CHAPTER II

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DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES"

SEA-HOUNDS

IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES

HELL'S HATCHES

DOWN THE COLUMBIA

[Illustration: (C) _J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

THE YELLOWSTONE]

DOWN THE

YELLOWSTONE

BY

LEWIS R. FREEMAN

Author of "In the Tracks of the Trades," "Down the

Columbia," etc., etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1922

Copyright, 1922,

By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY

BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

To

"MY FRIENDS ALONG THE YELLOWSTONE,

WHO HAVE KEPT ALIVE ALL THAT IS BEST

IN THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD WEST"

INTRODUCTION

It must have been close to twenty years ago that I first started to boat

from the head of the Yellowstone to the Gulf of Mexico. On that occasion

I covered something over a hundred miles from the source of the

Yellowstone--a good part of it on the ice, on the bank, or floundering

in the water. As a start it was not auspicious, nor was it destined to

be anything more than a start.

Shrouded in the mists of comparative antiquity, the reason for my

embarking on this voyage is only less obscure than my reason for failing

to continue it. As nearly as I can figure it today, it was a series of

tennis tournaments in Washington and British Columbia that lured me to

the North-west in the first place. Then a hunting trip in eastern

Washington merged into an enchanting interval of semi-vagabondage

through the silver-lead mining camps of the C[oe]ur d'Alene and the

copper camps of Montana, at that time in the hey-day of their glory.

From Butte to the Yellowstone was only a step. That it was still winter

at those altitudes, and that the Park, under from ten to forty feet of

snow, would not be opened to tourists for another two months, were only

negligible incidentals. That deep snow, far from being a hindrance,

actually facilitated travel over a rough country, I had learned the

previous year in Alaska.

I should have known better than to expect that permission would be

granted me to make a tour of the Park out of season, and, as a matter of

fact, it doubtless would not have been had I proceeded by the proper

official channels via Washington. Knowing nothing of either propriety or

officialdom at my then immature age (would that I could say the same

today!), I simply journeyed jauntily up to Fort Yellowstone and told the

U. S. Army officer in command that I was a writer on game protection,

and that I wanted the loan of a pair of ski in order to fare forth and

study the subject at first hand. When he asked me if I knew how to use

ski, adding that he could not let me proceed if I did not, I replied

that I did.

Now each of these confident assertions was made with a mental

reservation. I was really only a _potential_ writer on game protection,

just as I was only a _potential_ ski-runner. I knew that I could write

something about game protection, just as surely as I knew I could do

something with the ski. As to just what I should write about game

protection I was in some doubt, never having written about anything at

all up to that time. Similarly, in the matter of the ski, never having

seen a ski before. But I knew I could use them, for something, and hoped

it would be as aids to linear progression over snow.

Thanks to some previous experience with web snowshoes, I came through

fairly well with the ski, but at the cost of many bumps and bruises and

strained muscles. What it cost me to make good that game protection

scribe boast would require some figuring. I recall that there was one

old shark of an editor of a yellow-covered outdoor magazine in New York

who quoted me advertising rates for the article I submitted him, but I

believe we compromised by my taking twenty paid-in-advance

subscriptions. Another editor sent me a bill for the cost of the cuts,

and offered to include my own photograph--in evening clothes if

desired--for five dollars extra. I still have several game protection

articles on hand.

It must have been sometime previous to the two or three weeks that I

spent mushing about the valleys of the upper Yellowstone on the ice and

snow that the idea came to me that it would be a nice thing to float

down on the spring rise to the Missouri, the Mississippi and the Gulf.

In any event, I knew that the thought came to me before arriving at the

Park. I have a distinct recollection of pre-empting for my own use a big

iron staple which some soldier had put in the mineral-charged water of

Mammoth Hot Springs to acquire a frosty coating. I purposed driving it

into the bow of my boat to bend the painter to.

The boat I secured about ten miles down river from the Park boundary.

The famous "Yankee Jim" gave it to me. This may sound generous on Jim's

part, but seeing the boat didn't belong to him it wasn't especially so.

Nor was the craft really a boat, either. It had been built by a coal

miner from Aldridge, with the intention of using it to float down the

Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi to his childhood home in Hickman,

Kentucky. It had done such strange things in the comparatively quiet

ten-mile stretch below Gardiner that the miner abandoned it a good safe

distance above "Yankee Jim's" Canyon, went back to Cinnabar and bought a

ticket to Hickman by rail. I knocked the top-heavy house off the queer

contraption, and in, under and round about the shell-like residue bumped

and battered my way through the Canyon, and about twenty miles beyond.

The last five miles were made astride of the only three remaining

planks. I walked the ties the intervening fifteen miles to Livingston.

It was undoubtedly my intention to build a real boat in Livingston and

proceed on my voyage before the spring rise went down. Just why I came

to falter in my enterprise I can't quite remember, but I am almost

certain it was because the local semi-pro baseball team of the Montana

League needed a first baseman the same day that the editor of the local

paper was sent to the Keeley Institute with _delirium tremens_. Never

having been an editor before, there was a glamour about the name that I

must confess hardly surrounds it in my mind today. I can see now,

therefore, how I came to fall when a somewhat mixed delegation waited

upon me with the proposal that I edit the _Enterprise_ five days of the

week and play ball Saturdays and Sundays. I would fall for the same

thing again today, that is, without the editor stuff. At any rate,

summer and the tide of the Yellowstone waxed and began to wane without

my boating farther seaward than the timberless bluffs of Big Timber, to

where, with a couple of companions, I went slap-banging in a skiff one

Sunday morning when the team was scheduled for a game there in the

afternoon.

Finally, it seems to me, it was tennis and some challenge mugs that had

to be defended that took me back to Washington, and so to California. I

was destined to form more or less intimate boating acquaintance with

practically every one of the great rivers of South America, Asia, and

Africa before returning to resume my interrupted voyage down the

Yellowstone.

* * * * *

There were several moving considerations operative in bringing about my

decision to attempt a Yellowstone-Missouri-Mississippi voyage last

summer. Not the least of these, doubtless, was the desire to complete

the unfinished business of the original venture. A more immediate

inspiration, however, was traceable to a voyage I had made down the

Columbia the previous autumn. Second only to the scenic grandeur and the

highly diverting sport of running the rapids of this incomparable

stream, was the discovery that the supposedly long-quenched flame of

frontier kindliness and hospitality still flickered in the West, that

there were still a few folk in existence to whom the wayfarer was

neither a bird to be plucked nor a lemon to be squeezed. It wasn't quite

a turning of the calendar back to frontier days, but rather, perhaps, to

about those not unhappy pre-war times before the yellow serum of

profiteering was injected into the red blood of so many Americans.

Living well off the main arteries of travel, these river folk seemed to

have escaped the corroding infection almost to a man, and it was a

mightily reassuring experience to meet them, if no more than to shake

hands and exchange greetings in passing. So few will have had the

experience of late, that I quite despair of being understood when I

speak of the good it does one to encounter a fellow being whom one knows

wants and expects no more than is coming to him. Meeting a number of

such was like going into a new world.

I told myself frankly that I could do with a lot more people of that

kind, and perhaps come out rather less of an undesirable myself as a

consequence of the contact. If I found them all along the Columbia, why

not along the Yellowstone, and perhaps the Missouri and the Mississippi?

And what wouldn't four or five months' association with such do in the

way of eradicating incipient Bolshevism? And so I planned, embarked

upon, and finally completed the journey from the snows of the

Continental Divide where the Yellowstone takes its rise, to New Orleans

where the Mississippi meets the tide of the Gulf of Mexico. I trust the

dedication to this rambling volume of reminiscence may give some hint of

the extent to which my hopes for the voyage were justified.

To maintain perspective, I am beginning my story by sketching in a few

high lights from my earlier jaunt to the sources of the Yellowstone. I

saw things then that few have had the opportunity to see since, just as

I embarked lightsomely on several little enterprises that I have

neither the nerve nor the wind to attempt today. Also, I had fairly

intimate glimpses in the course of that delectable interval of

vagabondage of several notable frontier characters whom no present-day

wanderer by the ways of the Yellowstone can ever hope to meet. The

priceless "Yankee Jim" was inextricably mixed up with my rattle-headed

attempt to flounder through the canyon to which he had given his name.

He really belongs in the picture. "Calamity Jane" is more of an exotic

(to shift my metaphoric gear), so that the chapter I have devoted to the

most temperamental lady of a tempestuous epoch will have to be its own

justification.

Frequent historical allusions will be found in the pages of the

narrative of my later down-river voyage. I am sorry about this, but it

couldn't be helped. History-makers have boated upon, and camped by, the

Missouri for a hundred years, just as the Mississippi has known them for

thrice a hundred. Most of the things that path-finders leave behind them

are imponderable. In the thousands of miles between the mouth of the

Missouri and the mouth of the Columbia a few practically obliterated

scratches on a rock in Montana are all that one can point to as left by

the Lewis and Clark expedition; yet memories of those two lurk in the

shadows of every cliff, spring to meet one across the sandy bars of

every muddy tributary. And so with all who came after them, from Hunt

and his trapper contemporaries on down to Custer, "Buffalo Bill" and

Sitting Bull. And so on the Mississippi, from Marquette and La Salle to

Grant and Mark Twain. You can't ignore them, try as you will; that is,

if you're going to write at all about your voyagings. I've done the best

I could on that score. For the rest, I have written freely of rivers and

mountains, of adventure and misadventure, and somewhat of cities and

towns; much of men and little of institutions. In short, I seem to have

picked on about the same things that a commuter on his summer vacation

would choose to write of to a fellow-commuter who has staid at home. I

only hope that my view-point has been half as fresh.

CONTENTS

PART I

PAGE

I The Yellowstone in Winter 1

II Ski Snaps 10

III High Lights and Low Lights 24

IV Running Yankee Jim's Canyon 54

V "Calamity Jane" 77

PART II

I Present Day Yellowstone Park 97

II Livingston Twenty Years After 120

III Livingston to Big Timber 138

IV Big Timber to Billings 170

V Billings to Glendive 200

VI Glendive to the Missouri 239

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Yellowstone _Frontispiece_

Elk in gathering storm, Jackson's Hole 14

Elk stalled in snow 18

As we pulled up close behind him 18

The Falls in winter from Point Lookout 30

The Giant is the biggest geyser in North America 38

"Yankee Jim's" cabin 56

"Yankee Jim" with a trout from his canyon 68

Just above the first drop in "Yankee Jim's" Canyon 68

Foot of "Yankee Jim's" Canyon 72

"Calamity Jane" in 1885 80

I found "Calamity" smoking a cigar and cooking breakfast 80

Golden Gate Canyon and Viaduct 104

Emigrant Peak, Yellowstone River, near Livingston, Mont. 108

Tower Fall and Towers 110

Yellowstone Park Headquarters 116

Director Mather, Secretary of the Interior Fall, and Superintendent

Albright camping 116

Superintendent Albright and Mule Deer 116

Gate of the Mountains, Yellowstone River 122

Where Custer fell 126

The blacksmith shop where my boat was set up 142

We launched the boat below the Livingston bridge 142

A difficult riffle below Springdale 142

Pete Holt and Joe Evans 150

Hauled out at the foot of a rough rapid 150

A sharp pitch on the upper Yellowstone 150

Joe Evans who piloted me the first half day 156

Pete Holt and Joe Evans with their inflated life preservers 156

"Chickens, children and hogs" 156

Round-up outfit at dinner 172

A savage riffle near the site of Captain Clark's boat camp 176

Sunrise on a quiet reach of the lower Yellowstone 176

The Yellowstone below the outlet of the Lake 180

Rough water and a bad bend 180

Herd, Powder River Valley 202

Sheep by the water, Big Powder River 202

The County bridge over the Yellowstone 206

Pompey's Pillar 212

The Yellowstone from the top of Pompey's Pillar 212

Custer's Pillar, Bad Lands 216

The grating which protects the initials carved by Captain

Clark on the side of Pompey's Pillar 216

Stockyards, Miles City 224

"Freightin'" 224

One of the famous school bands of Glendive 240

Buffalo stampede 242

The dam across the Yellowstone at Intake 246

Portaging my boat round the Intake Dam 246

Completing the portage 246

The "Old-N" crossing the Powder River 254

The Yellowstone just above Livingston 270

The Yellowstone just after receiving the Big Horn 270

The broad stream of the Yellowstone below Glendive 280

The last bridge above the Missouri 280

Where the Yellowstone takes possession of the Missouri 280

PART I

TWENTY YEARS BEFORE

DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE

CHAPTER I

THE YELLOWSTONE IN WINTER

The present-day Indian inhabitants of the Yellowstone and Big Horn

valleys, whose ancestors hunted bear, buffalo and elk in the Devil's

Land now known as Yellowstone Park, preserve a legend to the effect that

when the world was made, because this region was the most desirable

section of Creation, Mog the God of Fire, and Lob the God of rains and

snows, contended for the control of it. After some preliminary

skirmishing, the disputants carried the matter to the court of the Great

Spirit for settlement. Here the ruling was that Mog should occupy the

land for six moons, when Lob should follow with possession for a similar

interval, thus dividing the year equally between them.

But Mog, being a bad god as well as a tricky one, spent his first six

moons in connecting the valleys with hell by a thousand passages, and

thus bringing up fire and sulphur and boiling water wherever it suited

his fiendish fancy. Then he threw dust on all of the beautiful colored

mountains, dried up the grass and shook the leaves from the trees, so

that when it came to his rival's turn to take charge, Lob found affairs

in a very sad way indeed.

But Lob set himself to work, like the good god that he was, and dusted

and furbished up the mountains, watered the grass and trees, and heaped

the snow in mighty drifts on geyser and hot spring in an effort to stop

their mouths and force their boiling waters back from whence they came.

But the latter task was too much for him. When the end of his allotted

time came, though the grass was springing green and fresh and the trees

were bursting into leaf again, the geysers and hot springs spouted

merrily on. All the incoming Mog had to do was to kick up a few clouds

of dust and turn the sun loose on the grass and trees to have the place

just as he had left it.

And so for some thousands of alternating tenancies the fight has gone

on, all the best of it with the bad god. Although Lob is gaining

somewhat year by year, and has already dried many a spouting geyser and

bubbling hot spring and reduced countless pots of boiling sulphur to

beds of yellow crystals, he still has many a moon to work before he can

force hell to receive its own and leave him free to complete his mighty

task of reclamation.

In strong support of this legend is the fact that at the time of year

when the Indians say that Lob is compelled to abdicate, and before Mog

begins his annual dust-throwing--the middle of April or

thereabouts,--the Yellowstone Park is incomparably more beautiful than

at any other season. And moreover, there are those who maintain that

even at other seasons it is still more beautiful than any other place in

the world, just as it was in the beginning when it aroused the

jealousies of the rival gods and precipitated their eternal conflict.

What the Yellowstone is in the early spring only those who have seen it

at that season can realize, and only those who have made the summer tour

are in a position to imagine. Let one who has breasted the sweltering

heat-waves that radiate from Obsidian Cliff in July, trying to picture

the impressive beauty of that massive pile of volcanic glass through the

translucent dust-clouds raised by the passage of two or three score

cars--let him fancy that cliff, its summit crowned with a feathered

crest of snow, huge drifts at its base, and its whole face, washed and

polished by the elements, glittering as though panelled with shining

ebony. Let him think of the time his car was halted on the Continental

Divide and the driver endeavoured to point out one of the distant

eminences, guessed dimly through the smoke-clouds rising beyond

Shoshone Lake, as the Grand Teton, and then fancy himself standing at

the same point and looking out across the valley through air that,

windowed and cleansed by the winds and snows of the winter, is so clear

that the bottle-green in the rims of the glaciers is discernible at

forty miles. Let him who has admired the transcendent beauty of the

steam-clouds swirling above Old Faithful in the summer imagine these

clouds increased two-fold in whiteness and density, and ten-fold in

volume, by the quicker condensation of a zero morning. Let him picture

the black gorge of the Fire Hole Canyon, where the river plunges down to

the Upper Geyser Basin, forming Kepplar Cascade, transformed to a

shining fairyland of sparkling crystal and silver, everything in range

of the flying spray spangled and plated and jewelled by the ice and

frost, as though a whole summer day's sunshine had been shaken up with a

winter night's snowfall, and then fashioned by an army of elfin workmen

into a marvellous million-pieced fretwork, adorned with traceries

ethereal and delicate, and of a fragile loveliness beyond words to

describe.

All these things, and many more, the summer tourist will have to picture

in coming near to a conception of what the wizardry of winter has

effected. There is the novelty of seeing a rim of ice around the

Devil's Frying Pan, and the great hole that the up-shooting gush of a

geyser tears in a cloud of driven snow. There is the massive beauty of

the ice bulwark upon Virginia Cascade, and then, in winter as in summer

the scenic climax, the lower falls and the Grand Canyon.

And nowhere more than in the incomparable Canyon is the general effect

heightened by the presence of the ice and the snow and the clean-washed

air. The very existence of the brilliant streaks and patches of yellow

and umber and a dozen shades of red depends upon the water from the rain

and melting snow dissolving the colouring matters from the rocks of the

upper levels and depositing them upon the canyon walls as it trickles

down to the river. Clear and sharp in the early springtime, the bright

pigments are bleached and blended by the sun and winds of the summer

until, by the time the fall storms set in, the contrast between streak

and streak is far less marked than when, chrysalis like, they first

burst from their snow cocoons of winter.

It is in the spring, when the blaze of the great colour-drenched diorama

is set off by patches of dazzling snow, when every vagrant sunbeam

glancing from the canyon side is caught and refracted in the mazes of

glittering icicles that fringe every jutting cornice and battlement till

it reaches the eyes of the beholder like a flash from a thousand-hued

star; when the slide from the mountainside forms a snow dam in the

river, and the angry torrent, leaping like a lion at the bars of its

cage, brushes away the obstruction and rages onward in renewed fury to

the valley; when the great mouth under the snow-cap at the top of the

falls is tearing itself wider day by day in its frantic efforts to

disgorge the swollen stream that comes surging down from the

over-flowing lake--it is at this time, when Nature has whipped on her

mightiest forces to the extreme limit of their powers in a grandstand

finish to her spring house-cleaning, that the Grand Canyon of the

Yellowstone has a beauty and a depth of appeal beyond all other seasons.

From the time that I first conceived the idea of an early springtime

trip through the Yellowstone Park the difficulties in the way of

carrying out such a plan, like rolled snowballs, seemed to grow as my

inquiries progressed. Every objection was urged, from the possibility of

snow-blindness to the certainty of death from cold, snow-slides, or wild

animals, from the probability of opposition from the Fort to the

improbability of securing provisions en route. Old "Yankee Jim" even

told me that the spirits of the hot springs and geysers, while peaceable

enough in the mild days of summer, were not to be trusted after they had

been "riled and fruz" by the winds and snows of winter. That was about

the last straw. I felt that I was literally between the devil and the

deep snow.

But when I reached Fort Yellowstone, at the entrance to the Park, I

learned that nearly the whole of the hundred and fifty miles of road

followed on the summer tour were patrolled by soldiers, and that the

scouts made a complete round several times during the winter. The

officer in command received me most kindly. He had no objection at all

to my going out with the scouts or the soldiers on game patrol. If I

would satisfy him that I could conduct myself properly on ski he would

see that all necessary equipment and facilities were provided me for the

winter tour.

I learned later that the sergeant who was detailed to test me out had

boasted that he intended to break me of my fool notion if he had to

break my fool neck. From the way he started, I am actually inclined to

believe he meant it. He led me on foot up the road to Golden Gate,

circled round to the west, ordered me to put on my ski, and then started

down through the timber toward the terraces of Mammoth Hot Springs. I,

of course, fell at the end of ten feet. Having little way on, my worst

difficulty was getting my head out from under the toe of my left ski the

while that same toe was held down by the rear end of my right ski. It

was just the usual ski beginner's mix-up. My instructor, however, had

descended about five hundred feet right side up when a loop of willow

caught the toe of one of his ski and sent him spinning the next five

hundred end over end. It was only by the greatest of good luck that he

kissed lightly off five or six trees in passing instead of colliding

with one head-on. Even as it was they had to send a sled up from the

fort to bring down his much-abused anatomy. The remainder of my ski

novitiate, thank heaven, was served under the skilful and considerate

tutelage of Peter Holt, the scout. Thanks to my Alaska snow-shoe work

and the fact that I was hard as nails physically, I was pronounced ready

to take the road at the end of a couple of days. It was intensive

training, and accompanied by many bumps and thrills. I shall probably

always be in Holt's debt for the bumps. Most of the thrills I paid back

last June when, finding him the Chief of Police of Livingston, I took

him along as passenger for the first fifty miles of my run down the

Yellowstone.

The morning after I was adjudged sufficiently ski-broke to attempt the

winter tour of the Park with a fair chance of finishing I was attached

to a party of troopers detailed to pack in bacon to the station at

Norris Basin. The memories of the doings of the delectable weeks that

followed, which I spent with bear and elk and spouting geysers and

bubbling mud springs as my daily play-fellows, are still tinged with

rose at the end of a score of years. I am appending here--in the form of

verbatim extracts from my religiously kept diary--some account of a few

of the more amusing episodes. The wording follows hard upon the

original; the spelling, I regret to say, I have just had to go over with

a dictionary and dephonetize. If the view-point is a bit naive in spots,

please remember that you are reading the babblings of a very moony and

immature youth, more or less tipsy with his first draughts of life, who

had just discovered that he was standing on the verge of a world full of

innumerable things and imagining that they were all put there for his

own special entertainment.

CHAPTER II

SKI SNAPS

Lake Station, April 13.

Corporal Hope and I set out this morning from the Patrol Station, going

after elk and buffalo pictures. Heading in the direction of Hayden

Valley, we encountered two buffalo cows and their calves crossing a

half-bare opening in the trees near the Mud Geyser. We had little

difficulty in heading them as they tried to break away and driving them

off on a course that offered me a favourable exposure. The calves were a

month or more old, but tottered on their thin legs and seemed very weak,

the consequence, no doubt, of continued inbreeding. The rapidly thinning

herd is badly in need of an infusion of new blood.

We came upon the main herd farther down the valley, making some

long-distance snap-shots on various individuals and sections of it as

they went lunging off through the drifts at our approach. It was old

"Tuskegee," reputed to be the largest specimen of the _Bison Americanus_

in existence, whose picture I most cared for. The old fellow is

estimated to weigh over 3000 pounds, is covered with a net-work of

scars from his lifetime of fighting, and has only one eye and the

remnant of a tail left. He has been seen to give battle to three

pugnacious bull elk at once, and has killed numbers of them in single

combat.

It was but a few summers ago that old "Tuskegee" left the herd, charged

a coach full of tourists, goring one of the horses so badly that it had

to be shot. The big vehicle was nearly overturned by the

plunging horses, while its occupants--a party of New England

school-teachers--were driven into frenzies of terror. Neither the

bullets from a nickel-plated revolver in the hands of one of the

schoolmarms, nor the long stinging whip of the driver, nor even his

equally long and stinging oaths, affected "Tuskegee" in the least. He

continued butting about among the frightened horses as though the

wrecking of a six-in-hand coach was a regular part of his daily routine.

At last, however, the sustained hysteria of the females seemed to get

upon the old fellow's nerves. Wheeling about, he turned the stub of his

tail to the swooning tourists and galloped, bellowing, over the hill.

An order was at once issued that "Tuskegee" should be shot on sight, and

for a month a special detail from the Fort scoured the hills and valleys

in search of the renegade. But all to no purpose. The old warrior, as

though understanding that he was _persona non grata_ with the

authorities, retreated into the impenetrable fastnesses of the mountain

spurs above Thorofare Plateau, and nothing was seen or heard of him for

many months.

For two years there was an interregnum in buffalodom, during which the

big herd gradually dropped to pieces and wandered about in leaderless

fragments. Then, one day, a big bull elk was found, crushed and torn,

trampled into the mud of Violet Springs, and the scouts told each other

that the King had returned. A few days later a soldier of the game

patrol, on a run through Hayden Valley, saw the reunited herd debouch

from a canyon, with old "Tuskegee" puffing proudly in the lead. His tail

was stubbier than ever, the grizzled red hair was more patchy on the

rump and more matted on the neck, and a new set of scars was

criss-crossed and etched into the old ones upon his flanks. The old

fighting spirit still flamed, however, and the trooper owed his life to

the fact that the snow was deep, the crust firm, the slope down and his

ski well waxed. But a new superintendent was in charge, and his

satisfaction at seeing the scattered herd once more united was so great

that he stayed the order of execution. Since that time, strangely

enough, "Tuskegee" has appeared to show his appreciation of this

official clemency by behaving in a most exemplary manner.

I was endeavouring to get a picture of the main herd before it broke up,

when Hope espied old "Stub Tail" in the rear of a bunch of young cows

who were heading away for the hills. Shouting for me to join him, he

gave chase. We gained on them easily in the heavy snow of the valley,

and almost overtook them where they floundered, belly-deep, on their

erratic course. Then they struck the wind-swept slopes of the lower

hills, where the agile cows drew away from us rapidly and scampered out

of sight. But not so old "Tuskegee." Whether it was rheumatism in his

stiff old joints that made him stop, or simple weariness, or, as is most

likely, the unconquerable pride that would not permit him to turn his

back upon an enemy, I shall not attempt to say. In any case, he wheeled

and faced us, head low, hoofs pawing the moss, and snorting in angry

defiance.

As he stood with his rugged form towering against the white background

of the snowy hillside, two jets of steam rushing from his nostrils, his

jaws flecked with bloody foam, his one eye gleaming green as the

starboard light of a steamer, and his bellows of rage so deep that they

seemed to come from beneath the earth, old "Tuskegee" might have been

the vindictive incarnation of the spirit of all the geysers and hell

holes in the Yellowstone bent on an errand of wrath and destruction.

Right then and there I forgot what I came for, forgot the picture I had

intended to take, forgot everything but that snorting colossus in front

of me and the fact that the hillside sloped invitingly in the opposite

direction. Wherefore I tried to swing around, and in swinging turned too

short, crossed my ski, and fell in a heap with my face in the snow.

They say that an ostrich will snuggle its head contentedly into the sand

and let a band of Arabs with drawn scimitars charge right into its tail

feathers. This may be quite true. Perhaps the climate of the Sahara has

something to do with it. But it won't work with a man, a bull buffalo

and a snowdrift, particularly if the man is strapped to two ten-foot-six

strips of hickory and the bull buffalo has a bad reputation.

The faith, folly, foolishness, or whatever it is of the ostrich would

have saved me a lot of unpleasant apprehensions. Every moment of the

time I struggled to unsocket my head from under the nose of one of my

ski I was sure I was going to be gored the next. And I am certain I was

down all of five minutes, notwithstanding Hope's assertion that he had

me straightened out and on my feet inside of ten seconds.

"Steady, young feller," I heard him saying as I rubbed the snow from my

eyes; "don't lose your head like that again." (I wonder if he meant that

literally.) "Old 'Tusky' won't hurt a fly nowadays. He's just posing for

his picture. Gimme that camera. Hold up there; tain't nothing to be

scared of!"

[Illustration: _Photo by S. N. Leek_

ELK IN GATHERING STORM, JACKSON'S HOLE]

That last was shouted at me as I gave a push with my pole and began to

slide off down the hill out of the danger zone. Swinging round to a

reluctant standstill, I meekly unslung my camera as Hope came down for

it. Then, all set for a start, I watched him as he zigzagged back up the

hill toward the buffalo. "Tusky" was blowing like a young Vesuvius, but

the nervy fellow, not a whit daunted, edged up to within twenty feet of

the steaming monster, waited calmly for the sun to come out from behind

a cloud, and snapped the camera. Then we coasted back to the valley--I

well in the lead,--leaving the resolute old monster in full possession

of the field.

Our chase of the fleet-footed _wapita_ was attended by less excitement

but more exertion than was our pursuit of the bison. Following a trail

from Violet Springs, we were lucky in encountering a herd of from four

to five hundred grazing where the spring sunshine was uncovering the

grass on a broad expanse of southerly sloping upland. We circled to the

higher hills in an endeavour to drive a portion of the herd to the

deeper snow of the valley, where we could overtake them on our ski. In

the course of our climb we came upon a fine young bull of two years or

thereabouts, lying in an alder thicket badly wounded from fighting. One

of his graceful horns was snapped squarely off a foot from the head, his

sides were frightfully bruised and torn, and so weak was he from loss of

blood that he took no notice whatever of our approach. Hope said that

few bulls are killed outright in their fights, but that most of the

badly wounded ones ultimately die from "scab."

Our efforts to turn the elk to the valley was only partially successful,

for the main herd, as though divining our purpose, set off on a mad

stampede for the mountains, and on a course which made it impossible to

head them. Hope, however, at imminent risk of his neck, dropped like a

meteor over the rim of the _mesa_, negotiated a precarious serpentine

curve among the butts of a lot of deadfalls, and just succeeded in

cutting off a large bunch of cows, half a dozen "spike" bulls, and a

fine old fourteen-pointer.

The bulls were brave enough at the beginning of the chase, where the

snow was light and the going easy. The old fellow in particular kept

well to the rear of his flying family, stopping every now and then to

brandish his horns and give voice to clear, penetrating cries of

defiance and anger. But as the herd wallowed into the _coulee_ that

skirted the foot of the hills his courage deserted him. He, in turn,

deserted his family, and it was _sauve qui peut_ for the lot of them. By

the time our glistening hickories pulled us up on the flank of the bunch

of heaving, sobbing cows, old "Fourteen Points" was a good hundred yards

ahead, with the "spikes" scattered in between.

We easily headed the frightened cows as they floundered shoulder-deep,

and I snapped them several times without much trouble. Then we turned

our attention to the big bull. He, in his terror, had charged straight

on down the _coulee_, going into increasingly deep snow at every bound.

His efforts were magnificent to behold. At times only the tips of his

shining antlers were visible; again, he would break through with his

fore feet and fall with his muzzle in the snow, only his hind quarters

showing above the crust. At times he would be down fore and aft,

disappearing completely from sight, only the sound of his mighty limbs

as they churned the honey-combed snow telling the story of the struggle.

His agility was wonderful. Every ounce of bone, every shred of muscle,

every fiber of nerve was strained to its utmost. Time and again I saw

his rear hoofs drawn as far forward and as high as his shoulders in an

effort to gain a solid footing. When the hold of his hind legs was lost

he would reach out and bury his fore hoofs and nose in the sinking

crust, and then, arching his back, try to drag his great body up to

them.

As we pulled up close behind him he wallowed into the shadow of some

tall pines where the crust, unexposed to the sun, was hard and firm. He

struggled to the surface, tottered across the shadowed space and began

to break through on the farther side. Backing up, he tried a fresh

place, but only to break through with all fours. Finally, all his former

courage seeming to return with a rush, he staggered back against a tree,

lowered his head, and with a shrill trumpet of defiance dared us to come

on.

That was just what we had hoped and planned for. Circling on the soft

snow, well beyond the reach of a rush, I made several snaps before we

coasted away and left him free to return to his family and explain his

desertion as best he might. The grating of his teeth, as he ground them

together in elk-ish fury, followed us for some distance as we slid away

down the _coulee_.

* * * * *

My attempt to secure some mountain sheep pictures by following the same

methods employed with the bison and elk was brought to a sudden

termination by what came so near to proving a serious disaster to the

quarry that it quite destroyed my zest for the new sport and made me

decide with regret to give it up as incompatible with my career as a

writer on game protection. This occurred on the mountains above the

Gardiner River not long after I had returned to Mammoth Hot Springs from

my circular tour on ski. Hope, whose time in the Army was about up, was

my fellow culprit. Both of us doubtless deserved to be clapped in the

guard-house, as we surely would have been had the true account of what

happened come out at the time. Now, at the end of twenty years, probably

it won't matter a lot. Certainly not to Hope in any event. After serving

out three or four more re-enlistments, he was killed in the Argonne in

one of the last actions of the war. I quote again from my diary.

[Illustration: _J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

ELK STALLED IN SNOW]

[Illustration: _J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

AS WE PULLED UP CLOSE BEHIND HIM]

Mammoth Hot Springs, April 23.

Hope and I came within a hair of wiping out the cream of the Yellowstone

Park herd of _Ovis Montana_ this morning while trying to take its

picture. I took the picture all right, but as a consequence of it the

herd took a header into the river. I think all of them got out, but it

was a narrow squeeze at the best. If there is ever an official inquiry

into our operations, I am afraid my reputation as a game protector will

be gone beyond all hope. This was the way the thing happened:

We had located with our glasses a large flock of fine animals several

hundred yards below our lookout on Gardiner Mountain. Hope set off along

the ridge to the windward of them, holding their interest so

successfully in that direction that I was able to coast down from the

opposite side and bring up almost in their midst before one of them knew

what had happened. I had time for one hurried snap before they were off,

and another when a swift quarter-mile coast brought me up almost on the

heels of the vanguard of the flying flock.

Down a couple of hundred yards of easy slope I held even with the tail

of the flock, and was man[oe]uvring for another exposure when they came

out upon a stretch of almost level bench above the river and began to

beat me three-to-one. The leaders had all but reached the shelter of the

timber when Hope, brandishing his pole and whooping like a wild Indian,

dropped with the suddenness of a thunderbolt from somewhere among the

snowy cliffs above and turned them back. The unexpected appearance of a

new enemy sent glimmering such wits as the grizzled old leader still

had. With one frightened glance to where I came labouring down on him

from the rear, he turned and went plunging over the rim of the cliff

onto the honey-combed ice and snow that bridged the river torrent, the

whole flock following in his wake.

Hope, wide eyed with consternation, was peering over the edge of the

cliff as I came up, and together we watched the various members of the

flock pull themselves together, flounder through to the opposite bank

and make off into the alder thicket beyond. The game struggle of the old

patriarch was splendid. The first to leap, his unfortunate anatomy, half

buried in the yielding snow, had received the impact of more than a few

of the flying hoofs and horns that followed. For four or five long

minutes after the last of his mates had struggled through to safety he

lay, stunned and bleeding, on a slender peninsula of firm snow that

jutted out over the surging stream. As the sound of our voices, loud and

tense with guilty anxiety, floated down to him, he roused, pulled

himself together, and at almost the first flounder broke through and

went whirling off in the clutch of the angry current.

At the lower end of the cave-in his high-flung horns caught against the

rim of soft ice, giving him a brief, but what we felt sure could be no

more than a temporary, respite from an apparently certain fate. But we

underrated the mettle of the brave old veteran, for even while his

sturdy hind quarters drew down in the grip of the powerful undercurrent,

one sharp fore hoof after the other gained hold on the trembling crust,

and his sinewy body was almost lifted to safety before the sagging mass

gave way again and left him struggling in the water. Twice, and then

once again, was this same plucky man[oe]uvre repeated, but only to end

each time in the same heart-breaking failure. Every fibre of rippling

muscle seemed strained to the limit in his final effort, and when the

soggy ice broke away it looked certain that the river was to be the

victor after all.

And such, no doubt, would have been the end had not the last cave-in

carried the resolute old patriarch to a submerged bar of shingle. Here,

rallying his seemingly inexhaustible strength, he gathered himself and

leaped cleanly to a solid stretch of crust. A moment later he was off in

the wake of the rest of his flock.

With long-drawn breaths of relief we turned and tightened up the thongs

of our ski for the climb out of the canyon. It was not until half an

hour later, when we paused for rest on the _mesa_ rim, that Hope's

drawling voice broke the silence that had held between us.

"Young feller," he said jerkedly between breaths, "if the old one had

drownded down there, the best thing you and I could do would be to jump

in and be drownded with him. Even as it is, if the Super gets wind of

that monkey show, it's me for a disonerable discharge and you for over

the border."

But as neither Hope nor I is inclined to do any talking, the chances

seem good that we'll steer clear of the trouble we were so surely asking

for. But no more ski-snapping for me, just the same.

CHAPTER III

HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS

Grand Canyon Station, April 9.

We made a three o'clock start from Norris this morning and came all the

way to the Canyon on the crust. Carr, one of the troopers accompanying

me, took a fearful tumble on the winding hill that leads down to the

Devil's Elbow, breaking his "gee-pole" and badly wrenching one of his

ankles. A fierce thunder-storm overtook us about seven. The vivid

flashes of the lightning produced a most striking effect in illuminating

the inky clouds as they were blown across the snowy peaks. A flock of

mountain sheep, driven from the upper spurs by the fury of the storm,

crossed close to the road. I snapped a very unusual silhouette of them

as they paused on the crest of a hill, with the blown storm-clouds in

the background.

We reached the hotel before the storm was over. Bursting into the rear

entrance, we were just in time to find Clark, the winter keeper, picking

himself up from the middle of the floor, where he had been thrown after

coming in contact with an electric current brought in on the telephone

wire while he was tinkering with the receiver. The chap seems to be an

inventive genius. He has, so the soldiers told me, dissected over a

dozen clocks in an effort to secure the machinery for a model of an

automobile sled he is working on. His last model was destroyed by his

dog, which took the strangely acting thing for a bird or a rat and shook

it to pieces before any one could interfere. A few days later the brute

essayed to follow Clark on one of his wild slides down the side of the

canyon to the brink of the falls, but lost his footing and went over

into the scenery. The inventor considers this a propitious sign from

heaven.

"For why should that dog go over the very first time he tried the slide

after he did that destruction," he asked us, "if it wasn't because the

Lord thought he stood in the way of good work? Now, with nothing to

bother me, I shall build another model and reap my reward."

"But was the dog your only obstacle?" I asked.

"By no means," was the reply; "but all the others will be brushed away

just as was the dog."

Hearken to that, oh ye of little faith! If faith will move mountains

there surely ought to be no trouble about the movement of Clark's

automobile sled.

Clark took me down the sidling snow-choked trail to the top of the

falls this afternoon, saying that he wanted to show me how he did his

famous "Devil's Slide." Utterly unable, in my comparative inexperience,

to keep the road, I was about to beg off when Clark suggested that I

remove my ski and ride the rest of the way by standing on the back of

his. It was a hair-raising coast, but we made the brink without a spill.

More important still--a point respecting which I had been most in

doubt,--we stopped there.

Already considerably shaken in nerve, I tried to dissuade Clark from

attempting his slide. Replying that the stunt was a part of his daily

routine for keeping his wits on edge, he "corduroyed" off up the side of

the canyon, which at that point has a slope of about forty-five degrees.

When he was perhaps a hundred feet above my head, he laid hold of a

sapling, swung quickly around, and shot full-tilt for the icy brink. I

was sure he intended to kill himself, just as so many cracked inventors

do. A sudden numbness seized me. The roar of the fall grew deafening,

and I involuntarily closed my eyes. There was a thud and a crash, a

shower of fine snow flew over me. Then the roar of the fall resumed.

When I mustered up the courage to open my eyes, it was to discover my

mad companion cautiously drawing himself back from the brink. He had

stopped, as usual, by throwing himself on his side and digging the edges

of his ski into the frozen snow. Although he wouldn't admit it, I am

certain he kept going an inch or two more than was his wont, for one

long strip of hickory was swinging free beyond the icy edge and the

other held by only a thin ridge of hard snow.

While he was still thus poised on the brink of Kingdom Come, or rather

the Falls of the Yellowstone, Clark insisted on explaining to me the

principle of a parachute cape he had devised for use in such an

emergency. He reckoned that it would not only help in checking his

momentum at the proper moment, but would also have a tendency to make

his landing much less painful in the event he went over. I am wondering

tonight if all inventors are like that. Clark is the first genius I have

ever known, so I can't be quite sure.

Grand Canyon Station, April 10.

Clark and Smith took me out for a ski-jumping lesson this morning. Clark

seems to be rather a star performer in all departments of ski work, but

he claims that he is better at jumping than at anything else. What the

long, straight drive, hit cleanly from the tee, is to the golfer, what

the five rails, fairly taken, is to the cross-country rider, what the

dash down a rocky-walled canyon is to the river boatman, the jump is to

the ski-runner. But what the foozle is to the golfer, the cropper to the

rider, the spill in midstream to the boatman, the fall at the end of the

jump is to the ski-man. I saw both the jump and the fall today. Or

rather, I saw the jump and _felt_ the fall. If I saw anything at all, it

was stars.

The jump is made from a raised "take-off" at the foot of a hill. The

steeper the hill the better. The snow slopes up from the foot of the

hill to the brink of the "take-off," where it ends abruptly. The jumper

goes off up the hill for a quarter of a mile or so, turns round and

coasts down at full speed. Leaving the "take-off" at a mile or more a

minute, it is inevitable that he must be shot a considerable distance

through the air. If he is well balanced at the proper moment he

naturally sails a lot farther than if he is floundering and

Dutch-windmilling with his arms. Also, he messes himself and the snow up

a lot less when he lands.

Considering their short runway and crudely built "take-off," the sixty

feet Clark cleared this morning was a fairly creditable performance,

though probably less than half what some of the cracks do in Norway.

Naturally, I could hardly be expected to do as well as that. It was

only on the last of a dozen trials that I managed to coast all the way

to the brink of the "take-off" without falling, and even then I was not

sufficiently under control to stream-line properly and so minimize air

resistance. Under the circumstances, therefore, I am rather pleased with

Clark's verdict anent my maiden effort. He said I hit harder and showed

less damage from it than any man in the Park.

Grand Canyon Station, April 11.

This morning we went down to Inspiration Point to watch the sunrise.

Never before did I realize how inadequate the most pretentious

descriptions of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone all are. The

greatest of the world's word painters have only succeeded in stringing

together a lot of colours like the variegated tags on a paint company's

sample sheet, throwing in a liberal supply of trope and hyperbole,

making a few comparisons to heaven and hell, sunrise and sunset and a

field of flowers, and mixing the whole together and serving it up

garnished with adjectives of the awful, terrible, immense and stupendous

order.

It is not in singling out each crag and pinnacle, or in separating each

bright streak of colour from its neighbour and admiring it alone, that

one comes to the fullest appreciation of the grandeur and beauty of the

canyon. It is rather in being gradually taken possession of by the

spirit of the place, an influence that lasts long after you have ceased

to look, a feeling far deeper than the mere transient delight of gazing

on a beautiful picture.

Yesterday's thaw must have raised the water in the Lake. The river is

much higher today, and the snow-bridges above the falls, as well as the

heaped-in drifts below, are breaking away in huge masses. The snow-cap

on the brink, with the water gushing forth from under it, has much the

appearance of a gigantic alabaster gargoyle. The river shoots down under

the snow and leaps out over the chasm in a clean compact stream of

bottle-green. Half-way down the resistance of the air has whitened the

jet, and as it disappears behind the great pile at its foot it is dashed

to a spray so snowy that, from a distance, the line between water and

drift defies the eye to fix.

As we edged our way out to a better position the sun rose and threw a

series of three rainbows in the mist clouds as they floated up out of

the shadowed depths. The lowest and clearest of these semi-circles of

irised spray seemed to spring from a patch of bright saffron sand, where

it was laid bare by the melting snow. Now I know where the story of the

gold at the end of the rainbow came from.

[Illustration:

_J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

THE FALLS IN WINTER FROM POINT LOOKOUT]

Lake Station, April 12.

Carr and I tried to come through from the Canyon by moonlight last night

and had rather a bad time of it. First a fog obscured the moon. Then we

tried to take a short cut by following the telephone line, got lost in

the dark, and staid lost till the moon set and made it darker still. In

cutting across the hills to get back into Hayden Valley, Carr fell over

a snow-bank and landed right in the middle of the road, where it had

been laid bare by the heat of hot springs. Starting again, we came to

the top of a hill and coasted down at a smart gait. As we sped to the

bottom I became aware of a dark blur beyond the white of the snow. Then

there was a sudden stoppage, and I seemed to see a re-risen moon, with a

whole cortege of comets in its wake, dancing about the sky. I came to at

the touch of a handful of snow on my face, to learn that I had coasted

right onto a bare spot in the road and stopped in half a ski-length. My

heavily loaded knapsack, shooting along the line of least resistance up

my spine, had come into violent contact with the back of my head,

producing the astronomical pyrotechnic illusion.

After a while we were lost again, this time in a level space bounded on

four sides by a winding creek. I know it was on four sides of the

place, for we carefully walked off toward each point of the compass in

rotation, and each time landed in the creek. We finally escaped by

wading. How we got in without wading will always be a mystery. Carr said

the stream was called Trout Creek. Doubtless he is right; but if there

were any trout over six inches long there last night they must have been

permanently disjointed at more than one vertebral connection by having

to conform to those confounded bends.

We passed the famous and only Mud Geyser an hour before daybreak. Things

were in a bad way with him, judging from the noise. The mutterings of

the old mud-slinger in his quieter moments reminds me very much of a

Chilkat Mission Indian reciting the Lord's Prayer in his native

tongue--just a rapid succession of deep gutturals. But when some

particularly indigestible concoction--served, possibly by subterranean

dumb-waiter from the adjacent Devil's Kitchen--interferes with the

gastronomies of the old epicure, his voice is anything but prayerful.

Carr said it reminded him of something between a mad bull buffalo and a

boat load of seasick tourists when the summer wind stirs up the Lake.

But Carr was too tired and disgusted to be elegant. Indeed, we were both

pretty well played out. Personally, I felt just about like the Mud

Geyser sounded.

After about an hour's groping in the dark, we found an emergency cabin

near the Mud Geyser. Building a fire, we warmed and ate a can of salmon.

When it was light enough to see, we slipped on the ski and came through

on the crust in short order.

Thumb Emergency Cabin, April 15.

Making a start before daybreak, we crossed Yellowstone Lake on the ice.

It was a wonderful opportunity to watch the light and shade effects on

the encircling mountains. Far to the south-west there is a very striking

pyramidal peak. Two flat snow-paved slopes of the mighty pile, divided

by an even ridge of black rock that rears itself in sharp contrast to

the beds of white that bulwark the base, form the sides of the pyramid.

The southeastern side so lies that it catches the first rays of the

morning sun and sends them off in shimmering streamers across the

lake--Nature's heliographic signal of the coming day.

An hour or more later the sun itself appears above the eastern hills,

silvering the tops of the frosted fir trees and whitening the vaporous

clouds above Steamboat Point and Brimstone Basin. The green ice in the

little glaciers near the summit of the big mountain kindle and sparkle

like handfuls of emeralds, and the reflected sun-flashes play in

quivering motes of dancing light on the snowy flanks of Elephant Back.

Meanwhile the south-west face of the great pyramid, lying in heavy

shadow, sleeps dull and black until the morning is well advanced. Then,

suddenly, without a perceptible premonitory fading of the shadow plane,

the whole snow-field becomes a shining sheet, as white and clear-cut as

thought carved from alabaster. At noon the sun, standing full above the

black dividing line of rock, sheds an impartial light on either side of

the mountain. Perspective is lost for the moment, and there appears to

be but one broad field of snow, with a black line traced down its

middle.

Toward midafternoon the eastern side draws on its coat of black as

suddenly as that of the other was cast aside in the morning. Now the

former is almost indiscernible, while the latter, gleaming in the

sunlight like a great sheet of white paper, seems suspended in the air

by invisible wires. And there it continues to hang, while the shadows

deepen along the shores and creep out over the ice in wavering lines as

night descends upon the frozen lake. Gradually the white sheet fades to

nothingness, until at last its position is marked only by a blank blur

unpricked by the twinkle of awakening stars.

It is as though the page of the day, new, bright, pure and unsullied in

the morning, had at last been turned to the place reserved for it from

the dawn of creation, blackened and blemished and stained by the sins of

a world of men.

(1922--I am considerably moved--I won't say how or to what--by that

little "sins-of-a-world-of-men" touch. It is something to have _begun_

life as a moralist, anyhow.)

Fountain Station, April 17.

This morning it was colder again, and we were witness of a most

wonderful sight when a snow squall chanced along while the Fountain

Geyser was in full eruption. The storm swooped down with sudden fury

while we were watching the steam jets in the Mammoth Paint Pot throw

evanescent lilies and roses in the coloured mud. We were waiting for the

Great Fountain, most beautiful of all the geysers of the Park, to get

over her fit of coyness and burst into action. The Fountain, by the way,

is one of the few geysers always spoken of in the feminine gender. I

asked if this was on account of her beauty, but Carr, who had a wife

once, thinks her uncertainty of temper had more to do with it.

The imperious advance of the Storm King seemed still further to

intimidate the bashful beauty, and at first she only shrank the deeper

into her subterranean bower. But when the little snowflakes, like

gentle but persistent caresses, began to shower softly upon the bosom

of the pool the silver bubbles came surging up with a rush. In a moment

more, as a maid overcome with the fervour of her love springs to the

arms of her lover, the queenly geyser leaped forth in all her splendour,

eight feet of beaming, bubbling green and white thrown with precipitate

eagerness upon the bosom of the Storm King. Whereupon the latter threw

all restraint to the winds and responded with a gust of bold,

blustering, ungovernable passion. Roaring in his triumph, beating and

winding her in sheets of driven snow, he grappled her in his might and

bent her back and down until the great steam-clouds from her crest, like

coils of flowing hair, were blown in curling masses along the earth.

For a full half hour they struggled in reckless abandon, granting full

play to the ardour of their elemental passions, reeling and swaying in

advance and retreat, as the mighty forces controlling them alternated in

mastery. When the gusts fell light the geyser played to her full height,

melting a wide circle in the snow that had been driven up to her very

mouth. When the wind came again she bent, quivering to his will, but

only to spring back erect as the gust weakened and died down.

Presently the storm passed, the sun came out and the north wind ceased

to blow. Full of the gladness of her love, the queenly geyser reared,

rippling, to her full height, held for a moment, a coruscating tower of

brilliants, and then, with little sobs and gasps of happiness and

contentment, sank back into her crystal chamber to dream and await the

next coming of her impetuous northern lover. Or so I fancied, at any

rate, as we watched the water sink away into the beryline depths of its

crater. But I failed to reckon with the sex of the beauty. This

afternoon, returning from a visit to Fairy Falls, we passed over the

formation. An indolent young breeze, just awakened from his siesta among

the southern hills, came picking his way up the valley of the Madison,

and the fickle Fountain was fairly choking in her eagerness to tell how

glad she was to see him. But her faithlessness had its proper reward.

The blase blade passed the flirtatious jade by without deigning even to

ruffle her steam-cloud hair. The soldiers said he had probably gone on

to keep an engagement at the Punch Bowl, where he has been in the habit

of stirring things up a bit with a giddy young zephyr who blows in to

meet him there from down Snake River way.

Norris Station, April 18.

This has been a memorable day, for in the course of it I have seen two

of the most famous manifestations of the Yellowstone in action--the

Giant Geyser erupting and Bill Wade swearing. The Giant is the biggest

geyser in America, and Bill Wade is reputed to have the largest

vocabulary of one-language profanity in the North-west. True, there is

said to be a chap over in the legislature at Helena that can out-cuss

Wade under certain conditions, but he is college bred, speaks four

languages and has to be under the influence of liquor to do consistent

work. Wade requires no artificial stimulants, but he does have to get

mad before he can do himself full justice. Today something happened to

make him sizzling mad. The eruption of the Giant is startling and

beautiful, the river, as it takes its three-hundred-foot leap to the

depths of the Grand Canyon, is sublime and awe-inspiring, but for sheer

fearsomeness Wade's swearing--viewed dispassionately and with no

consideration of its ethical bearing--is the real wonder of the

Yellowstone.

We were climbing the hill back of the Fountain Hotel--Wade, two troopers

and myself. Wade, who is the winter keeper of the hotel and not too

skilled with ski, tried to push straight up the steep slope. Half-way to

the top he slipped, fell over a stump, gained fresh impetus and came

bounding to the bottom over the hard crust, a wildly waving pin-wheel of

arms, legs and clattering ski. He was torn, bruised and scratched from

the brush and trees, and one of his long "hickories" was snapped at the

instep. For the moment he uttered no word, but the soldiers, who knew

what was coming, held their breath and waited in trembling anticipation.

The air was charged as before a thunder-storm. A hush fell upon us all,

a hush like the silence that settles upon a ring of tourists around Old

Faithful as the boiling water, sinking back with gurgling growls,

heralds the imminent eruption.

[Illustration:

_J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

THE GIANT IS THE BIGGEST GEYSER IN NORTH AMERICA]

Wade removed his ski, laid the fragments on the snow and folded his coat

across them, as a pious Mussulman spreads his prayer-mat. Seating

himself cross-legged on the coat, he cast his eyes heavenward, on his

face an expression as pure and passionless as that on the countenance of

the Sistine Madonna. For a few moments he was silent, as though putting

away earthly things and concentrating his mind on the business in hand.

Then he began to summon the powers of heaven and the powers of hell and

call them to reckoning. He held them all accountable. Then came the

saints--every illustrious one in the calendar. Saint by saint he called

them and bade them witness the state they had brought him to. Spirits of

light, imps of darkness--all were charged in turn.

His voice grew shriller and shriller as his pent-up fury was unleashed.

He cursed snow, hill, snags, stumps, trees and ski. He cursed by the

eyes, as the sailor curses, and by the female progenitor, as the

cowboy. He cursed till his face turned from white to red, from red to

purple, from purple to black; he cursed till the veins in knots and

cords seemed bursting from his forehead; he cursed till his voice sunk

from a bellow to a raucous howl, weakened to convulsive gasps and died

rattling in his throat, till brain and body reeled under the strain and

he sank into a quivering heap at our feet.

I shall always regret that the eruption of the Park's greatest geyser

came after, rather than before, that of Wade. Frankly, the spouting of

the mighty Giant seemed a bit tame after the forces we had just seen

unleashed over behind the hotel.

* * * * *

Wade, coming through to Norris with us this afternoon, got into more

trouble. Unfortunately, too, it was under conditions which made it

impracticable to relieve his feelings in a swear-fest. The snow around

the Fountain was nearly all gone when we started, and we found it only

in patches along the road down to the Madison. After carrying our ski

for a mile without being able to use them, we decided on Holt's advice,

to take the old wood trail over the hills. This, though rough and steep,

was well covered with snow. We all took a good many tumbles in dodging

trees and scrambling through the brush, Wade being particularly

unfortunate. Finally, however, we reached the top of the long winding

hill that leads back to the main road by the Gibbon River. Here we

stopped to get our wind and tighten our ski-thongs for the downward

plunge. At this point we discovered that the snow of the old road had

been much broken and wallowed by some large animals.

"Grizzlies," pronounced Holt, as he examined the first of a long row of

tracks that led off down the hill. "Do you see those claw marks? Nothing

like a grizzly for nailing down his footprints. Doesn't seem to care if

you do track him home."

The last words were almost lost as he disappeared, a grey streak, around

the first bend. Carr and I hastened to follow, and Wade, awkwardly

astride of his pole, brought up the rear. I rounded the turn at a sharp

clip, cutting hard on the inside with my pole to keep the trail. Then,

swinging into the straight stretch beyond, I waved my pole on high in

the approved manner of real ski cracks, and gathered my breath for the

downward plunge. And not until the air was beginning to whip my face and

my speed was quite beyond control, did I see two great hairy beasts

standing up to their shoulders in a hole in the middle of the trail.

Holt was on them even as I looked. Holding his course until he all but

reached the wallow, he swerved sharply to the right against the steeply

sloping bank, passed the bears, and then eased back to the trail again.

A few seconds later he was a twinkling shadow, flitting down the long

lane of spruces in the river bottom.

The stolid brutes never moved from their tracks. I made no endeavour to

stop, but, adopting Holt's tactics, managed to give a clumsy imitation

of his superlatively clever avoidance of the blockade. Venturing to

glance back over my shoulder as I regained the trail, I crossed the

points of my ski and was thrown headlong onto the crust. Beyond filling

my eyes with snow I was not hurt in the least. My ski thongs were not

even broken.

My momentary glance had revealed Wade, eyes popping from his head and

face purple with frantic effort, riding his pole and straining every

muscle to come to a stop. But all in vain. While I still struggled to

get up and under way again, there came a crash and a yell from above,

followed by a scuffle and a gust of snorts and snarls. When I regained

my feet a few seconds later nothing was visible on the trail but the

ends of two long strips of hickory. Scrambling up the side of the cut

and falling over each other in their haste, went two panic stricken

grizzlies.

Wade kicked out of his ski, crawled up from the hole, and was just

about to spread his swear-mat and tell everything and everybody between

high heaven and low hell what he thought of them for the trick they had

played on him when, with a rumbling, quizzical growl, a huge hairy

Jack-in-the-Box shot forth from a deep hole on the lower side of the

road. Burrowing deep for succulent roots sweet with the first run of

spring sap, the biggest grizzly of the lot had escaped the notice of

both of us until he reared up on his haunches in an effort to learn what

all the racket was about. A push with my pole quickly put me beyond

reach of all possible complications. Poor Wade rolled and floundered for

a hundred yards through the deep snow before stopping long enough to

look back and observe that the third grizzly was beating him

three-to-one--in the opposite direction. So profound was his relief that

he seemed to forget all about the swear-fest. My companions claim they

never knew anything of the kind to happen before.

Norris Station, April 19.

There are a number of things that are forbidden in Yellowstone Park, but

the worst one a man can do, short of first degree murder, is to "soap" a

geyser. Because the unnatural activity thus brought about is more than

likely to result in the destruction of a geyser's digestive system,

this offence--and most properly so--is very heavily penalized. Wherefore

we are speculating tonight as to what will happen to little Ikey

Einstein in case the Superintendent finds out what he did this

afternoon.

Ikey has had nothing to do with my tour at any time. That is one thing

to be thankful for. Discharged from the Army a few days ago, he had been

given some kind of job at the Lake Hotel for the summer. He is on his

way there now, he says, and is holding over here for the crust to freeze

before pushing on. Time was hanging rather heavily on his hands this

afternoon, which is probably the reason that he cooked up a case of

laundry soap in a five-gallon oil can and poured the resultant mess down

the crater of "The Minute Man." The latter won its name as a consequence

of playing with remarkable regularity practically upon the sixtieth tick

of the minute from its last spout. Or, at least, that was what was

claimed for it. Ikey maintains that he clocked it for half an hour, and

that it never did better than once in eighty seconds, and that it was

increasing its interval as the sun declined. He held that a geyser that

refused to recognize its duty to live up to its name and reputation

should be disciplined--just like in the Army. Perhaps it was discouraged

from getting so far behind schedule. If that was the case, plainly the

proper thing to do was to help it to make up lost time in one whale of

an eruption, and then it might start with a clean slate and live up to

its name. He was only acting for the geyser's own good. Thus Ikey, but

only after he had put his theory into practice.

Ikey waited until he had the station to himself before cooking up his

dope. Holt had pushed on to Mammoth Hot Springs and Carr and I had gone

out to watch for the eruption of the Monarch. With no scout and non-com

present, he doubtless figured he would run small chance of having his

experiment interfered with. Carr and I, sitting on the formation over by

the crater of the Monarch, saw him come down with an oil can on his

shoulder and start fussing round in the vicinity of "The Minute Man."

Suddenly a series of heavy reverberations shook the formation beneath

our feet, and at the same instant Ikey turned tail and started to run.

He was just in time to avoid the deluge from a great gush of water and

steam that shot a hundred feet in the air, but not to escape the

mountainous discharge of soapsuds that followed in its wake. Within a

few seconds that original five gallons of soft soap had been beaten to a

million times its original volume, and for a hundred yards to windward

it covered the formation in great white, fluffy, iridescent heaps.

Pear's Soap's original "Bubbles" boy wasn't a patch on the sputtering

little Hebrew who finally pawed his way to fresh air and sunshine from

the outermost of the sparkling saponaceous hillocks. Carr, whose mother

had been a washer-woman, almost wept at the visions of his innocent

childhood conjured up by the sight of such seas of suds.

For a good half hour "The Minute Man" retched and coughed in desperate

efforts to spew forth the nauseous mess that had been poured down its

throat. Then its efforts became scattering and spasmodic, finally

ceasing entirely. For an hour longer a diminuendo of gasps and gurgles

rattled in its racked throat. At last even these ceased, and a death-bed

silence fell upon the formation. There has not been the flutter of a

pulse since. It really looks as though "The Minute Man," his innermost

vitals torn asunder by the terrific expansion of boiling water acting

upon soft soap, is dead for good and all. I only hope I am not going to

be mixed up in the inquest.

Crystal Springs Emergency Cabin, April 20.

Wade and I had a long and heated session of religious argument at Norris

last night, of which I am inclined to think I had a shade the best. A

half hour ago, however, he pulled off a coup which he seems to feel has

about evened the score. At least I just overheard him telling Carr

that, while that "dern'd reporter was a mighty slippery cuss," he

reckoned that he finally got the pesky dude where he didn't have nothing

more to say. This was something the way of it:

Wade is a sort of amateur agnostic, and, next to swearing, his favourite

pastime is arguing "agin the church." He has read Voltaire and Bob

Ingersoll in a haphazard way, and also sopped up some queer odds and

ends from works on metaphysics and philosophy. These give him his basic

ideas which, alchemized in the wonderworking laboratory of his mind,

produce some golden theories. He holds, for instance, that no wise and

beneficent being would cast a devil out of a woman and into a drove of

hogs, because hogs were good to eat and women wasn't. Making the hogs

run off a cut-bank into the sea meant spoiling good meat, and no wise

and beneficent being would do that. He reckoned the whole yarn was just

a bit of bull anyhow, and if it really did happen, wasn't modern science

able to account for it by the fact that the girl was plain daffy and the

hogs had "trichiny" worms and stampeded?

Little touches like that go a long way toward brightening the gloom of a

winter evening, and for that reason I have done what I could to keep

Wade on production. Unfortunately, my knowledge of theology is not

profound, while Wade, with his wits sharpened on every itinerant

sky-pilot who has ever endeavoured to herd in the black sheep of the

Yellowstone, has all his guns ready to bear at a moment's notice.

Naturally, therefore, in a matter of straight argument, he has had me on

the run from his opening salvo. But always at the last I have robbed his

victories of all sweetness by ducking back into the citadel of dogma,

and telling him that I can't consent to argue with him unless he sticks

to premises--that the Church cannot eliminate the element of faith,

which he persists in ignoring. Then, leaving him fuming, I turn in and

muffle my exposed ear with a pillow.

That was about the way it went last night at Norris, except that both of

us, very childishly, lost our tempers and indulged in personalities.

Wade refused to accept the fact of my retirement and violated my rest by

staying up and poking the stove. When I uncovered my head to protest, he

took the occasion to ask me how I reconciled the theory of the

"conservashun" of matter with the story of the loaves and the fishes. I

snapped out pettishly that I could reconcile myself to the story of the

loaves and fishes a darn site easier than I could to the stories of a

fish and a loafer. It was a shameful and inexcusable lapse of breeding

on my part, especially as Wade, being a hotel watchman without active

duties, was abnormally sensitive about being referred to as a loafer.

At first he seemed to be divided between rushing me with a poker and

sitting down for a swear-fest. Finally, however, he did a much more

dignified thing than either by serving flat notice that he would never

again speak to me upon any subject whatever.

Wade made a brave effort to stand by his resolve. To my very contrite

apology in the morning he turned a deaf ear. Getting himself a hasty

breakfast, he kicked into his ski and pushed off down the Mammoth

Springs road at four o'clock. When Carr and I started an hour later a

drizzling rain had set in, making the going the hardest and most

disagreeable of the whole trip. The snow, honey-combed by the rain,

offered no support to our ski, and we wallowed to our knees in soft

slush. The drizzle increased to a steady downpour as the morning

advanced, drenching our clothes till the water ran down and filled our

rubber shoes. Buckskin gauntlets soaked through faster then they could

be wrung out. It was not long before chilled hands became almost

powerless to grasp the slippery steering poles and numbing fingers

fumbled helplessly in their efforts to tighten the stretching thongs of

rawhide that bound on our ski.

Wade was spitting a steady stream of curses where we pulled up on his

heels at the mud flats by Beaver Lake, but sullenly refused to make way

for me to take the lead and break trail. Past Obsidian Cliff, on the

still half-frozen pavement of broken glass, the going was better, and I

managed to pass and cut in ahead of the wallowing watchman just before

we came to the long avenue of pines running past Crystal Springs. He

seemed barely able to drag one sagging knee up past the other, and his

half-averted face was seamed deep with lines of weariness. Only the

spasmodic movement of his lips told of the unborn curses that his

overworked lungs lacked the power to force forth upon the air.

Realizing from the fact that he lacked the breath to curse how

desperately near a collapse the fellow must be, I whipped up my own

flagging energies with the idea of pushing on ahead to the cabin and

getting a fire started and a pot of coffee boiling. Shouting to Carr to

stand by to bring in the remains, I spurted on as fast as I could over

the crust which was still far from rotted by the rain. I was a good

three hundred yards ahead of my companions when I turned from the road

to cross Obsidian Creek to the cabin. A glance back before I entered the

trees revealed Wade reeling drunkenly from side to side, with Carr

hovering near to catch him when he fell.

A large fir log spanned the deep half-frozen pool beyond which stood the

half-snow-buried cabin. The near bank was several feet higher than the

far, so that the log sloped downward at a sharp angle. Since, on our

outward trip, we had crossed successfully by coasting down the

snow-covered top of the log, I assumed that the feat might be performed

again, especially as I was far more adept of the ski now than then. But

I failed to reckon on the softening the snow had undergone in the

elapsed fortnight. Half-way over the whole right side of the slushy cap

sliced off and let me flounder down into the waist-deep pool.

Wade, so Carr says, seemed to sense instantly the meaning of the wild

yell that surged up from the creek, and the realization of the glad fact

that his tormentor had come a cropper at the log acted like a galvanic

shock to revive his all-but-spent energies. I had just got my head above

the slushy ice and started cutting loose my ski thongs when he appeared

on the bank above. There was triumph in his fatigue-drawn visage, but no

mirth. Such was the intensity of his eagerness to speak that for a few

moments the gush of words jammed in his throat and throttled coherence.

Then out it came, short, sharp and to the point.

"Now, gol dern ye--what d'ye think o' God now?" was all he said. Then he

kicked out of one of his ski and reached it down for me to climb out

by. We did not, nor shall, resume the argument. The man is too terribly

in earnest. He has the same spirit--with the reverse English on it, of

course--that I had taken for granted had died with the early martyrs.

Mammoth Hot Springs, April 25.

The outside world of ordinary people has pushed in and taken possession

of Fort Yellowstone in the fortnight since I left here, and the invasion

of the rest of the Park will speedily follow. Two hundred labourers for

road work and the first installment of the hotel help arrived last night

and today they are swarming over the formations, gaping into the depths

of the springs, and setting nails and horseshoes to coat and crust in

the mineral-charged water as it trickles down the terraces. Irish and

Swedes predominate among both waitresses and shovel-wielders, and as

they flock about, open-mouthed with wonder and chattering at the tops of

their voices, they remind one of a throng of immigrants just off the

steamer. More of the same kind are due today, and still more tomorrow.

Then, worst of all, in another week will come the tourists. But Lob, the

good god of the snows and all his works will be gone by then, thank

heaven, and so shall I. Today there has come a letter from "Yankee Jim"

stating that he has located a boat which he reckons will do for a start

down the Yellowstone. He fails to say what he reckons it will do after

it starts, but I shall doubtless know more on that score at the end of a

couple of days.

CHAPTER IV

RUNNING "YANKEE JIM'S CANYON"

Thirty or forty years ago, before the railway came, "Yankee Jim" held

the gate to Yellowstone Park very much as Horatius held the bridge

across the Tiber. Or perhaps it was more as St. Peter holds the gate to

heaven. Horatius stopped all-comers, while Jim, like St. Peter, passed

all whom he deemed worthy--that is to say, those able to pay the toll.

For the old chap had graded a road over the rocky cliffs hemming in what

has since been called "Yankee Jim's Canyon of the Yellowstone," and this

would-be Park tourists were permitted to travel at so much per head. As

there was no other road into the Park in the early days, Jim established

more or less intimate contact with all visitors, both going and coming.

As there were several spare rooms in his comfortable cabin home at the

head of the Canyon, many, like Kipling, stopped over for a few days to

enjoy the fishing. The fishing never disappointed them, and neither did

Jim.

But people found Jim interesting and likable for very diverse

reasons--that became plain to me before ever I met the delicious old

character and was able to form an opinion of my own. A city official of

Spokane who had fished at Jim's canyon sometime in the nineties

characterized him to me as the most luridly picturesque liar in the

North-west. A few days later a fairly well known revivalist, who shared

my seat on the train to Butte, averred that "Yankee Jim" was one of the

gentlest and most saintly characters he ever expected to meet outside of

heaven. This same divergence of opinion I found to run through all the

accounts of those who had written of Jim in connection with their Park

visits. He had undoubtedly poured some amazingly bloodthirsty stories

into the ready ears of the youthful Kipling when the latter, homeward

bound from India, visited the Yellowstone in the late eighties. Some

hint of these yarns is given in the second volume of "From Sea to Sea."

Yet it could not have been much earlier than this that Bob Ingersoll and

Jim struck sparks, when the famous orator endeavoured to expound his

atheistic doctrines on the lecture platform in Livingston. And the witty

Bob admitted that on this occasion he found himself more preached

against than preaching.

It remained for the Sheriff of Park County, whom I met in Livingston on

my way to the Park, to reveal the secret spring of Jim's dual

personality. "It all depends upon whether old 'Yankee' is drinking or

not," he said. "He puts in on an average of about five days lapping up

corn juice and telling the whoppingest lies ever incubated on the

Yellowstone and ten days neutralizing the effects of them by talking and

living religion. Latterly he's been more and more inclining to

spiritualism and clairvoyance. Tells you what is going to happen to you.

Rather uncanny, some of the stuff he gets off; but on the whole a young

fellow like you that's looking for copy will find him to pan out better

when the black bottle's setting on the table and the talk runs to Injun

atrocities. But you're sure to get spirits in any event--if old 'Yankee'

isn't pouring 'em he'll be talking with 'em."

"Spirits are good in any form," I said, nodding gravely and crooking a

finger at the bar-keeper of the old Albermarle; "but--yes--without doubt

the black bottle promises better returns from my standpoint."

But it was not to be, either sooner or later. Silver of beard and of

hair and lamb-gentle of eye, old 'Yankee' fairly swam in an aura of

benevolence when I dropped in upon him a couple of days later--and the

table was bare. He raised his hands in holy horror when I asked him to

tell me Injun fighting stories, and especially of the tortures he had

seen and had inflicted. He admitted that such stories had been

attributed to him, but couldn't imagine how they had got started. He had

lived with the Crows and the Bannocks, it was true, but only as a friend

and a man of peace, never as a warrior. Far from ever having been even a

passive spectator of torture, he had always exerted himself to prevent,

or at least to minimise it. And he flattered himself that his efforts

along this line had not been without success. He felt that no village in

which he had lived but had experienced the civilizing effect of his

presence.

[Illustration:

_Courtesy Northern Pacific R. R._

"YANKEE JIM'S" CABIN]

Of course all this was terribly disappointing to a youth who had read of

the hair-raising exploits of "Yankee Jim, the White Chief," in

yellow-backed shockers, and who had looked forward for weeks to hearing

from his thin, hard lips the story of the burning of the squaw at the

stake, immortalized by Kipling. Forewarned, however, that it was

something like ten to five against my stumbling upon the felicitude of a

black-bottle regime, I philosophically decided to go ahead with my ski

trip through the Park on the chance that the process of the seasons

might bring me better luck on my return. After inducing Jim to undertake

either to find or to build me a boat suitable for my contemplated

down-river trip, I pushed on to Fort Yellowstone.

Whether the sign of the black bottle wheeled into the ascendant

according to calendar reckoning during the three weeks of my absence I

never learned. Certainly there was no sign of it either above or below

the horizon on my return. Jim was more benevolent than ever, and also

(so he assured me almost at once) in direct communication with his

"little friends up thar." He tried hard to dissuade me from tackling the

river, urging that a fine upstanding young feller like myself ought to

spend his life doing good to others rather than going outer his way to

do harm to hisself. I chaffed him into relinquishing that line by asking

him if he was afraid I was going to bump the edges off some of his

canyon scenery. Finally he consented to take me up-river to where an

abandoned boat he had discovered was located, but only on condition I

should try to get another man to help me run the Canyon. He said he

would give what help he could from the bank, but didn't care to expose

his old bones to the chance of a wetting. He thought "Buckskin Jim"

Cutler, who owned a ranch nearby, might be willing to go with me as far

as Livingston. He was not sure that Cutler had run the Canyon, but in

any event he knew it foot by foot, and would be of great help in letting

the boat down with ropes at the bad places.

We found the craft we sought about a mile up-stream, where it had been

abandoned at the edge of an eddy at the last high-water. It was high and

dry on the rocks, and the now rapidly rising river had some ten or

twelve feet to go before reaching the careened hull. Plain as it was

that neither boat-builder nor even carpenter had had a hand in its

construction, there was still no possible doubt of its tremendous

strength and capacity to withstand punishment. Jim was under the

impression that the timbers and planking from a wrecked bridge had been

drawn upon in building it. That boat reminded me of the pictures in my

school history of the _Merrimac_, and later, on my first visit to the

Nile, the massive Temple of Karnak reminded me of that boat.

Jim said that a homesick miner at Aldridge had built this fearful and

wonderful craft with the idea of using it to return to his family in

Hickman, Kentucky. He had bade defiance to the rapids of the Yellowstone

with the slogan "HICKMAN OR BUST." The letters were still discernible in

tarry basrelief. So also the name on bow and stern. (Or was it stern and

bow? I was never quite sure which was which.) _Kentucky Mule_ he had

called it, but I never knew why till years later. And sorry I was I ever

learned, too.

The fellow was lacking in heart, Jim said. He had run no rapids to speak

of in the _Mule_, and if she had hit any rocks in the five or six miles

of comparatively open water above she had doubtless nosed them out of

the way. The principal trouble appeared to have been that she preferred

to progress on her side or on her back rather than right side up. This

had caused her to fill with water, and that, while apparently not

affecting her buoyancy greatly, had made her cabin uncomfortable. Her

owner abandoned her just as soon as she could be brought to bank,

selling what was salvable of his outfit and leaving the rest. What Jim

complained of was the chap's failure to live up to his slogan. Nothing

had busted except his nerve. He hoped that in case I did push off I

wouldn't disgrace myself--and him, who was sponsoring me, so to

speak--by not keeping going. Old Jim had good sound basic instincts. No

doubt about that.

Working with ax and crowbar, we finally succeeded in knocking off the

cabin of what had been intended for a houseboat, leaving behind a

half-undecked scow. It was about twenty-five feet in length, with a beam

of perhaps eight feet. The inside of this hull was revealed as braced

and double-braced with railroad ties, while at frequent intervals along

the water lines similar timbers had been spiked, evidently for the

purpose of absorbing the impact of rocks and cliffs. She was plainly

unsinkable whatever side was upward, but as it was my idea to ballast

her in an endeavour to maintain an even keel, I went over her caulking

of tarry rags in the hope of reducing leakage to a minimum. We also

hewed out and rigged a clumsy stern-sweep for steering purposes, and it

was my intention to have a lighter one at the bow in the event I was

able to ship a crew to man it. I didn't care a lot for looks at this

juncture as I was going to rebuild the _Mule_ at Livingston in any case.

With the aid of a couple of chaps from a neighbouring ranch, we launched

her down a runaway of cottonwood logs into the rising back-current of

the eddy. It was not yet sunset, so there was still time to stow a heavy

ballasting of nigger-head boulders before dark. Water came in for a

while, but gradually stopped as the dry pine swelled with the

long-denied moisture. She still rode high after receiving all of a

thousand pounds of rocks, but as I did not want to reduce her freeboard

too much I let it go at that. She was amazingly steady withal, so that I

could stand on either rail without heaving her down more than an inch or

two. She looked fit to ram the Rock of Gibraltar, let alone the

comparatively fragile banks and braes of "Yankee Jim's Canyon." Never

again has it been my lot to ship in so staunch a craft.

Returning at dusk to Jim's cabin, we had word that "Buckskin Jim" Cutler

was away from home and not expected back for several days. That ended my

search for a crew, as there appeared to be no other eligible

candidates. Of "Buckskin Jim" I was not to hear for twenty years, when

it chanced that he was again recommended to me as the best available

river-man on the upper Yellowstone. How that grizzled old pioneer fought

his last battle with the Yellowstone on the eve of my push-off from

Livingston for New Orleans I shall tell in proper sequence.

Jim insisted on casting my "horryscoop" that night, just to give me an

idea how things were going to shape for the next week or two. Going into

a dark room that opened off the kitchen, he muttered away for some

minutes in establishing communication with his "little friends up thar."

Finally he called me in, closed the door, took my hand and talked

balderdash for a quarter of an hour or more. I made note in my diary of

only three of the several dozen things he told me. One was: "Young man,

you have the sweetest mother in all the world"; another: "I see you

struggling in the water beside a great black boat"; and the third: "You

will meet a dark woman, with a scowling face, to whom you will become

much attached."

Now that "sweetest mother" stuff was ancient stock formula of the

fortune-telling faker, and considering what Jim knew of my immediate

plans it hardly seemed that he needed to get in touch with his "little

friends up thar" to know that there was more than an even break that I

was going to be doing some floundering around a big black boat; but how

in the deuce did the old rascal know that I was going to meet the one

and only "Calamity Jane" the following week in Livingston?

Jim was bubbling with reminiscence when he came out of his averred

trance, but only in a gentle and benevolent vein. He claimed that he was

able to prove that Curley, the Crow Scout, was not a real survivor of

the Custer massacre, but only witnessed a part of the battle from

concealment in a nearby _coulee_. When I pressed him for details,

however, he seemed to become suspicious, and switched off to a rather

mild version of his meeting with Bob Ingersoll.

"Bob and his family stopped a whole day with me," he said, "and we got

to be great friends. His girls came right out here into this kitchen

where you are sitting now and helped me wash the dishes. They was

calling me 'Uncle Jim' before they had been here an hour. Well, the

people down there persuaded Bob to give a lecture in Livingston, and I

drove down the whole forty miles to hear it. When the lecture was over

Bob came up to me in the Albermarle and asked me what I thought of it.

'Mr. Ingersoll,' said I, 'I don't like to tell you.' 'I like a man that

speaks his mind,' says he; 'go on.' 'Well, Mr. Ingersoll,' said I, 'I

think you're making a grievous mistake in standing there and hurting the

feelings, and shaking the faith, of almost the whole audience, just for

the sake of the one or two as thinks as you do.' At first I thought he

was going to come back at me, but all of a sudden he laughed right out

in his jolly way, and took my arm and said, 'Mr. George, let's have a

drink.' Bob, in spite of his pernishus doctrines, was the most lovable

man I ever met."

Now this was a very different account of the clash from the one I had

heard in Livingston. There I was assured that the debate took place at

the Albemarle bar about midnight, and that Jim had Bob's hide on the

fence at the end of five minutes of verbal pyrotechnics. But it was

characteristic of Jim that he would neither boast nor talk of Injuns

during his non-drinking periods. Doubtless, therefore, he was far from

doing himself justice in relating the Ingersoll episode. I surely would

like to have heard it when the sign of the black bottle was in the

ascendant.

Jim admitted a clear remembrance of Kipling's visit, but was chary of

speaking of it, doubtless on account of the squaw-at-the-stake story.

(His atrocity yarns troubled him more than any other when they came home

to roost, so they assured me in Livingston.) Of Roscoe Conkling his

impressions were not friendly, even in the benevolence of his present

mood. "Conkling caught the biggest fish a tourist ever caught in the

Canyon," he said, "He was a great hand with a rod, but, in my candid

opinion, greatly over-rated as a public man. He had the nerve to cheat

me out of the price of a case of beer. Ordered it for a couple of

coachloads of his friends and then drove off without paying for it. Yes,

possibly a mistake; but these politicians are slippery cusses at the

best."

Our plan of operation for the morrow was something like this: Bill and

Herb, the neighbouring ranchers, were to go up and help me push off,

while Jim went down to the first fall at the head of the Canyon to be on

hand to pilot me through. If I made the first riffle all right, I was to

try to hold up the boat in an eddy until Jim could amble down to the

second fall and stand-by to signal me my course into that one in turn.

And so on down through. Once out of the Canyon there were no bad rapids

above Livingston. I was to take nothing with me save my camera. My bags

were to remain in Jim's cabin until he had seen me pass from sight below

the Canyon. Then he was to return, flag the down train from Cinnabar,

and send the stuff on to me at Livingston. Looking back on it from the

vantage of a number of years' experience with rough water, that

decision to leave the luggage to come on by train was the only

intelligent feature of the whole plan.

Steering a boat in swift water with any kind of a stern oar is an

operation demanding a skill only to be acquired by long practice. For a

greenhorn to try to throw over the head of a craft like _Kentucky Mule_

was about comparable to swinging an elephant by the tail. This fact,

which it took me about half a minute of pulling and tugging to learn,

did not bother me a whit however. I felt sure the _Mule_ was equal to

meeting the Canyon walls strength for strength. I knew I had

considerable endurance as a swimmer, and I was fairly confident that a

head that had survived several seasons of old style mass-play football

ought not to be seriously damaged by the rocks of the Yellowstone. Well,

I was not right--only lucky. Not one of the considerations on which my

confidence was based really weighed the weight of a straw in my favour.

That I came out at the lower end comparatively unscathed was luck, pure

luck. Subsequently I paid dearly for my initial success in running

rapids like a bull at a gate. In the long run over-confidence in running

rough water is about as much of an asset as a millstone tied round the

neck. Humility is the proper thing; humility and a deep distrust of the

wild beast into whose jaws you are poking your head.

As I swung round the bend above the head of the Canyon I espied old Jim

awaiting my coming on a rocky coign of vantage above the fall. A girl in

a gingham gown had dismounted from a calico pony and was climbing up to

join us. With fore-blown hair and skirt she cut an entrancing silhouette

against the sun-shot morning sky. I think the presence of that girl had

a deal to do with the impending disaster, for I would never have thought

of showing off if none but Jim had been there. But something told me

that the exquisite creature could not but admire the _sang froid_ of a

youth who would let his boat drift while he stood up and took a picture

of the thundering cataract over which it was about to plunge. And so I

did it--just that. Then, waving my camera above my head to attract Jim's

attention to the act, I tossed it ashore. That was about the only

sensible thing I did in my run through the Canyon.

As I resumed my steering oar I saw that Jim was gesticulating wildly in

an apparent endeavour to attract my attention to a comparatively

rock-free chute down the left bank. Possibly if I had not wasted

valuable time displaying my _sang froid_ I might have worried the _Mule_

over in that direction, and headed right for a clean run through. As it

was, the contrary brute simply took the bit in her teeth and went

waltzing straight for the reef of barely submerged rock at the head of

the steeply cascading pitch of white water. Broadside on she sunk into

the hollow of a refluent wave, struck crashingly fore and aft, and hung

trembling while the full force of the current of the Yellowstone surged

against her up-stream gunwale.

Impressions of what followed are considerably confused in my mind, but

it seems to me things happened in something like the following order:

The pressure on her upper side heeled the _Mule_ far over, so that her

boulder ballast began to shift and spill out at the same time the

refluent wave from below began pouring across the down-stream gunwale.

The more she heeled the more ballast she lost and the more water she

shipped. Fortunately most of the boulders had gone before the pin of the

stern-sweep broke and precipitated me after the ballast. The few

niggerheads that did come streaming in my wake were smooth and round and

did not seem to be falling very fast when they bumped my head and

shoulders. Certainly I hardly felt them at the time, nor was I much

marked from them afterwards.

Sticking to my oar I came up quickly and went bobbing down the

undulating stream of the rapid, kissing off a rock now and then but

never with sharp impact. I had gone perhaps a hundred yards when the

lightened boat broke loose above and started to follow me. Right down

the middle of the riffle she came, wallowing mightily but shipping very

little additional water. Holding my oar under one arm and paddling

lightly against the current with my other, I waited till the _Mule_

floundered abreast of me and clambered aboard. She was about a third

full of water, but as the weight of it hardly compensated for the rocks

dumped overboard she was riding considerably higher than before, though

much less steadily.

[Illustration: "YANKEE JIM" WITH A TROUT FROM HIS CANYON]

[Illustration: JUST ABOVE THE FIRST DROP IN "YANKEE JIM'S" CANYON]

Looking back up-stream as the reeling _Mule_ swung in the current, I saw

Jim, with the Gingham Girl in his wake, ambling down the bank at a

broken-kneed trot in an apparent endeavour to head me to the next fall

as per schedule. Poor old chap! He was never a hundred-to-one shot in

that race now that the _Mule_ had regained her head and was running away

down mid-channel regardless of obstacles. He stumbled and went down even

as I watched him with the tail of my eye. The Gingham Girl pulled him to

his feet and he seemed to be leaning heavily against her fine shoulder

as the _Mule_ whisked me out of sight around the next bend. That was the

last I ever saw of either of them. Jim, I understand, died some years

ago, and the Gingham Girl.... Dear me, she must be forty herself by now

and the mother of not less than eight. Even ten is considered a

conservative family up that way. They are not race suicidists on the

upper Yellowstone.

With the steering oar permanently unshipped there was more difficulty

than ever in exercising any control over the balkiness of the stubborn

_Mule_. After a few ineffectual attempts I gave up trying to do anything

with the oar and confined my navigation to fending off with a cottonwood

pike-pole. This really helped no more than the oar, so it was rather by

good luck than anything else that the _Mule_ hit the next pitch head-on

and galloped down it with considerable smartness. When she reeled

through another rapid beam-on without shipping more than a bucket or two

of green water I concluded she was quite able to take care of herself,

and so sat down to enjoy the scenery. I was still lounging at ease when

we came to a sharp right-angling notch of a bend where the full force of

the current was exerted to push a sheer wall of red-brown cliff out of

the way. Not unnaturally, the _Mule_ tried to do the same thing. That

was where I discovered I had over-rated her strength of construction.

I have said that she impressed me at first sight as being quite capable

of nosing the Rock of Gibraltar out of her way. This optimistic estimate

was not borne out. That little patch of cliff was not high enough to

make a respectable footstool for the guardian of the Mediterranean, but

it must have been quite as firmly socketed in the earth. So far as I

could see it budged never the breadth of a hair when the _Mule_, driving

at all of fifteen miles an hour, crashed into it with the shattering

force of a battering-ram. Indeed, everything considered, it speaks a lot

for her construction that she simply telescoped instead of resolving

into cosmic star-dust. Even the telescoping was not quite complete.

Although there were a number of loose planks and timbers floating in her

wake, the hashed mass of wood that backed soddenly away from the cliff

and off into the middle of the current again had still a certain seeming

of a boat--that is, to one who knew what it was intended for in the

first place. With every plank started or missing, however, water had

entered at a score of places, so that all the buoyancy she retained was

that of floating wood.

The _Mule_ had ceased to be a boat and become a raft, but not a raft

constructed on scientific principles. The one most desirable

characteristic of a properly built raft of logs is its stability. It is

almost impossible to upset. The remains of the _Mule_ had about as much

stability as a toe-dancer, and all of the capriciousness. She kept more

or less right side up on to the head of the next riffle and then laid

down and negotiated the undulating waves by rolling.

It was not until some years later, if I remember aright, that stout

women adopted the expedient of rolling to reduce weight. The _Mule_ was

evidently well in advance of the times, for she reduced both weight and

bulk by all of a quarter in that one series of rolls. I myself, after

she had spilled me out at the head of the riffle, rode through on one of

her planks, but it was a railroad tie, with a big spike in it, that

rasped me over the ear in the whirlpool at the foot.

And so I went on through to the foot of "Yankee Jim's Canyon." In the

smoother water I clung to a tie, plank or the thinning remnants of the

_Mule_ herself. At the riffles, to avoid another clout on the head from

the spike-fanged flotsam, I found it best to swim ahead and flounder

through on my own. I was not in serious trouble at any time, for much

the worst of the rapids had been those at the head of the Canyon. Had I

been really hard put for it, there were a dozen places at which I could

have crawled out. As that would have made overtaking the _Mule_ again

somewhat problematical, I was reluctant to do it. Also, no doubt, I was

influenced by the fear that Jim and the Gingham Girl might call me a

quitter.

Beaching what I must still call the _Mule_ on a bar where the river

fanned out in the open valley at the foot of the Canyon, I dragged her

around into an eddy and finally moored her mangled remains to a friendly

cottonwood on the left bank. Taking stock of damages, I found that my

own scratches and bruises, like Beauty, were hardly more than skin deep,

while the _Mule_, especially if her remaining spikes could be tightened

up a bit, had still considerable rafting potentialities. As the day was

bright and warm and the water not especially cold, I decided to make way

while the sun shone--to push on as far toward Livingston as time and

tide and my dissolving craft would permit. But first for repairs.

[Illustration:

_Courtesy Northern Pacific R. R._

FOOT OF "YANKEE JIM'S" CANYON]

Crossing a flat covered with a thick growth of willow and cottonwood, I

clambered up the railway embankment toward a point where I heard the

clank of iron and the voices of men at work. The momentary focus of the

section gang's effort turned out to be round a bend from the point where

I broke through to the right-of-way, but almost at my feet, lying across

the sleepers, was a heavy strip of rusty iron, pierced at even intervals

with round holes. Telling myself that I might well go farther and fare

worse in my quest for a tool to drive spikes with, I snatched it up and

returned to the river. Scarcely had my lusty blows upon the _Mule's_

sagging ribs begun to resound, however, than a great commotion broke

forth above, which presently resolved itself into mingled cursings and

lamentations in strange foreign tongues. Then a howling-mad Irish

section-boss came crashing through the underbrush, called me a

train-wrecker, grabbed the piece of iron out of my hand, and, shouting

that he would "sittle" with me in a jiffy, rushed back to the

embankment.

The fellow seemed to attach considerable importance to that strip of

rusty iron. Why this was I discovered a couple of minutes later when I

found him and three Italians madly bolting it to the loose ends of a

couple of rails before the down-bound train hove in sight up the line.

"I'll larn ye to steal a fish-plate, ye snakin' spalpheen," he roared as

the train thundered by and disappeared around the bend.

"I didn't steal any fish-plate," I remonstrated quaveringly, backing off

down the track as the irate navvy advanced upon me brandishing a

three-foot steel wrench; "I only borrowed a piece of rusty iron. I

didn't see any fish-plate. I didn't even know where your lunch buckets

are. I wish I did, for I've just swum through the Canyon and I'm darned

hungry." Gad, but I was glad the Gingham Gown and "Yankee Jim" couldn't

see me then!

With characteristic Hibernian suddenness, the bellow of rage changed to

a guffaw of laughter. "Sure an' the broth o' a bhoy thot a fish-plate

wuz a contryvance fer to eat off uv! An' it's jest through the Canyon

he's swam! An' it's hoongry an' wet thot he is! Bejabbers then, we won't

be afther murtherin' him outright; we'll jest let him go back to the

river an' dhrown hisself! Stip lively, ye skulkin' dagoes, an' bring out

the loonch."

And so while I sat on the bank quaffing Dago Red and munching

garlic-stuffed sausages, Moike and his gang of Eyetalians abandoned

their four-mile stretch of the Northern Pacific to drive more spikes in

the _Mule's_ bulging sides and render her as raft-shape as possible for

a further run. The boss led his gang in a cheer as they pushed me off

into the current, and the last I saw of him he was still guffawing

mightily over his little fish-plate joke. As a matter of fact, since

Mike in his excitement appeared to have neglected to send out a flagman

when he discovered his fish-plate was missing, I have always had a

feeling that the northbound train that morning came nearer than I did to

being wrecked in "Yankee Jim's Canyon of the Yellowstone."

The rest of that day's run was more a matter of chills than thrills,

especially after the evening shadows began to lengthen and the northerly

wind to strengthen. The _Mule_ repeated her roll-and-reduce tactics

every time she came to a stretch of white water. There were only three

planks left when I abandoned her at dusk, something over twenty miles

from the foot of the Canyon, and each of these was sprinkled as thickly

with spike-points as a Hindu _fakir's_ bed of nails. One plank, by a

curious coincidence, was the strake that had originally borne the

defiant slogan. "HICKMAN OR BUST." Prying it loose from its cumbering

mates, I shoved it gently out into the current. There was no question

that _Kentucky Mule_ was busted, but it struck me as the sporting thing

to do to give that plank a fighting chance to nose its way down to

Hickman. If I had known what I learned last summer I should not have

taken the trouble. Hickman has had more "Kentucky Mule" than is good for

it all the time; also a huge box factory where soft pine planks are cut

up into shooks. The last of my raft deserved a better fate. I hope it

stranded on the way.

Spending the night with a hospitable rancher, I walked into Livingston

in the morning. There I found my bags and camera, which good old "Yankee

Jim" had punctually forwarded by the train I had so nearly wrecked. The

accompanying pictures of Jim and his Canyon are from the roll of

negatives in the kodak at the time.

CHAPTER V

"CALAMITY JANE"

Thrilled with the delights of swift-water boating as they had been

vouchsafed to me in running the _Mule_ through "Yankee Jim's Canyon," I

hastened to make arrangements to continue my voyage immediately upon

arriving in Livingston. A carpenter called Sydney Lamartine agreed to

build me a skiff and have it ready at the end of three days. Hour by

hour I watched my argosy grow, and then--on the night before it was

ready to launch--came "Calamity."

In every man's life there is one event that transcends all others in the

bigness with which it bulks in his memory. This is not necessarily the

biggest thing that has really happened to him. Usually, indeed, it is

not. It is simply the thing that impresses most deeply the person he

happens to be at the time. The thunderbolt of a living, breathing

"Calamity Jane" striking at my feet from a clear sky is my biggest

thing. One does his little curtsey to a lot of queens, real and

figurative, in the course of twenty years' wandering, but not the most

regal of them has stirred my pulse like the "Queen of the Plains."

Queens of Dance, Queens of Song, and Queens of real kingdoms,

cannibalistic and otherwise, there have been, but only one "Queen of the

Rockies." And this was not because "Calamity Jane" was either young, or

beautiful or good. (There may have been a time when she was young, and

possibly even good, but beautiful--never.) So far as my own heart-storm

was concerned, it was because she had been the heroine of that

saffron-hued thriller called "The Beautiful White Devil of the

Yellowstone," the which I had devoured in the hay-mow in my adolescence.

The fragrance of dried alfalfa brings the vision of "Calamity Jane"

before my eyes even to this day. She is the only flesh-and-blood heroine

to come into my life.

My initial meeting with "Calamity" was characteristic. It was a bit

after midnight. On my way home to the old Albemarle to bed I became

aware of what I thought was a spurred and _chap-ed_ cowboy in the act of

embracing a lamp-post. A gruff voice hailed me as I came barging by.

"Short Pants!" it called; "oh, Short Pants--can't you tell a lady where

she lives?"

"Show me where the lady is and I'll try," I replied, edging cautiously

in toward the circle of golden glow.

"She's me, Short Pants--Martha Cannary--Martha Burk, better known as

'Calamity Jane.'"

"Ah!" I breathed, and again "Ah!" Then: "Sure, I'll tell you where you

live; only you'll have to tell me first." And thus was ushered in the

greatest moment of my life.

"Calamity," it appeared, had arrived from Bozeman that afternoon, taken

a room over a saloon, gone out for a convivial evening and forgotten

where she lived. She was only sure that the bar-keeper of the saloon was

named Patsy, and that there was an outside stairway up to the second

story. It was a long and devious search, not so much because there was

any great number of saloons with outside stairways and mixologists

called Patsy, as because every man in every saloon to which we went to

inquire greeted "Calamity" as a long-lost mother and insisted on

shouting the house. Then, to the last man, they attached themselves to

the search-party. When we did locate the proper place, it was only to

find that "Calamity" had lost her room-key. After a not-too-well-ordered

consultation, we passed her unprotesting anatomy in through a window by

means of a fire-ladder and reckoned our mission finished. That was the

proudest night on which I am able to look back.

When, agog with delicious excitement, I went to ask after Mrs. Burk's

health the following morning. I found her smoking a cigar and cooking

breakfast. She insisted on my sharing both, but I compromised on the ham

and eggs. She had no recollection whatever of our meeting of the

previous evening, yet greeted me as "Short Pants" as readily as ever.

This name, later contracted to "Pants," was suggested by my omnipresent

checkered knickers, the only nether garment I possessed at the time.

The "once-and-never-again 'Calamity Jane,'" was about fifty-five years

of age at this time, and looked it, or did not look it, according to

where one looked. Her deeply-lined, scowling, sun-tanned face and the

mouth with its missing teeth might have belonged to a hag of seventy.

The rest of her-well, seeing those leather-clad legs swing by on the

other side of a signboard that obscured the wrinkled phiz, one might

well have thought they belonged to a thirty-year-old cow-puncher just

coming into town for his night to howl. And younger even than her legs

was "Calamity's" heart. Apropos of which I recall confiding to Patsy,

the bar-keep, that she had the heart of a young god Pan. "Maybe so,"

grunted Patsy doubtfully (not having had a classical education he

couldn't be quite sure, of course); "in any case she's got the voice of

an old tin pan." Which was neither gallant nor quite fair to "Calamity."

Her voice _was_ a bit cracked, but not so badly as Patsy had tried to

make out. Another thing: that black scowl between her brows belied the

dear old girl. There was really nothing saturnine about her. Hers was

the sunniest of souls, and the most generous. She was poor all her life

from giving away things, and I have heard that her last illness was

contracted in nursing some poor sot she found in a gutter.

[Illustration: "CALAMITY JANE" IN 1885]

[Illustration: I FOUND "CALAMITY" SMOKING A CIGAR AND COOKING

BREAKFAST]

Naturally, of course, after a decent interval, I blurted out to

"Calamity" that I had come to hear the story of her wonderful life.

Right gamely did the old girl come through. "Sure, Pants," she replied.

"Just run down and rush a can of suds, and I'll rattle off the whole

layout for you. I'll meet you down there in the sunshine by those empty

beer barrels."

It was May, the month of the brewing of the fragrant dark-brown _Bock_.

Returning with a gallon tin pail awash to the gunnels, I found

"Calamity" enthroned on an up-ended barrel, with her feet comfortably

braced against the side of one of its prostrate brothers. Depositing the

nectar on a third barrel at her side, I sank to my ease upon a soft

patch of lush spring grass and budding dandelions. "Calamity" blew a

mouth-hole in the foam, quaffed deeply of the _Bock_; wiped her lips

with a sleeve, and began without further preliminary:

"My maiden name was Martha Cannary. Was born in Princeton, Missouri, May

first, 1848." Then, in a sort of parenthesis: "This must be about my

birthday, Pants. Drink to the health of the Queen of May, kid." I

stopped chewing dandelion, lifted the suds-crowned bucket toward her,

muttered "Many happy Maytimes, Queen," and drank deep. Immediately she

resumed with "My maiden name was Martha Cannary, etc."... "As a child I

always had a fondness for adventure and especial fondness for horses,

which I began to ride at an early age and continued to do so until I

became an expert rider, being able to ride the most vicious and stubborn

horses.

"In 1865 we emigrated from our home in Missouri by the overland route to

Virginia City, Montana. While on the way the greater part of my time was

spent in hunting along with the men; in fact I was at all times with the

men when there was excitement and adventure to be had. We had many

exciting times fording streams, for many of the streams on the way were

noted for quicksand and boggy places. On occasions of that kind the men

would usually select the best way to cross the streams, myself on more

than one occasion having mounted my pony and swam across the stream

several times merely to amuse myself and had many narrow escapes; but as

pioneers of those days had plenty of courage we overcame all obstacles

and reached Virginia City in safety.

"Mother died at Blackfoot in 1866, where we buried her. My father died

in Utah in 1867, after which I went to Fort Bridger. Remained around

Fort Bridger during 1868, then went to Piedmont, Wyoming, with U. P.

railway. Joined General Custer as a scout at Fort Russell, Wyoming, in

1870. Up to this time I had always worn the costume of my sex. When I

joined Custer I donned the uniform of a soldier. It was a bit awkward at

first but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men's clothes.

"I was a scout in the Nez Perce outbreak in 1872. In that war Generals

Custer, Miles, Terry and Cook were all engaged. It was in this campaign

I was christened 'Calamity Jane.' It was on Goose Creek, Wyoming, where

the town of Sheridan is now located. Captain Egan was in command of the

post. We were ordered out to quell an uprising of Indians, and were out

several days, had numerous skirmishes during which six of the soldiers

were killed and several severely wounded. On returning to the post we

were ambushed about a mile from our destination. When fired upon Captain

Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned

in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about

to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side

and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto

my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the fort.

Captain Egan on recovering laughingly said: 'I name you "Calamity Jane,"

the Heroine of the Plains.' I have borne that name up to the present

time."

Here, little dreaming what the consequence would be, I interrupted, and

for this reason: I had felt that "Calamity" had been doing herself scant

justice all along, but in the "christening" incident her matter-of-fact

recital was so much at variance with the facts as set down in "The

Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone" that I had to protest. "Excuse

me, Mrs. Burk," I said, "but wasn't that officer's name Major Percy

Darkleigh instead of Egan? And didn't you cry 'For life and love!' when

you caught his reeling form? And didn't you shake your trusty repeater

and shout 'To hell with the redskins!' as you turned and headed for the

fort? And didn't you ride with your reins in your teeth, the Major under

your left arm and your six-shooter in your right hand? And when you had

laid the Major safely down inside the Fort, didn't he breathe softly, 'I

thank thee Jane from the bottom of a grateful heart. No arm but thine

shall ever encircle my waist, for while I honour my wife--'"

Here "Calamity" cut in, swearing hard and pointedly, so hard and

pointedly, in fact, that her remarks may not be quoted verbatim here.

The gist of them was that "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone"

was highly coloured, was a pack of blankety-blank lies, in fact, and of

no value whatever as history. I realize now that she was right, of

course, but that didn't soften the blow at the time.

Trying to resume her story, "Calamity," after groping about falteringly

for the thread, had to back up again and start with "My maiden name was

Martha Cannary." She was in a Black Hills campaign against the Sioux in

1875, and in the spring of '76 was ordered north with General Crook to

join Generals Miles, Terry and Custer at the Big Horn. A ninety-mile

ride with dispatches after swimming the Platte brought on a severe

illness, and she was sent back in General Crook's ambulance to Fort

Fetterman. This probably saved her from being present at the massacre of

the Little Big Horn with Custer and the 7th Cavalry.

"During the rest of the summer of '76 I was a pony express rider,

carrying the U. S. mails between Deadwood and Custer, fifty miles over

some of the roughest trails in the Black Hills. As many of the riders

before me had been held up and robbed of their packages, it was

considered the most dangerous route in the Hills. As my reputation as a

rider and quick shot were well known I was molested very little, for

the toll-gatherers looked on me as being a good fellow and they knew I

never missed my mark.

"My friend William Hickock, better known as 'Wild Bill,' who was

probably the best revolver shot that ever lived, was in Deadwood that

summer. On the second of August, while setting at a gambling table of

the Bella Union Saloon, he was shot in the back of the head by the

notorious Jack McCall, a desperado. I was in Deadwood at the time and on

hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting

and found that my best friend had been killed by McCall. I at once

started to look for the assassin and found him at Shurdy's butcher shop

and grabbed a meat cleaver and made him throw up his hands, through

excitement on hearing Bill's death having left my weapons on the post of

my bed. He was then taken to a log cabin and locked up, but he got away

and was afterwards caught at Fagan's ranch on Horse Creek. He was taken

to Yankton, tried and hung."

Here, forgetting myself, I interrupted again in an endeavour to

reconcile the facts of "Wild Bill's" death as just detailed with the

version of that tragic event as depicted in "Jane of the Plain."

"Calamity's" language was again unfit to print. "Wild Bill" had _not_

expired with his head on her shoulder, muttering brokenly "My heart was

yours from the first, oh my love!" Nor had she snipped off a lock of

Bill's yellow hair and sworn to bathe it in the heart-blood of his

slayer. All blankety-blank lies, just like the "White Devil." Then, as

before, in order to get going properly, she had to back up and start all

over with: "My maiden name was Martha Cannary." This time I kept chewing

dandelions and let her run on to the finish, thereby learning the secret

of her somewhat remarkable style of delivery. This is the way the story

of her life concluded:

"We arrived in Deadwood on October 9th, 1895. My return after an absence

of so many years to the scene of my most noted exploits, created quite

an excitement among my many friends of the past, to such an extent that

a vast number of citizens who had heard so much of 'Calamity Jane' and

her many adventures were anxious to see me. Among the many whom I met

were several gentlemen from eastern cities, who advised me to allow

myself to be placed before the public in such a manner as to give the

people of the eastern cities the opportunity of seeing the lady scout

who was made so famous during her daring career in the West and Black

Hills countries. An agent of Kohl and Middleton, the celebrated museum

men, came to Deadwood through the solicitation of these gentlemen, and

arrangements were made to place me before the public in this manner. My

first engagement to begin at the Palace Museum, Minneapolis, January

20th, 1896, under this management.

Hoping that this history of my life may interest all readers, I remain,

as in the older days,

"Yours,

"Mrs. M. Burk,

"Better known as 'Calamity Jane.'"

"Calamity" had been delivering to me her museum tour lecture, the which

had also been printed in a little pink-covered leaflet to sell at the

door. That was why, like a big locomotive on a slippery track, she had

had to back up to get going again every time she was stopped. Oh, well,

the golden dust from the butterfly wing of Romance has to be brushed off

sometime; only it was rather hard luck to have it get such a devastating

side-swipe all at once. That afternoon for the first time I began to

discern that there was a more or less opaque webbing underlying the

rainbow-bright iridescence of sparkling dust.

With "Calamity Jane," the heroine, evanishing like the blown foam of her

loved _Bock_, there still remained Martha Burk, the human document, the

living page of thirty years of the most vivid epoch of Northwestern

history. Compared to what I had hoped from my historic researches in the

pages of "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone," this was of

comparatively academic though none the less real interest. Reclining

among the dandelions the while "Calamity" oiled the hinges of her memory

with beer, I conned through and between the lines of that record for

perhaps a week. Patiently diverting her from her lecture platform

delivery, I gradually drew from the strange old character much of

intimate and colourful interest. Circulating for three decades through

the upper Missouri and Yellowstone valleys and gravitating like steel to

the magnet wherever action was liveliest and trouble the thickest, she

had known at close range all of the most famous frontier characters of

her day. Naturally, therefore, her unrestrained talk was of Indians and

Indian fighters, road-agents, desperadoes, gamblers and bad men

generally--from "Wild Bill" Hickock and "Buffalo Bill" Cody to Miles and

Terry and Custer, to "Crazy Horse," "Rain-in-the-Face," Gall and

"Sitting Bull." She told me a good deal of all of them, not a little,

indeed, which seemed to throw doubt on a number of popularly accepted

versions of various more or less historical events. I made notes of all

of her stories on the spot, and at some future time of comparative

leisure, when there is a chance to cross-check sufficiently with fully

established facts from other sources, I should like to make some record

of them. These pages are not, of course, the place for controversial

matter of that kind.

One morning I kept tryst among the dandelions in vain. Inquiry at the

saloon revealed the fact that "Calamity," dressed in her buckskins, had

called for her stabled horse at daybreak and ridden off in the direction

of Big Timber. She would not pay for her room until she turned up again,

Patsy said. It was a perfectly good account, though; she never failed to

settle up in the end. I never heard of her again until the papers, a

year or two later, had word of her death.

With Romance and Historical Research out of the way, my mind returned to

the matter of my river voyage. Giving the newly built skiff a belated

trial with Sydney Lamartine, we swamped in a comparatively insignificant

rapid and shared a good rolling and wetting. Agreed that the craft

needed higher sides, we dragged it back to the yards for alterations.

Sydney thought he might find time to complete them inside of a week.

Before that week was over I had one foot in a newspaper editorial

sanctum and the other on the initial sack of a semi-professional

baseball team. As both footings seemed certain to develop into

stepping-stones to the realization of the most cherished of my

childhood's ambitions (I had never cared much about being President),

the river voyage to the Gulf went into complete discard--or rather into

a twenty-year postponement.

I became an editor as a direct consequence of making good on the ball

team; I ceased to be an editor as a direct consequence of betraying a

sacred trust laid upon me by the ball team. This was something of the

way of it: Livingston had high hopes of copping the championship of the

Montana bush league, which, at the time of my arrival, was just budding

into life with the willows and cottonwood along the river. For this

laudable purpose a fearful and wonderful aggregation had been chivvied

together from the ends of baseballdom, numbering on its roster about as

many names that had once been famous in diamond history as those that

were destined to become so. Of the team as finally selected three or

four of us were known to the police, and at least two of us came into

town on brake-beams. One of us was trying to forget the dope habit, and

another--our catcher and greatest star--had just been graduated from a

rum-cure institute.

All of us were guaranteed jobs--sinecural in character of course. Paddy

Ryan, one of the pitchers, and two or three others were bar-keepers.

There was also one night-watchman, one electrician and one compositor. I

was rather a problem to the management until the editor of the

_Enterprise_ was sent to the same institute recently evacuated by our

bibulous catcher. Then I was put in his place--I mean that of the

editor. I don't seem to recall much of my editorial duties or

achievements, save that one important reform I endeavoured to

institute--that of getting a roll of pink paper and publishing the

_Enterprise_ as a straight sporting sheet--somehow fell through.

They tried me out at centre in the opening game against Billings, and

after the second--at Bozeban--I became a permanency at first-base, my

old corner at Stanford. Besides holding down the initial bag, I was told

off for the unofficial duty of guarding the only partially rum-cured

catcher--seeing that he was kept from even inhaling the fumes of the

seductive red-eye, a single seance with which meant his inevitable

downfall for the season.

I played fairly promising ball right along through that season, and but

for the final disaster which overtook me in my unofficial capacity as

Riley's keeper might have gone on to the fulfillment of my life

ambition. Up to the final and deciding series with Butte I kept my

thirsty ward under an unrelaxing rein, with the result that he played

the greatest baseball of his career. Then a gang of Copper City sports,

who had been betting heavily on the series, contrived to lure Riley away

for a quarter of an hour while I was taking a bath. He was in the clouds

by the time I located him, and rapidly going out of control into a

spinning nose-dive. He crashed soon after, and when I left him just as

the dawn was breaking through the red smoke above the copper smelters he

was as busy chasing mauve mice and purple cockroaches as the substitute

we put in his place that afternoon was with passed balls. To cap the

climax--in endeavouring to extend a bunt into a two-bagger, or some

equally futile stunt--I strained an old "Charley Horse" and went out of

the game in the second inning. We lost the game, series and

championship, and I, incidentally, ceased to be a rising semi-pro ball

player and a somewhat less rising country editor.

I have failed to mention that I did have one more fling at the

Yellowstone that summer. Lamartine remodelled his skiff as we had

planned, and one Sunday when Livingston had a game on at Big Timber we

decided to make the run down by river. Pushing off at daybreak we

arrived under the big bluff of Big Timber a good hour or two before

noon. I find this run thus celebrated in an ancient clipping from the

Livingston _Post_, contemporary of the _Enterprise_.

"Mr. L. R. Freeman, Mr. Armstrong and Sydney Lamartine made the

trip from this city to Big Timber last Sunday in a flat-bottomed

boat. The river course between this city and Big Timber is fully 50

miles, and the gentlemen

made the trip without mishap in six hours. Several times the boat

had narrow escapes from being turned over, but each time the skill

of the boatmen prevented any trouble. Quite a crowd assembled on

the Springdale bridge and watched the crew shoot the little craft

through the boiling riffle at that point, cheering them lustily for

the skill they displayed in swinging their boat into the most

advantageous places. The trip is a hazardous one, but full of keen

enjoyment and spice and zest. The time made is without doubt the

fastest river boating ever done on the Yellowstone, and it is

extremely doubtful if the record has been duplicated on any other

stream. Mr. Freeman, who has had considerable experience in boating

in Alaska, says that he never has seen a small boat make such

splendid time."

I don't remember a lot about that undeniably speedy run save that we

stopped for nothing but dumping water out of the boat. Last summer, with

a number of seasons of swift-water experience to help, I took rather

more than nine hours to cover the same stretch. I suppose it was because

the river and I were twenty years older. Age is a great slower down, at

least where a man is concerned. I do seem to recall now that I stopped a

number of times on this last run to see which was the smoother channel.

Doubtless the old Yellowstone was just as fast as ever.

PART II

DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE CHAPTER I

PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE PARK

In embarking anew on a journey from the Continental Divide to the mouth

of the Mississippi I was influenced by three considerations in deciding

to start on the Yellowstone rather than on one of the three forks of the

Missouri. There was the sentimental desire to see again the land of

geysers and hot springs and waterfalls, no near rival of which had I

ever discovered in twenty years of travel in the out-of-the-way places

of the earth. Then I wanted to go all the way by the main river, and

there was no question in my mind that the Yellowstone was really the

main Missouri, just as the Missouri was the main Mississippi. John

Neihardt has put this so well in his inimitable "River and I" that I

cannot do better than quote what he has written in this connection.

"The geographer tells us that the mouth of the Missouri is about

seventeen miles above St. Louis, and that the mouth of the Yellowstone

is near Buford, North Dakota. It appeared to me that the fact is

inverted. The Missouri's mouth is near Buford, and the Yellowstone

empties directly into the Mississippi. I find that I am not alone in

this opinion. Father de Smet and other early travellers felt the truth

of it; and Captain Marsh, who has piloted river craft through every

navigable foot of the entire system of rivers, having sailed the

Missouri within sound of the Falls and the Yellowstone above Pompey's

Pillar, feels that the Yellowstone is the main stem and the Missouri a

tributary.

"Where the two rivers join, even at low water, the Yellowstone pours a

vast turbulent flood, compared with which the clear and quieter Missouri

appears an overgrown rain-water creek. The Mississippi after some miles

obliterates all traces of its great western tributary; but the Missouri

at Buford is entirely lost in the Yellowstone within a few hundred

yards. All of the unique characteristics by which the Missouri River is

known are given it by the Yellowstone--its turbulence, its tawniness,

its feline treachery, its giant caprices."

I cannot agree with Mr. Neihardt that the Mississippi obliterates the

Missouri within a few hundred yards, or even a few hundred miles; for in

all but name it is the latter, not the former, that mingles its mud with

the Gulf of Mexico. But in his contention that the Yellowstone is the

dominant stream where it joins the Missouri he is borne out by all that

I saw and the opinion of every authority I talked with, from a

half-breed river-rat at Buford to the Army engineers at Kansas City.

My third reason for choosing the Yellowstone was the technical

consideration of superior "boatability." The head of continuous

small-boat navigation on the Yellowstone is about at the northern

boundary of the Park, at an elevation of over five thousand feet. On

the Missouri it is at Fort Benton, below the cataracts of Great Falls,

whose elevation is less than half that of Gardiner. As the distance from

these respective points to the junction of the two rivers near the

Montana-North Dakota line is about the same, it is evident that the rate

of fall of the Yellowstone is many times greater than that of the Upper

Missouri below Benton. Indeed, the figures are, roughly, 3000 feet fall

for the former and 500 for the latter. This means that the Yellowstone

is much the swifter stream and, being also of considerably greater

volume, is infinitely preferable to the boatman who does not mind more

or less continuous white water. In addition to these points, the fact

that the Yellowstone, from the Park to its mouth, flows through one of

the most beautiful valleys in America while the Missouri meanders a

considerable distance among the Bad Lands, makes the former route the

pleasanter as well as the swifter one. These considerations, pretty

well in my mind before I started, were more than borne out in every

respect by my subsequent experience. There are two or three large rivers

down which boats (by frequent linings and portagings) can be taken which

are of greater fall than the Yellowstone, but I know of none anywhere in

the world on which such fast time can be made as on the latter--this

because its rapids are all runnable.

As I was not out for records of any description upon this trip, it was

no part of my plan to start from the remotest source of the Yellowstone,

some twenty-five miles south of the southern boundary of the Park, but

rather simply to follow down from the most convenient point where the

Continental Divide tilted to that river's upper water-shed. Following

the river as closely as might be by foot through the Park, it was then

my purpose to take train to Livingston and resume my voyage from about

where it had been abandoned two decades previously. As the steel skiff I

had ordered was extremely light, and of a type quite new to me, I did

not care to make my trial run through "Yankee Jim's Canyon."

I entered the Park on June 21st, the second day of the season, by the

West Yellowstone entrance. This route, following up the valley of the

Madison, was hardly more than opened up on the occasion of my former

visit. At that time the nearest railway point was Monida, on the Oregon

Short Line. Now I found the Union Pacific terminus chock-ablock with the

boundary at West Yellowstone, and fully as many tourists coming in by

this entrance as by the northern gateway at Gardiner. The eastern

entrance, by Cody, was also regularly served by the transportation

company, while a southerly road to the Snake was open for auto traffic.

The accessibility of the Park had been increased many-fold.

Probably more than ninety-five per cent. of the tourists visiting the

Yellowstone are fluttered folk and wild being rushed through on a

four-day schedule. This imposes a terribly hectic program, which,

however, is not the fault of the transportation or hotel people, (who

offer all facilities and inducements for a calmer survey), but of the

tourist himself, who seems imbued with the idea that the more he sees in

the day the more he is getting for his money. The American tourist,

doubtless a quite mild-demeanoured and amenable person on his native

heath, when observed _flagrante delicto_ touring is by long odds the

worst-mannered of all of God's creatures. Collectively, that is;

individually many of him and her turn out far from offensive.

Strangely--perhaps because, for the moment, they are all more or less

infected with the same form of hysteria--they never seem to get much on

each other's nerves. To a wanderer, however, habituated to the

kindness, consideration, dignity and respect for age commonly displayed

by such peoples as the Red Indian, the South Sea Islander and the Borneo

Dyak, the tourist at close range is rather trying. I proceeded with the

regular convoy to Old Faithful, then took a car to the crest of the

Continental Divide, and proceeded from there down the Yellowstone on

foot in comparative peace and contentment.

With the large and rapidly increasing number of railway tourists coming

to the Park every year, each intent upon making the round and getting

away in the minimum of time, there is probably no better plan devisable

than the present one of shooting them in and out, and from camp to camp,

in large busses. The most annoying and unsatisfactory feature of this

system is the great amount of time which the tourist must stand by

waiting for his bus-seat and room to be allotted. This, however, can

hardly be helped with daily shipments numbering several hundred being

made from and received at each camp and hotel. Under the circumstances

the most satisfactory way of touring the Park is in one's own car,

stopping at either hotel or camp, according to one's taste and

pocketbook. Delightful as the auto camping grounds are, tenting is

hardly to be recommended on account of the mosquitoes.

Allowing for the difference in season, there was little change

observable in the natural features of the Park since my former visit.

Things looked different, of course, but that was only because there was

less snow and more dust. The only appreciable natural changes were in

the hot spring and geyser areas, where here or there a formation had

augmented or crumbled to dust according to whether or not its supply of

mineral-charged water had been maintained or not. The cliffs and

mountains, waterfalls, and gorges could have suffered no more than the

two decades, infinitesimal geologic modifications--mostly erosive. Even

in the geyser basins the changes of a decade are such as few save a

scientific observer would note. The first authentic written description

of the Fire Hole geysers basins was penned nearly eighty years ago by

Warren Angus Ferris, a clerk of the American Fur Company. It describes

that region of the present as accurately as would the account of a last

summer's tourist.

Not unless we are prepared to accept those delectable yarns of old Jim

Bridger as the higher truth is there any evidence that the natural

features of the Park have suffered material change since its discovery.

But even in his own credulous time people were hardly inclined to

swallow the story of that cliff of telescopic glass which tempted Jim

into shooting twenty-five-miles-distant elk under the impression that

it was grazing within gunshot. Nor would those ancient sceptics believe

the story of the way the hoofs of Bridger's horse were shrunk to

pin-points in crossing the Alum Creek, or of how those astringent waters

actually shrunk the land and reduced the distance he had to travel.

Indeed, it is hard to believe these stories even today. And yet Bridger

is credited with being the greatest natural topographer in frontier

history--he was said to be able to draw an accurate map of the Rocky

Mountains on a buffalo hide.

But if the natural changes in the Yellowstone appeared inappreciable,

the artificial, the evolutionary changes were very striking. Roads and

trails had been greatly improved and extended, horse-drawn vehicles had

given place to motors, and the Rangers of the National Park Service had

taken over policing and patrol from the Army. Most heartening of all,

Administration seemed at last to have found itself. In the decade or two

following the creation of the Park, there were two Superintendents,

Langford and Norris, who gave the best that was in them to an all but

thankless task. Greatly hampered by lack of co-operation and even by

actual obstruction in Washington the achievement of neither was

commensurate with his effort.

[Illustration:

_J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

GOLDEN GATE CANYON AND VIADUCT]

Besides Langford and Norris these earlier years saw two or three

political appointees at the head of Park affairs, men whom no less an

authority than Captain Chittenden intimates were either incompetent or

corrupt. It was largely the lamentable results of the administration or

these latter that was responsible for turning the Yellowstone over to

the Army, just as was done in the construction of the Panama Canal. The

Army, subject to the limitations of military administration for this

kind of work, came through as usual with great credit to itself. A

military Superintendent--Capt. George W. Goode--was in charge on the

occasion of my first visit, and at that time it seemed probable that the

army regime might be continued indefinitely. It was plain, however, that

an officer who might be sent from the Philippines to the Yellowstone one

year, and from the Yellowstone to Alaska the next, was not in a

position, no matter what his ability and enthusiasm, to do full justice

to the task in hand. What appeared to be needed was a civil

administration, with the right sort of men, backed up with sympathy and

vigour at Washington. _That_ is the _desideratum_ which seems to have

been arrived at, both as to men and the support at the National Capital.

If I were going to pay adequate tribute to what the National Park

Service is doing and trying to do I should want the rest of this volume

in which to express myself. So I shall only say in passing that,

judging from the members of that service I have met, including the

Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent of the Yellowstone, it seems

to me to be developing a type that does not suffer in comparison with

that fine idealist, the British Civil Servant, whom I have always

admired so unreservedly where I have found him at work in India, the

Federated Malay States, and other outposts of empire--an official of

ability and experience giving his lifetime for the good of others for

very modest pay. If I knew how to pay a higher compliment I should do

so. In concluding this chapter I shall touch briefly on the future plans

and policy of the National Park Service for the Yellowstone.

It was a comparatively modest affluent of Yellowstone Lake that I

followed down from the two-ways-draining marsh on the Continental

Divide. I did not come upon the Yellowstone proper until I reached the

outlet of the Lake. It is a splendid stream even there--broad, deep,

swift and crystal-clear. At a point very near where the bridge of the

Cody road crosses the river is the site of the projected Yellowstone

Lake Dam, a dangerous encroachment of power and irrigation interests

which the energetic efforts of the National Park Service appear now to

have disposed of for good.

From my previous recollection of the river from the outlet to the Upper

Falls I had the impression that perhaps the first six or eight miles of

this stretch, with careful lining at one or two rapids, might be run

with an ordinary skiff. Finding a number of small fishing boats moored

just below the outlet I endeavoured to hire one with the idea of

settling this point in my mind. The boatman refused to entertain my

proposition for a moment, not even when I offered to deposit the value

of the skiff in question. "I don't care if you reckon you can swim out

of one of them rapids," he said with finality. "My boat can't swim, and

a boat earns its value three times over in a good season." He was a

practical chap, that one. Why, indeed, shouldn't it worry him more to

have his boat go over the Falls than it would to have me do it?

Walking down from the Lake to the Canyon I used the road only where it

ran close to the river. Thus I not only came to a more intimate

acquaintance with the latter, but also avoided the blended dust and

gasoline wakes of the daily Hegira of yellow busses. At the first

rapid--an abrupt fall of from three to six feet formed by a ledge of

bedrock extending all the way across the river--I found countless

millions of trout bunched where that obstacle blocked their upward

movement to the Lake. I had seen salmon jumping falls on many occasions,

but never before trout. These seemed to be getting in each other's way

a good deal, but even so were clearing the barrier like a flight of so

many grasshoppers. Many that got their take-off correctly gauged made a

clean jump of it. Others, striking near the top of the fall, still had

enough kick left in their tails to drive on up through the coiling

bottle-green water. But most of those that struck below the middle of

the fall were carried back and had their leap for nothing.

Immediately under the fall the fish were so thick that thrusting one's

hand into a pool near the bank was like reaching into the bumper haul of

a freshly-drawn seine. Closing a fist on the slippery creatures was

quite another matter, however. I was all of twenty minutes throwing half

a dozen two and three-pounders out onto the bank. Stringing these on a

piece of willow, I carried them up to the road and offered them as a

present to the first load of campers that came along. They appeared to

be from Kansas, or Missouri or thereabouts, and so had quite a

discussion before accepting them--didn't seem quite agreed as to whether

the fish were fresh or not. Finally I handed one of them the string and

went back to the trail by the river. They were still so engrossed in

their debate that it never occurred to them to say "Thank you." Ford

owners are nearly always suspicious I have found, and notably so when

they come from Pike County or environs.

[Illustration:

_By Haynes, St. Paul_

EMIGRANT PEAK, YELLOWSTONE RIVER, NEAR LIVINGSTON, MONT.]

There is a magnificent stretch of rapids for a quarter of a mile or more

above the Upper Falls, where the river takes a running start for its two

major leaps. I spent all of an hour lounging along here, speculating as

to just how far a man might get in with a boat--and then get out. On a

quiet, sunny day, with the mind at peace with the world, I am certain I

would not venture beyond the first sharp pitch above the bridge. Fleeing

from Indians, tourists or a jazz orchestra, however, I am inclined to

think I would chance it for all of three hundred yards. Possibly even,

in the event it were either of the two latter that menaced, I would

chance the Falls themselves.

To me the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is more inspiring--in a

perfectly human, friendly sort of way--than any other of the great

sights of the world. There are others that are on a bigger scale and

more awesome--the Grand Canyon of the Colorado or the snows of

Kinchinjunga from Darjeeling, for examples,--but to the ordinary soul

these are too stupendous for him to grasp, they appeal rather than

thrill. There may be a few exalted, self-communing souls, like Woodrow

Wilson and William Randolph Hearst, who could look the Grand Canyon of

the Colorado right between the eyes and feel quite on a par with

it--nay, even a bit condescending perhaps. Lesser mortals never quite

get over catching their breath at the more than earthly wonder of it. I

have never seen any one save a present-day flapper gaze for the first

time on the sombre depths of the great gorge of the Colorado with

untroubled eyes.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is not like that--it exhilarates

like a glass of old wine, a fresh sea breeze, a master-piece of

painting. There are no darksome depths to awaken doubt. You can see

right to the bottom of the gorge from almost any vantage point you

choose. But it is the rainbow-gaiety of the brilliant colour streaking

that gives the real kick. _That_ gets over with all and sundry--and

grows on them. The ones to whom the Canyon appeals most are those who

have seen it most frequently.

Twenty years ago I attempted, in the diary of my winter ski tour, some

description of the snow-choked gorge of the Yellowstone as I glimpsed it

from the rim. One learns a vast quantity of various kinds of things in

two decades, among them a realization of the numerous occasions on which

he has been an ass. I shall try not to offend again by attempting to

describe Grand Canyons.

[Illustration:

(C) _J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

TOWER FALL AND TOWERS]

I descended to the river at several points in the Canyon, but found it

quite impossible to proceed down stream any distance in the bottom of

the gorge. The fall is tremendous all the way through and I doubt if

there are many stretches of over a few hundred yards in length in which

a boat could live. The total fall from the Lake to the foot of the Grand

Canyon is something like three thousand feet, probably not far from a

hundred feet to the mile. I cannot recall offhand a river of so great a

volume anywhere in the world that has so considerable a fall. The Indus,

in the great bend above Leh, in Ladakh, may approximate such a drop, and

so may the Brahmaputra, where it cleaves the main range of the Himalayas

after passing Lhassa. The Yangtse, where it comes tumbling down from the

Tibetan plateau into Szechuan, is hardly more than a mountain torrent.

With the possible exception of the main affluents of the Upper Amazon in

the Peruvian Cordillera, these are the only great rivers in the running

for a record of this kind.

In walking from the Grand Canyon to Mammoth Hot Springs I followed the

road over Mount Washburn, stopping for the night at Camp Roosevelt,

below Tower Falls. This most recently established of the Park camps

takes its name from the fact that it is located on the spot where

Roosevelt and John Burroughs made headquarters on the occasion of their

winter tour of the Yellowstone a decade and a half ago. The best

fishing in the Park is found in this section, and for that reason the

management has developed and maintained it very largely as a sporting

camp. Only those with a really genuine love of the out-of-doors stop

there, while the regular ruck of the tourists pass it by. Those facts

alone set it apart in a class by itself as the pleasantest spot in the

Park for a prolonged sojourn.

On account of the class of people it attracts, Roosevelt has been made

rather a pet of the management from its inception. This is especially

true of personnel. The wholly charming couple--a Kentucky gentleman and

his wife--whom I found in charge last summer presided over the camp as

over a country home in the Blue Grass. The staff--all college boys and

girls--was practically a complete Glee Club in itself. Good sports, too.

Roosevelt was the only camp at which I did not find myself consumed with

longing for the primeval solitude of the Park as I had known it on my

winter tour--during the closed season for tourists.

Mammoth Hot Springs, in spite of the passing of Fort Yellowstone, I

found to have augmented greatly since my former visit. Most of my old

friends were gone, however, Assistant Superintendent Lindsay being the

only one remaining who recalled my coming and going. In company with a

couple of officers from the Post we had, I believe, enjoyed an afternoon

of fearful and wonderful tennis on the still ice- and snow-covered court.

Federal Judge Meldrum, terror of poachers, had been in the party twenty

years ago, but said he did not remember me. I was rather glad he had had

no occasion to. Had I ever been connected with the geyser that Private

Ikey Einstein soaped, or with aiding and abetting Sergeant Hope to drive

a flock of sheep over the bluffs into the Gardiner River, the Judge

would doubtless have been able to refer to the official memoranda to jog

his memory--possibly some thumb prints and a side and front view of my

criminal phiz.

To my great regret I learned that F. Jay Haynes, official photographer

of the Park, had died but a few months before. In his place I found Jack

Haynes, his son, who is brilliantly maintaining the reputation of his

illustrious father, both as an artist and as a factor in forwarding the

destiny of the Yellowstone. What the intrepid Kolb Brothers are doing in

photographing the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, what Byron Harmon is

doing in the Canadian Rockies, that the Haynes family have done for the

Yellowstone Park. I say "have done," because their work, having been

carried on during nearly four decades, is much more nearly complete

than that of the others who have worked a shorter time in a rather less

concentrated sphere.

But F. Jay Haynes was far more than a great photographic artist. He was

a great lover of the out-of-doors generally and of that of Yellowstone

Park particularly. In his organization of the transportation companies

to serve respectively the east and west entrances to the Park, it was

the bringing of the latter to the people that was the main consideration

in his mind; the financial success of his ventures was secondary. I

believe these were successful on both counts, however. I know that Mr.

Haynes is given the credit for inducing the late E. H. Harriman to build

a branch of the Union Pacific to the western entrance of the Park, now

the principal portal so far as number of tourists is concerned. They

have recently done the memory of Mr. Haynes the honour of naming a

mountain after him. This is a fitting tribute, and well deserved. Far

more impressive a monument, however, are his pictures. Mount Haynes may

be seen for a distance of perhaps a hundred miles; the Yellowstone

photographs of F. Jay Haynes may be seen at the ends of the world.

Jack Haynes is trying to do everything his father did, both as an artist

and as a friend of the Yellowstone. He was on the ground early. He

claims to have had his first ride over the Park roads some thirty years

ago--in a baby carriage. Now he burns up those same roads in a Stutz

roadster, taking hours to make the Grand Circuit where his father took

days or weeks. A Ranger at the Canyon told me that Jack made the round

so fast that he often headed back into Norris before the dust from his

outward trip had settled down. I think that is somewhat exaggerated; yet

Judge Meldrum, who trundled Jack on his knee, has figured that the

latter's time for some of his rounds averages about twice the speed

limit. The old judge swears that it is his dearest ambition to soak the

boy good and plenty for his defiance of Uncle Sam's laws--when he

catches him at it. So far, however, the only times that the Judge has

had any really unimpeachable evidence in point was when he himself was a

passenger in Jack's car! Then, he confesses, he couldn't take out his

watch because he was using both hands to hold on. Nor would the watch

have been of any use anyhow, he further admits, for they were going so

fast that the mile-posts looked just like a white stone wall, with a

very impressionistic black streak along near the top where the numbers

came!

Not so far behind Jim Bridger and his telescopic glass cliff, that

little touch about the mile-posts. And it proves that John Colter's dash

from his Indian captors can't always hope to stand as a speed record.

Surely it is good to know that the best of ancient Yellowstone tradition

is being so well maintained.

Jack Haynes drove me down to meet Superintendent Horace M. Albright, who

had only returned to Mammoth a couple of hours before I had to leave to

catch my train at Gardiner. I had Mr. Albright very much in mind when I

tried to pay the most fitting compliment I could to the type of men that

are being drawn to the National Park Service. An ever-ready sneer from

the common run of political heelers for the man in office who is trying

to accomplish something for the common good in a decent and honourable

manner is "impractical idealist." The words are all but inseparably

linked from long usage. Indeed, it seems rarely to occur to anybody that

there might be such a thing as a _practical_ idealist. And yet just that

is what Horace M. Albright impressed me as being; and such, I would

gather from all I can learn, is his Chief, Stephen T. Mather, Director

of the National Park Service. No one will question that they are

idealists, I daresay. That they are also practical, I doubt not that

very strong affirmative admissions might be secured from a number of

baffled politicians who have tried to encroach upon Yellowstone Park

with power and irrigation schemes.

[Illustration: YELLOWSTONE PARK HEADQUARTERS]

[Illustration: DIRECTOR MATHER, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR FALL, AND

SUPERINTENDENT ALBRIGHT CAMPING]

[Illustration: SUPERINTENDENT ALBRIGHT AND MULE DEER]

Captain Chittenden, writing of the early days of the Yellowstone, speaks

of the menace of the railways--attempts on the part of certain companies

to build into or through the Park itself. That threat was disposed of in

good time. The railways accepted the "Thus far shalt thou go and no

farther!" as final, built as close as practicable to the boundaries, and

rested content with allowing transportation within the Park to be

carried on by horse-drawn vehicles, later to be replaced by motor

busses. The menace of the railways was no longer heard of, but in time a

new one arose--that of the power and irrigation interests. This

hydra-headed camel tried to crawl under the flap of the Park tent in the

form of a dam at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake for the ostensible

purpose of preventing floods on the lower river. The bill to authorize

the project was introduced in Congress by Senator Thomas P. Walsh and

bears his name. Two very practical idealists, called to step into the

breach almost at a moment's notice, were able to demolish every claim

made for the measure after scarcely more than a hurried reading of it.

These two were Superintendent Albright and George E. Goodwin, Chief

Engineer of the National Park Service. Mr. Albright, practically

offhand, showed the falsity or the fallacy of every contention made in

the bill as regards the Park itself, but perhaps the solar plexus was

delivered by Mr. Goodwin, when he introduced figures to show that all of

the floods on the lower river came a month previous to high water in

Yellowstone Lake--that they were directly due in fact, not to the

latter, but to the torrential spring discharges of the Big Horn, Tongue,

Powder and other tributaries of the main stream.

This blocked the measure at the time, and equally telling action from

the Department of Interior has checked every subsequent attempt to

advance it. I should really like to know the particular practical

idealist of that Department who dissected a circular letter sent out

under Mr. Walsh's signature to his Congressional colleagues. Perhaps it

was Stephen T. Mather himself, head of the National Park Service. At any

rate, the blows dealt were so sharp and jolting that reading the

statement somehow made me think of a man walking down a row of plaster

images and cracking them with a hammer. If I was not certain this

insincere and maladroitly handled bill would not be at rather more than

its last gasp before these pages appear in print I would write more

about it--that is, against it. As things have shaped, however, this will

hardly be necessary.

In explaining why it was that the National Park Service had rallied its

forces for so vigorous a defence of the citadel against the Walsh Bill,

Mr. Albright quoted the words of John Barton Payne, Secretary of the

Interior under Wilson, in pushing the Jones-Esch Bill, which returned

the national parks and monuments to the sole authority of Congress. Said

Mr. Payne: "When once you establish a principle that you can encroach on

a national park for irrigation or water power, you commence a process

which will end only in the commercialization of them all.... There is a

heap more in this world," he concluded, "than three meals a day."

I was sorry not to be able to see more of Horace M. Albright. One can

put up with a good deal of his kind of practical idealism.

CHAPTER II

LIVINGSTON TWENTY YEARS AFTER

The train on which I journeyed from the Park to Livingston was a bit

late in getting started for some reason, as a consequence of which it

was trying to make up the lost time all the way. It was a decidedly

rough passage, especially on the curves through the rocky walls of

"Yankee Jim's Canyon." Even so, however, I reflected that the careening

observation car was making a lot better weather of it than did the old

_Kentucky Mule_ twenty years before.

Although past the crest of its spring rise by nearly a fortnight, the

Yellowstone was considerably higher than the early May stage at which I

ran it before. Even glimpsed from the train the Canyon impressed me as

having a lot of very rough water--much too rough for a small open boat

to run right through. With frequent landing and careful lining, however,

it looked quite feasible; indeed, on arrival at Livingston I learned

that a couple of men had worked through with a light canoe the previous

Sunday. Letting down with a line over the bad places, they took about an

hour for the passage of the roughest two miles of the Canyon. My jaunt

through in and about the _Mule_ was not clocked. Although the liveliness

of the action made it seem longer, I doubt if it was much over ten

minutes. Nevertheless I was quite content not to have to chance it

again, especially as a trial trip for a new type of boat.

Livingston is located at the bend where the Yellowstone, after running

north from the Park for fifty miles, breaks from the mountains and

begins its long easterly course to the Missouri through a more open

valley. This was the point at which Captain Clark, temporarily separated

from Lewis on their return journey from the mouth of the Columbia, first

saw the upper Yellowstone. He had, of course, passed its mouth when

proceeding westward by the Missouri the previous year. It was now his

purpose to explore the whole length of such of the river as flowed

between this point and the Missouri, making rendezvous with Lewis at

some point below its mouth. Clark had come from the Three Forks of the

Missouri with pack-train, but with the intention of building boats and

taking to the river just as soon as trees large enough for their

construction could be found. Searching every flat for suitable

boat-timber, the party proceeded down the north bank of the river,

probably pretty well along the route followed by General Gibbon seventy

years later in the campaign against the Sioux which culminated to the

Custer Massacre on the Little Big Horn.

The previous fall, rapid by rapid, I had run the lower Columbia in the

wake of Lewis and Clark. Now I was turning into the trail of the

Pathfinders again, this time their home trail. One of the things that I

had been anticipating above all others was the delight of following that

trail to its end, which also had been its beginning--St. Louis. I knew

that there was going to be something of Lewis and Clark for me in every

mile of the twenty-five hundred--yes, and of many another who had

followed in their path. I was not to be disappointed. I only hope I am

not going to be boring in telling a little about it. I trust not too

much so. Darn it, a man can't be expected to write about bootleggers,

and "white mule" and home-brew and ultra-modern institutions all the

time. Lewis and Clark and the other pioneers of the North-west have

always meant a lot to me. I simply can't help mentioning them now and

again--but I'll try and strike a balance in the long run.

[Illustration:

_By Haynes, St. Paul_

GATE OF THE MOUNTAINS, YELLOWSTONE RIVER]

There was a real thrill in the tablet erected by the D. A. R. near the

Livingston railway station commemorating the passing of Captain Clark.

Perhaps there will be no fitter place for me to acknowledge to the

Daughters of the Revolution my gratitude for many another thrill of the

same kind similar monuments of theirs gave me all the way to the end

of my journey. Now it was the defence of the stockade at Yankton that

was celebrated, now a station of the Pony Express or a crossing of the

Santa Fe Trail in Missouri, now a post on some old Indian road at

Natchez. Always they were modest and fitting, and always they winged a

thrill. I have never met any live Daughters of the Revolution to

recognize them, but I am sure from what they have done to make the river

way pleasant that they must be eminently kindly folk, like the

philanthropists who erect drinking fountains for man and beast and the

Burmans who put out little bird-houses in the trees.

Livingston had changed a lot since I had seen it last--that was plain

before my train had swung round the long bend and pulled up at the

station. The ball ground was gone--pushed right across the river by the

growth of the town. Many old landmarks were missing, and the main

street, lined with fine new modern buildings, had shifted a whole block

west. The shade trees had grown until they arched above the clean, cool

streets, now paved from one end of the town to the other. Even the

cottonwoods by the river towered higher and bulked bigger with the

twenty new rings that the passing years had built out from their hearts.

There was a new Post Office and a new railway station. The latter was a

handsome, sizable structure, well worthy of the important junction

which it served. And yet that station wasn't quite so sizable as certain

of the local boosters would have people think. Here, verbatim, is what I

read of it in the local Chamber of Commerce publication:

"The Northern Pacific passenger depot, which is the largest and

handsomest structure of the kind on the transcontinental line between

its terminals, domiciles a large number of general and division officers

and covers 100 miles East, and more than that distance West on two lines

and the branch railway North from this city and also the line running

South." Very likely that word _covers_ is intended to refer to the

jurisdiction of the officials housed in the building, but if that

sentence were to be taken literally there is no doubt that the Grand

Central, Liverpool Street, the _Gare du Nord_ and a few score more of

the world's great terminals might be chucked under those hundred-mile

easterly and westerly wings of the Livingston station and never be found

again.

Which reminds me that Kipling also found the natives making some pretty

big claims for Livingston. Something over thirty years previous to my

latest visit he had stopped there over-night on his way to the

Yellowstone. He describes it as a little cow-town of about two thousand.

Exhausting its resources in a short stroll, he wandered off among the

hills, narrowly to avoid being stepped upon by a herd of stampeding

horses. He returned to the town to find it was the night before the

Fourth of July, with much carousing and large talking going on. His

final comment was: "They raise horses and minerals around Livingston,

but they behave as though they raised cherubims with diamonds in their

wings."

But this is not the Livingston of the present day, nor even the

Livingston that I loved so well twenty years syne. Yes, even then almost

the only ruffians and carousers were the imported ball players and

editors and "Calamity Jane." The natives were very modest, gentle folk,

just as they are today. And they raised several things besides horses

and minerals--yea, even cherubims. I remember that distinctly, for it

was one named "Bunny," who worked in the telephone office, that knitted

me a purple tie which I kept for years--for a trunk-strap. It stretched

and stretched and stretched, but never weakened or faded. Expressmen and

other vulgar people used to think there was a bride in my party on

account of that purple ribbon. Bless your heart, "Bunny!" You'll never

know until you read this confession how much besides that rough, red

neck of mine you snared in the loop of your purple tie.

The Livingston _Enterprise_ had grown with the town--that was evident

from a glance at the first copy to fall into my hands. Quite a

metropolitan daily it was, with Associated Press service, sporting page

and regular boiler-plate Fashion Hint stuff from the _Rue de la Paix_.

The Editor, too, was a considerable advance--at least sartorially--over

the one I remembered. Phillips proved a mighty engaging chap, though,

and didn't seem a bit ashamed over having had me for a predecessor.

People spoke of him to me as an energetic civic and temperance worker,

declaring that he had been indefatigable in his efforts to put down

drink all over Park County. They called his vigorous editorials on these

subjects "Phillipics." They were noted for their jolt.

I modestly assured him that I couldn't claim to have done a lot for

temperance during the time I sat in his chair, but that I _had_ taken an

active interest in civic reform. And then, darn him! he took down the

year 1901 from the _Enterprise_ file. I had forgotten all about that.

Well, we found a number of columns of right pert comment on local men,

women and events and many square feet of baseball write-ups that

Phillips seemed highly tickled over; but of civic reform editorials, not

a one. Or not quite so bad as that perhaps. It may be that a trenchant

leader lashing the municipal council for neglecting to build a certain

badly needed sidewalk would come in that class. It was a sidewalk to the

baseball grounds. How well I remember the inspiration for that vitriolic

attack on the City Fathers! "Bunny" lost a French-heeled slipper in the

Yellowstone gumbo while mincing out to the Helena game and swore she

would never appear at the Park again unless it could be done without

getting muddied to her knees. "Bunny" was very outspoken for a cherubim.

In those days it took an outspoken girl to mention anything between her

shoe-tops and her pompadour.

[Illustration:

_By Haynes, St. Paul_

WHERE CUSTER FELL]

I liked Editor Phillips so well that I forthwith asked him to join me

for my first day's run down the river. He said he was highly

complimented, but that there were a number of reasons why he would not

be able to accept. The only one of these I recall was that the water was

far _too loosely packed_ between Livingston and Big Timber. Western

editors are always picturesque, and Phillips was one of the best of his

kind. He mentioned two or three others who might be induced to join me

for a day or two. One of these was Joe Evans, curio dealer and trapper.

I am not quite sure whether it was Phillips or some one else who

recommended "Buckskin Jim" Cutler as the best hand with a boat on the

upper river. It took some groping in my memory to place the name, but

finally I found it pigeon-holed as that of the man "Yankee Jim" had

spoken of in the same connection twenty years before. I had in mind

trying to get in touch with Cutler, but gave up the idea the moment I

discovered Pete Holt, former Government Scout and my first guide through

the Yellowstone, holding down the job of Chief of Police of Livingston.

Holt's furious pace on ski had resulted in my leaving jagged fragments

of cuticle on most of the trees and much of the crust along the

Yellowstone Grand Tour. Here was a chance to lead a measure or two of

the dance myself. Pete had ideas of his own about the looseness with

which the water was packed below Livingston, but was too good a sport to

let that interfere with my pleasure. Indeed, he even went out of his way

to make his trip official. Two people--a man and a woman--had been

drowned in the Yellowstone the previous week. He ordered himself to go

in search of them in my boat, hiring Joe Evans, with his canvas canoe,

to accompany us as scout and pilot. The arrangement was ideal. Joe knew

the best channel--so I took it for granted,--which would leave me

nothing to do but trail his wake and manage my new and untried boat.

Holt's hundred and eighty pounds in the stern would give that ballast

just where I needed it. The lack of serious responsibilities would give

us a chance for a good old yarn while, watching my chances, I could

pick favourable riffles and pay back my friend in his own coin the debt

of twenty years standing.

It was a great disappointment to find no one of my old baseball

team-mates still in Livingston. Jack Mjelde, Captain and second-baseman,

had been killed in an electrical accident. That was a typically

capricious trick of Fate. As I recall things now, Jack--a family man

with a real job, and a legitimate resident of Livingston--was about the

most worth preserving of the lot of us. Ed Ray had dropped in and out of

town on brake-beams every now and then, and so had two or three others.

Paddy Ryan, pitcher and the gentlest mannered of us all, was believed to

be still a bar-keeper--somewhat surreptitiously of course. Riley, the

never more than semi-Keeley-cured catcher, had last been heard of over

Missoula way, and looking rather fit now that there was a more or less

closed season on his favourite quarry--mauve mice.

And so it went. A score or more of old-timers who had seen me play

turned up at the hotel, but only one of these brought a real thrill.

That was a husky chap of about thirty, who said he had been admitted to

the park once for retrieving a home-run I had swatted over the fence in

a game against Anaconda. "Gosh, how you could line 'em out, boy,"

volunteered some one, and grunts of assent ran back and forth through

the crowd. That was all very nice, of course; but I would have enjoyed

it a lot more if I could have been quite sure that none of them had been

present the time we played Red Lodge on Miner's Union Day. This was the

morning after the Fireman's Ball of the night before. I believe I could

_see_ the ball all right. Indeed, that was just the trouble. I saw too

many balls and couldn't swing my bat against the right one. I struck out

three times running. The fourth time up I connected for a mighty wallop,

but only to get put out through starting for third base instead of

first!

Pete Nelson, Sheriff of my former visit and now State Game

Warden, called for me at the hotel and together we strolled

down the old main street to the river. We had dubbed it

"The-Street-That-is-Called-Straight." Just why I fail to remember, but

probably some of us wanted to show his biblical learning. Riley, the

Keeley-ed catcher, confessed it never had looked straight to him, and

there were times--especially late on the nights we had won games--that I

had doubts on that score myself. But if there had been crooks in or upon

it in the old days, time had ironed them out. I especially called

Nelson's attention to the Northern Pacific station at one end of the

vista, the nodding cottonwoods at the other, and the glaring new

concrete pavement, stretching straight as a white ribbon, connecting

them up.

Pete Nelson sadly called my attention to the manner in which all the gay

old palaces of carousal had been converted, and said he reckoned that

perhaps every one that had patronized them had undergone the same

change. I was also sad, but less optimistic than Pete respecting the

increasing purpose of the ages. As we leaned on the rail of the river

bridge and gazed at the swift green current I tried to recall those

lines of Stevenson's which began:

"Sing me a song of a boy that is gone--

Ah, could that lad be I!"

and which conclude:

"All that was good, all that was fair,

All that was me is gone."

I couldn't remember the part that I craved, and so fell back on:

"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depths of some divine despair

Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more."

That didn't quite do, either, for Tennyson was gazing on fading fields

and thinking of Autumn, and I was gazing on budding cottonwoods and

thinking of Spring--Spring! And yet it was a Spring that was gone.

"Pete," I said moodily, turning a gloomy eye to the seaward-rushing

flood, "there's a lot of water gone under this bridge never to return,

since you and I stood here last." The ex-Sheriff nodded in dreary

acquiescence. "And, boy," he remarked with the weariness of the ages in

his voice as he rubbed a finger up and down the bridge of a blue, cold

nose that I remembered as having once glowed with all the hues of a

sunset over the colour-splashed gorge of the Grand Canyon of the

Yellowstone; "boy, water ain't the only thing that's gone never to

return."

Arm in arm, as we had navigated "The-Street-That-is-Called-Straight" in

ancient of days, we wended our way back town-ward through the

gloom-drenched dusk. By devious ways and obscure Pete piloted, stopping

every now and then to introduce me to certain friends as the boy who

helped Livingston cop the state champeenship twenty years ago. We were

treated with great deference all along the way. There was the glint of a

twinkle in the ex-Sheriffian eye as Pete delivered me at the hotel.

"That was just to show you, boy, that Gilead is not yet quite drained of

Balm," he said, patting me on the back. "Until they give the screw a few

more turns, life in little old Livingston will not be entirely without

its compensayshuns."

I had dinner and spent the evening with Pete Holt's family, and a mighty

wholesome interval it was after an afternoon so wild with old regrets.

Holt had always been a teetotaler, and so, with nothing much to lose,

faced an unclouded future. Whether, as Chief of Police, he has ever

given those much-dreaded turns to the screws that would crush the last

lees of pleasure from sanguine grapes of pain I have never heard. It

made me think of Guelph and Ghibelline, this finding my old-time friends

thus arrayed against one another. And good old Peter Nelson--I am

wondering, when cock-crow sounds, if he will be found denying or denied.

* * * * *

"Buckskin Jim" Cutler, premier river man of the upper Yellowstone, came

down to Livingston the evening before the morning I had scheduled for my

departure. It had been rumoured for a couple of days that he would

arrive--some said to respond to a legal summons, others that he had

heard I had inquired for him and was hoping to sign on with me for my

river voyage. I have never been able to make sure either way. Certainly

he had been summoned to court over some dispute with a neighbour, while

I have never had definite assurance that he had received any word of my

trip. I could not have taken him far in any event, as I had no need of

help once my boat was given a thorough trying out.

Cutler's arrival in Livingston was sudden and tragic, as is always the

case when the Yellowstone takes a hand in real earnest. My boat had been

set up in a blacksmith shop on the river, at the foot of the main

street. Going down there just before dinner to make sure that everything

was ship-shape for the start on the morrow, I found the place deserted,

while there was a considerable gathering of people on the next bridge

below. Starting in that direction, I met one of the helpers, breathing

hard and deathly white, hurrying back to the deserted shop.

"Mighty hard luck," he ejaculated brokenly between breaths. "Man just

came down past shop--in river--yelling for help. Didn't hear him till he

got by. Half a minute sooner, and I could have yanked out your light

boat--all set up--and picked him up. Hear they've just got him down by

the next bridge--but 'fraid he's croaked. Cussed hard luck."

They were carrying a man to a waiting auto as I approached the crowd.

"Yep--drowned," I heard some one say; "but he made a hell of a fight.

That was old 'Buckskin Jim' to the last kick--always fighting." My

glimpse of the rugged face and dripping form was of the briefest, but

amply reassuring as to the truth of the statement I had overheard. It

was the frame of a man that could put up a hell of a fight, and the face

of a man who would--a real river-rat if there ever was one.

Next morning's issue of the Livingston _Enterprise_, which bore in the

lower left-hand corner of its front page a modest announcement of my

departure, on its upper right-hand corner carried a prominently featured

account of Jim Cutler's last run on the Yellowstone. As it contains

about all I have ever been able to learn in connection with the tragic

finish of a character who, in 1901 as in 1921, was recommended to me as

the best river hand on the upper Yellowstone, I reproduce the latter in

full herewith.

"BUCKSKIN JIM" CUTLER

USES RAFT AND DIES IN

FIGHT WITH YELLOWSTONE.

LACKING FUNDS TO PAY FOR TRANSPORTATION FROM CARBELLA TO

LIVINGSTON, PIONEER MAKES PERILOUS TRIP OF 40 MILES DOWN RIVER ONLY

TO WAGE LOSING BATTLE WITH WATER AS HE PREPARED TO END JOURNEY.

Without funds to pay for transportation which would bring him into

court as defendant in a water case, R. E. Cutler, Justice of the

Peace at Carbella, and known throughout

Park County as "Buckskin Jim," elected to travel the 40 miles to

Livingston on a small raft yesterday and after riding the flood

until he could leap ashore here he was pitched into the river by an

overhanging limb and after struggling with the current for half a

mile died either from drowning or the exertion of his fight.

Of massive physique Cutler made a wonderful fight for life despite his

65 years. A tree limb on the upper end of McLeod Island knocked the

voyager from his raft. Crying for help he attempted to reach the shore,

only a few feet away. Beneath the Main Street bridge, down past the

tourist camp packed with tents and travellers and down river to C

Street, Cutler was seen battling with the high water.

TONER CATCHES BODY

Near C Street he was forced to give up the fight. He sank but

reappeared a short distance above the H Street Bridge. A. T. Toner,

local contractor, swam out from the H Street Bridge and caught the

floating body. Earl Kirby, mail carrier, assisted him. Miss Jane

Wright, nurse at the Park Hospital, was driving by and took charge

of the work of trying to restore life. Dr. P. L. Green was called

and arrived in a few minutes. But all efforts were without success

and death won.

Doubt as to the cause of death was voiced by officials. Some held

the opinion that the deceased died from over exertion, shock or

heart trouble resulting from his terrific fight against the current

for a distance of more than half a mile rather than drowning.

Johnnie Doran, who was fishing near the head of McLeod Island saw

Cutler knocked from the raft and hurried to give

the alarm. Numerous residents along the banks of the river

discovered him fighting his way down stream and numerous calls were

sent to the city and county authorities. He seemed unable to make

the bank but remained above water for more than four blocks.

TOLD GILBERT OF TRIP

Cutler was served with a summons to appear in Livingston tomorrow

to answer to an order to show cause in a irrigation ditch dispute.

When Deputy Sheriff Clarence Gilbert served the papers Mr. Cutler

promised to appear but he informed the sheriff that he had no funds

and would probably have to make the trip in a boat or on a raft.

The officer did not take the remark seriously until Cutler was

lifted from the river about 6 o'clock yesterday afternoon.

The deceased had been a prominent resident of Paradise Valley for

many years. The Cutler hill on the road from Gardiner to Livingston

was named after the dead man. He is survived by seven sons and one

daughter besides his wife. Carbella residents reported that the

deceased started down river early yesterday on a small raft

intending to land at Livingston.