LIVINGSTON TO BIG TIMBER
As I had planned my Yellowstone-to-New-Orleans voyage as a strictly
one-man trip the ruling consideration I had had in mind in ordering my
outfit was lightness and compactness. I hoped also to find
serviceability in combination with these other qualifications, but the
latter were the things that I insisted on in advance. Serviceability
could only be proved by use. So I simply combed the sporting magazine
pages, picked out the lightest, tightest boat, engine, tent, sleeping
bag and other stuff I needed and let it go at that for a starter. No
article that I ordered was of a type I had ever used before. If anything
failed to stand up under use I knew that some sort of substitute could
be provided along the way. That is one distinct advantage boating on the
upper Yellowstone has over tackling such a stretch as the Big Bend of
the Columbia in Canada, or the remoter waters of any of the great South
American, African or Asian rivers.
First and last, of course, my boat was the main consideration. I knew
that I could get on with a wooden boat as a last resort, for I had
handled one alone over three hundred miles of the lower Columbia the
previous season. But I wanted to give at least a try-out to something
lighter than wood. I was certain there would be many occasions when my
ability to take my boat completely out of the water might be the means
of saving it from swamping, and possibly complete destruction. I also
knew there would be many places where such things as mud or too steep a
slope to the bank would make this quite out of the question with a
wooden boat weighing three hundred pounds or more. Lightness, also,
would mean easier pulling as well as greater mileage for the same amount
of engine power.
Investigation showed that the only practicable alternatives to wood were
steel and canvas. Canvas is extremely light and fairly strong, and there
are occasions--such as a journey on which both overland and water travel
are combined--when a properly designed folding canvas boat is
incomparably preferable to any other. This is the case, however, only
when there are frequent and difficult portages and very considerable
distances by land to be traversed. On a comparatively unbroken river
voyage the softness, the lack of rigidity, of a folding canvas boat fail
by a big margin to compensate for its lightness. This consideration
eliminated canvas for my purpose, though I readily grant its usefulness
under conditions favourable to it.
That committed me to steel. I found various types on the market, and
after several weeks of writing and wiring decided to take my chance with
a fourteen-foot sectional skiff put out by the Darrow Boat Company of
Albion, Michigan. The model I ordered weighed one hundred and fifty
pounds, according to the catalogue, and was amply stiff and strong. I
was willing to take the catalogue's word on the score of weight; the
matter of strength would have to be proved. The company admitted they
made no boat specially designed for rough-water work, and suggested it
might be best to build me one to order with a higher side. I knew that
four inches more side would be better than two, but didn't feel that I
could spare the ten days the job would require. That was the reason I
was taking a chance with a stock model that is probably most used for
duck-hunting on lakes and marshes. My only reason for ordering a
sectional type was the very considerable saving in express on account of
the comparatively small amount of space required for the knocked-down
boat in shipment.
I must confess that my first sight of the crated boat in the express
office at Livingston was a bit of a shock. There was no question about
the lightness of it, to be sure--I could pick it up, crate and all with
one hand. Rather, indeed, it looked to me _too_ light. I did not see how
material so thin could withstand a collision with a sharp, mid-stream
boulder without puncturing. But that was of less concern to me than the
lack of freeboard. After the big _batteaux_ and Peterboros I had used on
the Columbia the previous year this bright little tin craft looked like
a child's toy. Nor was there any comfort in the agent's run of patter as
he stood by during my inspection. All the boat people in town had been
in to see it. No end of opinions about it, but all agreed on one
thing--that it wouldn't do to allow it be launched in the river. No one
but a lunatic would think of such a thing, of course. Still just that
kind of lunatics had been turning up every now and then; so many,
indeed, that there was talk of erecting some kind of a trap down Big
Timber way to catch the bodies. But I didn't look like that kind of a
nut. In fact, the agent was more inclined to believe that I was one of
them rich fellows from St. Paul that had a hunting lodge up in the
Rockies.
I had the crate in a truck by this time. The agent's face was a study
when I gave the curt order: "Blacksmith shop on river--foot of Main
Street." His was all old stuff, of course. I had heard some variation of
it on every stream I had boated between the Yangtse and the Parana.
Noah must have gone through a barrage of the same sort the day he laid
the keel of the Ark. It didn't bother me a bit; but at the same time
there was nothing cheering in it. As a matter of fact, I had still to
make up my own mind as to just how much of the river those fourteen-inch
sides were going to exclude in a really rough-tumbling rapid. However,
it wasn't the sporting thing to do to abandon ship while ship was still
in two pieces, one inside of the other, in a crate. I would wait at
least until it was set up before arriving at any final verdicts. Perhaps
I would even give it a trial in the water. There was a quiet eddy under
the blacksmith shop, and I could play safe by bending on a line and
having some one keep hold of it in a pinch.
Joe Evans, the curio dealer, rushed out, bareheaded, as I drove past his
shop in the truck, to head me off from going to the river. A stranger
could have no idea how treacherous the Yellowstone was, he urged. Two
drownded in it already that week. If I must go ahead in that little tin
pan of a boat, much better to ship it to Miles City or Glendive and put
in below the worst rapids. From Livingston to Big Timber would be sheer
suicide, especially for a tenderfoot in a duck-boat. Nobody knew that
better than he did, for he had trapped all along the way. He was quite
disinterested in warning me thus. Indeed, it was all in his favour to
have me start. The county paid him twenty-five dollars a day for hunting
for dead bodies in the river, with twenty-five more as bonus for every
one he found. So I would see it was all to his interest to increase the
spring crop of floaters; but he was a humane man, and--Thus Joe, at some
length and with considerable vehemence.
[Illustration: THE BLACKSMITH SHOP WHERE MY BOAT WAS SET UP]
[Illustration: WE LAUNCHED THE BOAT BELOW THE LIVINGSTON BRIDGE]
[Illustration: A DIFFICULT RIFFLE BELOW SPRINGDALE]
I was chuckling to myself all the time Joe rattled on. The priceless old
chap had been in business at the same stand twenty years ago, but it was
plain he did not recognize me as the first-baseman of the Livingston
champeen nine. As a matter of fact, I was just as glad that he
didn't--right there before the truck-driver at least. For I had some
recollection of having been with our brake-beam-riding right fielder the
evening "Lefty" Clancy tried to palm a moss agate out of one of Joe's
trays--and got caught. Joe made "Lefty" disgorge, and then delivered
himself of remarks more pointed than polite respecting the morals of
Livingston's imported ball-players.
As I have intimated, I didn't care to have that episode dragged out
before the truck-driver, who might have passed it right on to Pete Holt
and Editor Phillips. So I just sat tight for the moment, thanked Joe for
his warnings and drove on when he got out of breath. But late that
afternoon I went to his shop and made a clean breast of everything. I
confessed about the moss agate, and also to the fact that I was the
youth who held the steering paddle for Sydney Lamartine the time the
still unbroken river record of six hours to Big Timber was put up. Then
we both grinned, shook hands and apologized to each other. I apologized
to Joe for seeming to have aided and abetted "Lefty" in trying to get
away with the moss agate, and Joe apologized to me for that warning
about the Yellowstone. There was a delicate and subtle compliment in his
handsome admission that he felt that his was the greater wrong, even
allowing for the fact that there were still two or three moss agates
missing when he finally checked over the tray. In this latter
connection, Joe said that for a year or two he had the feeling that he
had made a tactical error in not turning out my pockets as well as
"Lefty's" when he made his search. Then, one day, "Lefty" came in and
sold him back the agates. "I didn't say anything," said Joe with a
chuckle. "Just paid him a dollar apiece for the streakies, and then
turned about and sold him for ten dollars an old Colt's that had laid
under the snow all winter and wasn't worth six-bits. It seemed to me the
kinder way," he concluded.
Of course a man of so mellow and inclusive a charity as that was easy
for me to become fond of. Joe and I made friends quickly, and he fell in
very readily with the plan to go along in his canvas boat when I
started and help Pete Holt look for the two floaters.
Ten minutes sufficed to knock off the crate and set the boat up on the
floor of the blacksmith shop. It consisted of a bow and a stern section,
each about seven feet in length and provided with a thwart and a
water-tight compartment. Indeed, each section was really a complete boat
in itself, awkward in shape, to be sure, yet something that would float
on an even keel and which could be propelled by oars or paddles. Bolting
these two sections together produced a fourteen-foot skiff of
astonishingly good lines. The sides, it is true, were inches lower than
I would liked to have had them, but there was something distinctly
heartening in the fine flare of the bows and the pronounced sheer of the
little craft. Heartening, also, was the comment of the helper working to
patch up a gunwale smashed in transit. He said it was the darndest hard
tin he ever tried to put a drill through. Equally reassuring was the
blacksmith's complaint over the trouble he was having in hammering out a
number of little dents. I may as well add here that that transit-crushed
gunwale was the worst scar my pretty tin toy was to show when I docked
it finally in St. Louis after bumping something like 2500 miles down the
Yellowstone and Missouri.
The bright little shallop looked so inherently water-worthy that I
dragged it down to the river and jumped in without further misgivings.
Its lightness was highly refreshing, especially when I remembered the
back-breaking job it had been dragging for only a few feet the wooden
skiff I had used on the lower Columbia. Built to be pulled from the
forward section, carrying its load aft, it was down heavily by the head
until I trimmed ship by taking in the blacksmith. My own sodden two
hundred and forty pounds still brought it a bit too low by the bows, but
I readily saw how the weight of my outfit and ballast would correct this
until I shipped my outboard motor at Bismarck. The trial was eminently
satisfactory. I dodged back and forth across the current, ran a short
riffle, and then swung round and pulled right back up through it. Some
water was shipped, but not enough to bother. There would be no dearth of
dampness in the real rapids, I could see; but those air-chambers should
float her through in one way or another, and water was easily dumped at
the first eddy.
When, on pulling up to the bank to land, I tossed the painter to some
one waiting below the blacksmith shop, I acknowledged the proper sex of
the little craft for the first time. "Catch the line and ease her in!"
was what I said, or something to that effect. That meant she had
convinced me that she was a regular fellow--that I was quite game to
trust myself out alone with her day or night. And that is just what I
did, and for something like sixty or seventy days and nights. Saucy and
spirited, and at times wilful, as she proved to be, that confidence was
never betrayed.
Late that afternoon Pete Nelson called on me at the hotel, heading a
delegation from the Park County Chamber of Commerce with the request
that I permit the name of Livingston, Montana, to be painted upon my
boat. Pete's inherent delicacy must have made him sense the fact that
operating as a sandwich-man in any form was the one thing above all
others from which my shrinking nature recoiled. Turning his hat
nervously in his hands, the spokesman went on to explain and expatiate.
"Livingston was also the name of a great explorer. You're a sort of
explorer yourself, boy. Kind of appropriate to unite the two ideas.
Would also let the folks down river know that the little old town was
right on the map. Full of enterprise, too, sending its emissaries on
4000-mile river voyages...."
"Back up, Pete," I cut in. "This little voyage is my own idea, not
Livingston's. But go to it with the paint if you really think it will
turn any settlers this way. This little old town gave me my start in
life, and I am not going to lay myself open to the charge of
ingratitude, no matter at what cost to my personal feelings. Only please
don't insist on my flying a pennant or wearing a cap with the city
slogan on it. What is the motto, by the way?"
"_Live Lively in Livingston!_" chanted the delegation in unison, as
though delivering itself of a college yell. Pete opined it was a good
slogan, with a lot of _multum in parvo_ about it; but of course, if that
was the way I felt....
The delegation bowed itself out and adjourned to a sign-painter's shop
to discuss the practical side of the affair now that the diplomatic
preliminaries were disposed of. The next morning I found "LIVINGSTON,
MONT." streaming in bold capitals along port and starboard bows and
across the stern of my argosy. The blacksmith said there had been some
discussion anent blazoning the words in foot-high letters the whole
length of the bottom, on the theory, it appears, that this would be the
most conspicuous part of the boat in the event it capsized and continued
on to New Orleans without its skipper. Whether they really carried out
that inspired plan I never learned. The first sand bar I hit below
Livingston would have effectually erased the letters in any event.
Indeed, I was only too happy to find that it hadn't scoured a hole
through the bottom itself.
We had planned to push off by nine o'clock of the morning of June
thirtieth, but various odds and ends of delays and interruptions held us
over an hour. Most of these were in the form of elderly ladies who had
lost near relatives in the river and chose this as the fitting occasion
to tell me about it. I have some recollection of speaking with a friend
or connection of Sydney Lamartine. Sydney had died from some cause I
made out, but whether from the river or not I did not learn. Some one
else chimed in with a boat-upset story just at that juncture and things
got a bit mixed. I was mighty sorry to hear about Lamartine, though. He
pulled a strong oar and had no end of nerve--real river stuff.
When I came to ask the blacksmith how much I owed him, he scratched his
head for a few moments and then asked if I thought a dollar would be too
much. As the boat had been around his shop three or four days, with
himself or a helper tinkering on little things about it much of the time
out of pure kindliness, I told him I did not think it was and asked him
to let me take his picture for fear I should never find another like
him. I needn't have worried on that score, however. From first to last,
practically all of the people I had to do with along each of the three
great rivers I navigated had to be pressed before they would take any
pay at all for services. Indeed, I recall but two who seriously tried to
put anything over. One was the clerk of the local Ritz-Carlton at
Billings, who tried to charge me two days' rent for a room I had
occupied but one, and the other was a farmer's wife near Sibley,
Missouri, who was going to collect twenty-five cents from me for a quart
of skim milk. In the latter instance the husband of the offender came
along in time to intervene in my behalf and give the woman a good
tongue-lashing for trying to cheat a "po stranghah who wasn't no low
down tramp no how and maybe was writin' fo the papahs." In the former
case the "po stranghah" found justice denied him until he actually had
to prove that he occasionally did write for the "papahs." I wouldn't
have recalled either of these instances if they had chanced in the
course of an ordinary trip, for the very good reason there would have
been so many others of the same kind that my memory would not have
compassed them all. I have remembered them, and gone to the trouble of
mentioning them here, because that sort of thing isn't general practice
along the river-road.
[Illustration: PETE HOLT AND JOE EVANS]
[Illustration: HAULED OUT AT THE FOOT OF A ROUGH RAPID]
[Illustration: A SHARP PITCH ON THE UPPER YELLOWSTONE]
Just before starting, and purely as a gesture, I offered Pete Holt the
use of my Gieve inflatable life-preserver jacket. This handy little
garment I had worn in the North Sea during the war, and it had also
stood me in good stead on the Columbia the previous Fall. Now I was
really very keen for its reassuring embrace myself on that first
day's run, and if I had thought Holt would take it I would never have
offered it. When he rose to that jacket like a hungry trout to a fly I
felt toward him about as one does toward a man who asks you to say
"When"--and then stops pouring when you do say it. I had no legitimate
complaint of course. It was entirely my own fault. Just the same, the
unlucky denouement cramped my style from the outset. I had intended
giving Pete a deliberate spill in some safe-looking rapid just to pay
him for a few things he had done to me with the ski. I gave up the idea
entirely now. That "doughnut" of air under his arms meant that he would
probably bob through with dry hair while I serpentined over and under an
oar. It also meant that he was going to worry a lot less about the state
of the water than I hoped he would, for _auld lang syne_, that is. It
also meant that I was going to worry rather more. It was an unfortunate
move on my part altogether. Subject to that self-imposed handicap I
think I did pretty well. I am sure Pete would have confessed that night
that there were two or three new kinds of thrills in the world that he
wotted not of before, even though that confounded "doughnut" must have
acted as a good deal of a shock-absorber throughout.
Joe Evans, pushing off in his canoe from the dock of his river home a
couple of hundred yards below, gave the signal for casting off. The
current caught the bow as the honest blacksmith relinquished the painter
and the boat swung quickly into the stream. Some boys raised a
spattering cheer, the people who had lost relatives and friends in the
river shook their heads dubiously, and Pete Nelson, raising three
fingers aloft, shouted: "Here's luck!" He seemed a good deal elated
because the Chief of Police was going away.
We were off--or nearly so. When I turned from the crowd's acclaim to con
ship I discovered a good thick stream of green water slopping in, now
over one quarter, now over the other. And whichever side it splashed
from, Pete was getting the full benefit of it. "I hate to start crabbing
at this stage, Skipper," he said with a wry grin, "but it's that
confounded ballast of yours that's doing it. It's putting her rails
right under."
I squinted critically down the port gunwale; then down the starboard.
When she rode on an even keel either rail was a good two inches above
water. But when she lurched in even the gentlest swell, one rail or the
other went a good inch under. "You're right," I acquiesced. "Heave it
over." One by one the units of that precious pile of junk from the
blacksmith shop scrap-heap went to the bottom--a Ford axle, a mower
gear, the frame of a harrow, some fragments of "caterpillar" tractor
tracks, the drive wheel of a sewing machine. All of two hundred pounds
of choice assorted scrap Pete heaved over, keeping but a single hunk of
rusty iron that I thought I might use for an anchor at night in avoiding
some pernicious stretch of mosquito coast on the lower river. She still
rode low, but trimmed perfectly as soon as Pete finished bailing.
All down through the town they were waving us kindly farewells from the
bank, and at the H Street bridge, where "Buckskin Jim" Cutler had been
picked up the night before, we ran the gauntlet of another crowd.
Then the people began to thin out and we had the river to ourselves.
With the main channel streaming white a few hundred yards ahead I
settled to the oars for the sharp initiatory test I knew awaited us
there. We had closed up to within fifty feet of Joe by now, and saw for
the first time the remarkable precautionary measures he had taken to
insure the safety of himself and his canoe. For himself he had a
blown-up football tied to the back of his belt, an arrangement very
similar to the block of wood Chinese houseboat dwellers tie to their
boy, though not to their comparatively worthless girl, children. Along
both gunwales of the canoe were further air installations--these in the
form of long lengths of inflated inner tubes. The practical worth of
the latter contrivances was to be proved inside of half a minute. Of the
efficacy of a football tied to the back of the belt as a life-preserver
I had some doubts. It seemed to me, however, that the elevation of that
particular section of the anatomy could only be secured at the cost of
putting the head under water. Not being quite sure, I deemed it best not
to shake Joe's confidence by telling him of my doubts.
The Yellowstone divides a half mile or so above the Main Street bridge,
not far from the point where Jim Cutler was knocked from his raft. The
northerly channel, flowing by Livingston has perhaps a third of the
volume of the southerly one. The two unite not far below the H Street
bridge. In doing a bit of advance scouting down stream a day or two
previously I made particular mental note of a point, just below the
confluence, at which the current drove with great force close to the
left bank. Here, either snags or slightly submerged boulders made a
messy stretch of water that I saw at a glance it would not do to get a
boat into. However, a good sharp pull across the current from the point
the main channel was entered would be enough to avoid trouble--if
nothing went wrong.
The currents of the respective channels came together almost at right
angles, that of the main one flowing at perhaps eight miles an hour.
Ordinarily I would have eased into this by running parallel to it and
conforming my course to the direction of the stronger current. In my
anxiety to get quick way on across the current, however, I did not take
the time to do this. On the contrary, indeed, pulling as hard as I
could, I drove the light skiff almost head-on into the swiftly speeding
green bolt of the main current. The effect, naturally, was something
like that of a man's walking into the side of a moving street car. The
boat did precisely what a man walking into a car would do--went reeling
and staggering sideways in an effort to keep from rolling over and over.
She spun round twice before I got her under control, and of course
shipped a lot of green water--all of it in Holt's section. It wasn't
enough to bother much, though, and I had no trouble in pulling clear of
the danger point with yards to spare. Holt went quietly to bailing. I
was conscious of a mild thrill of elation at the thought of the sousing
I was giving him in spite of the "doughnut," but he didn't seem to be
worrying about it quite as much as I would have liked.
There was less excuse for Joe's having trouble at this point, because it
was almost in his back yard--one of his favourite fishing riffles, in
fact. It may be that the fact that I was crowding him closely from
behind made him nose into the main channel faster than he would have
done had he been on his own. I was too busy with my own troubles to see
what happened to him, so could only judge from the tremolo of his
high-keyed cursing. Holt, however, who had a grandstand seat for the
twin performances, said that the canvas canoe was thrown just about on
its beams' ends, and that nothing but the newly installed water-line
air-chambers, prevented a complete swamping.
The bend below the Northern Pacific bridge was one of the two or three
places of which I seemed to have retained much of a mental picture from
my previous run. Twenty years before the main channel was cutting
heavily into a low bluff on the left, bringing down an enormous quantity
of big round boulders. The short, savage riffle formed by these had
given us our first severe mauling on that earlier ride. Now I found the
river had broadened greatly, pouring a shallow current through a channel
two or three hundred yards wide. But it was still swift, very
swift--altogether relentless in its onward urge. It is the almost
complete absence of slack-water stretches that differentiates the five
hundred miles of the Yellowstone between Gardiner and Glendive from any
other great river I can recall. It is this that makes it so nearly ideal
for boating.
[Illustration: JOE EVANS WHO PILOTED ME THE FIRST HALF DAY]
[Illustration: PETE HOLT AND JOE EVANS WITH THEIR INFLATED LIFE
PRESERVERS]
[Illustration: "CHICKENS, CHILDREN AND HOGS"]
It didn't take us long to discover that as a pilot Joe was not an asset.
Personally he was a source of never-ending delight; also artistically.
His funny little craft with its inner-tube bilge keels, no less than the
bobbing of that football life-preserver, lent touches to the picture
that could have been blocked in by no other media. But what made Joe's
piloting fail to qualify was the fact that instead of trying to find the
channel he was trying to find floaters--to earn one or both of those
twenty-five-dollar rewards that were offered for the finding of the
bodies of the people drowned the previous week. I wanted all the deep,
clear, unobstructed channel there was to be had; the very nature of
Joe's quest kept him edging in toward snags and bars and shallows. These
little incidentals didn't bother him a bit. The instant he saw the water
shoaling dangerously he simply jumped overboard, grabbed his
feather-weight craft by the nose and trotted right out on dry land.
Now this wouldn't have troubled seriously if--save the mark!--I had also
been using an unladen canvas canoe. But with my outfit, a passenger, and
a boat whose ability to withstand collisions with rocks and snags had
still to be proved, Joe's little jump-out, pick-up and trot-off
man[oe]uvre was a difficult one to follow. Twice, because there was no
alternative either time, I did the best I could to go through his
motions. All I succeeded in doing--besides getting pulled down and
rolled--was proving that the bottom of my boat would bang for fifty feet
over shallowly submerged rocks without holing. While that latter was
reassuring, I couldn't see any reason for going on and proving it over
and over again. If the constant drop of water wears away the hardest
stone it seemed perfectly reasonable to believe that the constant biff
of boulders might batter through the hardest bottom. And I wanted that
bottom to do me for from twenty-five to thirty-five hundred miles yet.
That was the reason why when, entangled in a maze of shoaling channels,
Joe picked up his canoe and trotted up on a bar for the third time, I
had the corner of a wild-weather eye lifting for a possible gateway of
escape. A short, sharp chute cascading off to the right seemed to fill
the bill, but by a narrow squeeze. A rough tumble of green-white water
drove full at a caving gravel bank, reared up and fell over on its back
in a curling wave, serpentined between the out-reaching claws formed by
the roots of two prostrate cottonwood trees, and then recovered from its
tantrum in a diminuendo of whirlpools in the embrasure of a brown cliff.
It was the kind of a place which you knew you could run if all went
right, but which you usually didn't try for fear that one of a half
dozen things might go wrong. I should hardly have tackled it in cold
blood, even in a boat I was thoroughly used to; but I had just enough
dander up over the prospect of another bumping on Joe's bar to
be just a bit careless of consequences. It was that sort of
"Might-as-well-be-hanged-for-a-sheep-as-a-lamb" feeling that a man ought
to eliminate from his system as a first step in fitting himself for work
in rough water. It had always troubled me a bit, but I had it
sufficiently in check to keep it from asserting itself unless I was very
tired or slightly huffed. This time, I fear, there was just a bare
ruffle of huffiness easing the brake of my wonted restraint.
I was over the dip at the head of that chute before I knew it--likewise,
out into the swirls at the foot of it. I was conscious only of a sudden
dive, the loom of the back-curling wave--which the skiff, heeling half
over, was taking as a racing car round a steeply-banked turn,--a tangle
of roots to left and right, and then the serpentining through the
whirlpools. She had hardly shipped a bucket of solid water--most of it
over her bows as she tipped off the curling wave.
Joe was quite handsome above having his pilotage flaunted. The first
thing he did after catching up with us was to apologize again for having
warned about running the upper river. The good chap seemed really to
think that some skill had been displayed in running that chute. As a
matter of fact, I simply headed in and let the current do the rest.
Pete said I backed water sharply to keep from ramming the gravel bank,
and that we both fended with oars against the clutch of the cottonwood
snags. Pete also said I was pop-eyed all the way through. I _know_ that
he was. I was glad of it, too. Outside of a straight spill, I felt that
there wasn't going to be much more that I could do to shake those
confoundedly cool scout-trained nerves of his.
This little incident clarified the air on the pilotage question. I let
Joe keep the lead as far as I could, but assumed the responsibility of
picking my own channel while he concentrated on his quest.
We passed several grim reminders of the tragedies of the past week. A
few miles below Livingston we came upon Jim Cutler's raft stranded upon
a midstream bar. Even a passing glimpse revealed how well the double
tiers of logs were laid--plainly the work of the real old river-rat
"Buckskin Jim" must have been. Not far below the raft was the wreck of a
Ford, with cushions, wraps, and odds and ends of a camp outfit dotting
the bars for the next mile or two. The car, occupied by a young Middle
Westerner and his four-months' bride, had gone over the grade at a bend
of the road not far above where we saw the wreck. Rolling to the
flood-swollen river, it had been carried several hundred yards down
stream before stranding. The man crawled clear and reached the bank;
the body of his wife had not been recovered. The third recent river
tragedy was that of a rancher, but I had not learned the details of it.
I was, of course, much elated over the way in which my little tin boat
had behaved in running that side-winding chute. This very smart
performance proved conclusively that, with anything like intelligent
handling, she would be more than equal to any probable demands I would
have to make on her. There might, of course, be places that I would have
to avoid on account of her lack of freeboard, but that, at the worst,
would mean no more than the loss of a bit of time. She was good for what
she would have to do--that was the main thing. There was reassurance,
also, in the way her bottom and sides had withstood the bumping from the
rocks. There was no question in my mind now that that galvanized
tin-like looking stuff was real steel. Nothing else would have stood the
bumps. I planned to spare her all that kind of thing I could, but it was
good to know that she could stand the gaff if she had to. I was calling
her pet names before we had gone twenty miles. It is an astonishing
thing the affection a man develops for a boat that is carrying him well
on a long river journey.
The thing that I remembered best from my former run was the long, rough
rapid that winds down and under the Springdale bridge. I did not
recall, however, that the river divided into two channels a half mile
above the bridge. Indeed, it is quite possible that it did not do so
twenty years ago. Changes like that occur over night during the
high-water season on the Yellowstone. Joe led the way down the left-hand
side of the left-hand channel, but landed when it became apparent that
neither of our boats could live in the wild tumble of rollers where the
current drove hard against the side of the bluff above the bridge.
Lining back a quarter of a mile up-stream, we pulled across to the
opposite side, down which there was rough but fairly open running.
My boat was behaving so well that I couldn't resist the temptation to
give her a baptism in some really rough stuff at a point where salvage
operations would be so comparatively simple in case of grief. Giving the
little lady her head after the worst of the riffle had been passed, I
let the undercurrent draw her right over into the main string of
rollers. Wild, wallowing water it was, solid white all the way, but with
a straight run and no underhand look about it. She took it like a duck,
except where two or three of the most broken combers let her down too
sharply for her bows to rise to meet the next in turn. There were
perhaps a half dozen buckets of water in the forward section when we
beached and dumped her a hundred yards below the bridge. As I seem to
remember it now, Syd Lamartine's skiff had a foot of water in it when we
dumped at about the same point on that other run. On that occasion,
however, I have a clear recollection of riding the middle of the riffle
all the way down. I should want a _batteau_ and a full crew if I were
going to try the same stunt today.
It must have been six or seven miles below the Springdale bridge that
Holt, descrying an unusual object on the beach of a long, low island to
our left, asked me to pull in closer for a better look. Joe, a hundred
yards ahead of us, had already passed it up as a log of driftwood, but
the ex-scout's keen eye would not be deceived. At first we thought it
was the body of a man--probably the drowned rancher,--but as we drew
nearer it was revealed as that of a woman dressed in hiking garb,
undoubtedly the bride of the auto wreck.
As we were now in Sweet Grass County, the body was under the
jurisdiction of the Coroner at Big Timber. Holt decided it would be best
if Joe tried to find some ranch from which he could get in touch with
that official by phone, while we continued on down river to carry the
word by an alternative route.
Joe was treated to a good deal of a shock while towing the body down
stream to an eddy from which it could be landed on the left bank. No
sooner had he put off from the beach than the corpse, floating deeply
submerged at the end of a thirty-foot line, made straight for the
roaring line of rollers on the right side of the channel. As it was a
good deal too rough water for his boat to ride, Joe lost no time in
bending to his stubby oars and pulling for dear life in the opposite
direction. It was a tug-of-war all the way, with the grisly tow on the
outer end gaining foot by foot. Holt and I had drifted too far ahead
before we realized the seriousness of Joe's difficulty to be of any
help. As an upset was inevitable in the event the canoe was dragged into
the riffle stern first, the best that we could do was to pick him up at
the foot of it and trust that his canoe would strand and anchor the
corpse.
If that riffle had been fifty yards longer nothing in the world could
have prevented a spill that would have put Joe's football life-preserver
to a real test. As far as the tug-of-war was concerned he was beaten
completely--dragged over the line. Luckily it was only the smoothening
tail of the riffle, and the buoyant little canoe rode the rounded
rollers without capsizing. Another hundred yards, and the relentless
drag from the other end of his line had eased enough to allow him to
pull up and into the eddy. He was mighty white about the gills as Holt
gave him a hand ashore, and kept repeating over and over in an awed
voice: "_Did you see her try to drown me? Did you see her try to drown
me?_"
It was easy enough to understand what the trouble had been as soon as
one gave it a moment's collected thought. Calm reflection, however, was
a thing which I am inclined to think very few men would have been
capable of in Joe's place. As a matter of fact, indeed, neither Holt nor
I was in a sufficiently detached frame of mind to dope out the
phenomenon until some minutes after Joe had landed. This was the reason
for what happened:
In every swiftly flowing channel there is a strong draw toward the most
rapidly moving part of the current, and this draw is usually more
powerful below than at the surface. A boat paddled in comparatively
smooth water beside a riffle will invariably be drawn into the latter
within a few yards if allowed to drift. Only too often, in fact, it will
be drawn in despite every effort to avoid the riffle. In this particular
instance, the deeply floating corpse had given the inward-drawing
current a double hold, and Joe's short oars had not been able to develop
power enough to counteract it. Readily explicable as the uncanny
incident was, there was no question of the grim seriousness of it.
Indeed, I have always thought of it as a battle with Death in more
senses than one, for that football float of Joe's, attached as it was,
would have been about as much use as a life-preserver, once he was
dumped out into that riffle, as a millstone round his neck.
Holt and I made good time for the remainder of the run to Big
Timber--about three hours for something like twenty-five miles. The way
was a continuous succession of moderate rapids, with one very rough and
savage cascade. The latter was not far above Big Timber, and was formed
by a ledge of bedrock extending all the way across the river. A direct
drop of two or three feet here was followed by a series of stiff riffles
that extended out of sight round a sharp bend where the river was
deflected at right-angles by an abrupt cliff. I never learned the name
of the place, but it was a distinctly nasty one--just one damn thing
after another, as Pete put it. I have jumbled memories of messing up on
the ledge, and then half swamping just below it, on my former run.
Not to take too many chances in the deepening twilight (though all we'd
admit to each other at the time was that we were doing it to avoid
wetting my outfit), we lined by the sharp pitch and on down almost to
the bend. Even from there it was right sloppy going, partly through some
rather clumsy handling the skiff had as a consequence of a sudden
divergence of theory Pete and I developed on the subject of rapid
running.
Rounding the sharp bend the skiff was drawn into the middle of a rough,
foam-white riffle that extended ahead as far as I could see. The
unrhythmically wallowing rollers were banging her bows unmercifully and
throwing water aboard at a rate that I feared would swamp her very
quickly if she continued to head into them. Seeing that the water toward
the right bank was a bit less broken, I laid onto my oars for all that
was in me in an effort to throw her in that direction. Holt was grunting
mightily. Looking ahead over my shoulder, I could not see what he was
doing, but assumed he was paddling his head off in seconding my effort
to reach smoother water. But not a yard could I move her from the crest
of that white-capped ridge of rollicking combers. Down the whole length
of the riffle she slammed, dipping water at every plunge and finishing
with a good six inches swishing about in both sections.
Just about at the last gasp from my frantic but futile pulling, I let my
oars trail and my head sag down between my knees while my heart stopped
hop-skip-and-a-jumping and my breath came back. Looking up a half minute
later to see if there was anything ahead that would demand expert
attention, I saw that Pete was just coming out of a collapse similar to
my own. Also he was choking toward utterance.
"Took all I had in me,--but I did it," he gasped with a sickly grin.
"Did what?" I growled.
"Kept you from throwing her side-on and giving me that spill you
promised," he chuckled. "Don't you think it's getting too late in the
evening for that kind of jokes?"
Oh, well! The warehouses and the water-tanks of the Big Timber bluff
were beginning to blot the evening sky ahead, and so I hardly thought it
worth while to explain to Pete that his fancied self-defensive measures
had probably brought him nearer to that promised spill than he had been
at any time during the day. He wouldn't have believed me anyhow. Won't
even do so when he reads it here in cold print.
Pulling up a slough that ran back from the head of the bluff, we found
safe haven under the over-arching willows of a wonderfully cold and
clear little creek. Pushing out onto the bank above, we found ourselves
in the back yard of the local postmaster. A highly gracious and comely
young lady volunteered to mend my Gieve waistcoat, torn by Pete's
frantic paddlings over and roundabout the inflated "doughnut." The
Gieve is not made to paddle in.
Wolfing great porterhouse steaks and quaffing steaming mugs of coffee,
Pete and I sat long at a lunch-counter table and talked of our ancient
ski jaunt over the snows of the Yellowstone. He spoke much of coasting
and jumping and spills--especially of spills that I took. Just why he
did this didn't occur to me until after he had left for Livingston by
the midnight train. I figured it out walking back to the hotel. It was
merely the subtle chap's way of letting me know that he still reckoned I
was a bit in his debt on the score of thrills and spills. Maybe so.
Maybe so. Twenty-year thrills more readily than forty-year, just as
forty-year is more reluctant to take a chance at a spill.