to ex-
plore the whole length of such of the river as flowed
between this point and the Missouri, making rendez-
vous with Lewis at some point below its mouth.
Clark had come from the Three Forks of the Missouri
with pack-train, but with the intention of building
boats and taking to the river just as soon as trees
large enough for their construction could be found.
Searching every flat for suitable boat-timber, the
party proceeded down the north bank of the river,
probably pretty well along the route followed by
General Gibbon seventy years later in the campaign
122 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
against the Sioux which culminated to the Custer
Massacre on the Little Big Horn.
The previous fall, rapid by rapid, I had run the
lower Columbia in the wake of Lewis and Clark.
Now I was turning into the trail of the Pathfinders
again, this time their home trail. One of the things
that I had been anticipating above all others was the
delight of following that trail to its end, which also
had been its beginning — St. Louis. I knew that
there was going to be something of Lewis and Clark
for me in every mile of the twenty-five hundred — ^yes,
and of many another who had followed in their path.
I was not to be disappointed. I only hope I am not
going to be boring in telling a little about it. I trust
not too much so. Darn it, a man can't be expected
to write about bootleggers, and "white mule" and
home-brew and ultra-modern institutions all the time.
Lewis and Clark and the other pioneers of the North-
west have always meant a lot to me. I simply can't
help mentioning them now and again — but I'll try
and strike a balance in the long run.
There was a real thrill in the tablet erected by the
D. A. R. near the Livingston railway station com-
memorating the passing of Captain Clark. Perhaps
there will be no fitter place for me to acknowledge
to the Daughters of the Revolution my gratitude for
many another thrill of the same kind similar monu-
LIVINGSTON 123
merits of theirs gave me all the way to the end of my
journey. Now it was the defence of the stockade
at Yankton that was celebrated, now a station of the
Pony Express or a crossing of the Santa Fe Trail
in Missouri, now a post on some old Indian road at
Natchez. Always they were modest and fitting, and
always they winged a thrill. I have never met any
live Daughters of the Revolution to recognize them,
but I am sure from what they have done to make the
river way pleasant that they must be eminently kindly
folk, like the philanthropists who erect drinking foun-
tains for man and beast and the Burmans who put
out little bird-houses in the trees.
Livingston had changed a lot since I had seen it
last — that was plain before my train had swung
round the long bend and pulled up at the station.
The ball ground was gone — pushed right across the
river by the growth of the town. Many old land-
marks were missing, and the main street, lined with
fine new modern buildings, had shifted a whole block
west. The shade trees had grown until they arched
above the clean, cool streets, now paved from one end
of the town to the other. Even the cottonwoods by
the river towered higher and bulked bigger with the
twenty new rings that the passing years had built
out from their hearts. There was a new Post Office
and a new railway station. The latter was a hand-
124 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
some, sizable structure, well worthy of the important
junction which it served. And yet that station wasn't
quite so sizable as certain of the local boosters would
have people think. Here, verbatim, is what I read
of it in the local Chamber of Commerce publication:
**The Northern Placific passenger depot, which is
the largest and handsomest structure of the kind on
the transcontinental line between its terminals, domi-
ciles a large number of general and division officers
and covers 100 miles East, and more than that dis-
tance West on two lines and the branch railway North
from this city and also the line running South."
Very likely that word covers is intended to refer to
the jurisdiction of the officials housed in the building,
but if that sentence were to be taken literally there
is no doubt that the Grand Central, Liverpool Street,
the Gare du Nord and a few score more of the world's
great terminals might be chucked under those hun-
dred-mile easterly and westerly wings of the Living-
ston station and never be found again.
Which reminds me that Kipling also found the
natives making some pretty big claims for Living-
ston. Something over thirty years previous to my
latest visit he had stopped there overnight on his way
to the Yellowstone. He describes it as a little cow-
town of about two thousand. Exhausting its re-
sources in a short stroll, he wandered off among the
LIVINGSTON 125
hills, narrowly to avoid being stepped upon by a herd
of stampeding horses. He returned to the town to
find it was the night before the Fourth of July, with
much carousing and large talking going on. His
final comment was: "They raise horses and m;inerals
around Livingston, but they behave as though they
raised cherubims with diamonds in their wings."
But this is not the Livingston of the present day,
nor even the Livingston that I loved so well twenty
years syne. Yes, even then almost the only ruffians
and carousers were the imported ball players and
editors and "Calamity Jane." The natives were
very modest, gentle folk, just as they are today.
And they raised several things besides horses and
minerals — yea, even cherubims. I remember that
distinctly, for it was one named "Bunny," who
worked in the telephone office, that knitted me a pur-
ple tie which I kept for years — for a trunk-strap.
It stretched and stretched and stretched, but never
weakened or faded. Expressmen and other vulgar
people used to think there was a bride in my party
on account of that purple ribbon. Bless your heart,
"Bunny I" You'll never know until you read this
confession how much besides that rough, red neck of
mine you snared in the loop of your purple tie.
The Livingston Enterprise had grown with the
town — that was evident from a glance at the first
126 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
copy to fall into my hands. Quite a metropolitan
daily it was, with Associated Press service, sporting
page and regular boiler-plate Fashion Hint stuff
from the Rue de la Paix, The Editor, too, was a
considerable advance — ^^at least sartorially — over the
one I remembered. Phillips proved a mighty engag-
ing chap, though, and didn't seem a bit ashamed over
having had me for a predecessor. People spoke of
him to me as an energetic civic and temperance
worker, declaring that he had been indefatigable in
his eff*orts to put down drink all over Park County.
They called his vigorous editorials on these subjects
"Phillipics." They were noted for their jolt.
I modestly assured him that I couldn't claim to
have done a lot for temperance during the time I
sat in his chair, but that I had taken an active in-
terest in civic reform. And then, darn him! he took
down the year 1901 from the Enterprise file. I had
forgotten all about that. Well, we found a number
of columns of right pert comment on local men,
women and events and many square feet of baseball
write-ups that Phillips seemed highly tickled over;
but of civic reform editorials, not a one. Or not
quite so bad as that perhaps. It may be that a
trenchant leader lashing the municipal council for
neglecting to build a certain badly needed sidewalk
would come in that class. It was a sidewalk to the
LIVINGSTON 127
baseball grounds. How well I remember the inspir-
ation for that vitriolic attack on the City Fathers!
"Bunny" lost -a French-heeled slipper in the Yellow-
stone gumbo while mincing out to the Helena game
and swore she would never appear at the Park again
unless it could be done without getting muddied to
her knees. "Bunny" was very outspoken for a cher-
ubim. In those days it took an outspoken girl to
mention anything between her shoe-tops and her
pompadour.
I liked Editor Phillips so well that I forthwith
asked him to join me for my first day's run down the
river. He said he was highly complimented, but that
there were a number of reasons why he would not be
able to accept. The only one of these I recall was
that the water was far too loosely packed between
Livingston and Big Timber. Western editors are
always picturesque, and PJiillips was one of ^e best
of his kind. He mentioned two or three others who
might be induced to join me for a day or two. One
of these was Joe Evans, curio dealer and trapper.
I am not quite sure whether it was Phillips or some
one else who recommended "Buckskin Jim" Cutler
as the best hand with a boat on the upper river. It
took some groping in my memory to place the name,
but finally I found it pigeon-holed as that of the man
"Yankee Jim" had spoken of in the same connection
128 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
twenty years before. I had in mind trying to get
in touch with Cutler, but gave up the idea the mo-
ment I discovered Pete Holt, former Government
Scout and my first guide through the Yellowstone,
holding down the job of Chief of Police of Living-
ston. Holt's furious pace on ski had resulted in
my leaving jagged fragments of cuticle on most of
the trees and much of the crust along the Yellow-
stone Grand Tour. Here was a chance to lead a
measure or two of the dance myself. Pete had ideas
of his own about the looseness with which the water
was packed below Livingston, but was too good a
sport to let that interfere with my pleasure. Indeed,
he even went out of his way to make his trip official.
Two people — a man and a woman — had been
drowned in the Yellowstone the previous week. He
ordered himself to go in search of them in my boat,
hiring Joe Evans, with his canvas canoe, to accom-
pany us as scout and pilot. The arrangement was
ideal. Joe knew the best channel — so I took it for
granted, — ^which would leave me nothing to do but
trail his wake and manage my new and untried boat.
Holt's hundred and eighty pounds in the stern would
give that ballast just where I needed it. The lack
of serious responsibilities would give us a chance for
a good old yarn while, watching my chances, I could
LIVINGSTON 129
pick favourable riffles and pay back my friend in his
own coin the debt of twenty years standing.
It was a great disappointm)ent to find no one of my
old baseball team-mates still in Livingston. Jack
Mjelde, Captain and second-baseman, had been killed
in an electrical accident. That was a typically capri-
cious trick of Fate. As I recall things now, Jack —
a family man with a real job, and a legitimate resi-
dent of Livingston — was about the most worth pre-
serving of the lot of us. Ed Ray had dropped in
and out of town on brake-beams every now and then,
and so had two or three others. Paddy Ryan, pitcher
and the gentlest mannered of us all, was believed to
be still a bar-keeper — somewhat surreptitiously of
course. Riley, the never more than semi-Keeley-
cured catcher, had last been heard of over Missoula
way, and looking rather fit now that there was a more
or less closed season on his favourite quarry — mauve
mice.
And so it went. A score or more of old-timers
who had seen me play turned up at the hotel, but
only one of these brought a real thrill. That was a
husky chap of about thirty, who said he had been
admitted to the park once for retrieving a home-run
I had swatted over the fence in a game against Ana-
conda. "Gosh, how you could line 'em out, boy,"
130 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
volunteered some one, and grunts of assent ran back
and forth through the crowd. That was all very nice,
of course; but I would have enjoyed it a lot more
if I could have been quite sure that none of them had
been present the time we played Red Lodge on
Miner's Union Day. This was the morning after
the Fireman's Ball of the night before. I beheve
I could see the ball all right. Indeed, that was just
the trouble. I saw too many balls and couldn't
swing my bat against the right one. I struck out
three times running. The fourth time up I con-
nected for a mighty wallop, but only to get put out
through starting for third base instead of first!
Pete Nelson, Sheriff of my former visit and now
State Game Warden, called for me at the hotel and
together we strolled down the old main street to the
river. We had dubbed it "The-Street-That-is-
Called-Straight." Just why I fail to remember, but
probably some of us wanted to show his biblical learn-
ing. Riley, the Keeley-ed catcher, confessed it never
had looked straight to him, and there were times —
especially late on the nights we had won games — ^that
I had doubts on that score myself. But if there had
been crooks in or upon it in the old days, time had
ironed them out. I especially called Nelson's atten-
tion to the Northern Pacific station at one end of
LIVINGSTON 131
the vista, the nodding cottonwoods at the other, and
the glaring new concrete pavement, stretching
straight as a white ribbon, connecting them up.
Pete Nelson sadly called my attention to the man-
ner in which all the gay old palaces of carousal had
been converted, and said he reckoned that perhaps
every one that had patronized them had undergone
the same change. I was also sad, but less optimistic
than Pete respecting the increasing purpose of the
ages. As we leaned on the rail of the river bridge
and gazed at the swift green current I tried to recall
those lines of Stevenson's which began:
**Sing me a song of a boy that is gone —
Ah, could that lad be I!"
and which conclude:
"All that was good, all that was fair,
All that was me is gone.'*
I couldn't remember the part that I craved, and so
fell back on:
"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depths of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes.
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more."
That didn't quite do, either, for Tennyson was gaz-
ing on fading fields and thinking of Autimm, and
132 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
I was gazing on budding cottonwoods and thinking
of Spring — Spring 1 And yet it was a Spring that
was gone.
"Pete," I said moodily, turning a gloomy eye to
the seaward-rushing flood, "there's a lot of water gone
under this bridge never to return, since you and I
stood here last." The ex- Sheriff nodded in dreary
acquiescence. "And, boy," he remarked with the
weariness of the ages in his voice as he rubbed a fin-
ger up and down the bridge of a blue, cold nose that
I remembered as having once glowed with all the
hues of a sunset over the colour-splashed gorge of
the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone; "boy, water
ain't the only thing that's gone never to return."
Arm in arm, as we had navigated "The-Street-
That-is- Called- Straight" in ancient of days, we
wended our way back town-ward through the gloom-
drenched dusk. By devious ways and obscure Pete
piloted, stopping every now and then to introduce
me to certain friends as the boy who helped Living-
ston cop the state champeenship twenty years ago.
We were treated with great deference all along the
way. There was the glint of a twinkle in the ex-
SheriiRan eye as Pete delivered me at the hotel.
"That was just to show you, boy, that Gilead is not
yet quite drained of Bahn," he said, patting me on
the back. "Until they give the screw a few more
LIVINGSTON 133
turns, life in little old Livingston wiU not be entirely
without its compensayshuns."
I had dinner and spent the evening with Pete
Holt's family, and a mighty wholesome interval it
was after an afternoon so wild with old regrets.
Holt had always been a teetotaler, and so, with
nothing much to lose, faced an unclouded future.
Whether, as Chief of Police, he has ever given those
much-dreaded turns to the screws that would crush
the last lees of pleasure from sanguine grapes of pain
I have never heard. It made me think of Guelph
and Ghibelline, this finding my old-time friends thus
arrayed against one another. And good old Peter
Nelson — I am wondering, when cock-crow sounds,
if he will be found denying or denied.
• •••••••
"Buckskin Jim" Cutler, premier river man of the
upper Yellowstone, came down to Livingston the
evening before the morning I had scheduled for my
departure. It had been rumoured for a couple of
days that he would arrive — some said to respond to a
legal summons, others that he had heard I had in-
quired for him and was hoping to sign on with me
for my river voyage. I have never been able to make
sure either way. Certainly he had been summoned
to court over some dispute with a neighbour, while I
have never had definite assurance that he had received
134 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
any word of my trip. I could not have taken him
far in any event, as I had no need of help once my
boat was given a thorough trying out.
Cutler's arrival in Livingston was sudden and tra-
gic, as is always the case when the Yellowstone takes
a hand in real earnest. My boat had been set up
in a blacksmith shop on the river, at the foot of the
main street. Going down there just before dinner
to make sure that everything was ship-shape for the
start on the morrow, I found the place deserted, while
there was a considerable gathering of people on the
next bridge below. Starting in that direction, I met
one of the helpers, breathing hard and deathly white,
hurrying back to the deserted shop.
"Mighty hard luck," he ejaculated brokenly be-
tween breaths. "Man just came down past shop — in
river — yelling for help. Didn't hear him till he got
by. Half a minute sooner, and I could have yanked
out your light boat — all set up — and picked him up.
Hear they've just got him down by the next bridge
— but 'fraid he's croaked. Cussed hard luck."
They were carrying a man to a waiting auto as
I approached the crowd. "Yep — drowned," I heard
some one say; "but he made a hell of a fight. That
was old *Buckskin Jim' to the last kick — always
fighting." My glimpse of the rugged face and drip-
ping form was of the briefest, but amply reassuring
LIVINGSTON 135
as to the truth of the statement I had overheard. It
was the frame of a man that could put up a hell of
a fight, and the face of a man who would — a real
river-rat if there ever was one.
Next morning's issue of the Livingston Enterprise^
which bore in the lower left-hand corner of its front
page a modest announcement of my departure, on
its upper right-hand corner carried a prominently-
featured account of Jim Cutler's last run on the Yel-
lowstone. As it contains about all I have ever been
able to learn in connection with the tragic finish of
a character who, in 1901 as in 1921, was recommended
to me as the best river hand on the upper Yellow-
stone, I reproduce the latter in full herewith.
"BUCKSKIN JIM" CUTLER
USES RAFT AND DIES IN
FIGHT WITH YELLOWSTONE.
LACKING FUNDS TO PAY FOR TRANSPOR-
TATION FROM CARBELLA TO LIVINGSTON,
PIONEER MAKES PERILOUS TRIP OF 40
MILES DOWN RIVER ONLY TO WAGE LOSING
BATTLE WITH WATER AS HE PREPARED
TO END JOURNEY.
Without funds to pay for transporation which would
bring him into court as defendant in a water case, R. E. Cut-
ler, Justice of the Peace at Carbella, and known throughout
136 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
Park County as "Buckskin Jim," elected to travel the 40
miles to Livingston on a small raft yesterday and after rid-
ing the flood until he could leap ashore here he was pitched
into the river by an overhanging limb and after struggling
with the current for half a mile died either from drowning
or the exertion of his fight.
Of massive physique Cutler made a wonderful fight for
life despite his 65 years. A tree limb on the upper end of
McLeod Island knocked the voyager from his raft. Crying
for help he attempted to reach the shore, only a few feet
away. Beneath the Main Street bridge, down past the tour-
ist camp packed with tents and travellers and down river
to C Street, Cutler was seen battling with the high water.
TONER CATCHES BODY
Near C Street he was forced to give up the fight. He
sank but reappeared a short distance above the H Street
Bridge. A. T. Toner, local contractor, swam out from the
H Street Bridge and caught the floating body. Earl Kirby,
mail carrier, assisted him. Miss Jane Wright, nurse
at the Park Hospital, was driving by and took charge of
the work of trying to restore life. Dr. P. L. Green was
called and arrived in a few minutes. But all efforts were
without success and death won.
Doubt as to the cause of death was voiced by officials.
Some held the opinion that the deceased died from over ex-
ertion, shock or heart trouble resulting from his terrific fight
against the current for a distance of more than half a mile
rather than drowning.
Johnnie Doran, who was fishing near the head of McLeod
Island saw Cutler knocked from the raft and hurried to give
LIVINGSTON 137
the alarm. Numerous residents along the banks of the
river discovered him fighting his way down stream and nu-
merous calls were sent to the city and county authorities.
He seemed unable to make the bank but remained above
water for more than four blocks.
TOLD GILBERT OF TRIP
Cutler was served with a summons to appear in Livingston
tomorrow to answer to an order to show cause in a irriga-
tion ditch dispute. When Deputy Sheriff Clarence Gilbert
served the papers Mr. Cutler promised to appear but he
informed the sheriff that he had no funds and would probably
have to make the trip in a boat or on a raft. The officer
did not take the remark seriously until Cutler was lifted
from the river about 6 o'clock yesterday afternoon.
The deceased had been a prominent resident of Paradise
Valley for many years. The Cutler hill on the road from
Gardiner to Livingston was named after the dead man. He
is survived by seven sons and one daughter besides his wife.
Carbella residents reported that the deceased started down
river early yesterday on a small raft intending to land at
Livingston.
CHAPTER III
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER
As I had planned my Yellowstone-to-New-Or-
leans voyage as a strictly one-man trip the ruling con-
sideration I had had in mind in ordering my outfit
was lightness and compactness. I hoped also to find
serviceability in combination with these other qualifi-
cations, but the latter were the things that I insisted
on in advance. Serviceabihty could only be proved
by use. So I simply combed the sporting magazine
pages, picked out the lightest, tightest boat, engine,
tent, sleeping bag and other stuff I needed and let
it go at that for a starter. No article that I ordered
was of a type I had ever used before. If anything
failed to stand up under use I knew that some sort of
substitute could be provided along the way. That is
one distinct advantage boating on the upper Yellow-
stone has over tackling such a stretch as the Big
Bend of the Columbia in Canada, or the remoter
waters of any of the great South American, African
or Asian rivers.
First and last, of course, my boat was the main con-
sideration. I knew that I could get on with a wooden
138
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 139
boat as a last resort, for I had handled one alone
over three hundred miles of the lower Columbia the
previous season. But I wanted to give at least a try-
out to something lighter than wood. I was certain
there would be many occasions when my ability to
take my boat completely out of the water might be
the means of saving it from swamping, and possibly
complete destruction. I also knew there would be
many places where such things as mud or too steep
a slope to the bank would make this quite out of
the question with a wooden boat weighing three hun-
dred pounds or more. Lightness, also, would mean
easier pulling as well as greater mileage for the same
amount of engine power.
Investigation showed that the only practicable al-
ternatives to wood were steel and canvas. Canvas is
extremely light and fairly strong, and there are oc-
casions— such as a journey on which both overland
and water travel are combined — ^when a properly
designed folding canvas boat is incomparably prefer-
able to any other. This is the case, however, only
when there are frequent and difficult portages and
very considerable distances by land to be traversed.
On a comparatively unbroken river voyage the soft-
ness, the lack of rigidity, of a folding canvas boat
fail by a big margin to compensate for its lightness.
This consideration eliminated canvas for my purpose.
140 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
though I readily grant its usefulness under conditions
favourable to it.
That committed me to steel. I found various types
on the market, and after several weeks of writing and
wiring decided to take my chance with a fourteen-
foot sectional skiff put out by the D arrow Boat Com-
pany of Albion, Michigan. The model I ordered
weighed one hundred and fifty pounds, according to
the catalogue, and was amply stiff and strong. I
was willing to take the catalogue's word on the score
of weight; the matter of strength would have to be
proved. The company admitted they made no boat
specially designed for rough-water work, and sug-
gested it might be best to build me one to order with
a higher side. I knew that four inches more side
would be better than two, but didn't feel that I could
spare the ten days the job would require. That was
the reason I was taking a chance with a stock model
that is probably most used for duck-hunting on lakes
and marshes. My only reason for ordering a sec-
tional type was the very considerable saving in express
on account of the comparatively small amount of
space required for the knocked-down boat in ship-
ment.
I must confess that my first sight of the crated boat
in the express ofiice at Livingston was a bit of a shock.
There was no question about the lightness of it, to be
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 141
sure — I could pick it up, crate and all with one hand.
Rather, indeed, it looked to me too light. I did not
see how material so thin could withstand a collision
with a sharp, mid-stream boulder without puncturing.
But that was of less concern to me than the lack of
freeboard. After the big hatteaux and Peterboros I
had used on the Columbia the previous year this
bright little tin craft looked hke a child's toy. Nor
was there any comfort in the agent's run of patter
as he stood by during my inspection. All the boat
people in town had been in to see it. No end
of opinions about it, but all agreed on one thing —
that it wouldn't do to allow it be launched in the
river. No one but a lunatic would think of such a
thing, of course. Still just that kind of lunatics had
been turning up every now and then; so many, in-
deed, that there was talk of erecting some kind of a
trap down Big Timber way to catch the bodies. But
I didn't look like that kind of a nut. In fact, the
agent was more inclined to believe that I was one of
them rich fellows from St. Paul that had a hunting
lodge up in the Rockies.
I had the crate in* a truck by this time. The agent's
face was a study when I gave the curt order: "Black-
smith shop on river — foot of Main Street." His was
all old stuff, of course. I had heard some variation
of it on every stream I had boated between the
142 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
Yangtse and the Parana. Noah must have gone
through a barrage of the same sort the day he laid the
ikeel of the Ark. It didn't bother me a bit ; but at the
same time there was nothing cheering in it. As a
matter of fact, I had still to make up my own mind as
to just how much of the river those fourteen-inch
sides were going to exclude in a really rough-tum-
bling rapid. However, it wasn't the sporting thing to
do to abandon ship while ship was still in two pieces,
one inside of the other, in a crate. I would wait at
least until it was set up before arriving at any final
verdicts. Perhaps I would even give it a trial in the
water. There was a quiet eddy under the blacksmith
shop, and I could play safe by bending on a line and
having some one keep hold of it in a pinch.
Joe Evans, the curio dealer, rushed out, bare-
headed, as I drove past his shop in the truck, to head
me off from going to the river. A stranger could
have no idea how treacherous the Yellowstone was,
he urged. Two drownded in it already that week. If
I must go ahead in that little tin pan of a boat, much
better to ship it to Miles City or Glendive and put in
below the worst rapids. From Livingston to Big
Timber would be sheer suicide, especially for a ten-
derfoot in a duck-boat. Nobody knew that better
than he did, for he had trapped all along the way.
He was quite disinterested in warning me thus. In-
a
ma
"^m
THE BLACKSMITH SHOP WHERE MY BOAT WAS SET UP {AboVe)
WE LAUNCHED THE BOAT BELOW THE LIVINGSTON BRIDGE {Center)
A DIFFICULT RIFFLE BELOW SPRINGDALE {Below)
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 143
deed, it was all in his favour to have me start. The
county paid him twenty-five dollars a day for hunting
for dead bodies in the river, with twenty-five more
as bonus for every one he found. So I would see it
was all to his interest to increase the spring crop of
floaters ; but he was a humane man, and — Thus Joe,
at some length and with considerable vehemence.
I was chuckling to myself all the time Joe rattled
on. The priceless old chap had been in business at
the same stand twenty years ago, but it was plain he
did not recognize me as the first-baseman of the Liv-
ingston champeen nine. As a matter of fact, I was
just as glad that he didn't — right there before the
truck-driver at least. For I had some recollection of
having been with our brake-beam-riding right fielder
the evening "Lefty" Clancy tried to to palm a moss
agate out of one of Joe's trays — and got caught. Joe
made "Lefty" disgorge, and then delivered himself
of remarks more pointed than polite respecting the
morals of Livingston's imported ball-players.
As I have intimated, I didn't care to have that
episode dragged out before the truck-driver, who
might have passed it right on to Pete Holt and Edi-
tor Phillips. So I just sat tight for the moment,
thanked Joe for his warnings and drove on when he
got out of breath. But late that afternoon I went
to his shop and made a clean breast of everything. I
144 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
confessed about the moss agate, and also to the fact
that I was the youth who held the steering paddle for
Sydney Lamartine the time the still unbroken river
record of six hours to Big Timber was put up.
Then we both grinned, shook hands and apolo-
gized to each other. I apologized to Joe for
seeming to have aided and abetted "Lefty" in
trying to get away with the moss agate, and Joe
apologized to me for that warning about the Yellow-
stone. There was a delicate and subtle compliment
in his handsome admission that he felt that his was
the greater wrong, even allowing for the fact that
there were still two or three moss agates missing when
he finally checked over the tray. In this latter con-
nection, Joe said that for a year or two he had the
feeling that he had made a tactical error in not turn-
ing out my pockets as well as "Lefty's" when he
made his search. Then, one day, "Lefty" came in
and sold him back the agates. "I didn't say any-
thing," said Joe with a chuckle. "Just paid him a
dollar apiece for the streakies, and then turned about
and sold him for ten dollars 'an old Colt's that had
laid under the snow all winter and wasn't worth six-
bits. It seemed to me the kinder way," he concluded.
Of course a man of so mellow and inclusive a
charity as that was easy for me to become fond of.
Joe and I made friends quickly, and he fell in very
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 145
readily with the plan to go along in his canvas boat
when I started and help Pete Holt look for the two
floaters.
Ten minutes sufficed to knock off the crate and
set the boat up on the floor of the blacksmith shop.
It consisted of a bow and a stern section, each about
seven feet in length and provided with a thwart and
a water-tight compartment. Indeed, each section was
really a complete boat in itself, awkward in shape,
to be sure, yet something that would float on an even
keel and which could be propelled by oars or pad-
dles. Bolting these two sections together produced
a fourteen-foot skiff of astonishingly good lines. The
sides, it is true, were inches lower than I would liked
to have had them, but there was something distinctly
heartening in the fine flare of the bows and the pro-
nounced sheer of the little craft. Heartening, also,
was the comment of the helper working to patch up
a gunwale smashed in transit. He said it was the
darndest hard tin he ever tried to put a drill through.
Equally reassuring was the blacksmith's complaint
over the trouble he was having in hammering out a
number of little dents. I may as well add here that
that transit-crushed gunwale was the worst scar my
pretty tin toy was to show when I docked it finally in
St. Louis after bumping something like 2500 miles
down the Yellowstone and Missouri.
146 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
The bright httle shallop looked so inherently water-
worthy that I dragged it down to the river and
jumped in without further misgivings. Its lightness
was highly refreshing, especially when I remembered
the back-breaking job it had been dragging for only
a few feet the wooden skiff I had used on the lower
Columbia. Built to be pulled from the forward sec-
tion, carrying its load aft, it was down heavily by the
head until I trimmed ship by taking in the black-
smith. My own sodden two hundred and forty
pounds still brought it a bit too low by the bows, but
I readily saw how the weight of my outfit and bal-
last would correct this until I shipped my outboard
motor at Bismarck. The trial was eminently satis-
factory. I dodged back and forth across the cur-
rent, ran a short riffle, and then swung round and
pulled right back up through it. Some water was
shipped, but not enough to bother. There would be
no dearth of dampness in the real rapids, I could
see; but those air-chambers should float her through
in one way or another, and water was easily dumped
at the first eddy.
When, on pulling up to the bank to land, I tossed
the painter to some one waiting below the blacksmith
shop, I acknowledged the proper sex of the little craft
for the first time. "Catch the line and ease her in!"
was what I said, or something to that effect. That
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 147
meant she had convinced me that she was a regular fel-
low— that I was quite game to trust myself out alone
with her day or night. And that is just what I did,
and for something like sixty or seventy days and
nights. Saucy and spirited, and at times wilful, as
she proved to be, that confidence was never betrayed.
Late that afternoon Pete Nelson called on me at
the hotel, heading a delegation from the Park County
Chamber of Commerce with the request that I per-
mit the name of Livingston, Montana, to be painted
upon my boat. Pete's inherent delicacy must have
made him sense the fact that operating as a sand-
wich-man in any form was the one thing above all
others from which my shrinking nature recoiled.
Turning his hat nervously in his hands, the spokes-
man went on to explain and expatiate.
"Livingston was also the name of a great explorer.
You're a sort of explorer yourself, boy. Kind of ap-
propriate to unite the two ideas. Would also let the
folks down river know that the little old town was
right on the map. Full of enterprise, too, sending its
emissaries on 4000-mile river voyages. . . ."
"Back up, Pete," I cut in. "This little voyage is
my own idea, not Livingston's. But go to it with
the paint if you really think it will turn any settlers
this way. This little old town gave me my start in
life, and I am not going to lay myself open to the
148 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
charge of ingratitude, no matter at what cost to my
personal feelings. Only please don't insist on my
flying a pennant or wearing a cap with the city slogan
on it. What is the motto, by the way?"
"Live Lively in Livingstonr chanted the delega-
tion in unison, as though delivering itself of a col-
lege yell. Pete opined it was a good slogan, with a
lot of multum in parvo about it ; but of course, if that
was the way I felt. . , .
The delegation bowed itself out and adjourned to a
sign-painter's shop to discuss the practical side of the
affair now that the diplomatic preliminaries were dis-
posed of. The next morning I found "LIVING-
STON, MONT." streaming in bold capitals along
port and starboard bows and across the stern of my
argosy. The blacksmith said there had been some
discussion anent blazoning the words in foot-high
letters the whole length of the bottom, on the theory,
it appears, that this would be the most conspicuous
part of the boat in the event it capsized and con-
tinued on to New Orleans without its skipper.
Whether they really carried out that inspired plan I
never learned. The first sand bar I hit below Living-
ston would have effectually erased the letters in any
event. Indeed, I was only too happy to find that it
hadn't scoured a hole through the bottom itself.
We had planned to push off by nine o'clock of the
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 149
morning of June thirtieth, but various odds and ends
of delays and interruptions held us over an hour.
Most of these were in the form of elderly ladies who
had lost near relatives in the river and chose this as
the fitting occasion to tell me about it. I have some
recollection of speaking with a friend or connection
of Sydney Lamartine. Sydney had died from some
cause I made out, but whether from the river or not
I did not learn. Some one else chimed in with a
boat-upset story just at that juncture and things got
a bit mixed. I was mighty sorry to hear about La-
martine, though. He pulled a strong oar and had no
end of nerve — ^real river stuff.
When I came to ask the blacksmith how much I
owed him, he scatched his head for a few moments and
then asked if I thought a dollar would be too much.
As the boat had been around his shop three or four
days, with himself or a helper tinkering on little
things about it much of the time out of pure kindli-
ness, I told him I did not think it was and asked him
to let me take his picture for fear I should never find
another like him. I needn't have worried on that
score, however. From first to last, practically all of
the people I had to do with along each of the three
great rivers I navigated had to be pressed before they
would take any pay at all for services. Indeed, I
recall but two who seriously tried to put anything
150 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
over. One was the clerk of the local Ritz-Carlton at
Billings, who tried to charge me two days' rent for a
room I had occupied but one, and the other was a
farmer's wife near Sibley, Missouri, who was going
to collect twenty-five cents from me for a quart of
skim milk. In the latter instance the husband of the
offender came along in time to intervene in my be-
half and give the woman a good tongue-lashing for
trying to cheat a *'po stranghah who wasn't no low
down tramp no how and maybe was writin' fo the pa-
pahs." In the former case the "po stranghah" found
justice denied him until he actually had to prove that
he occasionally did write for the "papahs." I
wouldn't have recalled either of these instances if
they had chanced in the course of an ordinary trip,
for the very good reason there would have been so
many others of the same kind that my memory would
not have compassed them all. I have remembered
them, and gone to the trouble of mentioning them
here, because that sort of thing isn't general practice
along the river-road.
Just before starting, and purely as a gesture, I of-
fered Pete Holt the use of my Gieve inflatable life-
preserver jacket. This handy little garment I had
worn in the North Sea during the war, and it had also
stood me in good stead on the Columbia the previous
Fall. Now I was really very keen for its reassuring
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 151
embrace myself on that first day's run, and if I had
thought Holt would take it I would never have offered
it. When he rose to that jacket like a hungry trout
to a fly I felt toward him about as one does toward a
man who asks you to say "When" — and then stops
pouring when you do say it. I had no legitimate
complaint of course. It was entirely my own fault.
Just the same, the unlucky denouement cramped my
style from the outset. I had intended giving Pete a
deliberate spill in some safe-looking rapid just to pay
him for a few things he had done to me with the ski.
I gave up the idea entirely now. That "doughnut"
of air under his arms meant that he would probably
bob through with dry hair while I serpentined over
and under an oar. It also meant that he was going
to worry a lot less about the state of the water than
I hoped he would, for auld lang syne, that is. It
also meant that I was going to worry rather more.
It was an unfortunate move on my part altogether.
Subject to that self-imposed handicap I think I did
pretty well. I am sure Pete would have confessed
that night that there were two or three new kinds
of thrills in the world that he wotted not of before,
even though that confounded "doughnut" must have
acted as a good deal of a shock-absorber throughout.
Joe Evans, pushing off in his canoe from the dock
of his river home a couple of hundred yards below.
152 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
gave the signal for casting off. The current caught
the bow as the honest blacksmith relinquished the
painter and the boat swung quickly into the stream.
Some boys raised a spattering cheer, the people who
had lost relatives and friends in the river shook their
heads dubiously, and Pete Nelson, raising three fin-
gers aloft, shouted: "Here's luck!" He seemed a
good deal elated because the Chief of PoHce was go-
ing away.
We were off — or nearly so. When I turned from
the crowd's acclaim to con ship I discovered a good
thick stream of green water slopping in, now over
one quarter, now over the other. And whichever side
it splashed from, Pete was getting the full benefit
of it. "I hate to start crabbing at this stage. Skip-
per," he said with a wry grin, "but it's that con-
founded ballast of yours that's doing it. It's put-
ting her rails 'right under."
I squinted critically down the port gunwale; then
down the starboard. When she rode on an even keel
either rail was a good two inches above water. But
when she lurched in even the gentlest swell, one rail
or the other went a good inch under. "You're right,"
I acquiesced. "Heave it over." One by one the
units of that precious pile of junk from the black-
smith shop scrap-heap went to the bottom — a Ford
axle, a mower gear, the frame of a harrow, some frag-
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 153
merits of "caterpillar" tractor tracks, the drive wheel
of a sewing machine. All of two hundred pounds of
choice assorted scrap Pete heaved over, keeping but
a single hunk of rusty iron that I thought I might
use for an anchor at night in avoiding some pernicious
stretch of mosquito coast on the lower river. She
still rode low, but trimmed perfectly as soon as Pete
finished bailing.
All down through the town they were waving us
kindly farewells from the bank, and at the H Street
bridge, where "Buckskin Jim" Cutler had been
picked up the night before, we ran the the gauntlet
of another crowd. Then the people began to thin
out and we had the river to ourselves. With the
main channel streaming white a few hundred yards
ahead I settled to the oars for the sharp initiatory
test I knew awaited us there. We had closed up
to within fifty feet of Joe by now, and saw for the
first time the remarkable precautionary measures he
had taken to insure the safety of himself and his ca-
noe. For himself he had a blown-up football tied
to the back of his belt, an arrangement very similar
to the block of wood Chinese houseboat dwellers tie
to their boy, though not to their comparatively worth-
less girl, children. Along both gunwales of the ca-
noe were further air installations — these in the form
of long lengths of inflated inner tubes. The prac-
154 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
tical worth of the latter contrivances was to be proved
inside of half a minute. Of the efficacy of a foot-
ball tied to the back of the belt as a life-preserver
I had some doubts. It seemed to me, however, that
the elevation of that particular section of the anat-
omy could only be secured at the cost of putting the
head under water. Not being quite sure, I deemed
it best not to shake Joe's confidence by telling him
of my doubts.
The Yellowstone divides a half mile or so above
the Main Street bridge, not far from the point where
Jim Cutler was knocked from his raft. The north-
erly channel, flowing by Livingston has perhaps a
third of the volume of the southerly one. The two
unite not far below the H Street bridge. In doing
a bit of advance scouting down stream a day or two
previously I made particular mental note of a point,
just below the confluence, at which the current drove
with great force close to the left bank. Here, either
snags or slightly submerged boulders made a messy
stretch of water that I saw at a glance it would not
do to get a boat into. However, a good sharp pull
across the current from the point the main channel
was entered would be enough to avoid trouble — if
nothing went wrong.
The currents of the respective channels came to-
gether almost at right angles, that of the main one
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 155
flowing at perhaps eight miles an hour. Ordinarily
I would have eased into this by running parallel to
it and conforming my course to the direction of the
stronger current. In my anxiety to get quick way
on across the current, however, I did not take the
time to do this. On the contrary, indeed, pulling as
hard as I could, I drove the light skiff almost head-
on into the swiftly speeding green bolt of the main
current. The effect, naturally, was something like
that of a man's walking into the side of a moving
street car. The boat did precisely what a man walk-
ing into a car would do — ^went reeling and staggering
sideways in an effort to keep from rolling over and
over. She spun round twice before I got her under
control, and of course shipped a lot of green water
— all of it in Holt's section. It wasn't enough to
bother much, though, and I had no trouble in pul-
ling clear of the danger point with yards to spare.
Holt went quietly to bailing. I was conscious of a
mild thrill of elation at the thought of the sousing
I was giving him in spite of the "doughnut," but he
didn't seem to be worrying about it quite as much
as I would have liked.
There was less excuse for Joe's having trouble at
this point, because it was almost in his back yard —
one of his favourite fishing riffles, in fact. It may
be that the fact that I was crowding him closely from
156 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
behind made him nose into the main channel faster
than he would have done had he been on his own. I
was too busy with my own troubles to see what hap-
pened to him, so could only judge from the tremolo
of his high-keyed cursing. Holt, however, who had
a grandstand seat for the twin performances, said
that the canvas canoe was thrown just about on its
beams' ends, and that nothing but the newly installed
water-line air-chambers, prevented a complete
swamping.
The bend below the Northern Pacific bridge was
one of the two or three places of which I seemed to
have retained much of a mental picture from my pre-
vious run. Twenty years before the main channel
was cutting heavily into a low bluff on the left, bring-
ing down an enormous quantity of big round boulders.
The short, savage riffle formed by these had given
us our first severe mauling on that earlier ride. Now
I found the river had broadened greatly, pouring a
shallow current through a channel two or three hun-
dred yards wide. But it was still swift, very swift
— altogether relentless in its onward urge. It is the
almost complete absence of slack-water stretches that
differentiates the five hundred miles of the Yellow-
stone between Gardiner and Glendive from any other
great river I can recall. It is this that makes it so
nearly ideal for boating.
JOE EVANS WHO PILOTED ME THE FIRST HALF DAY (Above)
»ETE HOLT AND JOE EVANS WITH THEIR IJ
(Center)
'chickens, CHILDREN AND HOGs" (Below)
PETE HOLT AND JOE EVANS WITH THEIR INFLATED LIFE PRESERVERS
(Center)
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 157
It didn't take us long to discover that as a pilot
Joe was not an asset. Personally he was a source
of never-ending delight ; also artistically. His funny
little craft with its inner-tube bilge keels, no less than
the bobbing of that football life-preserver, lent touches
to the picture that could have been blocked in by no
other media. But what made Joe's piloting fail to
qualify was the fact that instead of trying to find the
channel he was trying to find floaters — to earn one
or both of those twenty-five-dollar rewards that were
offered for the finding of the bodies of the people
drowned the previous week. I wanted all the deep,
clear, unobstructed channel there was to be had; the
very nature of Joe's quest kept him edging in toward
snags and bars and shallows. These little incidentals
didn't bother him a bit. The instant he saw the water
shoaling dangerously he simply jumped overboard,
grabbed his feather-weight craft by the nose and
trotted right out on dry land.
Now this wouldn't have troubled seriously if — save
the mark! — I had also been using an unladen can-
vas canoe. But with my outfit, a passenger, and a
boat whose ability to withstand collisions with rocks
and snags had still to be proved, Joe's little jump-out,
pick-up and trot-off manoeuvre was a difiicult one to
follow. Twice, because there was no alterna-
tive either time, I did the best I could to go through
158 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
his motions. All I succeeded in doing — besides get-
ting pulled down and rolled — was proving that the
bottom of my boat would bang for fifty feet over shal-
lowly submerged rocks without holing. While that
latter was reassuring, I couldn't see any reason for
going on and proving it over and over again. If the
constant drop of water wears away the hardest stone
it seemed perfectly reasonable to believe that the con-
stant biff of boulders might batter through the hardest
bottom. And I wanted that bottom to do me for from
twenty-five to thirty -five hundred miles yet.
That was the reason why when, entangled in a maze
of shoaling channels, Joe picked up his canoe and
trotted up on a bar for the third time, I had the corner
of a wild-weather eye lifting for a possible gateway
of escape. A short, sharp chute cascading off to the
right seemed to fill the bill, but by a narrow squeeze.
A rough tumble of green-white water drove full at a
caving gravel bank, reared up and fell over on its back
in a curling wave, serpentined between the out-reach-
ing claws formed by the roots of two prostrate cotton-
wood trees, and then recovered from its tantrum in a
diminuendo of whirlpools in the embrasure of a brown
cliff. It was the kind of a place which you knew you
could run if all went right, but which you usually
didn't try for fear that one of a half dozen things
might go wrong. I should hardly have tackled it in
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 159
cold blood, even in a boat I was thoroughly used to;
but I had just enough dander up over the prospect
of another bumping on Joe's bar to be just a bit care-
less of consequences. It was that sort of "Might-as-
well-be-hanged-for-a-sheep-as-a-lamb" feeling that a
man ought to eliminate from his system as a first step
in fitting himself for work in rough water. It had
always troubled me a bit, but I had it sufficiently in
check to keep it from asserting itself unless I was very
tired or slighty huffed. This time, I fear, there was
just a bare ruffle of huffiness easing the brake of my
wonted restraint.
I was over the dip at the head of that chute before
I knew it — likewise, out into the swirls at the foot of
it. I was conscious only of a sudden dive, the loom
of the back-curling wave — which the skiff, heeling half
over, was taking as a racing car round a steeply-
banked turn, — a tangle of roots to left and right, and
then the serpentining through the whirlpools. She
had hardly shipped a bucket of solid water — most of
it over her bows as she tipped off the curling wave.
Joe was quite handsome above having his pilotage
flaunted. The first thing he did after catching up
with us was to apologize again for having warned
about running the upper river. The good chap
seemed really to think that some skill had been dis-
played in running that chute. As a matter of fact, I
160 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
simply headed in and let the current do the rest.
Pete said I backed water sharply to keep from ram-
ming the gravel bank, and that we both fended with
oars against the clutch of the cottonwood snags.
Pete also said I was pop-eyed all the way through. I
know that he was. I was glad of it, too. Outside of
a straight spill, I felt that there wasn't going to be
much more that I could do to shake those confound-
edly cool scout-trained nerves of his.
This little incident clarified the air on the pilotage
question. I let Joe keep the lead as far as I could,
but assumed the responsibility of picking my own
channel while he concentrated on his quest.
We passed several grim reminders of the tragedies
of the past week. A few miles below Livingston we
came upon Jim Cutler's raft stranded upon a mid-
stream bar. Even a passing glimpse revealed how
well the double tiers of logs were laid — plainly the
work of the real old river-rat "Buckskin Jim" must
have been. Not far below the raft was the wreck of
a Ford, with cushions, wraps, and odds and ends of a
camp outfit dotting the bars for the next mile or two.
The car, occupied by a young Middle Westerner and
his four-months' bride, had gone over the grade at a
bend of the road not far above where we saw the wreck.
Rolling to the flood-swollen river, it had been carried
several hundred yards down stream before stranding.
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 161
The man crawled clear and reached the bank ; the body
of his wife had not been recovered. The third recent
river tragedy was that of a rancher, but I had not
learned the details of it.
I was, of course, much elated over the way in which
my little tin boat had behaved in running that side-
winding chute. This very smart performance proved
conclusively that, with anything like intelligent han-
dling, she would be more than equal to any probable
demands I would have to make on her. There might,
of course, be places that I would have to avoid on ac-
count of her lack of freeboard, but that, at the worst,
would mean no more than the loss of a bit of time.
She was good for what she would have to do — that
was the main thing. There was reassurance, also, in
the way her bottom and sides had withstood the bump-
ing from the rocks. There was no question in my
mind now that that galvanized tin-like looking stuff
was real steel. Nothing else would have stood the
bumps. I planned to spare her all that kind of thing
I could, but it was good to know that she could stand
the gaff if she had to. I was calling her pet names
before we had gone twenty miles. It is an astonish-
ing thing the affection a man develops for a boat that
is carrying him well on a long river journey.
The thing that I remembered best from my former
run was the long, rough rapid that winds down and
162 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
under the Springdale bridge. I did not recall, how-
ever, that the river divided into two channels a half
mile above the bridge. Indeed, it is quite possible
that it did not do so twenty years ago. Changes like
that occur over night during the high-water season on
the Yellowstone. Joe led the way down the left-hand
side of the left-hand channel, but landed when it be-
came apparent that neither of our boats could live
in the wild tumble of rollers where the current drove
hard against the side of the bluff above the bridge.
Lining back a quarter of a mile up-stream, we pulled
across to the opposite side, down which there was
rough but fairly open running.
My boat was behaving so well that I couldn't re-
sist the temptation to give her a baptism in some
really rough stuff at a point where salvage operations
would be so comparatively simple in case of grief.
Giving the little lady her head after the worst of
the riffle had been passed, I let the undercurrent draw
her right over into the main string of rollers. Wild,
wallowing water it was, solid white all the way, but
with a straight run and no underhand look about it.
She took it like a duck, except where two or three
of the most broken combers let her down too sharply
for her bows to rise to meet the next in turn. There
were perhaps a half dozen buckets of water in the for-
ward section when we beached and dumped her a hun-
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 163
dred yards below the bridge. As I seem to remember
it now, Syd Lamartine's skiff had a foot of water in it
when we dumped at about the same point on that
other run. On that occasion, however, I have a clear
recollection of riding the middle of the riffle all the
way down. I should want a hatteau and a full crew
if I were going to try the same stunt today.
It must have been six or seven miles below the
Springdale bridge that Holt, descrying an unusual
object on the beach of a long, low island to our left,
asked me to pull in closer for a better look. Joe, a
hundred yards ahead of us, had already passed it up
as a log of driftwood, but the ex-scout's keen eye
would not be deceived. At first we thought it was
the body of a man — probably the drowned rancher,
— but as we drew nearer it was revealed as that of
a woman dressed in hiking garb, undoubtedly the
bride of the auto wreck.
As we were now in Sweet Grass County, the body
was under the jurisdiction of the Coroner at Big
Timber. Holt decided it would be best if Joe tried
to find some ranch from which he could get in touch
with that official by phone, while we continued on
down river to carry the word by an alternative route.
Joe was treated to a good deal of a shock while
towing the body down stream to an eddy from which
164 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
it could be landed on the left bank. No sooner had
he put off from the beach than the corpse, floating
deeply submerged at the end of a thirty-foot line,
made straight for the roaring line of rollers on the
right side of the channel. As it was a good deal too
rough water for his boat to ride, Joe lost no time in
bending to his stubby oars and pulling for dear life
in the opposite direction. It was a tug-of-war all
the way, with the grisly tow on the outer end gain-
ing foot by foot. Holt and I had drifted too far
ahead before we realized the seriousness of Joe's dif-
ficulty to be of any help. As an upset was inevitable
in the event the canoe was dragged into the riffle
stern first, the best that we could do was to pick him
up at the foot of it and trust that his canoe would
strand and anchor the corpse.
If that riffle had been fifty yards longer nothing
in the world could have prevented a spill that would
have put Joe's football life-preserver to a real test.
As far as the tug-of-war was concerned he was beaten
completely — dragged over the line. Luckily it was
only the smoothening tail of the riffle, and the buoyant
little canoe rode the rounded rollers without capsiz-
ing. Another hundred yards, and the relentless
drag from the other end of his line had eased enough
to allow him to pull up and into the eddy. He was
mighty white about the gills as Holt gave him a
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 165
hand ashore, and kept repeating over and over in
1 an awed voice : ^'Did you see her try to drown me?
'Did you see her try to drown me?"
It was easy enough to understand what the trouble
had been as soon as one gave it a moment's collected
thought. Calm reflection, however, was a thing
which I am inclined to think very few men would
have been capable of in Joe's place. As a matter
of fact, indeed, neither Holt nor I was in a suffi-
ciently detached frame of mind to dope out the phe-
nomenon until some minutes after Joe had landed.
This was the reason for what happened:
In every swiftly flowing channel there is a strong
draw toward the most rapidly moving part of the
current, and this draw is usually more powerful be-
low than at the surface. A boat paddled in com-
paratively smooth water beside a riffle will invariably
be drawn into the latter within a few yards if allowed
to drift. Only too often, in fact, it will be drawn
in despite every effort to avoid the riffle. In this
particular instance, the deeply floating corpse had
given the inward-drawing current a double hold, and
Joe's short oars had not been able to develop power
enough to counteract it. Readily explicable as the
uncanny incident was, there was no question of the
grim seriousness of it. Indeed, I have always
thought of it as a battle with Death in more senses
166 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
than one, for that football float of Joe's, attached
as it was, would have been about as much use as a
life-preserver, once he was dumped out into that rif-
fle, as a millstone round his neck.
Holt and I made good time for the remainder of
the run to Big Timber — about three hours for some-
thing like twenty-five miles. The way was a contin-
uous succession of moderate rapids, with one very
rough and savage cascade. The latter was not far
above Big Timber, and was formed by a ledge of
bedrock extending all the way across the river. A
direct drop of two or three feet here was followed
by a series of stiff riffles that extended out of sight
round a sharp bend where the river was deflected at
right-angles by an abrupt cliff. I never learned the
name of the place, but it was a distinctly nasty one —
just one damn thing after another, as Pete put it.
I have jumbled memories of messing up on the ledge,
and then half swamping just below it, on my former
run.
Not to take too many chances in the deepening
twilight (though all we'd admit to each other at the
time was that we were doing it to avoid wetting my
outfit), we lined by the sharp pitch and on down
almost to the bend. Even from there it was right
sloppy going, partly through some rather clumsy
handling the skiff had as a consequence of a sudden
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 167
divergence of theory Pete and I developed on the
subject of rapid running.
Rounding the sharp bend the skiff was drawn into
the middle of a rough, foam-white riffle that extended
ahead as far as I could see. The unrhythmically
wallowing rollers were banging her bows unmerci-
fully and throwing water aboard at a rate that I
feared would swamp her very quickly if she contin-
ued to head into them. Seeing that the water toward
the right bank was a bit less broken, I laid onto my
oars for all that was in me in an effort to throw her
in that direction. Holt was grunting mightily.
Looking ahead over my shoulder, I could not see
what he was doing, but assumed he was paddling his
head off in seconding my effort to reach smoother
water. But not a yard could I move her from the
crest of that white-capped ridge of rollicking
combers. Down the whole length of the riffle she
slammed, dipping water at every plunge and finish-
ing with a good six inches swishing about in both
sections.
Just about at the last gasp from my frantic but
futile pulling, I let my oars trail and my head sag
down between my knees while my heart stopped hop-
skip-and-a- jumping and my breath came back.
Looking up a half minute later to see if there was
anything ahead that would demand expert attention,
168 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
I saw that Pete was just coming out of a collapse
similar to my own. Also he was choking toward ut-
terance.
"Took all I had in me, — but I did it," he gasped
with a sickly grin.
"Did what?" I growled.
"Kept you from throwing her side-on and giving
me that spill you promised," he chuckled. "Don't
you think it's getting too late in the evening for that
kind of jokes?"
Oh, well! The warehouses and the water-tanks
of the Big Timber bluff were beginning to blot the
evening sky ahead, and 'so I hardly thought it worth
while to explain to Pete that his fancied self -defen-
sive measures had probably brought him nearer to
that promised spill than he had been at any time
during the day. He wouldn't have believed me any-
how. Won't even do so when he reads it here in
cold print.
Pulling up a slough that ran back from the head
of the bluff, we found safe haven under the over-
arching willows of a wonderfully cold and clear lit-
tle creek. Pushing out onto the bank above, we
found ourselves in the back yard of the local post-
master. A highly gracious and comely young lady
volunteered to mend my Gieve waistcoat, torn by
Pete's frantic paddlings over and roundabout the in-
LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER 169
flated "doughnut." The Gieve is not made to pad-
dle in.
Wolfing great porterhouse steaks and quaffing
steaming mugs of coffee, Pete and I sat long at a
lunch-counter table and talked of our ancient ski
jaunt over the snows of the Yellowstone. He spoke
much of coasting and jumping and spills — especially
of spills that I took. Just why he did this didn't oc-
c^r to me until after he had left for Livingston by
the midnight train. I figured it out walking back
to the hotel. It was merely the subtle chap's way
of letting me know that he still reckoned I was a
bit in his debt on the score of thrills and spills. May-
be so. Maybe so. Twenty-year thrills more readily
than forty-year, just as forty-year is more reluctant
to take a chance at a spill.
CHAPTER IV
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS
A troop of round-up artists jingled into Big Tim-
ber the morning of July first, just as I was leaving
the hotel to go down to my boat. They were in from
the ranges on their way to compete at the annual
cow-carnival at Miles City. Having read of my
voyage in the paper, they came to me with the pro-
posal that I book the lot of them as passengers.
They assumed that I would easily make the two hun-
dred and fifty mile run in a day, and that my boat
had unlimited cabin capacity. I replied by inviting
them down to my moorings. The sight of the tiny
tin shallop tied up under the willows brought them
to a more reasonable view of the situation. They
readily admitted that it would not carry anything
like ten people, even without their saddles, but they
were inclined to argue that it would carry at least
four besides myself.
I assured them I was game to try it if they were,
but suggested that the four elected should get in
first. Now four light-footed sailors might have
stepped into that little boat and taken their seats
170
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 171
without upsetting it. Four booted and spurred cow-
punchers could not, or at least did not. In fact the
third one precipitated the swamping when he stum-
bled and fell over the two who had preceded him.
After we had raised, dumped and launched her again,
I assured them that a single passenger was my out-
side limit, but that I would he highly honoured by
the company of any one of them whom they would
agree to nominate for the run to Billings. As I
was planning to stop over a day or two there, my
arrival by river in Miles would be too late for the
opening of the Round-up.
After some debate they picked the "buUdogger"
of the outfit. "BuUdogging" is a stock round-up
stunt, and I shall hardly need to explain that the
modus operandi involves throwing a steer by seizing
its nose in the teeth and upsetting its centre of grav-
ity by a sudden twist of the neck. One sees it in
every rodeo, but it is a feat withal that requires much
nerve, strength and skill.
Jocularly remarking that he reckoned he would
have to ride this tin broncho with a slick heel, the
"dogger" unbuckled his spurs and stepped into the
boat. I went up to fetch my remaining bags from
the postmaster's house and was delayed ten minutes
while the stitching up of my Gieve was completed.
When I returned I found a bewhiskered stranger
172 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
recounting with facile gesture how he fished the
floaters out of the eddy below his ranch down-river.
He called it "Dead Man's Douse." Last floater he
took out was a cow-puncher who had been so rolled
in the big rapid above that his spurs were tangled in
his hair and he came wheeling through the suds like
a doughnut. It was a hells-bells- jingler of a rapid,
that one above the "Douse." Water tossed about
so fierce that the fishes' brains were spattered on the
rocks I
That was about all I arrived in time to hear, but
the "dogger" had been more fortunate. The good
chap was deeply impressed, too, for his iron, bull-
nose-biting jaw was sagging in a sickly grin and he
was back on the bank offering a free passage to Bill-
ings to any of his mates who cared to accept. No
takers. The gamest of the lot appeared to be a lady
broncho-buster called Lil. She actually stepped into
the boat once, but finally decided to take the train
because it had a roof on it. It looked like rain, she
said, and it always made her broken shoulder ache
to get wet. As if rain was the wettest part of riding
the Yellowstone.
Just as I was about to push off the whiskered
rancher stepped up and asked if I minded giving him
a bit of a down-river lift. Gladly I bade him come
along, figuring that his pilotage would give me a
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 173
better chance of avoiding the dreaded "Douse."
The round-up artists sped us with their college yell
as I crabbed out of the little slough to the river. I
bumped into some of them again in Miles the day
after the Bound-up. Most of their faces bore the
marks of hoof or fist. Lady Lil had lost no cuticle
(at least where it showed), but red eyes hoisted the
distress signal of a deeper seated wound. The "dog-
ger" had taken up with another girl — a she-dude that
had once been a bare-back rider in a circus. Lil had
been crying a lot, which was no end of a shame con-
sidering how wetness affected her busted shoulder.
All of which went to prove that Lilly the Lady Bron-
cho-Buster and Judy O' Grady were sisters under the
skin. And Lil had looked so darned exempt from
the surge of the soft stuff!
There is a fairly rough riffle just below the Big
Timber, and then a lot of rather mean navigating
through the shallows where the boulders of Clark's fa-
mous "Rivers Across" litter the channel of the Yel-
lowstone. The whiskered stranger, stroking with an
oar from the stern, was of real help in making the
passage of both comparatively quiet and dry. He
also found me a smooth-running strip of green
through the almost solid tumble of white where the
river was chasing its tail in a sharply notched bend
about five miles farther on. These little riffles didn't
174 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
bother me much, though. My mind was too much
occupied by the "Dead Man's Douse" for that. I
was wondering whether the old chap intended to run
me through that fish-brain-spattering-rapid, or if he
might be considerate enough to help me portage
round. I was trying to get my nerve up to broach-
ing the latter procedure when my pilot dug hard with
his steering oar and brought the skiff up to a grav-
elly landing below a pretty little tree-covered bench.
His cabin was back behind the bull-berries, he said,
and he would have to leave me here. Or perhaps
I would hang on for an hour and have some coffee
and a mess of sinkers with him.
"But aren't you going to see me through the "Dead
Man's Douse?" I exclaimed in dismay, adding in a
feeble attempt at f unniness : "It might save you fish-
ing out my remains later."
A corner of the tobacco-stained mouth drew out
in a highly amused chuckle. "By jingo, sonny," he
giggled finally, "it wasn't youse I was shootin' for
with that yarn. I thought youse savvied all the time.
I jest was wantin' this here seat that bull-biting cow-
puncher had perempted. There ain't no 'Dead
Man's Douse.' Fack is, youse got most of the sloppy
stuff ahint youse already. Don't get too gosh-all-
fired sure of you'self an' youse all right — tin boat an'
all."
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 175
It was with real regret that the threat of coming
storm made it necessary for me to keep going while
I could. The good old chap had made casual men-
tion of Terry and Miles and Gibbon, of hunting buf-
falo and elk on the river in the early days, and of
many comparatively recent jaunts down the Yellow-
stone searching for agates. He would have been
well worth listening to. I never learned his name,
but I have always thought of him as "Jim Bridger"
— because he lied with so classic a simplicity, paint-
ing his pictures as — well, as a river paints its rocks
with fish-brains !
There were a good half dozen sinister-cloaked thun-
der-storms doing their war dances in this direction
or that as I left "Jim Bridger" and pushed back into
the stream. The wolf-fanged Crazies to the north
were getting the livehest of them, but there were also
some tremendous disturbances going on among the
snowy pinnacles where the Absarokas reared against
the southern sky. The restlessly counter-marching
clouds above the valley were full of whirling wind-
gusts but not of rain. The sudden side-swipes of
air kept the skiff yawing rather crazily, but as there
was no very fine shooting to do for the moment I
kept going. Indeed, I was quite unconcerned about
the threat of the weather. I still had to learn a
proper respect for thunder-storms — the same very
176 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
wholesome kind of respect that I had for really rough
water. That was to come in good time, and by the
usual channel — experience, very vivid experience.
I had not yet come to the point on the river where
Clark had built and launched his dugout. Con-
stantly searching for suitable timber, he had skirted
the northern bank closely all the way down from
where he had first come to the Yellowstone near the
present site of Livingston. The flint-paved mesas
wore down the hoofs of his Indian ponies so that it
became necessary to protect them with shoes of buf-
falo hide. This increased Clark's anxiety to take to
the river and his diary speaks often of the vain search
for l^rge trees. Very near the point I had now
reached an accident occurred which eventually forced
Clark's hand and probably resulted in his construct-
ing his boats farther up river, and from less satis-
factory material, than would otherwise have been the
case. The incident was picturesquely commemorated
in a name borne by a certain creek upon the earlier
maps.
In the vicinity of the creek in question, Clark tells
how one of his men, Gibson, in mounting his horse
after shooting a deer, "fell on a snag and runt (ran)
it nearly two inches into the muskeler (muscular)
part of his thy (thigh)." That incident inspired
Clark, who had already used up the names of the
^.«^' ^
A bWAGE lilii-LE NEAR THE SITE UF CAPTAIN Cl^AUK S liOAT CAMP
(Above)
SUNRISE ON A QUIET REACH OF THE LOWER YELLOWSTONE (Below)
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 177
members of his party a half dozen times over in geo-
graphical nomenclature, to call the creek "Thy
Snag'd." Gibson suffered so much from the jolting
of the horse upon which he was carried after his in-
jury that it became necessary to rest him in camp.
With a halt of two or three days imperative in any
case, Clark sought out the best brace of trees in the vi-
cinity and set his men making dugouts. Two of these,
lashed together side by side, made a craft of such
water-worthiness that it was not abandoned until
long after the junction with Lewis on the Missouri.
Although the names given by Clark on his voyage
down the Yellowstone have survived better than have
most of those applied by the explorers in other re-
gions, several of the most picturesque have not stood
the test of time and chance. Shield's River, Pryor's
Fork and Clark's Fork still bear their original names,
but Thy Snag'd Creek and River Across are no
more. The former has become Deer Creek and the
latter pair have been given individual names — that
flowing in from the north Big Timber Creek, that
from the south Boulder River. No more original and
distinctive dual nomenclature for streams flowing into
a river on opposite sides of the same point could have
been imagined. It is a pity that, in the nature of
the case, it could not fill the nomenclatural exigency
sufficiently to survive.
178 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
Fortunately for me the peculiar meteorological con-
ditions of the morning did not develop along what I
subsequently learned was their normal course at that
time of year. Ordinarily a pow-wow of thunder-
storms in the mountain-top in the morning means a
concerted attack upon the valley in the afternoon.
This time the advent of a warm southerly wind modi-
fied the assault-and-battery program and brought
only a drizzling' rain on the river. The broken piers
of Greycliff 's ruined bridge menaced me from the mist
as I drove past, and below the new bridge the
sagging strand of a slackened cable swooped
at me from the air. Then came a sharp
bend, with the roar of a considerable rapid boom-
ing in the grey obscurity below. The rain and
the mist deadened the sound somewhat, just as they
confused the perspective. Standing up on the thwart
in an endeavour to get a better view, I was warned
by the accelerating undulations of the skiff that I
had floated right onto the intake of a riffle which I
had assumed was still several hundred yards distant.
Hastening to straighten the cushion on my seat be-
fore taking to my oars, I was jolted from my feet by
the first solid wave, so that I sat with my full weight
upon the doubled-up index finger of my left hand.
I distinctly recall either hearing or feeling the snap
of what I thought at the moment was a tendon, but
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 179
as the finger still crooked with its fellow round its
oar I gave it no more thought until I had slammed
through to quieter water, a quarter of a mile below.
Then I found the finger was bent inward to the re-
semblance of a rather open letter C. Taking it for
granted it was dislocated, I started and kept on pull-
ing it until another riffle demanded personal attention.
Always afraid to take it to a doctor for fear of be-
ing held up, at gradually increasing intervals I kept
on trying to pull that drooping pointer into place
for the next two months. It was in St. Louis that
I found that two bones had been broken in the first
place, and that they had probably been re-broken
every time I pulled the finger afterwards. It is not
quite back to shape yet, which, everything considered,
is hardly to be wondered at.
A lifting of the mist accompanied an increase in
the rain, with the balance inclining toward a bet-
ter visibility. This latter came opportunely, for the
loom of high cliffs on the right and a running close
of the rounded hills on the left seemed to indicate
a canyon and bad water. It was an agreeable sur-
prise to find only a straight, swift reach of river bor-
dered with a narrow belt of cottonwood on either
side. There appeared no menace of mist-masked rap-
ids ahead, but with the rain settling into what seemed
likely to be an all-day downpour I was glad to pull
180 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
up to the left bank where an enchanting vista of ranch
buildings opened up beneath the cottonwoods. The
tree I tied up to had a trunk fully four feet in diam-
eter, and I was puzzled to account for the fact that
Clark had overlooked it in his search for boat timber
— until it occurred to me that the grey-barked giant
was perhaps a bit smaller with a hundred and six-
teen fewer annual rings on it.
There are a number of pleasing little things that
happen to the voyageur by the Running Road, but
not many that awaken a warmer glow in his sodden
breast than stepping almost direct from a wet boat
into a kitchen fragrant with the ineffable sweetness
of frying doughnuts. And when the doughnuts are
being forked forth by an astonishingly comely and
kindly young housewife ; and when her husband comes
in from the alfalfa patch and proves just as kindly if
less comely ; and when they insist on your drying out
and staying to dinner and then — because the rain
still continues — to supper and all night; and when
the three of you sit up till all hours and tell each
other everything you ever did — and how — and why:
well, all that just makes it nicer still.
They were a sterling pair of young pioneers, these
Fahlgrens. Both were from Kentucky. He had
come out to Montana about ten years before and
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 181
homesteaded what he reckoned as the loveliest spot
on the whole Yellowstone. A little later he had made
a hurried trip home to bring back a young woman that
he reckoned just as lovely and just as promising as
his ranch. Neither had disappointed him. His
ranch had doubled and trebled in size, with his family
just about keeping pace with it. There were hard
years behind, with not any too easy sledding at the
present ; but there had been much happiness all along
the road and the future was bright with promise.
How heartening it was even to brush in passing such
kindliness, simplicity, hopefulness and courage!
We had Maryland fried chicken and a big golden
pone of corn bread for breakfast. All left over was
put up for my lunch, together with a gooseberry pie.
As the early morning weather was still fitful and
showery, I did not start until ten o'clock, taking Fahl-
gren with me for a couple of miles to the next down-
river ranch. He wanted me to drift a rapid stern-
first, as the agate hunters were wont to do it. Trim-
med as we were, I knew what must happen. I agreed
to the trial readily enough, however, partly because
it was Fahlgren's suggestion but principally because
it was he, and not I, that was sitting in the stern.
Riding so low, the after section shipped a dozen
bucketfuls of green water, all of it via my passenger's
182 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
knees. The riffle was not rough enough to make any-
real trouble, and we Jboth took the thing strictly in
a larking spirit.
One can drift a riffle stern first that is too rough to
ride any other way. Facing down-stream, and pull-
ing against the current the headway of the boat is
checked and it is easier to shoot it to right or left to
avoid an obstacle. If the riffle is not too rough to
make the control of the boat impossible when rowed
bow-first with the stream, drifting means the cutting
down of speed and the loss of much good time. Also,
a boat one is going to use for drifting should have a
stout, high stern (whether double-ended or not) and
temporarily at least, it should be lightened aft and
trimmed to ride well down by the head.
Not long after I had parted with Fahlgren a dis-
tinct change in the weather took place. The charged,
humid thunder-storm condition of the atmosphere
gave way to sharp, keen north-westerly weather. A
strong wind became a stronger, and by noon the
valley was swept by a whistling gale blowing straight
from the main western mass of the Rockies. The
fact that it was almost dead astern as the general
course of the river ran was the only thing that made
keeping on the water a thing to be considered at all.
An equally strong gale blowing up-stream would have
tried to stand the river on its head and scoop the chan-
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 18B
nel dry. It would have succeeded in neither, but
the resulting rough-and-tumble would have kicked
up a wild welter of white caps such as no skiff could
have lived in for half a minute. But with current
and wind going in the same general direction it was
quite another matter, especially as I had a chance to
ease up to it gradually as the gale increased in force.
I was making such tremendous headway, and the
spell of the wild ride was so strong in my blood, that
my wonted cautiousness was swamped in a rising tide
of exhilaration. There are few who will not have
experienced the feeling of being intoxicated with
swift air and rapid motion. It was more than that
with me this time. I was inebriated — stewed — loaded
to the guards. I was having the time of my young
life and I hadn't the least intention of going homei
until morning.
Now in real life a man who starts out in such a
state of exaltation always bangs up against some
immovable body good and hard before he is through.
Or, more properly speaking, his getting through is
more or less coincident with his banging against such
a body. Why something like that didn't put a period
to my mad career on this occasion has never been clear
in my mind. Possibly that more or less mythical
Providence that has been known (though by no
means often enough to warrant the proverb) to shep-
184 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
herd drunks and fools had something to do with it.
At any rate^ I was still in mad career down mid-
stream when the wind gave up the bootless chase at
six o'clock, broke up into fitful zephyrs and went to
sleep among the cottonwoods. In all that time I had
not landed once, had not relinquished both oars for
a single second, and had not even munched my Mary-
land fried chicken and gooseberry pie. Skippers have
stood longer watches, but never a one has carried on
with less relief. On that score, perhaps, I may have
deserved to win through. On every other count I
was going out of my way to ask for trouble and had
nothing but my lucky star to thank for having*
avoided it.
I passed Reed Point and Columbus early in the
afternoon. Beyond the latter point I began keeping
watch for a certain long line of bluffs which I knew
began near the railway station called Rapids and ex-
tended easterly for three miles. Clark had called
them "Black Bluffs," and that name they retain to
this day, though their only claim to blackness even
in Clark's time came from the presence of dark green
undergrowth. Today they are brown and compara-
tively bare.
I picked up the rounded skyline of "Black Bluffs"
at just about the time that the straight, hard-running
riffle that gives Rapids Station its name began to
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 185
boom ahead. The middle of the riffle was plainly no
place for a little tin shallop, but down the right side
there appeared to to be fairly open channel. Set-
tling that course in my mind, I let the tail of my eye
steal back to the head of the bluff, and from
there to a cottonwood covered flat that opened up be-
yond the bend where the river, thrown off a
ledge of bedrock, turned sharply to the south in
a stohd stream of rock-torn white. Beyond ques-
tion there was going to be some fairly nice naviga-
tion demanded to find a way through that rough stuff
below the bend, especially as the wind was going to
come strongly abeam for a short distance. All of
which was hard luck, I complained to myself, for
the end of that line of bluffs pointed an unerring
finger at the flat below them as the place where
Clark had halted, built his boats and taken to the river.
I had hoped for a better look at it than I saw* I
was going to get.
Even the pressing exigencies of the navigational
problem could not quite obliterate from my mind the
realization of the fact that — from some point not more
than a few insignificant hundreds of yards ahead —
Captain William Clark was going to be my pilot all
the way to St. Louis. Exulting over that wasn't
what was at the bottom of the trouble, however.
You can tread a lot of highways and byways of fancy
186 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
without seriously imparing your river navigation, but
only when you keep your eyes on the water and the
back of your mind in a proper state to receive impres-
sions and transmit orders. I was not in the least
culpable in this respect. The reason I hit that mid-
stream snag was because a sudden hail from some
m.en grading a road over the bluff caused just
enough of a congestion of my ganglionic lines to slow
down proper and adequate action. I checked by an
effort the impulse to cup a hand to an ear in an at-
tempt to catch the import of what was doubtless a
warning of some sort, but as a consequence failed
to get through in time the order for my left hand to
back its oar when the imminent snag bobbed up.
The skiff struck on her starboard bow, slid along
the snag for a few feet, and then swung and hung
there, side-on to the current and the wind. White
water dashed in over the up-stream gunwale and min-
gled with green water poured over the down-stream.
But just before the forces from above threw her com-
pletely on her beams-ends the flexible root bent down
and let her swing off without capsizing. It was a
merry dance to the bend, but I managed to get her
under control in time to head into the best of the go-
ing through the suds below. This was close to the
right bank, where I had no little trouble in holding
her on account of the side-urge from the heavy west
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 187
wind. This is not a hard series of riffles to run if you
have no bad luck, but an upset in the upper riffle
would leave you at the mercy of the lower, which is a
savage tumble of combers filling most of the channel.
In that respect this double riffle below Rapids Sta-
tion is a good deal like the combination of Rock Slide
and Death Rapids on the Big Bend of the Columbia.
The latter pair are, however, incomparably the
rougher.
I was a mile away and on the farther side of the
valley before I got rid of enough water to survey
for damages. A long, jagged scratch down the side,
with a big, round dent at the point of first impact,
were the only marks she showed of the collision.
Light as was the steel, it had not come near to holing
from a blow that stopped her dead from at least
twelve miles an hour. This renewed assurance of the
staunchness of my tight little tin pan was by no means
unwelcome. There would still be a lot of things to
bump into, even after leaving the Yellowstone.
My only mental picture of the site of Clark's ship-
yard was that received from the one hurried glance as
I came to the upper rapid. There was no chance for
a second look. Sentimentally I was sorry not to have
been able to land and pretend to look for the stumps
of the trees cut down for the dugouts. As a matter
of fact, however, as the river had been altering its
188 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
channel every season for over a hundred years, there
was no question in my mind but that the shipyard
flat had been made and washed out a score of times
since Clark was there.
Captain Clark's party spent four days building the
two dugout canoes and exploring in this vicinity.
Twenty-four of their horses were stolen by Indians
and never recovered. The same fate ultimately over-
took the remainder of the bunch, which Sergeant
Pryor and two others were attempting to* drive over-
land to the Mandan villages on the Missouri. Clark
described the canoes as "twenty-eight feet long, six-
teen or eighteen inches deep and from sixteen to
twenty-four inches wide." Lashed together, these
must have made a clumsy but very serviceable craft.
Considering its weight and type, their first-day run
in it — from Rapids to the mouth of Pryor's Fork,
near Huntley — strikes me as being a remarkable one.
The Captain's actual estimates of distances on this
part of his journey are much too high and also pre-
sent many discrepancies. This particular run, how-
ever, is easy fixable by natural features. It must be
very close to sixty miles as the river winds, possibly
more. It is not fair to compare this with the consid-
erably faster time I made over similar stretches of the
Yellowstone. I had considerably higher and swifter
water and a boat so light that no delays from shallows
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 189
and bars were imposed. Very generally speaking, I
found my rate of travel on the Yellowstone to
have worked out about twenty-five per cent,
faster than that of Clark's party. On the Mis-
souri, on stretches where I did not use my outboard
motor, I averaged just about the same as the united
explorers on their down-stream voyage. There is
little doubt that they stopped longer and oftener
than I did on the Missouri, and that while on the
river their big crews snatched along whatever type
of craft they happened to be manning at a consider-
ably faster rate than I pulled. By and large, how-
ever, I should say that Kipling's
"Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone,"
holds quite as good on the Running Road as in Life's
Handicap.
In the journal of the first day on the river Cap-
tain Clark writes: "At the distance of a mile from
camp the river passes under a high bluff for about
23 miles, when the bottom widens on both sides."
This would give the impression that the river flowed
continuously for many miles under an overhanging
bluff. This it does not do, and could hardly have
done at any previous period. What it does do is to
run along the base of a long chain of broken bluffs,
190 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
many of which it has undermined. I have always
thought of this as by long odds the most beautiful
and picturesque stretch of stream I navigated between
the Rockies and the lower Mississippi.
The bluffs varied in natural colour from a grey-
brown to a reddish-black, but mosses and lichens and
mineral stains from the hills behind tinted their abrupt
faces with streaks and patches of various shades, all
blended like delicate pastelling. The main stream
usually ran close up against the bluffs, but numerous
chutes and back-channels sprawling over the verdant
flats to the left formed score on score of small islands,
all shaded with tall cottonwoods, lush with new grass
and brilliant with wild flowers. There was a fresh
vista of beauty at every turn. It was a shame not
to be able to stop and call on the Queen of the Fair-
ies. Titania's Bowers succeeded each other like
apartments on upper Broadway. For the second
time! that day I regretted my speed and the fact
that wind and rough water kept my attention riveted
close to the boat.
At first I gave the face of the bluffs a wide berth,
especially at those points where the full strength of
the current went swirling beneath the painted over-
hang in sinuous coils of green and white. As I
think of it now, it was the cavernous growls and rum-
bles, magnified by the sounding board of the cliff,
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 191
that made me chary of venturing in where the ani-
mals were being fed. The racket was not a Httle ter-
rifying until one found that it was more bark than
bite.
It was not until a sudden side-swiping squall
forced me under an overhang I was doing my best to
avoid that I had direct and conclusive evidence that
the yawning mouths had no teeth in them. Swift as
it was, the surface of the water was untorn by lurk-
ing rocks, while the refluent waves from the inner
depths of the cavern had a tendency to force the
boat out rather than to draw it in. My courage ral-
lied rapidly after that, so that I played hide-and-
seek with the river and the cliffs for the next twenty
miles. This was most opportune, as it chanced.
The overhangs provided me with cover from the worst
of a heavy series of rain squalls that began to sweep
the river at this juncture, and continued for an hour
or more. All in all, that httle bluff -bluffing stunt
proved one of the most novel and delightful bits of
boating I have ever known.
I passed the mouth of Clark's Fork a little before
six. Its channel was much divided by gravel bars,
and the comparatively small streams might easily
have been mistaken for returning back-chutes of the
Yellowstone. Clark had at first mistaken this river
for the Big Horn, and only applied his own name to it
192 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
when the greater tributary was reached some hundred
and fifty miles below. I scooped up a drink as I
passed one of the mouths. Clark's observation that
it was colder and cloudier than the waters of the Yel-
lowstone still held good. Clark mentions a "ripple in
the Yellowstone" about a mile about this tributary,
"on passing which the canoes took in some water.
The party therefore landed to bail the boats. . . ."
As this, considering the size of the boats, would have
indicated very rough water, I kept a close watch
for the place. I never located it definitely, though
sharp rijflSes were numerous all the way. Doubtless
parts of the channel have altered completely since
Clark's time. As a rule, however, rapids change less
with the years than the opener stretches — this be-
cause they are usually made by bedrock or boulders
of great size.
I made my first landing since dropping Fahlgren
at a flower-embowered farmhouse not far below the
mouth of Clark's Fork. All of the family were
away except a very motherly old lady who had just
received word by phone from Billings that Dempsey
had licked Carpentier. She had draped the Stars
and Stripes over the porch railing and insisted that
I stop and celebrate the great national victory with
her. I demurred, but my resolution weakened when
she began setting out a pan of scarcely diluted cream.
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 193
a bowl of strawberries and a chocolate cake. Be-
tween mouthfuls I told her (truthfully enough) that
I had met Carpentier at the Front during the war
and had subsequently seen him box in London. It
was a tactical error on my part. I should have known
better. She didn't tell me to back away from the
berries in so many words, but her manner changed,
and she did say that it was too bad it was not Demp-
sey I had met instead of the Frenchie. That didn't
spoil my appetite for the strawberries and cream, but
it did make me more conservative in my relations
with them. I probably stopped short by two or three
helpings of my capacity. It is not fair to one's self
to be bound by the rigid limitations of truthfulness
when trying to impress strangers. I resolved not to
make that mistake again.
Water had been unusually high all along the Yel-
lowstone during the early summer rise, the crest of
which was now over by about a fortnight. The dis-
charge from Clark's Fork had been especially heavy,
and the effects of this I began to encounter as soon as '
I resumed my run to Billings. Scores of new chan-
nels had been scoured out and countless thousands of
big cottonwoods and willows uprooted in the process.
Most of the latter were stranded on shallow bars, but
every now and then some great giant had anchored
itself squarely in mid-channel. It took no end of
194 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
care to avoid them, and it was a distinct relief to
find that the wind had now fallen very light.
My old strawberry lady had estimated the distance
to Billings as about twenty miles, but such was the
extreme deviousness of the endlessly divided chan-
nels that it must have been greatly in excess of that.
One minute I would be in what was undoubtedly the
main channel. The next I would be picking what
seemed the likeliest of four or five sprawling chutes,
with whichever one I took usually dividing and re-
dividing until I found myself scraping through the
shallows and all but grounded.
With no town in sight as eight o'clock began to
usher in the long midsummer twilight, I landed near
a large farmhouse on the left bank to make inquiries.
The buildings were fine and modern and the ir-
rigated acres of great richness, but the people turned
out to be Russian tenants, and not much for the
softer things of life. All of the dozen or more oc-
cupants of the big kitchen wore bib overalls, the bot-
toms puckered in with a zouave-trousers effect. All
were barefooted. The father and mother wore shirts.
For the rest, including the grown children, the only
garments were the comfortable and adequate over-
alls. Left to himself, the simple moujik hits upon
some very practical ideas.
Save the broad, kindly Slavic faces, the only Rus-
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 195
sian thing I saw about the place was a samovar, and I
sipped a mug of tea from this peacefully purring old
friend while I endeavoured to find out whether any of
them knew anything of the whereabouts of a certain
Montana metropolis called Billings. They appeared
to be trying to assure me that they had heard of such
a place, and there also seemed to be some unanimity
on the score of its being somewhere down river. But
just how far it was by river they couldn't get to-
gether on, and even if they had had any real knowl-
edge of the course of the stream they appeared not to
have the language to express it. Certainly an esti-
mate in versts wasn't going to help a lot. As I
thanked them and turned to go the whole family
trooped down to the landing to see me off. Point-
ing eastward to the low line of a distant bluff one
of the boys delivered himself of a laconic "Dam —
lookout!" I assured him I had already been warned
of the dam of the local power company, and
would be keeping just that kind of a good look-
out for it. That gave them their cue. They were
all ejaculating or registering "Dam — good — ^look-
out!" as the current bore me away into the deepening
dusk.
That last half -hour's run was an intensely trying
one, though I was never in serious trouble any of the
time. I kept going wrong on channels every few
196 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
minutes, with the result that I found every now and
then that the Yellowstone had gone off and left me
on a streak of wet rocks and gravel. With a heavy-
boat I should have been marooned for the night a
dozen times, but it was never very difficult to drag
my little tin shallop on to where there was enough
water trickling to lead the way back to the main chan-
nel. When an increasing frequency of lights in-
dicated I was nearing the outskirts of a town I found
the current to be running so swiftly along what ap-
peared to be a levee on the left bank that a landing
was rather too precarious to risk in the dark. I was
skirting the bank for a favourable eddy when the
rounding of a densely wooded bend brought me out in-
to a stretch of slackening water directly above the dam.
The long-striven-for bluff appeared to rise abruptly
from the water on my right, while on my left there
was a stretch of gravel bar running back to a strip
of trees and the levee.
The roar of the dam was not the less impressive
after bouncing off the bluff on its way to my ears, and
I took no more time than was necessary to pull in
and land upon the white stretch of beach. As rain
was still threatening I decided to seek the town for
shelter. Dragging the skiff well above high-water-
mark, I stacked by stuff in it, shouldered my pack-
sack and climbed the levee. After an hour's bootless
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 197
wanderings in the sloughs beyond I came back and
followed the levee a half mile down-stream to the
power-house below the dam. And so to town.
Suppering at a convenient lunch-counter, I drank
copiously of coffee from the steaming urn at my el-
bow. Now of all of the drinks of the ancient and
modern world that I have known, lunch-counter cof-
fee has always proved the most inebriating. That
was why I was impelled to fare forth to the prize-
fight bulletin boards seeking low companionship, and
that must have been why I put the French on "Car-
penter," and why I tried to affect vulgar ringside
jargon.
"Kar-pon-tee-ayh K. O.-ed, huh?" I grunted
familiarly, lounging up to a knot of local sports dis-
cussing pugilistic esoterics before the newspaper
window. For an instant the jabbering ceased — just
long enough for the half dozen technical experts to
sweep my mud-spattered khaki with scathing glances,
snort and get under way again. Only one of them
was polite enough to say: "No savee Crow talkee,"
adding to a companion: "Indian policeman — Crow
Reservation — funny don't talk 'Merican."
That certainly was not a good start. On the con-
trary, indeed, it was a perfectly rotten one. Which
fact only makes me more proud of the resiliency of
spirit I showed in coming right back and assuring
198 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
them that I was not a Crow Indian, that I did talk
'Merican, and that I had been one of Jack Dempsey's
first sparring partners. There was coffee-inspired
artistry, too, in the inconsequentiality with which I
added: "Gave Jack the K. O. once myself. Sort of
a flivver . . . but knocked him cold just the same."
Dear little old Strawberry Lady, didn't I swear I
wouldn't forget the lesson you taught me? That
made them take notice of course. For an instant
they hung in the balance, searching my scarred and
battered visage with awed, troubled eyes. Then
dawning wonder replaced doubt in their faces, and
they fell — ^my way. "Darn'd if you don't look the
part," said one. "My name's Allstein — in hardware
line — Shake 1" And then they all introduced them-
selves like that — each with his name and line. I for-
get just what my name was, but it must have been
something like "Spud" Gallagher. Sparring partners
never vary greatly from that model of nomenclature.
Finally we retired to a pool-room, where I remin-
isced to an ever augmenting audience. Alas I and yet
Alack-a-day! If it had only been the good old cow-
town Billings of those delectable baseball days of
twenty years ago, what wouldn't have been mine that
night! But it was not bad as it was; not bad at all.
I forget just where we were when dawn came, but
I do remember I was in the act of showing my punch-
BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS 199
damaged hands for the hundreth time when I looked
up and saw that a window was growing a glimmering
square with the light of the coming day. That was
my cue, of course. Excusing myself on some pre-
text, I slipped out the back way, slunk through an
alley, and finally to the street which leads past the
sugar refinery down to the power-house and the river.
For many days after that I felt less envious of good
old Haroun al Raschid.
CHAPTER V
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE
Getting round the power-dam did not prove a seri-
ous problem. The night man at the power-house
told me it would be possible to land on the right side
and let the boat down over a series of "steps" that had
been built at that end of the dam. This was prob-
ably true, but as landing on the almost perpendicu-
lar cliff immediately above the drop-off looked a bit
precarious I decided in favour of being safe by por-
taging rather than run the chance of being sorry
through trying to line down. It was against just
such emergencies as this that I had provided my feath-
er-weight outfit.
A wooden skiff of the size of my steel one would
have required at least four men to lift it up the forty-
five degree slope of the bank above the intake of the
power canal. It was not an easy task with my little
shallop, but I managed it alone without undue exer-
tion. Five minutes more sufficed to drag it a couple
of hundred feet along the levee and launch it at the
head of the rapid below the dam. Two trips brought
down my outfit, and I was off into the river again.
200
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 201
Running at a slashing rate round the bend of the
bluff, I kept on for a couple of miles or more to
where the Northern Pacific and a highway bridge
span the river a couple of miles from the centre of
Billings. Leaving the boat and my outfit in the care
of a genial pumping-house engineer, I phoned for a
taxi and went up to the hotel behind closed curtains.
To return to the scene of my last night's triumph as
a mere river-rat and hack writer was a distinct anti-
climax. As I had been warned by wire that a hun-
dred pages of urgently needed proofs from New York
would await me in Billings for correction, there was
no side-stepping the necessity. The risk would have
to be run, but to minimize it as far as was humanly
possible I planned to keep to my room as much as I
could, and to disguise myself by dressing as a gentle-
man or a drummer when I had to venture upon the
streets. Then by keeping to the more refined parts
of towns it seemed to me that I ought to stand a rea-
sonably good chance of avoiding the poignancy of
humiliation that would inevitably follow recognition
by any of those fine fellows who had sat at my feet the
night before. It was a well devised plan, and so
came pretty near to succeeding.
I tumbled out of my bath into bed, stayed there an
hour, got up, dressed in immaculate flannels and
started in on the proofs. A reporter from the Ga-
202 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
zette called up about noon to say he had been lying
in ambush for me ever since the Livingston papers
had warned him of my departure. Could he come
over for a story? I couldn't very well refuse that,
but took the precaution of throwing my "Indian Po-
lice" uniform in the closet before he arrived. Then
I made a special point of telling him I always wore
flannels and duck on mpr river trips — sort of survival
of my South Sea yatching days. If he would only
put that in, I reckoned, it would effectually drag a
red herring across any suspicions that might be
aroused by a reading of the story in the minds of my
late subjects. He forgot it as a matter of fact, but
it wasn't that that did the harm. It was just hard
luck — Joss^ as the sailors say.
The next day was the Fourth of July, a holiday,
but a very obliging express agent, who came down
town and opened up his office to let me get out a sleep-
ing bag, made it unnecessary to hang on another
night in Billings. The Gazette story brought no dem-
onstrations— that is, of a hostile nature. Calls from
scouting secretaries searching for a fatted calf to
butcher for club holidays were the only ripples on the
surface. Still with my fingers crossed, I ordered a
closed taxi for the run down to my boat. It would
have been a perfectly clean get-away had not Joss'
decreed that I should leave my package at the rail-
© L. A. Huffman
© L. A. Huffman
HERD, POWDER RIVER VALLEY {AboVe)
SHEEP BY THE WATER, BIG POWDER RIVER (Below)
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 203
way station to be picked up as I went by. Returning
to the taxi from the check-room a man was waiting
for me outside of the door.
"My name is Allstein," he began; but I had ob-
served that before he opened his hard-set jaw.
Without waiting for him to go on I made one wild,
despairing bid to keep my honour white. I feel to
this day that it deserved to have succeeded.
"Came in on the brake-beams, going out on shank's
mare," I chirruped bhthely, and forthwith (to the
very evident perturbation of the taxi-driver) started
as if off for Miles City on foot. Some will say my
reasoning was quixotic, but this was the way of it at
any rate : I cared no whit if hardware-drummer All-
stein believed I was a hobo, just as long as he con-
tinued to believe I was an ex-sparring partner of
Jack Dempsey. And what he must be prevented from
knowing at any cost was that, far from being even
the hammiest of ham-and-sparring partners, I was
what the Gazette cub had characterized as a "daring
novelist seeking material for new book by running
rapids of Yellowstone."
But the fat was already in the fire. Allstein halted
my Miles City Marathon with a gesture half weary,
half contemptuous. "That taxi looks about as much
like you're hoboing as did them three dishes of straw-
berries at the Northern this morning," he growled,
204. DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE ^ml\
glowering. I caved at once and meekly asked him
to get in and come down to see my little steel boat.
Lightest outfit that ever went down river. . . . Boat
and all my stuff weighed less than I did myself. . . .
I was in the taxi by that time. AUstein had con-
tinued to register "Betrayed! Betrayed!" but had not
moved to cut off my retreat. That was something to
be thankful for anyhow. Not knowing what else to
say, I remarked to the driver that it must be getting
along toward boat-time. And so away we went. All-
stein's reproachful gaze bored into my back until
we swung out of eye-range into the Custer Trail. I
know that I shall be reminded of him every time I
see a ruined maiden in the movies or at Drury Lane
to the end of my days.
Billings is a fine modem city, which makes me re-
gret all the more that most of my daylight impressions
of it had to be gained by peeking under a taxicab
curtain. It is by long odds the largest town on the
Yellowstone; in fact, I saw no city comparable with it
for size and vigour until at Sioux City I came to the
first of the packing-house metropolises of the Mis-
souri. Billings owed its first prosperity to cattle and
sheep and its fine strategic situation for distribution.
Pastoral industries cut less of a figure today, but the
town has continued to gain ground as the principal
distributing centre for western Montana. . That, with
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 205
agricultural and power development, has brought
mills and factories, and the town now ranks high
among the manufacturing centres of the North-west.
I shall live in hopes of going back some-day and see-
ing Billings properly — as a visiting Chamber of
Commerce booster or a Rotary excursionist, or some-
thing equally sans reproche.
The point where the Northern Pacific Railway
bridge crosses the Yellowstone below Billings is of
considerable interest historically. It was here that
Clark ferried Sergeant Pryor and his remaining pack
animals across the river, preliminary to the overland
journey that was to be attempted with the animals
to the Mandan Villages. Here, also, is the point that
is popularly credited with being the highwater mark
of steamboat navigation on the Yellowstone. On
June 6, 1875, Captain Grant Marsh in the Josephine.
conducting a rough survey of the river under the
direction of General J. W. Forsyth, reached a point
which he estimated to be forty-six miles above Pom-
pey's Pillar, 250 miles above Powder River and 4<83
miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. Major
Joseph Mills Hanson, in his "Conquest of the Mis-
souri," stirringly describes the climax of this remark-
able voyage.
After leaving Pompey's Pillar "the great river,
though apparently undiminished in volume, grew
206 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
more and more swift, constantly breaking into rapids
through which it was necessary to warp and spar the
boat, while numberless small islands split the channel
into chutes, no one of which was large enough for
easy navigation. At times it seemed that a smooth
stretch of water had been reached, . . . but invaria-
bly just beyond another rapid would be encountered.
... Before nightfall a tremendous rapid was en-
countered, and though, after a hard struggle, it was
successfully passed, so forbidding was its aspect and
so savage the resistance it offered, that it was appre-
ciatively named *Hell Roaring Rapids.' At the
head of it the boat lay up for the night, with a line
stretched to the bank ahead to help her forward in the
morning. But when dawn came, General Forsyth,
seeing the nature of the river in front, ordered out a
reconnoitring party who marched up the bank for
several miles examining the channel. On their re-
turn they reported the whole river ahead so broken
up by islands and with so powerful a current that it
could not be navigated without constant resort to
warping and sparring. . . . General Forsyth and
Captain Marsh held a consultation and decided that
no adequate reward for the labour involved could be
gained by going further. So, at two o'clock P. m. on
June 7th, the boat was turned about and started on
her return. ... Before leaving this highest point
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 207
attained, Captain Marsh blazed the trunk of a gigan-
tic Cottonwood to which the Josephine was tied, and
carved thereon the name of the boat and the date. It
is exceedingly improbable that a steam vessel will
ever again come within sight of that spot or be en-
titled to place her name beneath the Josephine's on
that ancient tree trunk, almost under the shadow of
the Rocky Mountains."
The Josephine's farthest west on the Yellowstone
stands as the record for steamers by many miles, but
what wouldn't I have given to have found that big
Cottonwood and tied up there myself I No t)ne along
the river could tell me anything about it, and there
is little doubt that, like so many thousands of its
less distinguished brethren, it has been swallowed up
by the spring floods. Neither above nor below the
bridge for many miles, however, could I locate a rif-
fle sufficiently savage to fit Captain Marsh's descrip-
tion of "Hell Roaring Rapids." It has occurred to
me as just possible that such a rapid was wiped out
when the power dam was built, the comparatively
short distance the water is backed up at that point
suggesting that the original fall was very consider-
able. Again, it is possible that to Captain Marsh,
after his many years in the comparatively smooth
waters of the Missouri, such riffles as still go slap-
banging down along the bluffs opposite Billings would
208 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
appear a lot rougher than they would to one just
down from the almost continuously white and rock-
torn rapids of the upper river.
At any event it stirred my imagination mightily to
locate the Josephine's turning point even approxi-
mately. From now on I was going to have a fellow
pilot for Captain Clark. Captain Grant Marsh was
henceforth at my call at any point I needed him be-
tween BiUings and St. Louis. The stout frame of
that splendid old river Viking had been tucked under
the sod down Bismarck-way for a number of years,
but I knew his spirit still took its wonted tricks at
the wheel. Captain William Clark and Captain
Grant Marsh! Could you beat that pair if it came
to standing watch-and-watch down the Yellowstone
and Missouri? And there were others waiting just
round the bend. At the Big Horn I could sign on
Manual Lisa if I wanted him; or John Colter, who
discovered the Yellowstone Park while flying from
the Blackfeet. But Colter was not truthful, which
disqualified him for pilotage. I should have to ship
him simply as a congenial spirit — one of my own kind.
Returning to my boat, I found that the little
daughters of the pumping-station man had roofed it
over Hke a Venetian gondola and moved in with all
their worldly goods. They confronted me with the
clean-cut alternatives of coming to live with them
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 209
right there or taking them with me down the river.
Fortunately their parents intervened on my side.
With the aid of those two kindly and tactful diplo-
mats— and a lot of milk chocolate and dried apricots
— I finally contrived an ejection. The operation de-
layed me till after four o'clock, though, so there was
no hope of making Plompey's Pillar that night.
Though I knew that the fall of the river would be
easing off very rapidly from now on, there was little
indication of it in the twenty-five-mile stretch I ran
before dark that evening. Bouncing back and forth
between broken lines of red-yellow bluffs, there were
frequent sharp riffles and even two or three corners
where considerable water was splashed in. For only
the shortest of reaches was the stream sufficiently
quiet to allow me to take my eyes off it long enough
to enjoy the really entrancing diorama of the scenery.
I was especially sorry for this, for on my right was
unfolding the verdant loveliness of the Crow Reser-
vation, the very heart of the hunting grounds which
the Indians had loved above all others for hundreds
of years — the region they had fought hardest to save
from relinquishnient to the relentless white. Read
what, according to Irving in the "Adventures of Cap-
tain Bonneville," an Absaroka said about this Red
Man's Garden of Eden a hundred years ago:
"The Crow country is a good country. The Great
210 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
1
Spirit has put it in exactly the right place ; while you
are in it you fare well; whenever you go out of it,
whichever way you travel, you fare worse." After
going on to tell of the unspeakable climatic conditions
and the scarcity of game prevaiHng in the regions to
the north, south, east and west, this progenitor of
the modern booster goes on: "The Crow country is
in exactly the right place. It has snowy mountains
and sunny plains ; all kinds of climate and good things
for every season. When summer heats scorch the
prairies, you can draw up under the mountains where
the air is sweet and cool, the grass fresh, and the
bright streams come tumbling out of the snowy-banks.
There you can hunt the elk, the deer and the antelope,
when their skins are fit for dressing; there you will
find plenty of white bears and the mountain sheep.
"In the autumn, when your horses are fat and
strong from the mountain pastures, you can go down
to the plains and hunt buffalo, or trap beaver on the
streams. And when winter comes, you can take shel-
ter in the woody bottoms along the rivers ; there you
will find buffalo meat for yourselves and cottonwood
bark for your horses ; or you may winter in the Wind
River valley, where there is salt weed in abundance.
"The Crow country is exactly in the right place.
Everything good is to be found there. There is no
country like the Crow country."
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 211
Like the scent of fern leaves wafted out of the
dear, dead past, those lines awakened in my heart
memories of something that had long gone out of my
life.
"Something is, or something seems,
Which touches me with mystic gleams.
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams . * .
Of something seen, I know not where,
Such as no language may declare."
I muttered that in fragments, but the lines only
adumbrated the longing without revealing its hidden
fount. Still groping mentally, I unwrapped some
forks and spoons done up in a page of the Los An-
geles Times, Ah, that gave me the cue! Los An-
geles Chamber of Commerce tourist literature. And
to think a Crow Indian started that kind of a thing I
Running until the river bottoms were swamped in
purple shadows, I landed and made camp in a soft
little nest of snowy sand left behind by a high-water
eddy. There was an abrupt yellow cliff rising
straight out of a woolly-white riffle on the right bank,
and beyond a grove of cottonwood to the left were
the shadowy buildings of some kind of a ranch. Even
in the deepening twilight I could read something of
the record of its growth — groups of log cabins, groups
of unpainted, rough-sawed lumber and finally a huge
red barn and a great square, verandahed house that
212 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
was all but a mansion. I was wondering if the same
pioneering frontiersman who had built the cabins had
survived to occupy the big green and white house,
when the soft southerly wind brought the scent of
sweet clover and the strains of a phonograph.
'"Evening Star/' the Jocelyn Lullaby, the Baccarole,
wafted me their * 'convoluted runes" one after the
other; then a piano began to strum and a girl, neither
mean of voice nor temperament, sang Tosti's "Good-
Bye" It always had had a softly sentimentalizing
effect on me, that "Lines of white on a sullen Sea"
sung (as it always is) the night before the steamer
reaches port. And here it was getting me in the
same old place — that mushy spot under the solar
plexus that non-anatomically trained poets confuse
with the heart. I simply had to hike over and tell
that impassioned songstress how perfectly her song
matched the scent of sweet clover. Cleaning up the
last of the dried apricot stew in my army mess tin,
I pushed southward across the moonlit bar. No
luck. I was on an island. ,
I tried out my new bed for the first time that night.
It turned out to be a combination of a canvas bag
and inflatable rubber mattress, called by its makers a
"Sleeping Pocket." Here again it transpired I had
played in luck in the matter of a pig bought in a
poke. I used that precious little ten-pound packet of
© L. A. Huffman
© L. A. Huffman
pompey's pillar (Above)
THE YELLOWSTONE FROM THE TOP OF POMPEy's PILLAR (Below)
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 213
rubber and canvas all the way to New Orleans with-
out blankets. On wind-blown sand bars, mud-banks,
coal barges or the greasy steel decks of engine-rooms
it was ever the same — always dry, always soft, al-
ways warm. Comfortable sleeping measures just
about the whole difference between the success and
failure of many a trip. I shudder to think of the
messy nights I must inevitably have suffered had all
those lurking thunder-storms that I weathered so
snugly caught me in blankets.
I overslept the next morning and so did not carry
out my over-night resolution of pulling across to the
ranch and thanking the "Good-Bye" girl. Or
rather, I did start and then changed my mind. She
was on the upper verandah recuperating from a sham-
poo. Scarlet kimono and bobbed hair! No, not with
a river to escape by. Stifling my au revoir impulse I
decided to leave well enough alone by taking that
"Good-bye" literally. Abandoning the boat to the
will of the current I departed via the lines of white
under the sullen cliff.
At the end of a couple of hours' run in a slack-
ening current I landed in an eddy above Pompey's
Pillar, quite the most outstanding landmark on the
Yellowstone. Clark describes how he halted "to ex-
amine a very remarkable rock situated in an exten-
sive bottom on the right, about two hundred and fifty
214 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
paces from the shore. It is nearly four hundred
paces in circumference, two hundred feet high and
accessible from the northeast, the other sides being
a perpendicular chff of a light-coloured, gritty rock.
. . . The Indians have carved the figures of animals
and other objects on the sides of the rock, and on the
top are raised two piles of stones." Captain Clark,
after writing down a careful description of the coun-
try on all sides, marked his name and the date on
the rock and went on his way.
This was the first point at which I had opportun-
ity to make accurate comparison of the respective
stages of water encountered by Clark and myself.
I found the base of the rock less than a hundred
paces from the river, which indicated — as the chan-
nel seems to have been well fixed here — that I was
enjoying three or four feet more water than did my
illustrious predecessor. This would seem to be just
about accounted for by the fact that I was voyag-
ing three weeks earlier in the season than he — that
much nearer the high water of early June, at which
time it was apparent that the river backed up right
to the chff.
Add the telegraph poles of a distant railway line
and a picnic booth littered with papers and water-
melon rinds, and Clark's description of what was
unrolled to him from the top of Pompey's Pillar
1
ed ■
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 215
would stand today. I located the place where his
name had been carved by a grating which the North-
ern Pacific engineers had erected to protect it from
vandals, but the most careful scrutiny failed to reveal
any trace of the letters themselves. The practical
obliteration of what is probably the only authentic
physical mark of their passing that either Lewis or
Clark left between St. Louis and the mouth of the
Columbia is hardly compensated for by the presence
of several hundred somewhat later and rather less
important signatures at this point. Several of these
latter bore the date of the previous day — July 4th,
1921, — and so represented a bold bid for fame on
the part of some of the watermelon guzzling pic-
nickers. One of these had even pried a bar aside
in an not entirely successful endeavour to emblazon
his name in the protected area. It was all rather
annoying. These new names are piling up very fast
with the coming of the flivver, but it is going to take
a lot of them to make up for the one fhey have blotted
out.
Clark's apparent mental processes in the christen-
ing of Pompey's Pillar are rather amusing. Neither
a profound historian nor a classicist, the Captain still
had a sort of vague idea in his head that there was
some kind of a rocky erection out Nile-way named
after Pompey. That being so, what could be more
216 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
fitting — since the names of all of the members of his
own party had been used a half dozen times over
first and last — than that this rocky eminence by the
Yellowstone should be called after Pompey. That
he was not clear in his mind as to the character of
the historic original at Alexandria is evidenced by
the fact that he first called the Yellowstone proto-
type "Pompy's Tower." Whether he or his pub-
lisher was responsible for the subsequent change to
"Pillar" is not clear. As a matter of fact the latter
is only a detached fragment of "the high romantic
clifts" that Clark observed jutting over the water
on the opposite side of the river. It bears about as
much actual resemblance to the real Pompey's Pillar
as the Enchanted Mesa does to Cleopatra's Needle.
The river was broader and slower below Pompey's
Pillar, with the rapids shorter and farther between.
At five I landed at a very pretty alfalfa ranch on
the left bank to inquire about passing what appeared
to be a submerged dam some hundreds of yards
ahead. Only two women were at home — a beaming
old lady and her very stout daughter. They insisted
on my staying to tea, which required no great per-
suasiveness on their part after Joanna remarked that
she was out of breath from turning the ice-cream
freezer. The girl was astonishingly red, round and
sweet — a veritable bifurcated apple. She seemed to
&:
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iT b« *
q ^ o
m ^
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^ o H
g - §
s ^ i^
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BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 217
have a very good knowledge of the river, and assured
me I should have no trouble at the diversion dam pro-
vided I kept well toward the left bank. Indeed, if
I thought it would help at all, she would ride down
with me and show the way. There was a path back
home from their lower pasture.
Considering how shy I had found most of the
rancher folk to be of the river, this game offer pretty
nearly took my breath away. I would have been all
for accepting it save for one very good and sufficient
reason — it was physically impossible. I had noticed
that Joanna's personal chair was of home construc-
tion, and considerable amplitude of beam — certainly
six inches more than the stern-sheets of my slender
shallop. She could wedge in sidewise, of course, but
that still left the matter of a life-preserver. I didn't
feel it was quite the thing to take an only child into
a rapid without some provision for floating her out
in case of an upset. And my Gieve wouldn't do.
The inflated "doughnut" that shpped so easily up
and down my own brawny brisket would just about
have served Joanna as an armlet. So I declined with
what grace I could, and we all parted on the best of
terms — I with a fragrant flitch of their home-cured
bacon, they with three double handfuls of my Cali-
fornia home-dried apricots.
I had no trouble at the dam, which was only on
218 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
the right side, where it had been erected to divert
the water into the head of an irrigation ditch. Run-
ning until nearly dark, I landed and made camp on
a breeze-swept bar away from the mosquitos.
I passed the mouth of the Big Horn in mid-fore-
noon of the following day. I should have liked to
land but was fearful I would get out of hand and
take too much time once I turned myself loose at
the one point above all others where the most Yel-
lowstone history has been made. The Big Horn was
known in a vague way through the Indian accounts
of it even before the tim^ of Lewis and Clark, but
the first permanent establishment upon it was the
trading post which Manuel Lisa erected there in
1807. It was to this point that John Colter fled
after being chased by the Blackfeet across Yellow-
stone Park, and it was his point of departure in a
canoe on a voyage to St. Louis which he claimed to
have made in thirty days. Colter's account of how
he ran down several black-tail deer and bighorn be-
fore relaxing the tremendous burst of speed he had
put on to distance the Redskins never bothered me
much, but that average of close to a hundred miles
a day — ^most of it down the languid Missouri — some-
how won't stick. I found I couldn't keep it up even
after I put on my engine. Colter undoubtedly ex-
aggerated about his time on this trip, and that being
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 219
true, doubtless, also, about trampling underfoot the
deer and bighorn. Colter was a liar but not an ar-
tistic one. Now if old Jim Bridger had been telling
that canoe-voyage yarn he would doubtless have hung
a bag of alum over the bow and shrunk the distance
as a starter, and then probably used a trained catfish
for auxiliary power. That's the kind of liar that
makes the world safe for democracy.
Post after post was founded at the confluence of
the Yellowstone and Big Horn until, in the 'seven-
tieSp it became the centre of operations for the Army
in the greatest of our Indian wars. In comparison
with the broad, rolling tide of the Yellowstone the
turbid current of the tributary appeared shallow and
of no great volume — the last place in the world for
a river steamer to venture with any hope of going
its own length without grounding. And yet, I re-
flected, the Big Horn could have been scarcely higher
on that sultry Sunday of June 25th, 1876, when Cap-
tain Grant Marsh, acting on orders from General
Terry, sparred and warped and crabbed the wonder-
ful old Far West up twenty-five miles of those rock-
choked, foam-white rapids. The skies to the south
were black with rolling smoke clouds, but with nothing
to indicate that under their shadows five companies
of the 7th Cavalry were paying with their lives for
the precipitancy of their brave but hot-headed com-
^
220 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
mander. The next day the Far West reached,
passed and returned to the mouth of the Little Big
Horn, and it was there that a half-crazed Crow scout,
all but speechless with terror, brought on the first
lap of its way to the outer world the story of the
Custer Massacre.
On the morning of June 30th, with Major Reno's
wounded aboard, the Far West cast off for the start
of her epic run to Fort Lincoln. Major Joseph
Hanson records that that Captain Marsh all but col-
lapsed in the pilot-house as the terrible responsibility
of that fifty-three-mile run down the rock-paved
channel of the Big Horn suddenly assailed him on
stepping to the wheel. General Terry had just said
to him: "Captain, you have on board the most pre-
cious cargo a boat ever carried. Every soldier here
who is suffering with wounds is the victim of a ter-
rible blunder; a sad and terrible blunder." Crab-
bing up stream with supplies was one thing, flounder-
ing down with a shattered human cargo of that kind,
quite another. Captain Marsh declared the moment
the most sickening of his life. Then he pulled him-
self together and drove her through. I tried to im-
agine the relief her skipper must have felt as he
rounded that last bend above where I now saw a rail-
way bridge and headed the Far West into the deep,
clear channel of the Yellowstone, but couldn't come
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 221
near to compassing it. A man has to have carried
a load of that kind to know what it means to put it
down. The Far West broke all upper river records
for speed in her run to Fort Lincoln, below Bismarck,
the nearest hospital. Captain Marsh's splendid
achievement in saving Reno's wounded by his mas-
terly navigation is the one bright bit of silver lining
on the sodden black cloud of the Massacre of the
Little Big Horn.
At the mouth of the Rosebud I passed another im-
portant rendezvous of the Sioux campaign. From
here, after taking his final orders from General Terry,
Custer had departed on the m^rch that was to finish
upon the Little Big Horn. Major Hanson relates
an incident that occurred here an hour or two after the
ill-fated command had disappeared up the valley, and
which was particularly interesting to me at the mo-
ment as it involved the upset of a skiff in a riffle I
was about to run. All of the letters written by Cus-
ter's men since leaving Fort Lincoln were put in a
bag and started by boat for Fort Buford. "Ser-
geant Fox and two privates of the escort were de-
tailed to carry the precious cargo down," wrote Major
Hanson. "Amid a chorus of hearty cheers from the
people on the steamer, they started out. But they
were totally unfamiliar with the handling of a small
boat in the swirling current of the Yellowstone. Be-
222 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
fore they had gone fifty feet their skiff overturned.
There, in full view of all their comrades, who could
not reach them in time to save, all three of the unfor-
tunate fellows sank froml sight, while the mail sack
went to the bottom of the river."
The soldiers were drowned, but persistent dragging
of the river under the direction of Captain Marsh
finally brought up the mail sack, thus saving for their
relatives and friends the last letters of the men who
were to fall before the Sioux a few days later. These
included Custer's note to his wife as well as young
Boston Custer's letter to his mother. Sending three
inexperienced soldiers to boat down the Yellowstone
with so humanly precious a freight in their care can-
not but strike one as about on all fours with other
blunders that led up to the tragic climax of that dis-
astrous campaign.
I found a shallow bar clawed with sprawling chan-
nels but no riffles to speak of below the Rosebud.
There could hardly have been bad water there at any
time.
Landing at a grassy point to make camp about
seven-thirty I found the mosquitos so thick that I
beat a hasty retreat to the boat and pushed off again
in search of a gravel bar in midstream. The sight
of new and comfortable ranch buildings lured mfe to
land a half mile below, however, where an invitation
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 223
to spend the night in the screened bunk-house was
promptly forthcoming. The ranch turned out to be
a part of an extensive irrigation enterprise, promoted
and managed by a chap named Cummings from
Minneapolis, who chanced to be on the place at the
time. Except for the general farming depression,
prospects were good, he said — better than in the dry
farming sections, where crops, already very short,
were being still further shortened by grasshoppers.
He was rather more optimistic than the run of Mon-
tanan pastoralists and agriculturalists I had met, all
of whom had been having terribly hard sledding.
A leisurely three-hour's run in the morning brought
me to Fort Keogh and Miles City, respectively above
and below the Tongue. The red-brown current of
the latter tinged the Yellowstone for a mile below
their confluence. Clark camped at the mouth of the
Tongue, and his painstaking description of the sec-
ond in size of the Yellowstone's tributaries might have
been written today.
"It has a very wide bed. . . . The water is of
a light-brown colour and nearly milk- warm; it is
shallow and its rapid current throws out great quan-
tities of mud and some coarse gravel. . . . The
warmth of the water would seem to indicate that the
country through which it passes is open and without
shade."
224 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
Captain Clark was a splendid geographer, even if
he did run amuck a bit with his historical nomencla-
ture.
The annual Round-up had come to an end the
previous day, so that I found Miles City, if not quite
a banquet hall deserted, at least in something of a fll
morning-after frame of mind. It rather warmed
one's heart to see so many people rubbing throbbing
temples, and I seemed to see in it some explanation
of what a cowboy meant when he told me that the
only critter at the Round-up that he couldn't ride
was the "White Mule."
All the cities of the Yellowstone have character
and individuality, and none more than Miles City.
Not so beautifully located as Livingston, not quite
so metropolitan as Billings, there is something in the
fine, broad streets of Miles that suggests the frank,
bluff, open-heartedness of a cowboy straight from
the ranges. The town looks you squarely between
the eyes and says "Put it there"! in a deep, mellow
voice that goes straight to the heart. That voice and
that look embody the quintessence of reassurance.
You know in an instant that you are face to face with
the kind of a town that couldn't play a mean trick
on a man if it tried — ^that there isn't going to be any
need of slinking around with one hand on your wal-
let and the other on your hip-pocket. Even though
By Haynes, St. Paul
STOCKYARDS, MILES CITY (Above)
"freightin' " (Below)
© L. A. Huffman
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 225
you may have been warned that various sorts of rough
stufP have been pulled in Miles, you are certain that
outsiders will have been found at the bottom! of it
if all the facts were known. (My over-night stop in
Miles was hardly sufficient to prove out the truth of
all this. Just the same, that's the way I felt about
the town, and that's the way I still feel.)
Miles City owed its early importance to sheep and
cattle, and still has the distinction of being the prin-
ciple horse market of America. Agriculture has
played an increasingly important part in its later
growth. The splendid valleys of the Powder and
the Tongue are both tributary territory, while the
irrigation of the rich lands of the Yellowstone is
bringing year by year an augmented flow of wealth
to the city's gates. (Darn it! I wonder if I have
cribbed that last sentence from Chamber of Com-
merce literature. In any event, it is quite true in
this case.)
Besides its extensive cattle and sheep ranges, the
Miles City region distinguishes itself by having the
greatest range of temperature of any place in the
world. The Government Weather Bureau is au-
thority for the fact that a winter temperature of
sixty-five degrees below Zero has been balanced by
a summer one of one hundred and fifteen above.
Neither California nor the Riviera can give the tour-
226 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
ist anything like that variety to choose from. From
Esquimo to Hottentot, what race couldn't establish
itself right there by the Yellowstone under almost
normal home weather conditions? Of course, if they
were going to establish themselves for long some kind
of a meteorological Joshua would be needed to
command the thermometer to stand still; also some
one to see that the command was carried out. And
there would lie the way to complications and friction,
for one can hardly imagine a Hottentot Joshua
quite in agreement with an Esquimo Joshua as to
just what point the thermometer should be com-
manded to stand at. That might be solved by the
establishment of thermostat villages, but then would
arise the endless train of legal complications inevi-
tably following in the wake of infringing on the ripar-
ian rights (whatever they are) of the irrigation peo-
ple. No, probably Miles had best be left to its pres-
ent inhabitants, who appear to have waxed both ami-
able and prosperous by browsing on their tempera-
ture ranges just as Nature provided them.
I made special inquiry about Buffalo Rapids while
in Miles City. This was for two reasons. Reading
that Clark had been compelled to let down his boats
over an abrupt fall of several feet at that point, I
thought it just as well not to go blundering into it
myself without further information. I also heard
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 227
that there was a project for developing extensive
power at this series of riffles. I spent a pleasant and
profitable afternoon with Mr. Doane, the engineer
of the project. He said that I ought to have little
trouble in running right through all of the rapids,
but suggested it might be well to land at a farm-
house near the head and see for myself. He also
gave me a few facts about the power project. I
would have to refer to my notes (which I never do
if at all avoidable) to recall the hydro-electric data;
but I need no such adventitious aid to remember Mrs.
Doane's freshly distilled "Essence of Dandelion."
Literal liquid golden sunshine it was, with a bouquet
recalling to me that of an ambrosial decoction made
by the monks of Mount Athos from buds of asphodel,
and which a masked hermit lets down to you on a
string from the tower in which he is supposed to be
walled up with the makings and his retorts. Buffalo
Rapids never troubled me again.
I pushed off about eleven in the forenoon of July
8th, and an hour's run in moderately fast water took
me within sight and sound of the white caps of the
first pitch of Buffalo Rapids. Clark had originally
named these riffles "Buff aloe Shoal, from the circum-
stance of one of these animals being found in them."
He describes it further as a "succession of bad shoals,
interspersed with hard, brown, gritty rock, extend-
228 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
ing for six miles ; the last shoal stretches nearly across
the river, and has a descent of about three feet. At
this place we were obliged to let the canoes down by
hand, for fear of their splitting on a concealed rock;
though when the shoals are known a large canoe could
pass with safety through the worst of them. This
is the most difficult part of the whole Yellowstone
River. . . ."
Captain Clark would hardly have registered the
latter verdict had he run the Yellowstone all the way
from the Big Bend, where he first came upon it. In-
deed, it seems to me that he must have run rapids
above Billings that were quite as menacing as the
one which now put his party to so much trouble to
avoid. I would not be too dogmatic on that point,
however. A hundred years of time bring great
changes even to bedrock riffles, and these latter them-
selves also vary greatly according to the stage of
water. I was assured that from August on there is
still a nearly abrupt drop of several feet at one point
in Buffalo Rapids.
Although I was sure I could see my way past the
first riffle without serious difficulty, I still thought it
best to learn what I could at the farmhouse Doane
had indicated. This proved to be a comfortable old
log structure at a point where the right bank was
being rapidly torn down by the swift current. A
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 229
very deaf chap at the first door I approached strongly
urged that I line all the way down, saying that there
was at least one point where my boat could not pos-
sibly live. As that wasn't quite what I wanted to
hear, I went round the house and tried another door.
Here, in a big, fragrant kitchen, I found a family
at lunch, but with one nice, juicy helping of cream-
splashed tapioca pudding still unconsumed. I helped
them out with that, and in return asked for informa-
tion about the rapids. None of them was river-
broke, but they said they had seen a rowboat run
down the left side of the first riffle the previous sum-
mer and that they afterwards heard it was not upset
until it got to Wolf Rapids, down Terry-way. That
was more encouraging, at least as far as Buffalo
Rapids were concerned, and I decided to push off*
and let Nature take its course. All of them, includ-
ing the careful deaf brother, came down to speed me
on. Rather anxious for a bit more weight aft to
bring the head higher, I asked if any of them cared to
run through with me to the railway bridge below the
bend. All of them shook their heads save a flower-
like slip of a girl of fourteen or thereabouts. She
would have been game, I think — had the proper en-
couragement from her mother been forthcoming.
What a handicap a solicitous mother is to a flower-
like child! This mother was rather an old dear,
230 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
too. All I really held against her at the last was
the score of letting her emergency reserve of tapioca
and cream sink so low.
The way past the worst of the first riffle looked so
clear on the right that I did not trouble to pull
across to the other side. I ran through in easy, un-
dulant water, without being forced uncomfortably
close to some patches of rather savage looking white
where the teeth of the bedrock were flecked with toss-
ing foam. Rounding a wide bend, I found myself
drifting down onto the main run of riffles, the passing
of one of which caused Clark's party some trouble.
These filled the channel much more completely than
did those above, and it hardly looked possible to avoid
bad water all of the way through. Even so, there
was nothing that looked wicked enough to be worth
landing to avoid.
Pulling hard to the right, I gave good berth to a
line of badly messed up combers with not enough
foam on them to cover all of the black-rock ledge be-
neath. Then, feeling more or less on easy street, I let
the skiflf slowly draw in toward the middle of a long,
straight line of smoothly-running rollers that ex-
tended to and under the long railway bridge. I
could have kept clear of the worst of this water by
hard work, but with the beautifully rounded waves
signalling "All clear"! as far as snags and reallj^
on SI
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 231
hostile rocks were concerned it seemed too bad to miss
the fun. Wallowing somewhat wildly now and then
and shipping a good bit of water in her dives, my
little tin shallop went through like a duck. I knew
I was getting down toward the end of that kind of
thrills and it was well to make hay while the sun
shone.
Before I was out of the rapid a long overland
rolled out upon and over the bridge below. The en-
gine gave me a friendly toot and waving hands down
the winding line of coaches gave the train the look
of a giant centipede trying to pirouette with all of its
port-side legs. Warned by what had happened to
me under similar circumstances in the riffle under
Rapids Station, I kept my eye right on the ball to
the end of the swing. A few days later, in the hotel
at Glen dive, a notions drummer told me he had been
on the observation platform on the occasion in ques-
tion, adding jocularly that every one there had been
wishing I would pull a spill for them. "Cose why?"
I asked him just a bit bluntly; "those rapids have
been known to drown a buffalo."
Perhaps I should not have been quite so abrupt, for
that was what cramped the delightfully drummer-
esque ingenuousness with which he had begun. Mut-
tering something about "breaking the monotony of a
run through the Bad Lands," the good chap backed
232 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
off and out of my life. I was sorry for that, sorry
to have embarrassed him, and especially sorry I
didn't have the savoir faire to make it easy for him
to finish as frankly as he opened up. I didn't blame
him and his friends for wishing for that spill. I
know perfectly well I would have hoped for it my-
self had our positions been reversed. Almost any
good red-blooded human would get a kick out of
watching, from a nice, dry car platform, another
good red-blooded human bumping-the-bumps down
a rocky riffle. But I would never have been honest
enough to confess my hopes — to the man who might
have figured in the spill, that is. That was where
this chap with the notions line would always have
me one down. And what a shame it was I couldn't
hold him long enough to learn how he made himself
that way.
"Buffaloe Shoal" was the first of what one might
call Clark's ^'Menagerie Series" of rapids. The next,
twenty miles below, was named Bear Rapid, because
they saw a bear standing there. The third, two miles
below the mouth of the Powder, was christened Wolf
Rapid, "from seeing a wolf there." Clark describes
Bear Rapids as "a shoal, caused by a number of rocks
strewed over the river ; but though the waves are high,
there is a very good channel to the left, which ren-
ders the passage secure." Wolf is dismissed as "a
BILLINGS TO GLlENDIVE 233
rapid of no great danger." A hundred spring floods
have doubtless had the effect of worsening Wolf— a
bedrock rapid — somewhat, and of scouring out the
worst of the boulders in Bear. I found the latter
only an inconsiderable riffle, but the Wolf still showed
some mighty vicious fangs. They were easy enough
to avoid in a light skiff, but the old steamboat skip-
pers always reckoned there was more potential trou-
ble lying in ambush in the cracks of these shallowly
submerged reefs of black rock than at any other place
on the navigated Yellowstone or Missouri.
The Powder is the last of the great southerly trib-
utaries of the Yellowstone. Sprawling over a shift-
ing estuary in several runlets, it looked much as it
must have appeared to Clark when he wrote: "The
water is very muddy, and like its banks of a dark
brown colour. Its current throws out great quanti-
ties of red stones; which circumstances, with the ap-
pearance of the distant hills, induced Captain Clark
to call it the Redstone, which he afterward found
to be the meaning of its Indian name, Wahasah/*
At his camp here Clark found the buffalo prowling so
close during the night that "they excited much alarm,
lest in crossing the river they should tread on the boats
and split them to pieces."
Below the Powder the river flows for some distance
through an extensive belt of Bad Lands, a burnt,
234 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
barren, savage-looking country with little vegetation,
few streams, and miles of fantastic castles, kiosks and
minarets of black and red rock. It is desolate in the
extreme even when viewed from the cool current of
the river, but surely in no wise so sinister and forbid-
ding as those terrible stretches of Bad Lands between
the Yellowstone and Little Missouri which grim old
General Sully, after pursuing the Sioux over their
scorched rocks for a season, so aptly described as
"Hell-With-the-Lights-Out."
Finding Terry was out of sight behind the hills,
I landed about eight o'clock to make camp on a gravel
bar. A grizzled old codger, across whose fish-lines
I came crabbing in, seemed more pleased than put
out over the diversion. He could fish twenty-four
hours a day, he explained, but a man willing to be
talked to wasn't the sort of a bird that came along to
that neck of the river every day. So he went up to his
cabin, brought down some eggs and milk, and we
pooled grub and suppered together there under the
cottonwoods by the river. He had hunted, trapped,
prospected and searched for agates for fifty years,
and it was well into the night before he had told me
all about it. A confession of my old love for "Calam-
ity Jane" broke down his reserve at the outset.
He had seen a lot of the dear old girl at the very ze-
nith of her career. He told a delicious story of how
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 235
"Calamity," her paprika temperament ruffled by a
dude's red necktie, had tried to make that unfortu-
nate eat the offending rag at the point of a pistol.
The advice with which she had endeavoured to sauce
the untoothsome morsel was rather the best part of
the yarn, but it was hardly sufficiently "drawing-
room" to find place in these chaste chronicles.
There was a strong up-river breeze blowing when I
got under way at six the next morning. When this
came dead ahead it had no effect other than slowing
down my progress greatly, but when the direction of
the channel brought it more or less abeam I had
great difficulty in keeping from being blown under
the caving banks. This was, as I remember it, my
first experience of what later became perhaps the most
annoyingly persistent difficulty attending my pro-
gress down both the Missouri and Mississippi. After
getting in trouble two or three times and having to
stop to bail out and recover my wind, I gave up the
fight about noon and landed at a highly picturesque
old ranch twenty-five miles above Glendive. The
clanging of a dinner gong was not the least pleasant
sound that assailed my ears as I climbed the bank.
Belonging to Charley Krug of Glendive, the place
was one of the oldest and most historic of Montana
cattle ranches. Built in the Indian days, and in an
extremely windy section of country, the buildings
236 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
appeared to be something of a compromise between
forts and cyclone cellars. Nothing short of a "Big
Bertha" could have made much impression upon the
enormous cottonwood logs — and the Sioux, I believe,
had nothing heavier than Springfields.
The professional personnel of the outfit was
wrapped in gloom over the advent of a devastating
light of grasshoppers that was rapidly cleaning up the
ranges down to the gravel. This sodden shroud, how-
ever, did not blanket the cook — an exception of im-
portance from my standpoint. This individual was
a part-time wrestler and prize-fighter, abandoning
the squared-circle for the pots and pans only in the
off seasons. He introduced himself to me as
"Happy" Coogan, and then proceeded to show why
he was so called. Backing me up behind a food bar-
rage, he sang a song, danced a jig, illustrated Jack
Dempsey's left hook and Gotch's "toe-hold" on a
half-breed cow-puncher, and then challenged all-com-
ers at a "catch-as-catch-can" rough-and-tumble with
nothing barred but gouging and biting. Now who
could worry about grasshoppers with a man like that
around?
"Happy" recited excerpts from his ring career all
afternoon while I ate apple pie with cream poured
over it and waited for the wind to cease. It was fall-
ing lighter by five, but my host would not hear of my
BILLINGS TO GLENDIVE 237
leaving before supper. Impromptu cabaret work
lengthened that banquet out to eight o'clock, and it
was early twilight before I finally broke away and
went down to push off. "Happy" followed me down,
his arms filled with eggs, milk, jams, pies and various
other comestibles. "Don't like to let a man go off
hungry," he explained. "Never know when I may
be needing a hand-out myself."
Bless your generous heart, "Happy"; I only hope
I may be cruising in your vicinity if you ever need
that hand-out. That bucket of California home-dried
apricots I left you didn't go toward balancing our
grub account.
With no very swift water ahead and the prospect
of a fairly clear night, I had hopes for a while of
drifting right on through to Glendive. These hopes
— along with me and my outfit — ^were dampened by
a shower shortly after I started, and completely
dashed by a steady drizzle that set in about nine.
Dragging up the skiff on the first bar on which it
grounded in the now pitchy darkness, I inflated my
sleeping-pocket, crawled into it and went to sleep.
Awakening at dawn to find a cloudless sky, I crawled
out, pushed off, and was in Glendive before six o'clock.
Landing half a mile above town, I climbed up to a
shack which "Happy" Coogan had told me was owned
by a friend of his who had worked in the local pool-
238 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
room. It was no sort of hour to awaken a tired
business man of a Sunday morning, but * 'Happy's"
name proved open sesame. It took some rearrang-
ing to get my stuff into that ten-by-twelve shack with
a man, his wife and their seven children. Somehow
we managed it, however ; moreover, the whole nine of
them pledged themselves to stand watch-and-watch
over the skiff until I showed up again, no matter
how long that might be. The true river spirit had
awakened even in these dwellers on the fringes of
Glendive's municipal dump. Bath, breakfast, snooze
and another seance with inevitable proofs was the
order of the day.
CHAPTER VI
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI
Glendive, located on the Yellowstone at a point
where the Northern Pacific leaves the river to cut
across the Bad Lands straight for the plains of North
Dakota, owes more to the railroad than perhaps any-
other town of the valley. Although Glendive Creek
was a frequent halt in the steamboat days of the
Indian campaigns, there was never much of a set-
tlement there until railway construction commenced
in the late 'seventies. The first train pulled into
Glendives almost forty years to a day previous to my
arrival by boat. I found a fine, clean, prosperous
little city of 6000 where my puffing predecessor had
drawn up to little more than a typical frontier con-
struction camp. Range stock helped the town along
in its earlier days, but the railway shops probably
did more. Finally the completion of the dam at In-
take and the distribution of water to the most ex-
tensive irrigable area in the Yellowstone Valley pro-
vided a tributary agricultural territory of great
wealth.
There was one thing I was especially interested in
239
240 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
seeing in Glendive — a school musical system that is
probably without a near rival in any town in America
five times as large. I was assured that, of a school
enrolment of about a thousand, nearly two hundred
pupils played some kind of a musical instrument.
There was an orchestra of sixty pieces, and a boy's
military band of sixty-five. Each was divided
into junior and senior grades, and a member was
pushed ahead or dropped back according to talent
and effort. At no time did a pupil have a place
cinched; nothing but steady conscientious effort, reg-
ular attendance at rehearsals, and proper general
deportment won promotion, or prevented demotion.
Perhaps the finest thing about the whole system, was
the fact that it was undertaken entirely apart from
the regular curriculum, no school credits whatever be-
ing given for the work. I was told the credit for
this fine achievement belonged to a principal of one
of the grade schools, a Miss Lucille Hennigar, who
had put herself behind it purely out of love of music
and children.
I did not have the honour of meeting Miss Henni-
gar, but I did make the acquaintance of some of her
protieges. First and last, about two score of them
must have chanced along in the hour I was tinkering
with my boat late Sunday afternoon. They were
regular fellows all right (every other one wanted to
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 241
come down in the morning and sign on with me) , but
not a hoodlum in the lot. Not a mother's darling of
them tried to kick a hole in my little tin shallop.
As none of them exhibited any symptoms of infantile
paralysis, I decided it must be music — quieting the
mean foot as well as soothing the savage breast.
Warned by every authority from Captain Clark to
an agate-hunter I had passed at the mouth of the
Powder that I was now approaching the "Mosquito
Coast" of the Yellowstone, I made special point of
preparing to go into battle by getting the best kind
of a sleep I could in Glendive. This made it partic-
ularly gratifying to find that this good httle city
had just about the cleanest, most comfortable and
best run hotel in the valley. I should have paid it
that tribute even had not its genial manager, in com-
pany with the Secretary of the Chamber of Com-
merce, driven down to see me off — bringing an es-
pecially appealing little cold lunch.
It was late in the forenoon before I got away.
Just as I was about to push off a telegram was
brought down to me from Mr. A. M. Cleland, Pas-
senger Traffic Manager of the Northern Pacific, say-
ing that he had heard of my trip and was wiring all
the company's agents along the river to' be on the
watch to lend me a hand, and to consider any of the
N. P.'s shops at my service for repairs. Even
242 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
though it arrived at the very moment I was turning
away from the main line of the Northern Pacific,
which I had paralleled all the way from Livingston,
I was nevertheless just as appreciative of the spirit
that prompted the courteous and kindly message.
Captain Clark had made camp just above Glen-
dive,^ "where they saw the largest white bear that
any of the party had ever before seen, devouring a
dead buffalo on a sand bar. They fired two balls
into him; he then swam to the mainland and walked
along the shore. Captain Clark pursued him and
lodged two more balls in his body ; but though he bled
profusely he made his escape, as night prevented them
from following him."
As the country below Glendive is probably both the
richest and most intensively cultivated in the whole
Yellowstone Valley, I was especially struck by the
contrast presented by verdant irrigated fields of al-
falfa and clover to the howling wilderness Clark de-
scribed. Nowhere else in all of his journey back and
forth across the continent had he seen such a variety
and such numbers of animals. It must have been
somewhere below the present site of the great Govern-
1 In reading Clark's notes in the original it should be born in mind
that they were written almost entirely in the third person. His spell-
ings were often most originally phonetic, but not always conforming
to one system. I have found three distinct spellings of mosquito in a
single paragraph, and buffalo was often rendered "buffaloe" and
"buffalow." L. R. F.
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 243
ment dam at Intake that the buffalo began to appear
in vast numbers. As their boat floated down "a
herd happened to be on their way across the river.
Such was the multitude of these animals that, though
the river, including an island over which they passed,
was a mile wide, the herd stretched, as thickly as
they could swim, from one side to the other, and the
party was obliged to stop for an hour." Forty-five
miles below, two other herds as numerous as the first
blocked their way again.
The following day they found the "buffalo and
elk, as well as the pursuers of both, the wolves, in
great numbers." Moreover, *'the bears, which gave
so much trouble on the head of the Missouri, are
equally fierce in this quarter. This morning one of
them, which was on a sandbar as the boat passed,
raised himself on his hind legs; and after looking at
the party, plunged in and swam toward them. He
was received with three balls in the body; he then
turned around and made for the shore. Toward eve-
ning another entered the water to swim across. Cap-
tain Clark ordered the boat toward the shore, and
just as the bear landed, shot the animal in the head.
It proved to be the largest female they had ever seen,
so old that its tusks were worn quite smooth. The
boats escaped with difficulty between two herds of
buffalo that were crossing the river." On this same
2U DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
day great numbers of bull elk were reported, and
also, "on some rugged hills to the southeast," numer-
ous bighorn.
In all the records of western exploration and travel
I can recall nothing that suggested such an astonish-
ing plenitude of many kinds of large animals in
one region. It would not have been so hard to con-
jure up the picture along some of the wilder reaches
of the upper river, but here — with those pretty little
forty and fifty-acre farms, all under ditch and culti-
vated to their last foot, stretching away mile after
mile on my left — it was asking almost too much of
the imagination to perform such acrobatics.
In a steady but ever slackening current it took
me about four hours to pull the thirty miles to the
Intake dam. The tovm was on the left but the ab-
rupt bluff at that point indicated the right as the
easier portage. The smooth green current of the
water over the end of the concrete barrier tempted
me for a moment to avoid portaging by letting down
the empty boat on a line. Sober second thought
counselled caution — that water at the end of a twelve-
foot drop had too much of a kick in reserve to make
it safe to trifle with. Better safe than submerged is
a servicable variation of the old saw for river use.
There was a considerable stretch af rip-raping and
other rocky barriers — laid to protect the €nd of the
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 245
dam at flood time — to get the boat over, but a young
rancher, just driving up to the ferry, kindly volun-
teered to come up and give me a hand. Carrying the
trim little craft bodily for a couple of hundred feet,
we put it into his wagon and drove down a hundred
yards to the ferry-landing where it was easier launch-
ing than near the dam. He was all against being
paid for his trouble, but finally suggested twenty-
five cents as his idea of what was fair. He looked
actually distressed when, with a wristy movie actor's
gesture of finality, I gave him the whole of a dollar
bill. What wouldn't a farmer on a country high-
way have charged for half that much labour pulling
a Ford out of a mud-hole?
But it appears that even non-river dwelling folk
are not mercenary in this neck of Montana. A cow-
boy-like girl who had just ridden up on a prancing
pinto frowned darkly when she saw the greenback
pass. Spurring down to the water as I finished trim-
ming the boat, she leaned down close to my ear,
whispering stagily through her hollowed gauntlet:
"Too bad you didn't see me first, stranger; I'd 'a
yanked down that lil' sardine-tin there on the end of
my rope for nothin'." That was the first time I ever
heard anybody called "stranger" outside of Wild
West stories written in the Tame East. Later, down
Nebraska and Missouri-way, however, I found that
246 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
address in common use by people in real life. There'
no end of a thrill in finding story-book stuff in real
life — I suppose because it happens so darn'd seldom.
There were a few flashes of white in the riffle be-
low the dam; then a broadening river and slacken-
ing water. Many and unmistakable signs told me
that I was now skirting the dread "Mosquito Coast."
Cattle nose-deep in the water or rushing blindly
through the thorny bull-berry bjashes, smudge-bar-
rages round the ranch houses, dark, shifting clouds
over the marshes and over-flow lakes — every one of
them was a sign of an ancient enemy, an enemy who
had drawn first and last blood on every field I had
met him from the Amazon to Alaska. Knowing that
I was going to run the gauntlet of him for many
hundreds of miles, I had come prepared, both mentally
and physically. Nevertheless I looked forward with
no small apprehension to a contest which could not
be other than a losing one — for me. Moreover, I
had too many dormant malarial germs in my once-
fever thinned blood to care to risk their being driven
to the warpath again by too intimate contact with
other Bolsheviki of the same breed. Frankly, Herr
Mosquito, with his shrecklichkeit, was one thing
above all others that had given me pause in planning
a voyage that would carry me through so many thou-
sand miles of his Happy Hunting Grounds. Miles
mee^h^
MW^m
THE DAM ACROSS THE YELLOWSTOxXE AT INTAKE (Above)
PORTAGING MY BOAT ROUND THE INTAKE DAM (Center)
COMPLETING THE PORTAGE (Beloiv)
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 247
and Terry and* Crook had driven the Redskin from
the Yellowstone and Missouri, Civilization had ex-
terminated the buffalo, but the mosquito still ranged
unchecked over his ancient domain. It was just a
question of how much blood one was going to have
to yield up to get by his toll-gate-keepers.
Some kind of a poor old river-rat — doubtless an
agate-hunter, — ringed with smudges and trying to
spare time enough from fighting the enemy to hold a
frying pan over a smouldering fire gave me a graphic
warning of what fate awaited me if I tried to camp
by the bank. Forthwith I decided to get my supper in
the boat, run till near dark, pick the likeliest-looking
ranch, tell them I was a farmer myself, and let
human nature take its course. I had had the plan
of adding a galley to the boat in mind for some days.
Drifting while I munched a cold lunch had already
eliminated the noonday halt, and I was now figuring
to let the river also go on with its work during break-
fast and supper hours as well. My first plan was to
make a little stove by cutting holes in an oil-can, set-
ting this on the non-inflammable steel bottom of my
boat and cooking with wood in the ordinary way.
Then, in a store window in Glendive, I saw a midget
of a stove that worked with gasoline pumped under
pressure. It was called a "Kampkook," but I could
see every reason why it would also make a perfectly
248 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
good "Boatkook." Drifting just beyond the wall of
the coastwise mosquito barrage, I tried it out that
evening. Bacon and eggs, petit pais, mulligatawny
soup, dried apricots and a pot of cocoa — all these de-
lectables I fried, boiled or stewed without pausing
from rowing for more than an occasional prod, stir or
shake. When all was ready, I removed the thwart
from the forward section, threw my half-inflated
sleeping-bag in the bottom, disposed a couple of cush-
ions, and suppered like Cleopatra on her barge, re-
clining at my ease. With occasional spice-lending-
variations, that sybaritic program was followed on
many another evening right on to the finish, of my
voyage. I loved too well the smell of "wood smoke
at twilight" to forego entirely the joy of the camp on
the bank, but wherever that bank was muddy or
infested by mosquitos, I. W. W.'s, or other undesir-
ables, or whenever I was trying to make time, I had a
perfectly self-contained ship aboard which I could eat
and sleep with entire comfort.
It was early twilight before I came to just the
ranch that I was looking for. Distantly at first, like
the gold at the end of a rainbow, I saw it transfigured
in the sunset glow at the end of the vista of a long
wine-dark side-channel. There was -a sprawling,
broad-eaved bungalow, vine-covered and inviting, big
new red barns and a lofty silo that loomed like a
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 249
tower against the sun-flushed western sky. I named
it "Ranch of the Heart's Desire'* on the instant, for
I knew that it could give all that I most intensely
craved — cover from the enemy. I tied up at the
landing as a sea-worn skipper drops his anchor in-
a harbour of the Islands of the Blest.
The long avenue of cottonwoods up to the bunga-
low seemed to be filled with about equal parts of
mosquitos and Jersey cows. Doubtless the mosqui-
tos were much the more numerous. But because it
hurts more to hit a running cow than a flying insect
I probably was impressed with the Jerseys out of all
proportion to their actual numbers. A dash through
a "No-Man's-Land" of smouldering smudges and I
burst into a Haven of Refuge at the bungalow door.
A genial chap with a steady smile met me as I emerged
from the smoke, complimented me upon the
smartness of my open-field running among the Jer-
seys, and opined that I must have been a pretty
shifty fullback in my day. A youth in greasy overalls
who came wiggling out from under a Ford he intro-
duced as "My hired man." But when the latter
blushed and protested: "Now there you go again,
dear!" he admitted that it was only his wife. They
promptly insisted I should have supper, while I had
considerable difficulty in making them believe I had
a galley functioning in my boat. We finally compro-
250 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
mised on ice-cream and strawberries. All the ranch-
ers along the lower Yellowstone and upper Missouri
have ice-houses.
They were just the kind of folk one knew he would
have to find in a haven called "Ranch of the Heart's
Desire." Their name was Patterson, and they had
lived most of their lives in Washington — in some kind
of departmental service. Becoming tired — or per-
haps ashamed — of working six hours a day, they
bought a ranch under the Yellowstone project ditch
and started working sixteen. So far they had been
spending rather more money than they had made but,
like all on the threshold of bucolic life, looked confi-
dently to a future rainbow-bright with prospects.
They confessed that it awakened a wee bit of nostal-
gia to meet one who had been in Washington, and
so it chanced that it was of "Things Washington-
ese" that we talked rather than of our experiences as
farmers.
There was something strangely appealing to the
imagination in sitting there where the bison in his
millions had so lately trod and putting everything and
everybody at the Primal Fount in their proper places.
Long into the night we rattled on just as though over
a table at the Shoreham, the New Williard or Chevy
Chase — just as we would have talked in Washington.
Knocking Wilson whenever any other subject was
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 251
exhausted, we bemoaned the predominance of tWrd-
class men in Congress, agreed that Harding wouldn't
do much harm and might do good, swapped yarns
about the funny things Congressmen's wives had said
and done, and passed by acclamation a motion that the
most unrepresentative institution in America was the
House of Representatives. It was highly refreshing
to meet people you could be really frank with in dis-
cussing the more or less esoteric phases of these and
kindred subjects. I enjoyed that evening's yarn only
less than I did my couch on a breeze-swept porch that
was armoured with a woven copper mesh against the
assaults of the common enemy.
Before I pushed off in the morning Mr. Patterson
took me around two sides of his ranch and showed
me some splendid fields of alfalfa and sweet clover,
just ready for cutting. Prices were good, he said,
and the prospects were bright for the best clean-up
they had known so far. I have often wondered just
how those green, fragrant fields looked ten hours later,
just how much those optimistic forecasts were modi-
fied as a consequence of certain little inequalities of
atmospheric pressure that were already making their
differences felt in a lightning-shot murkiness hanging
low on the northeastern horizon. I did not make sure
of the Patterson's address and a postcard of inquiry I
subsequently dispatched brought no reply.
252 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
I was aware of the heavy humidity of the atmos-
phere the moment I pulled out in the slow current
of the still broadening river. There was plenty of
air stirring but with no fixed plan of action in its
mind. Now it would swoop down over the banks in
sudden gusts; now it would blow down river for a
few moments and then turn on its heel and come
breezing right back, like a commuter who has for-
gotten his ticket; now it would deliberately *'Box-the-
Compass" right round the boat, as a cat circles a
rat that it is just a bit chary about springing on.
The easterly gusts paved the surface of the water
with evanescent patches of floating grasshoppers, evi-
dently part of a flight that had not yet found lodg-
ment in the growing fields under the irrigation proj-
ect on the other bank. After each gust the fish
would rise greedily to the feast for a few minutes.
Satiation would come quickly, however, and most of
the hoppers were left to drown or perhaps to gain
a few hours longer lease on life by drifting to a bar.
One gust that came while I was skirting the shore
poured a literal grasshopper cataract over the cut-
bank into the boat. There was a sharp, rasping con-
tact where the saw-toothed legs side-swiped my arms
and face that would undoubtedly have left abra-
sions on the skin if it had been kept up for any time.
For a few moments there was a layer cS hoppers two
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 253
or three inches deep in the bottom of the skiff; then
the most of them hurdled out into the water. The
dessicated remains of the few ambuscados that took
refuge in the grub-box kept turning up in a variety
of frys, stews, and fricassees for the next fortnight.
I pulled up to Riverview Ferry, well on toward
the North Dakota line, at one o'clock. Mr. and
Mrs. Meadows, with whom I had lunch, once oper-
ated a pontoon bridge at this point but had given it
up on account of the trouble from high water. They
wanted to sell the twenty or more pontoons left on
their hands but said they could not see where a buyer
would come from. It occurred to me that one of
these floats would make an ideal hull for a house-
boat, for a Missouri-Mississippi voyage, just as Riv-
erview would be an ideal place for launching one.
I have not Mr. Meadows' address, but fancy Sidney,
Montana, would reach him. I shall not take the re-
sponsibility of urging any one to attempt a trip of this
kind, but should the urge have developed spontane-
ously I think there is a chance here to acquire the
makings of an extremely serviceable house-boat at a
fraction of what it would cost to go about building it
in the ordinary way. Starting at high water in
June, an outfit of this kind — with luck and in the
hands of the right party — might well go through to
New Orleans before Christmas. Manned by a party
254 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
without much common sense and persistence, it might
conceivably be abandoned by some wildly regretful
people before it swung out into the "Big Muddy."
I utterly refuse to pass upon any one's qualification,
or to take other than hostile notice of letters charg-
ing me with ruining what but for me might have been
a comparatively inexpensive and enjoyable holiday in
Bermuda or on the Riviera.
The ferryman at Riverview claimed to have made
the voyage from Miles City to somewhere on the
lower Mississippi in a house-boat, taking two seasons
for it. He was the first ferryman I ever met who was
full of doleful warnings about troubles ahead. My
little tin boat might be all right for the rapids of the
Yellowstone, he said, but just wait till it went up
against the white caps kicked up by the winds of the
Missouri and the Mississippi. He said no word about
the winds of the Yellowstone. If he wasn't pre-
pared for them, I only hope his ferryboat was not
caught in midstream by a zephyr that breezed up
river about three hours later.
It must have "been toward three o'clock 4;hat I first
noticed how what had been a grey murkiness to the
north-east all morning was now rising in a solid bank
of swiftly advancing cloud. For a while its front
was smooth and rounded, like the rim of a tin-plate.
Half-way up to the zenith this front began to reveal
n
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 255
itself as a wind-riven line of madly racing nimbus,
black, sinister and ominous. And yet, blissfully ig-
norant of the hell-broth a-brew, I worried not a whit
— didn't even begin to edge away from mid-channel
for a while, in fact. What a lamb it was! Never
again, with so much as a man's-hand-sized cloud blink-
ing on the windward horizon, was I to know the
calm, quiet, serenity of a confident soul.
A long, lean, torpedo-like shaft of blue-black cloud,
breaking away from the ruck and aiming in a direc-
tion that would bring it directly over my head, pro-
duced the first splash in the pool of my perfect se-
renity. That did look just a bit as though I might
be running into the centre of a heavy thunder-storm,
I confessed to myself. Perhaps, if there was a ranch-
house convenient, it might be just as well to be think-
ing of getting under cover. Yes, there were three
or four houses off to the left — places on the irrigation
project, doubtless, they were so close together. I
started to pull in toward a sandy flat, but sheered
off again when it becaike apparent that a slough and
marsh would cut me off from the first of the houses,
a place with a silo and the inevitable red bam.
Plainly the only way to reach any of the farms would
be by landing at the foot of the bluff a quarter of
a mile ahead, climbing up and cutting across the
fields. That might not be possible before the storm
256 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
broke — but what did a warm summer rain matter
anyhow?
Leaning hard onto my oars, I headed straight down
stream for where a coal-streaked yellow bluff blocked
the northerly course of the river and bent it off al-
most directly eastward. Swelling monstrously as it
approached, the black arrow-head of the storm, de-
flecting sHghtly, began to pass overhead to the left.
I distinctly remember thinking how its shape now sug-
gested the picked skeleton of a gigantic mackerel —
just a backbone and right-angling ribs. The sun
dimmed and reddened as the flying clouds began to
drive across its face, and the even ribs barred the dull-
ing glow like a furnace grating. A sulphurous, cop-
perly glare streaming through cast a weird unearthly
sheen on the unrhythmically lapping wavelets of the
river. My serenity was blotted out with the sun. I
recalled only too well now where I had known that
ghostly yellow light before — the sullen fore-glow by
which the South Sea hurricane slunk upon its helpless
prey. It had always been associated in my mind with
the shriek of the wind, the roar of the surf and the
explosive detonations of snapped coco palm boles.
There were no coco palms here to snap, I reflected,
but — ah, that was surely a roar, and there came the
wind!
Pulling in a dead calm myself, I saw the river and
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 257
air at the bend turn white ahnost between one stroke
and the next. A tongue of wind seemed to have shot
out from behind a point to the right and begun scoop-
ing up hunks of the river and throwing them across
the flats. This blast was at right angles to my course
down stream, but I came parallel to it as I swung and
headed for the sand-bar on my left. The air was coil-
ing and twisting upon itself as I landed, but that
out-licking tongue of the storm was passing me by
and circling the bluffs beyond the flat.
Without unloading the skiff, I dragged her as far
in on the bar as I could, threw my stuff together in
the forward section and snugged it down under a
tarpaulin. Its weight might keep the boat from
blowing away, I -figured. Then I drove oars in the
sand with an ax and ran lines to them from bow and
stern — ^land-moorings, so to epeak. The fore-front
of the wind hard and sohd as the side of a moving
barn, caught me from behind as I made fast the bow-
line. I went forward to my knees, sprawled flat,
wiggled round head-on and then, leaning far forward,
slowly struggled to my feet. Hanging balanced at
angle of forty-five degrees, I started slowly crabbing
back to the boat. It wasn't so bad after all, I told
myself. The skiff was not giving an inch to the blast,
while leaning up against the wind that way was rather
good fun. I recalled a stunt something like it that
258 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
Little Tich used to pull in the London Halls — an
eccentric dance with enormously elongated shoes.
I decided that perhaps I was even enjoying the di-
version a bit. In half -pretended nonchalance I
turned my head and cast a side-glance over toward
the farmhouses back of the bluffs. That was the
last move of even assumed nonchalance I was guilty of
for some time.
That side-glance photographed three things on my
memory: a grove of willows flattened almost against
the earth by the wind, two women, with wondrously
billowing skirts, crawling along the side of a house
toward a door, and a flimsy unpainted outbuilding re-
solving into its component parts and pelting across
a corral full of horses. Doubtless there was more ani-
mated action to be observed had I been spared an-
other hundredth of a second or so to get a line on it.
The three things mentioned were as far as I got when
the hail opened up.
With the viciousness of spattering shrapnel that
first salvo of frozen pellets raked me across the right
cheek. The tingle of pain was astonishingly sharp,
like that from the blow of a back-snapped thorn
branch on an overgrown trail, and I was a bit sur-
prised when an explorative finger revealed no trace of
blood. Hunching my neck brought my face under
cover, but the batteries of the storm had got my range
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 259
now and there was a decided sting to the impact of
those baby icebergs, even through my slicker and
shirt. People are very prone to exaggerate about the
size of hail-stones, so I shall endeavour to make a spe-
cial effort to be conservative about these. They felt
a lot bigger when they hit, of course, but as I exam-
ined heaps of them afterward the average size seemed
to be about that of shrapnel or large marbles. There
may have been hail-stones the size of hens' eggs, but
no one who was ever exposed to them in the open can
have lived to tell the tale. Men looking out through
the bars of jail may have seen them and survived
to make affidavits ; most other authentic reports of
egg-sized hail-stones will doubtless be pretty well con-
fined to the minutes of coroners' juries. Indeed, I
am inclined to think that a considerable crimp would
have been put in my down-river schedule by the com-
paratively diminutive pellets I faced on this occasion
but for the shelter I presently found for my head
under the side of the skiff.
As the hail-stones, flying before the wind, were
hurtling along almost horizontally, huddling under
the lee bow of the skiff protected just about all of
me but my feet. Even that was not good enough,
however, for the impact of the blows on the tops of
my toes left an extraordinary ache behind it — some-
thing that I could not contemplate standing for an
260 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
indefinite number of murderous minutes. Clawing
over the side for a canvas or poncho to buffer the
worst of the barrage, my hand came in contact with
the roll of my sleeping pocket. That gave me an
idea. The wind, getting inside the hollow bag,
nearly tore it from my hands as I started to imroll it,
but once I got it smothered under me the rest was
easy. With my legs inside of the bag and the unin-
flated rubber mattress between my feet and the hail-
stones, about all I had to bother about seemed to be
a wind strong enough to carry the boat away and me
with it.
From the way things developed for the next cou-
ple of minutes this appeared to be just about what
was going to happen, however. I cannot recall ever
having felt more panicky in my life than when I saw
that that fore-running tongue of wind, which had
originally come charging round the bend from east,
had now circled southward along the bluffs below the
farmhouses and was heading straight back into the
east again. That meant that I was now occupying
the almost mathematical centre of the vortex of a real
"twister" — that I was about to be rocked on the bosom
of a fairly husky young cyclone. Something pro-
nounced in the way of an uplift movement was in-
evitably due the moment that back-curving tongue of
air lapped round to the place it started from.
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 261
A whimsical comparison flashed across my mind in
watching through the crook of my fending arm the
witch-dance of that circling blast. In some town up-
river I had seen a movie of the Custer Massacre, at
the climacteric moment of which the howhng hordes
of Gall and Rain-in-the-Face and Crazy-Horse
whirled in a wide circle round their doomed victims,
the mental agonies of which latter were shown in suc-
cessive cut-ins of close-ups. Now I was once assured
by a world-famous movie star that he always actually
felt in his heart — to the very depths of his being — ^the
emotion he was called on to register, was it murderous
lust, ineffable virtue, mother-love or what-not. Very
well. Assuming this to be true of all great movie
actors, I have very grave doubt if any of that silver-
screen last-stand battalion of Custer's felt any more
real a pricking of the scalp in watching the closing
circle of dancing Redskins than did I in waiting for
that spinning blast of wind to decide whether or not
it was going to stage a "Pick-me-up" party.
It is not quite clear in my mind even now why
things in my inmiediate vicinity did not start to avi-
ate. Several loosely built structures on the bluff
went flying off like autumn leaves, and wind enough
to blow boards into tree-tops would have at least
sent my boat rolling if not sky-ing. I am inclined
to think, however, that the failure of any marked
262 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
heliocoptic action to develop was due to a lack of
pronounced opposition on the part of a bluffing turn-
coat of a southwesterly wind. The latter skirmished
just long enough to turn in the vanguards of the
main storm, but took to its heels the moment the thun-
derbolt phalanx was launched upon it. It was the
advent of this Juggernaut that marked the end of
my consecutive impressions. Primal Chaos simply
clapped the lid down over me and kept it there for
several aeons — fifteen minutes to be exact.
Although it was rapidly getting darker, I had still
been able to see not a little of what was going on up
to the moment the God of the Thunders uncorked
his artillery; after that I simply heard and felt and
grovelled in the sand. The big red silo was the last
of the old workaday world I remember seeing be-
fore my horizon contracted from a quarter of a mile
to a scant ten feet. (I don't recall that old Jim
Bridger ever made anything shrink as fast and far
as that, even with the astringent waters of Alum
Creek.) The boat and I were lying in a grey-walled
cocktailshaker and being churned up with flying sand,
hail and jagged hunks of blown river water. At
first the resultant mixture was milk-warm, but pres-
ently it became hterally ice-cold, so that I shivered
in it like a new-shorn lamb. (The warm water was
that blown from the river. The subsequent chilling,
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 263
as I figured out afterwards, was due to the hail bank-
ing up against the windward side of the skiff, finally-
filling the forward section of the latte*r and drifting
right on over to congeal my cowering anatomy.)
The thunder did not come into action battery by
battery after its wonted practice, but seemed
to open up all of a sudden with a crashing barrage
all along the line. Flashes and crashes were simul-
taneous. The light of the jagged bolts broadened
the diameter of my bowl by not a foot. The solid
grey walls simply glowed and dulled like a ground-
glass bulb when its light is switched on and off. Not
one clear-cut flash did I see in the whole bombard-
ment.
I have always been a great believer in whistling
to keep up ebbing courage ; not necessarily a blowing
of air through pursed lips, but any easy and spon-
taneous action to show nonchalance and sang froid
in the face of danger. The particular practice which
had always seemed to produce the best results was
reciting stirring and appropriate poetry. "Sparta-
cus to the Gladiators" and "Roll on thou deep and
dark blue ocean, roll!" had steadied my faltering
nerve in many crises. On this occasion it was when
the boat broke loose from its moorings and started
to roll over upon me that I began to feel the need
of spiritual stiffening. I must have picked on Kip-
f
264 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
ling because "The Song of the Red War Boat" had
been running in my head for a day or two.
^'Hearken, Thor of the Thunder! (I sputtered)
We are not here for a jest."
But that was altogether too obvious. I broke off
and began again:
"The thunders bellow and clamour
The harm that they mean to do;
There goes Thor'a own Hammer
Cracking the night in two I
Close! But the blow has missed her. , . ."
But that was premature. Far from missing her,
the blow had at last got a shoulder under the bottom
of my poor little skiff and over she came ! By Thor's
grace she hung there, instead of going on rolling; but
those fifteen or twenty gallons of slightly liquefied
hail seemed to drain straight from the base of the
North Pole. I tried to continue registering noncha-
lance and sang froid, but accomplished an only too
literal rendition of the latter. I was still spitting
sand and quavermg ''There goes Thor's own Ham-
mer^' when the walls of my hail-hole began to brighten
and recede — and presently it was a warm, soft sum-
mer afternoon again. That three-mile-wide Jugger-
naut of Primal Chaos was rolling away straight
across those verdant irrigated farms of the Yellow-
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 265
stone Project and leaving desolation in its wake. I
only hope that it chastened the mendacious ferry-
man at Riverview and made a sharp right-angle bend
round the Pattei^son farm above Savage.
It was a considerably altered world that met the
owl-like bhnk of my still somewhat sand-filled eyes.
The big red barn and the silo still loomed against
the sky-line above the bluff, and most of the other
houses and barns were still standing* All of the
windmills had slipped out of the picture, however,
and many lesser wooden structures. Trees were
broken: off or uprooted in all directions. But the
strangest effect was from the practical disappearance
of the thousands of acres of standing crops — beaten
into the earth by the hail. There, I knew, lay the
real tragedy of Thor's little field-day. Quite likely
no human beings had been killed — but how many
human hopes ? The American public like to think and
talk in millions. Very well. There went a natural
mill that was grinding up corn and alfalfa and clover
and wheat at the rate of a million dollar's worth a
minute. Who said the mills of the gods grind slowly?
Much as I was longing for the cheering propinquity
of fellow creatures just at that moment, I hated the
thought of intruding upon the blank despair that I
knew had preceded me as a guest in the farmhouse
beyond the big red barn.
260 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
Laying out a change of dry clothes from one of
my water-proof bags, I stripped off my wet ones and
freshened up with a plunge into the warm, invigor-
ating current of the river. Thanks to the lightness
and simplicity of my outfit, salvage operations were
easily and expeditiously, effected. The skiff had
dumped itself in blowing over and was ready for
launching as soon as it was tipped back. Most of
my clothes were dry; most of my grub wet. The
worst loss in the latter was the sentimental one of
the residue of my California home-dried apricots. I
didn't care much for the darn things myself, but the
people along the river had proved dead keen for the
succulent amber slabs. Moreover, it had always lent
a pretty touch at parting to hand my host or hostess
something produced on my own ranch, with perhaps
a few words about how it had been picked, pitted,
sulphured, dried and packed by Mexican senoritas
— all young and dark-eyed and beautiful. That last
had been especially effective in lone cow-camps.
Yes, I was sorry to be compelled to give the last of
those apricots away all at once to prevent their spoil-
ing from dampness. I resolved to buy some more to
replace them — for making up intimate little packets
of parting — at the first opportunity.
The river had become its own quiet self again
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 267
within a few moments, and I pulled through a slow
current to the foot of the bluff at the bend, which
appeared to be the only place one could land and
avoid the mud-flats. The long sand-bar on which I
had ridden out the storm had been scoured almost
beyond recognition by the blown river waters. In
a dozen places channels had been scoured straight
through it to the slough behind, and the latter, greatly
augmented both from the river and from the drain-
age from the heights above, was pouring a muddy
torrent back into the mother stream at the bend. I
saw that I was luckier than I had at first appreciated
in not having had the bar dissolve beneath my feet.
Fully resolved, if no alternative cover offered, to
tunnel into the bluff to avoid exposure to another
of Thor's Juggernautic joy-rides, I landed on a jut-
ting ledge of water-soaked lignite at the bend.
Stacking up my outfit, I clapped the skiff down upon
it, threw a few lashings over the whole, and climbed
out up the bluff. With the fields themselves deep
in water and liquid mud, I had to zigzag cross-coun-
try toward the nearest house by following the em-
bankments of the irrigating ditches. Not a blade
of grass was left standing. All that remained of
alfalfa, oats and corn was a tangled green mat half
covered with slowly melting hail-stones. Half -grown
268 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
corn had not only been beaten flat, but the very stalks
were crushed and shredded as if pounded by ham-
mers.
There was only one cheering thing about that
whole sodden field of desolation — ^millions on millions
of mosquitos had been battered to death by the hail.
Great masses of them, literally pulped, had been
strained out of the water and collected against heaps
of debris in the ditches. One could scoop them up
by the double handfuls. How often had I bemoaned
the fact that every mosquito around some swampy
Alaskan or Guinanan camp of mine had not a single
head so that I could sever it with one fell swoop of
and ax or machete! That was too much to hope for,
of course; but right here was a tolerably fair approach
to it. I squeezed three or four fistfuls of those
pulped tormentors through my fingers and felt ap-
preciably less depressed.
Cut off by a deep-scoured drainage canal from a
direct approach to the farm of the big red barn, I
fared back for a quarter of a mile to a road and a
bridge. Crossing the latter and wading through
deep puddles, I came upon what I first took to be
a deserted ranch. The corrals were down, the barn
partially unroofed, and the windowless house was all
but stripped of its shingles. There was a response
to my knock, however, and I entered a half -wrecked
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 269
kitchen to find three men sitting round a table. A
lamp was burning on a wall-shelf, but its flickering
flame barely threw a glow above the top of the
opaquely smoked chimney.
The greeting I received was unconventional —
even slightly disconcerting.
"Are you broke?" boomed the blunt query from
a big chap with a hammer, evidently just through
tacking a blanket over a window. His two com-
panions took pipes from their mouths and hung on
my answer as though it might be a matter of con-
siderable importance.
"Not at all. ..." I began, intending to go on and
assure them that, far from being the hobo I looked,
I had money in my pocket and a large bag of Cali-
fornia home-dried apricots to give away. But they
waited only on my denial.
"All right. Move on!" they chorused to the ac-
companiment of stagy gestures. "This is no place
for a man that ain't broke. We are. Went broke
half an hour ago. Hailed outr An old fellow with
whiskers added the explanatory trimmings.
I gulped two or three times and was about to frame
a minimum demand for an hour to dry my wet togs
by the fire when the big chap strode over, clapped me
jovially on the shoulder and forced me into a chair
by the table.
270 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
*'Don't mind our little joke, friend," he said with
a ringing laugh. "Whatever there is left in this
shack in the way of comfort is at your disposal for
the night, or as long as you want to stay. Where
did the storm catch you? Car stalled on the road,
I suppose."
"Boat — on river — sand-bar," I replied between
gulps from the mug of steaming black coffee the big
fellow had poured me.
The three of them exchanged glances, first quiz-
zical and then indicative of dawning comprehension.
Finally they threw back their heads and guffawed
louder than ever. I finished my coffee and gave
them time to finish their laugh. Then I asked, in a
slightly hurt tone I fear, just what joke they saw
in being caught on a sand-bar by an embryonic cy-
clone. Perhaps if they had been there them-
selves. . . .
That set them off again, and I had time to pour
and empty another mug of coffee before one of them
was sufficiently recovered to reply. The old boy
with whiskers was the first to get his merriment un-
der leash, and so it was he who explained: "That
wasn't what tickled us; we was only laughin' 'cause
youse was already drowned an' had a gang scoutin'
for your dead body."
As that fell well within the compass of my own
THE YELLOWSTONE JUST ABOVE LIVINGSTON (Ahove)
THE YELLOWSTONE JUST AFTER RECEIVING THE BIG HORN (Below)
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 271
sense of humour, I joined the mirth party too, and
the four of us laughed all together. It appeared
that a gang of ditch-hands, before taking to cover,
had seen a man pulling down stream into the teeth
of the advancing .storm. The last they saw of him
he was trying to climb out on a sand-bar. The waves
were all around him and he appeared to be at his last
gasp. When the storm had blown by and they looked
again, no trace remained of man nor boat. That
was substantially the story the ditch-hands told in
recruiting a posse to search for the body. If they
had ventured out from cover lave minutes sooner they
would have seen just what had become of both man
and boat, instead of having to have it explained to
them by a trio of hilarious farmers who seemed to
feel the need of something in the way of comic re-
lief to take the edge off the tragedy of being "hailed
out."
The big chap's name was Solberg. He was of
Norwegian descent, extremely well educated, and had
spent a number of years teaching in the schools of
Minnesota. I was only too glad to accept his invita-
tion to stay over-night and dry out, especially as the
weather appeared to be far from settled. After call-
ing in my search-party, I returned home with him
and we spent the remaining hours of daylight board-
ing up windows, patching the roof and rendering
272 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
first-aid generally to his wounded house. The plucky-
fellow was far from being crushed. He admitted
that his crops were a total loss, that he was borrowed
up to the limit with the bank, and that he didn't even
see just how he was going to pay any of his debts.
And yet — if he could only get hold of a bunch of
sheep to fatten. Sheep were more in his line. Per-
haps, in the long run, he would be all the better off
for having to get back to them. Calling over his
collie, he took the dog's head between his knees and
asked him what he thought about it. The intelH-
gent animal eyed his master seriously for a few
moments and then wagged his tail approvingly.
" 'Shag' thinks it will be best to go back to sheep,"
pronounced Solberg. Then, musingly. "Yes, I
reckon sheep's the answer."
After supper Solberg said that he was a good deal
worried about his neighbours to the east — that they
were harder hit than any one else, and in rather worse
shape to stand it. A woman and kiddies didn't make
it any easier when a man was hailed out. X
had seemed pretty despondent when he had dropped
in just after the storm. Talked rather wildly. Said
he was through for good. Solberg hadn't been quite
sure whether X had just meant he was through
with farming, or something else. He was rather a
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 273
moody chap at best. . . . Perhaps no harm would
be done if we took a turn over that way. ...
The "neighbour to the east" turned out to be the
big red barn and silo which, during the storm, had
stood to me as the symbols of all that remained stable
in the universe. A young woman opened the door
of the staunch little farmhouse to us — a girl with a
baby in her arms and a couple of youngsters fastened
on her skirt. Her face was pretty — decidedly so, as
I saw presently, — but at the moment I noticed that
less than the courage it expressed. There was a well
of tears behind her fine eyes, but I knew the shedding
of them was going to be postponed indefinitely. Sol-
berg, after directing a questioning look round the
kitchen and sitting-room, asked bluntly where her
husband was. With a nervous glance in my di-
rection, she replied evasively that he was "outside
walking round," adding that she had milked the cows
and done the chores herself. With a keen and sym-
pathetic glance of understanding, my friend turned
on his heel and vanished into the darkness.
Never having seen any one hailed-out before, I
was somewhat at a loss to know just what form my
comforting ought to take. Finally, doubtless sub-
consciously inspired by "The Greatest Mother in the
World" picture, I scooped up all the kiddies in sight
274 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
and started to dandle them. I had always won ap-
proving nods for pulling that kind of a stunt, whether
it was in a London Zeppelin raid or a di^ive of Ar-
menian refugees at Trebizond. Even here it was
sound — theoretically at least — for it gave the mother
a chance to use her hands and apron to wipe dishes.
Where it miscarried was on the practical side — the
oldest boy would keep putting his hob-nailed boot
in the baby's eye. But when I had cached the baby
in its crib and gagged the other two with a handful
of wet dried apricots, instinct came to my rescue and
headed me oif on the proper tack — sympathy stuff.
That is, I told her my own troubles and led her to
forget hers in sympathizing with them.
Sincerely and unfeignedly sorry as I was for these
people, I was (momentarily) almost as sorry for
myself before I came to the end of that tale of woe.
I was a poor farmer from California. (Just how
poor, and in how many senses of the word, I didn't
confess.) Of all the farmers in the world, none had
so many troubles as the California farmer. Take
oranges, for example. If the buds escaped the frost
probably the tiny green fruit would succumb to the
"June Drop." If the latter was weathered, there
were the black scale, the brown rot and the red spider
lying in ambush, complicated by the probability of
water shortage at the end of the summer. If the
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 275
fruit ran that gauntlet and came to maturity, then
there lurked the worst menace of all — the January
frosts. And finally, if the ripe fruit survived the
frost barrage and reached the packing-house, it was
only to be pushed on into the "No Man's Land" of
an overstocked market. No man lived with so many
Damoclean swords suspended over him as the Cali-
fornia orange grower — unless it was the California
peach, prune, apricot, grape, nectarine or olive
grower; or the walnut or almond grower; or the al-
falfa, barley or wheat farmer ; or the truck gardener.
I had been all of these, I said, and was just about
to go on particularizing on the diseases and dangers
threatening each crop, as I had done with the orange,
when the rustle of a skirt caused me to raise my
bowed head. There she was, a half-wiped pie-tin
still in the bight of her apron, standing over me and
looking down with tears a lot nearer to brimming
than when we entered.
"And so you have had to come up to Montana
looking for work?" she asked in a voice vibrant with
sympathy. "What a shame it is we're all hailed-out
round here, with no work in sight, and nothing to
pay for it with if there was."
Having over-sailed the mark by a mile, I hastened
to trim in canvas and beat back onto the course as
originally charted. The last year or two in Califor-
276 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
nia hadn't been so bad, I admitted. I had even made
quite a bit of money, so that this little river jaunt
of mine on the Yellowstone was really almost in the
nature of a pleasure trip. (Funny thing, but that
river-pleasure- jaunt assertion was the only statement
I made at which she seemed inclined to lift an eye-
brow. ) I had brought a few of my California home-
dried apricots along, I continued. Perhaps they
would enjoy a few for a change. That was the point
I had been manoeuvring to. Now I would play my
comforter role.
Spreading the last of my bag of sticky slabs out
before the fire, I started to tell how they were made.
First there was the picking by men and the cutting
and pitting by Mexican girls. She interrupted to
ask what the girls were paid. I told her about fif-
teen cents a box, adding that some of the defter fin-
gered of them often made three and four dollars a
day. She sighed at that, and wished she had a chance
to earn that much — sure and safe where the hail
couldn't get it.
Solberg came in with her husband at this junc-
ture. He was a good-looking young chap, well set
up and with the right kind of an eye. There was no
doubt of the depth of his discouragement and de-
pression, but he was plainly too good stuff to sulk
for long. He shook hands warmly enough, but there
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 277
was a trace of bitterness in the smile with which he
remarked that he was glad to see that I had survived
the hail better than had his oats and corn. I rattled
right on about the apricots, telling of the sulphur-
ing, sunning, stacking, binning and packing, adding
— in a convenient moment when the wife had stepped
out to shake the tablecloth — that ever effective little
capsule about the Mexican senoritas, all young, dark-
eyed and beautiful. The good chap actually lifted
his head and took a deep, shoulder-squaring breath
at that. He relapsed again when I failed to develop
the theme, but it was only temporary. Ten minutes
later, with great inconsequentiality, I heard him ask-
ing his wife how she would like to go to California
and work in the apricots. Then he went over, wound
up the Victrola and put on ''Smiles! Smiles! Smiles!"
What a lot of latent good there was in those Cali-
fornia home-dried apricots, I reflected as we splashed
along homeward! Surely I must not fail to renew
my supply at the next town.
As we were preparing to turn in for the night, I
took Solberg to task for his remark earlier in the
evening to the effect that a woman and kiddies didn't
make it any easier for a man who had been hailed-
out. "Don't you think," I asked, "that a plucky lit-
tle woman like that comes in pretty handy to buffer
the bumps in a time of trouble like this?" For the
278 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
first and only time my host was guilty of sarcasm.
"Well," he said with a cynical glint in his blue eye,
*'if I had been in your place down there on the sand-
bar I daresay I would have been glad of almost any-
thing to buffer the bumps of the hail-stones. As
it is, I reckon I can do my own buffering."
Recognizing the familiar symptoms of an ancient
but still unhealed wound, I thought the best thing
I could do under the circumstances was to concen-
trate on blowing up my sleeping-bag and turning
in. Funny how imagination works in a man who is
much alone. Given a pin-prick over the heart, with
ten years of solitude to brood over it, and he'll con-
vince himself that the original wound was from noth-
ing of less calibre than a "Big Bertha."
The next morning was bright and clear, with no
signs of any menace lurking under the northeastern
horizon. Solberg accompanied me across his ruined
fields to my boat. His corn and oats, he admitted,
were a total loss, but he thought there were signs that
the tough, stringy stalks of the sweet clover had some
vitality left in them. He seemed especially attached
to this beautiful plant, calling it "The Friend of
Man" and saying that he had experimented with sev-
eral foods and drinks from it that promised well for
human consumption. There was something partic-
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 279
ulary appealing to me in this fine, and bluff, if slightly
eccentric, chap. I think it was his wholesomeness —
the firmness with which he seemed to have his feet
planted on the earth. One who has been attracted
to the French peasant for his love of the land from
which he draws his life will know what I mean.
I pushed off into a quiet current that was in strange
contrast to the wind-torn welter of white I had seen
at that bend the evening before. The air on the river
was fairly drenched with the heavy odour of crushed
vegetation, which seemed to have drained there from
higher levels. This was pronounced at all times, but
where I skirted fields of sweet clover there was a pal-
pability to the perfume which suggested that one
might almost gather it in his hands and allow it to
pour through his fingers. In the Marquesas there
is a little yellow-blossomed bush called the cassi, the
pollen from which blows far to leeward before the
South-east Trade. At times I have thought that I
could detect the delicate odour of hlown-cassi ten
miles at sea, yet never even in kicking my way
through a copse of the fragrant little bush have I been
assailed with such a veritable flow of perfume as
coiled and streamed about me as I drifted down
toward the mouth of the Yellowstone that morning
after the great hail-storm. Doubtless, indeed, the
280 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
hail was responsible. Crushed and dying, the voice-
less "Friend of Man" was chanting its "Swan Song"
in the only medium at its command.
A couple of miles below the bend where the storm
had caught me I passed into North Dakota at a point
called the State Line Ferry. An hour later I ran
under the bridge of a branch of the Great Northern.
It was a fine, bold piece of construction, and it was
in my mind at the time that its builder must be an
outstanding man in his line. This surmise was vin-
dicated a month later when I found him putting in
the first piers of a bridge to span the Missouri at
Yankton. Incidentally, some of his false-work got
in the way of my skiff and all but dumped me out
into the "Big Muddy."
Below Forsyth's Butte, last of the outstanding
landmarks of the Yellowstone, the country on both
sides began to smoothen and flatten out and offer
less resistance to the spread of the river. The broad
overflow flats offered an ideal breeding ground for
mosquitos, recalling to me that a very large portion
of Clark's journey of early August was devoted to
telling of the mental and physical suffering inflicted
upon the members of his party by the swarms of
stinging pests they had encountered just above and
below the mouth of the Yellowstone. From Clark's
time down to the present this particular region has
I
^MTU^/K
I
liiiiiiilliiMA
THE BROAD STREAM OF THE YELLOWSTONE BELOW GLENDIVE (AboVe)
THE LAST BRIDGE ABOVE THE MISSOURI (Center)
WHERE THE YELLOWSTONE TAKES POSSESSION OF THE MISSOURI (Below)
GLENDIVE TO THE MISSOURI 281
always been regarded as "The Dark and Bloody-
Ground of the Mosquito Coast of Dakota." I was
resolved to put bars between myself and the enemy
that night — if not the mosquito bars of a hotel room,
then the mid-stream sand-bars of the Missouri.
A broad, sweeping curve to the left, a wide bend,
and then an equally broad and sweeping curve to the
right opened up a long vista with low, dry, rounded
hills at the end of it. With a quick catch of breath
I recognized the telegraph poles of the Great North-
ern Railway and the scattering buildings of Fort
Buford — both beyond the Missouri, A swift run
under a crumbling cut-bank on the left carried me
past an out-reaching tongue of yellow clay and into
a quiet, sluggish, dark-stained current that came
meandering along from the west.
I have mentioned the quieter, calmer current in
which I had been drifting below Glendive. So it had
seemed after the tumultuous mountain torrent which
I had run from Livingston to Billings; yet in com-
parison with this decorous bride from the west the
Yellowstone came to its marriage bed like a raging
lion. Or, to borrow an animal from the next cage
in the zoo, the Missouri, in coming down to meet and
mingle with the Yellowstone, fared much like the
lady who went out to ride on the tiger. If I may
paraphrase:
282 DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
"I finished my ride with the Lady inside.
And the smile on the face of the Tiger,"
meaning the Yellowstone. Without even pausing to
crouch for a spring, the tawny, impetuous feline on
whose back I had ridden all the way down from the
Rockies, simply rushed out upon the muddy lamb
from the western plains and gobbled it up. Seven
or eight weeks later I saw the latter do the same thing
to the Mississippi — crowd it right over against the
Illinois shore and gulp it down. And along toward
the end of October I remember thinking how like
the blonde beast of the Yellowstone was a ropy coil
of tawny current I found undermining a levee in
Louisiana. According to the maps I had been travel-
ling for upwards of three thousand miles on the Mis-
souri and Mississippi, but in fancy it was the tawny
tiger of the Yellowstone that had carried me all the
way from the borders of Wyoming to the tide-waters
of the Gulf of Mexico.
THE END
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THTR BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
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THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY
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FEB 18193
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