went with him, and saw that he laid his clothes in a neat pile on the
trunk by his bed,--for in a camp bedroom trunks sometimes take the
place of chairs,--and heard him say his prayers, and sometimes they
talked together a little while before she kissed him good-night. That
night was Sunday night, and Jack’s mother asked him, while she watched
his undressing, if it ever made him dizzy to stand on high places and
look down. Jack did not seem to know what that feeling was like; and
then she asked him how far he had ever ridden on Mrs. O’Dowd at one
time. Jack thought he had never ridden farther than Mr. Hensley’s
ranch--that was three miles away, six miles in all, going and coming;
but he had rested at the ranch, and had walked for a part of the
journey when his sister Polly had resolved to ride by herself, instead
of behind him, holding on to his jacket.
It made his mother very happy to tell the boy that the next day, if
nothing happened to prevent, he was to set out with the fishing party
for a week’s camping up the river. She knew how, in his reticent
child’s heart, he had envied them. He was seated on the side of his
bed, emptying the beach sand out of his stockings, when she told him.
He said nothing at first, and one who did not know his plain little
face as his mother knew it might have thought he was indifferent. She
took a last look at him, before leaving the room. It seemed but a very
little while ago that the close-cropped whity-brown head on the pillow
had been covered with locks like thistle-down, which had never been
touched with the scissors; that the dark little work-hardened hands
(for Jack’s play was always work) lying outside the sheet had been
kissed a dozen times a day for joy of their rosy palms and dimples. And
to-morrow the boy would put on spurs,--no, not _spurs_, but _a_ spur,
left over from the men’s accoutrements,--and he would ride--to be sure
it was only Mrs. O’Dowd, but no less would the journey be one of the
landmarks in his life. And many older adventurers than Jack have set
out in this way on their first emprise,--not very heroically equipped,
except for brave and joyous dreams and good faith in their ability to
keep the pace set by better-mounted comrades.
Jack woke next morning with a delightful feeling that this day was
not going to be like any other day he had known. Preparations for
the journey had already begun. In the cook-tent two boxes were being
filled with things to eat and things to cook them with. These were to
be covered with canvas, roped, and fastened, one on each side of the
pack-mule’s pack-saddle. On the piazza, saddle-bags were being packed;
guns, ammunition, fishing-rods, rubber coats, and cushions were being
collected in a heap for John to carry down to the beach to be ferried
across the river, where the man from Turner’s horse-ranch was already
waiting with the animals. The saddle-horses and Mrs. O’Dowd were to
cross by the ford above the rapids. The boat went back and forth two
or three times, and in the last load went Jack and his mother and
Polly in the care of one of the young engineers. The stir of departure
had fired Polly’s imagination. It was not mamma saying good-by to
Polly,--it was Polly saying good-by to mamma, before riding off with
“bubba” on an expedition of their own. She was telling about it, in a
soft, joyous recitative, to any one who had time to listen. The man
from Turner’s had brought, for Mrs. Gilmour to ride, a mule he called a
lady’s animal, but remarked that for his own use he preferred one that
would go. Mrs. Gilmour thought that she did, too; so the side-saddle
was changed from the “lady’s animal” to the mule that “would go.”
The pack-mule was “packed,” the men’s horses were across the ford,
mamma had kissed Polly, two pairs and a half of spurs were jingling
impatiently on the rocks,--but where was Mrs. O’Dowd?
She was dallying at the ford,--she was coy about taking to the water.
Sticks and straps and emphatic words of encouragement had no effect
upon her. She had unfortunately had time to make up her mind, and she
had made it up not to cross the river. She was persuaded finally, by
means of a “lass’ rope” around her neck. Everybody was laughing at her
subdued way of making herself conspicuous, delaying the whole party and
meekly implying that it was everybody’s fault but her own.
The camp of the engineers was on a little river of Idaho that rises
in the Bitter-root range of the Rocky Mountains, and flows into the
swift, silent current of the great Snake River, which flows into the
Columbia, which flows into the Pacific; so that the waters of this
little inland river see a great deal of grand and peculiar scenery
on their way to the ocean. But the river as it flows past the camp
is still very young and inexperienced. Its waters have carried no
craft larger than a lumberman’s pirogue, or the coffin-shaped box the
Chinese wood-drivers use for a boat. Its cañons have never echoed to
a locomotive’s scream; it knows not towns nor villages; not even a
telegraph pole has ever been reared on its banks. It is just out of
the mountains, hurrying down through the gate of its last cañon to the
desert plains. But young and provincial as it is, it has an ancestral
history very ancient and respectable, if mystery and tragedy and
years of reticence can give dignity to a family history. The river’s
story has been patiently recorded on the tablets of the black basalt
bluffs that face each other across its channel. Their language it is
not given to everybody to read. The geologists tell a wonderful tale
which they learned from those inscriptions on the rocks. They do not
say how many years ago, but long enough to have given a very ancient
name to our river,--had there been any one living at that time to
call it by a name,--it met with a fearful obstruction, a very dragon
in its path, which threatened to devour it altogether, or to scatter
it in little streams over the face of the earth. A flood of melted,
boiling-hot lava burst up suddenly in the river’s bed, making it to
boil like a pot, and crowded into the granite gorges through which the
river had found its way, half filling them. It was a battle between the
heavens and the earth,--the stream of molten rock, blinding hot from
the caverns beneath the earth’s crust, meeting the sweet cool waters
from the clouds that troop about the mountains or hide their tops in
mist and snow. The life-giving flood prevailed over that which brought
only defacement and death. The sullen lava flux settled, shrank, and
hardened at last, fitting into the granite gorges as melted lead fits
the mould into which it is poured. The waters kept flowing down, never
resting till they had worn a new channel in the path of the old one,
only narrower and deeper, down through the intruding lava. When the
river was first known to men, wherever its course lay through a granite
gorge the granite was seen to be lined in places, often continuously
for miles, with black lava rock, or basalt, standing in lofty palisades
with deeply scarred and graven fronts and with long slides of crumbled
rock at their feet, descending to the level of the river.
Another part of the river’s story has been toilsomely written in
the trails that wind along its shores, worn by the feet of men and
animals. Whose feet were the first to tread them, and on what errands?
This is the part of the river’s story some of us would like best to
know. But this the geologist cannot tell us.
It was one of these hunters’, miners’, cowboys’, packers’, ranchmen’s
trails the fishing-party followed on its way up the river. Through the
cañon they wound along the base of the lava bluffs; then entered a
crooked fold of the hills called Sheep Gulch, passing through willow
thickets, rattling over the pebbles of a summer-dried stream, losing
the breeze and getting more than they wanted of the sun. Sheep Gulch
is one of the haunts of grouse, wood-doves, and “cotton-tails” (as
the little gray rabbits are called to distinguish them from the tall
leaping “jack-rabbits” of the sage-brush plains, which are like the
English hare).
Above Turner’s horse-ranch, Sheep Gulch divides into two branches; up
one of these goes the old Idaho City road. Where the gulch divides
there is a disused cabin, (which Jack remembered afterward because
there they saw some grouse which they didn’t get,) and there they left
the trail for the old stage-road. As they climbed the little divide
which separates the waters (when there are any) of Sheep Gulch from
those of Moore’s Creek, they were met by a fresh breeze which cooled
their hot faces and seemed to welcome them to the hills. The hills were
all around them now,--the beautiful mountain pastures, golden with
their wind-sown harvest of wild, strong-stemmed grasses. As the grass
becomes scarce on the lower ranges the herds of cattle climb to the
higher, along the spiral trails they make in grazing, taking always,
like good surveyors, the easiest upward grade.
In the fall the cattle-men send out their cowboys, or “riders,” to
drive the herds down from these highest ranges, where snow falls early,
and to collect them in some valley chosen for the autumn “round-up.”
At Giles’s ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up and to
ask a drink all around from the spring which every traveler who has
tasted it remembers.
The women of the household--a slender, dark-haired daughter and a
stout, fair, flushed mother with a year-old baby--were busy, baby and
all, in an outdoor kitchen, a delightful-looking place, part light and
part shadow, and full of all manner of tools and rude conveniences that
told of cheerful, busy living and making the best of things. They were
preparing for the coming, next week, of the threshers,--a yearly event
of consequence at a ranch,--fifteen men with horses for their machines
and saddle-horses besides, all to be fed and lodged at the ranch. In
the corral behind the big new barn, there were stacks of yellow and
stacks of green, and between them a hay press, painted pink, which one
could see as far as one could see Giles’s. Altogether it was lovely at
Giles’s; but they were building a new house,--which, of course, they
had a perfect right to do. But whoever stops there next year will find
them all snugly roofed and gabled and painted white; and it is to be
feared the outdoor kitchen, with its dim corners full of “truck” and
its lights and shadows, will be seen no more.
The old stage-road went gayly along a bit of high plain, and then,
without the slightest hesitation or circumlocution, dropped off into
the cañon of Moore’s Creek. These reckless old pioneer roads give one
a vivid idea of the race for possession of a new mining-camp, and of
the pluck it took to win. At the “freeze-out” stage-passengers probably
got out and walked, and the driver “rough-locked” the wheels; but the
horsemen of that new country doubtless took a fresh hitch on their
cinches and went jouncing down the breakneck grade, with countenances
as calm as those of the illustrious riders of bronze and marble horses
we see in the public squares, unless they were tired of the saddle and
walked down to rest themselves,--never their horses.
Jack’s short legs were getting numb with pressing the saddle, and he
was glad to walk, and to linger on his way down the wild descent
into the cañon. It was the middle of September; Moore’s Creek had
not more than enough water left to float the “Chinaman’s drive” of
cord-wood, cut higher up on its banks. Its waters, moreover, were
turbid with muddy tailings emptied into them from the sluice-boxes of
the placer-miners who had been working all summer on the bars. Above
Moore’s Creek the water of the river is clear as that of a trout-stream
and iridescent with reflections from sky and shore; but after its union
with that ill-fated stream it is obliged to carry the poor creek’s
burden, and its own bright waters thenceforth wear the stain of labor.
A breath of coolness, as of sunless rocks and damp, spicy shade, came
up to them from the cañon; and a noise of waters, mingled with queer,
discordant cries. It was dinner-time at the Chinamen’s camp and word
was being passed up stream, from man to man, calling the wood-drivers
to leave their work. They were not the sleek-braided, white-bloused,
silk-sashed Chinese of the house-servant variety. They had wild black
hair, rugged, not fat, sleepy faces, and little clothing except the
boots,--store boots, in which a Chinaman is queerer than in anything
except a store hat. They struggled with the jam of cord-wood as if it
were some sort of water-prey they had hunted down, and were now meeting
at bay, spearing, thrusting, hooking with their long boat-hooks,
skipping from rock to rock in midstream, hoarse with shouting.
The party had now left the stage-road and turned down the pack-trail
along the creek toward its junction with the river. The pack-trail here
crosses the creek by a bridge high above the stream; the bridge was
good enough, but it was a question whether Mrs. O’Dowd, with her known
prejudices, could be induced to go over it. It was quickly decided to
get a “good ready,” as Jack said, and hustle the old lady down the
trail between two of the horses and crowd her on the bridge before she
had time to make up that remarkable mind of hers. This simple plan was
carried out with enthusiasm on the part of all but Mrs. O’D. herself.
Soon after leaving Giles’s, they had met a wagon-load of people
townward bound from Gillespie’s, the beautiful river ranch above
Moore’s Creek. Mr. Gilmour had stopped them to inquire if a pack-animal
and two riding animals, mules or horses, could be sent from the ranch
up to the fishing-camp, on a day set for the journey home; for the
mules from Turner’s were to go back that same day, to start the next
day but one, as part of a pack-train bound for Atlanta.
The people in the wagon “couldn’t say.” Most of the horses were
out on the range; those at the ranch were being used for hauling
peaches to town, fording Moore’s Creek and the river, and scaling the
“freeze-out.” But Mr. Gillespie himself was at home; the travelers had
better stop on the way up and find out.
So, after crossing the bridge and gaining the good trail along the
river-bank, Mr. Dane spurred on ahead and forded the river, to make
the necessary inquiries at the ranch. Gillespie’s is on the opposite
side of the river from the packer’s trail. It is most beautiful with
the sun in the western sky, its hills and water-front of white beech
and pine trees all in shadow, and a broad reflection floating out into
the river at its feet.
The sun was still high and the shadows were short; but the river ranch
was a fair picture of a frontier home as they looked back at it passing
by on the other side,--the last home they should see on the wild way
they were taking.
The trail went winding up and up, and still higher, until they were
far above the river and could see, beyond the still reflections that
darkened it by Gillespie’s, the white-whipped waters of the rapids
above. And the higher they went, the more hills beyond hills rose along
the horizon widening their view.
Mr. Dane had rejoined the party, with a satisfactory report from
the ranch. He rode ahead on his blue-roan Indian pony twirling his
_romál_, a long leathern strap attached to the bridle, the end divided
like a double whip-lash by means of which and a pair of heavy blunt
spurs “Blue Pete” and his rider had come to a perfect understanding.
Blue Pete was a sulky little brute, with a broad white streak down his
nose and a rather vicious eye, but he was tough and unsensitive and
minded his business.
Next came Jack’s mamma on the “mule that would go”--with a will, as
far as Turner’s,--but after that needed the usual encouragement; a
gentle-paced creature though, and sure-footed on a bad trail. Then came
Jack on Mrs. O’Dowd. The poor old girl had been vigorously cinched and
it wasn’t becoming to her figure; but those were bad places for a
saddle to turn, even with an active, eight-year-old boy on it.
The boy was deeply content, gazing about him at the river, the hills,
the winding trail ahead, and serenely poking up Mrs. O’Dowd with his
one spur in response to the packer’s often-repeated command to “Keep
her up!” When Mrs. O’Dowd refused to be kept up Jack’s father made
a rush at her--a kind of business his good horse Billy must have
despised, for Billy had points that indicated better blood than that
which is usually found in the veins of those tough little “rustlers” of
the desert and the range. He loved to lead on a hard trail, with his
long, striding walk, his cheerful, well-opened eyes to the front. He
was gentle, but he was also scornful; he was not a “lady’s animal;” he
had a contempt for paltry little objectless canters over the hills with
limp-handed women and children flopping about on his back. He liked
to feel there was work ahead; a long climb and a bad trail did not
frighten him; he looked his best when he was breasting a keen ascent
with the wind of the summit parting his thin forelock, his ears pointed
forward, his breath coming quick and deep, his broad haunches working
under the saddle. Poor work indeed he must have thought it, hustling
a lazy, sulky old donkey along a trail that was as nothing to his own
sinewy legs.
After Billy came the pack-mule, driven by the man from Turner’s,
a square-jawed, bronzed young fellow, mounted also on a mule and
conversing amicably with John Brown. The lunch-bag had been passed
down the line, but there was no halt, except for water at the crossing
of a little gulch. The trail wound in and out among the spurs of the
hills and up and down the rock-faced heights. They passed a roofless
cabin, once the dwelling of some placer-miners, and farther on the
half-obliterated ditch they had built leading to the deserted bars,
where a few gray, warped sluice-boxes were falling to pieces in the sun.
Between two and three o’clock they came in sight of some large
pine-trees, sheltering a half circle of white sand beach that sloped
smoothly to the river. Above the pines a granite cliff rose, two
hundred and fifty feet of solid rock against a hill five hundred or
more feet higher, that shut off the morning sun. Between the cliff and
the lava bluffs opposite, the eastern and western shadows nearly met
across the river. There were deep, still pools among the rocks near
shore, where the large trout congregate. Below the shadowed bend, the
river spread out again suddenly in the sunlight that flashed white as
silver on the ripples of a gravelly bar. This was the spot chosen at
sight for the fishing-camp.
A bald eagle perched on a turret of the lava bluffs across the river
watched the party descending the trail. At the report of a rifle
echoing among the rocks, he rose and wheeled away over the pine-trees
without hurrying himself or dropping a single feather in acknowledgment
of the shot. It was a dignified, rather scornful retreat.
Where the trail hugs the cliff closest on its way around the bend, it
passes under a big overhanging rock. No one, I am sure, ever rode under
it for the first time without looking up at the black crack between
it and the cliff, and wondering how far up the crack goes, and when
the huge mass will fall. There is a story that the Bannock braves,
following this trail on the war-path, always fired a passing arrow up
into the crack,--perhaps out of the exuberance of youth and war-paint,
perhaps to propitiate the demon of the rocks, lest he should drop one
of his superfluous boulders on their feathered heads. The white men who
followed the trail after the Indians had left it, amused themselves by
shooting at the arrows and dislodging them from the crack. The story
must be true, because there are no arrows left in the crack! Jack
stared up at it many times, and never could see one.
* * * * *
So now they were at home for a week in the wilderness. Jack followed
Brown about as he was “making camp,” cutting tent-pegs and poles
and putting up the old A-tent, which had seen service in the army
and in many frontier camps since it was “condemned” and sold at
quartermaster’s sale.
The man from Turner’s had taken another bite of lunch and returned with
his animals. He bade Jack to watch for him as he passed the camp, day
after to-morrow, with his mule-train for Atlanta.
The kitchen was unpacked down on the beach and the fireplace chosen,--a
big, wedge-shaped rock,--in the lee of which John built a fire, not
for warmth, but for the sake of a good bed of coals for cooking. Mrs.
Gilmour was resting in the tent, under the pine-trees. Mr. Gilmour had
gone up the river to catch some trout for supper.
After four o’clock the sun left the river bank, but all the colors were
distinct and strong,--the white beach, the dark pine boughs against the
sky, the purple colors in the rocks, and the spots of pale green and
yellow lichen on them, the changing tints in the dark water swinging
smoothly around the bend and then flashing out into a broad sheet of
silvery sparkles over the bar. It was as if it went gravely around the
shadowy bend, and then broke out laughing in the bright light.
As it grew darker, the kitchen fire began to glow red against the big
gray rock. In front of it John was stooping to heap coals on the lid
of the bake-kettle, where the bread was spread in a thin, round cake
for cooking.
There were three big trout for supper and four or five little ones. The
big ones were a noble weight to tell of, but the little ones tasted the
best when they were taken out of the bake-kettle on hot tin plates and
served with thin slices of bacon and camp bread.
The horses had been turned loose up the trail but now came wandering
back, Billy leading, followed by Pete, who was hobbled but managed to
keep up with him, and Mrs. O’Dowd meandering meekly in the rear. They
were on their way home, having decided that was the best place to pass
the night, but John turned them back. After supper he watered them at
the river and took them up the trail to a rudely fenced inclosure on
the bluffs, where there was better pasture.
Sleepy-time for Jack came very soon after supper, but as the tent was
some distance from the camp-fire,--a lonesome bedroom for a little boy
to lie in by himself,--he was rolled up in a blanket and allowed to
sleep by the camp-fire. The last thing he could remember was the sound
of the river and the wind in the great pine boughs overhead and voices
around him talking about the stars that could be seen in the night
sky between the fire-illumined tree branches. The great boughs moved
strangely in the hot breath of the fire that lit them from below. The
sky between looked black as ink and the stars blazed far and keen.
John was washing up the dishes on his knees by the light of a candle
fastened in a box set upon end to shield it from draughts. Jack watched
the light shining up into his face and on his hands as he moved them
about. It seemed as if he had slept but a moment, when they were
shaking him and trying to stand him on his feet and he was stumbling
along to the tent with his father’s arm around him.
How they crawled about in the low tent, by the light of a candle
fastened by its own drippings to a stone, and took off a few clothes
and put on more (for the September nights were cold); how cosy it was,
lying down in his blankets inside the white walls of the tent with the
curtain securely tied against the wind, with his father close beside
him and his father’s gun on the outside within reach of an outstretched
hand; how the light went out and the river sounded on and some twigs
scraped against the tent in the wind,--this is about all Jack can
remember of his first night under canvas.
The morning was gray and cold. The sun had been up several hours before
it was seen in the camp. Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Dane were out with the
earliest light for trout. Jack was the next to leave the tent and go
shivering down to the river to wash, and then run to warm his red hands
and button his jacket at the kitchen fire, where John was again cooking
bread. John and Mr. Dane had slept on the beach with only the pine
boughs for a roof and saddle-bags for a pillow.
When Mrs. Gilmour appeared, last of all, Jack was just finishing his
second chunk of last night’s bread, leaning against the angle of the
rock fireplace out of the smoke that made a pale blue wavering flight
upward and aslant the dark pine boughs.