sporting we were about the weather, he was going to like us after all.
Well--
Our new tents leaked--disheartening little drips that came in and
wandered idly over our blankets, to lodge in little pools here and
there. A cold wind blew. I resorted to that camper's delight--a stone
heated in the camp-fire--to warm my chilled body. We found one or two
magazines, torn and dejected, and read them, advertisements and all. And
still, when it seemed the end of the day, it was not high noon.
By afternoon, we were saturated; the camp steamed. We ate supper after
dark, standing around the camp-fire, holding our tin plates of food in
our hands. The firelight shone on our white faces and dripping slickers.
The horses stood with their heads low against the storm. The men of the
outfit went to bed on the sodden ground with the rain beating in their
faces.
The next morning was gray, yet with a hint of something better. At eight
o'clock, the clouds began to lift. Their solidity broke. The lower edge
of the cloud-bank that had hung in a heavy gray line, straight and
ominous, grew ragged. Shreds of vapor detached themselves and moved off,
grew smaller, disappeared. Overhead, the pall was thinner. Finally it
broke, and a watery ray of sunlight came through. And, at last, old
Rainbow, at the upper end of the lake, poked her granite head through
its vapory sheathings. Angel, my white horse, also eyed the sky, and
then, putting her pink nose under the corral-rope, she gently worked her
way out. The rain was over.
The horses provided endless excitement. Whether at night being driven
off by madly circling riders to the grazing-ground or rounded up into
the corral in the morning, they gave the men all they could do. Getting
them into the corral was like playing pigs-in-clover. As soon as a few
were in, and the wrangler started for others, the captives escaped and
shot through the camp. There were times when the air seemed full of
flying hoofs and twitching ears, of swinging ropes and language.
On the last day at Bowman Lake, we realized that although the weather
had lifted, the cook's spirits had not. He was polite enough--he had
always been polite to the party. But he packed in a dejected manner.
There was something ominous in the very way he rolled up the strawberry
jam in sacking.
The breaking-up of a few days' camp is a busy time. The tents are taken
down at dawn almost over one's head. Blankets are rolled and strapped;
the pack-ponies groan and try to roll their packs off.
Bill Shea quotes a friend of his as contending that the way to keep a
pack-pony cinched is to put his pack on him, throw the diamond hitch,
cinch him as tight as possible, and then take him to a drinking-place
and fill him up with water. However, we did not resort to this.
V
TO KINTLA LAKE
We had washed at dawn in the cold lake. The rain had turned to snow in
the night, and the mountains were covered with a fresh white coating.
And then, at last, we were off, the wagons first, although we were soon
to pass them. We had lifted the boats out of the water and put them
lovingly in their straw again. And Mike and George formed the crew. The
guides were ready with facetious comments.
"Put up a sail!" they called. "Never give up the ship!" was another
favorite. The Head, who has a secret conviction that he should have had
his voice trained, warbled joyously:--
"I'll stick to the ship, lads;
You save your lives.
I've no one to love me;
You've children and wives."
And so, still in the cool of the morning, our long procession mounted
the rise which some great glacier deposited ages ago at the foot of
what is now Bowman Lake. We turned longing eyes back as we left the lake
to its winter ice and quiet. For never again, probably, will it be ours.
We have given its secret to the world.
At two o'clock we found a ranger's cabin and rode into its enclosure for
luncheon. Breakfast had been early, and we were very hungry. We had gone
long miles through the thick and silent forest, and now we wanted food.
We wanted food more than we wanted anything else in the world. We sat in
a circle on the ground and talked about food.
And, at last, the chuck-wagon drove in. It had had a long, slow trip. We
stood up and gave a hungry cheer, and then--_Bill was gone!_ Some miles
back he had halted the wagon, got out, taken his bed on his back, and
started toward civilization afoot. We stared blankly at the teamster.
"Well," we said; "what did he say?"
"All he said to me was, 'So long,'" said the teamster.
And that was all there was to it. So there we were in the wilderness,
far, far from a cook. The hub of our universe had departed. Or, to make
the figure modern, we had blown out a tire. And we had no spare one.
I made my declaration of independence at once. I could cook; but I would
not cook for that outfit. There were too many; they were too hungry.
Besides, I had come on a pleasure-trip, and the idea of cooking for
fifteen men and thirty-one horses was too much for me. I made some cocoa
and grumbled while I made it. We lunched out of tins and in savage
silence. When we spoke, it was to impose horrible punishments on the
defaulting cook. We hoped he would enjoy his long walk back to
civilization without food.
"Food!" answered one of the boys. "He's got plenty cached in that bed of
his, all right. What you should have done," he said to the teamster,
"was to take his bed from him and let him starve."
In silence we finished our luncheon; in silence, mounted our horses. In
black and hopeless silence we rode on north, farther and farther from
cooks and hotels and tables-d'hote.
We rode for an hour--two hours. And, at last, sitting in a cleared spot,
we saw a man beside the trail. He was the first man we had seen in days.
He was sitting there quite idly. Probably that man to-day thinks that he
took himself there on his own feet, of his own volition. We know better.
He was directed there for our happiness. It was a direct act of
Providence. For we rode up to him and said:--
"Do you know of any place where we can find a cook?"
And this man, who had dropped from heaven, replied:
"_I am a cook._"
So we put him on our extra saddle-horse and took him with us. He cooked
for us with might and main, day and night, until the trip was over. And
if you don't believe this story, write to Norman Lee, Kintla, Montana,
and ask him if it is true. What is more, Norman Lee could cook. He could
cook on his knees, bending over, and backward. He had been in Cuba, in
the Philippines, in the Boxer Rebellion in China, and was now a trapper;
is now a trapper, for, as I write this, Norman Lee is trapping marten
and lynx on the upper left-hand corner of Montana, in one of the empty
spaces of the world.
We were very happy. We caracoled--whatever that may be. We sang and
whistled, and we rode. How we rode! We rode, and rode, and rode, and
rode, and rode, and rode, and rode. And, at last, just when the end of
endurance had come, we reached our night camp.
Here and there upon the west side of Glacier Park are curious, sharply
defined treeless places, surrounded by a border of forest. On Round
Prairie, that night, we pitched our tents and slept the sleep of the
weary, our heads pillowed on war-bags in which the heel of a slipper,
the edge of a razor-case, a bottle of sunburn lotion, and the tooth-end
of a comb made sleeping an adventure.
It was cold. It was always cold at night. But, in the morning, we
wakened to brilliant sunlight, to the new cook's breakfast, and to
another day in the saddle. We were roused at dawn by a shrill yell.
Startled, every one leaped to the opening of his tent and stared out. It
proved, however, not to be a mountain-lion, and was, indeed, nothing
more than one of the packers struggling to get into a wet pair of socks,
and giving vent to his irritation in a wild fury of wrath.
As Pete and Bill Shea and Tom Farmer threw the diamond hitch over the
packs that morning, they explained to me that all camp cooks are of two
kinds--the good cooks, who are evil of disposition, and the tin-can
cooks, who only need a can-opener to be happy. But I lived to be able to
refute that. Norman Lee was a cook, and he was also amiable.
But that morning, in spite of the bright sunlight, started ill. For
seven horses were missing, and before they were rounded up, the guides
had ridden a good forty miles of forest and trail. But, at last, the
wanderers were brought in and we were ready to pack.
On a pack-horse there are two sets of rope. There is a sling-rope,
twenty or twenty-five feet long, and a lash-rope, which should be
thirty-five feet long. The sling-rope holds the side pack; the top pack
is held by the lash-rope and the diamond hitch. When a cow-puncher on a
bronco yells for a diamond, he does not refer to a jewel. He means a
lash-rope. When the diamond is finally thrown, the packer puts his foot
against the horse's face and pulls. The packer pulls, and the horse
grunts. If the packer pulls a shade too much, the horse bucks, and there
is an exciting time in which everybody clears and the horse has the
field--every one, that is, but Joe, whose duty it was to be on the spot
in dangerous moments. Generally, however, by the time he got his camera
set up and everything ready, the bucker was feeding placidly and the
excitement was over.
We rather stole away from Round Prairie that morning. A settler had
taken advantage of a clearing some miles away to sow a little grain.
When our seven truants were found that brilliant morning, they had eaten
up practically the grain-field and were lying gorged in the center of
it.
[Illustration: _Bear-grass_]
So "we folded our tents like the Arabs, and as silently stole away."
(This has to be used in every camping-story, and this seems to be a good
place for it.)
We had come out on to the foothills again on our way to Kintla Lake.
Again we were near the Flathead, and beyond it lay the blue and purple
of the Kootenai Hills. The Kootenais on the left, the Rockies on the
right, we were traveling north in a great flat basin.
The meadow-lands were full of flowers. There was rather less Indian
paint-brush than on the east side of the park. We were too low for much
bear-grass. But there were masses everywhere of June roses, true
forget-me-nots, and larkspur. And everywhere in the burnt areas was the
fireweed, that phoenix plant that springs up from the ashes of dead
trees.
There were, indeed, trees, flowers, birds, fish--everything but fresh
meat. We had had no fresh meat since the first day out. And now my soul
revolted at the sight of bacon. I loathed all ham with a deadly
loathing. I had eaten canned salmon until I never wanted to see it
again. And our provisions were getting low.
Just to the north, where we intended to camp, was Starvation Ridge. It
seemed to be an ominous name.
Norman Lee knew a man somewhere within a radius of one hundred
miles--they have no idea of distance there--who would kill a forty-pound
calf if we would send him word. But it seemed rather too much veal. We
passed it up.
On and on, a hot day, a beautiful trail, but no water. No little
rivulets crossing the path, no icy lakes, no rolling cataracts from the
mountains. We were tanned a blackish purple. We were saddle-sore. One of
the guides had a bottle of liniment for saddle-gall and suggested
rubbing it on the saddle. Packs slipped and were tightened. The mountain
panorama unrolled slowly to our right. And all day long the boatmen
struggled with the most serious problem yet, for the wagon-trail was now
hardly good enough for horses.
Where the trail turned off toward the mountains and Kintla Lake, we met
a solitary horseman. He had ridden sixty miles down and sixty miles back
to get his mail. There is a sort of R.F.D. in this corner of the world,
but it is not what I should call in active operation. It was then
August, and there had been just two mails since the previous Christmas!
Aside from the Geological Survey, very few people, except an occasional
trapper, have ever seen Kintla Lake. It lies, like Bowman Lake, in a
recess in the mountains. We took some photographs of Kintla Peak, taking
our boats to the upper end of the lake for the work. They are, so far as
I can discover, the only photographs ever taken of this great mountain
which towers, like Rainbow, a mile or so above the lake.
Across from Kintla, there is a magnificent range of peaks without any
name whatever. The imagination of the Geological Survey seemed to die
after Starvation Ridge; at least, they stopped there. Kintla is a
curious lemon-yellow color, a great, flat wall tapering to a point and
frequently hidden under a cap of clouds.
But Kintla Lake is a disappointment to the fisherman. With the exception
of one of the guides, who caught a four-pound bull-trout there, repeated
whippings of the lake with the united rods and energies of the entire
party failed to bring a single rise. No fish leaped of an evening; none
lay in the shallows along the bank. It appeared to be a dead lake. I
have a strong suspicion that that guide took away Kintla's only fish,
and left it without hope of posterity.
We rested at Kintla,--for a strenuous time was before us,--rested and
fasted. For supplies were now very low. Starvation Ridge loomed over us,
and starvation stared us in the face. We had counted on trout, and there
were no trout. That night, we supped off our last potatoes and off cakes
made of canned salmon browned in butter. Breakfast would have to be a
repetition minus the potatoes. We were just a little low in our minds.
[Illustration: _A Glacier Park lake_]
The last thing I saw that night was the cook's shadowy figure as he
crouched working over his camp-fire.
And we wakened in the morning to catastrophe. In spite of the fact that
we had starved our horses the day before, in order to keep them grazing
near camp that night, they had wandered. Eleven were missing, and eleven
remained missing. Up the mountain-slopes and through the woods the
wranglers rode like madmen, only to come in on dejected horses with
failure written large all over them. One half of the saddlers were gone;
my Angel had taken wings and flown away.
We sat dejectedly on the bank and fished those dead waters. We wrangled
among ourselves. Around us was the forest, thick and close save for the
tiny clearing, perhaps forty feet by forty feet. There was no open
space, no place to walk, nothing to do but sit and wait.
At last, some of us in the saddle and some afoot, we started. It looked
as though the walkers might have a long hike. But sometime about midday
there was a sound of wild cheering behind us, and the wranglers rode up
with the truants. They had been far up on the mountain-side.
It is curious how certain comparatively unimportant things stand out
about such a trip as this. Of Kintla itself, I have no very vivid
memories. But standing out very sharply is that figure of the cook
crouched over his dying fire, with the black forest all about him. There
is a picture, too, of a wild deer that came down to the edge of the lake
to drink as we sat in the first boat that had ever been on Kintla Lake,
whipping a quiet pool. And there is a clear memory of the assistant
cook, the college boy who was taking his vacation in the wilds,
whistling the Dvo[vr]ak "Humoresque" as he dried the dishes on a piece
of clean sacking.
VI
RUNNING THE RAPIDS OF THE FLATHEAD
It was now approaching time for Bob's great idea to materialize. For
this, and to this end, had he brought the boats on their strange
land-journey--such a journey as, I fancy, very few boats have ever had
before.
The project was, as I have said, to run the unknown reaches of the North
Fork of the Flathead from the Canadian border to the town of Columbia
Falls.
"The idea is this," Bob had said: "It's never been done before, do you
see? It makes the trip unusual and all that."
"Makes it unusually risky," I had observed.
"Well, there's a risk in pretty nearly everything," he had replied
blithely. "There's a risk in crossing a city street, for that matter.
Riding these horses is a risk, if you come to that. Anyhow, it would
make a good story."
So that is why I did it. And this is the story:
We were headed now for the Flathead just south of the Canadian line. To
reach the river, it was necessary to take the boats through a burnt
forest, without a trail of any sort. They leaped and plunged as the
wagon scrambled, jerked, careened, stuck, detoured, and finally got
through. There were miles of such going--heart-breaking miles--and at
the end we paused at the top of a sixty-foot bluff and looked down at
the river.
Now, I like water in a tub or drinking-glass or under a bridge. I am
very keen about it. But I like still water--quiet, well-behaved,
stay-at-home water. The North Fork of the Flathead River is a riotous,
debauched, and highly erratic stream. It staggers in a series of wild
zigzags for a hundred miles of waterway from the Canadian border to
Columbia Falls, our destination. And that hundred miles of whirlpools,
jagged rocks, and swift and deadly canons we were to travel. I turned
around and looked at the Family. It was my ambition that had brought
them to this. We might never again meet, as a whole. We were sure to
get to Columbia Falls, but not at all sure to get there in the boats. I
looked at the boats; they were, I believe, stout river-boats. But they
were small. Undeniably, they were very small.
The river appeared to be going about ninety miles an hour. There was one
hope, however. Perhaps they could not get the boats down over the bluff.
It seemed a foolhardy thing even to try. I suggested this to Bob. But he
replied, rather tartly, that he had not brought those boats at the risk
of his life through all those miles of wilderness to have me fail him
now.
He painted the joys of the trip. He expressed so strong a belief in them
that he said that he himself would ride with the outfit, thus permitting
most of the Family in the boats that first day. He said the river was
full of trout. I expressed a strong doubt that any trout could live in
that stream and hold their own. I felt that they had all been washed
down years ago. And again I looked at the Family.
Because I knew what would happen. The Family would insist on going
along. It was not going to let mother take this risk alone; it was
going to drown with her if necessary.
The Family jaws were set. _They were going._
The entire outfit lowered the wagon by roping it down. There was one
delicious moment when I thought boats and all were going over the edge.
But the ropes held. Nothing happened.
_They put the boats in the water._
I had one last rather pitiful thought as I took my seat in the stern of
one of them.
"This is my birthday," I said wistfully. "It's rather a queer way to
spend a birthday, I think."
But this was met with stern silence. I was to have my story whether I
wanted it or not.
Yet once in the river, the excitement got me. I had run brief spells of
rapids before. There had been a gasp or two and it was over. But this
was to be a prolonged four days' gasp, with intervals only to sleep at
night.
Fortunately for all of us, it began rather quietly. The current was
swift, so that, once out into the stream, we shot ahead as if we had
been fired out of a gun. But, for all that, the upper reaches were
comparatively free of great rocks. Friendly little sandy shoals beckoned
to us. The water was shallow. But, even then, I noticed what afterward I
found was to be a delusion of the entire trip.
This was the impression of riding downhill. I do not remember now how
much the Flathead falls per mile. I have an impression that it is ninety
feet, but as that would mean a drop of nine thousand feet, or almost two
miles, during the trip, I must be wrong somewhere. It was sixteen feet,
perhaps.
But hour after hour, on the straight stretches, there was that
sensation, on looking ahead, of staring down a toboggan-slide. It never
grew less. And always I had the impression that just beyond that glassy
slope the roaring meant uncharted falls--and destruction. It never did.
The outfit, following along the trail, was to meet us at night and have
camp ready when we appeared--if we appeared. Only a few of us could use
the boats. George Locke in one, Mike Shannon in the other, could carry
two passengers each. For the sake of my story, I was to take the entire
trip; the others were to alternate.
I do not know, but I am very confident that no other woman has ever
taken this trip. I am fairly confident that no other men have ever taken
it. We could find no one who had heard of it being taken. All that we
knew was that it was the North Fork of the Flathead River, and that if
we stayed afloat long enough, we would come out at Columbia Falls. The
boatmen knew the lower part of the river, but not the upper two thirds
of it.
[Illustration: _Still-water fishing_]
Now that it is over, I would not give up my memory of that long run for
anything. It was one of the most unique experiences in a not uneventful
career. It was beautiful always, terrible occasionally. There were
dozens of places each day where the boatmen stood up, staring ahead for
the channel, while the boats dodged wildly ahead. But always these
skillful pilots of ours found a way through. And so fast did we go that
the worst places were always behind us before we had time to be
really terrified.
The Flathead River in these upper reaches is fairly alive with trout. On
the second day, I think it was, I landed a bull-trout that weighed nine
pounds, and got it with a six-ounce rod. I am very proud of that. I have
eleven different pictures of myself holding the fish up. There were
trout everywhere. The difficulty was to stop the boat long enough to get
them. In fact, we did not stop, save in an occasional eddy in the midst
of the torrent. We whipped the stream as we flew along. Under great
boulders, where the water seethed and roared, under deep cliffs where it
flew like a mill-race, there were always fish.
It was frightful work for the boatmen. It required skill every moment.
There was not a second in the day when they could relax. Only men
trained to river rapids could have done it, and few, even, of these. To
the eternal credit of George and Mike, we got through. It was nothing
else.
On the evening of the first day, in the dusk which made the river
doubly treacherous, we saw our camp-fire far ahead.
With the going-down of the sun, the river had grown cold. We were wet
with spray, cramped from sitting still and holding on. But friendly
hands drew our boats to shore and helped us out.
VII
THE SECOND DAY ON THE FLATHEAD
In a way, this is a fairy-story. Because a good fairy had been busy
during our absence. Days before, at the ranger's cabin, unknown to most
of us, an order had gone down to civilization for food. During all those
days under Starvation Ridge, food had been on the way by
pack-horse--food and an extra cook.
So we went up to camp, expecting more canned salmon and fried trout and
little else, and beheld--
A festive board set with candles--the board, however, in this case is
figurative; it was the ground covered with a tarpaulin--fried chicken,
fresh green beans, real bread, jam, potatoes, cheese, cake, candy,
cigars, and cigarettes. And--champagne!
That champagne had traveled a hundred miles on horseback. It had been
cooled in the icy water of the river. We drank it out of tin cups. We
toasted each other. We toasted the Flathead flowing just beside us. We
toasted the full moon rising over the Kootenais. We toasted the good
fairy. The candles burned low in their sockets--this, also, is
figurative; they were stuck on pieces of wood. With due formality I was
presented with a birthday gift, a fishing-reel purchased by the Big and
the Middle and the Little Boy.
Of all the birthdays that I can remember--and I remember quite a
few--this one was the most wonderful. Over mountain-tops, glowing deep
pink as they rose above masses of white clouds, came slowly a great
yellow moon. It turned the Flathead beside us to golden glory, and
transformed the evergreen thickets into fairy glades of light and
shadow. Flickering candles inside the tents made them glow in luminous
triangles against their background of forest.
Behind us, in the valley lands at the foot of the Rockies, the horses
rested and grazed, and eased their tired backs. The men lay out in the
open and looked at the stars. The air was fragrant with pine and
balsam. Night creatures called and answered.