RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE
Ike had been working at high speed during our absence, but his
imagination appeared rather to have run ahead of his powers of
execution. The hundred-feet-long, thirty-feet-wide raft he had set
himself to construct (so as to have something that would "stack up big
in the movie") took another two days to complete, and even then was not
quite all that critical artist wanted to make it. After filling in the
raft proper with solid logs of spruce and cedar, he began heaping
cordwood upon it. He was trying to make something that would loom up
above the water, he explained; "somethin' tu make a showin' in the
pictur'." He had three or four teams hauling, and as many men piling,
for two days. We stopped him at fifty cords in order to get under way
the second day after our return. There was some division of opinion
among the 'long shore loafers as to whether or not this was the
_largest_ raft that had ever started down this part of the Columbia, but
they were a unit in agreeing that it was the _highest_. Never was there
a raft with so much "freeboard." The trouble was that every foot of that
"freeboard" was cordwood, and then some; for the huge stacks of
four-foot firewood had weighted down the logs under them until those
great lengths of spruce and cedar were completely submerged. When you
walked about "on deck" you saw the river flowing right along through
the loosely stacked cordwood beneath. Roos was exultant over the way
that mighty mass of rough wood charging down a rock-walled canyon was
going to photograph, and Ike was proud as a peacock over the Thing he
had brought into being. But Roos was going to be cranking on the cliff
when we went through Hell Gate, and Ike didn't care a fig what happened
to him anyhow. And I _did_ care. There were a lot of things that could
happen to a crazy contraption of that kind, _if ever it hit anything
solid_; and I knew that the walls of Hell Gate and Box Canyon must be
solid or they wouldn't have stood as long as they had. And as for
hitting ... that raft must be pretty nearly as long as Hell Gate was
wide, and if ever it got to swinging.... It's funny the things a man
will think of the night before he is going to try out a fool stunt that
he doesn't know much about.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE UPPER COLUMBIA]
[Illustration: A "CLOSE-UP" OF IKE BUILDING HIS RAFT]
[Illustration: MY FIFTY POUND SALMON]
A fine motherly old girl called Mrs. Miller had put us up in her big,
comfortable farm-house during our wait while Ike completed his
ship-building operations. She must have known all of seven different
ways of frying chicken, and maybe twice that number of putting up apple
preserves. We had just about all of them for breakfast the morning we
started. Jess, the ferry-man, treated us to vanilla extract cordials and
told us the story of a raft that had struck and broken up just above his
father's ranch near Hawk Creek. Only guy they fished out was always
nutty afterward. Cracked on the head with a length of cordwood while
swimming. Good swimmer, too; but a guy had no chance in a swish-swashing
bunch of broke-loose logs. Thus Jess, and thus--or in similar
vein--about a dozen others who came down to see us off from the ferry
landing. They all told stories of _raft_ disasters, just as they would
have enlarged on _boat_ disasters if it had been a boat in which we were
starting to run Hell Gate and Box Canyon.
I pulled across and landed Roos at the raft to make an introductory shot
or two of Ike before picking up the thread of his "continuity" with my
(pictorial) advent. A corner of the raft had been left unfinished for
this purpose. Ike was discovered boring a log with a huge auger, after
which he notched and laid a stringer, finishing the operation by pegging
the latter down with a twisted hazel withe. The old river rat seemed to
know instinctively just what was wanted of him, going through the action
so snappily that Roos clapped him on the back and pronounced him "the
cat's ears" as an actor.
Ike showed real quality in the next scene; also the single-minded
concentration that marks the true artist. Looking up from his boring, he
sees a boat paddling toward him from up-river. The nearing craft was
_Imshallah_, with the "farmer" at the oars, just as he had started (for
the still unbuilt raft) when the "prospector" gave him the boat before
disappearing up the bank to the "smelter" with his sack of "ore" over
his shoulder. Thus "continuity" was served.
The "farmer" pulls smartly alongside, tosses Ike the painter and
clambers aboard the raft. An animated colloquy ensues, in which the
"farmer" asks about the river ahead, and Ike tells him, with dramatic
gestures, that it will be death to tackle it in so frail a skiff. A
raft is the only safe way to make the passage and--here Ike spreads out
his hands with the manner of a butler announcing that "dinner is
served!"--the raft is at the "farmer's" disposal. That suits the
"farmer" to a "T;" so the skiff is lifted aboard and they are ready to
cast off.
Where Ike displayed the concentration of a true artist was in the
skiff-lifting shot. Just as the green bow of _Imshallah_ came over the
side, a boy who had been stacking cordwood, in rushing forward to clear
the fouled painter, stepped on an unsecured log and went through into
the river. By this time, of course, I knew better than to spoil a shot
by suspending or changing action in the middle of it, but that Ike
should be thus esoterically sapient was rather too much to expect. Yet
the sequel proved how much more consummate an artist of the two of us
that untutored (even by Roos) old river rat was. When we had finished
"Yo-heave-ho-ing" as the skiff settled into place, I (dropping my
histrionics like a wet bathing suit) shouted to Ike to come and help me
fish that kid out. "What kid?" he drawled in a sort of languid surprise.
Then, after a kind of dazed once-over of the raft, fore-and-aft: "By
cripes, the kid _is_ gone!" Now has that ever been beaten for artistic
concentration?
The lad, after bumping down along the bottom to the lower end of the
raft, had come to the surface no whit the worse for his ducking. He was
clambering up over the logs like a wet cat before either Ike or I,
teetering across the crooked, wobbly cordwood, had stumbled half the
distance to the "stern." "It must be a right sma't betta goin' daun
unda than up heah," was Ike's only comment.
The motor-boat which Ike had engaged to tow the raft was already on
hand. It had been built by a Spokane mining magnate for use at his
summer home on Lake Coeur d'Alene, and was one of the prettiest little
craft of the kind I ever saw. With its lines streaming gracefully back
from its sharp, beautifully-flared bow, it showed speed from every
angle. Hardwood and brass were in bad shape, but the engines were
resplendent; and the engines were the finest thing about it. They had
been built to drive it twenty-five miles an hour when she was new, the
chap running it said, and were probably good for all of twenty-two yet
when he opened up. Except that its hull wasn't rugged enough to stand
the banging, it was an ideal river boat, though not necessarily for
towing rafts. However, it was mighty handy even at that ignominious
work.
I couldn't quite make up my mind about the engineer of the motor
boat--not until he settled down to work, that is. His eye was quite
satisfactory, but his habit of hesitating before answering a question,
and then usually saying "I dunno," conveyed rather the impression of
torpid mentality if not actual dulness. Nothing could have been further
from the truth, as I realized instantly the moment he started swinging
the raft into the current. He merely said "I dunno" because he really
didn't know, where an ordinary man would have felt impelled to make half
an answer, or at least to say something about the weather or the stage
of the river. Earl (I never learned his last name) was sparing with his
tongue because he was unsparing with his brain. His mind was always
ready to act--and to react. There were to arise several situations well
calculated to test the mettle of him, and he was always "there." I have
never known so thoroughly useful and dependable a man for working a
launch in swift water.
While Ike was completing his final "snugging down" operations, I chanced
to observe a long steel-blue and slightly reddish-tinged body working up
the bottom toward the stern of the raft. It looked like a salmon, except
that it was larger than any member of that family I had ever seen. A
blunt-pointed pike-pole is about the last thing one would use for a
fish-spear, but, with nothing better ready to hand, I tried it. My first
thrust was a bad miss, but, rather strangely, I thought--failed to
deflect the loggily nosing monster more than a foot or two from his
course. The next thrust went home, but where I was half expecting to
have the pole torn from my hands by a wild rush, there was only a
sluggish, unresentful sort of a wriggle. As there was no hook or barb to
the pike, the best I could do was to worry my prize along the bottom to
the bank, where a couple of Indians lifted it out for me. It was a
salmon after all--a vicious looking "dog," with a wicked mouthful of
curving teeth--but of extraordinary size. It must have weighed between
fifty and sixty pounds, for the pike-pole all but snapped when I tried
to lift the monster with it. Indeed, its great bulk was undoubtedly
responsible for the fact that it was already half-dead from battering on
the rocks before I speared it. As the flesh was too soft even for the
Indians, I gave it to a German farmer from a nearby clearing to feed to
his hogs. Or rather, I traded it. The German had a dog which, for the
sake of "human interest," Roos very much wanted to borrow. (Why, seeing
it was a dog, he should not have called it "canine interest," I never
quite understood; but it was the "heart touch" he wanted, at any rate).
So Ike proposed to the "Dutchman" that we give him fifty pounds of dead
"dog" for half that weight of live dog, the latter to be returned when
we were through with him. That was Ike's _proposition_. As soon as we
were under way, however, he confided to me that he never was going to
give that good collie back to a Dutchman. A people that had done what
the "Dutchmen" did to Belgium had no right to have a collie anyhow. If
they must have dogs, let them keep dachshunds--or pigs. And he forthwith
began to alienate that particular collie's affection by feeding him milk
chocolate. Poor old Ike! Being only a fresh-water sailor, I fear he did
not have a wife in every port, so that there was an empty place in his
heart that craved affection.
We cast off at ten o'clock, Earl swung the raft's head out by a steady
pull with the launch, and the current completed the operation of
turning. Once in mid-stream she made good time, the motor-boat
maintaining just enough of a tug to keep the towing-line taut and give
her a mile an hour or so of way over the current. That gave Earl a
margin to work with, and, pulling sharply now to one side, now to the
other, he kept the great pile of logs headed where the current was
swiftest and the channel clearest. It was all in using his power at the
right time and in the right way. A hundred-ton tugboat would have been
helpless in stopping the raft once it started to go in the wrong
direction. The trick was to start it right and not let it go wrong, Ike
explained--just like raising pups or kids. It was certainly no job for a
novice, and I found constant reassurance in the consummate
"raftsmanship" our taciturn engineer was displaying.
The hills on both sides of the river grew loftier and more rugged as we
ran to the south, and the trees became patchier and scrubbier. The bunch
grass on the diminishing benches at the bends was withered and brown. It
was evident from every sign that we were nearing the arid belt of
eastern Washington, the great semi-desert plateau that is looped in the
bend of the Columbia between the mouth of the Spokane and the mouth of
the Snake. The towering split crest of Mitre Rock marked the approach to
the slack stretch of water backed up by the boulder barrage over which
tumbles Spokane Rapids. The run through the latter was to be our real
baptism; a short rapid passed a few miles above proving only rough
enough to set the raft rolling in fluent undulations and throw a few
light gobs of spray over her "bows." We were now going up against
something pretty closely approximating the real thing. It wasn't Hell
Gate or Box Canyon by a long way, Ike said, but at the same time it
wasn't any place to risk any slip-up.
Save for two or three of the major riffles on the Big Bend of Canada,
Spokane Rapids has a stretch of water that must go down hill just about
as fast as any on all the Columbia. The channel--although running
between boulders--was narrow in the first place, and the deepest part of
it was still further restricted by an attempt to clear a way through for
steamer navigation in the years when a through service up and down the
Columbia was still dreamed of. The channel was deepened considerably,
but the effect of this was to divert a still greater flow into it and
form a sort of a chute down which the water rushed as through a flume.
Being straight, this channel is not very risky to run, even with a small
boat--provided one keeps to it. A wild tumble of rollers just to the
left of the head must be avoided, however, even by a raft. That was why
we had the motor-boat--to be sure of "hitting the intake right," as Ike
put it. And the motor-boat ought to be able to handle the job without
help. He had been working hard ever since we started on a gigantic
stern-sweep, but that was for Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Here, with her
nose once in right, she should do it on her own.
Mooring the raft against the right bank in the quiet water a couple of
hundred yards above the "intake," Earl ran us down to the mouth of the
Spokane River in the launch. We were purchasing gasoline and provisions
in the little village of Lincoln, just below the Spokane, and Ike
thought that the lower end of the rapid would be the best place for Roos
to set up to command the raft coming through. It was indeed terrifically
fast water, but--because the launch had the power to pick the very best
of the channel--the run down just missed the thrill that would have
accompanied it had it been up to one's oars to keep his boat out of
trouble. Earl shut off almost completely as he slipped into the "V,"
keeping a bare steerage-way over the current. Twenty miles an hour was
quite fast enough to be going in the event she _did_ swerve from the
channel and hit a rock; there was no point in adding to the potential
force of the impact with the engine. As there was a heavy wash from the
rapids in even the quietest eddy he could find opposite the town, Earl
stayed with the launch, keeping her off the rocks with a pole while Ike,
Roos and myself went foraging. Ike spilled gasoline over his back in
packing a leaking can down over the boulders, causing burns from which
he suffered considerable pain and annoyance when he came to man the
sweep the following day.
After dropping Roos on the right bank to set up for the picture, Earl
drove the launch back up the rapid to the raft. I hardly know which was
the more impressive, the power of the wildly racing rapid or the power
of the engine of the launch. It was a ding-dong fight all the way.
Although he nosed at times to within a few inches of the overhanging
rocks of the bank in seeking the quietest water, the launch was brought
repeatedly to a standstill. There she would hang quivering, until the
accelerating engine would impart just the few added revolutions to the
propellers that would give her the upper hand again. The final struggle
at the "intake" was the bitterest of all, and Earl only won out there by
sheering to the right across the "V"--at imminent risk of being swung
round, it seemed to me--and reaching less impetuous water.
Throwing off her mooring lines, Earl towed the raft out into the
sluggish current. There was plenty of time and plenty of room to
manoeuvre her into the proper position. All he had to do was to bring
her into the "intake" well clear of the rocks and rollers to the left,
and then keep towing hard enough to hold her head down-stream. It was a
simple operation--compared, for instance, with what he would have on the
morrow at Hell Gate--but still one that had to be carried out just so if
an awful mess-up was to be avoided. Novice as I was with that sort of a
raft, I could readily see what would happen if she once got to swinging
and turned broadside to the rapid.
That was about the first major rapid I ever recall running when I didn't
have something to do, and it was rather a relief to be able to watch the
wheels go round and feel that there was nothing to stand-by for. Even
Ike, with no sweep to swing, was foot-loose, or rather hand-free.
Knowing Earl's complete capability, he prepared to cast aside
navigational worries for the nonce. He had picked up his axe and was
about to turn to hewing at the blade of his big steering-oar, when I
reminded him that he was still an actor and that he had been ordered to
run up and down the raft and register "great anxiety" while within range
of the camera.
Perhaps the outstanding sensation of that wild run was the feeling of
surprise that swept over me at the almost uncanny speed with which that
huge unwieldy mass of half submerged wood gathered way. In still water
it would have taken a powerful tug many minutes to start it moving; here
it picked up and leapt ahead like a motor-boat. One moment it was
drifting along at three miles an hour; five seconds later, having slid
over the "intake," it was doing more than twenty. The actual slope of
that first short pitch must have been all of one-in-ten, so that I found
myself bracing against the incline of the raft, as when standing in a
wagon that starts over the brow of a hill. Then the pitch eased and she
hit the rollers, grinding right through them like a floating Juggernaut.
The very worst of them--haughty-headed combers that would have sent the
skiff sky-rocketing--simply dissolved against the logs and died in
hissing anguish in the tangle of cordwood. The motion had nothing of the
jerkiness of even so large a craft as the launch, and one noticed it
less under his feet than when he looked back and saw the wallowing
undulations of the "deck."
But best of all was the contemptuous might with which the raft stamped
out, obliterated, abolished the accursed whirlpools. Spokane was not
deep and steep-sided enough to be a dangerous whirlpool rapid, like the
Dalles or Hell Gate, but there were still a lot of mighty mean-mouthed
"suckers" lying in ambush where the rollers began to flatten. There was
no question of their arrogance and courage. The raft might have been the
dainty _Imshallah_, with her annoying feminine weakness for clinging
embraces, for all the hesitancy they displayed in attacking it. But, oh,
what a difference! Where the susceptible _Imshallah_ had edged off in
coy dalliance and ended by all but surrendering, the raft simply
thundered ahead. The siren "whouf!" of the lurking brigand was forced
back down its black throat as it was literally effaced, smeared from
the face of the water. Gad, how I loved to see them die, after all
_Imshallah_ and I had had to endure at their foul hands! _Imshallah_,
perched safely aloft on a stack of cordwood, took it all with the rather
languid interest one would expect from a lady of her quality; but
I--well, I fear very much that I was leaning out over the "bows," at an
angle not wholly safe under the circumstances, and registering "ghoulish
glee" at the exact point where Roos had told me three times that I must
be running up and down in the wake of Ike and registering "great
anxiety."
As there was no stopping the raft within a mile or two of the foot of
the rapid, it had been arranged that we should launch the skiff as soon
as we were through the worst water, and pull in to the first favourable
eddy to await Roos and his camera. It was Ike bellowing to me to come
and lend him a hand with the skiff that compelled me to relinquish my
position at the "bow," where, "thumbs down" at every clash, I had been
egging on the raft to slaughter whirlpools. The current was still very
swift, so that Ike was carried down a considerable distance before
making a landing. As it was slow going for Roos, laden with camera and
tripod, over the boulders, ten or fifteen minutes elapsed before they
pushed off in pursuit of the raft. The latter, in the meantime, had run
a couple of miles farther down river before Earl found a stretch
sufficiently quiet to swing her round and check her way by towing up
against the current.
In running down to this point the raft had splashed through a slashing
bit of riffle, which I afterwards learned was called Middle Rapid
locally. There was a short stretch of good rough white water. Offhand,
it looked to me rather sloppier than anything we had put the skiff into
so far; but, as it appeared there would be no difficulty in steering a
course in fairly smooth water to the left of the rollers, I was not
greatly concerned over it. Presently Ike came pulling round the bend at
a great rate, and the next thing I knew _Imshallah_ was floundering
right down the middle of the frosty-headed combers. Twice or thrice I
saw the "V" of her bow shoot skyward, silhouetting like a black wedge
against a fan of sun-shot spray. Then she began riding more evenly, and
shortly was in smoother water. It was distinctly the kind of thing she
did best, and she had come through with flying colours. Roos was
grinning when he climbed aboard, but still showed a tinge of green about
the gills. "Why didn't you head her into that smooth stretch on the
left?" I asked. "_You_ had the steering paddle." "I tried to hard
enough," he replied, still grinning, "but Ike wouldn't have it. Said he
kinda suspected she'd go through that white stuff all right, and wanted
to see if his suspicions were correct." And that was old Ike Emerson to
a "T."
We wallowed on through French Rapids and Hawk Creek Rapids in the next
hour, and past the little village of Peach, nestling on a broad bench in
the autumnal red and gold of its clustering orchards. Ike, pacing the
"bridge" with me, said that they used to make prime peach brandy at
Peach, and reckoned that p'raps.... "No," I cut in decisively; "_I_
have no desire to return to Kettle Falls." I had jumped at the chance
to draw Ike on that remarkable up-river journey of his after the
disaster in Hell Gate, but he sheered off at once. I have grave doubts
as to whether that strange phenomenon ever will be explained.
We were now threading a great canyon, the rocky walls of which reared
higher and higher in fantastic pinnacles, spires and weird castellations
the deeper we penetrated its glooming depths. There had been painters at
work, too, and with colourings brighter and more varied than any I had
believed to exist outside of the canyons of the Colorado and the
Yellowstone. Saffron melting to fawn and dun was there, and vivid
streaks that were almost scarlet where fractures were fresh, but had
changed to maroon and terra cotta under the action of the weather. A
fluted cliff-face, touched by the air-brush of the declining sun,
flushed a pink so delicate that one seemed to be looking at it through a
rosy mist. There were intenser blocks and masses of colours showing in
vivid lumps on a buttressed cliff ahead, but they were quenched before
we reached them in a flood of indigo and mauve shadows that drenched the
chasm as the sun dropped out of sight. From the heights it must have
been a brilliant sunset, flaming with intense reds and yellows as desert
sunsets always are; but looking out through the purple mists of the
great gorge there was only a flutter of bright pennons--crimson, gold,
polished bronze and dusky olive green--streaming across an ever widening
and narrowing notch of jagged rock, black and opaque like splintered
ebony. For a quarter of an hour we seemed to be steering for those
shimmering pennons as for a harbor beacon; then a sudden up-thrust of
black wall cut them off like a sliding door. By the time we were headed
west again the dark pall of fallen night had smothered all life out of
the flame-drenched sky, leaving it a pure transparent black, pricked
with the twinkle of kindling stars. Only by the absence of stars below
could one trace the blank opacity of the blacker black of the towering
cliffs.
No one had said anything to me about an all-day-and-all-night schedule
for the raft, and, as a matter of fact, running in the night had not
entered into the original itinerary at all. The reason we were bumping
along in the dark now was that Ike, who had no more idea of time than an
Oriental, had pushed off from Gerome an hour late, wasted another
unnecessary hour in Lincoln yarning across the sugar barrel at the
general store, and, as a consequence, had been overtaken by night ten
miles above the point he wanted to make. As there was no fast water
intervening, and as Earl had shown no signs of dissent, Ike had simply
gone right on ahead regardless. When I asked him if it wasn't a bit
risky, he said he thought not very; adding comfortingly that he had
floated down on rafts a lot of times before, and hadn't "allus bumped."
If he could see to tighten up stringer pegs, he reckoned Earl ought to
be able to see rocks, "'cose rocks was a sight bigger'n pegs."
It was not long after Ike had nullified the effect of his reassuring
philosophy by smearing the end of his thumb with a mallet that Earl's
night-owl eyes played him false to the extent of overlooking a rock. It
may well have been a very small rock, and it was doubtless submerged a
foot or more; so there was no use expecting a man to see the ripple
above it when there wasn't light enough to indicate the passage of his
hand before his eyes. It was no fault of Earl's at all, and even the
optimistic Ike had claimed no more than that he hadn't "allus bumped."
Nor was it a very serious matter at the worst. The raft merely hesitated
a few seconds, swung part way round, slipped free again and, her head
brought back at the pull of the launch, resumed her way. The jar of
striking was not enough to throw a well-braced man off his feet. (The
only reason Roos fell and pulped his ear was because he had failed to
set himself at the right angle when the shock came.) The worst thing
that happened was the loss of a dozen or so cords of wood which, being
unsecurely stacked, toppled over when she struck. Luckily, the boat was
parked on the opposite side, as was also Roos. It would have been hard
to pick up either before morning, and Roos would hardly have lasted. The
wood was a total loss to Ike, of course; but he was less concerned about
that than he was over the fact that it reduced her "freeboard" on that
quarter by three feet, so that she wouldn't make so much of a "showin'
in the picters." He _did_ raise a howl the next morning, though. That
was when he found that his old denim jacket had gone over with the
cordwood. It wasn't the "wamus" itself he minded so much, he said, but
the fact that in one of that garment's pockets had been stored the milk
chocolate which he was using to alienate the affections of the
Dutchman's collie. "It's all in gettin' a jump on a pup's feelin's at
the fust offsta't," he philosophied bitterly; "an' naow I'll be losin'
mah jump." Rather keen on the psychology of alienation, that observation
of old Ike, it struck me.
It was along toward nine o'clock, and shortly after the abrupt walls of
the canyon began to fall away somewhat, that a light appeared on the
left bank. Making a wide circle just above what had now become a glowing
window-square, Earl brought the raft's head up-stream and swung her in
against the bank. The place was marked Creston on the maps, but appeared
to be spoken of locally as Halberson's Ferry. We spent the night with
the hospitable Halbersons, who ran the ferry across to the Colville
Reservation side and operated a small sawmill when logs were available.
Earl slept at his ranch, a few miles away on the _mesa_.
The night was intensely cold, and I was not surprised to find icicles
over a foot long on the flume behind the house in the morning. The
frozen ground returned a metallic clank to the tread of my hob-nailed
boots as I stepped outside the door. Then I gave a gasp of amazement,
for what did I see but Ike running--with a light, springing step--right
along the surface of the river? At my exclamation one of the Halbersons
left off toweling and came over to join me. "What's wrong?" he asked,
swinging his arms to keep warm. "Wrong!" I ejaculated; "look at that! I
know this isn't Galilee; but you don't mean to tell me the Columbia has
frozen over during the night!" "Hardly that," was the laughing answer.
"Ike's not running on either the ice or the water; he's just riding a
water-soaked log to save walking. It's an old trick of his. Not many can
do it like he can." And that was all there was to it. Ike had spotted a
drift-log stranded a short distance up-river, and was simply bringing it
down the easiest way so as to lash it to the raft and take it to market.
But I should have hated to have seen a thing like that "water-walking"
effect in those long ago days on the Canadian Big Bend, when we used to
prime our breakfast coffee with a couple of fingers of "thirty per
over-proof."
We cast off at nine-thirty, after Ike had laid in some more "component
parts" of his mighty sweep at the little sawmill. Although less deeply
encanyoned than through the stretch down which we passed the previous
night, there were still enormously high cliffs on both sides of the
river. Trees and brush were scarcer and scrubbier than above, and the
general aspect was becoming more and more like the semi-arid parts of
the Colorado Desert. The colouring was somewhat less vivid than the riot
in the canyon above, but was almost equally varied. The colour-effect
was diversified along this part of the river by the appearance of great
patches of rock-growing lichen, shading through half a dozen reds and
browns to the most delicate amethyst and sage-green. At places it was
impossible to tell from the river where the mineral pigments left off
and the vegetable coating began.
The river was broad and widening, with a comparatively slow current and
only occasional stretches of white water. I took the occasion to launch
the skiff and paddle about for an hour, trying to get some line on the
speed at which the raft was towing. In smooth water I found I had the
legs of her about three-to-one, and in rapids of about two-to-one. From
this I figured that she did not derive more than from a mile and a half
to two miles an hour of her speed from the launch. I only raced her
through one bit of rapid, and she was such a poor sport about the course
that I refused to repeat the stunt. Just as I began to spurt past her
down through the jumping white caps she did a sort of a side-slip and
crowded me out of the channel and into a rather messy souse-hole. The
outraged _Imshallah_ gulped a big mouthful, but floundered through
right-side up, as she always seemed able to do in that sort of stuff.
But I pulled into an eddy and let the hulking old wood-pile have the
right-of-way, declining Earl's tooted challenge for a brush in the
riffle immediately following. A monster that could eat whirlpools alive
wasn't anything for a skiff to monkey with the business end of. I
boarded her respectfully by the stern and pulled _Imshallah_ up after
me.
The great bald dome of White Rock, towering a thousand feet above the
left bank of the river, signalled our approach to Hell Gate. Towing
across a broad reach of quiet water, Earl laid the raft against the left
bank about half a mile above where a pair of black rock jaws,
froth-flecked and savage, seemed closing together in an attempt to bite
the river in two. That was as close as it was safe to stop the raft,
Earl explained as we made fast the mooring lines, for the current began
to accelerate rapidly almost immediately below. There were some shacks
and an ancient apple orchard on the bench above, and Ike came over to
whisper that they used to make some mighty kicky cider there once upon a
time, and perhaps.... I did not need the prompting of Earl's admonitory
head-shake. "Get a jump on you with the sweep," I said, "while Earl and
I go down and help Roos set up. There'll be time enough to talk about
cider below Hell Gate." I saw a somewhat (to judge from a distance)
Bacchantic ciderette picking her way down the bench bank to the raft as
the launch sped off down stream, but if Ike realized dividends from the
visit there was never anything to indicate it.
Although Hell Gate is a long ways from being the worst rapid on the
Columbia, it comes pretty near to qualifying as the _worst looking_
rapid. A long black reef, jutting out from the left bank, chokes the
river into a narrow channel and forces it over against the rocky wall on
the right. It shoots between these obstructions with great velocity,
only to split itself in two against a big rock island a hundred yards
farther down. The more direct channel is to the right, but it is too
narrow to be of use. The main river, writhing like a wounded snake after
being bounced off the sheer wall of the island, zigzags on through the
black basaltic barrier in a course shaped a good deal like an elongated
letter "Z." Hell Gate is very much like either the Great or Little
Dalles would be if a jog were put into it by an earthquake--a rapid
shaped like a flash of lightning, and with just as much kick in it.
After much climbing and scrambling over rocks, Roos found a place about
half way down the left side of the jagged gorge from which he could
command the raft rounding the first leg of the "Z" and running part of
the second leg. It would have taken a half dozen machines to cover the
whole run through, but the place he had chosen was the one which would
show the most one camera could be expected to get. It would miss
entirely the main thing--the fight to keep the raft from bumping the
rock island and splitting in two like the river did. That could not be
helped, however. A set up in a place to catch that would have caught
very little else, and we desired to show something of the general
character of the gorge and rapid. Roos, solacing himself with the remark
to the effect that, if the raft _did_ break up, probably the biggest
part of the wreck would come down his side, was cutting himself a
"sylvan frame" through the branches of a gnarled old screw pine as we
left him to go to the launch.
[Illustration: IKE RIDING A LOG]
[Illustration: IKE ON THE MOORING LINE OF THE RAFT]
[Illustration: RAFT IN TOW OF LAUNCH NEAR MOUTH OF SAN POIL (_above_)]
[Illustration: IKE AT THE SWEEP BELOW HELL GATE (_below_)]
Ike was sitting on the bank talking with a couple of men from the
farm-house when we got back to the raft. He had completed the sweep, he
said, but as he had forgotten to provide any "pin" to hang it on he
didn't quite know what to do. Perhaps we had better go up to the
farm-house and have dinner first, and then maybe he would think of
something. The thought of keeping Roos--whom I had seen on the verge of
apoplexy over a half minute delay once he was ready for
action--standing with crooked elbow at his crank, waiting an hour or
more for the raft to shoot round the bend the next second, struck me as
so ludicrous that I had to sit down myself to laugh without risk of
rolling into the river. When I finally got my breath and sight back, I
found Earl's ready mind had hit upon the idea of using the hickory
adze-handle as a pivot for the sweep and that he and Ike were already
rigging it. Ten minutes later the launch had swung the raft out into the
current and we were headed for Hell Gate.
The sweep, clumsy as it looked, was most ingeniously constructed. Its
handle was a four-inch-in-diameter fir trunk, about twenty feet in
length. One end of it had been hewn down to give hand-grip on it, and
the other split to receive the blade. The latter was a twelve-foot
plank, a foot and a half in width and three inches in thickness, roughly
rounded and hewn to the shape of the flat of an oar. It was set at a
slight upward tilt from the fir-trunk handle. Ike had contrived to
centre the weight of the whole sweep so nicely that you could swing it
on its adze-handle pivot with one hand. Swing it in the air, I mean;
submerged, five or six men would have been none too few to force that
colossal blade through the water. Ike admitted that himself, but
reckoned that the two of us ought to be 'better'n nothin' 'tall.'
As we swung out into the quickening current, I mentioned to Ike that, as
I had never even seen a sweep of that kind in operation, much less
worked at it myself, it might now be in order for him to give me some
idea of what he hoped to do with it, and how. "Ye're right," he
assented, after ejecting the inevitable squirt of tobacco and parking
the residuary quid out of the way of his tongue as a squirrel stows a
nut; "ye're right; five minutes fer eloosidashun an' r'h'rsal." As
usual, Ike overestimated the time at his disposal; nevertheless, his
intensive method of training was so much to the point that I picked up a
"right smart bit o' sweep dope" before we began to cram into the crooked
craw of Hell Gate.
This was the biggest raft he had ever tried to take through, Ike
explained, but he'd never had so powerful a motor launch; and Earl was
the best man in his line on the Columbia. He reckoned that the launch
would be able to swing the head of the raft clear of the rock island
where the river split "agin" it; but swinging _out_ the head would have
the effect of swinging in the stern. We were to man the sweep for the
purpose of keeping the raft from striking amidships. We would only have
to stroke one way, but we'd sure have to "jump into it billy hell!"
"That being so," I suggested, "perhaps we better try a practice stroke
or two to perfect our team-work." That struck Ike as reasonable, and so
we went at it, he on the extreme end of the handle, I one "grip" farther
along.
Pressing the handle almost to our feet in order to elevate the blade, we
dipped the latter with a swinging upward lift and jumped into the
stroke. In order to keep the blade well submerged, it was necessary to
exert almost as much force upward as forward. The compression on the
spine was rather awful--especially as I was two or three inches taller
than Ike, and on top of that, had the "inside" berth, where the handle
was somewhat nearer the deck. But the blade moved through the water when
we both straightened into it; slowly at first, and more rapidly toward
the end of the stroke. Then we lifted the blade out of the water, and
Ike swung it back through the air alone. I had only to "crab-step" back
along the runway--a couple of planks laid over the cordwood--and be
ready for the next stroke. Twice we went through that operation,
without--so far as I could see--having any effect whatever upon the
raft; but that was only because I was expecting "skiff-action" from a
hundred tons of logs. We really must have altered the course
considerably, for presently a howl came back from Earl to "do it t'other
way," as we were throwing her out of the channel. By the time we had
"corrected" with a couple of strokes in the opposite direction the
launch was dipping over the crest of the "intake." Straightening up but
not relinquishing the handle, Ike said to "let 'er ride fer a minnit,"
but to stand-by ready.
That swift opening run through the outer portal of Hell Gate offered
about the only chance I had for a "look-see." My recollections of the
interval that followed at the sweep are a good deal blurred. I noted
that the water of the black-walled chasm down which we were racing was
swift and deep, but not--right there at least--too rough for the skiff
to ride. I noted how the sharp point of the rock island ahead threw off
two unequal back-curving waves, as a battleship will do when turning at
full speed. I remember thinking that, if I were in the skiff, I would
try to avoid the island by sheering over to the right-hand channel. It
looked too hard a pull to make the main one to the left; and the latter
would have the worst whirlpools, too. I noted how confoundedly in the
way of the river that sharp-nosed island was; and not only of the river,
but of anything coming down the river. With that up-stabbing point out
of the stream, how easy it would be! But since....
"Stan'-by!" came in a growl from Ike. "'Memba naow--'billy hell' when I
says 'jump!'" By the fact that he spat forth the whole of his
freshly-bitten quid I had a feeling that the emergency was considerably
beyond the ordinary. My last clear recollection was of Earl's sharply
altering his course just before he nosed into the roaring back-curving
wave thrown off by the island and beginning to tow to the left with his
line at half of a right-angle to the raft. The staccato of his
accelerating engine cut like the rattle of a machine-gun through the
heavy rumble of the rapid, and I knew that he had thrown it wide open
even before the foam-geyser kicked up by the propellers began to tumble
over onto the stern of the launch. On a reduced scale, it was the same
sort of in-tumbling jet that a destroyer throws up when, at the
appearance of an ominous blur in the fog, she goes from
quarter-speed-ahead to full-speed-astern. A jet like that means that the
spinning screws are meeting almost solid resistance in the water.
Ike's shoulder cut off my view ahead now, and I knew that the bow was
swinging out only from the way the stern was swinging in. At his grunted
"Now!" we did our curtsey-and-bow to the sweep-handle, just as we had
practised it, then dipped the blade and drove it hard to the right.
Four or five times we repeated that stroke, and right smartly, too, it
seemed to me. The stern stopped swinging just at the right time,
shooting by the foam-whitened fang of the black point by a good ten
feet. The back-curving wave crashed down in solid green on the starboard
quarter--but harmlessly. There was water enough to have swamped a
_batteau_, but against a raft the comber had knocked its head off for
nothing.
Under Ike's assurance that the battle would all be over but the shouting
in half a minute, I had put about everything I had into those half dozen
mighty pushes with the sweep. I started to back off leisurely and resume
my survey of the scenery as we cleared the point, but Ike's mumbled
"Nother one!" brought me back to the sweep again. Evidently there had
been some kind of a slip-up. "Wha' 'smatter?" I gurgled, as we swayed
onto the kicking handle, and "Engin's on blink," rumbled the chesty
reply. "Gotta keep'er off wi' sweep."
It had been the motor-boat's role, after keeping the head of the raft
clear of the point of the island by a strong side pull, to tow out
straight ahead again as soon as the menace of collision was past. Earl
was trying to do this now (I glimpsed as I crab-stepped back), but with
two or three cylinders missing was not able to do much more than
straighten out the tow-line. As the raft was already angling to the
channel, the fact the current was swifter against the side of the island
had the tendency to throw her stern in that direction. It was up to the
sweep to keep her from striking, just as it had been at the point. What
made it worse now was that the possible points of impact were scattered
all the way along for two or three hundred yards, while the launch was
giving very little help.
A man ought to be able to lean onto a sweep all day long without getting
more than a good comfortable weariness, and so I _could_ have done had I
been properly broken in. But I was in the wrong place on the sweep, and,
on top of that, had allowed my infantile enthusiasm to lead me into
trying to scoop half the Columbia out of its channel at every stroke.
And so it was that when we came to a real showdown, I found myself
pretty hard put to come through with what was needed. Ike's relentless
"'Nother one!" at the end of each soul-and-body wracking stroke was all
that was said, but the 'tween-teethed grimness of its utterance was more
potent as a verbal scourge than a steady stream of sulphurous curses.
Ike was saving his breath, and I didn't have any left to pour out my
feelings with.
We were close to the ragged black wall all the way, and I have an idea
that the back-waves thrown off by the projecting points had about as
much to do with keeping us from striking as had the sweep. Such waves
will often buffer off a canoe or _batteau_, and they must have helped
some with the raft. There is no doubt, however, that, if the raft had
once been allowed to swing broadside, either she or the rock island
would have had to change shape or else hold up the million or so
horse-power driving the Columbia. That could have only resulted in a
one-two-three climax, with the island, Columbia and raft finishing in
the order named. Or, to express it in more accurate race-track
vernacular; "Island," first; "Columbia," second; "Raft," nowhere!
My spine was a bar of red-hot iron rasping up and down along the exposed
ends of all its connecting nerves, when a throaty "Aw right!" from Ike
signalled that the worst was past. Hanging over the end of the trailing
sweep-handle, I saw that the raft had swung into a big eddy at the foot
of the island, and that the launch, with its engine still spraying
scattered pops, was trying to help the back-current carry her in to the
right bank. Middle and Lower Rapids of Hell Gate were still below us,
but Earl had evidently determined not to run them until his engine was
hitting on all fours again. It was characteristic of him that he didn't
offer any explanation as to what had gone wrong, or why; but the trouble
must have been a consequence of the terrific strain put on the engine in
towing the head of the raft clear of the upper point of the island. At
the end of a quarter hour's tinkering Earl reckoned that the engine
would go "purty good" now; leastways, he hoped so, for there was nothing
more he could do outside of a machine-shop. To save tying up again
below, he ran across and picked up Roos and the camera before casting
off.
Middle and Lower Rapids were just straight, fast, white water, and we
ran them without trouble. Roos set up on the raft and shot a panorama of
the reeling rollers and the flying black curtains of the rocky walls as
they slid past. Then he made a close-up of the weird, undulating
Chinese-Dragon-wiggle of the "deck" of the raft, and finally, when we
had recovered a bit of breath, of Ike and me toiling at the sweep. To
save time, we had lunch on the raft, taking Earl's portion up to him in
the skiff.
Ike, announcing that he would need a crew of four or five men to handle
the raft in Box Canyon, was scouting for hands all afternoon. Whenever a
farm or a ferry appeared in the distance, we would pull ahead in the
skiff and he would dash ashore and pursue intensive recruiting until the
raft had come up and gone on down river. Then we would push off and
chase it, repeating the performance as soon as another apple orchard or
ferry tower crept out beyond a bend. For all our zeal, there was not a
man to show when we finally pulled the skiff aboard as darkness was
falling on the river. Most of the men Ike talked to took one look at the
nearing raft and cut him off with a "Good-night" gesture, the
significance of which was not lost on me even in the distant skiff. The
nearest we came to landing any one was at Plum, where the half-breed
ferry-man said he would have gone if it hadn't been for the fact that
his wife was about to become a mother. It wasn't that he was worried on
the woman's account (she did that sort of thing quite regularly without
trouble), but he had bet a horse with the blacksmith that it was going
to be a boy, and he kind of wanted to be on hand to be sure they didn't
put anything over on him.
At Clark's Ferry an old pal of Ike's, whom he had confidently counted on
getting, not only refused to go when he saw the raft, but even took the
old river rat aside and talked to him long and earnestly, after the
manner of a brother. Ike was rather depressed after that, and spent the
next hour slouching back and forth across the stern runway, nursing the
handle of the gently-swung sweep against his cheek like a pet kitten. He
was deeply introspective, and seemed to be brooding over something. It
was not until the next morning that he admitted that the raft had not
proved quite as handy as he had calculated.
Again we ran well into the dark, but this time in a somewhat opener
canyon than the black gorge we had threaded the night before. It was
Spring Canyon we were making for, where Ike had left his last raft. No
one was living there, he said, but it was a convenient place for the
ranchers from up on the plateau to come and get the wood. Earl found the
place and made the landing with not even a window-light to guide. We
moored to the lower logs of the cedar raft, most of which was now lying
high and dry on the rocks, left by the falling river. We cooked supper
on the bank and--after Roos had deftly picked the lock with a bent
wire--slept on the floor of an abandoned farm-house on the bench above.
Ike had complained a good deal of his gasoline-burned back during the
day, and was evidently suffering not a little discomfort from the
chafing of his woollen undershirt. He was restless during the night, and
when he got up at daybreak I saw him pick up and shake out an old white
table-cloth that had been thrown in one corner. When I went down to the
raft a little later, I found the old rat stripped to the waist and Earl
engaged in swathing the burned back in the folds of the white
table-cloth. As the resultant bundle was rather too bulky to allow a
shirt to be drawn over it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as
he was, for all the world like "the noblest Roman of them all"--from
neck to the waist, that is. The long, drooping, tobacco-stained
moustaches, no less than the sagging overalls, would have had rather a
"foreign" look on the _Forum Romanum_.