day, and I had not got all my story.
That first day's run of the river we got fifty trout, ranging from one
half-pound to four pounds. We should have caught more, but they could
not keep up with the boat. We caught, also, the most terrific sunburn
that I have ever known anything about. We had thought that we were
thoroughly leathered, but we had not passed the primary stage,
apparently. In vain I dosed my face with cold-cream and talcum powder,
and with a liquid warranted to restore the bloom of youth to an aged
skin (mine, however, is not aged).
My journal for the second day starts something like this:--
Cold and gray. Stood in the water fifteen minutes
in hip-boots for a moving picture. River looks
savage.
Of that second day, one beautiful picture stands out with distinctness.
The river is lovely; it winds and twists through deep forests with
always that marvelous background of purple mountains capped with snow.
Here and there, at long intervals, would come a quiet half-mile where,
although the current was incredibly swift, there were, at least, no
rocks. It was on coming round one of these bends that we saw, out from
shore and drinking quietly, a deer. He was incredulous at first, and
then uncertain whether to be frightened or not. He threw his head up and
watched us, and then, turning, leaped up the bank and into the forest.
Except for fish, there was surprisingly little life to be seen. Bald
eagles sat by the river, as intent on their fishing as we were on ours.
Wild ducks paddled painfully up against the current. Kingfishers fished
in quiet pools. But the real interest of the river, its real life, lay
in its fish. What piscine tragedies it conceals, with those murderous,
greedy, and powerful assassins, the bull-trout, pursuing fish, as I have
seen them, almost into the landing-net! What joyous interludes where, in
a sunny shallow, tiny baby trout played tag while we sat and watched
them!
[Illustration: _Mountains of Glacier National Park from the North Fork
of the Flathead River_]
The danger of the river is not all in the current. There are quicksands
along the Flathead, sands underlain with water, apparently secure but
reaching up clutching hands to the unwary. Our noonday luncheon, taken
along the shore, was always on some safe and gravelly bank or tiny
island.
Our second camp on the Flathead was less fortunate than the first.
Always, in such an outfit as ours, the first responsibility is the
horses. Camp must be made within reach of grazing-grounds for them, and
in these mountain and forest regions this is almost always a difficult
matter. Here and there are meadows where horses may eat their fill; but,
generally, pasture must be hunted. Often, long after we were settled for
the night, our horses were still ranging far, hunting for grass.
So, on this second night, we made an uncomfortable camp for the sake of
the horses, a camp on a steep bluff sloping into the water in a dead
forest. It had been the intention, as the river was comparatively quiet
here, to swim the animals across and graze them on the other side. But,
although generally a horse can swim when put to it, we discovered too
late that several horses in our string could not swim at all. In the
attempt to get them across, one horse with a rider was almost drowned.
So we gave that up, and they were driven back five miles into the
country to pasture.
There is something ominous and most depressing about a burnt forest.
There is no life, nothing green. It is a ghost-forest, filled with tall
tree skeletons and the mouldering bones of those that have fallen, and
draped with dry gray moss that swings in the wind. Moving through such a
forest is almost impossible. Fallen and rotten trees, black and charred
stumps cover every foot of ground. It required two hours' work with an
axe to clear a path that I might get to the little ridge on which my
tent was placed. The day had been gray, and, to add to our discomfort,
there was a soft, fine rain. The Middle Boy had developed an inflamed
knee and was badly crippled. Sitting in the drizzle beside the
camp-fire, I heated water in a tin pail and applied hot compresses
consisting of woolen socks.
It was all in the game. Eggs tasted none the worse for being fried in a
skillet into which the rain was pattering. Skins were weather-proof, if
clothes were not. And heavy tarpaulins on the ground protected our
bedding from dampness.
The outfit, coming down by trail, had passed a small store in a
clearing. They had bought a whole cheese weighing eleven pounds, a
difficult thing to transport on horseback, a wooden pail containing
nineteen pounds of chocolate chips, and six dozen eggs--our first eggs
in many days.
In the shop, while making the purchase, the Head had pulled out a box of
cigarettes. The woman who kept the little store had never seen
machine-made cigarettes before, and examined them with the greatest
interest. For in that country every man is his own cigarette-maker. The
Middle Boy later reported with wide eyes that at her elbow she kept a
loaded revolver lying, in plain view. She is alone a great deal of the
time there in the wilderness, and probably she has many strange
visitors.
It was at the shop that a terrible discovery was made. We had been in
the wilderness on the east side and then on the west side of the park
for four weeks. And days in the woods are much alike. No one had had a
calendar. The discovery was that we had celebrated my birthday on the
wrong day!
That night, in the dead forest, we gathered round the camp-fire. I made
hot compresses. The packers and guides told stories of the West, and we
matched them with ones of the East. From across the river, above the
roaring, we could hear the sharp stroke of the axe as branches were
being cut for our beds. There was nothing living, nothing green about us
where we sat.
I am aware that the camp-fire is considered one of the things about
which the camper should rave. My own experience of camp-fires is that
they come too late in the day to be more than a warming-time before
going to bed. We were generally too tired to talk. A little desultory
conversation, a cigarette or two, an outline of the next day's work, and
all were off to bed. Yet, in that evergreen forest, our fires were
always rarely beautiful. The boughs burned with a crackling white flame,
and when we threw on needles, they burst into stars and sailed far up
into the night. As the glare died down, each of us took his hot stone
from its bed of ashes and, carrying it carefully, retired with it.
VIII
THROUGH THE FLATHEAD CANON
The next morning we wakened to sunshine, and fried trout and bacon and
eggs for breakfast. The cook tossed his flapjacks skillfully. As the
only woman in the party, I sometimes found an air of festivity about my
breakfast-table. Whereas the others ate from a tarpaulin laid on the
ground, I was favored with a small box for a table and a smaller one for
a seat. On the table-box was set my graniteware plate, knife, fork, and
spoon, a paper napkin, the Prince Albert and the St. Charles. Lest this
sound strange to the uninitiated, the St. Charles was the condensed milk
and the Prince Albert was an old tin can which had once contained
tobacco but which now contained the sugar. Thus, in our camp-etiquette,
one never asked for the sugar, but always for the Prince Albert; not for
the milk, but always for the St. Charles, sometimes corrupted to the
Charlie.
I was late that morning. The men had gone about the business of
preparing the boats for the day. The packers and guides were out after
the horses. The cook, hot and weary, was packing up for the daily
exodus. He turned and surveyed that ghost-forest with a scowl.
"Another camping-place like this, and I'll be braying like a blooming
burro."
On the third day, we went through the Flathead River canon. We had
looked forward to this, both because of its beauty and its danger.
Bitterly complaining, the junior members of the family were exiled to
the trail with the exception of the Big Boy.
It had been Joe's plan to photograph the boat with the moving-picture
camera as we came down the canon. He meant, I am sure, to be on hand if
anything exciting happened. But impenetrable wilderness separated the
trail from the edge of the gorge, and that evening we reached the camp
unphotographed, unrecorded, to find Joe sulking in a corner and inclined
to blame the forest on us.
In one of the very greatest stretches of the rapids, a long
straightaway, we saw a pigmy figure, far ahead, hailing us from the
bank. "Pigmy" is a word I use generally with much caution, since a
friend of mine, in the excitement of a first baby, once published a poem
entitled "My Pigmy Counterpart," which a type-setter made, in the
magazine version, "My Pig, My Counterpart."
Nevertheless, we will use it here. Behind this pigmy figure stretched a
cliff, more than one hundred feet in height, of sheer rock overgrown
with bushes. The figure had apparently but room on which to stand.
George stood up and surveyed the prospect.
"Well," he said, in his slow drawl, "if that's lunch, I don't think we
can hit it."
The river was racing at mad speed. Great rocks caught the current,
formed whirlpools and eddies, turned us round again and again, and sent
us spinning on, drenched with spray. That part of the river the boatmen
knew--at least by reputation. It had been the scene, a few years before,
of the tragic drowning of a man they knew. For now we were getting down
into the better known portions.
[Illustration: _The beginning of the canon, Middle Fork of the Flathead
River_]
To check a boat in such a current seemed impossible. But we needed food.
We were tired and cold, and we had a long afternoon's work still before
us.
At last, by tremendous effort and great skill, the boatmen made the
landing. It was the college boy who had clambered down the cliff and
brought the lunch, and it was he who caught the boats as they were
whirling by. We had to cling like limpets--whatever a limpet is--to the
edge, and work our way over to where there was room to sit down.
It reminded the Head of Roosevelt's expression about peace raging in
Mexico. He considered that enjoyment was raging here.
Nevertheless, we ate. We made the inevitable cocoa, warmed beans, ate a
part of the great cheese purchased the day before, and, with gingersnaps
and canned fruit, managed to eke out a frugal repast. And shrieked our
words over the roar of the river.
It was here that the boats were roped down. Critical examination and
long debate with the boatmen showed no way through. On the far side,
under the towering cliff, was an opening in the rocks through which the
river boiled in a drop of twenty feet.
So it was fortunate, after all, that we had been hailed from the shore
and had stopped, dangerous as it had been. For not one of us would have
lived had we essayed that passage under the cliff. The Flathead River is
not a deep river; but the force of its flow is so great, its drop so
rapid, that the most powerful swimmer is hopeless in such a current.
Light as our flies were, again and again they were swept under and held
as though by a powerful hand.
Another year, the Flathead may be a much simpler proposition to
negotiate. Owing to the unusually heavy snows of last winter, which had
not commenced to melt on the mountain-tops until July, the river was
high. In a normal summer, I believe that this trip could be
taken--although always the boatmen must be expert in river rapids--with
comparative safety and enormous pleasure.
There is a thrill and exultation about running rapids--not for minutes,
not for an hour or two, but for days--that gets into the blood. And
when to that exultation is added the most beautiful scenery in America,
the trip becomes well worth while. However, I am not at all sure that it
is a trip for a woman to take. I can swim, but that would not have
helped at all had the boat, at any time in those four days, struck a
rock and turned over. Nor would the men of the party, all powerful
swimmers, have had any more chance than I.
We were a little nervous that afternoon. The canon grew wilder; the
current, if possible, more rapid. But there were fewer rocks; the
river-bed was clearer.
We were rapidly nearing the Middle Fork. Another day would see us there,
and from that point, the river, although swift, would lose much of its
danger.
Late the afternoon of the third day we saw our camp well ahead, on a
ledge above the river. Everything was in order when we arrived. We
unloaded ourselves solemnly out of the boats, took our fish, our poles,
our graft-hooks and landing-nets, our fly-books, my sunburn lotion, and
our weary selves up the bank. Then we solemnly shook hands all round. We
had come through; the rest was easy.
On the last day, the river became almost a smiling stream. Once again,
instead of between cliffs, we were traveling between great forests of
spruce, tamarack, white and yellow pine, fir, and cedar. A great golden
eagle flew over the water just ahead of our boat. And in the morning we
came across our first sign of civilization--a wire trolley with a cage,
extending across the river in lieu of a bridge. High up in the air at
each end, it sagged in the middle until the little car must almost have
touched the water. We had a fancy to try it, and landed to make the
experiment. But some ungenerous soul had padlocked it and had gone away
with the key.
For the first time that day, it was possible to use the trolling-lines.
We had tried them before, but the current had carried them out far ahead
of the boat. Cut-throat trout now and then take a spoon. But it is the
bull-trout which falls victim, as a rule, to the troll.
I am not gifted with the trolling-line. Sometime I shall write an
article on the humors of using it--on the soft and sibilant hiss with
which it goes out over the stern; on the rasping with which it grates on
the edge of the boat as it holds on, stanch and true, to water-weeds and
floating branches; on the low moan with which it buries itself under a
rock and dies; on the inextricable confusion into which it twists and
knots itself when, hand over hand, it is brought in for inspection.
I have spent hours over a trolling-line, hours which, otherwise, I
should have wasted in idleness. There are thirty-seven kinds of knots
which, so far, I have discovered in a trolling-line, and I am but at the
beginning of my fishing career.
"What are you doing," the Head said to me that last day, as I sat in the
stern busily working at the line. "Knitting?"
We got few fish that day, but nobody cared. The river was wide and
smooth; the mountains had receded somewhat; the forest was there to the
right and left of us. But it was an open, smiling forest. Still far
enough away, but slipping toward us with the hours, were settlements,
towns, the fertile valley of the lower river.
We lunched that night where, just a year before, I had eaten my first
lunch on the Flathead, on a shelving, sandy beach. But this time the
meal was somewhat shadowed by the fact that some one had forgotten to
put in butter and coffee and condensed milk.
However, we were now in that part of the river which our boatmen knew
well. From a secret cache back in the willows, George and Mike produced
coffee and condensed milk and even butter. So we lunched, and far away
we heard a sound which showed us how completely our wilderness days were
over--the screech of a railway locomotive.
Late that afternoon, tired, sunburned, and unkempt, we drew in at the
little wharf near Columbia Falls. It was weeks since we had seen a
mirror larger than an inch or so across. Our clothes were wrinkled from
being used to augment our bedding on cold nights. The whites of our eyes
were bloodshot with the sun. My old felt hat was battered and torn with
the fish-hooks that had been hung round the band. Each of us looked at
the other, and prayed to Heaven that he looked a little better himself.
IX
THE ROUND-UP AT KALISPELL
Columbia Falls had heard of our adventure, and was prepared to do us
honor. Automobiles awaited us on the river-bank. In a moment we were
snatched from the jaws of the river and seated in the lap of luxury. If
this is a mixed metaphor, it is due to the excitement of the change.
With one of those swift transitions of the Northwest, we were out of the
wilderness and surrounded by great yellow fields of wheat.
Cleared land or natural prairie, these valleys of the Northwest are
marvelously fertile. Wheat grows an incredible number of bushels to the
acre. Everything thrives. And on the very borders of the fields stands
still the wilderness to be conquered, the forest to be cleared. Untold
wealth is there for the man who will work and wait, land rich beyond the
dreams of fertilizer. But it costs about eighty dollars an acre, I am
told, to clear forest-land after it has been cut over. It is not a
project, this Northwestern farming, to be undertaken on a shoestring.
The wilderness must be conquered. It cannot be coaxed. And a good many
hearts have been broken in making that discovery. A little money--not
too little--infinite patience, cheerfulness, and red-blooded
effort--these are the factors which are conquering the Northwest.
I like the Northwest. In spite of its pretensions, its large cities, its
wealth, it is still peopled by essential frontiersmen. They are still
pioneers--because the wilderness encroaches still so close to them. I
like their downrightness, their pride in what they have achieved, their
hatred of sham and affectation.
And if there is to be real progress among us in this present generation,
the growth of a political and national spirit, that sturdy insistence on
better things on which our pioneer forefathers founded this nation, it
is likely to come, as a beginning, from these newer parts of our
country. These people have built for themselves. What we in the East
have inherited, they have made. They know its exact cost in blood and
sweat. They value it. And they will do their best by it.
Perhaps, after all, this is the end of this particular adventure. And
yet, what Western story is complete without a round-up?
There was to be a round-up the next day at Kalispell, farther south in
that wonderful valley.
But there was a difficulty in the way. Our horses were Glacier Park
horses. Columbia Falls was outside of Glacier Park. Kalispell was even
farther outside of Glacier Park, and horses were needed badly in the
Park. For last year Glacier Park had the greatest boom in its history
and found the concessionnaires unprepared to take care of all the
tourists. What we should do, we knew, was to deadhead our horses back
into the Park as soon as they had had a little rest.
But, on the other hand, there was Kalispell and the round-up. It would
make a difference of just one day. True, we could have gone to the
round-up on the train. But, for two reasons, this was out of the
question. First, it would not make a good story. Second, we had nothing
but riding-clothes, and ours were only good to ride in and not at all to
walk about in.
After a long and serious conclave, it was decided that Glacier Park
would not suffer by the absence of our string for twenty-four hours
more.
On the following morning, then, we set off down the white and dusty
road, a gay procession, albeit somewhat ragged. Sixteen miles in the
heat we rode that morning. It was when we were halfway there that one of
the party--it does not matter which one--revealed that he had received a
telegram from the Government demanding the immediate return of our
outfit. We halted in the road and conferred.
It is notorious of Governments that they are short-sighted, detached,
impersonal, aloof, and haughty. We gathered in the road, a gayly
bandanaed, dusty, and highly indignant crowd, and conferred.
The telegram had been imperative. It did not request. It commanded. It
unhorsed us violently at a time when it did not suit either ourselves or
our riding-clothes to be unhorsed.
We conferred. We were, we said, paying two dollars and a half a day for
each of those horses. Besides, we were out of adhesive tape, which is
useful for holding on patches. Besides, also, we had the horses. If they
wanted them, let them come and get them. Besides, this was
discrimination. Ever since the Park was opened, horses had been taken
out of it, either on to the Reservation or into Canada, to get about to
other parts of the Park. Why should the Government pick on us?
We were very bitter and abusive, and the rest of the way I wrote
mentally a dozen sarcastic telegrams. Yes; the rest of the way. Because
we went on. With a round-up ahead and the Department of the Interior in
the rear, we rode forward to our stolen holiday, now and then pausing,
an eye back to see if we were pursued. But nothing happened; no sheriff
in a buckboard drove up with a shotgun across his knees. The Government,
or its representative in Glacier Park, was contenting itself with
foaming at the mouth. We rode on through the sunlight, and sang as we
rode.
Kalispell is a flourishing and attractive town of northwestern Montana.
It is notable for many other things besides its annual round-up. But it
remains dear to me for one particular reason.
My hat was done. It had no longer the spring and elasticity of youth. It
was scarred with many rains and many fish-hooks. It had ceased to add
its necessary jaunty touch to my costume. It detracted. In its age, I
loved it, but the Family insisted cruelly on a change. So, sitting on
Angel, a new one was brought me, a chirky young thing, a cowgirl affair
of high felt crown and broad rim.
And, at this moment, a gentleman I had never seen before, but who is
green in my memory, stepped forward and presented me with his own
hat-band. It was of leather, and it bore this vigorous and inspiriting
inscription: "Give 'er pep and let 'er buck."
To-day, when I am low in my mind, I take that cowgirl hat from its
retreat and read its inscription: "Give 'er pep and let 'er buck." It is
a whole creed.
Somewhere among my papers I have the programme of that round-up at
Kalispell. It was a very fine round-up. There was a herd of buffalo;
there were wild horses and long-horned Mexican steers. There was a
cheering crowd. There was roping, and marvelous riding.
But my eyes were fixed on the grand-stand with a stony stare.
I am an adopted Blackfoot Indian, known in the tribe as "Pi-ta-mak-an,"
and only a few weeks before I had had a long conference with the chiefs
of the tribe, Two Guns, White Calf (the son of old White Calf, the great
chief who dropped dead in the White House during President Cleveland's
administration), Medicine Owl and Curly Bear and Big Spring and Bird
Plume and Wolf Plume and Bird Rattler and Bill Shute and
Stabs-by-Mistake and Eagle Child and Many Tail-Feathers--and many more.
[Illustration: _Pi-ta-mak-an, or Running Eagle (Mrs. Rinehart), with two
other members of the Blackfoot Tribe_]
And these Indians had all promised me that, as soon as our conference
was over, they were going back to the Reservation to get in their hay
and work hard for the great herd which the Government had promised to
give them. They were going to be good Indians.
So I stared at the grand-stand with a cold and fixed eye. For there,
very many miles from where they should have been, off the Reservation
without permission of the Indian agent, painted and bedecked in all the
glory of their forefathers--paint, feathers, beads, strings of thimbles
and little mirrors--handsome, bland, and enjoying every instant to the
full in their childish hearts, were my chiefs.
During the first lull in the proceedings, a delegation came to visit me
and to explain. This is what they said: First of all, they desired me to
make peace with the Indian agent. He was, they considered, most
unreasonable. There were many times when one could labor, and there was
but one round-up. They petitioned, then, that I intercede and see that
their ration-tickets were not taken away.