II. RUNNING THE BEND
_Kinbasket Lake and Rapids_
It continued slushing all night and most of the next day, keeping us
pretty close to camp. Andy, like the good housewife he was, kept
snugging up every time he got a chance, so that things assumed a
homelier and cheerier aspect as the day wore on. I clambered for a
couple of miles down the rocky eastern bank of the lake in the forenoon.
The low-hanging clouds still obscured the mountains, but underfoot I
found unending interest in the astonishing variety of drift corralled by
this remarkable catch-all of the upper Columbia. The main accumulation
of flotsam and jetsam was above our camp, but even among the rocks I
chanced onto almost everything one can imagine, from a steel rail--with
the ties that had served to float it down still spiked to it--to a
fragment of a vacuum-cleaner. What Roos called "the human touch" was
furnished by an enormous uprooted spruce, on which some amorous
lumber-jack had been pouring out his love through the blade of his axe.
This had taken the form of a two-feet-in-diameter "bleeding heart"
pierced by an arrow. Inside the roughly hewn "pericardium" were the
initials "K. N." and "P. R.," with the date "July 4, 1910." One couldn't
be quite sure whether the arrow stood for a heart quake or a heart
break. Andy, who was sentimental and inclined to put woman in the
abstract on a pedestal, thought it was merely a heart quake; but
Blackmore, who had been something of a gallant in his day, and therefore
inclined to cynicism as he neared the sear and yellow leaf, was sure it
was heart break--that the honest lumber-jack had hacked in the arrow and
the drops of blood after he had been jilted by some jade. Roos wanted to
make a movie of this simple fragment of rustic art, with me standing by
and registering "pensive memories," or something of the kind; but I
managed to discourage him by the highly technical argument that it would
impair the "continuity" of the "sportsmanship" which was the prime
_motif_ of the present picture.
Blackmore piloted me up to the main area of drift in the afternoon. It
occupied a hundred acres or more of sand and mud flats which constituted
the lower part of the extensive delta deposited on the edge of the lake
by the waters of the good-sized stream of Middle River. At a first
glance it seemed nothing more than a great wilderness of tree
trunks--prostrate, upended, woven and packed together--extending for
hundreds of yards below high-water-mark. It was between these logs that
the smaller things had lodged. There were a number of boats, not greatly
damaged, and fragments enough to have reconstructed a dozen more. I am
convinced that a half day's search would have discovered the material
for building and furnishing a house, though carpets and wall paper would
hardly have been all one could desire. I even found a curling
iron--closely clasped by the bent nail upon which it had been hung on
the log of a cabin--and a corset. The latter seemed hardly worth
salving, as it appeared--according to Blackmore--to be a "military
model" of a decade or so back, and the steel-work was badly rusted.
However, it was not gewgaws or house-furnishing we were after. One could
hardly be expected to slither about in soft slush for second-hand things
of that kind. I gave a great glad whoop at my first sight of a
silt-submerged cask, only to find the head missing and nothing but mud
in it. So, too, my second and third. Then it was Blackmore who gave the
"View Halloo," and my heart gave a mighty leap. _His_ treasure trove had
the head intact, and even the bung _in situ_. But alas! the latter had
become slightly started, and although the contents had both smell and
colour they were so heavily impregnated with river mud that they would
hardly have been deemed fit for consumption except in New York and
California, and not worth the risk of smuggling even there. That cask
was the high-water-mark of our luck. Several others had the old familiar
smell, and that was all. But there is no doubt in the world that there
is whisky in that drift pile--hundreds of gallons of it, and some very
old. Blackmore swears to that, and I never knew him to lie--about
serious matters, I mean. In hunting and trapping yarns a man is expected
to draw a long bead. I pass on this undeniably valuable information to
any one that cares to profit by it. There are no strings attached. But
of course ... in the event of success ... Pasadena always finds me!...
We did have one find, though, that was so remarkable as to be worth all
the trouble and disappointment of our otherwise futile search. This was
a road-bridge, with _instinct_. The manner in which this had been
displayed was so astonishing as to be almost beyond belief; indeed, I
would hesitate about setting down the facts had I not a photograph to
prove them. This bridge was perhaps sixty feet in length, and had
doubtless been carried away by a freshet from some tributary of the
upper river which it had spanned. This was probably somewhere between
Golden and Windermere, so that it had run a hundred miles or more of
swift water, including the falls of Surprise Rapids, without losing more
than a few planks. This in itself was remarkable enough, but nothing at
all to the fact that, when it finally decided it had come far enough,
the sagacious structure had gone and planked itself down squarely across
another stream. It was still a bridge in fact as well as in form. It had
actually saved my feet from getting wet when I rushed to Blackmore's aid
in up-ending the cask of mud-diluted whisky. My photograph plainly shows
Blackmore standing on the bridge, with the water flowing directly
beneath him. It would have been a more comprehensive and convincing
picture if there had been light enough for a snapshot. As it was, I had
to set up on a stump, and in a position which showed less of both stream
and bridge than I might have had from a better place. I swear (and so
does Blackmore) that we didn't place the bridge where it was. It was
much too large for that. Roos wanted to shoot the whole three of us
standing on it and registering "unbounded wonderment," but the light
was never right for it up to the morning of our departure, and then
there wasn't time.
It rained and snowed all that night and most of the following day.
During the afternoon of the latter the clouds broke up twice or thrice,
and through rifts in the drifting wracks we had transient glimpses of
the peaks and glaciers of the Selkirks gleaming above the precipitous
western walls of the lake. The most conspicuous feature of the sky-line
was the three-peaked "Trident," rising almost perpendicularly from a
glittering field of glacial ice and impaling great masses of pendant
_cumulo-nimbi_ on its splintered prongs. Strings of lofty glacier-set
summits marked the line of the back-bone of the Selkirks to southeast and
northwest, each of them sending down rain-swollen torrents to tumble
into the lake in cataracts and cascades. Behind, or east of us, we knew
the Rockies reared a similar barrier of snow and ice, but this was cut
off from our vision by the more imminent lake-wall under which we were
camped. If Kinbasket Lake is ever made accessible to the tourist its
fame will reach to the end of the earth. This is a consummation which
may be effected in the event the Canadian Pacific wipes out Surprise
Rapids with its hydro-electric project dam and backs up a lake to
Beavermouth. The journey to this spot of incomparable beauty could then
be made soft enough to suit all but the most effete.
A torrential rain, following a warm southerly breeze which sprang up in
the middle of the afternoon, lowered the dense cloud-curtain again, and
shortly, from somewhere behind the scenes, came the raucous rumble and
roar of a great avalanche. Blackmore's practised ear led him to
pronounce it a slide of both earth and snow, and to locate it somewhere
on Trident Creek, straight across the lake from our camp. He proved to
be right on both counts. When the clouds lifted again at sunset, a long
yellow scar gashed the shoulder of the mountain half way up Trident
Creek to the glacier, and the clear stream from the latter had
completely disappeared. Blackmore said it had been dammed up by the
slide, and that there would be all hell popping when it broke through.
Scouting around for more boughs to soften his bed, Roos, just before
supper, chanced upon Steinhoff's grave. It was under a small pine, not
fifty feet from our tent, but so hidden by the dense undergrowth that it
had escaped our notice for two days. It was marked only by a fragment
split from the stern of a white-painted boat nailed horizontally on the
pine trunk and with the single word "STEINHOFF" carved in rude capitals.
At one corner, in pencil, was an inscription stating that the board had
been put up in May, 1920, by Joe French and Leo Tennis. With the golden
sunset light streaming through the trees, Roos, always strong for
"pathetic human touches" to serve as a sombre background for his Mack
Sennett stuff, could not resist the opportunity for a picture. Andy and
Blackmore and I were to come climbing up to the grave from the lake,
read the inscription, and then look at each other and shake our heads
ominously, as though it was simply a matter of time until we, too,
should fall prey to the implacable river. I refused straightaway, on
the ground that I had signed up to act the part of a light comedy
sportsman and not a heavy mourner. Blackmore and Andy were more
amenable. In rehearsal, however, the expressions on their honest faces
were so wooden and embarrassed that Roos finally called me up to stand
out of range and "say something to make 'em look natural." I refrain
from recording what I said; but I still maintain that shot was an
interruption of the "continuity" of my "gentleman-sportsman" picture. I
have not yet heard if it survived the studio surgery.
Shortly before dark, Andy, going down to look at his set-line, found a
three-foot ling or fresh-water cod floundering on the end of it. Roos
persuaded him to keep it over night so that the elusive "fishing
picture" might be made the following morning in case the light was good.
As there were five or six inches of water in the bottom of the boat,
Andy threw the ling in there for the night in preference to picketing
him out on a line. There was plenty of water to have given the husky
shovel-nose ample room to circulate with comfort if only he had been
content to take it easy and not wax temperamental. Doubtless it was his
imminent movie engagement that brought on his attack of flightiness. At
any rate, he tried to burrow under a collapsible sheet-iron stove
(which, preferring to do with a camp-fire, we had left in the boat) and
got stuck. The forward five pounds of him had water enough to keep alive
in, but in the night--when it cleared off and turned cold--his tail,
which was bent up sharply under a thwart, froze stiff at almost right
angles. But I am getting ahead of my story.
The next morning, the sixth of October, broke brilliantly clear, with
the sun gilding the prongs of the "Trident" and throwing the whole snowy
line of the Selkirks in dazzling relief against a deep turquoise sky.
Blackmore, keen for an early start, so as not to be rushed in working
down through the dreaded "Twenty-One-Mile" Rapids to Canoe River, rooted
us out at daybreak and began breaking camp before breakfast. He had
reckoned without the "fishing picture," however. Roos wanted bright
sunlight for it, claiming he was under special instructions to make
something sparkling and snappy. All through breakfast he coached me on
the intricate details of the action. "Make him put up a stiff fight," he
admonished through a mouthful of flapjack. "Of course he won't fight,
'cause he ain't that kind; but if you jerk and wiggle your pole just
right it'll make it look like he was. That's what a real actor's
for--making things look like they is when they ain't. Got me?" Then we
went down and discovered that poor half-frozen fish with the eight-point
alteration of the continuity of his back-bone.
The ling or fresh-water cod has an underhung, somewhat shark-like mouth,
not unsuggestive of the new moon with its points turned downward. Roos'
mouth took on a similarly dejected droop when he found the condition the
principal animal actor in his fish picture was in. But it was too late
to give up now. Never might we have so husky a fighting fish ready to
hand, and with a bright sun shining on it. Roos tried osteopathy,
applied chiropractics and Christian Science without much effect. Our
"lead" continued as rigid and unrelaxing as the bushman's boomerang,
whose shape he so nearly approximated. Then Andy wrought the miracle
with a simple "laying on of hands." What he really did was to thaw out
the frozen rear end of the fish by holding it between his big, warm red
Celtic paws; but the effect was as magical as a cure at Lourdes. The big
ling was shortly flopping vigorously, and when Andy dropped him into a
bit of a boulder-locked pool he went charging back and forth at the
rocky barriers like a bull at a gate. Roos almost wept in his
thankfulness, and forthwith promised the restorer an extra rum ration
that night. Andy grinned his thanks, but reminded him that we ought to
be at the old ferry by night, where something even better than "thirty
per over-proof" rum would be on tap. It was indeed the morning of our
great day. Stimulated by that inspiring thought, I prepared to outdo
myself in the "fish picture," the "set" for which was now ready.
[Illustration: BLACKMORE AND THE LING THAT REFUSED TO "REGISTER"]
[Illustration: THE WRITER, WITH PIKE-POLE JUST BEFORE LINING DEATH
RAPIDS]
[Illustration: ANDY AND I PULLING DOWN KINBASKET LAKE]
Standing on the stern of the beached boat, I made a long cast,
registering "concentrated eagerness." Then Roos stopped cranking, and
Andy brought the ling out and fastened it to the end of my line with a
snug but comfortable hitch through the gills. (We were careful not to
hurt him, for Chester's directions had admonished especially against
"showing brutality".) When I had nursed him out to about where my
opening cast had landed, Roos called "Action!" and started cranking
again. Back and forth in wide sweeps he dashed, while I registered
blended "eagerness" and "determination," with frequent interpolations of
"consternation" as carefully timed tugs (by myself) bent my shivering
pole down to the water. When Roos had enough footage of "fighting," I
brought my catch in close to the boat and leered down at him,
registering "near triumph." Then I towed him ashore and Andy and
Blackmore rushed in to help me land him. After much struggling (by
ourselves) we brought him out on the beach. At this juncture I was
supposed to grab the ling by the gills and hold him proudly aloft,
registering "full triumph" the while. Andy and Blackmore were to crowd
in, pat me on the back and beam congratulations. Blackmore was then to
assume an expression intended to convey the impression that this was the
hardest fighting ling he had ever seen caught. All three of us were
action perfect in our parts; but that miserable turn-tail of a ling--who
had nothing to do but flop and register "indignant protest"--spoiled it
all at the last. As I flung my prize on high, a shrill scream of
"Rotten!" from Roos froze the action where it was. Then I noticed that
what was supposed to be a gamy denizen of the swift-flowing Columbia was
hanging from my hand as rigid as a coupling-pin--a bent coupling-pin at
that, for he had resumed his former cold-storage curl.
"Rotten!" shrieked Roos in a frenzy; "do it again!" But that was not to
be. For the "chief actor" the curtain had rung down for good. "You must
have played him too fierce," said Andy sympathetically. Blackmore was
inclined to be frivolous. "P'raps he was trying to register 'Big Bend,'"
said he.
Just after we had pushed off there came a heavy and increasing roar from
across the lake. Presently the cascade of Trident Creek sprang into
life again, but now a squirt of yellow ochre where before it was a
flutter of white satin. Rapidly augmenting, it spread from wall to wall
of the rocky gorge, discharging to the bosky depths of the delta with a
prodigious rumbling that reverberated up and down the lake like heavy
thunder. A moment later the flood had reached the shore, and out across
the lucent green waters of the lake spread a broadening fan of
yellow-brown. "I told you hell would be popping after that big slide,"
said Blackmore, resting on his paddle. "That's the backed-up stream
breaking through."
Kinbasket Lake is a broadening and slackening of the Columbia, backed up
behind the obstructions which cause the long series of rapids between
its outlet and the mouth of Canoe River. It is six or seven miles long,
according to the stage of water, and from one to two miles wide. Its
downward set of current is slight but perceptible. The outlet, as we
approached it after a three-mile pull from our camp at Middle River,
appeared strikingly similar to the head of Surprise Rapids. Here,
however, the transition from quiet to swift water was even more abrupt.
The surface of the lake was a-dance with the ripples kicked up by the
crisp morning breeze, and blindingly bright where the facets of the tiny
wavelets reflected the sunlight like shaken diamonds. The shadowed
depths of the narrow gorge ahead was Stygian by contrast. Blackmore
called my attention to the way the crests of the pines rimming the river
a few hundred yards inside the gorge appeared just about on the level
with the surface of the lake. "When you see the tree-tops fall away
like that," he said, standing up to take his final bearings for the
opening run, "look out. It means there's water running down hill right
ahead faster'n any boat wants to put its nose in." The roar rolling up
to us was not quite so deep-toned or thunderous as the challenging
bellow of the first fall of Surprise; but it was more "permeative," as
though the sources from which it came ran on without end. And that was
just about the situation. We were sliding down to the intake of
Kinbasket or "The Twenty-One-Mile" Rapids, one of the longest, if not
_the_ longest, succession of practically unbroken riffles on any of the
great rivers of the world.
From the outlet of Kinbasket Lake to the mouth of Canoe River is
twenty-one miles. For the sixteen miles the tail of one rapid generally
runs right into the head of the next, and there is a fall of two hundred
and sixty feet, or more than sixteen feet to the mile. For the last five
miles there is less white water, but the current runs from eight to
twelve miles an hour, with many swirls and whirlpools. The river is
closely canyoned all the way. This compels one to make the whole run
through in a single day, as there is no camping place at any point.
Cliffs and sharply-sloping boulder banks greatly complicate lining down
and compel frequent crossings at points where a failure to land just
right is pretty likely to leave things in a good deal of a mess.
Blackmore ran us down through a couple of hundred yards of slap-banging
white water, before coming to bank above a steep pitch where the river
tore itself to rags and tatters across a patch of rocks that seemed to
block the whole channel. From Captain Armstrong's description, this was
the exact point where the trouble with his tipsy bow-paddler had
occurred, the little difficulty which had been the cause of his leaving
the salvaged cask of Scotch at his next camp. Like pious pilgrims
approaching the gateway of some long-laboured-toward shrine, therefore,
we looked at the place with much interest, not to say reverence.
Blackmore was perhaps the least sentimental of us. "I wouldn't try to
run that next fall for all the whisky ever lost in the old Columbia," he
said decisively, beginning to re-coil his long line. Then we turned to
on lining down the most accursed stretch of river boulders I ever had to
do with.
Barely submerged rocks crowding the bank compelled us to wade in and
lift the boat ahead even oftener than in Surprise Rapids. Andy always
took the lead in this, but time after time my help was necessary to
throw her clear. For the first time since I had boated in Alaska a good
many years previously, I began to know the numbing effects of icy water.
The heavy exertion did a lot to keep the blood moving, but three or four
minutes standing with the water up to mid-thigh sent the chill right in
to the marrow of the bones, even when sweat was running off the face in
streams. That started a sort of dull ache in the leg bones that kept
creeping higher and higher the longer one remained in the water. That
ache was the worst part of it; the flesh became dead to sensation very
quickly, but that penetrating inward pain had more hurt in it every
minute it was prolonged. It was bad enough in the legs, but when,
submerged to the waist, as happened every now and then, the chill began
to penetrate to the back-bone and stab the digestive organs, it became
pretty trying. One realized then what really short shrift a man would
have trying to swim for more than four or five minutes even in calm
water of this temperature. That was about the limit for heart action to
continue with the cold striking in and numbing the veins and arteries, a
doctor had told Blackmore, and this seemed reasonable. Andy was
repeatedly sick at the stomach after he had been wet for long above the
waist. My own qualms were rather less severe (doubtless because I was
exposed rather less), but I found myself very weak and unsteady after
every immersion. A liberal use of rum would undoubtedly have been of
some help for a while, but Blackmore was adamant against starting in on
it as long as there was any bad water ahead. And as there was nothing
but bad water ahead, this meant that--in one sense at least--we were a
"dry ship."
I shall not endeavour to trace in detail our painful progress down
"Twenty-One-Mile." Indeed, I could not do so even if I wanted, for the
very good reason that my hands were so full helping with the boat all
the way that I had no time to make notes, and even my mental
record--usually fairly dependable--is hopelessly jumbled. Even Blackmore
became considerably mixed at times. At the first four or five riffles
below the lake he called the turn correctly, landing, lining, crossing
and running just where he should have done so. Then his mind-map became
less clear. Twice he lined riffles which it presently became plain we
could have run, and then he all but failed to land above one where a
well-masked "souse-hole" would have gulped the boat in one mouthful.
It was at this juncture that I asked him why he had never taken the
trouble of making a rough chart of this portion of the river, so that he
could be quite sure what was ahead. He said that the idea was a good
one, and that it had often occurred to him. There were several reasons
why he had never carried it out. One was, that he was always so mad when
he was going down "Twenty-One-Mile" that he couldn't see straight, let
alone write and draw straight. This meant that the chart would be of no
use to him, even if some one else made it--unless, of course, he brought
the maker along to interpret it. The main deterrent, however, had been
the fact that he had always sworn each passage should be his last, so
that (according to his frame of mind of the moment) there would be no
use for the chart even if he could have seen straight enough to make it,
and to read it after it had been made.
The scenery--so far as I recall it--was grand beyond words to describe.
Cliff fronted cliff, with a jagged ribbon of violet-purple sky between.
Every few hundred yards creeks broke through the mountain walls and came
cascading into the river over their spreading boulder "fans." Framed in
the narrow notches from which they sprang appeared transient visions of
sun-dazzled peaks and glaciers towering above wedge-shaped valleys
swimming full of lilac mist. I saw these things, floating by like double
strips of movie film, only when we were running in the current; when
lining I was aware of little beyond the red line of the gunwale which I
grasped, the imminent loom of Andy's grey-shirted shoulder next me, and
the foam-flecked swirl of liquefied glacier enfolding my legs and
swiftly converting them to stumpy icicles.
There was one comfort, though. The farther down river we worked away
from the lake, the shorter became the stretches of lining and the longer
the rapids that were runnable. That accelerated our progress materially,
but even so Blackmore did not reckon that there was time to stop for
pictures, or even for lunch. We were still well up to schedule, but he
was anxious to work on a good margin in the event of the
always-to-be-expected "unexpected." It was along toward three in the
afternoon that, after completing a particularly nasty bit of lining a
mile or two above the mouth of Yellow Creek, he came over and slapped me
on the back. "That finishes it for the day, young man," he cried gaily.
"We can turn loose and run the rest of it now, and we'll do it hell
sizzling fast. It may also rejoice you to know that all the lining left
for the whole trip is a couple of hundred yards at 'Rock Slide' and
Death Rapids. All aboard for the Ferry!"
All of a sudden life had become a blessed thing again. For the first
time I became aware that there were birds singing in the trees, flowers
blooming in the protected shelves above high-water-mark, and maiden-hair
ferns festooning the dripping grottoes of the cliffs. Dumping the water
from our boots, Andy and I resumed our oars and swung the boat right out
into the middle of the current. The first rapid we hit was a vicious
side-winder, shaped like a letter "S," with overhanging cliffs playing
battledore-and-shuttlecock with the river at the bends. Blackmore said
he would have lined it if the water had been two feet lower; as it was
now we would get wetter trying to worry a boat round the cliffs than in
slashing through. We got quite wet enough as it was. The rocks were not
hard to avoid, but banging almost side-on into the great back-curving
combers thrown off by the cliffs was just a bit terrifying. Slammed back
and forth at express-train speed, with nothing but those roaring
open-faced waves buffeting against the cliffs, was somewhat suggestive
of the sensation you get from a quick double-bank in a big biplane. Only
it was wetter--much wetter. It took Blackmore ten minutes of hard
bailing to get rid of the splashage.
The succeeding rapids, though no less swift, were straighter, and
easier--and dryer. Roos, perched up in the bow, announced that all was
over but the digging, and started to sing "Old Green River." Andy and I
joined in lustily, and even Blackmore (though a lip-reader would have
sworn he was mumbling over a rosary) claimed to be singing. Exultant as
we all were over the prize so nearly within our grasp, we must have put
a world of feeling into that heart-stirring chorus.
"I was drifting down the old Green River
On the good ship _Rock-and-Rye_--
I drifted too far;
I got stuck on the bar;
I was out there alone,
Wishing that I were home--
The Captain was lost, with all of the crew,
So that there was nothing left to do;
And I had to drink the whole Green River dry-igh
To get back ho-ohm to you-oo-ou!"
Smoother and smoother became the going, and then--rather unexpectedly,
it seemed to me--the water began to slacken its dizzy speed. Blackmore
appeared considerably puzzled over it, I thought. Roos, turning
sentimental, had started singing a song that he had learned from a
phonograph, and in which, therefore, appeared numerous hiati.
"Now I know da-da-da-da-da--
Now I know the reason why--
Da-da-da-da----da-da-da-daah--
Now I know, yes, now I know!
Da-da-da, my heart...."
Blackmore frowned more deeply as the treble wail floated back to him,
and then broke into the next "da-da" with a sudden growl. "I say, young
feller," he roared, slapping sharply into the quieting water with his
paddle blade; "if you know so _geesly_ much, I'm wondering if you'd mind
loosening up on one or two things that have got _me_ buffaloed. First
place, do I look like a man that had took a shot of hop?" "Not at all,
sir," quavered Roos, who seemed rather fearful of an impending
call-down. "I don't, huh?" went on the growl. "Then please tell me why
what I knows is a ten-mile-an-hour current looks to me like slack water,
and why I think I hear a roar coming round the next bend." "But the
water _is_ slack," protested Roos, "and I've heard that roar for five
minutes _myself_. Just another rapid, isn't it? The water always...."
"Rot!" roared the veteran. "There ain't no fall with a rip-raring
thunder like that 'tween Yellow Creek and Death Rapids. Rot, I tell you!
I must ha' been doped after all."
Nevertheless, when that ground-shaking rumble assailed us in a raw,
rough wave of savage sound as we pulled round the bend, Blackmore was
not sufficiently confident of his "dope theory" to care to get any
nearer to it without a preliminary reconnaissance. Landing a hundred
yards above where a white "eyelash" of up-flipped water showed above a
line of big rocks, we clambered down along the right bank on foot.
Presently all that had occurred was written clear for one who knew the
way of a slide with a river, and the way of a river with a slide, to
read as on the page of a book.
"A new rapid, and a whale at that!" gasped Blackmore in astonishment;
"the first one that's ever formed on the Columbia in my time!"
The amazing thing that had happened was this: Sometime in the spring, a
landslide of enormous size, doubtless started by an avalanche of snow
far up in the Selkirks, had ripped the whole side of a mountain out and
come down all the way across the river. As the pines were hurled
_backward_ for a couple of hundred feet above the river on the right or
Rocky Mountain bank, it seemed reasonable to believe that the dam formed
had averaged considerably more than that in height. As this would have
backed up the river for at least ten or twelve miles, it is probable
that the lake formed must have been rising for a number of days before
it flowed over the top of the barrier and began to sluice it away. On an
incalculably larger scale, it was just the sort of thing we had heard
and seen happening on Trident Creek, opposite our Kinbasket Lake camp.
Not the least remarkable thing in connection with the stupendous
convulsion was the fact that a large creek was flowing directly down the
great gash torn out by the slide and emptying right into the rapid which
was left when the dam had been washed away. Blackmore was quite positive
that there had been no creek at this point the last time he was there.
It seemed reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the slide, in removing
a considerable section of mountain wall, had opened a new line of
drainage for some little valley in the high Selkirks.
It was the great, rough fragments of cliff and native rock left after
the earth had been sluiced out of the dam that remained to form the
unexpected rapid which now confronted us. They had not yet been worn
smooth like the rest of the river boulders, and it was this fact,
doubtless, that gave the cascade tumbling through and over them such a
raw, raucous roar.
The solution of the mystery of the appearance of the rapid was only an
incident compared with the problem of how to pass it. There was a
comparatively straight channel, but there was no possibility that the
boat could live in the huge rollers that billowed down the middle of it.
Just to the right of the middle there was a smoother chute which looked
better--provided the boat could be kept to it. Blackmore said that it
looked like too much of a risk, and decided to try to line down the
right bank--the one on which we had landed. As the river walls were too
steep and broken to allow any of the outfit to be portaged, the boat
would have to go through loaded.
A big uprooted pine tree, extending out fifty feet over the river and
with its under limbs swept by the water, seemed likely to prove our
worst difficulty, and I am inclined to believe it would have held us up
in the end, even after we reached it. As things turned out, however, it
troubled us not a whit, for the boat never got down that far. Right at
the head of the rapid her bows jammed between two submerged boulders
about ten feet from the bank, and there she stuck. As it was quickly
evident that it was out of the question to lift her on through, it now
became a problem of working her back up-stream out of the jaws that held
her. But with the full force of the current driving her tighter between
the rocks, she now refused to budge even in the direction from which she
had come.
As I look back on it now, the fifteen minutes Andy and I, mid-waist deep
in the icy water, spent trying to work that hulking red boat loose so
that Blackmore could haul her back into quiet water for a fresh start
takes pride of place as the most miserable interval of the whole trip.
After Andy's experience in Surprise Rapids, neither of us was inclined
to throw his whole weight into a lift that might leave him overbalanced
when the boat was swept out of his reach. And so we pulled and hauled
and cursed (I should hate to have to record all we said about the
ancestry of the river, the boat, and the two rocks that held the boat),
while the tentacles of the cold clutched deeper with every passing
minute. Roos, sitting on a pine stump and whittling, furnished no help
but some slight diversion. When he started singing "Old Green River"
just after I had slipped and soused my head in the current, I stopped
tugging at the boat for long enough to wade out and shy a stone at him.
"Green River"[1] was all right in its place, but its place was swirling
against the _inside_ of the ribs, not the _outside_. Roos had the cheek
to pick the rock up out of his lap and heave it back at me--but with an
aim less certain than my own. A few minutes later he called out to
Blackmore to ask if this new rapid had a name, adding that if it had
not, he would like to do his employer, Mr. Chester, the honour of naming
it after him. Blackmore relaxed his strain on the line for a moment to
roar back that no rapid was ever named after a man unless he had been
"drownded" in it. "We'll name this one after you if you'll do the
needful," he growled as an afterthought, throwing his weight again onto
his line. That tickled Andy and me so mightily that we gave a prodigious
heave in all recklessness of consequences, and off she came. Gaining the
bank with little trouble, we joined Blackmore and helped him haul her up
by line into slower water.
[1] For the benefit of those who have forgotten, or may never
have known, I will state that "Green River" was the name of a
brand of whisky consumed by ancient Americans with
considerable gusto. L. R. F.
"No good lining," the "Skipper" announced decidedly, as we sat down to
rest for a spell; "I'm going to drive her straight through." Chilled,
weary and dead-beat generally, I was in a state of mind that would have
welcomed jumping into the rapid with a stone tied to my neck rather than
go back to the half-submerged wading and lifting. Roos said he hated to
risk his camera, and so would try to crawl with it over the cliff and
rejoin us below the rapid. Andy said he was quite game to pull his oar
for a run if we had to, but that he would first like to try lining down
the opposite bank. He thought we could make it _there_, and he had just
a bit of a doubt about what might happen in mid-river. That was
reasonable enough, and Blackmore readily consented to try the other
side.
[Illustration: OUR WETTEST CAMP AT KINBASKET LAKE (_above_)]
[Illustration: THE OLD FERRY TOWER ABOVE CANOE RIVER (_below_)]
[Illustration: WHERE WE TIED UP AT KINBASKET LAKE (_above_)]
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE WHICH THE COLUMBIA CARRIED A HUNDRED MILES AND
PLACED ACROSS ANOTHER STREAM (_center_)]
[Illustration: LINING DOWN TO THE HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (_below_)]
Almost at once it appeared that we had landed in the same trouble as on
the right bank. Directly off the mouth of the stream that came down from
the slide the bow of the boat was caught and held between two submerged
rocks, defying our every attempt to lift it over. Blackmore was becoming
impatient again, and was just ready to give up and run, when Andy, with
the aid of a young tree-trunk used as a lever, rolled one of the
boulders aside and cleared the way. Five minutes later we had completed
lining down and were pushing off for the final run to the Ferry. No more
"mystery rapids" cropped up to disturb our voyage, and, pulling in deep,
swift water, we made the next five miles in twenty-five minutes. A part
of the distance was through the rocky-walled Red Canyon, one of the
grandest scenic bits of the Bend. At one point Blackmore showed us a
sheer-sided rock island, on which he said he had once found the
graves of two white men, with an inscription so worn as to be
indecipherable. He thought they were probably those of miners lost
during the Cariboo gold-field excitement of the middle of the last
century, or perhaps even those of Hudson Bay _voyageurs_ of a century or
more back. There were many unidentified graves all the way round the
Bend, he said.
The river walls fell back a bit on both sides as we neared our
destination, and the low-hanging western sun had found a gap in the
Selkirks through which it was pouring its level rays to flood with a
rich amber light the low wooded benches at the abandoned crossing. The
old Ferry-tower reared itself upward like the Statue of Liberty, bathing
its head in the golden light of the expiring day. Steering for it as to
a beacon, Blackmore beached the boat on a gravel bar flanking an eddy
almost directly under the rusting cable. We would cross later to spend
the night in a trapper's cabin on the opposite bank, he said; as there
was sure to be a shovel or two in the old ferry shacks, he had come
there at once so as to get down to business without delay.
Right then and there, before we left the boat, I did a thing which I
have been greatly gratified that I did do--right then and there. I drew
my companions close to me and assured them that I had made up my mind to
divide the spoils with them. Blackmore and Andy should have a gallon
apiece, and Roos a quart. (I scaled down the latter's share sharply,
partly because he had thrown that stone back at me, and the nerve of it
rankled, and partly--I must confess--out of "professional jealousy."
"Stars" and "Directors" never do hit off.) The rest I would retain and
divide with Captain Armstrong as agreed. I did not tell them that I had
high hopes that Armstrong would soften in the end and let me keep it all
to take home. After all of them (including Roos) had wrung my hand with
gratitude, we set to work, each in his own way.
The spot was readily located the moment we took the compass bearing.
Pacing off was quite unnecessary. It was in the angle of a V-shaped
outcrop of bedrock, where a man who knew about what was there could feel
his way and claw up the treasure in the dark. It was an "inevitable"
hiding place, just as Gibraltar is an inevitable fortress and Manhattan
an inevitable metropolis. Yes, we each went to work in our own way.
Blackmore and Andy found a couple of rusty shovels and went to digging;
Roos climbed up into the old ferry basket to take a picture of them
digging; I climbed up on the old shack to take a picture of Roos taking
a picture of them digging. Nothing was omitted calculated to preserve
historical accuracy. I had been in Baalbek just before the war when a
German archaeological mission had inaugurated excavation for Phoenician
antiquities, and so was sapient in all that an occasion of the kind
required.
The picture cycle complete, I strolled over to where Andy and Blackmore
were making the dirt fly like a pair of Airedales digging out a badger.
The ground was soft, they said, leaning on their shovels; it ought to be
only the matter of minutes now. The "showings" were good. They had
already unearthed a glove, a tin cup and a fragment of barrel iron.
"Gorgeous stroke of luck for us that chap, K----, hit the stuff so hard
up at Kinbasket," I murmured ecstatically. Blackmore started and
straightened up like a man hit with a steel bullet. "What was that name
again?" he gasped. "K----," I replied wonderingly; "some kind of a
Swede, I believe Armstrong said. But what difference does his name make
as long as...."
Blackmore tossed his shovel out of the hole and climbed stiffly up after
it before he replied. When he spoke it was in a voice thin and trailing,
as though draggled by the Weariness of the Ages. "Difference, boy! All
the difference between hell and happiness. About two years ago K----
dropped out of sight from Revelstoke, and it was only known he had gone
somewhere on the Bend. A week after he returned he died in the hospital
of the 'D. T's.'"
Roos (perhaps because he had the least to lose by the disaster) was the
only one who had the strength to speak. It seemed that he had studied
Latin in the high school. "_Sic transit gloria spiritum frumenti_," was
what he said. Never in all the voyage did he speak so much to the point.
Blackmore frowned at him gloomily as the mystic words were solemnly
pronounced. "Young feller," he growled, "I don't savvy what the last
part of that drug-store lingo you're spitting means; but you're dead
right about the first part. _Sick_ is sure the word."
We spent the night in an empty trapper's cabin across the river. Charity
forbids that I lift the curtain of the house of mourning.