BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS
A troop of round-up artists jingled into Big Timber the morning of July
first, just as I was leaving the hotel to go down to my boat. They were
in from the ranges on their way to compete at the annual cow-carnival at
Miles City. Having read of my voyage in the paper, they came to me with
the proposal that I book the lot of them as passengers. They assumed
that I would easily make the two hundred and fifty mile run in a day,
and that my boat had unlimited cabin capacity. I replied by inviting
them down to my moorings. The sight of the tiny tin shallop tied up
under the willows brought them to a more reasonable view of the
situation. They readily admitted that it would not carry anything like
ten people, even without their saddles, but they were inclined to argue
that it would carry at least four besides myself.
I assured them I was game to try it if they were, but suggested that the
four elected should get in first. Now four light-footed sailors _might_
have stepped into that little boat and taken their seats without
upsetting it. Four booted and spurred cow-punchers could not, or at
least did not. In fact the third one precipitated the swamping when he
stumbled and fell over the two who had preceded him. After we had
raised, dumped and launched her again, I assured them that a single
passenger was my outside limit, but that I would be highly honoured by
the company of any one of them whom they would agree to nominate for the
run to Billings. As I was planning to stop over a day or two there, my
arrival by river in Miles would be too late for the opening of the
Round-up.
After some debate they picked the "bulldogger" of the outfit.
"Bulldogging" is a stock round-up stunt, and I shall hardly need to
explain that the _modus operandi_ involves throwing a steer by seizing
its nose in the teeth and upsetting its centre of gravity by a sudden
twist of the neck. One sees it in every rodeo, but it is a feat withal
that requires much nerve, strength and skill.
Jocularly remarking that he reckoned he would have to ride this tin
broncho with a slick heel, the "dogger" unbuckled his spurs and stepped
into the boat. I went up to fetch my remaining bags from the
postmaster's house and was delayed ten minutes while the stitching up of
my Gieve was completed. When I returned I found a bewhiskered stranger
recounting with facile gesture how he fished the floaters out of the
eddy below his ranch down-river. He called it "Dead Man's Douse." Last
floater he took out was a cow-puncher who had been so rolled in the big
rapid above that his spurs were tangled in his hair and he came wheeling
through the suds like a doughnut. It was a hells-bells-jingler of a
rapid, that one above the "Douse." Water tossed about so fierce that the
fishes' brains were spattered on the rocks!
That was about all I arrived in time to hear, but the "dogger" had been
more fortunate. The good chap was deeply impressed, too, for his iron,
bull-nose-biting jaw was sagging in a sickly grin and he was back on the
bank offering a free passage to Billings to any of his mates who cared
to accept. No takers. The gamest of the lot appeared to be a lady
broncho-buster called Lil. She actually stepped into the boat once, but
finally decided to take the train because it had a roof on it. It looked
like rain, she said, and it always made her broken shoulder ache to get
wet. As if rain was the wettest part of riding the Yellowstone.
[Illustration: (C) _L. A. Huffman_
ROUND-UP OUTFIT AT DINNER]
Just as I was about to push off the whiskered rancher stepped up and
asked if I minded giving him a bit of a down-river lift. Gladly I bade
him come along, figuring that his pilotage would give me a better
chance of avoiding the dreaded "Douse." The round-up artists sped us
with their college yell as I crabbed out of the little slough to the
river. I bumped into some of them again in Miles the day after the
Round-up. Most of their faces bore the marks of hoof or fist. Lady Lil
had lost no cuticle (at least where it showed), but red eyes hoisted the
distress signal of a deeper seated wound. The "dogger" had taken up with
another girl--a she-dude that had once been a bare-back rider in a
circus. Lil had been crying a lot, which was no end of a shame
considering how wetness affected her busted shoulder. All of which went
to prove that Lilly the Lady Broncho-Buster and Judy O'Grady were
sisters under the skin. And Lil had looked so darned exempt from the
surge of the soft stuff!
There is a fairly rough riffle just below the Big Timber, and then a lot
of rather mean navigating through the shallows where the boulders of
Clark's famous "Rivers Across" litter the channel of the Yellowstone.
The whiskered stranger, stroking with an oar from the stern, was of real
help in making the passage of both comparatively quiet and dry. He also
found me a smooth-running strip of green through the almost solid tumble
of white where the river was chasing its tail in a sharply notched bend
about five miles farther on. These little riffles didn't bother me
much, though. My mind was too much occupied by the "Dead Man's Douse"
for that. I was wondering whether the old chap intended to run me
through that fish-brain-spattering-rapid, or if he might be considerate
enough to help me portage round. I was trying to get my nerve up to
broaching the latter procedure when my pilot dug hard with his steering
oar and brought the skiff up to a gravelly landing below a pretty little
tree-covered bench. His cabin was back behind the bull-berries, he said,
and he would have to leave me here. Or perhaps I would hang on for an
hour and have some coffee and a mess of sinkers with him.
"But aren't you going to see me through the Dead Man's Douse?" I
exclaimed in dismay, adding in a feeble attempt at funniness: "It might
save you fishing out my remains later."
A corner of the tobacco-stained mouth drew out in a highly amused
chuckle. "By jingo, sonny," he giggled finally, "it wasn't youse I was
shootin' for with that yarn. I thought youse savvied all the time. I
jest was wantin' this here seat that bull-biting cow-puncher had
perempted. There ain't no 'Dead Man's Douse.' Fack is, youse got most of
the sloppy stuff ahint youse already. Don't get too gosh-all-fired sure
of you'self an' youse all right--tin boat an' all."
It was with real regret that the threat of coming storm made it
necessary for me to keep going while I could. The good old chap had made
casual mention of Terry and Miles and Gibbon, of hunting buffalo and elk
on the river in the early days, and of many comparatively recent jaunts
down the Yellowstone searching for agates. He would have been well worth
listening to. I never learned his name, but I have always thought of him
as "Jim Bridger"--because he lied with so classic a simplicity, painting
his pictures as--well, as a river paints its rocks with fish-brains!
There were a good half dozen sinister-cloaked thunder-storms doing their
war dances in this direction or that as I left "Jim Bridger" and pushed
back into the stream. The wolf-fanged Crazies to the north were getting
the liveliest of them, but there were also some tremendous disturbances
going on among the snowy pinnacles where the Absarokas reared against
the southern sky. The restlessly counter-marching clouds above the
valley were full of whirling wind-gusts but not of rain. The sudden
side-swipes of air kept the skiff yawing rather crazily, but as there
was no very fine shooting to do for the moment I kept going. Indeed, I
was quite unconcerned about the threat of the weather. I still had to
learn a proper respect for thunder-storms--the same very wholesome kind
of respect that I had for really rough water. That was to come in good
time, and by the usual channel--experience, very vivid experience.
I had not yet come to the point on the river where Clark had built and
launched his dugout. Constantly searching for suitable timber, he had
skirted the northern bank closely all the way down from where he had
first come to the Yellowstone near the present site of Livingston. The
flint-paved _mesas_ wore down the hoofs of his Indian ponies so that it
became necessary to protect them with shoes of buffalo hide. This
increased Clark's anxiety to take to the river and his diary speaks
often of the vain search for large trees. Very near the point I had now
reached an accident occurred which eventually forced Clark's hand and
probably resulted in his constructing his boats farther up river, and
from less satisfactory material, than would otherwise have been the
case. The incident was picturesquely commemorated in a name borne by a
certain creek upon the earlier maps.
[Illustration: A SAVAGE RIFFLE NEAR THE SITE OF CAPTAIN CLARK'S BOAT
CAMP]
[Illustration: SUNRISE ON A QUIET REACH OF THE LOWER YELLOWSTONE]
In the vicinity of the creek in question, Clark tells how one of his
men, Gibson, in mounting his horse after shooting a deer, "fell on a
snag and runt (ran) it nearly two inches into the muskeler (muscular)
part of his thy (thigh)." That incident inspired Clark, who had already
used up the names of the members of his party a half dozen times over
in geographical nomenclature, to call the creek "Thy Snag'd." Gibson
suffered so much from the jolting of the horse upon which he was carried
after his injury that it became necessary to rest him in camp. With a
halt of two or three days imperative in any case, Clark sought out the
best brace of trees in the vicinity and set his men making dugouts. Two
of these, lashed together side by side, made a craft of such
water-worthiness that it was not abandoned until long after the junction
with Lewis on the Missouri.
Although the names given by Clark on his voyage down the Yellowstone
have survived better than have most of those applied by the explorers in
other regions, several of the most picturesque have not stood the test
of time and chance. Shield's River, Pryor's Fork and Clark's Fork still
bear their original names, but Thy Snag'd Creek and River Across are no
more. The former has become Deer Creek and the latter pair have been
given individual names--that flowing in from the north Big Timber Creek,
that from the south Boulder River. No more original and distinctive dual
nomenclature for streams flowing into a river on opposite sides of the
same point could have been imagined. It is a pity that, in the nature of
the case, it could not fill the nomenclatural exigency sufficiently to
survive.
Fortunately for me the peculiar meteorological conditions of the morning
did not develop along what I subsequently learned was their normal
course at that time of year. Ordinarily a pow-wow of thunder-storms in
the mountain-top in the morning means a concerted attack upon the valley
in the afternoon. This time the advent of a warm southerly wind modified
the assault-and-battery program and brought only a drizzling rain on the
river. The broken piers of Greycliff's ruined bridge menaced me from the
mist as I drove past, and below the new bridge the sagging strand of a
slackened cable swooped at me from the air. Then came a sharp bend, with
the roar of a considerable rapid booming in the grey obscurity below.
The rain and the mist deadened the sound somewhat, just as they confused
the perspective. Standing up on the thwart in an endeavour to get a
better view, I was warned by the accelerating undulations of the skiff
that I had floated right onto the intake of a riffle which I had assumed
was still several hundred yards distant. Hastening to straighten the
cushion on my seat before taking to my oars, I was jolted from my feet
by the first solid wave, so that I sat with my full weight upon the
doubled-up index finger of my left hand. I distinctly recall either
hearing or feeling the snap of what I thought at the moment was a
tendon, but as the finger still crooked with its fellow round its oar I
gave it no more thought until I had slammed through to quieter water, a
quarter of a mile below. Then I found the finger was bent inward to the
resemblance of a rather open letter C. Taking it for granted it was
dislocated, I started and kept on pulling it until another riffle
demanded personal attention. Always afraid to take it to a doctor for
fear of being held up, at gradually increasing intervals I kept on
trying to pull that drooping pointer into place for the next two months.
It was in St. Louis that I found that two bones had been broken in the
first place, and that they had probably been re-broken every time I
pulled the finger afterwards. It is not quite back to shape yet, which,
everything considered, is hardly to be wondered at.
A lifting of the mist accompanied an increase in the rain, with the
balance inclining toward a better visibility. This latter came
opportunely, for the loom of high cliffs on the right and a running
close of the rounded hills on the left seemed to indicate a canyon and
bad water. It was an agreeable surprise to find only a straight, swift
reach of river bordered with a narrow belt of cottonwood on either side.
There appeared no menace of mist-masked rapids ahead, but with the rain
settling into what seemed likely to be an all-day downpour I was glad to
pull up to the left bank where an enchanting vista of ranch buildings
opened up beneath the cottonwoods. The tree I tied up to had a trunk
fully four feet in diameter, and I was puzzled to account for the fact
that Clark had overlooked it in his search for boat timber--until it
occurred to me that the grey-barked giant was perhaps a bit smaller with
a hundred and sixteen fewer annual rings on it.
There are a number of pleasing little things that happen to the voyageur
by the Running Road, but not many that awaken a warmer glow in his
sodden breast than stepping almost direct from a wet boat into a kitchen
fragrant with the ineffable sweetness of frying doughnuts. And when the
doughnuts are being forked forth by an astonishingly comely and kindly
young housewife; and when her husband comes in from the alfalfa patch
and proves just as kindly if less comely; and when they insist on your
drying out and staying to dinner and then--because the rain still
continues--to supper and all night; and when the three of you sit up
till all hours and tell each other everything you ever did--and how--and
why: well, all that just makes it nicer still.
[Illustration: THE YELLOWSTONE BELOW THE OUTLET OF THE LAKE]
[Illustration: ROUGH WATER AND A BAD BEND]
They were a sterling pair of young pioneers, these Fahlgrens. Both were
from Kentucky. He had come out to Montana about ten years before and
homesteaded what he reckoned as the loveliest spot on the whole
Yellowstone. A little later he had made a hurried trip home to bring
back a young woman that he reckoned just as lovely and just as promising
as his ranch. Neither had disappointed him. His ranch had doubled and
trebled in size, with his family just about keeping pace with it. There
were hard years behind, with not any too easy sledding at the present;
but there had been much happiness all along the road and the future was
bright with promise. How heartening it was even to brush in passing such
kindliness, simplicity, hopefulness and courage!
We had Maryland fried chicken and a big golden pone of corn bread for
breakfast. All left over was put up for my lunch, together with a
gooseberry pie. As the early morning weather was still fitful and
showery, I did not start until ten o'clock, taking Fahlgren with me for
a couple of miles to the next down-river ranch. He wanted me to drift a
rapid stern-first, as the agate hunters were wont to do it. Trimmed as
we were, I knew what must happen. I agreed to the trial readily enough,
however, partly because it was Fahlgren's suggestion but principally
because it was he, and not I, that was sitting in the stern. Riding so
low, the after section shipped a dozen bucketfuls of green water, all of
it via my passenger's knees. The riffle was not rough enough to make
any real trouble, and we both took the thing strictly in a larking
spirit.
One can drift a riffle stern first that is too rough to ride any other
way. Facing down-stream, and pulling against the current the headway of
the boat is checked and it is easier to shoot it to right or left to
avoid an obstacle. If the riffle is not too rough to make the control of
the boat impossible when rowed bow-first with the stream, drifting means
the cutting down of speed and the loss of much good time. Also, a boat
one is going to use for drifting should have a stout, high stern
(whether double-ended or not) and temporarily at least, it should be
lightened aft and trimmed to ride well down by the head.
Not long after I had parted with Fahlgren a distinct change in the
weather took place. The charged, humid thunder-storm condition of the
atmosphere gave way to sharp, keen north-westerly weather. A strong wind
became a stronger, and by noon the valley was swept by a whistling gale
blowing straight from the main western mass of the Rockies. The fact
that it was almost dead astern as the general course of the river ran
was the only thing that made keeping on the water a thing to be
considered at all. An equally strong gale blowing up-stream would have
tried to stand the river on its head and scoop the channel dry. It
would have succeeded in neither, but the resulting rough-and-tumble
would have kicked up a wild welter of white caps such as no skiff could
have lived in for half a minute. But with current and wind going in the
same general direction it was quite another matter, especially as I had
a chance to ease up to it gradually as the gale increased in force. I
was making such tremendous headway, and the spell of the wild ride was
so strong in my blood, that my wonted cautiousness was swamped in a
rising tide of exhilaration. There are few who will not have experienced
the feeling of being intoxicated with swift air and rapid motion. It was
more than that with me this time. I was inebriated--stewed--loaded to
the guards. I was having the time of my young life and I hadn't the
least intention of going home until morning.
Now in real life a man who starts out in such a state of exaltation
always bangs up against some immovable body good and hard before he is
through. Or, more properly speaking, his getting through is more or less
coincident with his banging against such a body. Why something like that
didn't put a period to my mad career on this occasion has never been
clear in my mind. Possibly that more or less mythical Providence that
has been known (though by no means often enough to warrant the proverb)
to shepherd drunks and fools had something to do with it. At any rate,
I was still in mad career down midstream when the wind gave up the
bootless chase at six o'clock, broke up into fitful zephyrs and went to
sleep among the cottonwoods. In all that time I had not landed once, had
not relinquished both oars for a single second, and had not even munched
my Maryland fried chicken and gooseberry pie. Skippers have stood longer
watches, but never a one has carried on with less relief. On that score,
perhaps, I may have deserved to win through. On every other count I was
going out of my way to ask for trouble and had nothing but my lucky star
to thank for having avoided it.
I passed Reed Point and Columbus early in the afternoon. Beyond the
latter point I began keeping watch for a certain long line of bluffs
which I knew began near the railway station called Rapids and extended
easterly for three miles. Clark had called them "Black Bluffs," and that
name they retain to this day, though their only claim to blackness even
in Clark's time came from the presence of dark green undergrowth. Today
they are brown and comparatively bare.
I picked up the rounded sky-line of "Black Bluffs" at just about the
time that the straight, hard-running riffle that gives Rapids Station
its name began to boom ahead. The middle of the riffle was plainly no
place for a little tin shallop, but down the right side there appeared
to be fairly open channel. Settling that course in my mind, I let the
tail of my eye steal back to the head of the bluff, and from there to a
cottonwood covered flat that opened up beyond the bend where the river,
thrown off a ledge of bedrock, turned sharply to the south in a stolid
stream of rock-torn white. Beyond question there was going to be some
fairly nice navigation demanded to find a way through that rough stuff
below the bend, especially as the wind was going to come strongly abeam
for a short distance. All of which was hard luck, I complained to
myself, for the end of that line of bluffs pointed an unerring finger at
the flat below them as the place where Clark had halted, built his boats
and taken to the river. I had hoped for a better look at it than I saw I
was going to get.
Even the pressing exigencies of the navigational problem could not quite
obliterate from my mind the realization of the fact that--from some
point not more than a few insignificant hundreds of yards ahead--Captain
William Clark was going to be my pilot all the way to St. Louis.
Exulting over that wasn't what was at the bottom of the trouble,
however. You can tread a lot of highways and byways of fancy without
seriously impairing your river navigation, but only when you keep your
eyes on the water and the back of your mind in a proper state to receive
impressions and transmit orders. I was not in the least culpable in this
respect. The reason I hit that mid-stream snag was because a sudden hail
from some men grading a road over the bluff caused just enough of a
congestion of my ganglionic lines to slow down proper and adequate
action. I checked by an effort the impulse to cup a hand to an ear in an
attempt to catch the import of what was doubtless a warning of some
sort, but as a consequence failed to get through in time the order for
my left hand to back its oar when the imminent snag bobbed up.
The skiff struck on her starboard bow, slid along the snag for a few
feet, and then swung and hung there, side-on to the current and the
wind. White water dashed in over the up-stream gunwale and mingled with
green water poured over the down-stream. But just before the forces from
above threw her completely on her beams-ends the flexible root bent down
and let her swing off without capsizing. It was a merry dance to the
bend, but I managed to get her under control in time to head into the
best of the going through the suds below. This was close to the right
bank, where I had no little trouble in holding her on account of the
side-surge from the heavy west wind. This is not a hard series of
riffles to run if you have no bad luck, but an upset in the upper riffle
would leave you at the mercy of the lower, which is a savage tumble of
combers filling most of the channel. In that respect this double riffle
below Rapids Station is a good deal like the combination of Rock Slide
and Death Rapids on the Big Bend of the Columbia. The latter pair are,
however, incomparably the rougher.
I was a mile away and on the farther side of the valley before I got rid
of enough water to survey for damages. A long, jagged scratch down the
side, with a big, round dent at the point of first impact, were the only
marks she showed of the collision. Light as was the steel, it had not
come near to holing from a blow that stopped her dead from at least
twelve miles an hour. This renewed assurance of the staunchness of my
tight little tin pan was by no means unwelcome. There would still be a
lot of things to bump into, even after leaving the Yellowstone.
My only mental picture of the site of Clark's shipyard was that received
from the one hurried glance as I came to the upper rapid. There was no
chance for a second look. Sentimentally I was sorry not to have been
able to land and pretend to look for the stumps of the trees cut down
for the dugouts. As a matter of fact, however, as the river had been
altering its channel every season for over a hundred years, there was
no question in my mind but that the shipyard flat had been made and
washed out a score of times since Clark was there.
Captain Clark's party spent four days building the two dugout canoes and
exploring in this vicinity. Twenty-four of their horses were stolen by
Indians and never recovered. The same fate ultimately overtook the
remainder of the bunch, which Sergeant Pryor and two others were
attempting to drive overland to the Mandan villages on the Missouri.
Clark described the canoes as "twenty-eight feet long, sixteen or
eighteen inches deep and from sixteen to twenty-four inches wide."
Lashed together, these must have made a clumsy but very serviceable
craft. Considering its weight and type, their first-day run in it--from
Rapids to the mouth of Pryor's Fork, near Huntley--strikes me as being a
remarkable one. The Captain's actual estimates of distances on this part
of his journey are much too high and also present many discrepancies.
This particular run, however, is easy fixable by natural features. It
must be very close to sixty miles as the river winds, possibly more. It
is not fair to compare this with the considerably faster time I made
over similar stretches of the Yellowstone. I had considerably higher and
swifter water and a boat so light that no delays from shallows and bars
were imposed. Very generally speaking, I found my rate of travel on the
Yellowstone to have worked out about twenty-five per cent. faster than
that of Clark's party. On the Missouri, on stretches where I did not use
my outboard motor, I averaged just about the same as the united
explorers on their down-stream voyage. There is little doubt that they
stopped longer and oftener than I did on the Missouri, and that while on
the river their big crews snatched along whatever type of craft they
happened to be manning at a considerably faster rate than I pulled. By
and large, however, I should say that Kipling's
"Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone,"
holds quite as good on the Running Road as in Life's Handicap.
In the journal of the first day on the river Captain Clark writes: "At
the distance of a mile from camp the river passes under a high bluff for
about 23 miles, when the bottom widens on both sides." This would give
the impression that the river flowed continuously for many miles under
an overhanging bluff. This it does not do, and could hardly have done at
any previous period. What it does do is to run along the base of a long
chain of broken bluffs, many of which it has undermined. I have always
thought of this as by long odds the most beautiful and picturesque
stretch of stream I navigated between the Rockies and the lower
Mississippi.
The bluffs varied in natural colour from a grey-brown to a
reddish-black, but mosses and lichens and mineral stains from the hills
behind tinted their abrupt faces with streaks and patches of various
shades, all blended like delicate pastelling. The main stream usually
ran close up against the bluffs, but numerous chutes and back-channels
sprawling over the verdant flats to the left formed score on score of
small islands, all shaded with tall cottonwoods, lush with new grass and
brilliant with wild flowers. There was a fresh vista of beauty at every
turn. It was a shame not to be able to stop and call on the Queen of the
Fairies. Titania's Bowers succeeded each other like apartments on upper
Broadway. For the second time that day I regretted my speed and the fact
that wind and rough water kept my attention riveted close to the boat.
At first I gave the face of the bluffs a wide berth, especially at those
points where the full strength of the current went swirling beneath the
painted overhang in sinuous coils of green and white. As I think of it
now, it was the cavernous growls and rumbles, magnified by the sounding
board of the cliff, that made me chary of venturing in where the
animals were being fed. The racket was not a little terrifying until one
found that it was more bark than bite.
It was not until a sudden side-swiping squall forced me under an
overhang I was doing my best to avoid that I had direct and conclusive
evidence that the yawning mouths had no teeth in them. Swift as it was,
the surface of the water was untorn by lurking rocks, while the refluent
waves from the inner depths of the cavern had a tendency to force the
boat out rather than to draw it in. My courage rallied rapidly after
that, so that I played hide-and-seek with the river and the cliffs for
the next twenty miles. This was most opportune, as it chanced. The
overhangs provided me with cover from the worst of a heavy series of
rain squalls that began to sweep the river at this juncture, and
continued for an hour or more. All in all, that little bluff-bluffing
stunt proved one of the most novel and delightful bits of boating I have
ever known.
I passed the mouth of Clark's Fork a little before six. Its channel was
much divided by gravel bars, and the comparatively small streams might
easily have been mistaken for returning back-chutes of the Yellowstone.
Clark had at first mistaken this river for the Big Horn, and only
applied his own name to it when the greater tributary was reached some
hundred and fifty miles below. I scooped up a drink as I passed one of
the mouths. Clark's observation that it was colder and cloudier than the
waters of the Yellowstone still held good. Clark mentions a "ripple in
the Yellowstone" about a mile above this tributary, "on passing which
the canoes took in some water. The party therefore landed to bail the
boats...." As this, considering the size of the boats, would have
indicated very rough water, I kept a close watch for the place. I never
located it definitely, though sharp riffles were numerous all the way.
Doubtless parts of the channel have altered completely since Clark's
time. As a rule, however, rapids change less with the years than the
opener stretches--this because they are usually made by bedrock or
boulders of great size.
I made my first landing since dropping Fahlgren at a flower-embowered
farmhouse not far below the mouth of Clark's Fork. All of the family
were away except a very motherly old lady who had just received word by
phone from Billings that Dempsey had licked Carpentier. She had draped
the Stars and Stripes over the porch railing and insisted that I stop
and celebrate the great national victory with her. I demurred, but my
resolution weakened when she began setting out a pan of scarcely diluted
cream, a bowl of strawberries and a chocolate cake. Between mouthfuls I
told her (truthfully enough) that I had met Carpentier at the Front
during the war and had subsequently seen him box in London. It was a
tactical error on my part. I should have known better. She didn't tell
me to back away from the berries in so many words, but her manner
changed, and she did say that it was too bad it was not Dempsey I had
met instead of the Frenchie. That didn't spoil my appetite for the
strawberries and cream, but it did make me more conservative in my
relations with them. I probably stopped short by two or three helpings
of my capacity. It is not fair to one's self to be bound by the rigid
limitations of truthfulness when trying to impress strangers. I resolved
not to make that mistake again.
Water had been unusually high all along the Yellowstone during the early
summer rise, the crest of which was now over by about a fortnight. The
discharge from Clark's Fork had been especially heavy, and the effects
of this I began to encounter as soon as I resumed my run to Billings.
Scores of new channels had been scoured out and countless thousands of
big cottonwoods and willows uprooted in the process. Most of the latter
were stranded on shallow bars, but every now and then some great giant
had anchored itself squarely in mid-channel. It took no end of care to
avoid them, and it was a distinct relief to find that the wind had now
fallen very light.
My old strawberry lady had estimated the distance to Billings as about
twenty miles, but such was the extreme deviousness of the endlessly
divided channels that it must have been greatly in excess of that. One
minute I would be in what was undoubtedly the main channel. The next I
would be picking what seemed the likeliest of four or five sprawling
chutes, with whichever one I took usually dividing and redividing until
I found myself scraping through the shallows and all but grounded.
With no town in sight as eight o'clock began to usher in the long
midsummer twilight, I landed near a large farmhouse on the left bank to
make inquiries. The buildings were fine and modern and the irrigated
acres of great richness, but the people turned out to be Russian
tenants, and not much for the softer things of life. All of the dozen or
more occupants of the big kitchen wore bib overalls, the bottoms
puckered in with a zouave-trousers effect. All were barefooted. The
father and mother wore shirts. For the rest, including the grown
children, the only garments were the comfortable and adequate overalls.
Left to himself, the simple _moujik_ hits upon some very practical
ideas.
Save the broad, kindly Slavic faces, the only Russian thing I saw about
the place was a _samovar_, and I sipped a mug of tea from this
peacefully purring old friend while I endeavoured to find out whether
any of them knew anything of the whereabouts of a certain Montana
metropolis called Billings. They appeared to be trying to assure me that
they had heard of such a place, and there also seemed to be some
unanimity on the score of its being somewhere down river. But just how
far it was by river they couldn't get together on, and even if they had
had any real knowledge of the course of the stream they appeared not to
have the language to express it. Certainly an estimate in _versts_
wasn't going to help a lot. As I thanked them and turned to go the whole
family trooped down to the landing to see me off. Pointing eastward to
the low line of a distant bluff one of the boys delivered himself of a
laconic "Dam--lookout!" I assured him I had already been warned of the
dam of the local power company, and would be keeping just that kind of a
good lookout for it. That gave them their cue. They were all ejaculating
or registering "Dam--good--lookout!" as the current bore me away into
the deepening dusk.
That last half-hour's run was an intensely trying one, though I was
never in serious trouble any of the time. I kept going wrong on channels
every few minutes, with the result that I found every now and then that
the Yellowstone had gone off and left me on a streak of wet rocks and
gravel. With a heavy boat I should have been marooned for the night a
dozen times, but it was never very difficult to drag my little tin
shallop on to where there was enough water trickling to lead the way
back to the main channel. When an increasing frequency of lights
indicated I was nearing the outskirts of a town I found the current to
be running so swiftly along what appeared to be a levee on the left bank
that a landing was rather too precarious to risk in the dark. I was
skirting the bank for a favourable eddy when the rounding of a densely
wooded bend brought me out into a stretch of slackening water directly
above the dam. The long-striven-for bluff appeared to rise abruptly from
the water on my right, while on my left there was a stretch of gravel
bar running back to a strip of trees and the levee.
The roar of the dam was not the less impressive after bouncing off the
bluff on its way to my ears, and I took no more time than was necessary
to pull in and land upon the white stretch of beach. As rain was still
threatening I decided to seek the town for shelter. Dragging the skiff
well above high-water mark, I stacked my stuff in it, shouldered my
packsack and climbed the levee. After an hour's bootless wanderings in
the sloughs beyond I came back and followed the levee a half mile
down-stream to the power-house below the dam. And so to town.
Suppering at a convenient lunch-counter, I drank copiously of coffee
from the steaming urn at my elbow. Now of all of the drinks of the
ancient and modern world that I have known, lunch-counter coffee has
always proved the most inebriating. That was why I was impelled to fare
forth to the prizefight bulletin boards seeking low companionship, and
that must have been why I put the French on "Carpenter," and why I tried
to affect vulgar ringside jargon.
"Kar-pon-tee-ayh K. O.-ed, huh?" I grunted familiarly, lounging up to a
knot of local sports discussing pugilistic esoterics before the
newspaper window. For an instant the jabbering ceased--just long enough
for the half dozen technical experts to sweep my mud-spattered khaki
with scathing glances, snort and get under way again. Only one of them
was polite enough to say: "No savee Crow talkee," adding to a companion:
"Indian policeman--Crow Reservation--funny don't talk 'Merican."
That certainly was not a good start. On the contrary, indeed, it was a
perfectly rotten one. Which fact only makes me more proud of the
resiliency of spirit I showed in coming right back and assuring them
that I was not a Crow Indian, that I did talk 'Merican, and _that I had
been one of Jack Dempsey's first sparring partners_. There was
coffee-inspired artistry, too, in the inconsequentiality with which I
added: "Gave Jack the K. O. once myself. Sort of a flivver ... but
knocked him cold just the same."
Dear little old Strawberry Lady, didn't I swear I wouldn't forget the
lesson you taught me? That made them take notice of course. For an
instant they hung in the balance, searching my scarred and battered
visage with awed, troubled eyes. Then dawning wonder replaced doubt in
their faces, and they fell--my way. "Darn'd if you don't look the part,"
said one. "My name's Allstein--in hardware line--Shake!" And then they
all introduced themselves like that--each with his name and line. I
forget just what my name was, but it must have been something like
"Spud" Gallagher. Sparring partners never vary greatly from that model
of nomenclature.
Finally we retired to a pool-room, where I reminisced to an ever
augmenting audience. Alas! and yet Alack-a-day! If it had only been the
good old cow-town Billings of those delectable baseball days of twenty
years ago, what wouldn't have been mine that night! But it was not bad
as it was; not bad at all. I forget just where we were when dawn came,
but I do remember I was in the act of showing my punch-damaged hands
for the hundredth time when I looked up and saw that a window was
growing a glimmering square with the light of the coming day. That was
my cue, of course. Excusing myself on some pretext, I slipped out the
back way, slunk through an alley, and finally to the street which leads
past the sugar refinery down to the power-house and the river. For many
days after that I felt less envious of good old Haroun al Raschid.