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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The River and I, by John G. Neihardt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The River and I
+
+Author: John G. Neihardt
+
+Release Date: October 3, 2005 [EBook #16793]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVER AND I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Julia Miller and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors and inconsistent spellings
+found in the original publication have been maintained in this text. A
+list of these is found at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER AND I
+
+
+
+
+_Other Books by_
+JOHN G. NEIHARDT
+
+INDIAN TALES AND OTHERS
+POETIC VALUES
+THE QUEST
+THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS
+THE SONG OF THE INDIAN WARS
+THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS
+THE SPLENDID WAYFARING
+TWO MOTHERS
+COLLECTED POEMS
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: NIGHT IN CAMP.]
+
+
+
+
+                 THE
+              RIVER AND
+                  I
+
+
+
+
+                  BY
+           JOHN G. NEIHARDT
+
+
+
+
+             _Illustrated
+              New Edition_
+
+
+
+
+               New York
+         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+                 1927
+         _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+           COPYRIGHT, 1910,
+         BY JOHN G. NEIHARDT.
+
+       Set up and electrotyped.
+Reissued in new format, October, 1927.
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+         BY THE CORNWALL PRESS
+
+
+
+
+                  TO
+               MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+The following account of a youthful adventure was written during the
+winter of 1908, ran as a serial in _Putnam's Magazine_ the following
+year, and appeared as a book in 1910, five years before "The Song of
+Hugh Glass," the first piece of my Western Cycle. Many who have cared
+for my narrative poems, feeling the relation between those and this
+earlier avowal of an old love, have urged that "The River and I" be
+reprinted.
+
+J.G.N.
+
+St. Louis, 1927.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                          PAGE
+   I. THE RIVER OF AN UNWRITTEN EPIC                1
+
+  II. SIXTEEN MILES OF AWE                         22
+
+ III. HALF-WAY TO THE MOON                         40
+
+  IV. MAKING A GETAWAY                             65
+
+   V. THROUGH THE REGION OF WEIR                   84
+
+  VI. GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS                    113
+
+ VII. ON TO THE YELLOWSTONE                       137
+
+VIII. DOWN FROM THE YELLOWSTONE                   165
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Night in Camp                               _Frontispiece_
+                                              FACING PAGE
+"Off on the Perilous Floods"                        6
+Barriers Formed before Him                          7
+The Boats Wrecked in an Ice Gorge                   7
+After the Spring Break-Up                          18
+"Hole-in-the-Wall" Rock on the Upper Missouri      19
+Palisades of the Upper Missouri                    19
+Great Falls from Cliff Above                       30
+Great Falls from the Front                         31
+"This was Benton"                                  52
+Ruins of Old Fort Benton                           52
+The House of the Bourgeois                         53
+A Round-Up Outfit on the March                     62
+Joe                                                62
+Montana Sheep                                      63
+A Montana Wool-Freighter                           63
+The "Atom I" under Construction                    74
+The Cable Ferry Towed Us Out                       74
+Laid Up with a Broken Rudder                       75
+"Atom" Sailing Up-Stream in a Head Wind            86
+Typical Rapids on Upper Missouri                   87
+Wolf Point, the First Town in 500 Miles            98
+Entrance to the Bad Lands                          99
+Fresh Meat!                                       110
+Supper!                                           111
+"Walking" Boats over Shallows                     126
+Typical Upper Missouri River Reach                126
+The Mouth of the James                            127
+Reveille!                                         142
+The Pen and Key Ranch                             143
+Assiniboine Indian Chief                          154
+Assiniboine Indian Camp                           155
+On the Hurricane Deck of the "Expansion";
+    Capt. Marsh Third from the Left               166
+Fort Union in 1837                                167
+Site of Old Fort Union                            167
+Boats Laid Up for the Winter at Washburn, N.D.    178
+Washburn, N.D.                                    178
+The Landing at Bismarck, N.D.                     179
+The Yankton Landing in the Old Days               192
+"Atom II" Landing at Sioux City                   193
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER AND I
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER AND I
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RIVER OF AN UNWRITTEN EPIC
+
+
+It was Carlyle--was it not?--who said that all great works produce an
+unpleasant impression on first acquaintance. It is so with the Missouri
+River. Carlyle was not, I think, speaking of rivers; but he was speaking
+of masterpieces--and so am I.
+
+It makes little difference to me whether or not an epic goes at a
+hexameter gallop through the ages, or whether it chooses to be a flood
+of muddy water, ripping out a channel from the mountains to the sea. It
+is merely a matter of how the great dynamic force shall express itself.
+
+I have seen trout streams that I thought were better lyrics than I or
+any of my fellows can ever hope to create. I have heard the moaning of
+rain winds among mountain pines that struck me as being equal, at least,
+to _Adonais_. I have seen the solemn rearing of a mountain peak into the
+pale dawn that gave me a deep religious appreciation of my significance
+in the Grand Scheme, as though I had heard and understood a parable from
+the holy lips of an Avatar. And the vast plains of my native country are
+as a mystic scroll unrolled, scrawled with a cabalistic writ of infinite
+things.
+
+In the same sense, I have come to look upon the Missouri as something
+more than a stream of muddy water. It gave me my first big boy dreams.
+It was my ocean. I remember well the first time I looked upon my
+turbulent friend, who has since become as a brother to me. It was from a
+bluff at Kansas City. I know I must have been a very little boy, for the
+terror I felt made me reach up to the saving forefinger of my father,
+lest this insane devil-thing before me should suddenly develop an
+unreasoning hunger for little boys. My father seemed as tall as
+Alexander--and quite as courageous. He seemed to fear it almost not at
+all. And I should have felt little surprise had he taken me in his arms
+and stepped easily over that mile or so of liquid madness. He talked
+calmly about it--quite calmly. He explained at what angle one should
+hold one's body in the current, and how one should conduct one's legs
+and arms in the whirlpools, providing one should swim across.
+
+_Swim across!_ Why, it took a giant even to talk that way! For the
+summer had smitten the distant mountains, and the June floods ran. Far
+across the yellow swirl that spread out into the wooded bottom-lands, we
+watched the demolition of a little town. The siege had reached the
+proper stage for a sally, and the attacking forces were howling over the
+walls. The sacking was in progress. Shacks, stores, outhouses suddenly
+developed a frantic desire to go to St. Louis. It was a weird retreat in
+very bad order. A cottage with a garret window that glared like the eye
+of a Cyclops, trembled, rocked with the athletic lift of the flood, made
+a panicky plunge into a convenient tree; groaned, dodged, and took off
+through the brush like a scared cottontail. I felt a boy's pity and
+sympathy for those houses that got up and took to their legs across the
+yellow waste. It did not seem fair. I have since experienced the same
+feeling for a jack-rabbit with the hounds a-yelp at its heels.
+
+But--to _swim_ this thing! To fight this cruel, invulnerable, resistless
+giant that went roaring down the world with a huge uprooted oak tree in
+its mouth for a toothpick! This yellow, sinuous beast with hell-broth
+slavering from its jaws! This dare-devil boy-god that sauntered along
+with a town in its pocket, and a steepled church under its arm for a
+moment's toy! Swim _this_?
+
+For days I marvelled at the magnificence of being a fullgrown man,
+unafraid of big rivers.
+
+But the first sight of the Missouri River was not enough for me. There
+was a dreadful fascination about it--the fascination of all huge and
+irresistible things. I had caught my first wee glimpse into the
+infinite; I was six years old.
+
+Many a lazy Sunday stroll took us back to the river; and little by
+little the dread became less, and the wonder grew--and a little love
+crept in. In my boy heart I condoned its treachery and its giant sins.
+For, after all, it sinned through excess of strength, not through
+weakness. And that is the eternal way of virile things. We watched the
+steamboats loading for what seemed to me far distant ports. (How the
+world shrinks!) A double stream of "roosters" coming and going at a
+dog-trot rushed the freight aboard; and at the foot of the gang-plank
+the mate swore masterfully while the perspiration dripped from the point
+of his nose.
+
+And then--the raucous whistles blew. They reminded me of the lions
+roaring at the circus. The gang-plank went up, the hawsers went in. The
+snub nose of the steamer swung out with a quiet majesty. Now she feels
+the urge of the flood, and yields herself to it, already dwindled to
+half her size. The pilot turns his wheel--he looks very big and quiet
+and masterful up there. The boat veers round; bells jangle. And now the
+engine wakens in earnest. She breathes with spurts of vapor!
+
+Breathed? No, it was sighing; for about it all clung an inexplicable
+sadness for me--the sadness that clings about all strong and beautiful
+things that must leave their moorings and go very, very far away. (I
+have since heard it said that river boats are not beautiful!) My throat
+felt as though it had smoke in it. I felt that this queenly thing really
+wanted to stay; for far down the muddy swirl where she dwindled,
+dwindled, I heard her sobbing hoarsely.
+
+Off on the perilous flood for "faërie lands forlorn"! It made the world
+seem almost empty and very lonesome.
+
+And then the dog-days came, and I saw my river tawny, sinewy, gaunt--a
+half-starved lion. The long dry bars were like the protruding ribs of
+the beast when the prey is scarce, and the ropy main current was like
+the lean, terrible muscles of its back.
+
+In the spring it had roared; now it only purred. But all the while I
+felt in it a dreadful economy of force, just as I have since felt it in
+the presence of a great lean jungle-cat at the zoo. Here was a thing
+that crouched and purred--a mewing but terrific thing. Give it an
+obstacle to overcome--fling it something to devour; and lo! the crushing
+impact of its leap!
+
+And then again I saw it lying very quietly in the clutch of a bitter
+winter--an awful hush upon it, and the white cerement of the snow flung
+across its face. And yet, this did not seem like death; for still one
+felt in it the subtle influence of a tremendous personality. It slept,
+but sleeping it was still a giant. It seemed that at any moment the
+sleeper might turn over, toss the white cover aside and, yawning,
+saunter down the valley with its thunderous seven-league boots. And
+still, back and forth across this heavy sleeper went the pigmy wagons of
+the farmers taking corn to market!
+
+[Illustration: "OFF ON THE PERILOUS FLOODS."]
+
+[Illustration: BARRIERS FORMED BEFORE HIM.]
+
+[Illustration: THE BOATS WRECKED IN AN ICE GORGE.]
+
+But one day in March the far-flung arrows of the geese went over. _Honk!
+honk!_ A vague, prophetic sense crept into the world out of
+nowhere--part sound, part scent, and yet too vague for either. Sap
+seeped from the maples. Weird mist-things went moaning through the
+night. And then, for the first time, I saw my big brother win a fight!
+
+For days, strange premonitory noises had run across the shivering
+surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent
+booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato
+crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent
+bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the
+disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a line of
+cavalry unsheathing sabres.
+
+But all the while, no show of violence--only the awful quietness with
+deluge potential in it. The lion was crouching for the leap.
+
+Then one day under the warm sun a booming as of distant big guns began.
+Faster and louder came the dull shaking thunders, and passed swiftly up
+and down, drawling into the distance. Fissures yawned, and the sound of
+the grumbling black water beneath came up. Here and there the surface
+lifted--bent--broke with shriekings, groanings, thunderings. And
+then----
+
+The giant turned over, yawned and got to his feet, flinging his arms
+about him! Barriers formed before him. Confidently he set his massive
+shoulders against them--smashed them into little blocks, and went on
+singing, shouting, toward the sea. It was a glorious victory. It made me
+very proud of my big brother. And yet all the while I dreaded him--just
+as I dread the caged tiger that I long to caress because he is so strong
+and so beautiful.
+
+Since then I have changed somewhat, though I am hardly as tall, and
+certainly not so courageous as Alexander. But I have felt the sinews of
+the old yellow giant tighen about my naked body. I have been bent upon
+his hip. I have presumed to throw against his Titan strength the craft
+of man. I have often swum in what seemed liquid madness to my boyhood.
+And we have become acquainted through battle. No friends like fair foes
+reconciled!
+
+And I have been panting on his bars, while all about me went the lisping
+laughter of my brother. For he has the strength of a god, the headlong
+temper of a comet; but along with these he has the glad, mad,
+irresponsible spirit of a boy. Thus ever are the epic things.
+
+The Missouri is unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the
+beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace--and His precept
+was the Missouri. To me, the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber is
+a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a fantastic fairy-tale; the Nile a
+mummy, periodically resurrected; the Mississippi, a convenient
+geographical boundary line; the Hudson, an epicurean philosopher.
+
+But the Missouri--my brother--is the eternal Fighting Man!
+
+I love things that yearn toward far seas: the singing Tennysonian brooks
+that flow by "Philip's farm" but "go on forever"; the little Ik Walton
+rivers, where one may "study to be quiet and go a-fishing"! The
+Babylonian streams by which we have all pined in captivity; the
+sentimental Danube's which we can never forget because of "that night in
+June"; and at a very early age I had already developed a decent respect
+for the verbose manner in which the "waters come down at Lodore."
+
+But the Missouri is more than a sentiment--even more than an epic. It is
+the symbol of my own soul, which is, I surmise, not unlike other souls.
+In it I see flung before me all the stern world-old struggle become
+materialized. Here is the concrete representation of the earnest desire,
+the momentarily frustrate purpose, the beating at the bars, the
+breathless fighting of the half-whipped but never-to-be-conquered
+spirit, the sobbing of the wind-broken runner, the anger, the madness,
+the laughter. And in it all the unwearying urge of a purpose, the
+unswerving belief in the peace of a far away ocean.
+
+If in a moment of despair I should reel for a breathing space away from
+the fight, with no heart for battle-cries, and with only a desire to
+pray, I could do it in no better manner than to lift my arms above the
+river and cry out into the big spaces: "You who somehow
+understand--behold this river! It expresses what is voiceless in me. It
+prays for me!"
+
+Not only in its physical aspect does the Missouri appeal to the
+imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth--a distance of three thousand
+miles--this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps
+never before in the history of the world has a river been the
+thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so
+vastly significant in its relation to the development of man. And in the
+building of the continent Nature fashioned well the scenery for the
+great human story that was to be enacted here in the fullness of years.
+She built her stage on a large scale, taking no account of miles; for
+the coming actors were to be big men, mighty travelers, intrepid
+fighters, laughers at time and space. Plains limited only by the rim of
+sky; mountains severe, huge, tragic as fate; deserts for the trying of
+strong spirits; grotesque volcanic lands--dead, utterly
+ultra-human--where athletic souls might struggle with despair; impetuous
+streams with their rapids terrible as Scylla, where men might go down
+fighting: thus Nature built the stage and set the scenes. And that the
+arrangements might be complete, she left a vast tract unfinished, where
+still the building of the world goes on--a place of awe in which to feel
+the mighty Doer of Things at work. Indeed, a setting vast and weird
+enough for the coming epic. And as the essence of all story is struggle,
+tribes of wild fighting men grew up in the land to oppose the coming
+masters; and over the limitless wastes swept the blizzards.
+
+I remember when I first read the words of Vergil beginning _Ubi tot
+Simois_, "where the Simois rolls along so many shields and helmets and
+strong bodies of brave men snatched beneath its floods." The far-seeing
+sadness of the lines thrilled me; for it was not of the little stream of
+the _Æneid_ that I thought while the Latin professor quizzed me as to
+constructions, but of that great river of my own epic country--the
+Missouri. Was I unfair to old Vergil, think you? As for me, I think I
+flattered him a bit! And in this modern application, the ancient lines
+ring true. For the Missouri from Great Falls to its mouth is one long
+grave of men and boats. And such men!
+
+It is a time-honored habit to look back through the ages for the epic
+things. Modern affairs seem a bit commonplace to some of us. A horde of
+semi-savages tears down a town in order to avenge the theft of a
+faithless wife who was probably no better than she should have been--and
+we have the _Iliad_. A petty king sets sail for his native land, somehow
+losing himself ten years among the isles of Greece--and we have the
+_Odyssey_. (I would back a Missouri River "rat" to make the distance in
+a row boat within a few months!) An Argive captain returns home after an
+absence of ten years to find his wife interested overmuch in a friend
+who went not forth to battle; a wrangle ensues; the tender spouse
+finishes her lord with an axe--and you have the _Agamemnon_. (To-day we
+should merely have a sensational trial, and hysterical scareheads in the
+newspapers.) Such were the ancient stories that move us all--sordid
+enough, be sure, when you push them hard for fact. But time and genius
+have glorified them. Not the deeds, but Homer and Æschylus and the
+hallowing years are great.
+
+We no longer write epics--we live them. To create an epic, it has been
+said somewhere, the poet must write with the belief that the immortal
+gods are looking over his shoulder.
+
+We no longer prostrate ourselves before the immortal gods. We have long
+since discovered the divinity within ourselves, and so we have flung
+across the continents and the seas the visible epics of will.
+
+The history of the American fur trade alone makes the Trojan War look
+like a Punch and Judy show! and the Missouri River was the path of the
+conquerors. We have the facts--but we have not Homer.
+
+An epic story in its essence is the story of heroic men battling, aided
+or frustrated by the superhuman. And in the fur trade era there was no
+dearth of battling men, and the elements left no lack of superhuman
+obstacles.
+
+I am more thrilled by the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition than
+by the tale of Jason. John Colter, wandering three years in the
+wilderness and discovering the Yellowstone Park, is infinitely more
+heroic to me that Theseus. Alexander Harvey makes Æneas look like a
+degenerate. It was Harvey, you know, who fell out with the powers at
+Fort Union, with the result that he was ordered to report at the
+American Fur Company's office at St. Louis before he could be reinstated
+in the service. This was at Christmas time--Christmas of a Western
+winter. The distance was seventeen hundred miles, as the crow flies.
+"Give me a dog to carry my blankets," said he, "and by God I'll report
+before the ice goes out!" He started afoot through the hostile tribes
+and blizzards. He reported at St. Louis early in March, returning to
+Union by the first boat out that year. And when he arrived at the Fort,
+he called out the man who was responsible for the trouble, and quietly
+killed him. That is the stern human stuff with which you build realms.
+What could not Homer do with such a man? And when one follows him
+through his recorded career, even Achilles seems a bit ladylike beside
+him!
+
+The killing of Carpenter by his treacherous friend, Mike Fink, would
+easily make a whole book of hexameters--with a nice assortment of gods
+and goddesses thrown in. There was a woman in the case--a half-breed.
+Well, this half-breed woman fascinates me quite as much as she whose
+face "launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium"!
+In ancient times the immortal gods scourged nations for impieties; and,
+as we read, we feel the black shadow of inexorable fate moving through
+the terrific gloom of things. But the smallpox scourge that broke out at
+Fort Union in 1837, sweeping with desolation through the prairie tribes,
+moves me more than the storied catastrophes of old. It was a Reign of
+Terror. Even Larpenteur's bald statement of it fills me with the fine
+old Greek sense of fate. Men sickened at dawn and were dead at sunset.
+Every day a cartload or two of corpses went over the bluff into the
+river; and men became reckless. Larpenteur and his friend joked daily
+about the carting of the gruesome freight. They felt the irresistible,
+and they laughed at it, since struggle was out of the question. Some
+drank deeply and indulged in hysterical orgies. Some hollowed out their
+own graves and waited patiently beside them for the hidden hand to
+strike. At least fifteen thousand died--Audubon says one hundred and
+fifty thousand; and the buffalo increased rapidly--because the hunters
+were few.
+
+Would not such a story--here briefly sketched--move old Sophocles?
+
+The story of the half-breed woman--a giantess--who had a dozen sons, has
+about it for me all the glamour of an ancient yarn. The sons were
+free-trappers, you know, and, incidentally, thieves and murderers. (I
+suspect some of our classic heroes were as much!) But they were
+doubtless living up to the light that was in them, and they were game to
+the finish. So was the old woman; they called her "the mother of the
+devils." Trappers from the various posts organized to hunt them down,
+and the mother and the sons barricaded their home. The fight was a hard
+one. One by one the "devils" fell fighting about their mother. And then
+the besieging party fired the house. With all her sons wounded or dead,
+the old woman sallied forth. She fought like a grizzly and went down
+like a heroine.
+
+A sordid, brutal story? Ah, but it was life! Fling about this story of
+savage mother-love the glamour of time and genius, and it will move you!
+
+And the story of old Hugh Glass! Is it not fateful enough to be the
+foundation of a tremendous Æschylean drama? A big man he was--old and
+bearded. A devil to fight, a giant to endure, and an angel to forgive!
+He was in the Leavenworth campaign against the Aricaras, and afterward
+he went as a hunter with the Henry expedition. He had a friend--a mere
+boy--and these two were very close. One day Glass, who was in advance of
+the party, beating up the country for game, fell in with a grizzly; and
+when the main party came up, he lay horribly mangled with the bear
+standing over him. They killed the bear, but the old man seemed done
+for; his face had all the features scraped off, and one of his legs went
+wabbly when they lifted him.
+
+It was merely a matter of one more man being dead, so the expedition
+pushed on, leaving the young friend with several others to see the old
+man under ground. But the old man was a fighter and refused to die,
+though he was unconscious: held on stubbornly for several days, but it
+seemed plain enough that he would have to let go soon. So the young
+friend and the others left the old man in the wilderness to finish up
+the job by himself. They took his weapons and hastened after the main
+party, for the country was hostile.
+
+But one day old Glass woke up and got one of his eyes open. And when he
+saw how things stood, he swore to God he would live, merely for the sake
+of killing his false friend. He crawled to a spring near by, where he
+found a bush of ripe bull-berries. He waited day after day for strength,
+and finally started out to _crawl_ a small matter of one hundred miles
+to the nearest fort. And he did it, too! Also he found his friend after
+much wandering--and forgave him.
+
+Fancy Æschylus working up that story with the Furies for a chorus and
+Nemesis appearing at intervals to nerve the old hero!
+
+[Illustration: AFTER THE SPRING BREAK-UP.]
+
+[Illustration: "HOLE-IN-THE-WALL" ON THE UPPER MISSOURI.]
+
+[Illustration: PALISADES OF THE UPPER MISSOURI.]
+
+And Rose the Renegade, who became the chief of a powerful tribe of
+Indians! And Father de Smet, one of the noblest figures in history,
+carrying the gospel into the wilderness! And Le Barge, the famous pilot,
+whose biography reads like a romance! In the history of the Missouri
+River there were hundreds of these heroes, these builders of the epic
+West. Some of them were violent at times; some were good men and some
+were bad. But they were masterful always. They met obstacles and
+overcame them. They struck their foes in front. They thirsted in
+deserts, hungered in the wilderness, froze in the blizzards, died with
+the plagues, and were massacred by the savages. Yet they conquered.
+Heroes of an unwritten epic! And their pathway to defeat and victory was
+the Missouri River.
+
+If you wish to have your epic spiced with the glamour of kings, the
+history of the river will not fail you; for in those days there were
+kings as well as giants in the land. Though it was not called such, all
+the blank space of the map of the Missouri River country and even to the
+Pacific, was one vast empire--the empire of the American Fur Company;
+and J.J. Astor in New York spoke the words that filled the wilderness
+with deeds. Thus democratic America once beheld within her own confines
+the paradox of an empire truly Roman in character.
+
+Here and there on the banks of the great waterway--an imperial road that
+would have delighted Cæsar--many forts were built. These were the
+ganglia of that tremendous organism of which Astor was the brain. The
+bourgeois of one of these posts was virtually proconsul with absolute
+power in his territory. Mackenzie at Union--which might be called the
+capital of the Upper Missouri country--was called "King of the
+Missouri." He had an eye for seeing purple. At one time he ordered a
+complete suit of armor from England; and even went so far as to have
+medals struck, in true imperial fashion, to be distributed among his
+loyal followers.
+
+Far and wide these Western American kings flung the trappers, their
+subjects, into the wilderness. Verily, in the unwritten "Missouriad"
+there is no lack of regal glamour.
+
+The ancients had a way of making vast things small enough to be
+familiar. They make gods of the elements, and natural phenomena became
+to them the awful acts of the gods.
+
+These moderns made no gods of the elements--they merely conquered them!
+The ancients idealized the material. These moderns materialized the
+ideal. The latter method is much more appealing to me--an American--than
+the former. I love the ancient stories; but it is for the modern
+marvellous facts that I reserve my admiration.
+
+When one looks upon his own country as from a height of years, old tales
+lose something of their wonder for him. It is owing to this attitude
+that the prospect of descending the great river in a power canoe from
+the head of navigation gave me delight.
+
+Days and nights filled with the singing and muttering of my big brother!
+And I would need only to close my eyes, and all about me would come and
+go the ghosts of the mighty doers--who are my kin. Big men, bearded and
+powerful, pushing up stream with the cordelle on their shoulders!
+Voyageurs chanting at the paddles! Mackinaws descending with precious
+freights of furs! Steamboats grunting and snoring up stream! Old forts
+sprung up again out of the dusk of things forgotten, with all the old
+turbulent life, where in reality to-day the plough of the farmer goes or
+the steers browse! Forgotten battles blowing by in the wind! And from a
+bluff's summit, here and there, ghostly war parties peering down upon
+me--the lesser kin of their old enemies--taking a summer's outing where
+of old went forth the fighting men, the builders of the unwritten epic!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SIXTEEN MILES OF AWE
+
+
+Our party of three left the railroad at Great Falls, a good two-days'
+walk up river from Benton, the head of Missouri River navigation, to
+which point our boat material had been shipped and our baggage checked.
+
+A vast sun-burned waste of buffalo-grass, prickly pears, and sagebrush
+stretched before us to the north and east; and on the west the filmy
+blue contour of the Highwoods Mountains lifted like sun-smitten thunder
+clouds in the July swelter. One squinting far look, however, told you
+that these were not rain clouds. The very thought of rain came to you
+with the vagueness of some birth-surviving memory of a former time. You
+looked far up and out to the westward and caught the glint of snow on
+the higher peaks. But the sight was unconvincing; it was like a story
+told without the "vital impulse." Always had these plains blistered
+under this July sun; always had the spots of alkali made the only
+whiteness; and the dry harsh snarl and snap of the grasshoppers' wings
+had pricked this torrid silence through all eternity.
+
+A stern and pitiless prospect for the amateur pedestrian, to be sure;
+for devotees of the staff and pack have come to associate pedestrianism
+with the idyllic, and the idyllic nourishes only in a land of frequent
+showers. Theocritus and prickly pears are not compatible. Yet it was not
+without a certain thrill of exaltation that we strapped on our packs and
+stretched our legs after four days on the dusty plush.
+
+And though ahead of us lay no shady, amiably crooked country roads and
+bosky dells, wherein one might lounge and dawdle over Hazlitt, yet we
+knew how crisscross cattle-trails should take us skirting down the
+river's sixteen miles of awe.
+
+Five hundred miles below its source, the falls of the Missouri begin
+with a vertical plunge of sixty feet. This is the Black Eagle Falls,
+presumably named so by Lewis and Clark and other explorers, because of
+the black eagles found there.
+
+With all due courtesy to my big surly grumbling friend, the Black Eagle
+Falls, I must say that I was a bit disappointed in him. Oh! he is quite
+magnificent enough, and every inch a Titan, to be sure; but of late
+years it seems he has taken up with company rather beneath him. First of
+all, he has gone to work in a most plebeian, almost slave-like fashion,
+turning wheels and making lights and dragging silly little trolley cars
+about a straggling town. Also, he hobnobs continually with a sprawling,
+brawling, bad-breathed smelter, as no respectable Titan should do. And
+on top of it all--and this was the straw that broke the back of my
+sentimental camel--he allows them to maintain a park on the cliffs above
+him, where the merest white-skinned, counter-jumping pigmy may come of a
+Sunday for his glass of pop and a careless squint at the toiling Titan.
+Puny Philistines eating peanuts and watching Samson at his Gaza stunt! I
+like it not. Rather would I see the Muse Clio pealing potatoes or
+Persephone busy with a banana cart! Encleadus wriggling under a mountain
+is well enough; but Enceladus composedly turning a crank for little
+men--he seemed too heavy for that light work.
+
+Leaning on the frame observation platform, I closed my eyes, and in the
+dull roar that seemed the voices of countless ages, the park and the
+smelter and the silly bustling trolley cars and the ginger-ale and the
+peanuts and my physical self--all but my own soul--were swallowed up. I
+saw my Titan brother as he was made--four hundred yards of writhing,
+liquid sinew, strenuously idle, magnificently worthless, flinging
+meaningless thunders over the vast arid plain, splendidly empty under
+sun and stars! I saw him as La Verendrye must have seen him--busy only
+at the divine business of being a giant. And for a moment behind shut
+eyes, it seemed very inconsequential to me that cranks should be turned
+and that trolley cars should run up and down precisely in the same
+place, never getting anywhere, and that there should be anything in all
+that tract but an austere black eagle or two, and my own soul, and my
+Titan brother.
+
+When I looked again, I could half imagine the old turbulent fellow
+winking slyly at me and saying in that undertone you hear when you
+forget the thunders for a moment: "Don't you worry about me, little man.
+It's all a joke, and I don't mind. Only to-morrow and then another
+to-morrow, and there won't be any smelters or trolley cars or ginger-ale
+or peanuts or sentimentalizing outers like yourself. But I'll be here
+howling under sun and stars."
+
+Whereupon I posed the toiling philosopher before the camera, pressed
+the bulb, and descended from the summit of the cliff (as well as from my
+point of view) to the trail skirting northward up the river, leaving
+Encleadus grumbling at his crank.
+
+Perhaps, after all, cranks really have to be turned. Still, it seems too
+bad, and I have long bewailed it almost as a personal grief, that
+utility and ugliness should so often be running mates.
+
+They tell me that the Matterhorn never did a tap of work; and you
+couldn't color one Easter egg with all the gorgeous sunsets of the
+world! May we all become, some day, perfectly useless and beautiful!
+
+At the foot of the first fall, a mammoth spring wells up out of the
+rock. Nobody tells you about it; you run across it by chance, and it
+interests you much more in that way. It would seem that a spring
+throwing out a stream equivalent to a river one hundred yards wide and
+two feet deep would deserve a little exploitation. Down East they would
+have a great white sprawling hotel built close by it wherein one could
+drink spring water (at a quarter the quart), with half a pathology
+pasted on the bottle as a label. But nobody seems to care much about so
+small an ooze out there: everything else is so big. And so it has
+nothing at all to do but go right on being one of the very biggest
+springs of all the world. This is really something; and I like it better
+than the quarter-per-quart idea.
+
+In sixteen miles the Missouri River falls four hundred feet.
+Incidentally, this stretch of river is said to be capable of producing
+the most tremendous water-power in the world.
+
+After skirting four miles of water that ran like a mill-race, we came
+upon the Rainbow Falls, where a thousand feet of river takes a drop of
+fifty feet over a precipice regular as a wall of masonry. This was much
+more to my liking--a million horse-power or so busy making rainbows!
+Bully!
+
+It was a very hot day and the sun was now high. I sat down to wipe the
+sweat out of my eyes. I wished to get acquainted with this weaver of
+iridescent nothings who knew so well the divine art of doing nothing at
+all and doing it good and hard! After all, it isn't so easy to do
+nothing and make it count!
+
+And in the end, when all broken lights have blended again with the
+Source Light, I'm not so sure that rainbows will seem less important
+than rows and rows of arc lights and clusters and clusters of
+incandescent globes. Are you? I can contract an indefinable sort of
+heartache from the blue sputter of a city light that snuffs out moon and
+stars for tired scurrying folks: but the opalescent mist-drift of the
+Rainbow Falls wove heavens for me in its sheen, and through its
+whirlwind rifts and crystal flaws, far reaches opened up with all the
+heart's desire at the other end. You shut your eyes with that thunder in
+your ears and that gusty mist on your face, and you see it very
+plainly--more plainly than ever so many arc lights could make you see
+it--the ultimate meaning of things. To be sure, when you open your eyes
+again, it's all gone--the storm-flung rainbows seem to hide it again.
+
+A mile below, we came upon the Crooked Falls of twenty feet. Leaving the
+left bank and running almost parallel with it for some three hundred
+yards, then turning and making a horseshoe, and returning to the right
+bank almost opposite the place of first observation, this fall is nearly
+a mile in length, being an unbroken sheet for that distance. This one,
+also, does nothing at all, and in a beautifully irregular way. Somehow
+it made me think of Walt Whitman! But we left it soon, swinging out
+into the open parched country. We knew all this turbulence to be merely
+the river's bow before the great stunt.
+
+As we swung along, kicking up the acrid alkali dust from the
+cattle-trail that snaked its way through the cactus and sagebrush, the
+roar behind us died; and before us, far away, dull muffled thunders grew
+up in the hush of the burning noon. Thunders in a desert, and no cloud!
+For an hour we swung along the trail, and ever the thunders
+increased--like the undertone of the surf when the sea whitens. We were
+approaching the Great Falls of the Missouri. There were no sign posts in
+that lonesome tract; no one of whom to ask the way. Little did we need
+direction. The voice of thunder crying in the desert led us surely.
+
+A half-hour more of clambering over shale-strewn gullies, up sun-baked
+watercourses, and we found ourselves toiling up the ragged slope of a
+bluff; and soon we stood upon a rocky ledge with the thunders beneath
+us. Damp gusts beat upward over the blistering scarp of the cliff. I lay
+down, and crawling to the edge, looked over. Two hundred feet below
+me--straight down as a pebble drops--a watery Inferno raged, and
+far-flung whirlwinds all but exhausted with the dizzy upward reach,
+whisked cool, invisible mops of mist across my face.
+
+Flung down a preliminary mile of steep descent, choked in between
+soaring walls of rock four hundred yards apart, innumerable crystal tons
+rushed down ninety feet in one magnificent plunge. You saw the long bent
+crest--shimmering with the changing colors of a peacock's back--smooth
+as a lake when all winds sleep; and then the mighty river was snuffed
+out in gulfs of angry gray. Capricious river draughts, sucking up the
+damp defile, whipped upward into the blistering sunlight gray spiral
+towers that leaped into opal fires and dissolved in showers of diamond
+and pearl and amethyst.
+
+[Illustration: GREAT FALLS FROM CLIFF ABOVE.]
+
+[Illustration: GREAT FALLS FROM THE FRONT.]
+
+I caught myself tightly gripping the ledge and shrinking with a
+shuddering instinctive fear. Then suddenly the thunders seemed to stifle
+all memory of sound--and left only the silent universe with myself and
+this terribly beautiful thing in the midst of utter emptiness. And I
+loved it with a strange, desperate, tigerish love. It expressed itself
+so magnificently; and that is really all a man, or a waterfall, or a
+mountain, or a flower, or a grasshopper, or a meadow lark, or an ocean,
+or a thunderstorm has to do in this world. And it was doing it right
+out in the middle of a desert, bleak, sun-leprosied, forbidding, with
+only the stars and the moon and the sun and a cliff-swallow or two to
+behold. Thundering out its message into the waste places, careless of
+audiences--like a Master! Bully, grizzled old Master-Bard singing--as
+most of them do--to empty benches! And it had been doing that ten
+thousand thousand years, and would do so for ten thousand thousand more,
+and never pause for plaudits. I suspect the soul of old Homer did
+that--and is still doing it, somehow, somewhere. After all there isn't
+much difference between really tremendous things--Homer or waterfalls or
+thunderstorms--is there? It's only a matter of how things happen to be
+big.
+
+I was absent-mindedly chasing some big thundering line of Sophocles when
+Bill, the little Cornishman, ran in between me and the evasive line:
+"Lord! what a waste of power!"
+
+There is some difference in temperaments. Most men, I fancy, would have
+enjoyed a talk with a civil engineer upon that ledge. I should have
+liked to have Shelley there, myself! It's the difference between poetry
+and horse-power, dithyrambics and dynamos, Keats and Kipling! What is
+the energy exerted by the Great Falls of the Missouri? How many
+horse-power did Shelley fling into the creation of his _West Wind_? How
+many foot-pounds did the boy heart of Chatterton beat before it broke?
+Something may be left to the imagination!
+
+We backtrailed to a point where the cliff fell away into a rock-strewn
+incline, and clambered down a break-neck slope to the edge of the
+crystal broil. There was a strange exhilaration about it--a novel sense
+of discovering a natural wonder for ourselves. We seemed the first men
+who had ever been there: that was the most gripping thing about it.
+
+Aloof, stupendous, terriffic, staggering in the intensity of its wild
+beauty, you reach it by a trail. There are no 'busses running and you
+can't buy a sandwich or a peanut or a glass of beer within ten miles of
+its far-flung thunders. For twentieth century America, that is doing
+rather well!
+
+Skirting the slippery rocks at the lip of the mad flood, we swung
+ourselves about a ledge, dripping with the cool mist-drift; descended to
+the level of the lower basin, where a soaking fog made us shiver; pushed
+through a dripping, oozing, autumnal sort of twilight, and came out
+again into the beat of the desert sun, to look squarely into the face of
+the giant.
+
+A hawk wheeled and swooped and floated far up in the dazzling air.
+Somehow that hawk seemed to make the lonely place doubly lonely. Did you
+ever notice how a lone coyote on a snow-heaped prairie gives you a
+heartache, whereas the empty waste would only have exhilarated you?
+Always, it seemed, that veering hawk had hung there, and would hang so
+always--outliving the rising of suns and the drifting of stars and the
+visits of the moon.
+
+A vague sense of grief came over me at the thought of all this eternal
+restlessness, this turbulent fixity; and, after all, it seemed much
+greater to be even a very little man, living largely, dying, somehow,
+into something big and new; than to be this Promethean sort of thing, a
+giant waterfall in a waste.
+
+I have known men who felt dwarfed in the presence of vast and awful
+things. I never felt bigger than when I first looked upon the ocean. The
+skyward lift of a mountain peak makes me feel very, very tall. And when
+a thunderstorm comes down upon the world out of the northwest, with
+jagged blades of fire ripping up the black bellies of the clouds, I know
+all about the heart of Attila and the Vikings and tigers and Alexander
+the Great! So I think I grew a bit out there talking to that water-giant
+who does nothing at all--not even a vaudeville stunt--and does it so
+masterfully.
+
+By and by they'll build a hotel in the flat at the edge of the lower
+basin; plant prim flowers in very prim beds; and rob you on the genteel
+European plan. Comfortably sitting in a willow chair on the broad
+veranda, one will read the signs on those cliffs--all about the best
+shoes to wear, and what particular pill of all the pills that be, should
+be taken for that ailing kidney. But it will not be I who shall sit in
+that willow chair on that broad, as yet unbuilt, veranda.
+
+The sun was glinting at the rim of the cliffs, and the place of awe and
+thunders was slowly filling with shadow. We found a steep trail,
+inaccessible for vehicles, leading upward in the direction of Benton. It
+was getting that time of day when even a sentimentalist wants a
+beefsteak, especially if he has hiked over dusty scorching trails and
+scrambled over rocks all day.
+
+Some kind man back in the town, with a fund of that most useless
+article, information, had told us of a place called Goodale,
+theoretically existing on the Great Northern Railroad between Great
+Falls and Benton. We had provided only for luncheon, trusting to fate
+and Goodale for supper.
+
+Goodale! A truly beautiful name! No doubt in some miraculous way the
+character of the country changed suddenly just before you got there
+merely to justify the name. Surely no one would have the temerity to
+conjure up so beautiful a name for a desert town. Yet, half unwillingly,
+I thought of a little place I once visited--against my will, since the
+brakeman put me off there--by the name of Forest City. I remembered with
+misgivings how there wasn't a tree within something like four hundred
+miles. But I pushed that memory aside as a lying prophet. I believed in
+Goodale and beefsteak. Goodale would be a neat, quiet little town, set
+snugly in a verdant valley. We would come into it by starlight--down a
+careless gypsying sort of country road; and there would be the sound of
+a dear little trickling bickering cool stream out in the shadows of the
+trees fringing the approach to Goodale. And we'd pass pretty little
+cottages with vines growing over the doors, and hollyhocks peeping over
+the fences, and cheerful lights in the windows.
+
+Goodale! And then, right in the middle of the town (no, _village_--the
+word is cosier somehow)--right in the middle of the village there would
+be a big restaurant, with such alluring scents of beefsteak all about
+it.
+
+I set the pace up that trail. It was a swinging, loose, cavalry-horse
+sort of pace--the kind that rubs the blue off the distance and paints
+the back trail gray. Goodale was a sort of Mecca. I thought of it with
+something like a religious awe. How far was Goodale, would you suppose?
+Not far, certainly, once we found the railroad.
+
+We made the last steep climb breathlessly, and came out on the level. A
+great, monotonous, heartachy prairie lay before us--utterly featureless
+in the twilight. Far off across the scabby land a thin black line swept
+out of the dusk into the dusk--straight as a crow's flight. It was the
+railroad. We made a cross-cut for it, tumbling over gopher holes,
+plunging through sagebrush, scrambling over gullies that told the
+incredible tale of torrents having been there once. I ate quantities of
+alkali dust and went on believing in Goodale and beefsteak. Beefsteak
+became one of the principal stations on the Great Northern Railroad, so
+far as I was concerned personally. That is what you might call the
+geography of a healthy stomach.
+
+With the falling of the sun the climate of the country had changed. It
+was no longer blistering. You sat down for a moment and a shiver went up
+your spine. At noon I thought about all the lime-kilns I had ever met.
+Now I could hear the hickory nuts dropping in the crisp silence down in
+the old Missouri woods.
+
+We struck the railroad and went faster. Since my first experience with
+railroad ties, I have continued to associate them with hunger. I need
+only look an ordinary railroad tie in the face to contract a wonderful
+appetite. It works on the principle of a memory system. So, as we put
+the ties behind us, I increased my order at that restaurant in the sweet
+little pedestrian's village of Goodale. "A couple of eggs on the side,
+waiter," I said half audibly to the petite woman in the white apron who
+served the tables in the restaurant there. She was very real to me. I
+could count the rings on her fingers; and when she smiled, I noted that
+her teeth were very white--doubtless they got that way from eating
+quantities and quantities of thick juicy beefsteak!
+
+The track took a sudden turn ahead. "Around that bend," I said aloud,
+"lies Goodale." We went faster. We rounded the bend, only to see the
+dusky, heartachy, barren stretch.
+
+"Railroads," explained I to myself, "have a way of going somewhere; it
+is one of their peculiarities." No doubt this track had been laid for
+the express purpose of guiding hungry folks to the hospitable little
+village. We plunged on for an hour. Meanwhile my orders to the trim
+little woman in the white apron increased steadily. She smiled broadly
+but winsomely, showing those charming beefsteak-polished teeth. They
+shone like a beacon ahead of me, for it was now dark.
+
+Suddenly we came upon a signboard. We went up to it, struck a match, and
+read breathlessly--"GOODALE."
+
+We looked about us. Goodale was a switch and a box car.
+
+              Nothing beside remains,
+
+I quoted,
+
+                'round the decay
+    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
+    The lone and level sands stretch far away.
+
+Alas for the trim little lady with the white teeth and the smile and the
+beefsteak!
+
+We said bitter things there in that waste about the man with the
+information. We loaded his memory with anathemas. One cannot eat a
+signboard, even with so inviting a name upon it. An idea struck me--it
+seemed a very brilliant one at the moment. I sat down and delivered
+myself of it to my companions, who also had lusted after the flesh-pots.
+"We have wronged that man with the information," said I. "He was no
+ordinary individual; he was a prophet: he simply got his dates mixed. In
+precisely one hundred years from now, there will be a town on this
+spot--and a restaurant! Shall we wait?"
+
+They cursed me bitterly. I suspect neither of them is a philosopher.
+Thereat I proceeded to eat a thick juicy steak from the T-bone portion
+of an unborn steer, served by the trim little lady of a hundred years
+hence, there in that potential village of Goodale. And as I smoked my
+cigarette, I felt very thankful for all the beautiful things that do not
+exist.
+
+And I slept that night in the great front bedroom, the ceiling of which
+is of diamond and turquoise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HALF-WAY TO THE MOON
+
+
+At last the sinuous yellow road dropped over the bluff rim and, to all
+appearances, dissolved into the sky--a gray-blue, genius-colored sky.
+
+It was sundown, and this was the end of the trail for us. Beneath the
+bluff rim lay Benton. We flung ourselves down in the bunch-grass that
+whispered dryly in a cool wind fresh from the creeping night-shade. Now
+that Benton lay beneath us, I was in no hurry to look upon it.
+
+_Fort Benton?_ What a clarion cry that name had been to me! Old men--too
+old for voyages--had talked about this place; a long time ago, 'way down
+on the Kansas City docks, I had heard them. How far away it was then!
+Reach after reach, bend after bend, grunting, snoring, toiling, sparring
+over bars, bucking the currents, dodging the snags, went the snub-nosed
+steamers--brave little steamers!--forging on toward Fort Benton. And it
+was so very, very far away--half-way to the moon no doubt! St. Louis was
+indeed very far away. But Fort Benton!----
+
+Well, they spoke of the Fort Benton traffic as "the mountain trade," and
+I had not then seen a mountain. You could stand on the very tallest
+building in Kansas City, and you could look and look and never see a
+mountain. And to think how far the brave little steamers had to go! How
+_did_ they ever manage to get back?
+
+But the old men on the docks--they had been there and all the way back,
+perhaps hundreds of times. And they were such heroes! Great paw-like
+hands they had, toughened with the gripping of cables; eyes that had
+that way of looking through and far beyond things. (Seamen and plainsmen
+have it.) And they had such romantic, crinkly, wrinkly, leathery faces.
+They got so on the way to Benton and back. And they talked about
+it--those old men lounging on the docks--because it was so far away and
+they were so old that they couldn't get there any more.
+
+What a picture I made out of their kaleidoscopic chatter; beautifully
+inaccurate, impossibly romantic picture, in which big muscley men had
+fights with yawping painted savages that always got gloriously licked,
+in the approved story-book manner! I could shut my eyes and see it all
+very plainly, away off there half-way to the moon. And I used to wonder
+how my father could be such a strong man and never have any hankering to
+go up there at all! The two facts were quite incompatible. He should
+have been a captain and taken me on for cub pilot, or at least a
+"striker" engineer; though I wouldn't have objected seriously to the
+business of a cabin boy. I thought it would be very nice to engage in
+the mountain trade.
+
+And then, after a while, in the new light that creeps in with years, I
+began to rearrange my picture of things up there; and Benton crept a wee
+bit closer--until I could see its four adobe walls and its two adobe
+bastions, stern with portholes, sitting like bulldogs at the opposite
+corners ready to bark at intruders. And in and out at the big gate went
+the trappers--sturdy, rough-necked, hirsute fellows in buckskins, with
+Northwest fusils on their shoulders; lean-bodied, capable fellows, with
+souls as lean as their bodies, survivors of long hard trails, men who
+could go far and eat little and never give up. I was very fond of that
+sort of man.
+
+Little by little the picture grew. Indian bull boats flocked at the
+river front beneath the stern adobe walls; moored mackinaws swayed in
+the current, waiting to be loaded with peltries and loosed for the long
+drift back to the States; and the keel-boats, looking very fat and lazy,
+unloaded supplies in the late fall that were loaded at St. Louis in the
+early spring. And these had come all the way without the stroke of a
+piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or a pound of steam. Nothing but
+grit and man-muscle to drag them a small matter of two or three thousand
+miles up the current of the most eccentric old duffer of a river in the
+world!
+
+What men it did take to do that! I saw them on the wild shelterless
+banks of the yellow flood--a score or so of them--stripped and sweating
+under the prairie sun, with the cordelle on their calloused shoulders,
+straightening out to the work like honest oxen. What _males_ those
+cordelle men were--what _stayers_! Fed on wild, red meat, lean and round
+of waist, thick of chest, thewed for going on to the finish. Ten or
+fifteen miles a day and every inch a fight! Be sure they didn't do it
+merely for the two or three hundred dollars a year they got from the
+Company. They did it because they were that sort of men, and had to
+express themselves. Everything worth while is done that way.
+
+Do they raise that breed now? Never doubt it! You need only find your
+keel-boats or their equivalents, and the men will come around for the
+job, I'm sure. But when you speak enthusiastically of the old Greek
+doers of things, I'd like to put in a few words for those old up-river
+men. They belong to the unwritten American epic.
+
+And then the keel-boats and the bull-boats and the mackinaws and the
+up-river men flashed out--like a stereopticon picture when the man moves
+the slide; and I saw a little ragged village of log houses scattered
+along the water front. I saw the levees piled with merchandise, and a
+score or more of packets rushing fresh cargoes ashore--mates bawling
+commands down the gangplanks where the roustabouts came and went at a
+trot. Gold-mad hundreds thronged the wagon-rutted streets of this raw
+little village, the commercial center of a vast new empire. Six-horse
+freighters trundled away toward the gold fields; and others trundled in,
+their horses jaded with the precious freight they pulled. And I saw
+steamers dropping out for the long voyage back to the States, freighted
+with cargoes of gold dust--really truly story-book treasure-ships that
+would have made old Captain Kidd's men mad with delight.
+
+As I lay dreaming in the bunch-grass, it all grew up so real that I had
+to get up and take my first look, half expecting to find it all there
+just as in the old days.
+
+We stood at the rim of the bluff and looked down into a cup-like valley
+upon a quiet little village, winking with scattered lights in the
+gloaming. Past it swept the river--glazed with the twilight and
+silver-splotted with early stars.
+
+This was Benton--it could have been almost any other town as well. And
+yet, once upon a time, it had filled my day-dreams with wonders--this
+place that seemed half-way to the moon.
+
+The shrill shriek of a Great Northern locomotive, trundling freight cars
+through the gloom, gave the death-stroke to the old boy-dream. It was
+the cry of modernity. This boisterous, bustling, smoke-breathing thing,
+plunging through the night with flame in its throat, had made the
+change, dragged old Benton out of the far-off lunar regions and set
+what is left of it right down in the back yard of the world. Even a very
+little boy could get there now.
+
+"And yet," thought I, as we set out rapidly for the village in the
+valley, "the difference between the poetry of mackinaws and Great
+Northern locomotives is merely a matter of perspective. If those old
+cordelle men could only come back for a while from their Walhalla, how
+they would crowd about that wind-splitting, fire-eating, iron beast,
+panting from its long run, and catching its breath for another plunge
+into the waste places and the night! And I? I would be gazing
+wide-mouthed at the cordelle men. It's only the human curiosity about
+the other side of the moon. How perfect the nights would be if we could
+only see that lost Pleiad!"
+
+Ankle-deep in the powdery sand, we entered the little town with its
+business row facing the water front. One glance at the empty levees told
+you of the town's dead glory. Not a steamboat's stacks, blackening in
+the gloom, broke the peaceful glitter of the river under the stars. But
+along the sidewalk where the electric-lighted bar-rooms buzzed and
+hummed, brawny cow-men, booted and spurred, lounged about, talking in
+that odd but not unpleasant Western English that could almost be called
+a dialect.
+
+But it was not the Benton of the cow-men that I felt about me. It was
+still for me the Benton of the fur trade and the steamboats and the gold
+rush--my boyhood's Benton half-way to the moon--the ghost of a dead
+town.
+
+At Goodale I had sought a substantial town and found a visionary one. At
+Benton I had sought a visionary town and found a substantial one.
+Philosophy was plainly indicated as the proper thing. And, after all, a
+steaming plate of lamp chops in a Chinese chuck-house of a substantial
+though disappointing town, is more acceptable to even a dreamer than the
+visionary beefsteak I ate out there in that latent restaurant of a
+potential village.
+
+This was a comfortable thought; and for a quarter of an hour, the far
+weird cry of things that are no more, was of no avail. The rapid music
+of knife and fork drowned out the asthmatic snoring of the ghostly
+packets that buck the stream no more. How grub does win against
+sentiment!
+
+Swallowing the last of the chops, "Where will I find the ruins of the
+old fort?" I asked of my bronze-faced neighbor across the wreck of
+supper. He looked bored and stiffened a horny practical thumb in the
+general direction of the ruins. "Over there," he said laconically.
+
+I caught myself wondering if a modern Athenian would thus carelessly
+direct you to the Acropolis. Is the comparison faulty? Surely a ruin is
+sacred only for what men did there. We are indeed a headlong race. We
+keep our ruins behind us. Perhaps that is why we get somewhere. And yet,
+what beauty blooms flowerlike to the backward gaze! Music and
+poetry--all the deepest, purest sentiments of the heart--are fed greatly
+upon the memory of the things that were but can never be again.
+Mnemosyne is the mother of all the Muses.
+
+I got up and went out. By the light of a thin moon, I found the place
+"over there." An odd, pathetic little ruin it is, to be sure. Nothing
+imposing about it. It doesn't compel through admiration: it woos through
+pity--the great, impersonal kind of pity.
+
+    "A single little turret that remains
+    On the plains"--
+
+Browning tells about all there is to tell about it, though he never
+heard of it; only they called it a "bastion" in the old days--the
+little square adobe blockhouse that won't stand much longer. One
+crumbling bastion and two gaunt fragments of adobe walls in a waste of
+sand beside the river--that's Fort Benton.
+
+A thin pale grudging strip of moon lit it up: just the moon by which to
+see ruins--a moon for backward looking and regrets. A full round
+love-moon wouldn't have served at all.
+
+Out of pure moon-haze I restored the walls of the house where the
+bourgeois lived. The fireplace and the great mud chimney are still
+there, and the smut of the old log fires still clings inside. The man
+who sat before that hearth was an American king. A simple word of
+command spoken in that room was the thunder of the law in the wilderness
+about, and men obeyed. There's a bat living there now. He tumbled about
+me in the dull light, filling the silence with the harsh whir of
+pinions.
+
+I thought about that night a long, long time ago when all the people
+under the protection of the newly erected fort, gathered here for a
+house-warming. How clearly I could hear that squawking, squeaking,
+good-natured fiddle and the din of dancing feet! Only the sound got
+mixed up with the dim, weird moonlight, until you didn't know whether
+you were hearing or seeing or feeling it--the music of the fiddles and
+the feet. Oh, the dim far music!
+
+I thought about the other ruins of the world, the exploited,
+tourist-haunted ruins; and I wondered why the others attract so much
+attention while this one attracts practically none at all. How they do
+dig after old Troy--poor old long-buried, much-abused Troy! And nobody
+even cares to steal a brick from this ruined citadel that took so great
+a part in the American epic. Indeed, you would not be obliged to steal a
+brick; there are no guards.
+
+Some one has said that the history of our country as taught in the
+common schools is the history of a narrow strip of land along the
+Atlantic coast. The statement is significant. The average school-teacher
+knows very little about Fort Benton, I suspect.
+
+And yet, one of the most tremendous of all human movements centered
+about it--the movement that brought about the settlement of the
+Northwest. One of these days they will plant a potato patch there!
+
+But modern Benton?
+
+Get on a train in the East, snuggle up in your berth, plunge on to the
+Western coast, and you run through the real West in the night. They are
+getting Eastern out there at the rim of the big sea. Benton is in the
+West--the big, free, heart-winning West; and it gives promise of staying
+there for a while yet.
+
+Charter a bronco and canter out across the river for an hour, and it
+will be very plain to you that the romantic West still lives--the West
+of the cowboy and the bronco and the steer. Not the average story-book
+West, to be sure. Perhaps that West never existed. But it is the West
+that has bred and is still breeding a race of men as beautiful in a
+virile way (and how else should men be beautiful?) as this dear old
+mother of an Earth ever suckled.
+
+I stood once on the yellow slope of a hill and watched a round-up outfit
+passing in the gulch below. Four-horse freighters grumbling up the dusty
+trail; cook wagons trundling after; whips popping over the sweating
+teams; a hundred or more saddle ponies trailing after in rolling clouds
+of glinting dust; a score of bronze-faced, hard-fisted outriders,
+mounted on gaunt, tough, wise little horses--such strong, outdoor,
+masterful Americans, truly beautiful in a big manly way!
+
+The sight of it all put that glorious little achy feeling in my throat
+that you get when they start the fife and drum, or when a cavalry column
+wheels at the word of command, or when a regiment swings past with even
+tread, or when you stand on a dock and watch a liner dropping out into
+the fog. It's the feeling that you're a man and mighty proud of it. But
+somehow it always makes you just a little sad.
+
+I felt proud of that bunch of strong capable fellows--proud as though I
+had created them myself.
+
+[Illustration: "THIS WAS BENTON."]
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD FORT BENTON.]
+
+[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF THE BOURGEOIS.]
+
+And once again the glorious little achy feeling in the throat came. The
+Congressman from Choteau County had returned from Washington with fresh
+laurels; and Benton turned out to welcome her Great Man. Down the dusty,
+poorly lighted, front street came the little band--a shirt-sleeved
+squad. Halting under the dingy glow of a corner street-lamp, they struck
+up the best-intentioned, noisiest noise I ever heard. The tuba raced
+lumberingly after the galloping cornet, that ran neck-and-neck with the
+wheezing clarinet; and the drums beat up behind, pounding like the hoofs
+of stiff-kneed horses half a stretch behind.
+
+It was a mad, exciting race of sounds--a sort of handicap. The circular
+glow of the street-lamp became the social center of Benton. At last the
+mad race was ended. I think it was the cornet that won, with the
+clarinet a close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, complacently
+claimed third money, and the bass-drum finished last with a shameless,
+resolute boom!
+
+A great hoarse cry went up--probably for the winning cornet; a
+big-lunged, generous, warrior cry that made you think of a cavalry
+charge in the face of bayonets. And the shirt-sleeved band swung off
+down the street in the direction of the little cottage where the Great
+Man lived. All Benton fell in behind--clerks and bar-keeps and sheepmen
+and cowboys tumbling into fours. Under the yellow flare of the kerosene
+torches they went down the street like a campaigning company in rout
+step, scattering din and dust.
+
+Great, deep-chested, happy-looking, open air fellows, they were; big
+lovers, big haters, good laughers, eaters, drinkers--and every one of
+them potentially a fighting man.
+
+And suddenly, as I watched them pass, something deep down in me cried
+out: "Great God! What a fighting force we can drum up out of the cactus
+and the sagebrush when the time comes!" And when I looked again, not one
+of the sun-bronzed faces was strange to me, but every one was the face
+of a brother. Choteau's Congressman was my Congressman! Benton's Great
+Man was my Great Man! I fell into line alongside a big bronco-buster
+with his high-heeled boots and his clanking spurs and his bandy-legged,
+firm-footed horseman's stride. Thirty yards farther on we were old
+comrades. That is the Western way.
+
+Once again the little band struck up a march, which was very little more
+than a rhythmic snarling and booming of the drums, with now and then the
+shrill savage cry of the clarinet stabbing the general dim. Irresistibly
+the whole line swung into step.
+
+What is it about the rhythmic stride of many men down a dusty road that
+grips you by the throat and makes your lungs feel like overcharged
+balloons? I felt something like the maddening, irritating tang of
+powder-smoke in my throat. Trumpet cries that I had never heard, yet
+somehow dimly remembered, wakened in the night about us--far and faint,
+but haughty with command. It took very little imagination for me to
+feel the whirlwind of battles I may never know, to hear the harsh
+metallic snarl of high-power bullets I may never face. For, marching
+there in the dusty, torch-painted night, with that ragged procession of
+Westerners, a deep sense of the essential comradeship of free men had
+come upon me; and I could think of these men in no other way than as
+potential fighting men--the stern hard stuff with which you build and
+keep your empires. What a row Napoleon could have kicked up with half a
+million of these sagebrush boys to fling foeward under his
+cannon-clouds!
+
+We reached the cottage of the Great Man with the fresh laurels. He met
+us at the gate. He called us Jim and Bill and Frank and Kid something or
+other. We called him Charlie. And he wasn't the least bit stiff or
+proud, though we hadn't the least doubt that half of Washington was in
+tears at his departure for the West.
+
+The sudden flare of a torch betrayed his moist eyes as he told us how he
+loved us. And I'm sure he meant it. He said, with that Western drawl of
+his: "Boys, while I was back there trying to do a little something for
+you in Congress, I heard a lot of swell bands; but I didn't hear any
+such music as this little old band of ours has made to-night!" The
+unintentional humor somehow didn't make you want to laugh at all.
+
+We're all riding with his outfit; and next year we're going to send
+Charlie back East again. May we all die sheepmen if we don't--and that's
+the limit in Montana!
+
+Talking about sheepmen, reminds me of Joe, the big bronco-buster, and
+his _mot_. I was doing the town with Joe, and he was carefully educating
+me in the Western mysteries. He told me all about "day-wranglers" and
+"night-hawks" and "war-bags" and "round-ups"; showed me how to tie a
+"bull-noose" and a "sheep-shank" and a "Mexican hacamore"; put me onto
+the twist-of-the-wrist and the quick arm-thrust that puts half-hitches
+'round a steer's legs; showed me how a cowboy makes dance music with a
+broom and a mouth-harp--and many other wonderful feats, none of which I
+can myself perform.
+
+I wanted to feel the mettle of the big typical fellow, and so I said
+playfully: "Say, Joe, come to confession--you're a sheepman, now aren't
+you?"
+
+He clanked down a glass of long-range liquid, and glared down at me with
+a monitory forefinger pointing straight between my eyes: "Now you look
+here, Shorty," he drawled; "you're a friend of mine, and whatever you
+say _goes_, as long as I ain't all caved in! But you cut that out, and
+don't you say that out loud again, or you and me'll be having to scrap
+the whole outfit!"
+
+He resumed his glass. I told him, still playfully, that a lot of mighty
+good poetry had been written about sheep and sheepmen and crooks and
+lambs and things like that, and that I considered my question
+complimentary.
+
+"You're talkin' about sheepmen in the old country, Shorty," he drawled.
+"There ain't any cattle ranges there, you know. Do you know the
+difference between a sheepman in Scotland, say, and in Montana?"
+
+I did not.
+
+"Well," he proceeded, "over in Scotland when a feller sees a sheepman
+coming down the road with his sheep, he says: 'Behold the gentle
+shepherd with his fleecy flock!' That's poetry. Now in Montana, that
+same feller says, when he sees the same feller coming over a ridge with
+the same sheep: '_Look at that crazy blankety-blank with his woolies!_'
+That's fact. You mind what I say, or you'll get spurred."
+
+I don't quite agree with Joe, however. Once, lying in my tent across
+the river, I looked out over the breaks through that strange purple
+moonlight, such as I had always believed to exist only in the staging of
+a melodrama, and saw four thousand sheep descending to the ferry.
+
+Like lava from a crater they poured over the slope above me; and above
+them, seeming prodigiously big against the weird sky, went the sheepman
+with his staff in his hand and a war-bag over his arm, while at his
+heels a wise collie followed. It was a picture done by chance very much
+as Millet could have done it. And somehow Joe's _mot_ couldn't stand
+before that picture.
+
+There is indeed a big Pindaric sort of poetry about a plunging mass of
+cattle. And just as truly there is a sort of Theocritus poetry about
+sheep. Only in the latter case, the poetical vanishing point is farther
+away for me than is the case with cattle. I think I couldn't write very
+good verses about a flock of sheep, unless I were at least five hundred
+yards away from them. I haven't figured the exact distance as yet. But
+when you have a large flock of sheep camping about you all night, making
+you eat fine sand and driving you mad with that most idiotic of all
+noises (which happened once to me), you don't get up in the morning
+quoting Theocritus. You remember Joe's _mot_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We found a convenient gravel bar on the farther side of the river, where
+we established our navy-yard. There we proceeded to set up the keel of
+the _Atom I_--a twenty-foot canoe with forty-inch beam, lightly ribbed
+with oak and planked with quarter-inch cypress.
+
+No sooner had we screwed up the bolts in the keel, than our ship-yard
+became a sort of free information bureau. Every evening the cable ferry
+brought over a contingent of well-wishers, who were ardent in their
+desire to encourage us in our undertaking, which was no less than that
+of making a toboggan slide down the roof of the continent.
+
+The salient weakness of the _genus homo_, it has always seemed to me, is
+an overwhelming desire to give advice. Through several weeks of toil, we
+were treated to a most liberal education on marine matters. It appeared
+that we had been laboring under a fatal misunderstanding regarding the
+general subject of navigation. Our style of boat was indeed
+admirable--for a lake, if you please, _but_--well, of course, they did
+not wish to discourage us. It was quite possible that we were
+unacquainted with the Upper Missouri. Now the Upper River (hanging out
+that bleached rag of a sympathetic smile), the Upper River was _not_ the
+Lower River, you know. (That really _did_ seem remarkably true, and we
+became alarmed.) The Upper River, mind you, was terriffic. Why, those
+frail ribs and that impossible planking would go to pieces on the first
+rock--like an egshell! Of course, we were free to do as we pleased--they
+would not discourage us for the world. And the engine! Gracious! Such a
+boat would never stand the vibration of a four-horse, high-speed engine
+driving a fourteen-inch screw! It appeared plainly that we were almost
+criminally wrong in all our calculations. Shamefacedly we continued to
+drive nails into the impossible hull, knowing full well--poor misguided
+heroes--that we were only fashioning a death trap! There could be no
+doubt about it. The free information bureau was unanimous. It was all
+very pathetic. Nothing but the tonic of an habitual morning swim in the
+clear cold river kept us game in the face of the inevitable!
+
+We saw it all. With a sort of forlorn cannon-torn-cavalry-column hope we
+pushed on with the fatal work. Never before did I appreciate old Job in
+the clutches of good advice. I used to accuse him of rabbit blood. In
+the light of experience, I wish to record the fact that I beg his
+pardon. He was in the house of his friends. I think Job and I understand
+each other better now. It was not the boils, but the free advice!
+
+At last the final nail was driven and clenched, the canvas glued on and
+ironed, the engine installed. The trim, slim little craft with her
+admirable speed lines, tapering fore and aft like a fish, lay on the
+ways ready for the plunge.
+
+We had arranged to christen her with beer. The Kid stood at the prow
+with the bottle poised, awaiting his cue. The little Cornishman knelt at
+the prow. He was _not_ bowed in prayer. He was holding a bucket under
+the soon-to-be-broken bottle. "For," said he, "in a country where beer
+is so dear and advice so cheap, let us save the beer that we may be
+strong to stand the advice!"
+
+The argument was inded Socratic.
+
+"And now, little boat," said I, in that dark brown tone of voice of
+which I am particularly proud, "be a good girl! Deliver me not unto the
+laughter of my good advisers. I christen thee _Atom_!"
+
+The bottle broke--directly above that bucket.
+
+And now before us lay the impossible as plainly pointed out, not only by
+local talent, but by no less a man that the august captain of a
+government snag-boat. Several weeks before the launching, an event had
+taken place at Benton. The first steamboat for sixteen years tied up
+there one evening. She was a government snag-boat. Now a government
+snag-boat may be defined as a boat maintained by the government for the
+sole purpose of sailing the river _and dodging snags_. This particular
+snag-boat, I learned afterward in the course of a long cruise behind
+her, holds the snag-boat record. I consider her pilot a truly remarkable
+man. He seemed to have dodged them all.
+
+All Benton turned out to view the big red and white government steamer.
+There was something almost pathetic about the public demonstration when
+you thought of the good old steamboat days. During her one day's visit
+to the town, I met the captain.
+
+[Illustration: A ROUND-UP OUTFIT ON THE MARCH.]
+
+[Illustration: JOE.]
+
+[Illustration: MONTANA SHEEP.]
+
+[Illustration: A MONTANA WOOL-FREIGHTER.]
+
+He was very stiff and proud. He awed me. I stood before him fumbling my
+hat. Said I to myself: "The personage before me is more than a snag-boat
+captain. This is none other than the gentleman who invented the Missouri
+River. No doubt even now he carries the patent in his pocket!"
+
+"Going down river in a power canoe, eh?" he growled, regarding me
+critically. "Well, you'll never get down!"
+
+"That so?" croaked I, endeavoring to swallow my Adam's apple.
+
+"No, you won't!"
+
+"Why?" ventured I timidly, almost pleadingly; "isn't there--uh--isn't
+there--uh--_water enough_?"
+
+"Water enough--yes!" growled the personage who invented the longest
+river in the world and therefore knew what he was talking about. "Plenty
+of water--_but you won't find it_!"
+
+Now as the _Atom_ slid into the stream, I thought of the captain's
+words. Since that time the river had fallen three feet. We drew eighteen
+inches.
+
+Sixty-five days after that oraculous utterance of the captain, the Kid
+and I, half stripped, sun-burned, sweating at the oars, were forging
+slowly against a head wind at the mouth of the Cheyenne, sixteen hundred
+miles below the head of navigation. A big white and red steamer was
+creeping up stream over the shallow crossing of the Cheyenne's bar,
+sounding every foot of the water fallen far below the usual summer
+level.
+
+It was the snag-boat. Crossing her bows and drifting past her slowly, I
+stood up and shouted to the party in the pilot house:
+
+"I want to speak to the captain."
+
+He came out on the hurricane deck--the man who invented the river. He
+was still stiff and proud, but a swift smile crossed his face as he
+looked down upon us, half-naked and sun-blackened there in our dinky
+little craft.
+
+"Captain," I cried, and perhaps there was the least vainglory in me; "I
+talked to you at Benton."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, _I have found that water!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MAKING A GETAWAY
+
+
+Tell a Teuton that he can't, and very likely he will show you that he
+can. It's in the blood. Between the prophecy of the snag-boat captain
+and my vainglorious answer at the Cheyenne crossing, I learned to
+respect the words of the man who invented the eccentric old river. In
+the face of heavy head winds, I quoted the words, "You'll never get
+down"--and they bit deep like whip lashes. On many a sand-bar and gravel
+reef, with the channel far away, I heard the words, "Plenty of water,
+yes, but you won't find it!" And always something stronger than my
+muscles cried out within me: "The devil I won't, O, you inventor of
+rain-water creeks!" Hour by hour, day by day, against almost continual
+head winds and with the lowest water in years, that discouraging
+prophecy invaded me and was repulsed. And that is why we have pessimists
+in the world. A pessimist is merely a counter-irritant.
+
+I stood on the bank for some time after the _Atom I_ slid into the
+water, admiring her truly beautiful lines. Once I was captain of a trunk
+lid that sailed a frog-pond down in Kansas City; and at that time I
+thought I knew the meaning of pride. I did not. All three of us were a
+bit puffed up over that boat. Something of that ride that goes before a
+fall awoke in my captain's breast as I loved her with my eyes--that
+trim, slim speed-thing, tugging at her forward line, graceful and
+slender and strong and fleet as a Diana.
+
+I said at last: "I will now get in her, drop down to the town landing,
+and proceed to put to shame a few of these local motor-tubs that make so
+much fuss and don't go anywhere!"
+
+I loved her as a man should love all things that are swift and strong
+and honest, keen for marks and goals--a big, clean-limbed, thoroughbred
+horse that will break his heart to get under the wire first; a
+high-power rifle, slim of muzzle, thick of breech, with its wicked
+little throaty cry, doing its business over a flat trajectory a thousand
+yards away: I love her as a man should love those. Little did I dream
+that she would betray me.
+
+I took in the line and went aboard. At that moment I almost understood
+the snag-boat captain's bearing. To be master of the _Atom I_ seemed
+quite enough; but to be the really truly captain of a big red and white
+snag-boat--it must have been overwhelming!
+
+I dropped out into the current that, fresh from its plunge of four
+hundred feet in sixteen miles, ran briskly. Everything was in readiness.
+I meant to put a crimp in the vanity of that free-information bureau.
+
+I turned on the switch, opened the needle valve, swung the throttle over
+to the notch numbered with a big "2." I placed the crank on the wheel
+and gave it a vigorous turn.
+
+"Poof!" said the engine sweetly, and the kind word encouraged me
+immensely. Again I cranked.
+
+"Poof! Poof!"
+
+It seemed that I had somehow misunderstood the former communication, and
+it was therefore repeated with emphasis. Like a model father who walks
+the floor with the weeping child, tenderly seeking the offending pin, I
+looked over the engine. "What have I neglected?" said I. I intended to
+be quite logical and fair in the matter.
+
+I once presided over a country newspaper that ran its presses with a
+gasoline engine with a most decided artistic temperament. That engine
+used to have a way of communing silently with its own soul right in the
+middle of press day. I remembered this with forebodings. I remembered
+how firm but kind I was obliged to be with that old engine. I remembered
+how it always put its hands in its pockets and took an extended vacation
+every time I swore at it. I decided to be nothing but a perfect
+gentleman with this engine. I even endeavored to be a jovial good
+fellow.
+
+"What is it, Little One?" said I mentally; "does its little carburetor
+hurt it? Or did the bad man strangle it with that horrid old gasoline?"
+
+I tenderly jiggled its air valve, fiddled gently with its spark-control
+lever. I cranked it again. It barked at me like a dog! I had been kind
+to it, and it barked right in my face. I wanted to slap it. I lifted my
+eyes and saw that the rapid current would soon carry me past the town
+landing. I seized a paddle and shoved her in. Of course, a member of the
+free-information bureau was at the landing. He had with him a bland
+smile and a choice bit of information.
+
+"Having trouble with your engine, aren't you?" he said as I leaped
+ashore with the line. "There must be something wrong with it!" The
+remark was indeed illuminating. It struck me with the force of an
+inspiration. It seemed so true.
+
+"Strange that I hadn't thought of that!" I remarked. "That really must
+be the trouble--there's something wrong with it. Thanks!"
+
+I tied the boat and went up-town, hoping to sidetrack the benevolent
+member of that ubiquitous bureau. When I returned, I found half a dozen
+other benevolent members at the landing. They were holding a
+consultation, evidently; and the very air felt gummy with latent advice.
+
+"What's the matter with your engine?" they chorused.
+
+"Why, there's something wrong with it!" I explained cheerfully, as I
+went aboard again. I began to crank, praying steadily for a miracle. Now
+and then I managed to coax forth a gaseous chortle or two. The
+convention on the landing understood every chortle in a truly marvellous
+way.
+
+"It's the spark-plug, that's sure!" announced one with an air of
+finality. "When an engine has run for a while (!) the spark-plug gets
+all smutted up. Have you cleaned your spark-plug?"
+
+"No, Jim!" contradicted another, "it's all in the oil feed! Look how she
+puffs! W'y it's in the oil feed--plain as day! Now if you'll take off
+that carburetor and----"
+
+I cranked on heroically.
+
+"It's in the timer," voluntered another. "You see that little brass
+lever back there? Well, you take and remove that and you'll find
+that----"
+
+I cranked on shamelessly.
+
+"The batteries ain't no good!" growled a man with a big voice that
+reminded me of a bass-drum booming up among the wind instruments in a
+medley. Like the barber who owned the white owl, I stuck to my business.
+I cranked on.
+
+"It ain't _in_ them batteries--them batteries is all right!" piped a
+weazened little man who had been grinning wisely at the lack of
+mechanical ability so shamelessly exposed by his fellows.
+
+"Now in a jump-spark engine," he explained leisurely, with a knowing
+squint of his eyes and an uplifted explanatory forefinger: "in a
+jump-spark engine, gentlemen, there is a number of things to consider.
+Now if you'll take and remove that cylinder-head, pull out the piston,
+and----"
+
+The voice of the expounder was suddenly drowned out by the earsplitting
+rapid-fire of the exhaust! The miracle had happened! Hooray!
+
+I grasped the steering cords and jammed her rudder hard to port. Her
+fourteen-inch screw, suddenly started at full speed ahead, made the
+light, slim craft leap like a spike-spurred horse.
+
+But the turn was too short. She thrust her sharp haughty nose into the
+air like an offended lady, and started up the bank after that
+information bureau. If a tree had been convenient, I think she would
+have climbed it.
+
+I shut her down.
+
+"_She went that time!_" chorused the information bureau. Coming from an
+information bureau, the statement was marvellously correct. But I had
+suddenly become too glad-hearted for a sharp retort.
+
+"If you will please throw me the line, and push me off," I said
+confidently, "I'll drop out into the current."
+
+I dropped out.
+
+"Now for putting a crimp in some people's vanity!" I exulted.
+
+I cranked. Nothing doing! I cranked some more. No news from the crimping
+department. I continued to crank; also, I continued to drift. Somehow
+the current seemed to have increased alarmingly in speed.
+
+I thought I heard a sound of merriment. I looked up. The little weazened
+man was gesticulating wildly with that forefinger of his. He was
+explaining something. The information bureau, steadily dwindling into
+the distance, was not listening. It seemed to be enjoying itself
+immensely.
+
+I swallowed a half-spoken word that tasted bitter as it went down. Then
+I cranked again. There seemed to be nothing else to do. It was a hot
+day; hot sweat blinded me, and trickled off the tip of my nose. My hands
+began to develop blisters. Finally, a deep disgust seized me. I once saw
+a tender-hearted lady on her knees in the dust before a balky auto. I
+remembered her half-sobbed words: "_You mean thing, you! What is the
+matter with you, anyway! Oh, you mean, mean thing!_"
+
+I sat down in front of that engine and abandoned myself to a great
+feeling of tenderness and chivalry for that unfortunate lady. In that
+moment I believe I would have fought a bear for her! Oh that all the
+gasoline engines in the world could be concentrated somehow into one
+big woolly, scary black bear, how I could have set my teeth in its neck
+and died chewing!
+
+I heard a roaring of waters that broke my vision of bear fights and
+gentle ladies in distress. A hundred yards ahead of me I saw rapids. The
+words of the information bureau came back to me with terrible
+distinctness: "Why, her light timbers will go to pieces on the first
+rock!"
+
+Although I am no hero, I didn't get frightened. I got sore. "Go ahead,
+and smash yourself up, if you like!" I cried to the balky craft. And
+then I waited to see her do it. She swung 'round sharply with the first
+suck of the rapids, struck a rock, side-stepped, struck another, and
+went on down, grinding and dragging on a stony reef.
+
+It suddenly came to me that this was what they called the Grocondunez
+Rapids. I remembered that they said the name meant "the big bridge of
+the nose." The name had a powerful fascination for me--I wanted to hit
+something good and hard somewhere in that region!
+
+Finally she swung clear of the reef, caught the swirl of the main
+current, and started for New Orleans with the bit in her teeth. I wasn't
+ready to arrive in New Orleans at once; I had made other arrangements.
+So I grasped a paddle and drove her into shallow water. I leaped out,
+waist-deep in the cold stream, and threw my weight against her.
+Pantingly, I wondered what was the exact distance to the nearest axe. I
+resolved to crank her once more, and then for the axe hunt!
+
+I leaned over the gunwale and began to grind. For the life of me, I
+don't know just what I did to her; but it seemed that she had taken some
+offence. Without the least warning, she leaped forward at three-quarter
+speed, and started up stream with that haughty head of her thrust
+skyward!
+
+I clung desperately to her gunwale, and she dragged me insultingly in
+the drink! She made a soppy rag of me! I managed to scramble
+aboard--something after the fashion of a bronco-buster who mounts at a
+gallop.
+
+But the way she _traveled_! I forgot the ducking and forgave her with
+all my heart. I held her nose well out into the channel where the
+current ran with swells, though no wind blew.
+
+[Illustration: THE "ATOM I" UNDER CONSTRUCTION.]
+
+[Illustration: THE CABLE FERRY TOWED US OUT.]
+
+[Illustration: LAID UP WITH A BROKEN RUDDER.]
+
+Bucking the rapids, she split the fast water over her nose and sent it
+aft in two clean-cut masses, that hissed about her like angry skirts. A
+light, V-shaped wake spread after, scarcely agitating the surface. She
+dragged no water. There was no churning at her stern. Only the dull,
+sub-aqueous drone, felt rather than heard beneath the rapid banging of
+her exhaust, told me how the honest little screw thrust hard.
+
+I pushed the spark-lever close to the reversing point, and opened her
+throttle wide. This acted like a bottle-fly on the flank of a spirited
+mare. She shook herself, quivering through all her light, pliable
+construction, lifted her prow another inch or two, and flung the rapids
+behind her.
+
+Slim, fleet, clean-heeled, and hungry for distance, she raced toward the
+Benton landing two miles up.
+
+In my anxiety to show her to the benevolent ones, I left the current and
+took a crosscut over a rocky ford. Pebbles flung from her pounding heels
+showered down upon me. I climbed forward and let her hammer away. She
+cleared the gravel bar, and as she plunged past the now silent
+information bureau on the landing, condescendingly I waved a hand at
+them and went on splitting water.
+
+We shot under the bridge, forged into the crossing current, passed the
+big brick hotel, where a considerable number came out to salute us.
+They dubbed her the fastest boat that had ever climbed that current, I
+learned afterward. Alas! I was getting my triumph early and in one big
+chunk! I figure that that one huge breakfast of triumph, if properly
+distributed, would have fed me through the whole two thousand miles of
+back-strain and muscle-cramp. And yet, through all the days of
+snail-paced toil that followed, I remained truly thankful for that early
+breakfast.
+
+The Kid and the Cornishman, busy in camp with the packing for the
+voyage, had shared in the gloom of my temporary defeat. But now, as I
+plunged past them, I could see them leaping into the air and cracking
+their heels together with delight. They had wet every plank of her with
+their sweat, and they were as proud as I. In the light of the following
+days, their delight dwindled into a pathetic thing.
+
+I held her on her course up-stream, reached the bend a mile above, swung
+round and--discovered that she had only then begun to lift her heels!
+With the rapid current to aid, her speed was truly wonderful. She could
+have kept pace with any respectable freight train at least.
+
+I indulged in a little feverish mental calculation. She could make, with
+the minimum current, eighteen miles per hour. Every day meant fifteen
+hours of light. Sioux City was two thousand miles away. We could reach
+Sioux City easily in ten days of actual running!
+
+While I was covering that fast mile back to camp I saw the _Atom I_
+passing Sioux City with an air of high-nosed contempt. I developed a
+sort of unreasoning hunger for New Orleans--a kind of violent thirst for
+the Gulf of Mexico! Nothing short of these, it seemed to me, could be
+worthy of so fleet a craft. When I shoved her nose into the landing, I
+found that my companions thoroughly agreed with me.
+
+All that night in my restless sleep I drove speed boats at a terrific
+pace through impossible channels and rock-toothed Scyllas; and the
+little Cornishman fought angry seas and heard a dream-wind shrieking in
+the cordage, and felt the salt spume on his face. "I wonder why I am
+always dreaming that," he said. "Atavism," I ventured; and he regarded
+me narrowly, as though I might be maligning his character in some way.
+
+At dawn we had already eaten and were loading the _Atom_ for the voyage.
+With her cargo she drew eighteen inches of water. At full speed, she
+would squat four inches. It was the first of August and the water,
+which had reached in the spring its highest point for twenty years, had
+been falling rapidly, and now promised to go far below the average
+low-water mark. We had ahead of us a long voyage, every mile of which
+was strange water.
+
+Once again I went over that feverish calculation. This time I was more
+generous. I decided upon fifteen days. The cable ferry towed us out
+beyond the gravel bars that, during the last week, had been slowly
+lifting their bleached masses higher. In mid-stream we cut loose.
+
+At the first turn the engine started. We were going at a good half-speed
+clip, when suddenly the engine changed its mind. "Squash!" it said
+wearily. Then it let off a gasoline sigh and went into a peaceful sleep.
+We had reached the brick hotel. We pulled in with the paddles and tied
+up. The information bureau was there, and at once went into
+consultation.
+
+"I'm looking for an engine doctor," I said. "How about Mr. Blank? They
+tell me he knows the unknowable."
+
+"Best man with an engine in town," sad one.
+
+"For gracious' sake, keep that man away from your engine if you don't
+want it ruined!" said others. A man who can arouse a diversity of
+opinions is at least a man of originality. I went after that man.
+
+He came--with an air of mystery and a monkey wrench. He sat down in
+front of the patient (how that word _does_ fit!) and after some time he
+said: "_Hm!_"
+
+He unscrewed this--and whistled awhile; he unscrewed that--and whistled
+some more. Then he screwed up both this and that and cranked her.
+
+"Phew-oo-oo-oo!" said the engine. Whereat the doctor smiled knowingly.
+It was plain that she was an open book to him.
+
+"What is the trouble?" said I, with that tone of voice you use in a
+sick-room.
+
+It appeared to be appendicitis.
+
+"Spark-plug," muttered the doctor.
+
+"Shall I get another?" I asked, half apologetically.
+
+"Better," grunted the doctor.
+
+I chased down an automobile owner, and a launch owner and a man who had
+a small pumping-engine. I was eloquent in my appeal for spark-plugs. I
+made a very fine collection of them[1] and hastened back to the doctor.
+He didn't seem to appreciate my efforts. He had the patient on the
+operating table. Everything was either unscrewed or pulled out. He was
+carefully scrutinizing the wreck--for more things to screw out!
+
+"Locate the trouble?" I ventured.
+
+"Buzzer's out of whack," replied the Man of Awe. "Have to get another
+spark-coil!" In times of sickness even the sternest man submits to
+medical tyranny. I ran down a man who once owned a power boat, and he
+had a spark coil. He finally agreed to forgo the pleasure of possessing
+it for a suitable reward. Considering the size of that reward, he had
+undoubtedly become greatly attached to his spark-coil!
+
+I returned in triumph to the doctor. He was now screwing up all that he
+had previously unscrewed.
+
+"Think she'll go now?" I pleaded.
+
+He screwed up several dozen things, and whistled a while. Then the
+oracle gave voice: "'Fraid the batteries won't do; they're awful weak!"
+
+With a bitter heart, I turned on my heel and went forth once more.
+Electrical supplies were not on sale at any of the stores. But I found a
+number of gentlemen who were evidently connoisseurs in the battery
+business. They had batteries of which they were extremely fond. They
+parted with some of superior quality upon the consideration of a
+friendly regard for me--and a slight emolument on my part. I was
+evidently very popular.
+
+At a breathless speed I returned to--_not_ to the doctor. He had
+vanished. Rumor had it that he had gone home to lunch, for the sun was
+now high. So far as I know, he is still at lunch.
+
+Several things were yet unscrewed. I fell to work. Wherever anything
+seemed to make a snug fit, I screwed it in. Other remaining things I
+drove into convenient holes. All the while I begged blind fate to guide
+me. Then I connected the batteries, supplied the new spark-coil,
+selected a new spark-plug at random, and screwed it in.
+
+Having done various things, I carefully surveyed my environs for a lady.
+There were no ladies present, so I spoke out freely. "And now," said I,
+having exhausted my vocabulary, "I shall crank!"
+
+Bill and the Kid sat on a pile of rocks looking very sullen. For some
+reason or other they seemed to doubt that engine. I don't know how long
+I cranked. I know only that the impossible happened. The boat started
+for the hotel piazza!
+
+I didn't shut her down this time. I leaped out and took her by the nose.
+Putting our shoulders against the power of the screw, we walked her out
+into the current, headed her down stream, and scrambled in, wet to the
+ears.
+
+My logbook speaks for that day as follows: "Left Benton at 2:30
+P.M. Gypsied along under half gasoline for several hours,
+safely crossing the Shonkin and Grocondunez bars. Struck a rock in
+Fontenelle Rapids at 4:30, taking off rudder. Landed with difficulty on
+a gravel-bar and repaired damages. At 5:30 engine bucked. A heavy wind
+from the west beat us against a ragged shore for an hour and a half.
+Impossible to proceed without power, except by cordelling--which we did,
+walking waist-deep in the water much of the time. Paddles useless in
+such a head wind. The wind falling at sunset, we drifted, again losing
+our rudder while shooting Brule Rapids. Tied up at the head of Black
+Bluff Rapids at dusk, having made twenty miles out of two thousand for
+the first day's run. Have to extend that fifteen days! Just the same,
+that information bureau saw us leave under power!"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Dear Reader: Should you undertake the Missouri River trip,
+don't lay anything out on spark-plugs. I sowed them all along up there.
+Take a drag-net. You will scoop up several hundred dry batteries, but
+don't mind them; they are probably spoiled.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THROUGH THE REGION OF WEIR
+
+
+We awoke with light hearts on the second morning of the voyage. All
+about us was the sacred silence of the wilderness dawn. The coming sun
+had smitten the chill night air into a ghostly fog that lay upon the
+valley like a fairy lake.
+
+We were at the rim of the Bad Lands and there were no birds to sing; but
+crows, wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung doleful voices downward
+into the morning hush--the spirit of the place grown vocal.
+
+Cloaked with the fog, our breakfast fire of driftwood glowed ruddily.
+What is there about the tang of wood-smoke in a lonesome place that
+fills one with glories that seem half memory and half dream? Crouched on
+my haunches, shivering just enough to feel the beauty there is in fire,
+I needed only to close my eyes, smarting with the smoke, to feel myself
+the first man huddled close to the first flame, blooming like a mystic
+flower in the chill dawn of the world!
+
+Perhaps that is what an outing is for--to strip one down to the lean
+essentials, press in upon one the glorious privilege of being one's
+self, unique in all the universe of innumerable unique things. Crouched
+close to your wilderness campfire, the great Vision comes easily out of
+the smoke. Once again you feel the bigness of your world, the tremendous
+significance of everything in it--including yourself--and a far-seeing
+sadness grips you. Living in the flesh seems so transient, almost a
+pitiful thing in the last analysis. But somehow you feel that there is
+something bigger--not beyond it, but all about it continually. And you
+wonder that you ever hated anyone. You know, somehow, there in the smoky
+silence, why men are noble or ignoble; why they lie or die for a
+principle; why they kill, or suffer martyrdom; why they love and hate
+and fight; why women smile under burdens, sin splendidly or
+sordidly--and why hearts sometimes break.
+
+And expanded by the bigness of the empty silent spaces about you, like a
+spirit independent of it and outside of it all, you love the great red
+straining Heart of Man more than you could ever love it at your desk in
+town. And you want to get up and move--push on through purple
+distances--whither? Oh, anywhere will do! What you seek is at the end of
+the rainbow; it is in the azure of distance; it is just behind the glow
+of the sunset, and close under the dawn. And the glorious thing about it
+is that you know you'll never find it until you reach that lone, ghostly
+land where the North Star sets, perhaps. You're merely glad to know that
+you're not a vegetable--and that the trail never really ends anywhere.
+
+Just now, however, the longing for the abstract had the semblance of a
+longing for the concrete. It always has that semblance, for that matter.
+You never really want what you think you are seeking. Touch the
+substance--and away you go after the shadow!
+
+[Illustration: "ATOM" SAILING UP-STREAM IN A HEAD WIND.]
+
+[Illustration: TYPICAL RAPIDS ON UPPER MISSOURI.]
+
+Around the bend lay Sioux City. Around what bend? What matter? Somewhere
+down stream the last bend lay, and in between lay the playing of the
+game. Any bend will do to sail around! There's a lot of fun in merely
+being able to move about and do things. For this reason I am overwhelmed
+with gratitude whenever I think that, through some slight error in the
+cosmic process, the life forces that glow in me might have been flung
+into a turnip--_but weren't_! The thought is truly appalling--isn't it?
+The avoidance of that one awful possibility is enough to make any man
+feel lucky all his life. It's such fun to awaken in the morning with all
+your legs and arms and eyes and ears about you, waiting to be used
+again! So strong was this thought in me when we cast off, that even the
+memory of Bill's amateurish pancakes couldn't keep back the whistle.
+
+The current of the Black Bluffs Rapids whisked us from the bank with a
+giddy speed, spun us about a right-angled bend, and landed us in a long
+quiet lake. Contrary to the average opinion, the Upper Missouri is
+merely a succession of lakes and rapids. In the low-water season, this
+statement should be italicised. When you are pushing down with the power
+of your arms alone the rapids show you how fast you want to go, and the
+lakes show you that you can't go that fast. For the teaching of
+patience, the arrangement is admirable. But when head winds blow, a
+three-mile reach means about a two-hour fight.
+
+This being a very invigorating morning, however, the engine decided to
+take a constitutional. It ran. Below the mouth of the Marias River,
+twenty minutes later, we grounded on Archer's Bar and shut down. After
+dragging her off the gravel, we discovered that the engine wished to
+sleep. No amount of cranking could arouse it. Now and then it would say
+"_squash_," feebly rolling its wheel a revolution or two--like a
+sleepy-head brushing off a fly with a languid hand.
+
+A light breeze had sprung up out of the west. The stream ran east and
+northeast. We hastily rigged a tarp on a pair of oars spliced for a
+mast, and proceeded at a care-free pace. The light breeze ruffled the
+surface of the slow stream;
+
+      "----yet still the sail made on
+    A pleasant noise till noon."
+
+In the lazy heat of the mounting sun, tempered by the cool river
+draught, the yellow sandstone bluffs, whimsically decorated with sparse
+patches of greenery, seemed to waver as though seen through shimmering
+silken gauze. And over it all was the hush of a dream, except when, in a
+spasmodic freshening of the breeze, the rude mast creaked and a sleepy
+watery murmur grew up for a moment at the wake.
+
+Now and then at a break in the bluffs, where a little coulee entered the
+stream, the gray masses of the bull-berry bushes lifted like smoke, and
+from them, flame-like, flashed the vivid scarlet of the berry-clusters,
+smiting the general dreaminess like a haughty cry in a silence.
+
+A wilderness indeed! It seemed that waste land of which Tennyson sang,
+"where no man comes nor hath come since the making of the world." I
+thought of the steamboats and the mackinaws and the keel-boats and the
+thousands of men who had pushed through this dream-world and the thought
+was unconvincing. Fairies may have lived here, indeed; and in the youth
+of the world, a glad young race of gods might have dreamed gloriously
+among the yellow crags. But surely we were the first men who had ever
+passed that way--and should be the last.
+
+Suddenly the light breeze boomed up into a gale. The _Atom_, with
+bellying sail, leaped forward down the roughening water, swung about a
+bend, raced with a quartering wind down the next reach, shot across
+another bend--and lay drifting in a golden calm. Still above us the
+great wind buzzed in the crags like a swarm of giant bees, and the
+waters about us lay like a sheet of flawless glass.
+
+With paddles we pushed on lazily for an hour. At the next bend, where
+the river turned into the west, the great gale that had been roaring
+above us, suddenly struck us full in front. Sucking up river between the
+wall rocks on either side, its force was terrific. You tried to talk
+while facing it, and it took your breath away. In a few minutes, in
+spite of our efforts with the paddles, we lay pounding on the shallows
+of the opposite shore.
+
+We got out. Two went forward with the line and the third pushed at the
+stern. Progress was slow--no more than a mile an hour. The clear water
+of the upper river is always cold, and the great wind chilled the air.
+Even under the August noon it took brisk work to keep one's teeth from
+chattering. The bank we were following became a precipice rising sheer
+from the river's edge, and the water deepened until we could no longer
+wade. We got in and poled on to the next shallows, often for many
+minutes at a time barely holding our own against the stiff gusts. For
+two hours we dragged the heavily laden boat, sometimes walking the bank,
+sometimes wading in mid-stream, sometimes poling, often swimming with
+the line from one shallow to another. And the struggle ended as suddenly
+as it began. Upon rounding the second bend the head wind became a stern
+wind, driving us on at a jolly clip until nightfall.
+
+During the late afternoon, we came upon a place where the Great Northern
+Railroad touches the river for the last time in five hundred miles. Here
+we saw two Italian section hands whiling away their Sunday with fishing
+rods. I went ashore, hoping to buy some fish. Neither of the two could
+speak English, and Italian sounds to me merely like an unintelligible
+singing. However, they gave me to understand that the fish were not for
+sale, and my proffered coin had no persuasive powers.
+
+Still wanting those fish, I rolled a smoke, carelessly whistling the
+while a strain from an opera I had once heard. For some reason or other
+that strain had been in my head all day. I had gotten up in the morning
+with it; I had whistled it during the fight with the head wind. The Kid
+called it "that Dago tune." I think it was something from _Il
+Trovatore_.
+
+Suddenly one of the little Italians dropped his rod, stood up to his
+full height, lifted his arms very much after the manner of an orchestra
+leader and joined in with me. I stopped--because I saw that he _could_
+whistle. He carried it on with much expression to the last thin note
+with all the ache of the world in it. And then he grinned at me.
+
+"Verdi!" he said sweetly.
+
+I applauded. Whereat the little Italian produced a bag of tobacco. We
+sat down on the rocks and smoked together, holding a wordless but
+perfectly intelligble conversation of pleasant grins.
+
+That night we had fish for supper! I got them for a song--or, rather,
+for a whistle. I was fed with more than fish. And I went to sleep that
+night with a glorious thought for a pillow: Truth expressed as Art is
+the universal language. One immortal strain from Verdi, poorly whistled
+in a wilderness, had made a Dago and a Dutchman brothers!
+
+Scarcely had the crackling of the ruddy log lulled us to sleep, when the
+night had flitted over like a shadow, and we were cooking breakfast. A
+lone, gray wolf, sitting on his haunches a hundred paces away, regarded
+us curiously. Doubtless we were new to his generation; for in the
+evening dusk we had drifted well into the Bad Lands.
+
+Bad Lands? Rather the Land of Awe!
+
+A light stern wind came up with the sun. During the previous evening we
+had rigged a cat-sail, and noiselessly we glided down the glinting trail
+of crystal into the "Region of Weir."
+
+On either hand the sandstone cliffs reared their yellow masses against
+the cloudless sky. Worn by the ebbing floods of a prehistoric sea,
+carved by the winds and rains of ages, they presented a panorama of
+wonders.
+
+Rows of huge colonial mansions with pillared porticoes looked from their
+dizzy terraces across the stream to where soaring mosques and mystic
+domes of worship caught the sun. It was all like the visible dream of a
+master architect gone mad. Gaunt, sinister ruins of medieval castles
+sprawled down the slopes of unassailable summits. Grim brown towers,
+haughtily crenellated, scowled defiance on the unappearing foe. Titanic
+stools of stone dotted barren garden slopes, where surely gods had once
+strolled in that far time when the stars sang and the moon was young.
+Dark red walls of regularly laid stone--huge as that the Chinese flung
+before the advance of the Northern hordes--held imaginary empires
+asunder. Poised on a dizzy peak, Jove's eagle stared into the eye of the
+sun, and raised his wings for the flight deferred these many centuries.
+Kneeling face to face upon a lonesome summit, their hands clasped before
+them, their backs bent as with the burdens of the race, two women prayed
+the old, old woman prayer. The snow-white ruins of a vast cathedral lay
+along the water's edge, and all about it was a hush of worship. And near
+it, arose the pointed pipes of a colossal organ--with the summer silence
+for music.
+
+With a lazy sail we drifted through this place of awe; and for once I
+had no regrets about that engine. The popping of the exhaust would have
+seemed sacrilegious in this holy quiet.
+
+Seldom do men pass that way. It is out of the path of the tourist. No
+excursion steamers ply those awesome river reaches. Across the sacred
+whiteness of that cathedral's imposing mass, no sign has ever been
+painted telling you the merits of the best five-cent cigar in the world!
+Few besides the hawks and the crows would see it, if it were there.
+
+And yet, for all the quiet in this land of wonder, somehow you cannot
+feel that the place is unpeopled. Surely, you think, invisible knights
+clash in tourney under those frowning towers. Surely a lovelorn maiden
+spins at that castle window, weaving her heartache into the magic
+figures of her loom. Stately dames must move behind the shut doors of
+those pillared mansions; devotees mutter Oriental prayers beneath those
+sun-smitten domes. And amid the awful inner silence of that cathedral,
+white-robed priests lift wan faces to their God.
+
+Under the beat of the high sun the light stern wind fell. The slack sail
+drooped like a sick-hearted thing. Idly drifting on the slow glassy
+flood, we seemed only an incidental portion of this dream in which the
+deepest passions of man were bodied forth in eternal fixity. Towers of
+battle, domes of prayer, fanes of worship, and then--the kneeling women!
+Somehow one couldn't whistle there. Bill and the Kid, little given to
+sentiment, sat quietly and stared.
+
+Late in the afternoon we found ourselves out of this "Region of Weir."
+Great wall rocks soared above us. Consulting our map, we found that we
+were nearing Eagle Rapids, the first of a turbulent series. I had fondly
+anticipated shooting them all under power. So once more I decided to go
+over that engine. We landed at the wooded mouth of a little ravine,
+having made a trifle over twenty miles that day.
+
+With those tools of the engine doctor--an air of mystery and a
+monkey-wrench--I unscrewed everything that appeared to have a thread on
+it, and pulled out the other things. The odds, I figured, were in my
+favor. A sick engine is useless, and I felt assured of either killing or
+curing. I did something--I don't know what; but having achieved the
+complete screwing up and driving in of things--_it went_!
+
+So on the morning of the fourth day, we were up early, eager for the
+shooting of rapids. We had understood from the conversation of the
+seemingly wise, that Eagle Rapids was the first of a series that made
+the other rapids we had passed through look like mere ripples on the
+surface. In some of those we had gone at a very good clip, and several
+times we had lost our rudder.
+
+I remembered how the steamboats used to be obliged to throw out cables
+and slowly wind themselves up with the power of the "steam nigger." I
+also remembered the words of Father de Smet: "There are many rapids, ten
+of which are very difficult to ascend and very dangerous to go down."
+
+We had intended from the very first to get wrecked in one or all of
+these rapids. For this reason we had distributed forward, aft, and
+amidships, eight five-gallon cans, soldered air-tight. The frail craft
+would, we figured, be punctured. The cans would displace nearly three
+hundred and fifty pounds of water, and the boat and engine, submerged,
+would lose a certain weight. I had made the gruesome calculation with
+fond attention to detail. I decided that she should be wrecked quite
+arithmetically. We should be able, the figures said, to recover the
+engine and patch the boat. We had provided three life-preservers, but
+one had been stolen; so I had fancied what a bully fight one might have
+if he should be thrown out into the mad waters without a life-preserver.
+
+I have never been able to explain it satisfactorily; it is one of the
+paradoxes; but human nature seems to take a weird delight in placing in
+jeopardy that which is dearest. Even a coward with his fingers clenched
+desperately on the ragged edge of hazard, feels an inexplicable thrill
+of glory. Having several times been decently scared, I know.
+
+One likes to take a sly peep behind the curtain of the big play, hoping
+perhaps to get a slight hint as to what machinery hoists the moon, and
+what sort of contrivance flings the thunder and lightning, and many
+other things that are none of his business. Only, to be sure, he intends
+to get away safely with his information. When you think you see your
+finish bowing to receive you, something happens in your head. It's like
+a sultry sheet of rapid fire lapping up for a moment the thunder-shaken
+night--and discovering a strange land to you. And it's really good for
+you.
+
+Under half speed we cruised through the windless golden morning; and the
+lonesome canyon echoed and re-echoed with the joyful chortle of the
+resurrected engine. We had covered about ten miles, when a strange
+sighing sound grew up about us. It seemed to emanate from the soaring
+walls of rock. It seemed faint, yet it arose above the din of the
+explosions, drowned out the droning of the screw.
+
+Steadily the sound increased. Like the ghost of a great wind it moaned
+and sighed about us. Little by little a new note crept in--a sibilant,
+metallic note as of a tense sheet of silk drawn rapidly over a thin
+steel edge.
+
+[Illustration: WOLF POINT, THE FIRST TOWN IN 500 MILES.]
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE BAD LANDS.]
+
+We knew it to be the mourning voice of the Eagle Rapids; but far as we
+could see, the river was quiet as a lake. We jogged on for a mile,
+with the invisible moaning presence about us. It was somewhat like the
+intangible something you feel about a powerful but sinister personality.
+The golden morning was saturated with it.
+
+Suddenly, turning a sharp bend about the wall of rock that flanked the
+channel, a wind of noise struck us. It was like the hissing of
+innumerable snakes against a tonal background of muffled continuous
+thunder. A hundred yards before us was Eagle Rapids--a forbidding patch
+of writhing, whitening water, pricked with the upward thrust of
+toothlike rocks.
+
+The first sight of it turned the inside of me mist-gray. Temporarily,
+wrecks and the arithmetic of them had little charm for me. I seized the
+spark-lever, intending to shut down. Instead, I threw it wide open. With
+the resulting leap of the craft, all the gray went out of me.
+
+I grasped the rudder ropes and aimed at a point where the sinuous
+current sucked through a passage in the rocks like a lean flame through
+a windy flue. Did you ever hear music that made you see purple? It was
+that sort of purple I saw (or did I hear it like music?) when we plunged
+under full speed into the first suck of the rapids. We seemed a
+conscious arrow hurled through a gray, writhing world, the light of
+which was noise. And then, suddenly, the quiet, golden morning flashed
+back; and we were ripping the placid waters of a lake.
+
+The Kid broke out into boisterous laughter that irritated me strangely:
+"Where the devil do you suppose our life-preservers are?" he bawled.
+"They're clear down under all the cargo!"
+
+A world of wonderful beauty was forging past us. In the golden calm, the
+scintillant sheet of water seemed to be rushing backward, splitting
+itself over the prow, like a fabric woven of gold and silver drawn
+rapidly against a keen stationary blade.
+
+The sheer cliffs had fallen away into pine-clad slopes, and vari-colored
+rocks flung notes of scarlet and gold through the sombre green of the
+pines--like the riotous treble cries of an organ pricking the sullen
+murmur of the bass. So still were the clean waters that we seemed midway
+between two skies.
+
+We skirted the base of a conical rock that towered three hundred feet
+above us--a Titan sentinel. It was the famous Sentinel Rock of the old
+steamboat days. I shut the engine down to quarter speed, for somehow
+from the dizzy summit a sad dream fell upon me and bade me linger.
+
+I stared down into the cold crystal waters at the base of the rock.
+Many-colored mosses, sickly green, pale, feverish red, yellow like fear,
+black like despair, purple like the lips of a strangled man, clung
+there. I remembered an old spring I used to haunt when I was just old
+enough to be awed by the fact of life and frightened at the possibility
+of death. Just such mosses grew in the depths of that spring. I used to
+stare into it for hours.
+
+It fascinated me in a terrible way. I thought Death looked like that.
+Even now I am afraid I could not swim long in clear waters with those
+fearful colors under me. I am sure they found Ophelia floating like a
+ghastly lily in such a place.
+
+Filled with a shadow of the old childish dread, I looked up to the
+austere summit of the Sentinel. Scarred and haggard with time it caught
+the sun. I thought of how long it had stood there just so, under the
+intermittent flashing of moon and sun and star, since first its flinty
+peak had pricked through the hot spume of prehistoric seas.
+
+Fantastic reptiles, winged and finned and fanged, had basked upon
+it--grotesque, tentative vehicles of the Flame of Life! And then these
+flashed out, and the wild sea fell, and the land arose--hideous and
+naked, a steaming ooze fetid with gasping life. And all the while this
+scarred Sentinel stared unmoved. And then a riot of giant vegetation all
+about it--divinely extravagant, many-colored as fire. And this too
+flashed out--like the impossible dream of a god too young. And the Great
+Change came, and the paradox of frost was in the world, stripping life
+down to the lean essentials till only the sane, capable things might
+live. And still the Titan stared as in the beginning. And then, men were
+in the land--gaunt, terrible, wolf-like men, loving and hating. And La
+Verendrye forged past it; and Lewis and Clark toiled under it through
+these waters of awful quiet. And then the bull boats and the mackinaws
+and the packets. And all these flashed out; and still it stood unmoved.
+And I came--and I too would flash out, and all men after me and all
+life.
+
+I viewed the colossal watcher with something like terror--the aspect of
+death about its base and that cynical glimmer of sunlight at its top. I
+flung the throttle open, and we leaped forward through the river hush.
+I wanted to get away from this thing that had seen so much of life and
+cared so little. It depressed me strangely; it thrust bitter questions
+within the charmed circle of my ego. It gave me an almost morbid desire
+for speed, as though there were some place I should reach before the
+terrible question should be answered against me.
+
+We fled down five or six miles of depressingly quiet waters. Once again
+the wall rocks closed about us. We seemed to be going at a tediously
+slow pace, yet the two thin streams of water rushed hissing from prow to
+stern. A strange mood was upon me. Once when I was a boy and far from
+home, I awoke in the night with a bed of railroad ties under me, and the
+chill black blanket of the darkness about me. I wanted to get up and run
+through that damned night--anywhere, just so I went fast
+enough--stopping only when exhaustion should drag me down. And yet I was
+afraid of nothing tangible; hunger and the stranger had sharpened
+whatever blue steel there was in my nature. I was afraid of being still!
+Were you ever a homesick boy, too proud to tell the truth about it?
+
+I felt something of that boy's ache as we shot in among the wall rocks
+again. It was a psychic hunger for something that does not exist. Oh, to
+attain the terrible speed one experiences in a fever-dream, to get
+somewhere before it is too late, before the black curtain drops!
+
+To some this may sound merely like the grating of overwrought nerves.
+But it is more than that. All religions grew out of that most human
+mood. And whenever one is deeply moved, he feels it. For even the most
+matter-of-fact person of us all has now and then a suspicion that this
+life is merely episodic--that curtain after curtain of darkness is to be
+pierced, world after world of consciousness and light to be passed
+through.
+
+Once more the rocks took on grotesque shapes--utterly ultra-human in
+their suggestiveness. Those who have marveled at the Hudson's beauty
+should drop down this lonesome stretch.
+
+We shot through the Elbow Rapids at the base of the great
+Hole-in-the-wall Rock. It was deep and safe--much like an exaggerated
+mill-race. It ran in heavy swells, yet the day was windless.
+
+In the late afternoon we shot the Dead Man's Rapids, a very turbulent
+and rocky stretch of water. We went through at a freight-train speed,
+and began to develop a slight contempt for fast waters. That night we
+camped at the mouth of the Judith River on the site of the now forgotten
+Fort Chardon. We had made only ninety-eight miles in four days. It began
+to appear that we might be obliged to finish on skates!
+
+We were up and off with the first gray of the morning. We knew Dauphin
+Rapids to be about seventeen miles below, and since this particular
+patch of water had by far the greatest reputation of all the rapids, we
+were eager to make its acquaintance.
+
+The engine began to show unmistakable signs of getting tired of its job.
+Now and then it barked spitefully, had half a notion to stop, changed
+its mind, ran faster than it should, wheezed and slowed down--acting in
+an altogether unreasonable way. But it kept the screw humming
+nevertheless.
+
+Fortunately it was going at a mad clip when we sighted the Dauphin.
+There was not that sibilance and thunder that had turned me a bit gray
+inside at first sight of the Eagle. The channel was narrow, and no rocks
+appeared above the surface. But speed _was_ there; and the almost
+noiseless rolling of the swift flood ahead had a more formidable
+appearance than that of the Eagle. Rocks above the surface are not much
+to be feared when you have power and a good rudder. But we drew about
+twenty-two inches of water, and I thought of the rocks under the
+surface.
+
+I had, however, only a moment to think, for we were already traveling a
+good eighteen miles, and when the main swirl of the rapids seized us, we
+no doubt reached twenty-five. I was grasping the rudder ropes and we
+were all grinning a sort of idiotic satisfaction at the amazing spurt of
+speed, when----
+
+Something was about to happen!
+
+The Kid and I were sitting behind the engine in order to hold her screw
+down to solid water. Bill, decorated with a grin, sat amidships facing
+us. I caught a pink flash in the swirl just under our bow, and then _it
+happened_!
+
+The boat reared like a steeple-chaser taking a fence! The Kid shot
+forward over the engine and knocked the grin off Bill's face! Clinging
+desperately to the rudder ropes, I saw, for a brief moment, a good
+three-fourths of the frail craft thrust skyward at an angle of about
+forty-five degrees. Then she stuck her nose in the water and her screw
+came up, howling like seven devils in the air behind me! Instinctively,
+I struck the spark-lever; the howling stopped,--and we were floating in
+the slow waters below Dauphin Rapids.
+
+All the cargo had forged forward, and the persons of Bill and the Kid
+were considerably tangled. We laughed loud and long. Then we gathered
+ourselves up and wondered if she might be taking water under the cargo.
+It developed that she wasn't. But one of our grub boxes, containing all
+the bacon, was missing. So were the short oars that we used for paddles.
+While we laughed, these had found some convenient hiding-place.
+
+We had struck a smooth bowlder and leaped over it. A boat with the
+ordinary launch construction would have opened at every seam. The light
+springy tough construction of the _Atom_ had saved her. Whereat I
+thought of the Information Bureau and was well pleased.
+
+Altogether we looked upon the incident as a purple spot. But we were
+many miles from available bacon, and when, upon trial, the engine
+refused to make a revolution, we began to get exceedingly hungry for
+meat.
+
+Having a dead engine and no paddles, we drifted. We drifted very slowly.
+The Kid asked if he might not go ashore and drive a stake in the bank.
+For what purpose? Why, to ascertain whether we were going up or down
+stream! While we drifted in the now blistering sun, we talked about
+_meat_. With a devilish persistence we quite exhausted the subject. We
+discussed the best methods for making a beefsteak delicious. It made us
+very hungry for meat. The Kid announced that he could feel his backbone
+sawing at the front of his shirt. But perhaps that was only the
+hyperbole of youth. Bill confessed that he had once grumbled at his good
+wife for serving the steak too rare. He now stated that at the first
+telegraph station he would wire for forgiveness. I advised him to wire
+for money instead and buy meat with it. Personally I felt a sort of
+wistful tenderness for packing-houses.
+
+That day passed somehow, and the next morning we were still hungry for
+meat. We spent most of the morning talking about it. In the blistering
+windless afternoon, we drifted lazily. Now and then we took turns
+cranking the engine.
+
+We were going stern foremost and I was cranking. We rounded a bend
+where the wall rocks sloped back, leaving a narrow arid sagebrush strip
+along both sides of the stream. I had straightened up to get the kink
+out of my back and mop the sweat out of my eyes, when I saw something
+that made my stomach turn a double somersault.
+
+A good eight hundred yards down stream at the point of a gravel-bar,
+something that looked like and yet unlike a small cluster of drifting,
+leafless brush moved slowly into the water. Now it appeared quite
+distinct, and now it seemed that a film of oil all but blotted it out. I
+blinked my eyes and peered hard through the baffling yellow glare. Then
+I reached for the rifle and climbed over the gunwhale. I smelled raw
+meat.
+
+Fortunately, we were drifting across a bar, and the slow water came only
+to my shoulders. The thing eight hundred yards away was forging across
+stream by this time--heading for the mouth of a coulee. I saw plainly
+now that the brush grew out of a head. It was a buck with antlers.
+
+Just below the coulee's mouth, the wall rocks began again. The buck
+would be obliged to land above the wall rocks, and the drifting boat
+would keep him going. I reached shore and headed for that coulee. The
+sagebrush concealed me. At the critical moment, I intended to show
+myself and start him up the steep slope. Thus he would be forced to
+approach me while fleeing me. When I felt that enough time had passed, I
+stood up. The buck, shaking himself like a dog, stood against the yellow
+sandstone at the mouth of the gulch. He saw me, looked back at the
+drifting boat, and appeared to be undecided.
+
+I wondered what the range might be. Back home in the plowed field where
+I frequently plug tin cans at various long ranges, I would have called
+it six hundred yards--at first. Then suddenly it seemed three or four
+hundred. Like a thing in a dream the buck seemed to waver back and forth
+in the oily sunlight.
+
+"Call it four hundred and fifty," I said to myself, and let drive. A
+spurt of yellow stone-dust leaped from the cliff a foot or so above the
+deer's back. Only four hundred? But the deer had made up his mind. He
+had urgent business on the other side of that slope--he appeared to be
+overdue.
+
+[Illustration: FRESH MEAT.]
+
+[Illustration: SUPPER!]
+
+I pumped up another shell and drew fine at four hundred. That time
+his rump quivered for a second as though a great weight had been dropped
+on it. But he went on with increased speed. Once more I let him have it.
+That time he lost an antler. He had now reached the summit, two hundred
+feet up at the least.
+
+He hesitated--seemed to be shivering. I have hunted with a full stomach
+and brought down game. But there's a difference when you are empty. In
+that moment before you kill, you became the sort of fellow your mother
+wouldn't like. Perhaps the average man would feel a little ashamed to
+tell the truth about that savage moment. I got down on my knee and put a
+final soft-nosed ball where it would do the most good. The buck reared,
+stiffened, and came down, tumbling over and over.
+
+That night we pitched camp under a lone scrubby tree at the mouth of an
+arid gulch that led back into the utterly God-forsaken Bad Lands. It was
+the wilderness indeed. Coyotes howled far away in the night, and diving
+beaver boomed out in the black stream.
+
+We built half a dozen fires and swung above them the choice portions of
+our kill. And how we ate--with what glorious appetites!
+
+It is good to sit with a glad-hearted company flinging words of joyful
+banter across very tall steins. It is good to draw up to a country table
+at Christmas time with turkey and pumpkin-pies and old-fashioned
+puddings before you, and the ones you love about you. I have been deeply
+happy with apples and cider before an open fireplace. I have been
+present when the brilliant sword-play of wit flashed across a banquet
+table--and it thrilled me. _But_----
+
+There is no feast like the feast in the open--the feast in the flaring
+light of a night fire--the feast of your own kill, with the tang of the
+wild and the tang of the smoke in it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
+
+
+It all came back there by the smoldering fires--the wonder and the
+beauty and the awe of being alive. We had eaten hugely--a giant feast.
+There had been no formalities about that meal. Lying on our blankets
+under the smoke-drift, we had cut with our jack-knives the tender
+morsels from a haunch as it roasted. When the haunch was at last cooked
+to the bone, only the bone was left.
+
+Heavy with the feast, I lay on my back watching the gray smoke brush my
+stars that seemed so near. _My stars!_ Soft and gentle and mystical!
+Like a dark-browed Yotun woman wooing the latent giant in me, the night
+pressed down. I closed my eyes, and through me ran the sensuous surface
+fires of her dream-wrought limbs. Upon my face the weird magnetic lure
+of ever-nearing, never-kissing lips made soundless music. Like a sister,
+like a mother she caressed me, lazy with the huge feast; and yet, a
+drowsy, half-voluptuous joy shimmered and rippled in my veins.
+
+Drowsing and dreaming under the drifting smoke-wrack, I felt the sense
+of time and self drop away from me. No now, no to-morrow, no yesterday,
+no I! Only eternity, one vast whole--sun-shot, star-sprent, love-filled,
+changeless. And in it all, one spot of consciousness more acute than
+other spots; and that was the something that had eaten hugely, and that
+now felt the inward-flung glory of it all; the swooning, half-voluptuous
+sense of awe and wonder, the rippling, shimmering, universal joy.
+
+And then suddenly and without shock--like the shifting of the wood
+smoke--the mood veered, and there was nothing but I. Space and eternity
+were I--vast projections of myself, tingling with my consciousness to
+the remotest fringe of the outward swinging atom-drift; through
+immeasurable night, pierced capriciously with shafts of paradoxic day;
+through and beyond the awful circle of yearless duration, my ego lived
+and knew itself and thrilled with the glory of being. The slowly
+revolving Milky Way was only a glory within me; the great woman-star
+jeweling the summit of a cliff, was only an ecstasy within me; the
+murmuring of the river out in the dark was only the singing of my heart;
+and the deep, deep blue of the heavens was only the splendid color of my
+soul.
+
+Bill snored. Among the glowing fires moved the black bulk of the Kid,
+turning the hunks of venison. And then the universe and I, curiously
+mixed, swooned into nothing at all, and I was blinking at a golden glow,
+and from the river came a shouting.
+
+It was broad day. We leaped up, and rubbing the sleep from our eyes, saw
+a light skiff drifting toward us. It contained two men--Frank and
+Charley. We had met them at Benton, and during an acquaintance of three
+weeks we had learned of their remarkable ability as cooks. Frank was a
+little Canadian Frenchman, and Charley was English. Both, in the
+parlance of the road, were "floaters"; that is to say, no locality ever
+knew them long; the earth was their floor, the sky their ceiling--and
+their god was Whim. Naturally our trip had appealed to them, and one
+month in Benton had aggravated that hopelessly incurable
+disease--_Wanderlust_.
+
+So we had agreed that somewhere down river we would camp for a week and
+wait for them. They would do the cooking, and we would take them in tow.
+Two days after we dropped out of Benton, they had abruptly "jumped" an
+unfinished job and put off after us in a skiff, rowing all day and most
+of the night in order to overtake us.
+
+Certainly they had arrived at the moment most psychologically favorable
+for the beginning of an odd sort of tyranny that followed. Cooking is a
+weird mystery to me. As for Bill and the Kid, courtesy forbids detailed
+comment. The Kid had been uniformly successful in disguising the most
+familiar articles of diet; and Bill was perhaps least unsuccessful in
+the making of flapjacks. According to his naïve statement, he had
+discovered the trick of mixing the batter while manufacturing
+photographer's mounting paste. His statement was never questioned. My
+only criticism on his flapjacks was simply that he left too much to the
+imagination. For these and kindred reasons, we gladly hailed the
+newcomers.
+
+Ten minutes after the skiff touched shore, the camp consisted of two
+cooks and three scullions. The Kid was a hewer and packer of wood, I was
+a peeler and slicer of things, and Bill, sweetly oblivious of his
+bewhiskered dignity, danced about in the humblest of moods, handing this
+and that to the grub-lords.
+
+"You outfitted like greenhorns!" announced the usurpers. "What you want
+is raw material. Run down to the boat, please, and bring me this! Oh,
+yes, and bring me that! And you'll find the other in the bottom of the
+skiff's forward locker! Put a little more wood on the fire, Kid; and
+say, Bill, hand me that, won't you? Who's going to get a pail of water?"
+
+All three of us were going to get a pail of water, of course! It was the
+one thing in the world we wanted to do very much--get a pail of water!
+
+But the raw materials--how they played on them! I regarded their
+performance as a species of duet; and the raw materials, ranged in the
+sand about the fire, were the keys. Frank touched this, Charley touched
+that, and over the fire the music grew--perfectly stomach-ravishing!
+
+We had bought with much care all, or nearly all the ordinary
+cooking-utensils. These the usurpers scorned. Three or four gasoline
+cans, transformed by a jack-knife into skillets, ovens, platters, etc.,
+sufficed for these masters of their craft. The downright Greek
+simplicity of their methods won me completely.
+
+"This is indeed Art," thought I; "first, the elimination of the
+non-essential, and then the virile, unerring directness, the seemingly
+easy accomplishment resulting from effort long forgotten; and, above
+all, the final, convincing delivery of the goods."
+
+Out of the chaos of the raw material, beneath the touch of Charley's
+wise hands, emerged a wondrous cosmos of biscuits, light as the heart of
+a boy. And Frank, singing a French ditty, created wheat cakes. His
+method struck me as poetic. He scorned the ordinary uninspired cook's
+manner of turning the half-baked cake. One side being done, he waited
+until the ditty reached a certain lilting upward leap in the refrain,
+when, with a dexterous movement of the frying-pan, he tossed the cake
+into the air, making it execute a joyful somersault, and catching it
+with a sizzling _splat_ in the pan, just as the lilting measure ceased
+abruptly.
+
+Why, I could taste that song in the pancakes!
+
+I wonder why domestic economy has so persistently overlooked the value
+of song as an adjunct to cookery. _Gâteaux à la chansonnette!_ Who
+wouldn't eat them for breakfast?
+
+At six in the evening we put off, Charley, the Kid and I manning the
+power boat, Bill and Frank the skiff, which was towed by a thirty-foot
+line. I had, during the day, transformed my unquestioned slavery into a
+distinct advantage, having carefully impressed upon the Englishman the
+honor I would do him by allowing him to become chief engineer of the
+_Atom_. I carefully avoided the subject of cranking. I was tired
+cranking. I felt that I had exhausted the possibilities of enjoyment in
+that particular form of physical exercise. It had developed during the
+day that Charley had once run a gasoline engine. I was careful to
+emphasize my ridiculous lack of mechanical ability. Charley took the
+bait beautifully.
+
+But just now the engine ran merrily. Above its barking I sang the
+praises of the Englishman, with a comfortable feeling that, at least in
+this, the tail would wag the dog.
+
+Through the clear quiet waters, between soaring canyon walls, we raced
+eastward into the creeping twilight. Here and there the banks widened
+out into valleys of wondrous beauty, flanked by jagged miniature
+mountains transfigured in the slant evening light. It seemed the "færie
+land forlorn" of which Keats dreamed, where year after year come only
+the winds and the rains and the snow and the sunlight and the star-sheen
+and the moon-glow.
+
+In the deepening evening our widening V-shaped wake glowed with
+opalescent witch-fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered wild and
+lost the channel. We all got out and, wading in different directions,
+went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake
+three or four hundred yards wide and eight inches deep. Slipping poles
+under the power boat, we carried it several hundred yards to a point
+where the stream deepened. It was now quite dark, and the engine quit
+work for the day. The skiff towed us another mile or so to a camping
+place.
+
+Having moored the boats, we lined up on the shore and had a song. It was
+a quintet, consisting of a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Irishman, a
+Cornishman, and a German. A very strong quintet it was; that is to say,
+strong on volume. As to quality--we weren't thrusting ourselves upon an
+audience. The river and the sky didn't seem to mind, and the cliffs sang
+after us, lagging a beat or two.
+
+We wished to sing ever so beautifully; and, after all, it would be much
+better to have the whole world wishing to sing melodiously, than to have
+just a few masters here and there who really can! Did you ever hear a
+barefooted, freckle-faced plowboy singing powerfully and quite out of
+tune, the stubble fields about him still glistening with the morning
+dew, and the meadow larks joining in from the fence-posts? I have: and
+soaring above the faulty execution, I heard the lark-heart of the
+never-aging world wooing the far-off eternal dawn. True song is merely a
+hopeful condition of the soul. And so I am sure we sang very wonderfully
+that night.
+
+And how the flapjacks disappeared as a result of that singing! We ate
+until Charley refused to bake any more; then we rolled up in our
+blankets by the fire and "swapped lies," dropping off one at a time into
+sleep until the last speaker finished his story with only the drowsy
+stars for an audience. At least I suppose it was so; I was not the last
+speaker.
+
+Alas! too seldom were we to hail the evening star with song. So far we
+had made in a week little more than one hundred and fifty miles. With
+the exception of a few hours of head winds, that week had been a week of
+dream. We now awoke fully to the fact that in low water season the
+Missouri is not swift. In our early plans we had fallen in with the
+popular fallacy that one need only cut loose and let the current do the
+rest; whereas, in low water, one would probably never reach the end of
+his journey by that method. In addition to this, our gasoline was
+running low. We had trusted to irrigation plants for replenishing our
+supply from time to time. But the great flood of the spring had swept
+the valley clean. Where the year before there were prosperous ranch
+establishments with gasoline pumping plants, there was only desolation
+now. It was as though we traveled in the path of a devastating army.
+Perhaps the summer of 1908 was the most unfavorable season for such a
+trip in the last fifty years. Steamboating on the upper river is only a
+memory. There are now no wood-yards as formerly. We found ourselves with
+no certainty of procuring grub and oil; our engine became more and more
+untrustworthy; our paddles had been lost. What winds we had generally
+blew against us, and the character of the banks was changing. The cliffs
+gave way to broad alluvial valleys, over which, at times, the gales
+swept with terrific force.
+
+Our map told us of a number of river "towns." We had already been
+partially disillusioned as to the character of those "towns." They were
+pretty much in a class with Goodale, except that they lacked the switch
+and the box-car and the sign. Just now Rocky Point lay ahead of us.
+Rocky Point meant a new supply of food and oil. Stimulated by this
+thought, Charley cranked heroically under the blistering sun and managed
+to arouse the engine now and then into spasms of speed. He had not yet
+begun to swear. Fearfully I awaited the first evidence of the new mood,
+which I knew must come.
+
+At least once a day we put the machinery on the operating table. Each
+time we succeeded only in developing new symptoms.
+
+At a point about fifty miles from the "town" so deeply longed for, a
+lone cow-punch appeared on the bank.
+
+"How far to Rocky Point?" I cried.
+
+"Oh, something less than two hundred miles!" drawled the horseman. (How
+carelessly they juggle with miles in that country!)
+
+"It's just a little place, isn't it?" I continued.
+
+"Little place!" answered the cow-puncher; "hell, no!"
+
+"What!" I cried in glee; "Is it really a town of importance?" I had
+visions of a budding metropolis, full of gasoline and grub.
+
+"I guess it ain't a little place," explained the rider; "_w'y, they've
+got nigh onto ten thousand cattle down there_!"
+
+Ten minutes after that, Charley, after a desperate but unsuccessful fit
+of cranking, straightened the kink out of his back, mopped the
+perspiration from his face--_and swore_!
+
+Almost immediately I felt, or at least thought I felt, a distinct change
+in the temper of the crew--for the worse. We used the better part of two
+days covering the last fifty miles into Rocky Point, only to find that
+the place consisted of a log ranch-house, two women, an old man, and
+"Texas." The cattle and the other men were scattered over a hundred
+miles or so of range. The women either would not or could not supply us
+with grub, explaining that the nearest railroad town was ninety miles
+away. Gasoline was out of the question. We might be able to buy some at
+the mouth of Milk River, _two hundred miles down stream_!
+
+"Texas," who made me think of Gargantua, and who had a chest like a
+bison bull's, and a drawling fog-horn voice, ran a saloon in an odd
+little shanty boat brought down by the flood. He solved the problem for
+us.
+
+"You cain't get no gasoline short o' Milk River," he bellowed
+drawlingly; "and you sure got to paddle, so you better buy whisky!"
+
+While we were deciding to accept the offered advice, "Texas" whittled a
+stick and got off a few jokes of Rabelaisian directness. We laughed
+heartily, and as a mark of his appreciation, he gave us five quarts for
+a gallon. Which proved, in spite of his appearance, that "Texas" was
+very human.
+
+We gave the engine a final trial. It ran by spasms--backwards. Then,
+finally, it refused to run at all. We tried to make ourselves believe
+that the gasoline was too low in the tank, that the pressure of the oil
+had something to do with it. At first we really knew better. But days of
+drudgery at the paddles transformed the makeshift hope into something
+almost like a certainty.
+
+There was no lumber at Rocky Point. We rummaged through a pile of
+driftwood and found some half-rotted two-by-sixes. These we hacked into
+paddles. They weighed, when thoroughly soaked, at least fifteen pounds
+apiece.
+
+Sending Bill and Frank on ahead with the skiff and the small store of
+provisions, Charley and I, the Kid at the steering rope, set out pushing
+the power canoe with the paddles. The skiff was very soon out of sight.
+
+The _Atom_, very fast under power, was, with paddles, the slowest boat
+imaginable. There was no lift to her prow, no exhilarating leap as with
+the typical light canoe driven by regulation paddles. And she was as
+unwieldy as a log. A light wind blew up-stream, and the current was very
+slow. After dark we caught up with Bill and Frank, who had supper
+waiting. I had been tasting venison all day; but there was none for
+supper. In spite of a night's smoking, all of it had spoiled. This left
+us without meat. Our provisions now consisted mostly of flour. We had a
+few potatoes and some toasted wind called "breakfast food." During six
+or seven hours of hard work at the paddles, we had covered no more than
+fifteen miles. These facts put together gave no promising result. In
+addition to this, it was impossible to stir up a song. Even the liquor
+wouldn't bring it out. And the flapjacks were not served _à la
+chansonnette_ that night. I tried to explain why the trip was only
+beginning to get interesting; but my words fell flat. And when the
+irrepressible Kid essayed a joke, I alone laughed at it, though rather
+out of gratitude than mirth.
+
+[Illustration: "WALKING" BOATS OVER SHALLOWS.]
+
+[Illustration: TYPICAL UPPER MISSOURI RIVER REACH.]
+
+[Illustration: THE MOUTH OF THE JAMES.]
+
+There are many men who live and die with the undisputed reputation of
+being good fellows--your friends and mine--who, if put to the test,
+would fail miserably. Fortunate is that man to whom it is not given to
+test all of his friends. This is not cynicism; it is only human nature;
+and I love human nature, being myself possessed of so much of it. I
+admire it when it stands firmly upon its legs, and I love it when it
+wabbles. But when it gains power with increasing odds, grows big with
+obstacles, I worship it.
+
+    "To thrill with the joy of girded men,
+    To go on forever and fail, and go on again--
+    With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night--"
+
+Thus it should have been. But that night, staring into the face of three
+of the four, I saw the yellow streak. The Kid was not one of the three.
+The first railroad station would hold out no temptation to him. He was a
+kid, but manhood has little to do with age. It must exist from the
+first like a tang of iron in the blood. Age does not really create
+anything--it only develops. Your wonderful and beautiful things often
+come as paradoxes. I looked for a man and found him in a boy.
+
+Bill talked about home and stared into the twilight. The "floaters" were
+irritable, quarreling with the fire, the grub, the cooking-utensils, and
+verbally sending the engine to the devil.
+
+Seeing about eighteen hundred miles of paddle work ahead, knowing that
+at that season of the year the prevailing winds would be head winds, and
+having very little faith in the engine under any conditions, I decided
+to travel day and night, for the water was falling steadily and already
+the channels were at times hard to find. Charley and Frank grumbled. I
+told them we would split the grub fairly, a fifth to a man, and that
+they might travel as slowly as they liked, the skiff being their
+property. They stayed with us.
+
+We lashed the boats together and put off into the slow current. A
+haggard, eerie fragment of moon slinked westward. Stars glinted in the
+flawless chilly blue. The surface of the river was like polished
+ebony--a dream-path wrought of gloom and gleam. The banks were lines of
+dusk, except where some lone cottonwood loomed skyward like a giant
+ghost clothed with a mantle that glistered and darkled in the chill
+star-sheen.
+
+There was the feel of moving in eternity about it all. The very
+limitation of the dusk gave the feeling of immensity. There was no sense
+of motion, yet we moved. The sky seemed as much below as above. We
+seemed suspended in a hollow globe. Now and then the boom of a diving
+beaver's tail accented the clinging quiet; and by fits the drowsy
+muttering of waterfowl awoke in the adjacent swamps, and droned back
+into the universal hush.
+
+Frank and I stood watch, the three others rolling up in their blankets
+among the luggage. It occurred to me for the first time that we had a
+phonograph under the cargo. I went down after it. At random I chose a
+record and set the machine going. It was a Chopin _Nocturne_ played on a
+'cello--a vocal yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, a brushing
+of sick wings across the gates of heavens never to be entered; and then
+the finale--an insistent, feverish repetition of the human ache, ceasing
+as with utter exhaustion.
+
+I looked about me drinking in the night. How little this music really
+expressed it! It seemed too humanly near-sighted, too egotistic, too
+petty to sound out under those far-seeing stars, in that divine quiet.
+
+I slipped on another record. This time it was a beautiful little song,
+full of the sweet melancholy of love. I shut it down. The thing wouldn't
+do. In the evening--yes. But _now_! Truly there is something womanly
+about Night, something loverlike in a vast impersonal way; but too
+big--she is too terribly big to woo with human sentiment. Only a
+windlike chant would do--something with an undertone of human despair,
+outsoared by brave, savage flights of invincible soul-hope--great virile
+singing man-cries, winged as the starlight, weird as space--Whitman
+sublimated, David's soul poured out in symphony.
+
+I started another going. This time I did not stop it, for the Night was
+singing--through its nose perhaps, but still it was singing--out of that
+machine. It was Wagner's _Evening Star_ played by an orchestra. It
+filled the night, swept the glittering reaches, groped about in the
+glooms; and then, leaving the human theme behind, soul-like the upward
+yearning violins took flight, dissolving at last into starlight and
+immensity. Ages swept by me like a dream-wind. When I got back, the
+machine, all but run down, was scratching hideously.
+
+Slowly we swung about in the scarcely perceptible current. Down among
+the luggage the three snored discordantly. Frank's cigarette glowed
+intermittently against the dim horizon, like a bonfire far off.
+Somewhere out in the gloom coyotes chattered and yelped, and from far
+across the dusky valley others answered--a doleful tenson.
+
+I dozed. Frank awoke us all with a shout. We leaped up and stared
+blinkingly into the north. That whole region of the sky was aflame from
+zenith to horizon with spectral fires. It was the aurora. Not the pale,
+ragged glow, sputtering like the ghost of a huge lamp-flame, which is
+familiar to every one, but a billowing of color, rainbows gone mad! In
+the northeast the long rolling columns formed--many-colored clouds of
+spectral light whipped up as by a whirlwind--flung from eastward to
+westward, devouring Polaris and the Wain--rapid sequent towers of
+smokeless fire!
+
+It dazzled and whirled and mounted and fell like the illumined filmy
+skirts of some invisible Titanic serpentine dancer, madly pirouetting
+across a carpet of stars. Then suddenly it all fell into a dull
+ember-glow and flashed out. The ragged moon dropped out of the
+southwestern sky. In the chill of the night, gray, dense fog wraiths
+crawled upon the hidden face of the waters.
+
+Again I dozed and awakened with the sense of having stopped suddenly. A
+light wind had arisen and we were fast on a bar. Frank and I took our
+blankets out on the sand, rolled up and went to sleep.
+
+The red of dawn awoke us as though some one had shouted. Frank and I sat
+up and stared about. A white-tail deer was drinking at the river's edge
+three hundred yards away. So far as we were concerned, it was a
+dream-deer. We blinked complacently at it until it disappeared in the
+brush. Then we thought of the rifle.
+
+We were all stiff and chilled. The boats were motionless in shallow
+water. We all got out in the stream that felt icy to us, and waded the
+crafts into the channel. Incidentally we remembered Texas and his
+wisdom.
+
+The time was early August; but nevertheless there was a tang of frost in
+the air and the river seemed to flow not water but a thick frore fog. I
+smelled persimmons distinctly--it was that cold; brown spicy persimmons
+smashed on crisp autumn leaves down in old Missouri! The smell haunted
+me all morning like a bitter-sweet regret.
+
+We breakfasted on flapjacks and, separating the boats, put off. The
+skiff left us easily and disappeared. A head wind arose with the sun and
+increased steadily. By eleven o'clock it blew so strongly that we could
+make no headway with the rude paddles, and the waves, rolling at least
+four feet from trough to crest, made it impossible to hold the boat in
+course. We quit paddling, and got out in the water with the line. Two
+pulled and one pushed. All day we waded, sometimes up to our necks;
+sometimes we swam a bit, and sometimes we clung to the boat and kicked
+it on to the next shallows. Our progress was ridiculously slow, but we
+kept moving. When we stopped for a few minutes to smoke under the lee of
+a bank, our legs cramped.
+
+To lay up one day would be only to establish a precedent for day after
+day of inactivity. The prevailing winds would be head winds. We clung
+to the shoddy hope held out by that magic name--Milk River. We knew too
+well that Milk River was only a snare and a delusion; but one must fight
+toward something--it makes little difference what you call that
+something. A goal, in itself, is an empty thing; all the virtue lies in
+the moving toward the goal.
+
+Often we sank deep in the mud; often at the bends we could scarcely
+forge against the blast that held us leaning to the pull. Noon came and
+still we had not overtaken the skiff. Dark came, and we had not yet
+sighted it. But with the sun, the wind fell, and we paddled on, lank and
+chilled. About ten o'clock we sighted the campfire.
+
+We ate flapjacks once more--delicious, butterless flapjacks!--and then
+once more we put off into the chill night. We made twelve miles that
+day, and every foot had been a fight. I wanted to raise it to
+twenty-five before sunrise. No one grumbled this time; but in the light
+of the campfire the faces looked cheerless--except the Kid's face.
+
+We huddled up in our blankets and, naturally, all of us went to sleep. A
+great shock brought us to our feet. The moon had set and the sky was
+overcast. Thick night clung around us. We saw nothing, but by the
+rocking of the boats and the roaring of the river, we knew we were
+shooting rapids.
+
+Still dazed with sleep, I had a curious sense of being whirled at a
+terrific speed into some subterranean suck of waters. There was nothing
+to do but wait. We struck rocks and went rolling, shipping buckets of
+water at every dip. Then there was a long sickening swoop through utter
+blackness. It ended abruptly with a thud that knocked us down.
+
+We found that we were no longer moving. We got out, hanging to the
+gunwales. The boats were lodged on a reef of rock, and we were obliged
+to "walk" them for some distance, when suddenly the water deepened, and
+we all went up to our necks. And the night seemed bitterly cold. I never
+shivered more in January.
+
+It was yet too dark to find a camping place; so we drifted on until the
+east paled. Then we built a great log fire and baked ourselves until
+sunrise.
+
+Day after day my log-book begins with the words, "Heavy head winds," and
+ends with "Drifted most of the night." We covered about twenty-five
+miles every twenty-four hours. Every day the cooks grumbled more; and
+Bill had a way of staring wistfully into the distance and talking about
+home, that produced in me an odd mixture of anger and pity.
+
+We had lost our map: we had no calendar. Time and distance, curiously
+confused, were merely a weariness in the shoulders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ON TO THE YELLOWSTONE
+
+
+At last one evening (shall I confess it?) we had blue-crane soup for
+supper!
+
+Now a flight of gray-blue cranes across a pearl-gray sky, shot with
+threads of evening scarlet, makes a masterly picture: indeed, an effect
+worthy of reproduction in Art. You see a Japanese screen done in heroic
+size; and it is a sight to make you long exquisitely for things that are
+not--like a poet. But----
+
+Let us have no illusions about this matter! Crane soup is not
+satisfactory. It looks gray-blue and tastes gray-blue, and gives to your
+psychic inwardness a dull, gray-blue, melancholy tone. And when you
+nibble at the boiled gray-blue meat of an adult crane, you catch
+yourself wondering just what sort of _ragout_ could be made out of
+boots; you have a morbid longing to know just how bad such a _ragout_
+would really be!
+
+Hereafter on whatever trails I may follow, blue cranes shall be used
+chiefly for Japanese screen effects. Little by little (the latent
+philosopher in me emerges to remark) by experience we place not only
+ourselves but all things in their proper places in the universe. This
+process of fitting things properly in one's cosmos seems to be one of
+the chief aims of conscious life. Therefore I score one for
+myself--having placed blue cranes permanently in that cosmic nook given
+over to Japanese screen effects!
+
+Next morning we pushed on. The taste of that crane soup clung to me all
+day like the memory of an old sorrow dulled by time.
+
+Deer tracks were plentiful, but it has long been conceded that the
+tracks are by far the least edible things pertaining to an animal.
+Cranes seemed to have multiplied rapidly. Impudently tame, they lined
+the gravel-bars, and regarded us curiously as we fought our way past
+them. Now and then a flock of wild ducks alighted several hundred yards
+from us. We had only a rifle. To shoot a moving duck out of a moving
+boat with a rifle is a feat attended with some difficulties. Once we
+wounded a wild goose, but it got away; which offended our sense of
+poetic justice. After crane soup one would seem to deserve roast goose.
+
+I scanned the dreary monotonous valleys stretching away from the river.
+We had for several days been living on scenery, tobacco, and flapjacks.
+The scenery had flattened out, tobacco was running low; but the
+flapjacks bid fair to go on forever. I sought in my head for the exact
+adjective, the particular epithet with the inevitable feel about it,
+with which to describe that monotonous melancholy stretch. Every time I
+tried, I came back to the word "_baconless_." The word took on exquisite
+overtones of gray meaning, and I worked up those overtones until I had a
+perfectly wrought melancholy poem of one word--"_Baconless_." For, after
+all, a poem never existed upon paper, but lives subtly in the
+consciousness of the poet, and in the minds of those who understand the
+poet through the suggestiveness of his written symbols, and their own
+remembered experiences.
+
+But during the next morning, poetic justice worked. A rider mounted on a
+piebald pony appeared on the bank and shouted for us to pull in.
+
+I suddenly realized why a dog wags his tail at a stranger. But the
+feeling I had was bigger than that. This mounted man became at once for
+me the incarnation of the meaning of bacon!
+
+When two parties meet and each wants what the other can give, it doesn't
+take long to get acquainted. The rider was a youth of about seventeen.
+One glance at his face told you the story of his rearing. He was
+unmistakably city-bred, and his hands showed that his life had begun too
+easy for his own good.
+
+"From the East?" he questioned joyously. "Say, you know little old New
+York, don't you? When were you there last?"
+
+The lad was hungry, but not for bacon. Alas! Our hunger was the
+healthier one! We talked of New York. "Mother's in Paris," he
+volunteered, "and Dad's in New York meeting her bills. But the Old Man's
+got a grouch at me, and so he sent me 'way out here in this God-forsaken
+country! Say, what did they make this country for? Got any tailor-made
+cigarettes about you? How did Broadway look when you were there last?
+Lights all there yet at night? I've been here two years--it seems like
+two hundred! Talk about Robinson Crusoe! Say, I've got him distanced!"
+
+I helped him build up a momentary Broadway there in the wilderness--the
+lights, the din, the hurrying, jostling theater crowds, the cafés,
+faces, faces--anguished faces, eager faces, weary faces, painted faces,
+squalor, brilliance. For me the memory of it only made me feel the pity
+of it all. But the lad's eyes beamed. He was homesick for Broadway.
+
+I changed the subject from prose to poetry; that is, from Broadway to
+bacon.
+
+"Wait here till I come back," said the lad, mounting. He spurred up a
+gulch and disappeared. In an hour he reappeared with a half strip of the
+precious stuff. "Take money for it? Not on your life!" he insisted.
+"You've been down there, and that goes for a meal ticket with me!"
+
+Fried bacon! And flapjacks sopped in the grease of it! After all, a
+banquet is very much a state of mind.
+
+When we pulled away, the ostracized New Yorker bade us farewell with a
+snatch of a song once more or less popular: "Give my regards to
+Broadway!"
+
+We pushed on vigorously now. The head wind came up. _The head wind!_ It
+seemed one of the eternal things. We paddled and cordelled valiantly,
+discussing Milk River the while. We had grown very credulous on that
+subject. Somehow or other an unlimited supply of gasoline was all the
+engine needed for the complete restoration of its health; and Milk River
+stood for gasoline in liberal quantities. Hope is generally represented
+by the poets as a thing winged and ethereal; nevertheless it can be fed
+on bacon.
+
+The next morning we arrived at the mouth of what we took to be Hell
+Creek, which flows (when it has any water in it!) out of the Bad Lands.
+It didn't take much imagination to name that creek. The whole country
+from which it debouches looks like Hell--"with the lights out," as
+General Sully once remarked. A country of lifeless hills that had the
+appearance of an endless succession of huge black cinder heaps from
+prehistoric fires.
+
+The wind had increased steadily all day, and now we saw ahead of us a
+long rolling stretch of wind-lashed river that discouraged us somewhat.
+A gray mist rolled with the wind, and dull clouds scudded over. We
+pitched camp in a clump of cottonwoods and made flapjacks; after which
+the Kid and I, taking our blankets and the rifle, set out to explore
+Hell Creek.
+
+[Illustration: REVEILLE!]
+
+[Illustration: THE PEN AND KEY RANCH.]
+
+The windings of the ravine soon hid us from the river, and we found
+ourselves in a melancholy world, without life and without any human
+significance. It was very easy to imagine one's self lost amid the drear
+ashen craters of the moon. We pushed on up the creek, kicking up clouds
+of alkali dust as we went. A creek of a burnt-out hell it was, to be
+sure. It seemed almost blasphemous to call this arid gully a creek. Boys
+swim in creeks, and fishes twinkle over the shallows where the sweet
+eager waters make a merry sound. Creek, indeed! Did a cynic name this
+dry ragged gash in the midst of a bleak black world where nothing lived,
+where never laughter sounded?
+
+A seething, fiery ooze might have flowed there once, but surely never
+did water make music there.
+
+We pushed on five or six miles, and the evening shade began to press in
+about us. At last we issued forth into a flat basin, surrounded by the
+weird hills--a grotesque, wind-carved amphitheater, admirably suited for
+a witches' orgy. Some bleached bison heads with horns lay scattered
+about the place, and a cluster of soapweeds grew there--God knows how!
+They thrust their sere yellow sword-blades skyward with the pitiful
+defiance of desperate things. It seemed natural enough that something
+should be dead in this sepulcher; but the living weeds, fighting
+bitterly for life, seemed out of place.
+
+I looked about and thought of Poe. Surely just beyond those summits
+where the melancholy sky touched the melancholy hills, one would come
+upon the "dank tarn of Auber" and the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
+
+We gathered a quantity of the dry sword-bladed soapweeds, and with one
+of the blankets made a lean-to shelter against the steep hillside. The
+place was becoming eerie in the gray evening that spread slowly over the
+dead land. The mist driven by the moaning wind became a melancholy
+drizzle. We dragged the soapweeds under cover and lit a fire with
+difficulty. It was a half-hearted, smudgy, cheerless fire.
+
+And then the night fell--tremendous, overpowering night! The Kid and I,
+huddled close in one blanket, thrust our heads out from under the
+shelter and watched the ghastly world leap by fits out of the dark, when
+the sheet lightning flared through the drizzle. It gave one an odd
+shivery feeling. It was as though one groped about a strange dark room
+and saw, for a brief moment in the spurting glow of a wind-blown
+sulphur match, the staring face of a dead man. Over us the great wind
+groaned. Water dripped through the blanket--like tears. We scraped the
+last damp ends of the weeds together that the fire might live a little
+longer. Byron's poem came back to me with a new force; and lying on my
+stomach in the cheerless drip before a drowning fire, I chanted snatches
+of it aloud to the Kid and to that sinister personality that was the
+Night.
+
+      I had a dream which was not all a dream;
+    The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
+        Did wander darkling in eternal space,
+        Rayless and pathless; and the icy earth
+    Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
+
+Low thunder shook the ink-sopped night--I thought of it as the Spirit of
+Byron applauding his own terrific lines.
+
+    A fearful hope was all the world contained;
+    Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
+    They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
+    Extinguished with a crash--and all was black.
+
+Out in the wind-voiced darkness, swept by spasmodic deluges of rapid
+flame and muffled thunder, it seemed I could hear the dream-forests of
+the moody Master crackling and booming in the gloom.
+
+      --looked up
+    With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
+    The pall of a past world.
+
+"Say, how long is that piece?" asked the Kid.
+
+    And vipers crawled
+    And twined themselves among the multitude,
+    Hissing--
+
+We wondered if there might not be some rattlesnakes in that vicinity.
+
+    --They raked up
+    And, shivering, scraped with their cold skeleton hands
+    The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
+    Blew for a little life, and made a flame
+    Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
+    Their eyes as it grew brighter, and beheld
+    Each other's aspects--saw and shrieked and died--
+
+"Cut that out!" said the Kid.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Because," said the Kid.
+
+But what are Bad Lands for? I had hoped to chant a bit of James Thomson,
+the younger, also, there in that "dreadful night." I never was in a
+place where it seemed to fit so well.
+
+But we huddled up in our blanket under the dripping shelter, and that
+was a long night. The soppy gray morning came at length. A midsummer
+morning after a night of rain--and yet, no bird, no hopeful greenery, no
+sense of the upward yearning Earth-Soul!
+
+When we sighted the Missouri River again, the sun had broken through
+upon the greengirt, glinting stream. It seemed like Paradise.
+
+By almost continuous travel we reached Lismus Ferry on the second
+morning from Hell Creek. The ferryman had a bit of information for us.
+We would find nothing at the mouth of Milk River but a sandbar, he
+advised us. But he had some ointment to apply to the wound thus
+inflicted, in that Glasgow, a town on the Great Northern, was only
+twenty-five miles inland. The weekly stage had left on the morning
+before; but the ferryman understood that the trail was not overcrowded
+with pedestrians.
+
+It was a smarting ointment to apply to so fresh a wound; but we took the
+medicine. Frank, Charley, and I set out at once for Glasgow, leaving the
+others at camp to repair the leaking boat during our absence. The stage
+trail led through an arid, undulating prairie of yellow buffalo grass.
+There were creek beds, but they were filled with dust at this season of
+the year. The Englishman set the pace with the stride of the
+long-legged. The sun rose high; the dry runs reminded us unpleasantly of
+our increasing thirst, and the puffing wind blew hot as from a distant
+prairie fire.
+
+I followed at the Englishman's heels, and by and by it began to occur to
+me that he could walk rather rapidly. The Frenchman trailed after at a
+steadily increasing distance, until finally I could no longer hear his
+forceful remarks (uttered in two languages) concerning a certain corn
+which he possessed. We had been cramped up in a boat for several weeks,
+and the frequent soakings in the cold water had done little good to our
+joints. None of us was fit for walking. I kept back a limp until the
+Englishman ahead of me began to step with a little jerking of the knees;
+and then with an almost vicious delight, I gave over and limped. I never
+knew before the great luxury of limping. We covered the distance in
+something less than six hours.
+
+The next morning, in a drizzling rain, each packing a five-gallon can of
+gasoline and some provisions, we set out for the Ferry; and it was a
+sorry, bedraggled trio that limped up to camp eight hours later. We did
+little more than creep the last five miles. And all for a spiteful
+little engine that might prove ungrateful in the end!
+
+It rained all night--a cold, insistent downpour. Our log fire was
+drowned out; the tent dripped steadily; our blankets got soppy; and
+three of us were so stiff that the least movement gave keen pain.
+
+Soppy dawn--wet wood--bad grub for breakfast--and bad humor concealed
+with difficulty; but through it all ran a faint note of victory at the
+thought of the gasoline, and the way that engine would go! We lay in
+camp all day--soppy, sore--waiting for the rain to let up. By way of
+cheering up I read _L'Assomoir_; and a grim graveyard substitute for
+cheer it was. But the next day broke with a windy, golden dawn. We
+filled the tank, packed the luggage and lo! the engine worked! It took
+all the soreness out of our legs to see it go.
+
+We rejoiced now in the heavy and steadily increasing head wind; for it
+was like conquering an old enemy to go crashing through the rolling
+water that had for so many days given us pitiless battle.
+
+For five or six miles we plunged on down the wind-tumbled river. There
+was a distinct change in the temper of the crew. A vote at that time
+would have been unanimous for finishing at New Orleans.
+
+_Squash!_
+
+The engine stopped; the _Atom_ swung round in the trough of the waves,
+and the tow-skiff rammed us, trying to climb over our gunwale. We
+wallowed in the wash of a bar, and cranked by turns. At the end of an
+hour no illusions were left us. Holding an inquest over the engine, we
+pronounced it dead.
+
+In the drear fag end of the windy day, soaked from much wading and weary
+of paddling with little headway, we made camp in a clump of scarlet
+bull-berry bushes; and by the evening fire two talked of railroad
+stations, one talked of home, and I thought of that one of the "soldiers
+three" who "swore quietly into the sky."
+
+The Milk River illusion was lost. Two hundred miles below was the mouth
+of the Yellowstone--the first station in the long journey. A few days
+back we had longed for gasoline; but there was no one to sell. Now we
+had fifteen gallons to sell--and there was no one to buy. The hope
+without the gasoline was decidedly better than the gasoline without the
+hope. Whereat the philosopher in me emerges to remark--but who cares?
+Philosophy proceeds backward, and points out errors of thought and
+action chiefly when it has become too late to mend them. But it is
+possible to be poor in the possession of erstwhile prospective wealth,
+and rich in retrospective poverty. Oh, blessed is he who is negatively
+rich!
+
+Being a bit stunned by the death of the hope conceived in weariness, we
+did not put off that night, but huddled up in our blankets close to the
+log fire; for this midsummer night had in it a tang of frost.
+
+Day came--cloudy and cold--blown over the wilderness by a wind that made
+the cottonwoods above us groan and pop. The waves were higher than we
+had seen them before. We had little heart for cordelling, and no
+paddling could make headway against that gale. It was Sunday. Everything
+was damp and chilly. Shivers ran up our backs while we toasted our feet
+and faces; and the wind-whipped smoke had a way of blowing in every
+direction at once. Charley struggled with the engine, which now and then
+made a few revolutions--backwards--by way of leading him on. He heaped
+big curses upon it, and it replied periodically with snorts of rage.
+
+Bad blood developed, and mutiny ensued, which once gave promise of
+pirate-story developments--fortunately warded off. Before the day was
+done, it was made plain that the Kid and I would travel alone from the
+mouth of the Yellowstone. "For," said the Kid with certain virile
+decorations of speech, "I'm going with you if we have to buy skates!"
+
+The wind fell at sunset. A chill, moonless, starry night lured me, and I
+decided to travel. The mutineers, eager to reach a railroad as soon as
+possible, agreed to go. The skiff led and the _Atom_ followed with
+paddles. A mile or so below we ran into shallows and grounded. We waded
+far around in the cold water that chilled us to the marrow, but could
+find neither entrance nor outlet to the pocket in which we found
+ourselves. Wading ashore, we made a cheerless camp in the brush, leaving
+the boats stuck in the shallows. For the first time, the division in the
+camp was well marked. The Kid and I instinctively made our bed together
+under one blanket, and the others bunked apart. We had become the main
+party of the expedition; the others were now merely enforced camp
+followers. It was funny in an unpleasant way.
+
+In the morning a sea of stiff fog hid our boats. Packing the camp stuff
+on our backs, we waded about and found the crafts.
+
+At last, after a number of cheerless days and nights of continuous
+travel, the great, open, rolling prairies ahead of us indicated our
+approach toward the end of the journey's first stage. The country began
+to look like North Dakota, though we were still nearly two hundred miles
+away. The monotony of the landscape was depressing. It seemed a thousand
+miles to the sunrise. The horizon was merely a blue haze--and the
+endless land was sere. The river ran for days with a succession of
+regularly occurring right-angled bends to the north and east. Each
+headland shot out in the same way, with, it seemed, the same snags in
+the water under it, and the same cottonwoods growing on it; and opposite
+each headland was the same stony bluff, wind- and water-carved in the
+same way: until at last we cried out against the tediousness of the
+oft-repeated story, wondering whether or not we were continually passing
+the same point, and somehow slipping back to pass it again.
+
+But at last we reached Wolf Point--the first town in five hundred miles.
+We had seen no town since we left Benton. An odd little burlesque of a
+town it was; but walking up its main street we felt very metropolitan
+after weeks on those lonesome river stretches.
+
+Five Assiniboine Indian girls seemed to be the only women in the town. I
+coaxed them to stand for a photograph on the incontestable grounds that
+they were by far the prettiest women I had seen for many days! The
+effect of my generous praise is fixed forever on the pictured faces
+presented herewith.
+
+Here, during the day, Frank and Charley disposed of their skiff and we
+saw them no more. We pushed on with little mourning. But in a spirit of
+fairness, let me record that Charley's biscuits were marvels, and that
+Frank's _gâteaux à la chansonnette_ were things of beauty and therefore
+joys forever.
+
+[Illustration: ASSINIBOINE INDIAN CHIEF.]
+
+[Illustration: ASSINIBOINE INDIAN CAMP.]
+
+The days that followed were long and hard; and half the chilly nights
+were spent in drying ourselves before a roaring fire. There were more
+mosquitoes now. They began to torture us at about five o'clock in the
+afternoon, and left off only when the cold of night came, relieving us
+of one discomfort by the substitution of another. Bill, of whom I had
+come to think as the expatriated turnip, gave me an opportunity to study
+homesickness--at once pitiful and ludicrous in a man with abundant
+whiskers. But he pulled strenuously at the forward paddle, every stroke
+as he remarked often, taking him closer to home.
+
+The river had fallen alarmingly, and was still falling. Several times we
+were obliged to unload the entire cargo, piling it high in the shallow
+water, that we might be able to carry the empty boat to the channel.
+
+One evening we came upon a typical Montana ranch--the Pen and Key. The
+residence, barns, sheds, fences were built of logs. The great rolling
+country about it was thickly dotted with horses and cattle. The place
+looked like home. It was a sight from Pisgah--a glimpse of a Promised
+Land after the Wilderness. We pulled in, intending to buy some
+provisions for the last stage of the journey to the Yellowstone.
+
+I went up to the main ranch-house, and was met at the door by one of
+those blessed creatures that have "mother" written all over them. Hers
+were not the eyes of a stranger. She looked at me as she must look at
+one of her sons when he returns from an extended absence. I told at
+once the purpose of my errand, explaining briefly what we were doing on
+the river. Why, yes, certainly we could have provisions. But we weren't
+going any farther that night--were we? The rancher appeared at this
+moment--a retired major of the army, who looked the part--and decided
+that we would stay for supper. How many were there in our party? Three?
+"Three more plates," he said to the daughters of the house, busy about
+the kitchen.
+
+Let's be frank! It really required no persuasion at all to make a guest
+of me. Had I allowed myself adequate expression of my delight, I should
+have startled the good mother by turning a somersault or a series of
+cartwheels! Oh, the smell of an old-fashioned wholesome meal in process
+of development!
+
+A short while back I sang the praises of the feast in the open--the
+feast of your own kill, tanged with the wood smoke. And even here I
+cling to the statement that of all meals, the feast of wild meat in the
+wilderness takes precedence. But the supper we ate that evening takes
+close second. Welcome on every face!--the sort of welcome that the most
+lavish tips could not buy. And after the dishes were cleared away, they
+brought out a phonograph, and we all sat round like one family, swapping
+information and yarns even up, while the music went on. When we left
+next morning at sunrise, it seemed that we were leaving home--and the
+river reaches looked a bit dismal all that day.
+
+Having once been a vagabond in a non-professional way, I have a theory
+about the physiognomy of houses. Some have a forbidding,
+sick-the-dog-on-you aspect about them, not at all due, I am sure, to
+architectural design. Experience has taught me to be suspicious of such
+houses. Some houses have the appearance of death--their windows strike
+you as eyeless sockets, the doors look like mouths that cannot speak.
+The great houses along Fifth Avenue seemed like that to me. I could walk
+past them in the night and feel like a ghost. I have seen cottages that
+I wanted to kneel to; and I'm sure this feeling wasn't due to the vine
+growing over the porch or the roses nodding in the yard. Knock at the
+door of such a house, and the chances are in favor of your being met by
+a quiet, motherly woman--one who will instantly make you think of your
+own mother. Some very well constructed houses look surly, and some
+shabby ones look kind, somehow. If you have ever been a book agent or a
+tramp, how you will revel in this seeming digression! God grant that no
+man in need may ever look wistfully at your house or at mine, and pass
+on with a shake of the head. It is a subtle compliment to have book
+agents and tramps frequently at one's door.
+
+Am I really digressing? My theme is a trip on a great river. Well,
+kindness and nature are not so far apart, let us believe.
+
+Now this ranch-house looked hospitable; there was no mistaking it.
+Wherefore I deduce that the spirit of the inhabitants must pierce
+through and emanate from the senseless walls like an effluvium. Who
+knows but that every house has its telltale aura, plain to a vision of
+sufficient spiritual keenness? Perhaps some one will some day write a
+book _On the Physio-Psychological Aspect of Houses_: and there will be
+an advance sale of at least one copy on that book.
+
+At noon on the fourth day from the Pen and Key Ranch, we pulled up at
+the Mondak landing two miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. We were
+thoroughly soaked, having dragged the boat the last two or three miles
+through the shallows and intermittent deeps of an inside channel. The
+outer channel was rolling viciously in that eternal thing, the head
+wind. We had covered the first six hundred miles with a power boat
+(called so, doubtless, because it required so much power to shove it
+along!) in a little less than four weeks. During that time we had
+received no mail, and I was making a break for the post-office, oozing
+and feeling like an animated sponge, when a great wind-like voice roared
+above me: "_Hey there!_"
+
+I looked up to the hurricane deck of a steamer that lay at the bank
+taking on freight. A large elderly man, dressed like a farmer, with an
+exaggerated straw hat shading a face that gripped my attention at once,
+was looking down at me. It was the face of a born commander; it struck
+me that I should like to have it cast in bronze to look at whenever a
+vacillating mood might seize me.
+
+"_Come aboard!_" bawled the man under the ample hat. There was nothing
+in the world just then that I wished for more than my mail; but somehow
+I felt the will to obey--even the necessity of obeying.
+
+"You came from Benton?" he asked, when I had clambered up the forward
+companionway and stood dripping before the captain of the steamer
+_Expansion_. At this closer range, the strength of the face was even
+more impressive, with its eagle beak and its lines of firmness; but a
+light of kindness was shed through it, and the eyes took on a gentle
+expression.
+
+"How did you find the water?"
+
+"Very low, sir; we cordelled much of the way."
+
+"I tried to get this boat to Benton," he said, "and got hung up on the
+rocks above Lismus Ferry."
+
+"And we drifted over them helter-skelter at midnight!"
+
+He smiled, and we were friends. Thus I met Captain Grant Marsh, the
+Grand Old Man of the Missouri River. He was freighting supplies up the
+Yellowstone for the great Crane Creek irrigation dam, sixty miles above
+the mouth. The _Expansion_ was to sail on the following day, and I was
+invited to go along. Seeing that the Captain was short of help, I
+insisted upon enlisting as a deck hand for the trip.
+
+It was work. I think I should prefer hod-carrying as a profession, for
+we had a heavy cargo, ranging from lumber and tiling to flour and beer;
+and there are no docks on the Yellowstone. The banks were steep, the sun
+was very hot, and the cargo had to be landed by man power. My companions
+in toil swore bitterly about everything in general and steamboating in
+particular.
+
+"How much are you getting?" asked a young Dane of me, as we trudged up
+the plank together.
+
+"Nothing at all," I said.
+
+He swore an oath of wonder, and stopped to look me over carefully for
+the loose screw in my make-up.
+
+"--nothing but the fun of it," I added.
+
+He sniffed and looked bewildered.
+
+"Did it ever occur to you," said I, "that a man will do for nothing what
+he wouldn't do for money?"
+
+I could see my conundrum playing peek-a-boo all about his stolid
+features. After that the Dane treated me with an air of superiority--the
+superiority of thirty dollars per month over nothing at all.
+
+We stopped twice to coal, and worked far into the night. There are no
+coal chutes on the Yellowstone. We carried and wheeled the stuff aboard
+from a pile on the bank. During a brief interval of rest, the young
+Dane announced to the others that I was working for nothing; whereat
+questioning eyes were turned upon me in the dull lantern light. And I
+said to myself: I can conceive of heaven only as an improbable condition
+in which all men would be willing and able to work for nothing at all. I
+had read in the Dane's face the meaning of a price. Heaving coal, I
+built Utopias.
+
+When the boat was under way, I sat in the pilot-house with the Captain,
+watching the yellow flood and the yellow cliffs drift past like a
+vision. And little by little, this old man who has followed the river
+for over sixty years, pieced out the wonderful story of his life--a
+story fit for Homer. That story may now be read in a book, so I need not
+tell it here. But I came to think of him as the incarnation of the
+river's mighty spirit; and I am proud that I served him as a deck hand.
+
+As we steamed out of the Yellowstone into the clear waters of the
+Missouri, the Captain pointed out to me the spot upon which Fort Union
+stood. Upon landing, I went there and found two heaps of stone at the
+opposite corners of a rectangle traced by a shallow ditch where of old
+the walls stood. This was all that remained of the powerful
+fort--virtually the capital of the American Fur Company's Upper Missouri
+empire--where Mackenzie ruled--Mackenzie who was called King!
+
+Long slough grass grew there, and blue waxen flowers struggled up amid
+the rubble of what were once defiant bastions. I lay down in the
+luxuriant grass, closed my eyes, and longed for a vision of heroic days.
+I thought of the Prince who had been entertained there with his great
+retinue; of the regality of the haughty Scotchman who ruled there; of
+Alexander Harvey, who had killed his enemy on the very spot, doubtless,
+where I lay: killed him as an outraged brave man kills--face to face
+before the world. I thought of Bourbonais, the golden-haired Paris of
+this fallen Ilium. I thought of the plague that raged there in '37, and
+of Larpenteur and his friend, grim, jesting carters of the dead!
+
+It all passed before me--the unwritten Iliad of a stronghold forgotten.
+But the vision wouldn't come. The river wind moaned through the grasses.
+
+I looked off a half mile to the modern town of Mondak, and wondered how
+many in that town cared about this spot where so much had happened, and
+where the grass grew so very tall now.
+
+I gathered blue flowers and quoted, with a slight change, the lines of
+Stevenson:
+
+    But ah, how deep the grass
+    Along the battlefield!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DOWN FROM THE YELLOWSTONE
+
+
+The geographer tells us that the mouth of the Missouri is about
+seventeen miles above St. Louis, and that the mouth of the Yellowstone
+is near Buford, North Dakota. It appeared to me that the fact is
+inverted. The Missouri's mouth is near Buford, and the Yellowstone
+empties directly into the Mississippi!
+
+I find that I am not alone in this opinion. Father de Smet and other
+early travelers felt the truth of it; and Captain Marsh, who has piloted
+river craft through every navigable foot of the entire system of rivers,
+having sailed the Missouri within sound of the Falls and the Yellowstone
+above Pompey's Pillar, feels that the Yellowstone is the main stem and
+the Missouri a tributary.
+
+Where the two rivers join, even at low water, the Yellowstone pours a
+vast turbulent flood, compared with which the clear and quieter
+Missouri appears an overgrown rain-water creek. The Mississippi after
+some miles obliterates all traces of its great western tributary; but
+the Missouri at Buford is entirely lost in the Yellowstone within a few
+hundred yards. All of the unique characteristics by which the Missouri
+River is known are given to it by the Yellowstone--its turbulence, its
+tawniness, its feline treachery, its giant caprices.
+
+Examine closely, and everything will take on before your eyes either
+masculine or feminine traits. Gender, in a broad sense, is universal,
+and nothing was created neuter. The Upper Missouri is decidedly female:
+an Amazon, to be sure, but nevertheless not a man. Beautiful, she is,
+alluring or terrible, but always womanlike. But when you strike the
+ragged curdling line of muddy water where the Yellowstone comes in, it
+is all changed. You feel the sinewy, nervous might of the man.
+
+So it is, that when you look upon the Missouri at Kansis City, it is the
+Yellowstone that you behold!
+
+[Illustration: ON THE HURRICANE DECK OF THE "EXPANSION"; CAPT. MARSH
+THIRD FROM THE LEFT.]
+
+[Illustration: FORT UNION IN 1837.]
+
+[Illustration: SITE OF OLD FORT UNION.]
+
+But names are idle sounds; and being of a peace-loving disposition, I
+would rather withdraw my contention than seriously disturb the
+geographical _status quo_! Let it be said that the Upper Missouri is the
+mother and the Yellowstone the father of this turbulent Titan, who
+inherits his father's might and wonder, and takes through courtesy the
+maiden name of his mother. There! I am quite appeased, and the
+geographers may retain their nomenclature.
+
+At Mondak, Luck stood bowing to receive us. The _Atom I_ had suffered
+more from contact with snags and rocks than we had supposed. For several
+hundred miles her intake of water had steadily increased. We had toiled
+at the paddles with the water halfway to our knees much of the time;
+though now and then--by spasms--we bailed her dry. She had become a
+floating lump of discouragement, and still fourteen hundred miles lay
+ahead.
+
+But on the day previous to our sailing, a nervous little man with a
+wistful eye offered us a trade. He had a steel boat, eighteen feet long,
+forty inches beam, which he had built in the hours between work and
+sleep during the greater part of a year.
+
+His boat was some miles up the Yellowstone, but he spoke of her in so
+artless and loving a manner--as a true workman might speak--and with
+such a wistful eye cast upon our boat, that I believed in him and his
+boat. He had no engine. It was the engine in our boat that attracted
+him, as he wished to make a hunting trip up river in the fall. He stated
+that his boat would float, that it was a dry boat, that it would row
+with considerable ease. "Then," said I, "paddle her down to the mouth of
+the Yellowstone, and the deal is made." After dark he returned to our
+camp with a motor boat, ready to take us to our new craft, _Atom II_.
+
+Leaving all our impedimenta to be shipped by rail, that is, Bill, the
+tent, extra blankets, phonograph--everything but a few cooking-utensils,
+an ax, a tarp, and a pair of blankets--the Kid and I got in with the
+little man and dropped down to the Yellowstone. The new boat was moored
+under a mud bank. I climbed in, lit a match, and my heart leaped with
+joy. She was staunch and beautiful--a work of love, which means a work
+of honesty. Fore and aft were air-tight compartments. She had an oil
+tank, a water tank, engine housing, steering wheel, lockers. She was
+ready for the very engine I had ordered to be shipped to me at Bismarck.
+She was dry as a bone, and broad enough to make a snug bed for two.
+
+The little man and the motor boat dropped out into the gloom and left us
+gloating over our new possession, sending thankful rings of tobacco
+smoke at the stars. When the first flush of triumph had passed, we
+rolled up in the bottom of the boat, lulled to sleep by the cooing of
+the fusing rivers, united under our gunwale. Such a sleep--a _dry_
+sleep! and the sides of the boat protected us against the chill night
+wind.
+
+And the dawn came--shouting merrily like a boy! I once had a chum who
+had a habit of whistling me out of bed now and then of a summer morning,
+when the birds were just awakening, and the dew looked like frost on the
+grass. And the sun that morning made me think of my old boy chum with
+his blithe, persistent whistling. For the first hard stage of the
+journey was done; all had left me but a brave lad who would take his
+share of the hardships with a light heart. (All boys are instinctively
+true sportsmen!) And before us lay the great winding stretch of a savage
+river that I had loved long--the real Missouri of my boyhood.
+
+A new spirit had come upon us with the possession of the _Atom II_--the
+spirit of the forced march. For nearly a month we had floundered,
+trusting to a sick engine and inefficient paddles. Now we had a staunch,
+dry boat, and eight-foot oars. We trusted only ourselves, and we were
+one in the desire to push the crooked yellow miles behind us. During the
+entire fourteen hundred miles that desire increased, until our progress
+was little more than a retreat. We pitched no camps; we halted only when
+we could proceed no further owing to sandbars encountered in the dark;
+we ate as we found it convenient to do so. Regularly relieving each
+other at the oars, one sat at the steering wheel, feeling for the
+channel. And it was not long until I began to note a remarkable change
+in the muscles of the Kid, for we toiled naked to the waist most of the
+time. His muscles had shown little more than a girl's when we first swam
+together at Benton. Now they began to stand out, clearly defined, those
+of his chest sprawling rigidly downward to the lean ribs, and little
+eloquent knots developed on the bronzed surface of his once smooth arms.
+He was at the age of change, and he was growing into a man before my
+eyes. It was good to see.
+
+All the first day the gods breathed gently upon us, and we made fifty
+miles, passing Trenton and Williston before dark. But the following day,
+our old enemy, the head wind, came with the dawn. We were now sailing a
+river more than twice the size of the Upper Missouri, and the waves were
+in proportion. Each at an oar, with the steering wheel lashed, we forged
+on slowly but steadily. In midstream we found it impossible to control
+the boat, and though we hugged the shore whenever possible, we were
+obliged to cross with the channel at every bend. When the waves caught
+us broadside, we were treated to many a compulsory bath, and our clothes
+were thoroughly washed without being removed. An ordinary skiff would
+have capsized early in the day, but the _Atom II_ could carry a full
+cargo of water and still float.
+
+By sunset the wind fell, the river smoothed as a wrinkled brow at the
+touch of peace. Aided by a fair current, we skulled along in the hush of
+evening through a land of vast green pastures with "cattle upon a
+thousand hills." The great wind had spread the heavens with ever
+deepening clouds. The last reflected light of the sun fell red upon the
+burnished surface of the water. It seemed we were sailing a river of
+liquefied red flame; only for a short distance about us was the water
+of that peculiar Missouri hue which makes one think of bad coffee
+colored with condensed milk.
+
+Slowly the colors changed, until we were in the midst of a stream of
+iridescent opal fires; and quite lost in the gorgeous spectacle, at
+length we found ourselves upon a bar.
+
+We got out and waded around in water scarcely to our ankles, feeling for
+a channel. The sand was hard; the bar seemed to extend across the entire
+river; but a thin rippling line some fifty yards ahead told us where it
+ended. We found it impossible to push the heavy boat over the shallows.
+The clouds were deepening, and the night was coming rapidly. Setting the
+Kid to work digging with an oar at the prow, I pushed and wriggled the
+stern until I saw galaxies. Thus alternately digging and pushing, we at
+last reached navigable depths.
+
+It was now quiet and dark. Low thunder was rolling, and now and then
+vivid flashes of lightning discovered the moaning river to us--ghastly
+and forbidding in the momentary glare. We decided to pull in for the
+night; but in what direction should we pull? A drizzling rain had begun
+to fall, and the sheet lightning glaring through it only confused
+us--more than the sooty darkness that showered in upon us after the
+rapid flashes. We sat still and waited. In the intermittent silences,
+the rain hissed on the surface of the river like a shower of innumerable
+heated pebbles. Ahead of us we heard the dull booming of the cut banks,
+as the current undermined ponderous ledges of sand.
+
+Now, a boat that happens under a falling cut bank, passes at once into
+the region of forgotten things. The boat would follow the main current;
+the main current flows always under the cut banks. How long would it
+take us to get there? Which way should we pull? Put a simpler question:
+In which way were we moving? We hadn't the least conception of
+direction. For us the night had only one dimension--_out_!
+
+Finally a great booming and splashing sounded to our left, and the boat
+rocked violently a moment after. We grasped the oars and pulled blindly
+in what we supposed to be the opposite direction, only to be met by
+another roar of falling sand from that quarter.
+
+There seemed to be nothing to do but have faith in that divinity which
+is said to superintend the goings and coming of fools and drunkards.
+Therefore we abandoned the oars, twiddled our thumbs, and let her drift.
+We couldn't even smoke, for the rain was now coming down merrily. The
+Kid thought it a great lark, and laughed boisterously at our
+predicament. By flashes I saw the drenched grin under his dripping nose.
+But for me, some lines written by that sinister genius, Wainwright, came
+back with a new force, and clamored to be spoken:
+
+_"Darkness--sooty, portentous darkness--shrouds the whole scene; as if
+through a horrid rift in a murky ceiling, a rainy deluge--'sleety flaw,
+discolored water'--streams down amain, spreading a grisly spectral
+light, even more horrible than that palpable night."_
+
+At length the sensation of sudden stopping dizzied us momentarily. We
+thrust out an oar and felt a slowly sloping bar. Driving the oar
+half-way into the soft sand, we wrapped the boat's chain about it and
+went to bed, flinging the tarp over us.
+
+A raw dawn wind sprinkled a cheerless morning over us, and we got up
+with our joints grinding rustily. We were in the midst of a desolate
+waste of sand and water. The bar upon which we had lodged was utterly
+bare. Drinking a can of condensed milk between us, we pushed on.
+
+That day we found ourselves in the country of red barns. It was like
+warming cold hands before an open grate to look upon them. At noon we
+saw the first wheat-field of the trip--an undulating golden flood,
+dimpled with the tripping feet of the wind. These were two joys--quite
+enough for one day. But in the afternoon the third came--the first
+golden-rod. My first impulse was to take off my hat to it, offer it my
+hand.
+
+That evening we pulled up to a great bank, black-veined with outcrops of
+coal, and cooked supper over a civilized fire. For many miles along the
+river in North Dakota, as well as along the Yellowstone in Montana,
+these coal outcrops are in evidence. Doubtless, within another
+generation, vast mining operations will be opened up in these
+localities. Coal barges will be loaded at the mines and dropped down
+stream to the nearest railroad point.
+
+We were in the midst of an idyllic country--green, sloping, lawn-like
+pastures, dotted sparsely with grotesque scrub oaks. Far over these the
+distant hills lifted in filmy blue. The bluffs along the water's edge
+were streaked with black and red and yellow, their colors deepened by
+the recent rains. Lazy with a liberal supper, we drifted idly and gave
+ourselves over for a few minutes to the spell of this twilight
+dreamland. I stared hard upon this scene that would have delighted
+Theocritus; and with little effort, I placed a half-naked shepherd boy
+under the umbrella top of that scrub oak away up yonder on the lawny
+slope. With his knees huddled to his chin, I saw him, his fresh cheeks
+bulged with the breath of music. I heard his pipe--clear,
+dream-softened--the silent music of my own heart. Dream flocks sprawled
+tinkling up the hills.
+
+With a wild burst of scarlet, the sunset flashed out. Black clouds
+darkened the visible idyll. A chill gust swept across the stream,
+showering rain and darkness. Each at an oar, we forged on, until we lost
+the channel in the gloom. At the first peep of day we were off again,
+after a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and coffee.
+
+We were gradually becoming accustomed to the strain of constant rowing.
+For at least sixteen hours a day we fought the wind, during which time
+the oars were constantly dipping; and very often our day lengthened out
+to twenty hours. We had no time-piece, and a night of drifting was
+divided into two watches. These watches we determined either by the
+dropping of a star toward the horizon, or by the position of the moon
+when it shone. On dark nights, the sleeper trusted to the judgment of
+his friend to call when the watch seemed sufficiently long. Daily the
+water fell, and every inch of fall increased the difficulty of
+traveling.
+
+We were now passing through the country of the Mandans, Gros Ventres,
+and Ricarees, the country through which old Hugh Glass crawled his
+hundred miles with only hate to sustain him. To the west lay the barren
+lands of the Little Missouri, through which Sully pushed with his
+military expedition against the Sioux on the Yellowstone. An army flung
+boldly through a dead land--a land without forage, and waterless--a
+labyrinth of dry ravines and ghastly hills! Sully called it "hell with
+the lights out." A magnificent, Quixotic expedition that succeeded! I
+compared it with the ancient expeditions--and I felt the eagle's wings
+strain within me. _Sully!_ There were trumpets and purple banners for me
+in the sound of the name!
+
+Late in the evening we reached the mouth of the Little Missouri. There
+we found one of the few remaining mud lodges of the ancient type. We
+landed and found ourselves in the midst of a forsaken little frontier
+town. A shambling shack bore the legend, "Store," with the "S" looking
+backward--perhaps toward dead municipal hopes. A few tumble-down frame
+and log shanties sprawled up the desultory grass-grown main street, at
+one end of which dwelt a Mandan Indian family in the mud lodge.
+
+A dozen curs from the lodge resented our intrusion with canine
+vituperation. I thrust my head into the log-cased entrance of the
+circular house of mud, and was greeted with a sound of scolding in the
+Mandan jargon, delivered by a squaw of at least eighty years. She arose
+from the fire that burned in the center of the great circular room, and
+approached me with an "I-want-your-scalp" expression. One of her
+daughters, a girl dressed in a caricature of the white girl's garments,
+said to me: "She wants to know what you've got to trade." To this old
+woman of the prairie, all white men were traders.
+
+"I want to buy," I said, "eggs, meat, bread, anything to eat."
+
+[Illustration: BOATS LAID UP FOR THE WINTER AT WASHBURN, N.D.]
+
+[Illustration: WASHBURN, N.D.]
+
+[Illustration: THE LANDING AT BISMARCK, N.D.]
+
+The old woman looked me over with a whimper of amused superiority,
+and disappeared, soon reappearing with a dark brown object not wholly
+unlike a loaf of bread. "Wahtoo," she remarked, pointing to the dark
+brown substance.
+
+I gave her a half-dollar. Very quietly she took it and went back to her
+fire. "But," said I, "do you sell your bread for fifty cents per loaf?"
+
+The girl giggled, and the old woman gave me another piece of her Mandan
+mind. She had no change, it appeared. I then insisted upon taking the
+balance in eggs. The old woman said she had no eggs. I pointed to a
+flock of hens that was holding a sort of woman's club convention in the
+yard, discussing the esthetics of egg-laying, doubtless, while
+neglecting their nests.
+
+The old lady arose majestically, disappeared again, and reappeared with
+three eggs. I protested. The Mandan lady forthwith explained (or at
+least it appeared so to me) all the execrable points in my character.
+They seemed to be numerous, and she appeared to be very frank about the
+matter. My moral condition, apparently, was clearly defined in her own
+mind. I withdrew in haste, fearing that the daughter at any moment might
+begin to translate.
+
+We dropped down river a few miles, prepared supper, and attacked the
+dark brown substance which the Indian lady had called "wahtoo." At the
+first bite, I began to learn the Mandan tongue. I swallowed a chunk
+whole, and then enlightened the Kid as to a portion of the Mandan
+language. "Wahtoo," said I, "means 'indigestible'; it is an evident
+fact." Then, being strengthened by our linguistic triumph, we fell upon
+the dark brown substance again. But almost anything has its good points;
+and I can conscientiously recommend Mandan bread for durability!
+
+Once more we had a rainy night. The tarp, stretched across the boat,
+sagged with the water it caught, and poured little persistent streams
+upon us. The chief of these streams, from the point of size, seemed
+consciously aiming at my ear. Thirce I turned over, shifted my position;
+thrice I was awakened by the sound of a merry brooklet pouring into that
+persecuted member.
+
+Somewhere in the world the white cock was crowing sleepily when we put
+off, stiff and soaked and shivering.
+
+Early in the day the fine sand from banks and bars began to lift in the
+wind. It smarted our faces like little whip lashes. Very often we could
+see no further than a hundred and fifty yards in any direction. Only by
+a constant, rapid dipping of the oars could the boat be held
+perpendicular to the choppy waves. One stroke missed meant hard work for
+both of us in getting out of the trough.
+
+Fighting every foot of water, we wallowed through the swells--past Elbow
+Woods, past Fort Berthold, past the forlorn, raggedy little town,
+"Expansion." (We rechristened it "Contraction"!)
+
+During the day the gale swept the sky clear. The evening air was crisp
+and invigorating. We cooked supper early and rowed on silently over the
+mirroring waters, between two vast sheets of stars, through a semilucent
+immensity. Far ahead of us a high cliff loomed black and huge against
+the spangled blue-black velvet of the sky. On its summit a dark mass
+soared higher. We thought it a tree, but surely a gigantic one.
+Approaching it, the soaring mass became a medieval castle sitting
+haughtily with frowning crenellations upon an impregnable rock; and the
+Missouri became for the moment a larger Rhine. At last, rowing up under
+the sheer cliff, the castle resolved itself into a huge grain elevator,
+its base a hundred feet above the stream.
+
+Although it was late, we tied our boat, clambered up a zigzag path, and
+found ourselves in one of the oddest little towns in the
+West--Manhaven--one of the few remaining steamboat towns.
+
+The main street zigzagged carelessly through a jumble of little houses.
+One light in all the street designated the social center of the town, so
+we went there. It was the grocery store--a general emporium of ideas and
+canned goods.
+
+Entering, we found ourselves in the midst of "the rustic cackle of the
+burg." I am sure the municipal convention was verbally reconstructing
+the universe; but upon our entrance, the matter was abruptly laid on the
+table. When we withdrew, the entire convention, including the
+grocery-man, adjourned, and accompanied us to the river where the
+general merits of our boat were thoroughly discussed by lantern light.
+Also, various conflicting versions of the distance to Bismarck were
+given--each party being certain of his own infallibility.
+
+There is something curious about the average man's conception of
+distance. During the entire trip we found no two men who agreed on this
+general subject. After acquiring a book of river distances, we created
+much amusement for ourselves by asking questions. The conversation very
+often proceeded in this manner:
+
+"Will you please tell us how far it is to So-and-So?"
+
+"One hundred and fifty-two and a half miles!" (with an air of absolute
+certainty).
+
+"But you are slightly mistaken, sir; the exact distance is sixty-two and
+seven-tenths miles!" (Consternation on the face of the omniscient
+informant.)
+
+Once a man told us that a certain town was one hundred and fifty miles
+down stream. We reached the town in an hour and a half!
+
+However, we had more success with the Indian. One day we came upon an
+old Mandan buck and squaw, who were taking a bath in the river,
+doubtless feeling convinced that they needed it. The current took us
+within fifty yards of them. Upon our approach, they got out of the water
+and sat in the sand quite as nude and unashamed as our first parents
+before the apple ripened.
+
+"Bismarck--how far?" I shouted, standing up in the boat.
+
+The buck rose in all his unclothed dignity, raised his two hands, shut
+and opened them seven times, after which he lowered one arm, and again
+opened and shut a hand. Then with a spear-like thrust of the arm toward
+the southeast, he stiffened the index finger in the direction of
+Bismarck. He meant "seventy-five miles as the crow flies." As near as I
+could figure it out afterward, he was doubtless correct.
+
+At noon the next day we reached the mouth of the Knife River, near which
+stood the Mandan village made famous by Lewis and Clark as their winter
+quarters. Fort Clark also stood here. Nothing remains of the Fort but
+the name and a few slight indentations in the ground. A modern steamboat
+town, Deapolis occupies the site of the old post. Across the river there
+are still to be seen the remains of trenches. A farmer pointed them out
+to us as all that remains of the winter camp of the great explorers.
+
+In the late evening we passed Washburn, the "steamboat center" of the
+upper river, fifty water miles from Bismarck. It made a very pretty
+appearance with its neat houses climbing the hillside. Along the water
+front, under the elevators, a half-dozen steamboats of the good
+old-fashioned type, lay waiting for their cargoes. Two more boats were
+building on the ways.
+
+Night caught us some five miles below the town, and, wrapping ourselves
+in our blankets, we set to drifting. I went on watch and the Kid rolled
+up forward and went to sleep. After sixteen hours of rowing in the wind,
+it is a difficult matter to keep awake. The night was very calm; the
+quiet waters crooned sleepily about the boat. I set myself the task of
+watching the new moon dip toward the dim hills; I intended to keep
+myself awake in that manner. The moon seemed to have stuck. Slowly I
+passed into an impossible world, in which, with drowsy will, I struggled
+against an exasperating moon that had somehow gotten itself tangled in
+star-sheen and couldn't go down.
+
+I awoke with a start. My head was hanging over the gunwale--the dawn was
+breaking through the night wall. A chill wind was rolling breakers upon
+us, and we were fast upon a bar. I awakened the Kid and we put off. We
+had no idea of the distance covered while sleeping. It must have been at
+least twenty miles, for, against a heavy wind, we reached Bismarck at
+one o'clock.
+
+We had covered about three hundred and fifty miles in six days, but we
+had paid well for every mile. As we passed under the Bismarck bridge,
+we confessed that we were thoroughly fagged. It was the thought of the
+engine awaiting us at this town that had kept us from confessing
+weariness before.
+
+I landed and made for the express office three miles away. A half-hour
+later I stood, covered with humility and perspiration, in the awful
+presence of the expressman, who regarded me with that lofty "God-and-I"
+air, characteristic of some emperors and almost all railroad officials.
+I stated to the august personage that I was looking for an engine
+shipped to me by express.
+
+It seems that my statement was insulting. The man snarled and shook his
+head. I have since thought that he was the owner of the Northern Pacific
+system in disguise. I suggested that the personage might look about. The
+personage couldn't stoop to that; but a clerk who overheard my insulting
+remark (he had not yet become the owner of a vast transportation system)
+condescended to make a desultory search. He succeeded in digging up a
+spark-coil--and that is all I ever saw of the engine.
+
+During my waiting at Bismarck, I had a talk with Captain Baker, manager
+of the Benton Packet Line. We agreed in regard to the Government's
+neglect of duty toward the country's most important natural
+thoroughfare, the Missouri River. About Sioux City, the Government
+operates a snag-boat, the _Mandan_, at an expense ridiculously
+disproportionate to its usefulness. The _Mandan_ is little more than an
+excursion boat maintained for a few who are paid for indulging in the
+excursions. A crew of several hundred men with shovels, picks, and
+dynamite, could do more good during one low water season than such boats
+could do during their entire existence.
+
+The value of the great river as an avenue of commerce is steadily
+increasing; and those who discourage the idea of "reopening" navigation
+of the river, are either railroad men or persons entirely ignorant of
+the geography of the Northwest. Captain Marsh would say, "Reopen
+navigation? I've sailed the river sixty years, and in that time
+navigation has not ceased."
+
+Rocks could and should be removed from the various rapids, and the banks
+at certain points should be protected against further cutting. A natural
+canal, extending from New Orleans in the South and Cincinnati in the
+East to the Rockies in the Northwest, is not to be neglected long by an
+intelligent Government.
+
+As a slow freight thoroughfare, this vast natural system of waterways is
+unequalled on the globe. Within another generation, doubtless, this
+all-but-forgotten fact will be generally rediscovered.
+
+Having waited four days for the engine, we put off again with oars. It
+was near sundown when we started, hungry for those thousand miles that
+remained. When we had pulled in to the landing at Bismarck, we were like
+boxers who stagger to their corners all but whipped. But we had
+breathed, and were ready for another round. A kind of impersonal anger
+at the failure of another hope nerved us; and this new fighting spirit
+was like another man at the oars. Many of the hard days that followed
+left on our memories little more than the impress of a troubled dream.
+We developed a sort of contempt for our old enemy, the head wind--that
+tireless, intangible giant that lashed us with whips of sand, drove us
+into shallows, set its mighty shoulders against our prow, roared with
+laughter at us when, soaked and weary, we walked and pushed our boat for
+miles at a time. The quitter that is in all men more or less, often
+whispered to us when we were weariest: "Why not take the train? What is
+it all for?" Well, what is life for? We were expressing ourselves out
+there on the windy river. The wind said we couldn't and our muscles said
+we shouldn't, and the snag-boat captain had said we couldn't get
+down--so we went on. We were now in full retreat--retreat from the
+possibility of quitting.
+
+During the first night out, an odd circumstance befell us that, for some
+hours, seemed likely to lose us our boat. As usual, we set to drifting
+at dark. The moon, close on its half, was flying, pale and frightened,
+through scudding clouds. However, the wind blew high and the surface of
+the water was unruffled. There could be nothing more eerie than a night
+of drifting on the Missouri, with a ghastly moon dodging in and out
+among the clouds. The strange glimmer, peculiar to the surface of the
+tawny river at night, gives it a forbidding aspect, and you seem
+surrounded by a murmuring immensity.
+
+We were, presumably, drifting into a great sandy bend, for we heard the
+constant booming of falling sand ahead. It was impossible to trace the
+channel, so we swung idly about with the current. Suddenly, we stopped.
+Our usual proceeding in such cases was to leap out and push the boat
+off. That night, fortunately, we were chilly, and did not fancy a
+midnight ducking. Each taking an oar, we thrust at the bar. The oars
+went down to the grip in quicksand. Had we leaped out as usual, there
+would have been two burials that night without the customary singing.
+
+We rocked the boat without result. We were trapped; so we smoked awhile,
+thought about the matter, and decided to go to bed. In the morning we
+would fasten on our cork belts and reach shore--perhaps. Having reached
+shore, we would find a stray skiff and go on. But the _Atom II_ seemed
+booked for a long wait on that quicksand bar.
+
+During the night a violent shaking of the boat awakened us. A heavy wind
+was blowing, and the prow of the boat was swinging about. It soon
+stopped with a chug. We stood up and rocked the boat vigorously. It
+broke loose again, and swung half-way around. Continuing this for a
+half-hour, we finally drifted into deep water.
+
+The next day we passed Cannon Ball River, and reached Standing Rock
+Agency in the late evening. Sitting Bull is buried there. After a late
+supper, we went in search of his grave. We found it after much lighting
+of matches at headstones, in a weed-grown corner of the Agency
+burying-ground. A slab of wood, painted white, bears the following
+inscription in black: "In Memory of Sitting Bull. Died Dec. 15, 1890."
+
+Perched upon the ill-kept grave, we smoked for an hour under the flying
+moon. A dog howled somewhere off in the gloomy waste.
+
+That night the Erinnyes, in the form of a swarm of mosquitoes, attacked
+us lying in our boat. The weary Kid rolled and swore till dawn, when a
+light wind sprang up _astern_. We hoisted our sail, and for one whole
+day cruised merrily, making sixty miles by sunset. This took us to the
+town of Mobridge.
+
+I was charmed with the novelty of driving our old enemy in harness. So,
+letting the Kid go to sleep forward under the sail, I cruised on into
+the night. The wind had fallen somewhat, but it kept the canvas filled.
+The crooning of the water, the rustling of the sail, the thin voices of
+bugs on shore, and the guttural song of the frogs, shocking the general
+quiet--these sounds only intensified the weird calm of the night. The
+sky was cloudless, and the moon shone so brightly that I wrote my day's
+notes by its glow.
+
+The winking lights of Mobridge slowly dropped astern and faded into the
+glimmering mist.
+
+    Lonely seamen all the night
+    Sail astonished amid stars.
+
+The remembered lines gave me the divine itch for quoting verses. I did
+so, until the poor tired Kid swore drowsily in his sleep under the mast.
+The air was of that invigorating coolness that makes you think of cider
+in its sociable stage of incipient snappiness. Sleepy dogs bayed far
+away. Lone trees approached me, the motion seeming to belong to them
+rather than to me, and drifted slowly past--austere spectral figures.
+Somewhere about midnight I fell asleep and was awakened by a flapping
+sail and a groaning mast, to find myself sprawling over the wheel. The
+wind had changed; it was once more blowing up-stream, and a drizzling
+rain was driving through the gloom. During my sleep the boat had gone
+ashore. I moored her to a drift log, lowered sail, flung a tarp over us,
+and went to sleep again. And the morning came--blanketed with gray
+oozing fog. The greater part of that day we rowed on in the rain without
+a covering. In the evening we reached Forest City, an odd little old
+town, looking wistfully across stream at the youthful red and white
+government buildings of the Cheyenne Agency.
+
+[Illustration: THE YANKTON LANDING IN THE OLD DAYS.]
+
+[Illustration: "ATOM II" LANDING AT SIOUX CITY.]
+
+Despite its name, this town is utterly treeless! I once knew a
+particularly awkward, homely, and freckled young lady named "Lily." The
+circumstance always seemed grimly humorous to me, and I remembered it as
+we strolled through the town that couldn't live up to its name.
+
+We were ravenously hungry, and as soon as possible we got our feet under
+the table of the town's dingy restaurant. A long, lean man came to take
+our orders. He was a walking picture of that condition known to patent
+medicine as "before taking." I looked for the fat, cheerful person who
+should illustrate the effect of eating at that place, but in vain. When
+the lean man reappeared with the two orders carefully tucked away in the
+palms of his bony hands, I thought I grasped the etiology of his
+thinness. It was indeed a frugal repast. We took in the situation at a
+glance.
+
+"Please consider us four hearty men, if you will," I said kindly; "and
+bring two more meals." The man obeyed. My _third_ order, it seems, met
+objections from the cook. The lean man, after a half audible colloquy
+with the presiding spirit of the kitchen, reported with a whipped
+expression that the house was "all out of grub." I regretted the matter
+very much, as I had looked forward to a long, unbroken series of meals
+that evening.
+
+Setting out at moonrise, just after sunset, we reached Pascal Island,
+fifteen miles below, before sleep came upon us in a manner not to be
+resisted. All night coyotes yelped from the hilltops about us,
+recounting their immemorial sorrows to the wandering moon.
+
+At sunset of the fifth day from Bismarck, we pulled in at Pierre.
+Although I had never been there before, Carthage was not more hospitable
+to storm-tossed Æneas than Pierre to the weather-beaten crew of the
+_Atom_. At a reception given us by Mr. Doane Robinson, secretary of the
+State Historical Society, I felt again the warmth of the great heart of
+the West.
+
+During the first night out of Pierre, the Kid, having stood his watch,
+called me at about one o'clock. The moon was sailing high. I grasped the
+oars and fell to rowing with a resolute swing, meaning, in the shortest
+possible time, to wear off the disagreeable stupor incident to arising
+at that time of night. I had been rowing for some time when I noted a
+tree on the bank near which the current ran. Still drowsy, I turned my
+head away and pulled with a will. After another spell of energetic
+rowing, I looked astern, expecting to see that tree at least a mile
+behind. There was no tree in sight, and yet I could see in that
+direction with sufficient clearness to discern the bulk of a tree if any
+were there.
+
+"I am rowing to beat the devil!" thought I; "that tree is away around
+the bend already!" So I increased the speed and length of my stroke, and
+began to come out of my stupor. Some time later, I happened to look
+behind me. _The tree in question was about three hundred yards ahead of
+the boat!_ I had been rowing up-stream for at least a half-hour in a
+strenuous race with that tree! The Kid, aroused by my laughter, asked
+sleepily what in thunder tickled me. I told him I had merely thought of
+a funny story; whereat he mumbled some unintelligble anathema, and
+lapsed again into a snoring state. But I claim the distinction of being
+the only man on record who ever raced a half-hour with a tree, and
+finished three city blocks to the bad!
+
+The next day we rounded the great loop, in which the river makes a
+detour of thirty miles. Having rowed the greater part of the day, we
+found ourselves in the evening only two or three miles from a point we
+had reached in the morning.
+
+In a drizzling rain we passed Brule Agency. In the evening, soppy and
+chilled, we were pulling past a tumble-down shanty built under the
+bluffs, when a man stepped from the door and hailed us. We pulled in.
+"You fellers looks like you needed a drink of booze," said the man as we
+stepped ashore. "Well, I got it for sale, and it ain't no harm to
+advertise!"
+
+This strenuous liquor merchant bore about him all the wretched marks of
+the stuff he sold.
+
+"Have your wife cook us two meals," said I, "and I'll deal with you."
+
+"Jump in my boat," said he. I got in his skiff, wondering what his whim
+might mean. After several strokes of the oars, he pulled a flask from
+his pocket, took my coin and rowed back to shore. "Government license,"
+he explained; "got to sell thirty feet from the bank." "Poor old
+Government," thought I; "they beat you wherever they deal with you!"
+
+We went up to the wretched shanty, built of driftwood, and entered. The
+interior was a mêlée of washtubs, rickety chairs, babies, and flies. The
+woman of the house hung out a ragged smile upon her puckered mouth,
+etched at the lips with many thin lines of worry, and aped hospitality
+in a manner at once pathetic and ridiculous. A little girl, who looked
+fifty or five, according to how you observed her, dexterously dodged the
+drip from the cracks in the roof, as she backed away into a corner, from
+whence she regarded us with eyes already saddened with the ache of life.
+
+After many days and nights in the great open, fraternizing with the
+stars and the moon and the sun and the river, it gave me a heartache to
+have the old bitter human fact thrust upon me again. "What is there left
+here to live for?" thought I. And just then I noted, hanging on the wall
+where the water did not drip, a neatly framed marriage certificate. This
+was the one attempt at decoration.
+
+It was the household's 'scutcheon of respectability. This woman, even in
+her degradation, true to the noblest instinct of her sex, clung to this
+holy record of a faded glory.
+
+Two days later, pushing on in the starlit night, we heard ahead the
+sullen boom of waters in turmoil. For a half-hour, as we proceeded, the
+sound increased, until it seemed close under our prow. We knew there
+was no cataract in the entire lower portion of the river; and yet, only
+from a waterfall had I ever heard a sound like that. We pulled for the
+shore, and went to bed with the sinister booming under our bow.
+
+Waking in the gray dawn, we found ourselves at the mouth of the Niobrara
+River. Though a small stream compared with the Missouri, so great is its
+speed, and so tremendous the impact of its flood, that the mightier, but
+less impetuous Missouri is driven back a quarter of a mile.
+
+Reaching Springfield--twelve miles below--before breakfast, in the
+evening we lifted Yankton out of a cloud of flying sand. The next day
+Vermilion and Elk Point dropped behind; and then, thirty miles of the
+two thousand remained.
+
+In the weird hour just before the first faint streak of dawn grows out
+of dark, we were making coffee--the last outdoor coffee of the year. Oh,
+the ambrosial stuff!
+
+We were under way when the stars paled. At sunrise the smoke of Sioux
+City was waving huge ragged arms of welcome out of the southeast. At
+noon we landed. We had rowed fourteen hundred miles against almost
+continual head winds in a month, and we had finished our two thousand
+miles in two months. It was hard work. And yet----
+
+The clang of the trolleys, the rumble of the drays, the rushing of the
+people!
+
+I prefer the drifting of the stars, the wandering of the moon, the
+coming and going of the sun, the crooning of the river, the shout of the
+big, manly, devil-may-care winds, the boom of the diving beaver in the
+night.
+
+I never felt at home in a town. Up river when the night dropped over me,
+somehow I always felt comfortably, kindly housed. Towns, after all, are
+machines to facilitate getting psychically lost.
+
+When I started for the head of navigation a friend asked me what I
+expected to find on the trip. "Some more of myself," I answered.
+
+And, after all, that is the Great Discovery.
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+The original text has a number of typographical errors and spelling
+inconsistencies, which have been maintained in this text. The following
+list details these errors:
+
+Original
+Page No.   Typographical error
+  4        marvelled for marveled
+  8        tighen for tighten
+  9        Danube's for Danubes
+ 14        "... to me that Theseus. ..." "that" should read "than"
+ 24        pealing for peeling
+ 32        terriffic for terrific
+ 47        lamp for lamb
+ 60        egshell for eggshell
+           terriffic for terrific
+ 61        inded for indeed
+ 66        ride for pride
+ 70        voluntered for volunteered
+ 78        sad for said
+ 92        intelligble for intelligible
+109        gunwhale for gunwale
+119        "I was tired cranking." for "I was tired of cranking."
+131        tenson for tension
+166        Kansis for Kansas
+171        skulled for sculled
+180        Thirce for Thrice
+195        unintelligble for unintelligible
+
+Inconsistencies
+
+cross-cut / crosscut
+Encleadus / Enceladus
+færie / faërie
+half-way / halfway
+Hole-in-the-Wall / Hole-in-the-wall
+log-book / logbook
+mid-stream / midstream
+sand-bar / sandbar
+"Texas" / Texas
+wind-like / windlike
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The River and I, by John G. Neihardt
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The River and I, by John G. Neihardt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The River and I
+
+Author: John G. Neihardt
+
+Release Date: October 3, 2005 [EBook #16793]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVER AND I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Julia Miller and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="10" summary="Transcriber's Note">
+<tr>
+<td valign="top">Transcriber's Notes:</td>
+<td>Typographical errors and inconsistent spellings
+found in the original publication have been maintained in this text. Misspelled words
+are <ins class="correction" title="correction">marked</ins>, with the correction in the popup. A
+<a href="#Note">list</a> of these is found at the end of the book.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i"></a></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>THE RIVER AND I</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii"></a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<table class="center" summary="Other Books by Neihardt">
+<tr>
+<td><div class="bbox">
+<div class="bbox2">
+<i>Other Books by</i><br />
+JOHN G. NEIHARDT<br />
+<hr class="bb" />
+<p> <span class="smcap">Indian Tales and Others</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Poetic Values</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Quest</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Song of Hugh Glass</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Song of the Indian Wars</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Song of Three Friends</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">The Splendid Wayfaring</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Two Mothers</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Collected Poems</span><br /></p>
+</div>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a name="Page_ii-f" id="Page_ii-f"></a></p>
+<p><a name="Page_iii-f" id="Page_iii-f"></a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image01" id="image01"></a>
+<a href="images/img01-full.jpg">
+<img src="images/img01.jpg" width="500" height="313" alt="Night in Camp." title="Night in Camp." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Night in Camp.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii"></a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<h1 style="margin-top: 4em; margin-bottom: 2em;">
+THE<br />
+RIVER AND<br />
+I</h1>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>JOHN G. NEIHARDT</h2>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><i>Illustrated<br />
+New Edition</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="titlepage">New York<br />
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+1927<br />
+<i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv"></a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+
+<p class="titlepage">
+<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1910,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> JOHN G. NEIHARDT.</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">Set up and electrotyped.<br />
+Reissued in new format, October, 1927.</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA<br />
+BY THE CORNWALL PRESS</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v"></a></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p class="center">
+TO<br />
+MY MOTHER<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2 class="sectionhead">NOTE</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> following account of a youthful adventure was written during the
+winter of 1908, ran as a serial in <i>Putnam's Magazine</i> the following
+year, and appeared as a book in 1910, five years before "The Song of
+Hugh Glass," the first piece of my Western Cycle. Many who have cared
+for my narrative poems, feeling the relation between those and this
+earlier avowal of an old love, have urged that "The River and I" be
+reprinted. </p>
+<p style="text-align: right;">J.G.N.</p>
+
+<p>St. Louis, 1927.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2 class="sectionhead"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>CHAPTER <span class="ralign">PAGE</span></li>
+<li><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I. <span class="smcap">The River of an Unwritten Epic</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></span></li>
+<li><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;II. <span class="smcap">Sixteen Miles of Awe</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">22</a></span></li>
+<li><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;III. <span class="smcap">Half-Way to the Moon</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">40</a></span></li>
+<li><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;IV. <span class="smcap">Making a Getaway</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">65</a></span></li>
+<li><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;V. <span class="smcap">Through the Region of Weir</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">84</a></span></li>
+<li><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;VI. <span class="smcap">Getting Down to Business</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">113</a></span></li>
+<li><br />&nbsp;VII. <span class="smcap">On to the Yellowstone</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">137</a></span></li>
+<li><br />VIII. <span class="smcap">Down from the Yellowstone</span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">165</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii"></a></p>
+<p><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2 class="sectionhead"><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>
+Night in Camp <span class="ralign"><a href="#image01"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></span></li>
+<li><br />
+&nbsp; <span class="ralign">FACING PAGE</span></li>
+<li>"Off on the Perilous Floods" <span class="ralign"><a href="#image02">6</a></span></li>
+<li>Barriers Formed before Him <span class="ralign"><a href="#image03">7</a></span></li>
+<li>The Boats Wrecked in an Ice Gorge <span class="ralign"><a href="#image04">7</a></span></li>
+<li>After the Spring Break-Up <span class="ralign"><a href="#image05">18</a></span></li>
+<li>"Hole-in-the-Wall" Rock on the Upper Missouri <span class="ralign"><a href="#image06">19</a></span></li>
+<li>Palisades of the Upper Missouri <span class="ralign"><a href="#image07">19</a></span></li>
+<li>Great Falls from Cliff Above <span class="ralign"><a href="#image08">30</a></span></li>
+<li>Great Falls from the Front <span class="ralign"><a href="#image09">31</a></span></li>
+<li>"This was Benton" <span class="ralign"><a href="#image10">52</a></span></li>
+<li>Ruins of Old Fort Benton <span class="ralign"><a href="#image11">52</a></span></li>
+<li>The House of the Bourgeois <span class="ralign"><a href="#image12">53</a></span></li>
+<li>A Round-Up Outfit on the March <span class="ralign"><a href="#image13">62</a></span></li>
+<li>Joe <span class="ralign"><a href="#image14">62</a></span></li>
+<li>Montana Sheep <span class="ralign"><a href="#image15">63</a></span></li>
+<li>A Montana Wool-Freighter <span class="ralign"><a href="#image16">63</a></span></li>
+<li>The "Atom I" under Construction <span class="ralign"><a href="#image17">74</a></span></li>
+<li>The Cable Ferry Towed Us Out <span class="ralign"><a href="#image18">74</a></span></li>
+<li>Laid Up with a Broken Rudder <span class="ralign"><a href="#image19">75</a></span></li>
+<li>"Atom" Sailing Up-Stream in a Head Wind <span class="ralign"><a href="#image20">86</a></span></li>
+<li>Typical Rapids on Upper Missouri <span class="ralign"><a href="#image21">87</a></span></li>
+<li>Wolf Point, the First Town in 500 Miles <span class="ralign"><a href="#image22">98</a></span></li>
+<li>Entrance to the Bad Lands <span class="ralign"><a href="#image23">99</a></span></li>
+<li>Fresh Meat! <span class="ralign"><a href="#image24">110</a></span></li>
+<li>Supper! <span class="ralign"><a href="#image25">111</a></span>
+   <a name="Page_x" id="Page_x"></a></li>
+<li>"Walking" Boats over Shallows <span class="ralign"><a href="#image26">126</a></span></li>
+<li>Typical Upper Missouri River Reach <span class="ralign"><a href="#image27">126</a></span></li>
+<li>The Mouth of the James <span class="ralign"><a href="#image28">127</a></span></li>
+<li>Reveille! <span class="ralign"><a href="#image29">142</a></span></li>
+<li>The Pen and Key Ranch <span class="ralign"><a href="#image30">143</a></span></li>
+<li>Assiniboine Indian Chief <span class="ralign"><a href="#image31">154</a></span></li>
+<li>Assiniboine Indian Camp <span class="ralign"><a href="#image32">155</a></span></li>
+<li>On the Hurricane Deck of the "Expansion"; Capt. Marsh Third from the Left <span class="ralign"><a href="#image33">166</a></span></li>
+<li>Fort Union in 1837 <span class="ralign"><a href="#image34">167</a></span></li>
+<li>Site of Old Fort Union <span class="ralign"><a href="#image35">167</a></span></li>
+<li>Boats Laid Up for the Winter at Washburn, N.D. <span class="ralign"><a href="#image36">178</a></span></li>
+<li>Washburn, N.D. <span class="ralign"><a href="#image37">178</a></span></li>
+<li>The Landing at Bismarck, N.D. <span class="ralign"><a href="#image38">179</a></span></li>
+<li>The Yankton Landing in the Old Days <span class="ralign"><a href="#image39">192</a></span></li>
+<li>"Atom II" Landing at Sioux City <span class="ralign"><a href="#image40">193</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi"></a></p>
+
+
+<p><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii"></a></p>
+<p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a></p>
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_I"></a></p>
+
+<h2 style="margin-top: 4em;">THE RIVER AND I</h2>
+
+
+<h2 class="sectionhead" style="margin-top: 2em;">CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3 class="chapterhead">THE RIVER OF AN UNWRITTEN EPIC</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">I</span>T was Carlyle&mdash;was it not?&mdash;who said that all great works produce an
+unpleasant impression on first acquaintance. It is so with the Missouri
+River. Carlyle was not, I think, speaking of rivers; but he was speaking
+of masterpieces&mdash;and so am I.</p>
+
+<p>It makes little difference to me whether or not an epic goes at a
+hexameter gallop through the ages, or whether it chooses to be a flood
+of muddy water, ripping out a channel from the mountains to the sea. It
+is merely a matter of how the great dynamic force shall express itself.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen trout streams that I thought were better lyrics than I or
+any of my fellows can ever hope to create. I have heard the moaning of
+rain winds among mountain pines that struck me as being equal, at least,
+to <i>Adonais</i>. I have seen the solemn rearing of a mountain peak into the
+pale dawn that gave me a deep religious appreciation <a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a>of my significance
+in the Grand Scheme, as though I had heard and understood a parable from
+the holy lips of an Avatar. And the vast plains of my native country are
+as a mystic scroll unrolled, scrawled with a cabalistic writ of infinite
+things.</p>
+
+<p>In the same sense, I have come to look upon the Missouri as something
+more than a stream of muddy water. It gave me my first big boy dreams.
+It was my ocean. I remember well the first time I looked upon my
+turbulent friend, who has since become as a brother to me. It was from a
+bluff at Kansas City. I know I must have been a very little boy, for the
+terror I felt made me reach up to the saving forefinger of my father,
+lest this insane devil-thing before me should suddenly develop an
+unreasoning hunger for little boys. My father seemed as tall as
+Alexander&mdash;and quite as courageous. He seemed to fear it almost not at
+all. And I should have felt little surprise had he taken me in his arms
+and stepped easily over that mile or so of liquid madness. He talked
+calmly about it&mdash;quite calmly. He explained at what angle one should
+hold one's body in the current, and how one should conduct one's legs
+and arms in the whirlpools, providing one should swim across.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a></p>
+
+<p><i>Swim across!</i> Why, it took a giant even to talk that way! For the
+summer had smitten the distant mountains, and the June floods ran. Far
+across the yellow swirl that spread out into the wooded bottom-lands, we
+watched the demolition of a little town. The siege had reached the
+proper stage for a sally, and the attacking forces were howling over the
+walls. The sacking was in progress. Shacks, stores, outhouses suddenly
+developed a frantic desire to go to St. Louis. It was a weird retreat in
+very bad order. A cottage with a garret window that glared like the eye
+of a Cyclops, trembled, rocked with the athletic lift of the flood, made
+a panicky plunge into a convenient tree; groaned, dodged, and took off
+through the brush like a scared cottontail. I felt a boy's pity and
+sympathy for those houses that got up and took to their legs across the
+yellow waste. It did not seem fair. I have since experienced the same
+feeling for a jack-rabbit with the hounds a-yelp at its heels.</p>
+
+<p>But&mdash;to <i>swim</i> this thing! To fight this cruel, invulnerable, resistless
+giant that went roaring down the world with a huge uprooted oak tree in
+its mouth for a toothpick! This yellow, sinuous beast with hell-broth
+slavering from its jaws!<a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a> This dare-devil boy-god that sauntered along
+with a town in its pocket, and a steepled church under its arm for a
+moment's toy! Swim <i>this</i>?</p>
+
+<p>For days I <a name="marvelled" id="marvelled"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="marveled">marvelled</ins> at the magnificence of being a fullgrown man,
+unafraid of big rivers.</p>
+
+<p>But the first sight of the Missouri River was not enough for me. There
+was a dreadful fascination about it&mdash;the fascination of all huge and
+irresistible things. I had caught my first wee glimpse into the
+infinite; I was six years old.</p>
+
+<p>Many a lazy Sunday stroll took us back to the river; and little by
+little the dread became less, and the wonder grew&mdash;and a little love
+crept in. In my boy heart I condoned its treachery and its giant sins.
+For, after all, it sinned through excess of strength, not through
+weakness. And that is the eternal way of virile things. We watched the
+steamboats loading for what seemed to me far distant ports. (How the
+world shrinks!) A double stream of "roosters" coming and going at a
+dog-trot rushed the freight aboard; and at the foot of the gang-plank
+the mate swore masterfully while the perspiration dripped from the point
+of his nose.</p>
+
+<p>And then&mdash;the raucous whistles blew. They reminded me of the lions
+roaring at the circus.<a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a> The gang-plank went up, the hawsers went in. The
+snub nose of the steamer swung out with a quiet majesty. Now she feels
+the urge of the flood, and yields herself to it, already dwindled to
+half her size. The pilot turns his wheel&mdash;he looks very big and quiet
+and masterful up there. The boat veers round; bells jangle. And now the
+engine wakens in earnest. She breathes with spurts of vapor!</p>
+
+<p>Breathed? No, it was sighing; for about it all clung an inexplicable
+sadness for me&mdash;the sadness that clings about all strong and beautiful
+things that must leave their moorings and go very, very far away. (I
+have since heard it said that river boats are not beautiful!) My throat
+felt as though it had smoke in it. I felt that this queenly thing really
+wanted to stay; for far down the muddy swirl where she dwindled,
+dwindled, I heard her sobbing hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>Off on the perilous flood for "fa&euml;rie lands forlorn"! It made the world
+seem almost empty and very lonesome.</p>
+
+<p>And then the dog-days came, and I saw my river tawny, sinewy, gaunt&mdash;a
+half-starved lion. The long dry bars were like the protruding ribs of
+the beast when the prey is scarce, and the ropy <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>main current was like
+the lean, terrible muscles of its back.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring it had roared; now it only purred. But all the while I
+felt in it a dreadful economy of force, just as I have since felt it in
+the presence of a great lean jungle-cat at the zoo. Here was a thing
+that crouched and purred&mdash;a mewing but terrific thing. Give it an
+obstacle to overcome&mdash;fling it something to devour; and lo! the crushing
+impact of its leap!</p>
+
+<p>And then again I saw it lying very quietly in the clutch of a bitter
+winter&mdash;an awful hush upon it, and the white cerement of the snow flung
+across its face. And yet, this did not seem like death; for still one
+felt in it the subtle influence of a tremendous personality. It slept,
+but sleeping it was still a giant. It seemed that at any moment the
+sleeper might turn over, toss the white cover aside and, yawning,
+saunter down the valley with its thunderous seven-league boots. And
+still, back and forth across this heavy sleeper went the pigmy wagons of
+the farmers taking corn to market!</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image02" id="image02"></a>
+<a href="images/img02-full.jpg"><img src="images/img02.jpg" width="500" height="337" alt="&quot;Off on the Perilous Floods.&quot;" title="&quot;Off on the Perilous Floods.&quot;" /></a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;Off on the Perilous Floods.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<table style="width: 500px;" summary="Images">
+<tr>
+<td>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 200px;">
+<a name="image03" id="image03">&nbsp;</a>
+<a href="images/img03-full.jpg"><img src="images/img03.jpg" width="200" height="284" alt="Barriers Formed before Him." title="Barriers Formed before Him." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Barriers Formed before Him.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 208px;">
+<a name="image04" id="image04">&nbsp;</a>
+<a href="images/img04-full.jpg"><img src="images/img04.jpg" width="208" height="284" alt="The Boats Wrecked in an Ice Gorge." title="The Boats Wrecked in an Ice Gorge." /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Boats Wrecked in an Ice Gorge.</span>
+</div>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>But one day in March the far-flung arrows of the geese went over. <i>Honk!
+honk!</i> A vague, prophetic sense crept into the world out of
+<a name="Page_6-f" id="Page_6-f"></a><a name="Page_7-f" id="Page_7-f"></a><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>
+nowhere&mdash;part sound, part scent, and yet too vague for either. Sap
+seeped from the maples. Weird mist-things went moaning through the
+night. And then, for the first time, I saw my big brother win a fight!</p>
+
+<p>For days, strange premonitory noises had run across the shivering
+surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent
+booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato
+crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent
+bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the
+disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a line of
+cavalry unsheathing sabres.</p>
+
+<p>But all the while, no show of violence&mdash;only the awful quietness with
+deluge potential in it. The lion was crouching for the leap.</p>
+
+<p>Then one day under the warm sun a booming as of distant big guns began.
+Faster and louder came the dull shaking thunders, and passed swiftly up
+and down, drawling into the distance. Fissures yawned, and the sound of
+the grumbling black water beneath came up. Here and there the surface
+lifted&mdash;bent&mdash;broke with shriekings, groanings, thunderings. And
+<span class="nowrap">then&mdash;&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a></p>
+
+<p>The giant turned over, yawned and got to his feet, flinging his arms
+about him! Barriers formed before him. Confidently he set his massive
+shoulders against them&mdash;smashed them into little blocks, and went on
+singing, shouting, toward the sea. It was a glorious victory. It made me
+very proud of my big brother. And yet all the while I dreaded him&mdash;just
+as I dread the caged tiger that I long to caress because he is so strong
+and so beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Since then I have changed somewhat, though I am hardly as tall, and
+certainly not so courageous as Alexander. But I have felt the sinews of
+the old yellow giant <a name="tighen" id="tighen"></a><ins class="correction" title="tighten">tighen</ins>
+about my naked body. I have been bent upon
+his hip. I have presumed to throw against his Titan strength the craft
+of man. I have often swum in what seemed liquid madness to my boyhood.
+And we have become acquainted through battle. No friends like fair foes
+reconciled!</p>
+
+<p>And I have been panting on his bars, while all about me went the lisping
+laughter of my brother. For he has the strength of a god, the headlong
+temper of a comet; but along with these he has the glad, mad,
+irresponsible spirit of a boy. Thus ever are the epic things.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a></p>
+
+<p>The Missouri is unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the
+beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace&mdash;and His precept
+was the Missouri. To me, the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber is
+a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a fantastic fairy-tale; the Nile a
+mummy, periodically resurrected; the Mississippi, a convenient
+geographical boundary line; the Hudson, an epicurean philosopher.</p>
+
+<p>But the Missouri&mdash;my brother&mdash;is the eternal Fighting Man!</p>
+
+<p>I love things that yearn toward far seas: the singing Tennysonian brooks
+that flow by "Philip's farm" but "go on forever"; the little Ik Walton
+rivers, where one may "study to be quiet and go a-fishing"! The
+Babylonian streams by which we have all pined in captivity; the
+sentimental <a name="Danubes" id="Danubes"></a><ins class="correction" title="Danubes">Danube's</ins>
+which we can never forget because of "that night in
+June"; and at a very early age I had already developed a decent respect
+for the verbose manner in which the "waters come down at Lodore."</p>
+
+<p>But the Missouri is more than a sentiment&mdash;even more than an epic. It is
+the symbol of my own soul, which is, I surmise, not unlike other souls.
+In it I see flung before me all the stern <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>world-old struggle become
+materialized. Here is the concrete representation of the earnest desire,
+the momentarily frustrate purpose, the beating at the bars, the
+breathless fighting of the half-whipped but never-to-be-conquered
+spirit, the sobbing of the wind-broken runner, the anger, the madness,
+the laughter. And in it all the unwearying urge of a purpose, the
+unswerving belief in the peace of a far away ocean.</p>
+
+<p>If in a moment of despair I should reel for a breathing space away from
+the fight, with no heart for battle-cries, and with only a desire to
+pray, I could do it in no better manner than to lift my arms above the
+river and cry out into the big spaces: "You who somehow
+understand&mdash;behold this river! It expresses what is voiceless in me. It
+prays for me!"</p>
+
+<p>Not only in its physical aspect does the Missouri appeal to the
+imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth&mdash;a distance of three thousand
+miles&mdash;this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps
+never before in the history of the world has a river been the
+thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so
+vastly significant in its relation to the development of man. And in the
+building of the <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>continent Nature fashioned well the scenery for the
+great human story that was to be enacted here in the fullness of years.
+She built her stage on a large scale, taking no account of miles; for
+the coming actors were to be big men, mighty travelers, intrepid
+fighters, laughers at time and space. Plains limited only by the rim of
+sky; mountains severe, huge, tragic as fate; deserts for the trying of
+strong spirits; grotesque volcanic lands&mdash;dead, utterly
+ultra-human&mdash;where athletic souls might struggle with despair; impetuous
+streams with their rapids terrible as Scylla, where men might go down
+fighting: thus Nature built the stage and set the scenes. And that the
+arrangements might be complete, she left a vast tract unfinished, where
+still the building of the world goes on&mdash;a place of awe in which to feel
+the mighty Doer of Things at work. Indeed, a setting vast and weird
+enough for the coming epic. And as the essence of all story is struggle,
+tribes of wild fighting men grew up in the land to oppose the coming
+masters; and over the limitless wastes swept the blizzards.</p>
+
+<p>I remember when I first read the words of Vergil beginning <i>Ubi tot
+Simois</i>, "where the Simois rolls along so many shields and helmets and
+strong <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>bodies of brave men snatched beneath its floods." The far-seeing
+sadness of the lines thrilled me; for it was not of the little stream of
+the <i>&AElig;neid</i> that I thought while the Latin professor quizzed me as to
+constructions, but of that great river of my own epic country&mdash;the
+Missouri. Was I unfair to old Vergil, think you? As for me, I think I
+flattered him a bit! And in this modern application, the ancient lines
+ring true. For the Missouri from Great Falls to its mouth is one long
+grave of men and boats. And such men!</p>
+
+<p>It is a time-honored habit to look back through the ages for the epic
+things. Modern affairs seem a bit commonplace to some of us. A horde of
+semi-savages tears down a town in order to avenge the theft of a
+faithless wife who was probably no better than she should have been&mdash;and
+we have the <i>Iliad</i>. A petty king sets sail for his native land, somehow
+losing himself ten years among the isles of Greece&mdash;and we have the
+<i>Odyssey</i>. (I would back a Missouri River "rat" to make the distance in
+a row boat within a few months!) An Argive captain returns home after an
+absence of ten years to find his wife interested overmuch in a friend
+who went not forth to battle; a <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>wrangle ensues; the tender spouse
+finishes her lord with an axe&mdash;and you have the <i>Agamemnon</i>. (To-day we
+should merely have a sensational trial, and hysterical scareheads in the
+newspapers.) Such were the ancient stories that move us all&mdash;sordid
+enough, be sure, when you push them hard for fact. But time and genius
+have glorified them. Not the deeds, but Homer and &AElig;schylus and the
+hallowing years are great.</p>
+
+<p>We no longer write epics&mdash;we live them. To create an epic, it has been
+said somewhere, the poet must write with the belief that the immortal
+gods are looking over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>We no longer prostrate ourselves before the immortal gods. We have long
+since discovered the divinity within ourselves, and so we have flung
+across the continents and the seas the visible epics of will.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the American fur trade alone makes the Trojan War look
+like a Punch and Judy show! and the Missouri River was the path of the
+conquerors. We have the facts&mdash;but we have not Homer.</p>
+
+<p>An epic story in its essence is the story of heroic men battling, aided
+or frustrated by the super<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>human. And in the fur trade era there was no
+dearth of battling men, and the elements left no lack of superhuman
+obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>I am more thrilled by the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition than
+by the tale of Jason. John Colter, wandering three years in the
+wilderness and discovering the Yellowstone Park, is infinitely more
+heroic to me <a name="that" id="that"></a><ins class="correction" title="than">that</ins>
+Theseus. Alexander Harvey makes &AElig;neas look like a
+degenerate. It was Harvey, you know, who fell out with the powers at
+Fort Union, with the result that he was ordered to report at the
+American Fur Company's office at St. Louis before he could be reinstated
+in the service. This was at Christmas time&mdash;Christmas of a Western
+winter. The distance was seventeen hundred miles, as the crow flies.
+"Give me a dog to carry my blankets," said he, "and by God I'll report
+before the ice goes out!" He started afoot through the hostile tribes
+and blizzards. He reported at St. Louis early in March, returning to
+Union by the first boat out that year. And when he arrived at the Fort,
+he called out the man who was responsible for the trouble, and quietly
+killed him. That is the stern human stuff with which you build realms.
+What could not Homer do with such a man? And <a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>when one follows him
+through his recorded career, even Achilles seems a bit ladylike beside
+him!</p>
+
+<p>The killing of Carpenter by his treacherous friend, Mike Fink, would
+easily make a whole book of hexameters&mdash;with a nice assortment of gods
+and goddesses thrown in. There was a woman in the case&mdash;a half-breed.
+Well, this half-breed woman fascinates me quite as much as she whose
+face "launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium"!
+In ancient times the immortal gods scourged nations for impieties; and,
+as we read, we feel the black shadow of inexorable fate moving through
+the terrific gloom of things. But the smallpox scourge that broke out at
+Fort Union in 1837, sweeping with desolation through the prairie tribes,
+moves me more than the storied catastrophes of old. It was a Reign of
+Terror. Even Larpenteur's bald statement of it fills me with the fine
+old Greek sense of fate. Men sickened at dawn and were dead at sunset.
+Every day a cartload or two of corpses went over the bluff into the
+river; and men became reckless. Larpenteur and his friend joked daily
+about the carting of the gruesome freight. They felt the irresistible,
+and they laughed at it, since struggle <a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>was out of the question. Some
+drank deeply and indulged in hysterical orgies. Some hollowed out their
+own graves and waited patiently beside them for the hidden hand to
+strike. At least fifteen thousand died&mdash;Audubon says one hundred and
+fifty thousand; and the buffalo increased rapidly&mdash;because the hunters
+were few.</p>
+
+<p>Would not such a story&mdash;here briefly sketched&mdash;move old Sophocles?</p>
+
+<p>The story of the half-breed woman&mdash;a giantess&mdash;who had a dozen sons, has
+about it for me all the glamour of an ancient yarn. The sons were
+free-trappers, you know, and, incidentally, thieves and murderers. (I
+suspect some of our classic heroes were as much!) But they were
+doubtless living up to the light that was in them, and they were game to
+the finish. So was the old woman; they called her "the mother of the
+devils." Trappers from the various posts organized to hunt them down,
+and the mother and the sons barricaded their home. The fight was a hard
+one. One by one the "devils" fell fighting about their mother. And then
+the besieging party fired the house. With all her sons wounded or dead,
+the old woman sallied forth. She fought like a grizzly and went down
+like a heroine.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a></p>
+
+<p>A sordid, brutal story? Ah, but it was life! Fling about this story of
+savage mother-love the glamour of time and genius, and it will move you!</p>
+
+<p>And the story of old Hugh Glass! Is it not fateful enough to be the
+foundation of a tremendous &AElig;schylean drama? A big man he was&mdash;old and
+bearded. A devil to fight, a giant to endure, and an angel to forgive!
+He was in the Leavenworth campaign against the Aricaras, and afterward
+he went as a hunter with the Henry expedition. He had a friend&mdash;a mere
+boy&mdash;and these two were very close. One day Glass, who was in advance of
+the party, beating up the country for game, fell in with a grizzly; and
+when the main party came up, he lay horribly mangled with the bear
+standing over him. They killed the bear, but the old man seemed done
+for; his face had all the features scraped off, and one of his legs went
+wabbly when they lifted him.</p>
+
+<p>It was merely a matter of one more man being dead, so the expedition
+pushed on, leaving the young friend with several others to see the old
+man under ground. But the old man was a fighter and refused to die,
+though he was unconscious: held on stubbornly for several days, but it
+<a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>seemed plain enough that he would have to let go soon. So the young
+friend and the others left the old man in the wilderness to finish up
+the job by himself. They took his weapons and hastened after the main
+party, for the country was hostile.</p>
+
+<p>But one day old Glass woke up and got one of his eyes open. And when he
+saw how things stood, he swore to God he would live, merely for the sake
+of killing his false friend. He crawled to a spring near by, where he
+found a bush of ripe bull-berries. He waited day after day for strength,
+and finally started out to <i>crawl</i> a small matter of one hundred miles
+to the nearest fort. And he did it, too! Also he found his friend after
+much wandering&mdash;and forgave him.</p>
+
+<p>Fancy &AElig;schylus working up that story with the Furies for a chorus and
+Nemesis appearing at intervals to nerve the old hero!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image05" id="image05"></a>
+<a href="images/img05-full.jpg"><img src="images/img05.jpg" width="500" height="309" alt="After the Spring Break-Up." title="After the Spring Break-Up." /></a>
+<span class="caption">After the Spring Break-Up.</span>
+</div>
+
+<table class="images" summary="Images">
+<tr><td valign="top"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image06" id="image06"></a>
+<a href="images/img06-full.jpg"><img src="images/img06.jpg" width="300" height="192" alt="&quot;Hole-in-the-Wall&quot; on the Upper Missouri." title="&quot;Hole-in-the-Wall&quot; on the Upper Missouri." /></a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;Hole-in-the-Wall&quot; on the Upper Missouri.</span>
+</div></td>
+
+<td valign="top"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image07" id="image07"></a>
+<a href="images/img07-full.jpg"><img src="images/img07.jpg" width="300" height="188" alt="Palisades of the Upper Missouri." title="Palisades of the Upper Missouri." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Palisades of the Upper Missouri.</span>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>And Rose the Renegade, who became the chief of a powerful tribe of
+Indians! And Father de Smet, one of the noblest figures in history,
+carrying the gospel into the wilderness! And Le Barge, the famous pilot,
+whose biography reads like a romance! In the history of the Missouri
+River there were hundreds of these heroes, these builders of the epic
+West. Some of them were <a name="Page_18-f" id="Page_18-f"></a><a name="Page_19-f" id="Page_19-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>violent at times; some were good men and some
+were bad. But they were masterful always. They met obstacles and
+overcame them. They struck their foes in front. They thirsted in
+deserts, hungered in the wilderness, froze in the blizzards, died with
+the plagues, and were massacred by the savages. Yet they conquered.
+Heroes of an unwritten epic! And their pathway to defeat and victory was
+the Missouri River.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish to have your epic spiced with the glamour of kings, the
+history of the river will not fail you; for in those days there were
+kings as well as giants in the land. Though it was not called such, all
+the blank space of the map of the Missouri River country and even to the
+Pacific, was one vast empire&mdash;the empire of the American Fur Company;
+and J.J. Astor in New York spoke the words that filled the wilderness
+with deeds. Thus democratic America once beheld within her own confines
+the paradox of an empire truly Roman in character.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there on the banks of the great waterway&mdash;an imperial road that
+would have delighted C&aelig;sar&mdash;many forts were built. These were the
+ganglia of that tremendous organism of which Astor was the brain. The
+bourgeois of one of <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>these posts was virtually proconsul with absolute
+power in his territory. Mackenzie at Union&mdash;which might be called the
+capital of the Upper Missouri country&mdash;was called "King of the
+Missouri." He had an eye for seeing purple. At one time he ordered a
+complete suit of armor from England; and even went so far as to have
+medals struck, in true imperial fashion, to be distributed among his
+loyal followers.</p>
+
+<p>Far and wide these Western American kings flung the trappers, their
+subjects, into the wilderness. Verily, in the unwritten "Missouriad"
+there is no lack of regal glamour.</p>
+
+<p>The ancients had a way of making vast things small enough to be
+familiar. They make gods of the elements, and natural phenomena became
+to them the awful acts of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>These moderns made no gods of the elements&mdash;they merely conquered them!
+The ancients idealized the material. These moderns materialized the
+ideal. The latter method is much more appealing to me&mdash;an American&mdash;than
+the former. I love the ancient stories; but it is for the modern
+marvellous facts that I reserve my admiration.</p>
+
+<p>When one looks upon his own country as from a height of years, old tales
+lose something of their <a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>wonder for him. It is owing to this attitude
+that the prospect of descending the great river in a power canoe from
+the head of navigation gave me delight.</p>
+
+<p>Days and nights filled with the singing and muttering of my big brother!
+And I would need only to close my eyes, and all about me would come and
+go the ghosts of the mighty doers&mdash;who are my kin. Big men, bearded and
+powerful, pushing up stream with the cordelle on their shoulders!
+Voyageurs chanting at the paddles! Mackinaws descending with precious
+freights of furs! Steamboats grunting and snoring up stream! Old forts
+sprung up again out of the dusk of things forgotten, with all the old
+turbulent life, where in reality to-day the plough of the farmer goes or
+the steers browse! Forgotten battles blowing by in the wind! And from a
+bluff's summit, here and there, ghostly war parties peering down upon
+me&mdash;the lesser kin of their old enemies&mdash;taking a summer's outing where
+of old went forth the fighting men, the builders of the unwritten epic!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a></p>
+
+<h2 class="sectionhead">CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3 class="chapterhead">SIXTEEN MILES OF AWE</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">O</span>UR party of three left the railroad at Great Falls, a good two-days'
+walk up river from Benton, the head of Missouri River navigation, to
+which point our boat material had been shipped and our baggage checked.</p>
+
+<p>A vast sun-burned waste of buffalo-grass, prickly pears, and sagebrush
+stretched before us to the north and east; and on the west the filmy
+blue contour of the Highwoods Mountains lifted like sun-smitten thunder
+clouds in the July swelter. One squinting far look, however, told you
+that these were not rain clouds. The very thought of rain came to you
+with the vagueness of some birth-surviving memory of a former time. You
+looked far up and out to the westward and caught the glint of snow on
+the higher peaks. But the sight was unconvincing; it was like a story
+told without the "vital impulse." Always had these plains blistered
+under this July sun; always had the spots <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>of alkali made the only
+whiteness; and the dry harsh snarl and snap of the grasshoppers' wings
+had pricked this torrid silence through all eternity.</p>
+
+<p>A stern and pitiless prospect for the amateur pedestrian, to be sure;
+for devotees of the staff and pack have come to associate pedestrianism
+with the idyllic, and the idyllic nourishes only in a land of frequent
+showers. Theocritus and prickly pears are not compatible. Yet it was not
+without a certain thrill of exaltation that we strapped on our packs and
+stretched our legs after four days on the dusty plush.</p>
+
+<p>And though ahead of us lay no shady, amiably crooked country roads and
+bosky dells, wherein one might lounge and dawdle over Hazlitt, yet we
+knew how crisscross cattle-trails should take us skirting down the
+river's sixteen miles of awe.</p>
+
+<p>Five hundred miles below its source, the falls of the Missouri begin
+with a vertical plunge of sixty feet. This is the Black Eagle Falls,
+presumably named so by Lewis and Clark and other explorers, because of
+the black eagles found there.</p>
+
+<p>With all due courtesy to my big surly grumbling friend, the Black Eagle
+Falls, I must say that I was a bit disappointed in him. Oh! he is quite
+magnificent enough, and every inch a Titan, to <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>be sure; but of late
+years it seems he has taken up with company rather beneath him. First of
+all, he has gone to work in a most plebeian, almost slave-like fashion,
+turning wheels and making lights and dragging silly little trolley cars
+about a straggling town. Also, he hobnobs continually with a sprawling,
+brawling, bad-breathed smelter, as no respectable Titan should do. And
+on top of it all&mdash;and this was the straw that broke the back of my
+sentimental camel&mdash;he allows them to maintain a park on the cliffs above
+him, where the merest white-skinned, counter-jumping pigmy may come of a
+Sunday for his glass of pop and a careless squint at the toiling Titan.
+Puny Philistines eating peanuts and watching Samson at his Gaza stunt! I
+like it not. Rather would I see the Muse Clio <a name="pealing" id="pealing"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="peeling">pealing</ins> potatoes or
+Persephone busy with a banana cart! Encleadus wriggling under a mountain
+is well enough; but Enceladus composedly turning a crank for little
+men&mdash;he seemed too heavy for that light work.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning on the frame observation platform, I closed my eyes, and in the
+dull roar that seemed the voices of countless ages, the park and the
+smelter and the silly bustling trolley cars and the ginger-ale and the
+peanuts and my physical self&mdash;<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>all but my own soul&mdash;were swallowed up. I
+saw my Titan brother as he was made&mdash;four hundred yards of writhing,
+liquid sinew, strenuously idle, magnificently worthless, flinging
+meaningless thunders over the vast arid plain, splendidly empty under
+sun and stars! I saw him as La Verendrye must have seen him&mdash;busy only
+at the divine business of being a giant. And for a moment behind shut
+eyes, it seemed very inconsequential to me that cranks should be turned
+and that trolley cars should run up and down precisely in the same
+place, never getting anywhere, and that there should be anything in all
+that tract but an austere black eagle or two, and my own soul, and my
+Titan brother.</p>
+
+<p>When I looked again, I could half imagine the old turbulent fellow
+winking slyly at me and saying in that undertone you hear when you
+forget the thunders for a moment: "Don't you worry about me, little man.
+It's all a joke, and I don't mind. Only to-morrow and then another
+to-morrow, and there won't be any smelters or trolley cars or ginger-ale
+or peanuts or sentimentalizing outers like yourself. But I'll be here
+howling under sun and stars."</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon I posed the toiling philosopher <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>before the camera, pressed
+the bulb, and descended from the summit of the cliff (as well as from my
+point of view) to the trail skirting northward up the river, leaving
+Encleadus grumbling at his crank.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, after all, cranks really have to be turned. Still, it seems too
+bad, and I have long bewailed it almost as a personal grief, that
+utility and ugliness should so often be running mates.</p>
+
+<p>They tell me that the Matterhorn never did a tap of work; and you
+couldn't color one Easter egg with all the gorgeous sunsets of the
+world! May we all become, some day, perfectly useless and beautiful!</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the first fall, a mammoth spring wells up out of the
+rock. Nobody tells you about it; you run across it by chance, and it
+interests you much more in that way. It would seem that a spring
+throwing out a stream equivalent to a river one hundred yards wide and
+two feet deep would deserve a little exploitation. Down East they would
+have a great white sprawling hotel built close by it wherein one could
+drink spring water (at a quarter the quart), with half a pathology
+pasted on the bottle as a label. But nobody seems to care much about so
+small an ooze <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>out there: everything else is so big. And so it has
+nothing at all to do but go right on being one of the very biggest
+springs of all the world. This is really something; and I like it better
+than the quarter-per-quart idea.</p>
+
+<p>In sixteen miles the Missouri River falls four hundred feet.
+Incidentally, this stretch of river is said to be capable of producing
+the most tremendous water-power in the world.</p>
+
+<p>After skirting four miles of water that ran like a mill-race, we came
+upon the Rainbow Falls, where a thousand feet of river takes a drop of
+fifty feet over a precipice regular as a wall of masonry. This was much
+more to my liking&mdash;a million horse-power or so busy making rainbows!
+Bully!</p>
+
+<p>It was a very hot day and the sun was now high. I sat down to wipe the
+sweat out of my eyes. I wished to get acquainted with this weaver of
+iridescent nothings who knew so well the divine art of doing nothing at
+all and doing it good and hard! After all, it isn't so easy to do
+nothing and make it count!</p>
+
+<p>And in the end, when all broken lights have blended again with the
+Source Light, I'm not so sure that rainbows will seem less important
+<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>than rows and rows of arc lights and clusters and clusters of
+incandescent globes. Are you? I can contract an indefinable sort of
+heartache from the blue sputter of a city light that snuffs out moon and
+stars for tired scurrying folks: but the opalescent mist-drift of the
+Rainbow Falls wove heavens for me in its sheen, and through its
+whirlwind rifts and crystal flaws, far reaches opened up with all the
+heart's desire at the other end. You shut your eyes with that thunder in
+your ears and that gusty mist on your face, and you see it very
+plainly&mdash;more plainly than ever so many arc lights could make you see
+it&mdash;the ultimate meaning of things. To be sure, when you open your eyes
+again, it's all gone&mdash;the storm-flung rainbows seem to hide it again.</p>
+
+<p>A mile below, we came upon the Crooked Falls of twenty feet. Leaving the
+left bank and running almost parallel with it for some three hundred
+yards, then turning and making a horseshoe, and returning to the right
+bank almost opposite the place of first observation, this fall is nearly
+a mile in length, being an unbroken sheet for that distance. This one,
+also, does nothing at all, and in a beautifully irregular way. Somehow
+it made me think of Walt Whitman! But we left it soon, <a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>swinging out
+into the open parched country. We knew all this turbulence to be merely
+the river's bow before the great stunt.</p>
+
+<p>As we swung along, kicking up the acrid alkali dust from the
+cattle-trail that snaked its way through the cactus and sagebrush, the
+roar behind us died; and before us, far away, dull muffled thunders grew
+up in the hush of the burning noon. Thunders in a desert, and no cloud!
+For an hour we swung along the trail, and ever the thunders
+increased&mdash;like the undertone of the surf when the sea whitens. We were
+approaching the Great Falls of the Missouri. There were no sign posts in
+that lonesome tract; no one of whom to ask the way. Little did we need
+direction. The voice of thunder crying in the desert led us surely.</p>
+
+<p>A half-hour more of clambering over shale-strewn gullies, up sun-baked
+watercourses, and we found ourselves toiling up the ragged slope of a
+bluff; and soon we stood upon a rocky ledge with the thunders beneath
+us. Damp gusts beat upward over the blistering scarp of the cliff. I lay
+down, and crawling to the edge, looked over. Two hundred feet below
+me&mdash;straight down as a pebble drops&mdash;a watery Inferno raged, and
+far-flung whirlwinds all but exhausted with the dizzy <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>upward reach,
+whisked cool, invisible mops of mist across my face.</p>
+
+<p>Flung down a preliminary mile of steep descent, choked in between
+soaring walls of rock four hundred yards apart, innumerable crystal tons
+rushed down ninety feet in one magnificent plunge. You saw the long bent
+crest&mdash;shimmering with the changing colors of a peacock's back&mdash;smooth
+as a lake when all winds sleep; and then the mighty river was snuffed
+out in gulfs of angry gray. Capricious river draughts, sucking up the
+damp defile, whipped upward into the blistering sunlight gray spiral
+towers that leaped into opal fires and dissolved in showers of diamond
+and pearl and amethyst.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 270px;">
+<a name="image08" id="image08"></a>
+<a href="images/img08-full.jpg"><img src="images/img08.jpg" width="270" height="400" alt="Great Falls from Cliff Above." title="Great Falls from Cliff Above." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Great Falls from Cliff Above.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image09" id="image09"></a>
+<a href="images/img09-full.jpg"><img src="images/img09.jpg" width="500" height="313" alt="Great Falls from the Front." title="Great Falls from the Front." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Great Falls from the Front.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I caught myself tightly gripping the ledge and shrinking with a
+shuddering instinctive fear. Then suddenly the thunders seemed to stifle
+all memory of sound&mdash;and left only the silent universe with myself and
+this terribly beautiful thing in the midst of utter emptiness. And I
+loved it with a strange, desperate, tigerish love. It expressed itself
+so magnificently; and that is really all a man, or a waterfall, or a
+mountain, or a flower, or a grasshopper, or a meadow lark, or an ocean,
+or a thunderstorm has to do in this <a name="Page_30-f" id="Page_30-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_31-f" id="Page_31-f"></a><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>world. And it was doing it right
+out in the middle of a desert, bleak, sun-leprosied, forbidding, with
+only the stars and the moon and the sun and a cliff-swallow or two to
+behold. Thundering out its message into the waste places, careless of
+audiences&mdash;like a Master! Bully, grizzled old Master-Bard singing&mdash;as
+most of them do&mdash;to empty benches! And it had been doing that ten
+thousand thousand years, and would do so for ten thousand thousand more,
+and never pause for plaudits. I suspect the soul of old Homer did
+that&mdash;and is still doing it, somehow, somewhere. After all there isn't
+much difference between really tremendous things&mdash;Homer or waterfalls or
+thunderstorms&mdash;is there? It's only a matter of how things happen to be
+big.</p>
+
+<p>I was absent-mindedly chasing some big thundering line of Sophocles when
+Bill, the little Cornishman, ran in between me and the evasive line:
+"Lord! what a waste of power!"</p>
+
+<p>There is some difference in temperaments. Most men, I fancy, would have
+enjoyed a talk with a civil engineer upon that ledge. I should have
+liked to have Shelley there, myself! It's the difference between poetry
+and horse-power, dithyrambics and dynamos, Keats and Kipling!<a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a> What is
+the energy exerted by the Great Falls of the Missouri? How many
+horse-power did Shelley fling into the creation of his <i>West Wind</i>? How
+many foot-pounds did the boy heart of Chatterton beat before it broke?
+Something may be left to the imagination!</p>
+
+<p>We backtrailed to a point where the cliff fell away into a rock-strewn
+incline, and clambered down a break-neck slope to the edge of the
+crystal broil. There was a strange exhilaration about it&mdash;a novel sense
+of discovering a natural wonder for ourselves. We seemed the first men
+who had ever been there: that was the most gripping thing about it.</p>
+
+<p>Aloof, stupendous, <a name="terriffic1" id="terriffic1"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="terrific">terriffic</ins>, staggering in the intensity of its wild
+beauty, you reach it by a trail. There are no 'busses running and you
+can't buy a sandwich or a peanut or a glass of beer within ten miles of
+its far-flung thunders. For twentieth century America, that is doing
+rather well!</p>
+
+<p>Skirting the slippery rocks at the lip of the mad flood, we swung
+ourselves about a ledge, dripping with the cool mist-drift; descended to
+the level of the lower basin, where a soaking fog made us shiver; pushed
+through a dripping, oozing, <a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>autumnal sort of twilight, and came out
+again into the beat of the desert sun, to look squarely into the face of
+the giant.</p>
+
+<p>A hawk wheeled and swooped and floated far up in the dazzling air.
+Somehow that hawk seemed to make the lonely place doubly lonely. Did you
+ever notice how a lone coyote on a snow-heaped prairie gives you a
+heartache, whereas the empty waste would only have exhilarated you?
+Always, it seemed, that veering hawk had hung there, and would hang so
+always&mdash;outliving the rising of suns and the drifting of stars and the
+visits of the moon.</p>
+
+<p>A vague sense of grief came over me at the thought of all this eternal
+restlessness, this turbulent fixity; and, after all, it seemed much
+greater to be even a very little man, living largely, dying, somehow,
+into something big and new; than to be this Promethean sort of thing, a
+giant waterfall in a waste.</p>
+
+<p>I have known men who felt dwarfed in the presence of vast and awful
+things. I never felt bigger than when I first looked upon the ocean. The
+skyward lift of a mountain peak makes me feel very, very tall. And when
+a thunderstorm comes down upon the world out of the northwest, <a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>with
+jagged blades of fire ripping up the black bellies of the clouds, I know
+all about the heart of Attila and the Vikings and tigers and Alexander
+the Great! So I think I grew a bit out there talking to that water-giant
+who does nothing at all&mdash;not even a vaudeville stunt&mdash;and does it so
+masterfully.</p>
+
+<p>By and by they'll build a hotel in the flat at the edge of the lower
+basin; plant prim flowers in very prim beds; and rob you on the genteel
+European plan. Comfortably sitting in a willow chair on the broad
+veranda, one will read the signs on those cliffs&mdash;all about the best
+shoes to wear, and what particular pill of all the pills that be, should
+be taken for that ailing kidney. But it will not be I who shall sit in
+that willow chair on that broad, as yet unbuilt, veranda.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was glinting at the rim of the cliffs, and the place of awe and
+thunders was slowly filling with shadow. We found a steep trail,
+inaccessible for vehicles, leading upward in the direction of Benton. It
+was getting that time of day when even a sentimentalist wants a
+beefsteak, especially if he has hiked over dusty scorching trails and
+scrambled over rocks all day.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a></p>
+
+<p>Some kind man back in the town, with a fund of that most useless
+article, information, had told us of a place called Goodale,
+theoretically existing on the Great Northern Railroad between Great
+Falls and Benton. We had provided only for luncheon, trusting to fate
+and Goodale for supper.</p>
+
+<p>Goodale! A truly beautiful name! No doubt in some miraculous way the
+character of the country changed suddenly just before you got there
+merely to justify the name. Surely no one would have the temerity to
+conjure up so beautiful a name for a desert town. Yet, half unwillingly,
+I thought of a little place I once visited&mdash;against my will, since the
+brakeman put me off there&mdash;by the name of Forest City. I remembered with
+misgivings how there wasn't a tree within something like four hundred
+miles. But I pushed that memory aside as a lying prophet. I believed in
+Goodale and beefsteak. Goodale would be a neat, quiet little town, set
+snugly in a verdant valley. We would come into it by starlight&mdash;down a
+careless gypsying sort of country road; and there would be the sound of
+a dear little trickling bickering cool stream out in the shadows of the
+trees fringing the approach to Goodale. And we'd pass <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>pretty little
+cottages with vines growing over the doors, and hollyhocks peeping over
+the fences, and cheerful lights in the windows.</p>
+
+<p>Goodale! And then, right in the middle of the town (no, <i>village</i>&mdash;the
+word is cosier somehow)&mdash;right in the middle of the village there would
+be a big restaurant, with such alluring scents of beefsteak all about
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I set the pace up that trail. It was a swinging, loose, cavalry-horse
+sort of pace&mdash;the kind that rubs the blue off the distance and paints
+the back trail gray. Goodale was a sort of Mecca. I thought of it with
+something like a religious awe. How far was Goodale, would you suppose?
+Not far, certainly, once we found the railroad.</p>
+
+<p>We made the last steep climb breathlessly, and came out on the level. A
+great, monotonous, heartachy prairie lay before us&mdash;utterly featureless
+in the twilight. Far off across the scabby land a thin black line swept
+out of the dusk into the dusk&mdash;straight as a crow's flight. It was the
+railroad. We made a cross-cut for it, tumbling over gopher holes,
+plunging through sagebrush, scrambling over gullies that told the
+incredible tale of torrents having been there once. I ate quantities of
+alkali dust and went on believing in<a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a> Goodale and beefsteak. Beefsteak
+became one of the principal stations on the Great Northern Railroad, so
+far as I was concerned personally. That is what you might call the
+geography of a healthy stomach.</p>
+
+<p>With the falling of the sun the climate of the country had changed. It
+was no longer blistering. You sat down for a moment and a shiver went up
+your spine. At noon I thought about all the lime-kilns I had ever met.
+Now I could hear the hickory nuts dropping in the crisp silence down in
+the old Missouri woods.</p>
+
+<p>We struck the railroad and went faster. Since my first experience with
+railroad ties, I have continued to associate them with hunger. I need
+only look an ordinary railroad tie in the face to contract a wonderful
+appetite. It works on the principle of a memory system. So, as we put
+the ties behind us, I increased my order at that restaurant in the sweet
+little pedestrian's village of Goodale. "A couple of eggs on the side,
+waiter," I said half audibly to the petite woman in the white apron who
+served the tables in the restaurant there. She was very real to me. I
+could count the rings on her fingers; and when she smiled, I noted that
+her teeth were very white&mdash;<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>doubtless they got that way from eating
+quantities and quantities of thick juicy beefsteak!</p>
+
+<p>The track took a sudden turn ahead. "Around that bend," I said aloud,
+"lies Goodale." We went faster. We rounded the bend, only to see the
+dusky, heartachy, barren stretch.</p>
+
+<p>"Railroads," explained I to myself, "have a way of going somewhere; it
+is one of their peculiarities." No doubt this track had been laid for
+the express purpose of guiding hungry folks to the hospitable little
+village. We plunged on for an hour. Meanwhile my orders to the trim
+little woman in the white apron increased steadily. She smiled broadly
+but winsomely, showing those charming beefsteak-polished teeth. They
+shone like a beacon ahead of me, for it was now dark.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly we came upon a signboard. We went up to it, struck a match, and
+read breathlessly&mdash;"<span class="smcap">Goodale</span>."</p>
+
+<p>We looked about us. Goodale was a switch and a box car.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Nothing beside remains,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I quoted,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i5">'round the decay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lone and level sands stretch far away.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a></p>
+
+<p>Alas for the trim little lady with the white teeth and the smile and the
+beefsteak!</p>
+
+<p>We said bitter things there in that waste about the man with the
+information. We loaded his memory with anathemas. One cannot eat a
+signboard, even with so inviting a name upon it. An idea struck me&mdash;it
+seemed a very brilliant one at the moment. I sat down and delivered
+myself of it to my companions, who also had lusted after the flesh-pots.
+"We have wronged that man with the information," said I. "He was no
+ordinary individual; he was a prophet: he simply got his dates mixed. In
+precisely one hundred years from now, there will be a town on this
+spot&mdash;and a restaurant! Shall we wait?"</p>
+
+<p>They cursed me bitterly. I suspect neither of them is a philosopher.
+Thereat I proceeded to eat a thick juicy steak from the T-bone portion
+of an unborn steer, served by the trim little lady of a hundred years
+hence, there in that potential village of Goodale. And as I smoked my
+cigarette, I felt very thankful for all the beautiful things that do not
+exist.</p>
+
+<p>And I slept that night in the great front bedroom, the ceiling of which
+is of diamond and turquoise.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a></p>
+
+<h2 class="sectionhead">CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3 class="chapterhead">HALF-WAY TO THE MOON</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">A</span>T last the sinuous yellow road dropped over the bluff rim and, to all
+appearances, dissolved into the sky&mdash;a gray-blue, genius-colored sky.</p>
+
+<p>It was sundown, and this was the end of the trail for us. Beneath the
+bluff rim lay Benton. We flung ourselves down in the bunch-grass that
+whispered dryly in a cool wind fresh from the creeping night-shade. Now
+that Benton lay beneath us, I was in no hurry to look upon it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fort Benton?</i> What a clarion cry that name had been to me! Old men&mdash;too
+old for voyages&mdash;had talked about this place; a long time ago, 'way down
+on the Kansas City docks, I had heard them. How far away it was then!
+Reach after reach, bend after bend, grunting, snoring, toiling, sparring
+over bars, bucking the currents, dodging the snags, went the snub-nosed
+steamers&mdash;brave little steamers!&mdash;forging on toward Fort Benton.
+<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a> And it
+was so very, very far away&mdash;half-way to the moon no doubt! St. Louis was
+indeed very far away. But Fort <span class="nowrap">Benton!&mdash;&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>Well, they spoke of the Fort Benton traffic as "the mountain trade," and
+I had not then seen a mountain. You could stand on the very tallest
+building in Kansas City, and you could look and look and never see a
+mountain. And to think how far the brave little steamers had to go! How
+<i>did</i> they ever manage to get back?</p>
+
+<p>But the old men on the docks&mdash;they had been there and all the way back,
+perhaps hundreds of times. And they were such heroes! Great paw-like
+hands they had, toughened with the gripping of cables; eyes that had
+that way of looking through and far beyond things. (Seamen and plainsmen
+have it.) And they had such romantic, crinkly, wrinkly, leathery faces.
+They got so on the way to Benton and back. And they talked about
+it&mdash;those old men lounging on the docks&mdash;because it was so far away and
+they were so old that they couldn't get there any more.</p>
+
+<p>What a picture I made out of their kaleidoscopic chatter; beautifully
+inaccurate, impossibly romantic picture, in which big muscley men had
+fights with yawping painted savages that always <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>got gloriously licked,
+in the approved story-book manner! I could shut my eyes and see it all
+very plainly, away off there half-way to the moon. And I used to wonder
+how my father could be such a strong man and never have any hankering to
+go up there at all! The two facts were quite incompatible. He should
+have been a captain and taken me on for cub pilot, or at least a
+"striker" engineer; though I wouldn't have objected seriously to the
+business of a cabin boy. I thought it would be very nice to engage in
+the mountain trade.</p>
+
+<p>And then, after a while, in the new light that creeps in with years, I
+began to rearrange my picture of things up there; and Benton crept a wee
+bit closer&mdash;until I could see its four adobe walls and its two adobe
+bastions, stern with portholes, sitting like bulldogs at the opposite
+corners ready to bark at intruders. And in and out at the big gate went
+the trappers&mdash;sturdy, rough-necked, hirsute fellows in buckskins, with
+Northwest fusils on their shoulders; lean-bodied, capable fellows, with
+souls as lean as their bodies, survivors of long hard trails, men who
+could go far and eat little and never give up. I was very fond of that
+sort of man.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a></p>
+
+<p>Little by little the picture grew. Indian bull boats flocked at the
+river front beneath the stern adobe walls; moored mackinaws swayed in
+the current, waiting to be loaded with peltries and loosed for the long
+drift back to the States; and the keel-boats, looking very fat and lazy,
+unloaded supplies in the late fall that were loaded at St. Louis in the
+early spring. And these had come all the way without the stroke of a
+piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or a pound of steam. Nothing but
+grit and man-muscle to drag them a small matter of two or three thousand
+miles up the current of the most eccentric old duffer of a river in the
+world!</p>
+
+<p>What men it did take to do that! I saw them on the wild shelterless
+banks of the yellow flood&mdash;a score or so of them&mdash;stripped and sweating
+under the prairie sun, with the cordelle on their calloused shoulders,
+straightening out to the work like honest oxen. What <i>males</i> those
+cordelle men were&mdash;what <i>stayers</i>! Fed on wild, red meat, lean and round
+of waist, thick of chest, thewed for going on to the finish. Ten or
+fifteen miles a day and every inch a fight! Be sure they didn't do it
+merely for the two or three hundred dollars a year they got from the
+Company. They did it <a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>because they were that sort of men, and had to
+express themselves. Everything worth while is done that way.</p>
+
+<p>Do they raise that breed now? Never doubt it! You need only find your
+keel-boats or their equivalents, and the men will come around for the
+job, I'm sure. But when you speak enthusiastically of the old Greek
+doers of things, I'd like to put in a few words for those old up-river
+men. They belong to the unwritten American epic.</p>
+
+<p>And then the keel-boats and the bull-boats and the mackinaws and the
+up-river men flashed out&mdash;like a stereopticon picture when the man moves
+the slide; and I saw a little ragged village of log houses scattered
+along the water front. I saw the levees piled with merchandise, and a
+score or more of packets rushing fresh cargoes ashore&mdash;mates bawling
+commands down the gangplanks where the roustabouts came and went at a
+trot. Gold-mad hundreds thronged the wagon-rutted streets of this raw
+little village, the commercial center of a vast new empire. Six-horse
+freighters trundled away toward the gold fields; and others trundled in,
+their horses jaded with the precious <a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>freight they pulled. And I saw
+steamers dropping out for the long voyage back to the States, freighted
+with cargoes of gold dust&mdash;really truly story-book treasure-ships that
+would have made old Captain Kidd's men mad with delight.</p>
+
+<p>As I lay dreaming in the bunch-grass, it all grew up so real that I had
+to get up and take my first look, half expecting to find it all there
+just as in the old days.</p>
+
+<p>We stood at the rim of the bluff and looked down into a cup-like valley
+upon a quiet little village, winking with scattered lights in the
+gloaming. Past it swept the river&mdash;glazed with the twilight and
+silver-splotted with early stars.</p>
+
+<p>This was Benton&mdash;it could have been almost any other town as well. And
+yet, once upon a time, it had filled my day-dreams with wonders&mdash;this
+place that seemed half-way to the moon.</p>
+
+<p>The shrill shriek of a Great Northern locomotive, trundling freight cars
+through the gloom, gave the death-stroke to the old boy-dream. It was
+the cry of modernity. This boisterous, bustling, smoke-breathing thing,
+plunging through the night with flame in its throat, had made the
+change, dragged old Benton out of the far-off <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>lunar regions and set
+what is left of it right down in the back yard of the world. Even a very
+little boy could get there now.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," thought I, as we set out rapidly for the village in the
+valley, "the difference between the poetry of mackinaws and Great
+Northern locomotives is merely a matter of perspective. If those old
+cordelle men could only come back for a while from their Walhalla, how
+they would crowd about that wind-splitting, fire-eating, iron beast,
+panting from its long run, and catching its breath for another plunge
+into the waste places and the night! And I? I would be gazing
+wide-mouthed at the cordelle men. It's only the human curiosity about
+the other side of the moon. How perfect the nights would be if we could
+only see that lost Pleiad!"</p>
+
+<p>Ankle-deep in the powdery sand, we entered the little town with its
+business row facing the water front. One glance at the empty levees told
+you of the town's dead glory. Not a steamboat's stacks, blackening in
+the gloom, broke the peaceful glitter of the river under the stars. But
+along the sidewalk where the electric-lighted bar-rooms buzzed and
+hummed, brawny cow-men, booted and spurred, lounged about, talking in
+that odd <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>but not unpleasant Western English that could almost be called
+a dialect.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the Benton of the cow-men that I felt about me. It was
+still for me the Benton of the fur trade and the steamboats and the gold
+rush&mdash;my boyhood's Benton half-way to the moon&mdash;the ghost of a dead
+town.</p>
+
+<p>At Goodale I had sought a substantial town and found a visionary one. At
+Benton I had sought a visionary town and found a substantial one.
+Philosophy was plainly indicated as the proper thing. And, after all, a
+steaming plate of <a name="lamp" id="lamp"></a><ins class="correction" title="lamb">lamp</ins>
+chops in a Chinese chuck-house of a substantial
+though disappointing town, is more acceptable to even a dreamer than the
+visionary beefsteak I ate out there in that latent restaurant of a
+potential village.</p>
+
+<p>This was a comfortable thought; and for a quarter of an hour, the far
+weird cry of things that are no more, was of no avail. The rapid music
+of knife and fork drowned out the asthmatic snoring of the ghostly
+packets that buck the stream no more. How grub does win against
+sentiment!</p>
+
+<p>Swallowing the last of the chops, "Where will I find the ruins of the
+old fort?" I asked of my bronze-faced neighbor across the wreck of
+supper.<a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a> He looked bored and stiffened a horny practical thumb in the
+general direction of the ruins. "Over there," he said laconically.</p>
+
+<p>I caught myself wondering if a modern Athenian would thus carelessly
+direct you to the Acropolis. Is the comparison faulty? Surely a ruin is
+sacred only for what men did there. We are indeed a headlong race. We
+keep our ruins behind us. Perhaps that is why we get somewhere. And yet,
+what beauty blooms flowerlike to the backward gaze! Music and
+poetry&mdash;all the deepest, purest sentiments of the heart&mdash;are fed greatly
+upon the memory of the things that were but can never be again.
+Mnemosyne is the mother of all the Muses.</p>
+
+<p>I got up and went out. By the light of a thin moon, I found the place
+"over there." An odd, pathetic little ruin it is, to be sure. Nothing
+imposing about it. It doesn't compel through admiration: it woos through
+pity&mdash;the great, impersonal kind of pity.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A single little turret that remains<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the plains"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Browning tells about all there is to tell about it, though he never
+heard of it; only they called it <a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>a "bastion" in the old days&mdash;the
+little square adobe blockhouse that won't stand much longer. One
+crumbling bastion and two gaunt fragments of adobe walls in a waste of
+sand beside the river&mdash;that's Fort Benton.</p>
+
+<p>A thin pale grudging strip of moon lit it up: just the moon by which to
+see ruins&mdash;a moon for backward looking and regrets. A full round
+love-moon wouldn't have served at all.</p>
+
+<p>Out of pure moon-haze I restored the walls of the house where the
+bourgeois lived. The fireplace and the great mud chimney are still
+there, and the smut of the old log fires still clings inside. The man
+who sat before that hearth was an American king. A simple word of
+command spoken in that room was the thunder of the law in the wilderness
+about, and men obeyed. There's a bat living there now. He tumbled about
+me in the dull light, filling the silence with the harsh whir of
+pinions.</p>
+
+<p>I thought about that night a long, long time ago when all the people
+under the protection of the newly erected fort, gathered here for a
+house-warming. How clearly I could hear that squawking, squeaking,
+good-natured fiddle and the din of dancing feet! Only the sound got
+mixed up with <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>the dim, weird moonlight, until you didn't know whether
+you were hearing or seeing or feeling it&mdash;the music of the fiddles and
+the feet. Oh, the dim far music!</p>
+
+<p>I thought about the other ruins of the world, the exploited,
+tourist-haunted ruins; and I wondered why the others attract so much
+attention while this one attracts practically none at all. How they do
+dig after old Troy&mdash;poor old long-buried, much-abused Troy! And nobody
+even cares to steal a brick from this ruined citadel that took so great
+a part in the American epic. Indeed, you would not be obliged to steal a
+brick; there are no guards.</p>
+
+<p>Some one has said that the history of our country as taught in the
+common schools is the history of a narrow strip of land along the
+Atlantic coast. The statement is significant. The average school-teacher
+knows very little about Fort Benton, I suspect.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, one of the most tremendous of all human movements centered
+about it&mdash;the movement that brought about the settlement of the
+Northwest. One of these days they will plant a potato patch there!</p>
+
+<p>But modern Benton?</p><p><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a></p>
+
+<p>Get on a train in the East, snuggle up in your berth, plunge on to the
+Western coast, and you run through the real West in the night. They are
+getting Eastern out there at the rim of the big sea. Benton is in the
+West&mdash;the big, free, heart-winning West; and it gives promise of staying
+there for a while yet.</p>
+
+<p>Charter a bronco and canter out across the river for an hour, and it
+will be very plain to you that the romantic West still lives&mdash;the West
+of the cowboy and the bronco and the steer. Not the average story-book
+West, to be sure. Perhaps that West never existed. But it is the West
+that has bred and is still breeding a race of men as beautiful in a
+virile way (and how else should men be beautiful?) as this dear old
+mother of an Earth ever suckled.</p>
+
+<p>I stood once on the yellow slope of a hill and watched a round-up outfit
+passing in the gulch below. Four-horse freighters grumbling up the dusty
+trail; cook wagons trundling after; whips popping over the sweating
+teams; a hundred or more saddle ponies trailing after in rolling clouds
+of glinting dust; a score of bronze-faced, hard-fisted outriders,
+mounted on gaunt, tough, wise little horses&mdash;such strong, outdoor,
+masterful<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a> Americans, truly beautiful in a big manly way!</p>
+
+<p>The sight of it all put that glorious little achy feeling in my throat
+that you get when they start the fife and drum, or when a cavalry column
+wheels at the word of command, or when a regiment swings past with even
+tread, or when you stand on a dock and watch a liner dropping out into
+the fog. It's the feeling that you're a man and mighty proud of it. But
+somehow it always makes you just a little sad.</p>
+
+<p>I felt proud of that bunch of strong capable fellows&mdash;proud as though I
+had created them myself.</p>
+
+<table class="images" summary="Images">
+<tr><td valign="top"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image10" id="image10"></a>
+<a href="images/img10-full.jpg"><img src="images/img10.jpg" width="300" height="183" alt="&quot;This was Benton.&quot;" title="&quot;This was Benton.&quot;" /></a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;This was Benton.&quot;</span>
+</div></td>
+
+<td valign="top"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image11" id="image11"></a>
+<a href="images/img11-full.jpg"><img src="images/img11.jpg" width="300" height="179" alt="Ruins of Old Fort Benton." title="Ruins of Old Fort Benton." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Ruins of Old Fort Benton.</span>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 290px;">
+<a name="image12" id="image12"></a>
+<a href="images/img12-full.jpg"><img src="images/img12.jpg" width="290" height="400" alt="The House of the Bourgeois." title="The House of the Bourgeois." /></a>
+<span class="caption">The House of the Bourgeois.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>And once again the glorious little achy feeling in the throat came. The
+Congressman from Choteau County had returned from Washington with fresh
+laurels; and Benton turned out to welcome her Great Man. Down the dusty,
+poorly lighted, front street came the little band&mdash;a shirt-sleeved
+squad. Halting under the dingy glow of a corner street-lamp, they struck
+up the best-intentioned, noisiest noise I ever heard. The tuba raced
+lumberingly after the galloping cornet, that ran neck-and-neck with the
+wheezing clarinet; and the drums beat up behind, pounding like the hoofs
+of stiff-kneed horses half a stretch behind.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_52-f" id="Page_52-f"></a></p>
+<p><a name="Page_53-f" id="Page_53-f"></a></p>
+<p><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a></p>
+
+<p>It was a mad, exciting race of sounds&mdash;a sort of handicap. The circular
+glow of the street-lamp became the social center of Benton. At last the
+mad race was ended. I think it was the cornet that won, with the
+clarinet a close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, complacently
+claimed third money, and the bass-drum finished last with a shameless,
+resolute boom!</p>
+
+<p>A great hoarse cry went up&mdash;probably for the winning cornet; a
+big-lunged, generous, warrior cry that made you think of a cavalry
+charge in the face of bayonets. And the shirt-sleeved band swung off
+down the street in the direction of the little cottage where the Great
+Man lived. All Benton fell in behind&mdash;clerks and bar-keeps and sheepmen
+and cowboys tumbling into fours. Under the yellow flare of the kerosene
+torches they went down the street like a campaigning company in rout
+step, scattering din and dust.</p>
+
+<p>Great, deep-chested, happy-looking, open air fellows, they were; big
+lovers, big haters, good laughers, eaters, drinkers&mdash;and every one of
+them potentially a fighting man.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly, as I watched them pass, something deep down in me cried
+out: "Great God! What a fighting force we can drum up out of the <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>cactus
+and the sagebrush when the time comes!" And when I looked again, not one
+of the sun-bronzed faces was strange to me, but every one was the face
+of a brother. Choteau's Congressman was my Congressman! Benton's Great
+Man was my Great Man! I fell into line alongside a big bronco-buster
+with his high-heeled boots and his clanking spurs and his bandy-legged,
+firm-footed horseman's stride. Thirty yards farther on we were old
+comrades. That is the Western way.</p>
+
+<p>Once again the little band struck up a march, which was very little more
+than a rhythmic snarling and booming of the drums, with now and then the
+shrill savage cry of the clarinet stabbing the general dim. Irresistibly
+the whole line swung into step.</p>
+
+<p>What is it about the rhythmic stride of many men down a dusty road that
+grips you by the throat and makes your lungs feel like overcharged
+balloons? I felt something like the maddening, irritating tang of
+powder-smoke in my throat. Trumpet cries that I had never heard, yet
+somehow dimly remembered, wakened in the night about us&mdash;far and faint,
+but haughty with command. It took very little imagination for me <a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>to
+feel the whirlwind of battles I may never know, to hear the harsh
+metallic snarl of high-power bullets I may never face. For, marching
+there in the dusty, torch-painted night, with that ragged procession of
+Westerners, a deep sense of the essential comradeship of free men had
+come upon me; and I could think of these men in no other way than as
+potential fighting men&mdash;the stern hard stuff with which you build and
+keep your empires. What a row Napoleon could have kicked up with half a
+million of these sagebrush boys to fling foeward under his
+cannon-clouds!</p>
+
+<p>We reached the cottage of the Great Man with the fresh laurels. He met
+us at the gate. He called us Jim and Bill and Frank and Kid something or
+other. We called him Charlie. And he wasn't the least bit stiff or
+proud, though we hadn't the least doubt that half of Washington was in
+tears at his departure for the West.</p>
+
+<p>The sudden flare of a torch betrayed his moist eyes as he told us how he
+loved us. And I'm sure he meant it. He said, with that Western drawl of
+his: "Boys, while I was back there trying to do a little something for
+you in Congress, I heard a lot of swell bands; but I didn't hear any
+such music as this little old band of ours has made <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>to-night!" The
+unintentional humor somehow didn't make you want to laugh at all.</p>
+
+<p>We're all riding with his outfit; and next year we're going to send
+Charlie back East again. May we all die sheepmen if we don't&mdash;and that's
+the limit in Montana!</p>
+
+<p>Talking about sheepmen, reminds me of Joe, the big bronco-buster, and
+his <i>mot</i>. I was doing the town with Joe, and he was carefully educating
+me in the Western mysteries. He told me all about "day-wranglers" and
+"night-hawks" and "war-bags" and "round-ups"; showed me how to tie a
+"bull-noose" and a "sheep-shank" and a "Mexican hacamore"; put me onto
+the twist-of-the-wrist and the quick arm-thrust that puts half-hitches
+'round a steer's legs; showed me how a cowboy makes dance music with a
+broom and a mouth-harp&mdash;and many other wonderful feats, none of which I
+can myself perform.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to feel the mettle of the big typical fellow, and so I said
+playfully: "Say, Joe, come to confession&mdash;you're a sheepman, now aren't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>He clanked down a glass of long-range liquid, and glared down at me with
+a monitory forefinger pointing straight between my eyes: "Now you <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>look
+here, Shorty," he drawled; "you're a friend of mine, and whatever you
+say <i>goes</i>, as long as I ain't all caved in! But you cut that out, and
+don't you say that out loud again, or you and me'll be having to scrap
+the whole outfit!"</p>
+
+<p>He resumed his glass. I told him, still playfully, that a lot of mighty
+good poetry had been written about sheep and sheepmen and crooks and
+lambs and things like that, and that I considered my question
+complimentary.</p>
+
+<p>"You're talkin' about sheepmen in the old country, Shorty," he drawled.
+"There ain't any cattle ranges there, you know. Do you know the
+difference between a sheepman in Scotland, say, and in Montana?"</p>
+
+<p>I did not.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he proceeded, "over in Scotland when a feller sees a sheepman
+coming down the road with his sheep, he says: 'Behold the gentle
+shepherd with his fleecy flock!' That's poetry. Now in Montana, that
+same feller says, when he sees the same feller coming over a ridge with
+the same sheep: '<i>Look at that crazy blankety-blank with his woolies!</i>'
+That's fact. You mind what I say, or you'll get spurred."</p>
+
+<p>I don't quite agree with Joe, however. Once, <a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>lying in my tent across
+the river, I looked out over the breaks through that strange purple
+moonlight, such as I had always believed to exist only in the staging of
+a melodrama, and saw four thousand sheep descending to the ferry.</p>
+
+<p>Like lava from a crater they poured over the slope above me; and above
+them, seeming prodigiously big against the weird sky, went the sheepman
+with his staff in his hand and a war-bag over his arm, while at his
+heels a wise collie followed. It was a picture done by chance very much
+as Millet could have done it. And somehow Joe's <i>mot</i> couldn't stand
+before that picture.</p>
+
+<p>There is indeed a big Pindaric sort of poetry about a plunging mass of
+cattle. And just as truly there is a sort of Theocritus poetry about
+sheep. Only in the latter case, the poetical vanishing point is farther
+away for me than is the case with cattle. I think I couldn't write very
+good verses about a flock of sheep, unless I were at least five hundred
+yards away from them. I haven't figured the exact distance as yet. But
+when you have a large flock of sheep camping about you all night, making
+you eat fine sand and driving you mad with that most idiotic of all
+noises (which happened once <a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>to me), you don't get up in the morning
+quoting Theocritus. You remember Joe's <i>mot</i>!</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>We found a convenient gravel bar on the farther side of the river, where
+we established our navy-yard. There we proceeded to set up the keel of
+the <i>Atom I</i>&mdash;a twenty-foot canoe with forty-inch beam, lightly ribbed
+with oak and planked with quarter-inch cypress.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had we screwed up the bolts in the keel, than our ship-yard
+became a sort of free information bureau. Every evening the cable ferry
+brought over a contingent of well-wishers, who were ardent in their
+desire to encourage us in our undertaking, which was no less than that
+of making a toboggan slide down the roof of the continent.</p>
+
+<p>The salient weakness of the <i>genus homo</i>, it has always seemed to me, is
+an overwhelming desire to give advice. Through several weeks of toil, we
+were treated to a most liberal education on marine matters. It appeared
+that we had been laboring under a fatal misunderstanding regarding the
+general subject of navigation. Our style of boat was indeed
+admirable&mdash;for a lake, if you please, <i>but</i>&mdash;well, of course, they did
+not wish to <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>discourage us. It was quite possible that we were
+unacquainted with the Upper Missouri. Now the Upper River (hanging out
+that bleached rag of a sympathetic smile), the Upper River was <i>not</i> the
+Lower River, you know. (That really <i>did</i> seem remarkably true, and we
+became alarmed.) The Upper River, mind you, was <a name="terriffic2" id="terriffic2"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="terrific">terriffic</ins>. Why, those
+frail ribs and that impossible planking would go to pieces on the first
+rock&mdash;like an <a name="egshell" id="egshell"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="eggshell">egshell</ins>! Of course, we were free to do as we pleased&mdash;they
+would not discourage us for the world. And the engine! Gracious! Such a
+boat would never stand the vibration of a four-horse, high-speed engine
+driving a fourteen-inch screw! It appeared plainly that we were almost
+criminally wrong in all our calculations. Shamefacedly we continued to
+drive nails into the impossible hull, knowing full well&mdash;poor misguided
+heroes&mdash;that we were only fashioning a death trap! There could be no
+doubt about it. The free information bureau was unanimous. It was all
+very pathetic. Nothing but the tonic of an habitual morning swim in the
+clear cold river kept us game in the face of the inevitable!</p>
+
+<p>We saw it all. With a sort of forlorn cannon-torn-cavalry-column hope we
+pushed on with the <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>fatal work. Never before did I appreciate old Job in
+the clutches of good advice. I used to accuse him of rabbit blood. In
+the light of experience, I wish to record the fact that I beg his
+pardon. He was in the house of his friends. I think Job and I understand
+each other better now. It was not the boils, but the free advice!</p>
+
+<p>At last the final nail was driven and clenched, the canvas glued on and
+ironed, the engine installed. The trim, slim little craft with her
+admirable speed lines, tapering fore and aft like a fish, lay on the
+ways ready for the plunge.</p>
+
+<p>We had arranged to christen her with beer. The Kid stood at the prow
+with the bottle poised, awaiting his cue. The little Cornishman knelt at
+the prow. He was <i>not</i> bowed in prayer. He was holding a bucket under
+the soon-to-be-broken bottle. "For," said he, "in a country where beer
+is so dear and advice so cheap, let us save the beer that we may be
+strong to stand the advice!"</p>
+
+<p>The argument was <a name="inded" id="inded"></a><ins class="correction" title="indeed">inded</ins>
+Socratic.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, little boat," said I, in that dark brown tone of voice of
+which I am particularly proud, "be a good girl! Deliver me not unto the
+laughter of my good advisers. I christen thee <i>Atom</i>!"</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a></p>
+
+<p>The bottle broke&mdash;directly above that bucket.</p>
+
+<p>And now before us lay the impossible as plainly pointed out, not only by
+local talent, but by no less a man that the august captain of a
+government snag-boat. Several weeks before the launching, an event had
+taken place at Benton. The first steamboat for sixteen years tied up
+there one evening. She was a government snag-boat. Now a government
+snag-boat may be defined as a boat maintained by the government for the
+sole purpose of sailing the river <i>and dodging snags</i>. This particular
+snag-boat, I learned afterward in the course of a long cruise behind
+her, holds the snag-boat record. I consider her pilot a truly remarkable
+man. He seemed to have dodged them all.</p>
+
+<p>All Benton turned out to view the big red and white government steamer.
+There was something almost pathetic about the public demonstration when
+you thought of the good old steamboat days. During her one day's visit
+to the town, I met the captain.</p>
+
+<table class="images" summary="Images">
+<tr><td>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image13" id="image13"></a>
+<a href="images/img13-full.jpg"><img src="images/img13.jpg" width="300" height="184" alt="A Round-Up Outfit on the March." title="A Round-Up Outfit on the March." /></a>
+<span class="caption">A Round-Up Outfit on the March.</span>
+</div></td>
+
+<td><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image14" id="image14"></a>
+<a href="images/img14-full.jpg"><img src="images/img14.jpg" width="300" height="196" alt="Joe." title="Joe." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Joe.</span>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class="images" summary="Images">
+<tr><td>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image15" id="image15"></a>
+<a href="images/img15-full.jpg"><img src="images/img15.jpg" width="300" height="155" alt="Montana Sheep." title="Montana Sheep." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Montana Sheep.</span>
+</div></td>
+
+<td><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image16" id="image16"></a>
+<a href="images/img16-full.jpg"><img src="images/img16.jpg" width="300" height="184" alt="A Montana Wool-Freighter." title="A Montana Wool-Freighter." /></a>
+<span class="caption">A Montana Wool-Freighter.</span>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>He was very stiff and proud. He awed me. I stood before him fumbling my
+hat. Said I to myself: "The personage before me is more than a snag-boat
+captain. This is none other than the gentleman who invented the Missouri
+River. No <a name="Page_62-f" id="Page_62-f"></a><a name="Page_63-f" id="Page_63-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>doubt even now he carries the patent in his pocket!"</p>
+
+<p>"Going down river in a power canoe, eh?" he growled, regarding me
+critically. "Well, you'll never get down!"</p>
+
+<p>"That so?" croaked I, endeavoring to swallow my Adam's apple.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you won't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" ventured I timidly, almost pleadingly; "isn't there&mdash;uh&mdash;isn't
+there&mdash;uh&mdash;<i>water enough</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Water enough&mdash;yes!" growled the personage who invented the longest
+river in the world and therefore knew what he was talking about. "Plenty
+of water&mdash;<i>but you won't find it!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Now as the <i>Atom</i> slid into the stream, I thought of the captain's
+words. Since that time the river had fallen three feet. We drew eighteen
+inches.</p>
+
+<p>Sixty-five days after that oraculous utterance of the captain, the Kid
+and I, half stripped, sun-burned, sweating at the oars, were forging
+slowly against a head wind at the mouth of the Cheyenne, sixteen hundred
+miles below the head of navigation. A big white and red steamer was
+creeping up stream over the shallow crossing of the Chey<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>enne's bar,
+sounding every foot of the water fallen far below the usual summer
+level.</p>
+
+<p>It was the snag-boat. Crossing her bows and drifting past her slowly, I
+stood up and shouted to the party in the pilot house:</p>
+
+<p>"I want to speak to the captain."</p>
+
+<p>He came out on the hurricane deck&mdash;the man who invented the river. He
+was still stiff and proud, but a swift smile crossed his face as he
+looked down upon us, half-naked and sun-blackened there in our dinky
+little craft.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain," I cried, and perhaps there was the least vainglory in me; "I
+talked to you at Benton."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>I have found that water!</i>"</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a></p>
+
+<h2 class="sectionhead">CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3 class="chapterhead">MAKING A GETAWAY</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>ELL a Teuton that he can't, and very likely he will show you that he
+can. It's in the blood. Between the prophecy of the snag-boat captain
+and my vainglorious answer at the Cheyenne crossing, I learned to
+respect the words of the man who invented the eccentric old river. In
+the face of heavy head winds, I quoted the words, "You'll never get
+down"&mdash;and they bit deep like whip lashes. On many a sand-bar and gravel
+reef, with the channel far away, I heard the words, "Plenty of water,
+yes, but you won't find it!" And always something stronger than my
+muscles cried out within me: "The devil I won't, O, you inventor of
+rain-water creeks!" Hour by hour, day by day, against almost continual
+head winds and with the lowest water in years, that discouraging
+prophecy invaded me and was repulsed. And that is why we have pessimists
+in the world. A pessimist is merely a counter-irritant.</p>
+
+<p>I stood on the bank for some time after the<a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a> <i>Atom I</i> slid into the
+water, admiring her truly beautiful lines. Once I was captain of a trunk
+lid that sailed a frog-pond down in Kansas City; and at that time I
+thought I knew the meaning of pride. I did not. All three of us were a
+bit puffed up over that boat. Something of that <a name="ride" id="ride"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="pride">ride</ins> that goes before a
+fall awoke in my captain's breast as I loved her with my eyes&mdash;that
+trim, slim speed-thing, tugging at her forward line, graceful and
+slender and strong and fleet as a Diana.</p>
+
+<p>I said at last: "I will now get in her, drop down to the town landing,
+and proceed to put to shame a few of these local motor-tubs that make so
+much fuss and don't go anywhere!"</p>
+
+<p>I loved her as a man should love all things that are swift and strong
+and honest, keen for marks and goals&mdash;a big, clean-limbed, thoroughbred
+horse that will break his heart to get under the wire first; a
+high-power rifle, slim of muzzle, thick of breech, with its wicked
+little throaty cry, doing its business over a flat trajectory a thousand
+yards away: I love her as a man should love those. Little did I dream
+that she would betray me.</p>
+
+<p>I took in the line and went aboard. At that <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>moment I almost understood
+the snag-boat captain's bearing. To be master of the <i>Atom I</i> seemed
+quite enough; but to be the really truly captain of a big red and white
+snag-boat&mdash;it must have been overwhelming!</p>
+
+<p>I dropped out into the current that, fresh from its plunge of four
+hundred feet in sixteen miles, ran briskly. Everything was in readiness.
+I meant to put a crimp in the vanity of that free-information bureau.</p>
+
+<p>I turned on the switch, opened the needle valve, swung the throttle over
+to the notch numbered with a big "2." I placed the crank on the wheel
+and gave it a vigorous turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Poof!" said the engine sweetly, and the kind word encouraged me
+immensely. Again I cranked.</p>
+
+<p>"Poof! Poof!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that I had somehow misunderstood the former communication, and
+it was therefore repeated with emphasis. Like a model father who walks
+the floor with the weeping child, tenderly seeking the offending pin, I
+looked over the engine. "What have I neglected?" said I. I intended to
+be quite logical and fair in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>I once presided over a country newspaper that <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>ran its presses with a
+gasoline engine with a most decided artistic temperament. That engine
+used to have a way of communing silently with its own soul right in the
+middle of press day. I remembered this with forebodings. I remembered
+how firm but kind I was obliged to be with that old engine. I remembered
+how it always put its hands in its pockets and took an extended vacation
+every time I swore at it. I decided to be nothing but a perfect
+gentleman with this engine. I even endeavored to be a jovial good
+fellow.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Little One?" said I mentally; "does its little carburetor
+hurt it? Or did the bad man strangle it with that horrid old gasoline?"</p>
+
+<p>I tenderly jiggled its air valve, fiddled gently with its spark-control
+lever. I cranked it again. It barked at me like a dog! I had been kind
+to it, and it barked right in my face. I wanted to slap it. I lifted my
+eyes and saw that the rapid current would soon carry me past the town
+landing. I seized a paddle and shoved her in. Of course, a member of the
+free-information bureau was at the landing. He had with him a bland
+smile and a choice bit of information.</p>
+
+<p>"Having trouble with your engine, aren't you?"<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a> he said as I leaped
+ashore with the line. "There must be something wrong with it!" The
+remark was indeed illuminating. It struck me with the force of an
+inspiration. It seemed so true.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange that I hadn't thought of that!" I remarked. "That really must
+be the trouble&mdash;there's something wrong with it. Thanks!"</p>
+
+<p>I tied the boat and went up-town, hoping to sidetrack the benevolent
+member of that ubiquitous bureau. When I returned, I found half a dozen
+other benevolent members at the landing. They were holding a
+consultation, evidently; and the very air felt gummy with latent advice.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with your engine?" they chorused.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, there's something wrong with it!" I explained cheerfully, as I
+went aboard again. I began to crank, praying steadily for a miracle. Now
+and then I managed to coax forth a gaseous chortle or two. The
+convention on the landing understood every chortle in a truly marvellous
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the spark-plug, that's sure!" announced one with an air of
+finality. "When an engine has run for a while (!) the spark-plug gets
+all smutted up. Have you cleaned your spark-plug?"</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a></p>
+
+<p>"No, Jim!" contradicted another, "it's all in the oil feed! Look how she
+puffs! W'y it's in the oil feed&mdash;plain as day! Now if you'll take off
+that carburetor <span class="nowrap">and&mdash;&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>I cranked on heroically.</p>
+
+<p>"It's in the timer," <a name="voluntered" id="voluntered"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="volunteered">voluntered</ins> another. "You see that little brass
+lever back there? Well, you take and remove that and you'll find
+<span class="nowrap">that&mdash;&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>I cranked on shamelessly.</p>
+
+<p>"The batteries ain't no good!" growled a man with a big voice that
+reminded me of a bass-drum booming up among the wind instruments in a
+medley. Like the barber who owned the white owl, I stuck to my business.
+I cranked on.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't <i>in</i> them batteries&mdash;them batteries is all right!" piped a
+weazened little man who had been grinning wisely at the lack of
+mechanical ability so shamelessly exposed by his fellows.</p>
+
+<p>"Now in a jump-spark engine," he explained leisurely, with a knowing
+squint of his eyes and an uplifted explanatory forefinger: "in a
+jump-spark engine, gentlemen, there is a number of things to consider.
+Now if you'll take and remove that cylinder-head, pull out the piston,
+<span class="nowrap">and&mdash;&mdash;"</span></p>
+
+<p>The voice of the expounder was suddenly <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>drowned out by the earsplitting
+rapid-fire of the exhaust! The miracle had happened! Hooray!</p>
+
+<p>I grasped the steering cords and jammed her rudder hard to port. Her
+fourteen-inch screw, suddenly started at full speed ahead, made the
+light, slim craft leap like a spike-spurred horse.</p>
+
+<p>But the turn was too short. She thrust her sharp haughty nose into the
+air like an offended lady, and started up the bank after that
+information bureau. If a tree had been convenient, I think she would
+have climbed it.</p>
+
+<p>I shut her down.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>She went that time!</i>" chorused the information bureau. Coming from an
+information bureau, the statement was marvellously correct. But I had
+suddenly become too glad-hearted for a sharp retort.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will please throw me the line, and push me off," I said
+confidently, "I'll drop out into the current."</p>
+
+<p>I dropped out.</p>
+
+<p>"Now for putting a crimp in some people's vanity!" I exulted.</p>
+
+<p>I cranked. Nothing doing! I cranked some more. No news from the crimping
+department.<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a> I continued to crank; also, I continued to drift. Somehow
+the current seemed to have increased alarmingly in speed.</p>
+
+<p>I thought I heard a sound of merriment. I looked up. The little weazened
+man was gesticulating wildly with that forefinger of his. He was
+explaining something. The information bureau, steadily dwindling into
+the distance, was not listening. It seemed to be enjoying itself
+immensely.</p>
+
+<p>I swallowed a half-spoken word that tasted bitter as it went down. Then
+I cranked again. There seemed to be nothing else to do. It was a hot
+day; hot sweat blinded me, and trickled off the tip of my nose. My hands
+began to develop blisters. Finally, a deep disgust seized me. I once saw
+a tender-hearted lady on her knees in the dust before a balky auto. I
+remembered her half-sobbed words: "<i>You mean thing, you! What is the
+matter with you, anyway! Oh, you mean, mean thing!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>I sat down in front of that engine and abandoned myself to a great
+feeling of tenderness and chivalry for that unfortunate lady. In that
+moment I believe I would have fought a bear for her! Oh that all the
+gasoline engines in the <a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>world could be concentrated somehow into one
+big woolly, scary black bear, how I could have set my teeth in its neck
+and died chewing!</p>
+
+<p>I heard a roaring of waters that broke my vision of bear fights and
+gentle ladies in distress. A hundred yards ahead of me I saw rapids. The
+words of the information bureau came back to me with terrible
+distinctness: "Why, her light timbers will go to pieces on the first
+rock!"</p>
+
+<p>Although I am no hero, I didn't get frightened. I got sore. "Go ahead,
+and smash yourself up, if you like!" I cried to the balky craft. And
+then I waited to see her do it. She swung 'round sharply with the first
+suck of the rapids, struck a rock, side-stepped, struck another, and
+went on down, grinding and dragging on a stony reef.</p>
+
+<p>It suddenly came to me that this was what they called the Grocondunez
+Rapids. I remembered that they said the name meant "the big bridge of
+the nose." The name had a powerful fascination for me&mdash;I wanted to hit
+something good and hard somewhere in that region!</p>
+
+<p>Finally she swung clear of the reef, caught the swirl of the main
+current, and started for New Orleans with the bit in her teeth. I wasn't
+ready to arrive in New Orleans at once; I had made <a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>other arrangements.
+So I grasped a paddle and drove her into shallow water. I leaped out,
+waist-deep in the cold stream, and threw my weight against her.
+Pantingly, I wondered what was the exact distance to the nearest axe. I
+resolved to crank her once more, and then for the axe hunt!</p>
+
+<p>I leaned over the gunwale and began to grind. For the life of me, I
+don't know just what I did to her; but it seemed that she had taken some
+offence. Without the least warning, she leaped forward at three-quarter
+speed, and started up stream with that haughty head of her thrust
+skyward!</p>
+
+<p>I clung desperately to her gunwale, and she dragged me insultingly in
+the drink! She made a soppy rag of me! I managed to scramble
+aboard&mdash;something after the fashion of a bronco-buster who mounts at a
+gallop.</p>
+
+<p>But the way she <i>traveled</i>! I forgot the ducking and forgave her with
+all my heart. I held her nose well out into the channel where the
+current ran with swells, though no wind blew.</p>
+
+<table class="images" summary="Images">
+<tr><td>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image17" id="image17"></a>
+<a href="images/img17-full.jpg"><img src="images/img17.jpg" width="300" height="184" alt="The &quot;Atom I&quot; under Construction." title="The &quot;Atom I&quot; under Construction." /></a>
+<span class="caption">The &quot;Atom I&quot; under Construction.</span>
+</div></td>
+
+<td><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image18" id="image18"></a>
+<a href="images/img18-full.jpg"><img src="images/img18.jpg" width="300" height="200" alt="The Cable Ferry Towed Us Out." title="The Cable Ferry Towed Us Out." /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Cable Ferry Towed Us Out.</span>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image19" id="image19"></a>
+<a href="images/img19-full.jpg"><img src="images/img19.jpg" width="500" height="287" alt="Laid Up with a Broken Rudder." title="Laid Up with a Broken Rudder." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Laid Up with a Broken Rudder.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Bucking the rapids, she split the fast water over her nose and sent it
+aft in two clean-cut masses, that hissed about her like angry skirts. A
+light, V-shaped wake spread after, scarcely agitating <a name="Page_74-f" id="Page_74-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_75-f" id="Page_75-f"></a><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>the surface. She
+dragged no water. There was no churning at her stern. Only the dull,
+sub-aqueous drone, felt rather than heard beneath the rapid banging of
+her exhaust, told me how the honest little screw thrust hard.</p>
+
+<p>I pushed the spark-lever close to the reversing point, and opened her
+throttle wide. This acted like a bottle-fly on the flank of a spirited
+mare. She shook herself, quivering through all her light, pliable
+construction, lifted her prow another inch or two, and flung the rapids
+behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Slim, fleet, clean-heeled, and hungry for distance, she raced toward the
+Benton landing two miles up.</p>
+
+<p>In my anxiety to show her to the benevolent ones, I left the current and
+took a crosscut over a rocky ford. Pebbles flung from her pounding heels
+showered down upon me. I climbed forward and let her hammer away. She
+cleared the gravel bar, and as she plunged past the now silent
+information bureau on the landing, condescendingly I waved a hand at
+them and went on splitting water.</p>
+
+<p>We shot under the bridge, forged into the crossing current, passed the
+big brick hotel, where a considerable number came out to salute us.<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>
+They dubbed her the fastest boat that had ever climbed that current, I
+learned afterward. Alas! I was getting my triumph early and in one big
+chunk! I figure that that one huge breakfast of triumph, if properly
+distributed, would have fed me through the whole two thousand miles of
+back-strain and muscle-cramp. And yet, through all the days of
+snail-paced toil that followed, I remained truly thankful for that early
+breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>The Kid and the Cornishman, busy in camp with the packing for the
+voyage, had shared in the gloom of my temporary defeat. But now, as I
+plunged past them, I could see them leaping into the air and cracking
+their heels together with delight. They had wet every plank of her with
+their sweat, and they were as proud as I. In the light of the following
+days, their delight dwindled into a pathetic thing.</p>
+
+<p>I held her on her course up-stream, reached the bend a mile above, swung
+round and&mdash;discovered that she had only then begun to lift her heels!
+With the rapid current to aid, her speed was truly wonderful. She could
+have kept pace with any respectable freight train at least.</p>
+
+<p>I indulged in a little feverish mental calculation. She could make, with
+the minimum current, <a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>eighteen miles per hour. Every day meant fifteen
+hours of light. Sioux City was two thousand miles away. We could reach
+Sioux City easily in ten days of actual running!</p>
+
+<p>While I was covering that fast mile back to camp I saw the <i>Atom I</i>
+passing Sioux City with an air of high-nosed contempt. I developed a
+sort of unreasoning hunger for New Orleans&mdash;a kind of violent thirst for
+the Gulf of Mexico! Nothing short of these, it seemed to me, could be
+worthy of so fleet a craft. When I shoved her nose into the landing, I
+found that my companions thoroughly agreed with me.</p>
+
+<p>All that night in my restless sleep I drove speed boats at a terrific
+pace through impossible channels and rock-toothed Scyllas; and the
+little Cornishman fought angry seas and heard a dream-wind shrieking in
+the cordage, and felt the salt spume on his face. "I wonder why I am
+always dreaming that," he said. "Atavism," I ventured; and he regarded
+me narrowly, as though I might be maligning his character in some way.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn we had already eaten and were loading the <i>Atom</i> for the voyage.
+With her cargo she drew eighteen inches of water. At full speed, she
+would squat four inches. It was the first of<a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a> August and the water,
+which had reached in the spring its highest point for twenty years, had
+been falling rapidly, and now promised to go far below the average
+low-water mark. We had ahead of us a long voyage, every mile of which
+was strange water.</p>
+
+<p>Once again I went over that feverish calculation. This time I was more
+generous. I decided upon fifteen days. The cable ferry towed us out
+beyond the gravel bars that, during the last week, had been slowly
+lifting their bleached masses higher. In mid-stream we cut loose.</p>
+
+<p>At the first turn the engine started. We were going at a good half-speed
+clip, when suddenly the engine changed its mind. "Squash!" it said
+wearily. Then it let off a gasoline sigh and went into a peaceful sleep.
+We had reached the brick hotel. We pulled in with the paddles and tied
+up. The information bureau was there, and at once went into
+consultation.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm looking for an engine doctor," I said. "How about Mr. Blank? They
+tell me he knows the unknowable."</p>
+
+<p>"Best man with an engine in town," <a name="sad" id="sad"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="said">sad</ins> one.</p>
+
+<p>"For gracious' sake, keep that man away from <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>your engine if you don't
+want it ruined!" said others. A man who can arouse a diversity of
+opinions is at least a man of originality. I went after that man.</p>
+
+<p>He came&mdash;with an air of mystery and a monkey wrench. He sat down in
+front of the patient (how that word <i>does</i> fit!) and after some time he
+said: "<i>Hm!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He unscrewed this&mdash;and whistled awhile; he unscrewed that&mdash;and whistled
+some more. Then he screwed up both this and that and cranked her.</p>
+
+<p>"Phew-oo-oo-oo!" said the engine. Whereat the doctor smiled knowingly.
+It was plain that she was an open book to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the trouble?" said I, with that tone of voice you use in a
+sick-room.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared to be appendicitis.</p>
+
+<p>"Spark-plug," muttered the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I get another?" I asked, half apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>"Better," grunted the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>I chased down an automobile owner, and a launch owner and a man who had
+a small pumping-engine. I was eloquent in my appeal for spark-<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>plugs. I
+made a very fine collection of them<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> and hastened back to the doctor.
+He didn't seem to appreciate my efforts. He had the patient on the
+operating table. Everything was either unscrewed or pulled out. He was
+carefully scrutinizing the wreck&mdash;for more things to screw out!</p>
+
+<p>"Locate the trouble?" I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"Buzzer's out of whack," replied the Man of Awe. "Have to get another
+spark-coil!" In times of sickness even the sternest man submits to
+medical tyranny. I ran down a man who once owned a power boat, and he
+had a spark coil. He finally agreed to forgo the pleasure of possessing
+it for a suitable reward. Considering the size of that reward, he had
+undoubtedly become greatly attached to his spark-coil!</p>
+
+<p>I returned in triumph to the doctor. He was now screwing up all that he
+had previously unscrewed.</p>
+
+<p>"Think she'll go now?" I pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>He screwed up several dozen things, and whistled a while. Then the
+oracle gave voice:<a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a> "'Fraid the batteries won't do; they're awful weak!"</p>
+
+<p>With a bitter heart, I turned on my heel and went forth once more.
+Electrical supplies were not on sale at any of the stores. But I found a
+number of gentlemen who were evidently connoisseurs in the battery
+business. They had batteries of which they were extremely fond. They
+parted with some of superior quality upon the consideration of a
+friendly regard for me&mdash;and a slight emolument on my part. I was
+evidently very popular.</p>
+
+<p>At a breathless speed I returned to&mdash;<i>not</i> to the doctor. He had
+vanished. Rumor had it that he had gone home to lunch, for the sun was
+now high. So far as I know, he is still at lunch.</p>
+
+<p>Several things were yet unscrewed. I fell to work. Wherever anything
+seemed to make a snug fit, I screwed it in. Other remaining things I
+drove into convenient holes. All the while I begged blind fate to guide
+me. Then I connected the batteries, supplied the new spark-coil,
+selected a new spark-plug at random, and screwed it in.</p>
+
+<p>Having done various things, I carefully surveyed my environs for a lady.
+There were no ladies present, so I spoke out freely. "And now,"<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a> said I,
+having exhausted my vocabulary, "I shall crank!"</p>
+
+<p>Bill and the Kid sat on a pile of rocks looking very sullen. For some
+reason or other they seemed to doubt that engine. I don't know how long
+I cranked. I know only that the impossible happened. The boat started
+for the hotel piazza!</p>
+
+<p>I didn't shut her down this time. I leaped out and took her by the nose.
+Putting our shoulders against the power of the screw, we walked her out
+into the current, headed her down stream, and scrambled in, wet to the
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>My logbook speaks for that day as follows: "Left Benton at 2:30
+<span class="smcap">p.m.</span> Gypsied along under half gasoline for several hours,
+safely crossing the Shonkin and Grocondunez bars. Struck a rock in
+Fontenelle Rapids at 4:30, taking off rudder. Landed with difficulty on
+a gravel-bar and repaired damages. At 5:30 engine bucked. A heavy wind
+from the west beat us against a ragged shore for an hour and a half.
+Impossible to proceed without power, except by cordelling&mdash;which we did,
+walking waist-deep in the water much of the time. Paddles useless in
+such a head wind. The wind falling at sunset, we drifted, again losing
+our rudder while shooting Brule Rapids.<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a> Tied up at the head of Black
+Bluff Rapids at dusk, having made twenty miles out of two thousand for
+the first day's run. Have to extend that fifteen days! Just the same,
+that information bureau saw us leave under power!"</p>
+
+<div class="fnline">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+<a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a>
+<a class="footnotea" href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">&nbsp;1&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></a> Dear Reader:
+Should you undertake the Missouri River trip,
+don't lay anything out on spark-plugs. I sowed them all along up there.
+Take a drag-net. You will scoop up several hundred dry batteries, but
+don't mind them; they are probably spoiled.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a></p>
+
+<h2 class="sectionhead">CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3 class="chapterhead">THROUGH THE REGION OF WEIR</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">W</span>E awoke with light hearts on the second morning of the voyage. All
+about us was the sacred silence of the wilderness dawn. The coming sun
+had smitten the chill night air into a ghostly fog that lay upon the
+valley like a fairy lake.</p>
+
+<p>We were at the rim of the Bad Lands and there were no birds to sing; but
+crows, wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung doleful voices downward
+into the morning hush&mdash;the spirit of the place grown vocal.</p>
+
+<p>Cloaked with the fog, our breakfast fire of driftwood glowed ruddily.
+What is there about the tang of wood-smoke in a lonesome place that
+fills one with glories that seem half memory and half dream? Crouched on
+my haunches, shivering just enough to feel the beauty there is in fire,
+I needed only to close my eyes, smarting with the smoke, to feel myself
+the first man huddled <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>close to the first flame, blooming like a mystic
+flower in the chill dawn of the world!</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps that is what an outing is for&mdash;to strip one down to the lean
+essentials, press in upon one the glorious privilege of being one's
+self, unique in all the universe of innumerable unique things. Crouched
+close to your wilderness campfire, the great Vision comes easily out of
+the smoke. Once again you feel the bigness of your world, the tremendous
+significance of everything in it&mdash;including yourself&mdash;and a far-seeing
+sadness grips you. Living in the flesh seems so transient, almost a
+pitiful thing in the last analysis. But somehow you feel that there is
+something bigger&mdash;not beyond it, but all about it continually. And you
+wonder that you ever hated anyone. You know, somehow, there in the smoky
+silence, why men are noble or ignoble; why they lie or die for a
+principle; why they kill, or suffer martyrdom; why they love and hate
+and fight; why women smile under burdens, sin splendidly or
+sordidly&mdash;and why hearts sometimes break.</p>
+
+<p>And expanded by the bigness of the empty silent spaces about you, like a
+spirit independent of it and outside of it all, you love the great red
+straining Heart of Man more than you could <a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>ever love it at your desk in
+town. And you want to get up and move&mdash;push on through purple
+distances&mdash;whither? Oh, anywhere will do! What you seek is at the end of
+the rainbow; it is in the azure of distance; it is just behind the glow
+of the sunset, and close under the dawn. And the glorious thing about it
+is that you know you'll never find it until you reach that lone, ghostly
+land where the North Star sets, perhaps. You're merely glad to know that
+you're not a vegetable&mdash;and that the trail never really ends anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Just now, however, the longing for the abstract had the semblance of a
+longing for the concrete. It always has that semblance, for that matter.
+You never really want what you think you are seeking. Touch the
+substance&mdash;and away you go after the shadow!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image20" id="image20"></a>
+<a href="images/img20-full.jpg"><img src="images/img20.jpg" width="500" height="287" alt="&quot;Atom&quot; Sailing Up-Stream in a Head Wind." title="&quot;Atom&quot; Sailing Up-Stream in a Head Wind." /></a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;Atom&quot; Sailing Up-Stream in a Head Wind.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 266px;">
+<a name="image21" id="image21"></a>
+<a href="images/img21-full.jpg"><img src="images/img21.jpg" width="266" height="400" alt="Typical Rapids on Upper Missouri." title="Typical Rapids on Upper Missouri." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Typical Rapids on Upper Missouri.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Around the bend lay Sioux City. Around what bend? What matter? Somewhere
+down stream the last bend lay, and in between lay the playing of the
+game. Any bend will do to sail around! There's a lot of fun in merely
+being able to move about and do things. For this reason I am overwhelmed
+with gratitude whenever I think that, through some slight error in the
+cosmic process, <a name="Page_86-f" id="Page_86-f"></a><a name="Page_87-f" id="Page_87-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>the life forces that glow in me might have been flung
+into a turnip&mdash;<i>but weren't</i>! The thought is truly appalling&mdash;isn't it?
+The avoidance of that one awful possibility is enough to make any man
+feel lucky all his life. It's such fun to awaken in the morning with all
+your legs and arms and eyes and ears about you, waiting to be used
+again! So strong was this thought in me when we cast off, that even the
+memory of Bill's amateurish pancakes couldn't keep back the whistle.</p>
+
+<p>The current of the Black Bluffs Rapids whisked us from the bank with a
+giddy speed, spun us about a right-angled bend, and landed us in a long
+quiet lake. Contrary to the average opinion, the Upper Missouri is
+merely a succession of lakes and rapids. In the low-water season, this
+statement should be italicised. When you are pushing down with the power
+of your arms alone the rapids show you how fast you want to go, and the
+lakes show you that you can't go that fast. For the teaching of
+patience, the arrangement is admirable. But when head winds blow, a
+three-mile reach means about a two-hour fight.</p>
+
+<p>This being a very invigorating morning, however, the engine decided to
+take a constitutional. It ran. Below the mouth of the Marias River,
+<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>twenty minutes later, we grounded on Archer's Bar and shut down. After
+dragging her off the gravel, we discovered that the engine wished to
+sleep. No amount of cranking could arouse it. Now and then it would say
+"<i>squash</i>," feebly rolling its wheel a revolution or two&mdash;like a
+sleepy-head brushing off a fly with a languid hand.</p>
+
+<p>A light breeze had sprung up out of the west. The stream ran east and
+northeast. We hastily rigged a tarp on a pair of oars spliced for a
+mast, and proceeded at a care-free pace. The light breeze ruffled the
+surface of the slow stream;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"&mdash;&mdash;yet still the sail made on<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pleasant noise till noon."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the lazy heat of the mounting sun, tempered by the cool river
+draught, the yellow sandstone bluffs, whimsically decorated with sparse
+patches of greenery, seemed to waver as though seen through shimmering
+silken gauze. And over it all was the hush of a dream, except when, in a
+spasmodic freshening of the breeze, the rude mast creaked and a sleepy
+watery murmur grew up for a moment at the wake.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then at a break in the bluffs, where a little coulee entered the
+stream, the gray masses <a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>of the bull-berry bushes lifted like smoke, and
+from them, flame-like, flashed the vivid scarlet of the berry-clusters,
+smiting the general dreaminess like a haughty cry in a silence.</p>
+
+<p>A wilderness indeed! It seemed that waste land of which Tennyson sang,
+"where no man comes nor hath come since the making of the world." I
+thought of the steamboats and the mackinaws and the keel-boats and the
+thousands of men who had pushed through this dream-world and the thought
+was unconvincing. Fairies may have lived here, indeed; and in the youth
+of the world, a glad young race of gods might have dreamed gloriously
+among the yellow crags. But surely we were the first men who had ever
+passed that way&mdash;and should be the last.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the light breeze boomed up into a gale. The <i>Atom</i>, with
+bellying sail, leaped forward down the roughening water, swung about a
+bend, raced with a quartering wind down the next reach, shot across
+another bend&mdash;and lay drifting in a golden calm. Still above us the
+great wind buzzed in the crags like a swarm of giant bees, and the
+waters about us lay like a sheet of flawless glass.</p>
+
+<p>With paddles we pushed on lazily for an hour.<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a> At the next bend, where
+the river turned into the west, the great gale that had been roaring
+above us, suddenly struck us full in front. Sucking up river between the
+wall rocks on either side, its force was terrific. You tried to talk
+while facing it, and it took your breath away. In a few minutes, in
+spite of our efforts with the paddles, we lay pounding on the shallows
+of the opposite shore.</p>
+
+<p>We got out. Two went forward with the line and the third pushed at the
+stern. Progress was slow&mdash;no more than a mile an hour. The clear water
+of the upper river is always cold, and the great wind chilled the air.
+Even under the August noon it took brisk work to keep one's teeth from
+chattering. The bank we were following became a precipice rising sheer
+from the river's edge, and the water deepened until we could no longer
+wade. We got in and poled on to the next shallows, often for many
+minutes at a time barely holding our own against the stiff gusts. For
+two hours we dragged the heavily laden boat, sometimes walking the bank,
+sometimes wading in mid-stream, sometimes poling, often swimming with
+the line from one shallow to another. And the struggle ended as suddenly
+as it began. Upon rounding <a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>the second bend the head wind became a stern
+wind, driving us on at a jolly clip until nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>During the late afternoon, we came upon a place where the Great Northern
+Railroad touches the river for the last time in five hundred miles. Here
+we saw two Italian section hands whiling away their Sunday with fishing
+rods. I went ashore, hoping to buy some fish. Neither of the two could
+speak English, and Italian sounds to me merely like an unintelligible
+singing. However, they gave me to understand that the fish were not for
+sale, and my proffered coin had no persuasive powers.</p>
+
+<p>Still wanting those fish, I rolled a smoke, carelessly whistling the
+while a strain from an opera I had once heard. For some reason or other
+that strain had been in my head all day. I had gotten up in the morning
+with it; I had whistled it during the fight with the head wind. The Kid
+called it "that Dago tune." I think it was something from <i>Il
+Trovatore</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly one of the little Italians dropped his rod, stood up to his
+full height, lifted his arms very much after the manner of an orchestra
+leader and joined in with me. I stopped&mdash;because I saw that he <i>could</i>
+whistle. He carried it on <a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>with much expression to the last thin note
+with all the ache of the world in it. And then he grinned at me.</p>
+
+<p>"Verdi!" he said sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>I applauded. Whereat the little Italian produced a bag of tobacco. We
+sat down on the rocks and smoked together, holding a wordless but
+perfectly <a name="intelligble" id="intelligble"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="intelligible">intelligble</ins> conversation of pleasant grins.</p>
+
+<p>That night we had fish for supper! I got them for a song&mdash;or, rather,
+for a whistle. I was fed with more than fish. And I went to sleep that
+night with a glorious thought for a pillow: Truth expressed as Art is
+the universal language. One immortal strain from Verdi, poorly whistled
+in a wilderness, had made a Dago and a Dutchman brothers!</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had the crackling of the ruddy log lulled us to sleep, when the
+night had flitted over like a shadow, and we were cooking breakfast. A
+lone, gray wolf, sitting on his haunches a hundred paces away, regarded
+us curiously. Doubtless we were new to his generation; for in the
+evening dusk we had drifted well into the Bad Lands.</p>
+
+<p>Bad Lands? Rather the Land of Awe!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a></p>
+
+<p>A light stern wind came up with the sun. During the previous evening we
+had rigged a cat-sail, and noiselessly we glided down the glinting trail
+of crystal into the "Region of Weir."</p>
+
+<p>On either hand the sandstone cliffs reared their yellow masses against
+the cloudless sky. Worn by the ebbing floods of a prehistoric sea,
+carved by the winds and rains of ages, they presented a panorama of
+wonders.</p>
+
+<p>Rows of huge colonial mansions with pillared porticoes looked from their
+dizzy terraces across the stream to where soaring mosques and mystic
+domes of worship caught the sun. It was all like the visible dream of a
+master architect gone mad. Gaunt, sinister ruins of medieval castles
+sprawled down the slopes of unassailable summits. Grim brown towers,
+haughtily crenellated, scowled defiance on the unappearing foe. Titanic
+stools of stone dotted barren garden slopes, where surely gods had once
+strolled in that far time when the stars sang and the moon was young.
+Dark red walls of regularly laid stone&mdash;huge as that the Chinese flung
+before the advance of the Northern hordes&mdash;held imaginary empires
+asunder. Poised on a dizzy peak, Jove's eagle stared into the eye of the
+sun, and raised his wings for the flight <a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>deferred these many centuries.
+Kneeling face to face upon a lonesome summit, their hands clasped before
+them, their backs bent as with the burdens of the race, two women prayed
+the old, old woman prayer. The snow-white ruins of a vast cathedral lay
+along the water's edge, and all about it was a hush of worship. And near
+it, arose the pointed pipes of a colossal organ&mdash;with the summer silence
+for music.</p>
+
+<p>With a lazy sail we drifted through this place of awe; and for once I
+had no regrets about that engine. The popping of the exhaust would have
+seemed sacrilegious in this holy quiet.</p>
+
+<p>Seldom do men pass that way. It is out of the path of the tourist. No
+excursion steamers ply those awesome river reaches. Across the sacred
+whiteness of that cathedral's imposing mass, no sign has ever been
+painted telling you the merits of the best five-cent cigar in the world!
+Few besides the hawks and the crows would see it, if it were there.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, for all the quiet in this land of wonder, somehow you cannot
+feel that the place is unpeopled. Surely, you think, invisible knights
+clash in tourney under those frowning towers. Surely a lovelorn maiden
+spins at that castle win<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>dow, weaving her heartache into the magic
+figures of her loom. Stately dames must move behind the shut doors of
+those pillared mansions; devotees mutter Oriental prayers beneath those
+sun-smitten domes. And amid the awful inner silence of that cathedral,
+white-robed priests lift wan faces to their God.</p>
+
+<p>Under the beat of the high sun the light stern wind fell. The slack sail
+drooped like a sick-hearted thing. Idly drifting on the slow glassy
+flood, we seemed only an incidental portion of this dream in which the
+deepest passions of man were bodied forth in eternal fixity. Towers of
+battle, domes of prayer, fanes of worship, and then&mdash;the kneeling women!
+Somehow one couldn't whistle there. Bill and the Kid, little given to
+sentiment, sat quietly and stared.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the afternoon we found ourselves out of this "Region of Weir."
+Great wall rocks soared above us. Consulting our map, we found that we
+were nearing Eagle Rapids, the first of a turbulent series. I had fondly
+anticipated shooting them all under power. So once more I decided to go
+over that engine. We landed at the wooded mouth of a little ravine,
+having made a trifle over twenty miles that day.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a></p>
+
+<p>With those tools of the engine doctor&mdash;an air of mystery and a
+monkey-wrench&mdash;I unscrewed everything that appeared to have a thread on
+it, and pulled out the other things. The odds, I figured, were in my
+favor. A sick engine is useless, and I felt assured of either killing or
+curing. I did something&mdash;I don't know what; but having achieved the
+complete screwing up and driving in of things&mdash;<i>it went</i>!</p>
+
+<p>So on the morning of the fourth day, we were up early, eager for the
+shooting of rapids. We had understood from the conversation of the
+seemingly wise, that Eagle Rapids was the first of a series that made
+the other rapids we had passed through look like mere ripples on the
+surface. In some of those we had gone at a very good clip, and several
+times we had lost our rudder.</p>
+
+<p>I remembered how the steamboats used to be obliged to throw out cables
+and slowly wind themselves up with the power of the "steam nigger." I
+also remembered the words of Father de Smet: "There are many rapids, ten
+of which are very difficult to ascend and very dangerous to go down."</p>
+
+<p>We had intended from the very first to get <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>wrecked in one or all of
+these rapids. For this reason we had distributed forward, aft, and
+amidships, eight five-gallon cans, soldered air-tight. The frail craft
+would, we figured, be punctured. The cans would displace nearly three
+hundred and fifty pounds of water, and the boat and engine, submerged,
+would lose a certain weight. I had made the gruesome calculation with
+fond attention to detail. I decided that she should be wrecked quite
+arithmetically. We should be able, the figures said, to recover the
+engine and patch the boat. We had provided three life-preservers, but
+one had been stolen; so I had fancied what a bully fight one might have
+if he should be thrown out into the mad waters without a life-preserver.</p>
+
+<p>I have never been able to explain it satisfactorily; it is one of the
+paradoxes; but human nature seems to take a weird delight in placing in
+jeopardy that which is dearest. Even a coward with his fingers clenched
+desperately on the ragged edge of hazard, feels an inexplicable thrill
+of glory. Having several times been decently scared, I know.</p>
+
+<p>One likes to take a sly peep behind the curtain of the big play, hoping
+perhaps to get a slight <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>hint as to what machinery hoists the moon, and
+what sort of contrivance flings the thunder and lightning, and many
+other things that are none of his business. Only, to be sure, he intends
+to get away safely with his information. When you think you see your
+finish bowing to receive you, something happens in your head. It's like
+a sultry sheet of rapid fire lapping up for a moment the thunder-shaken
+night&mdash;and discovering a strange land to you. And it's really good for
+you.</p>
+
+<p>Under half speed we cruised through the windless golden morning; and the
+lonesome canyon echoed and re-echoed with the joyful chortle of the
+resurrected engine. We had covered about ten miles, when a strange
+sighing sound grew up about us. It seemed to emanate from the soaring
+walls of rock. It seemed faint, yet it arose above the din of the
+explosions, drowned out the droning of the screw.</p>
+
+<p>Steadily the sound increased. Like the ghost of a great wind it moaned
+and sighed about us. Little by little a new note crept in&mdash;a sibilant,
+metallic note as of a tense sheet of silk drawn rapidly over a thin
+steel edge.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image22" id="image22"></a>
+<a href="images/img22-full.jpg"><img src="images/img22.jpg" width="500" height="311" alt="Wolf Point, the First Town in 500 Miles." title="Wolf Point, the First Town in 500 Miles." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Wolf Point, the First Town in 500 Miles.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image23" id="image23"></a>
+<a href="images/img23-full.jpg"><img src="images/img23.jpg" width="500" height="309" alt="Entrance to the Bad Lands." title="Entrance to the Bad Lands." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Entrance to the Bad Lands.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We knew it to be the mourning voice of the Eagle Rapids; but far as we
+could see, the river <a name="Page_98-f" id="Page_98-f"></a><a name="Page_99-f" id="Page_99-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>was quiet as a lake. We jogged on for a mile,
+with the invisible moaning presence about us. It was somewhat like the
+intangible something you feel about a powerful but sinister personality.
+The golden morning was saturated with it.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, turning a sharp bend about the wall of rock that flanked the
+channel, a wind of noise struck us. It was like the hissing of
+innumerable snakes against a tonal background of muffled continuous
+thunder. A hundred yards before us was Eagle Rapids&mdash;a forbidding patch
+of writhing, whitening water, pricked with the upward thrust of
+toothlike rocks.</p>
+
+<p>The first sight of it turned the inside of me mist-gray. Temporarily,
+wrecks and the arithmetic of them had little charm for me. I seized the
+spark-lever, intending to shut down. Instead, I threw it wide open. With
+the resulting leap of the craft, all the gray went out of me.</p>
+
+<p>I grasped the rudder ropes and aimed at a point where the sinuous
+current sucked through a passage in the rocks like a lean flame through
+a windy flue. Did you ever hear music that made you see purple? It was
+that sort of purple I saw (or did I hear it like music?) when we plunged
+under full speed into the first suck of the rapids.<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a> We seemed a
+conscious arrow hurled through a gray, writhing world, the light of
+which was noise. And then, suddenly, the quiet, golden morning flashed
+back; and we were ripping the placid waters of a lake.</p>
+
+<p>The Kid broke out into boisterous laughter that irritated me strangely:
+"Where the devil do you suppose our life-preservers are?" he bawled.
+"They're clear down under all the cargo!"</p>
+
+<p>A world of wonderful beauty was forging past us. In the golden calm, the
+scintillant sheet of water seemed to be rushing backward, splitting
+itself over the prow, like a fabric woven of gold and silver drawn
+rapidly against a keen stationary blade.</p>
+
+<p>The sheer cliffs had fallen away into pine-clad slopes, and vari-colored
+rocks flung notes of scarlet and gold through the sombre green of the
+pines&mdash;like the riotous treble cries of an organ pricking the sullen
+murmur of the bass. So still were the clean waters that we seemed midway
+between two skies.</p>
+
+<p>We skirted the base of a conical rock that towered three hundred feet
+above us&mdash;a Titan sentinel. It was the famous Sentinel Rock of the old
+steamboat days. I shut the engine down to <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>quarter speed, for somehow
+from the dizzy summit a sad dream fell upon me and bade me linger.</p>
+
+<p>I stared down into the cold crystal waters at the base of the rock.
+Many-colored mosses, sickly green, pale, feverish red, yellow like fear,
+black like despair, purple like the lips of a strangled man, clung
+there. I remembered an old spring I used to haunt when I was just old
+enough to be awed by the fact of life and frightened at the possibility
+of death. Just such mosses grew in the depths of that spring. I used to
+stare into it for hours.</p>
+
+<p>It fascinated me in a terrible way. I thought Death looked like that.
+Even now I am afraid I could not swim long in clear waters with those
+fearful colors under me. I am sure they found Ophelia floating like a
+ghastly lily in such a place.</p>
+
+<p>Filled with a shadow of the old childish dread, I looked up to the
+austere summit of the Sentinel. Scarred and haggard with time it caught
+the sun. I thought of how long it had stood there just so, under the
+intermittent flashing of moon and sun and star, since first its flinty
+peak had pricked through the hot spume of prehistoric seas.</p>
+
+<p>Fantastic reptiles, winged and finned and <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>fanged, had basked upon
+it&mdash;grotesque, tentative vehicles of the Flame of Life! And then these
+flashed out, and the wild sea fell, and the land arose&mdash;hideous and
+naked, a steaming ooze fetid with gasping life. And all the while this
+scarred Sentinel stared unmoved. And then a riot of giant vegetation all
+about it&mdash;divinely extravagant, many-colored as fire. And this too
+flashed out&mdash;like the impossible dream of a god too young. And the Great
+Change came, and the paradox of frost was in the world, stripping life
+down to the lean essentials till only the sane, capable things might
+live. And still the Titan stared as in the beginning. And then, men were
+in the land&mdash;gaunt, terrible, wolf-like men, loving and hating. And La
+Verendrye forged past it; and Lewis and Clark toiled under it through
+these waters of awful quiet. And then the bull boats and the mackinaws
+and the packets. And all these flashed out; and still it stood unmoved.
+And I came&mdash;and I too would flash out, and all men after me and all
+life.</p>
+
+<p>I viewed the colossal watcher with something like terror&mdash;the aspect of
+death about its base and that cynical glimmer of sunlight at its top. I
+flung the throttle open, and we leaped forward <a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>through the river hush.
+I wanted to get away from this thing that had seen so much of life and
+cared so little. It depressed me strangely; it thrust bitter questions
+within the charmed circle of my ego. It gave me an almost morbid desire
+for speed, as though there were some place I should reach before the
+terrible question should be answered against me.</p>
+
+<p>We fled down five or six miles of depressingly quiet waters. Once again
+the wall rocks closed about us. We seemed to be going at a tediously
+slow pace, yet the two thin streams of water rushed hissing from prow to
+stern. A strange mood was upon me. Once when I was a boy and far from
+home, I awoke in the night with a bed of railroad ties under me, and the
+chill black blanket of the darkness about me. I wanted to get up and run
+through that damned night&mdash;anywhere, just so I went fast
+enough&mdash;stopping only when exhaustion should drag me down. And yet I was
+afraid of nothing tangible; hunger and the stranger had sharpened
+whatever blue steel there was in my nature. I was afraid of being still!
+Were you ever a homesick boy, too proud to tell the truth about it?</p>
+
+<p>I felt something of that boy's ache as we shot <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>in among the wall rocks
+again. It was a psychic hunger for something that does not exist. Oh, to
+attain the terrible speed one experiences in a fever-dream, to get
+somewhere before it is too late, before the black curtain drops!</p>
+
+<p>To some this may sound merely like the grating of overwrought nerves.
+But it is more than that. All religions grew out of that most human
+mood. And whenever one is deeply moved, he feels it. For even the most
+matter-of-fact person of us all has now and then a suspicion that this
+life is merely episodic&mdash;that curtain after curtain of darkness is to be
+pierced, world after world of consciousness and light to be passed
+through.</p>
+
+<p>Once more the rocks took on grotesque shapes&mdash;utterly ultra-human in
+their suggestiveness. Those who have marveled at the Hudson's beauty
+should drop down this lonesome stretch.</p>
+
+<p>We shot through the Elbow Rapids at the base of the great
+Hole-in-the-wall Rock. It was deep and safe&mdash;much like an exaggerated
+mill-race. It ran in heavy swells, yet the day was windless.</p>
+
+<p>In the late afternoon we shot the Dead Man's Rapids, a very turbulent
+and rocky stretch of <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>water. We went through at a freight-train speed,
+and began to develop a slight contempt for fast waters. That night we
+camped at the mouth of the Judith River on the site of the now forgotten
+Fort Chardon. We had made only ninety-eight miles in four days. It began
+to appear that we might be obliged to finish on skates!</p>
+
+<p>We were up and off with the first gray of the morning. We knew Dauphin
+Rapids to be about seventeen miles below, and since this particular
+patch of water had by far the greatest reputation of all the rapids, we
+were eager to make its acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>The engine began to show unmistakable signs of getting tired of its job.
+Now and then it barked spitefully, had half a notion to stop, changed
+its mind, ran faster than it should, wheezed and slowed down&mdash;acting in
+an altogether unreasonable way. But it kept the screw humming
+nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately it was going at a mad clip when we sighted the Dauphin.
+There was not that sibilance and thunder that had turned me a bit gray
+inside at first sight of the Eagle. The channel was narrow, and no rocks
+appeared above the surface. But speed <i>was</i> there; and the almost
+<a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>noiseless rolling of the swift flood ahead had a more formidable
+appearance than that of the Eagle. Rocks above the surface are not much
+to be feared when you have power and a good rudder. But we drew about
+twenty-two inches of water, and I thought of the rocks under the
+surface.</p>
+
+<p>I had, however, only a moment to think, for we were already traveling a
+good eighteen miles, and when the main swirl of the rapids seized us, we
+no doubt reached twenty-five. I was grasping the rudder ropes and we
+were all grinning a sort of idiotic satisfaction at the amazing spurt of
+speed, <span class="nowrap">when&mdash;&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>Something was about to happen!</p>
+
+<p>The Kid and I were sitting behind the engine in order to hold her screw
+down to solid water. Bill, decorated with a grin, sat amidships facing
+us. I caught a pink flash in the swirl just under our bow, and then <i>it
+happened</i>!</p>
+
+<p>The boat reared like a steeple-chaser taking a fence! The Kid shot
+forward over the engine and knocked the grin off Bill's face! Clinging
+desperately to the rudder ropes, I saw, for a brief moment, a good
+three-fourths of the frail craft thrust skyward at an angle of about
+forty-five <a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>degrees. Then she stuck her nose in the water and her screw
+came up, howling like seven devils in the air behind me! Instinctively,
+I struck the spark-lever; the howling stopped,&mdash;and we were floating in
+the slow waters below Dauphin Rapids.</p>
+
+<p>All the cargo had forged forward, and the persons of Bill and the Kid
+were considerably tangled. We laughed loud and long. Then we gathered
+ourselves up and wondered if she might be taking water under the cargo.
+It developed that she wasn't. But one of our grub boxes, containing all
+the bacon, was missing. So were the short oars that we used for paddles.
+While we laughed, these had found some convenient hiding-place.</p>
+
+<p>We had struck a smooth bowlder and leaped over it. A boat with the
+ordinary launch construction would have opened at every seam. The light
+springy tough construction of the <i>Atom</i> had saved her. Whereat I
+thought of the Information Bureau and was well pleased.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether we looked upon the incident as a purple spot. But we were
+many miles from available bacon, and when, upon trial, the engine
+refused to make a revolution, we began to get exceedingly hungry for
+meat.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a></p>
+
+<p>Having a dead engine and no paddles, we drifted. We drifted very slowly.
+The Kid asked if he might not go ashore and drive a stake in the bank.
+For what purpose? Why, to ascertain whether we were going up or down
+stream! While we drifted in the now blistering sun, we talked about
+<i>meat</i>. With a devilish persistence we quite exhausted the subject. We
+discussed the best methods for making a beefsteak delicious. It made us
+very hungry for meat. The Kid announced that he could feel his backbone
+sawing at the front of his shirt. But perhaps that was only the
+hyperbole of youth. Bill confessed that he had once grumbled at his good
+wife for serving the steak too rare. He now stated that at the first
+telegraph station he would wire for forgiveness. I advised him to wire
+for money instead and buy meat with it. Personally I felt a sort of
+wistful tenderness for packing-houses.</p>
+
+<p>That day passed somehow, and the next morning we were still hungry for
+meat. We spent most of the morning talking about it. In the blistering
+windless afternoon, we drifted lazily. Now and then we took turns
+cranking the engine.</p>
+
+<p>We were going stern foremost and I was <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>cranking. We rounded a bend
+where the wall rocks sloped back, leaving a narrow arid sagebrush strip
+along both sides of the stream. I had straightened up to get the kink
+out of my back and mop the sweat out of my eyes, when I saw something
+that made my stomach turn a double somersault.</p>
+
+<p>A good eight hundred yards down stream at the point of a gravel-bar,
+something that looked like and yet unlike a small cluster of drifting,
+leafless brush moved slowly into the water. Now it appeared quite
+distinct, and now it seemed that a film of oil all but blotted it out. I
+blinked my eyes and peered hard through the baffling yellow glare. Then
+I reached for the rifle and climbed over the <a name="gunwhale" id="gunwhale"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="gunwale">gunwhale</ins>. I smelled raw
+meat.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately, we were drifting across a bar, and the slow water came only
+to my shoulders. The thing eight hundred yards away was forging across
+stream by this time&mdash;heading for the mouth of a coulee. I saw plainly
+now that the brush grew out of a head. It was a buck with antlers.</p>
+
+<p>Just below the coulee's mouth, the wall rocks began again. The buck
+would be obliged to land above the wall rocks, and the drifting boat
+<a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>would keep him going. I reached shore and headed for that coulee. The
+sagebrush concealed me. At the critical moment, I intended to show
+myself and start him up the steep slope. Thus he would be forced to
+approach me while fleeing me. When I felt that enough time had passed, I
+stood up. The buck, shaking himself like a dog, stood against the yellow
+sandstone at the mouth of the gulch. He saw me, looked back at the
+drifting boat, and appeared to be undecided.</p>
+
+<p>I wondered what the range might be. Back home in the plowed field where
+I frequently plug tin cans at various long ranges, I would have called
+it six hundred yards&mdash;at first. Then suddenly it seemed three or four
+hundred. Like a thing in a dream the buck seemed to waver back and forth
+in the oily sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>"Call it four hundred and fifty," I said to myself, and let drive. A
+spurt of yellow stone-dust leaped from the cliff a foot or so above the
+deer's back. Only four hundred? But the deer had made up his mind. He
+had urgent business on the other side of that slope&mdash;he appeared to be
+overdue.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image24" id="image24"></a>
+<a href="images/img24-full.jpg"><img src="images/img24.jpg" width="500" height="300" alt="Fresh Meat." title="Fresh Meat." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Fresh Meat.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image25" id="image25"></a>
+<a href="images/img25-full.jpg"><img src="images/img25.jpg" width="500" height="308" alt="Supper!" title="Supper!" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Supper!</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I pumped up another shell and drew fine at <a name="Page_110-f" id="Page_110-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_111-f" id="Page_111-f"></a><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>four hundred. That time
+his rump quivered for a second as though a great weight had been dropped
+on it. But he went on with increased speed. Once more I let him have it.
+That time he lost an antler. He had now reached the summit, two hundred
+feet up at the least.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated&mdash;seemed to be shivering. I have hunted with a full stomach
+and brought down game. But there's a difference when you are empty. In
+that moment before you kill, you became the sort of fellow your mother
+wouldn't like. Perhaps the average man would feel a little ashamed to
+tell the truth about that savage moment. I got down on my knee and put a
+final soft-nosed ball where it would do the most good. The buck reared,
+stiffened, and came down, tumbling over and over.</p>
+
+<p>That night we pitched camp under a lone scrubby tree at the mouth of an
+arid gulch that led back into the utterly God-forsaken Bad Lands. It was
+the wilderness indeed. Coyotes howled far away in the night, and diving
+beaver boomed out in the black stream.</p>
+
+<p>We built half a dozen fires and swung above them the choice portions of
+our kill. And how we ate&mdash;with what glorious appetites!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a></p>
+
+<p>It is good to sit with a glad-hearted company flinging words of joyful
+banter across very tall steins. It is good to draw up to a country table
+at Christmas time with turkey and pumpkin-pies and old-fashioned
+puddings before you, and the ones you love about you. I have been deeply
+happy with apples and cider before an open fireplace. I have been
+present when the brilliant sword-play of wit flashed across a banquet
+table&mdash;and it thrilled me. <span class="nowrap"><i>But</i>&mdash;&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>There is no feast like the feast in the open&mdash;the feast in the flaring
+light of a night fire&mdash;the feast of your own kill, with the tang of the
+wild and the tang of the smoke in it!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a></p>
+
+<h2 class="sectionhead">CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3 class="chapterhead">GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">I</span>T all came back there by the smoldering fires&mdash;the wonder and the
+beauty and the awe of being alive. We had eaten hugely&mdash;a giant feast.
+There had been no formalities about that meal. Lying on our blankets
+under the smoke-drift, we had cut with our jack-knives the tender
+morsels from a haunch as it roasted. When the haunch was at last cooked
+to the bone, only the bone was left.</p>
+
+<p>Heavy with the feast, I lay on my back watching the gray smoke brush my
+stars that seemed so near. <i>My stars!</i> Soft and gentle and mystical!
+Like a dark-browed Yotun woman wooing the latent giant in me, the night
+pressed down. I closed my eyes, and through me ran the sensuous surface
+fires of her dream-wrought limbs. Upon my face the weird magnetic lure
+of ever-nearing, never-kissing lips made soundless music. Like a sister,
+like a mother she caressed me, lazy <a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>with the huge feast; and yet, a
+drowsy, half-voluptuous joy shimmered and rippled in my veins.</p>
+
+<p>Drowsing and dreaming under the drifting smoke-wrack, I felt the sense
+of time and self drop away from me. No now, no to-morrow, no yesterday,
+no I! Only eternity, one vast whole&mdash;sun-shot, star-sprent, love-filled,
+changeless. And in it all, one spot of consciousness more acute than
+other spots; and that was the something that had eaten hugely, and that
+now felt the inward-flung glory of it all; the swooning, half-voluptuous
+sense of awe and wonder, the rippling, shimmering, universal joy.</p>
+
+<p>And then suddenly and without shock&mdash;like the shifting of the wood
+smoke&mdash;the mood veered, and there was nothing but I. Space and eternity
+were I&mdash;vast projections of myself, tingling with my consciousness to
+the remotest fringe of the outward swinging atom-drift; through
+immeasurable night, pierced capriciously with shafts of paradoxic day;
+through and beyond the awful circle of yearless duration, my ego lived
+and knew itself and thrilled with the glory of being. The slowly
+revolving Milky Way was only a glory within me; the great woman-star
+jeweling the <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>summit of a cliff, was only an ecstasy within me; the
+murmuring of the river out in the dark was only the singing of my heart;
+and the deep, deep blue of the heavens was only the splendid color of my
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>Bill snored. Among the glowing fires moved the black bulk of the Kid,
+turning the hunks of venison. And then the universe and I, curiously
+mixed, swooned into nothing at all, and I was blinking at a golden glow,
+and from the river came a shouting.</p>
+
+<p>It was broad day. We leaped up, and rubbing the sleep from our eyes, saw
+a light skiff drifting toward us. It contained two men&mdash;Frank and
+Charley. We had met them at Benton, and during an acquaintance of three
+weeks we had learned of their remarkable ability as cooks. Frank was a
+little Canadian Frenchman, and Charley was English. Both, in the
+parlance of the road, were "floaters"; that is to say, no locality ever
+knew them long; the earth was their floor, the sky their ceiling&mdash;and
+their god was Whim. Naturally our trip had appealed to them, and one
+month in Benton had aggravated that hopelessly incurable
+disease&mdash;<i>Wanderlust</i>.</p>
+
+<p>So we had agreed that somewhere down river <a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>we would camp for a week and
+wait for them. They would do the cooking, and we would take them in tow.
+Two days after we dropped out of Benton, they had abruptly "jumped" an
+unfinished job and put off after us in a skiff, rowing all day and most
+of the night in order to overtake us.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly they had arrived at the moment most psychologically favorable
+for the beginning of an odd sort of tyranny that followed. Cooking is a
+weird mystery to me. As for Bill and the Kid, courtesy forbids detailed
+comment. The Kid had been uniformly successful in disguising the most
+familiar articles of diet; and Bill was perhaps least unsuccessful in
+the making of flapjacks. According to his na&iuml;ve statement, he had
+discovered the trick of mixing the batter while manufacturing
+photographer's mounting paste. His statement was never questioned. My
+only criticism on his flapjacks was simply that he left too much to the
+imagination. For these and kindred reasons, we gladly hailed the
+newcomers.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes after the skiff touched shore, the camp consisted of two
+cooks and three scullions. The Kid was a hewer and packer of wood, I was
+<a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>a peeler and slicer of things, and Bill, sweetly oblivious of his
+bewhiskered dignity, danced about in the humblest of moods, handing this
+and that to the grub-lords.</p>
+
+<p>"You outfitted like greenhorns!" announced the usurpers. "What you want
+is raw material. Run down to the boat, please, and bring me this! Oh,
+yes, and bring me that! And you'll find the other in the bottom of the
+skiff's forward locker! Put a little more wood on the fire, Kid; and
+say, Bill, hand me that, won't you? Who's going to get a pail of water?"</p>
+
+<p>All three of us were going to get a pail of water, of course! It was the
+one thing in the world we wanted to do very much&mdash;get a pail of water!</p>
+
+<p>But the raw materials&mdash;how they played on them! I regarded their
+performance as a species of duet; and the raw materials, ranged in the
+sand about the fire, were the keys. Frank touched this, Charley touched
+that, and over the fire the music grew&mdash;perfectly stomach-ravishing!</p>
+
+<p>We had bought with much care all, or nearly all the ordinary
+cooking-utensils. These the usurpers scorned. Three or four gasoline
+cans, transformed by a jack-knife into skillets, ovens, <a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>platters, etc.,
+sufficed for these masters of their craft. The downright Greek
+simplicity of their methods won me completely.</p>
+
+<p>"This is indeed Art," thought I; "first, the elimination of the
+non-essential, and then the virile, unerring directness, the seemingly
+easy accomplishment resulting from effort long forgotten; and, above
+all, the final, convincing delivery of the goods."</p>
+
+<p>Out of the chaos of the raw material, beneath the touch of Charley's
+wise hands, emerged a wondrous cosmos of biscuits, light as the heart of
+a boy. And Frank, singing a French ditty, created wheat cakes. His
+method struck me as poetic. He scorned the ordinary uninspired cook's
+manner of turning the half-baked cake. One side being done, he waited
+until the ditty reached a certain lilting upward leap in the refrain,
+when, with a dexterous movement of the frying-pan, he tossed the cake
+into the air, making it execute a joyful somersault, and catching it
+with a sizzling <i>splat</i> in the pan, just as the lilting measure ceased
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Why, I could taste that song in the pancakes!</p>
+
+<p>I wonder why domestic economy has so persistently overlooked the value
+of song as an <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>adjunct to cookery. <i>G&acirc;teaux &agrave; la chansonnette!</i> Who
+wouldn't eat them for breakfast?</p>
+
+<p>At six in the evening we put off, Charley, the Kid and I manning the
+power boat, Bill and Frank the skiff, which was towed by a thirty-foot
+line. I had, during the day, transformed my unquestioned slavery into a
+distinct advantage, having carefully impressed upon the Englishman the
+honor I would do him by allowing him to become chief engineer of the
+<i>Atom</i>. I carefully avoided the subject of cranking. I was <a name="of" id="of"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="tired of cranking">tired
+cranking</ins>. I felt that I had exhausted the possibilities of enjoyment in
+that particular form of physical exercise. It had developed during the
+day that Charley had once run a gasoline engine. I was careful to
+emphasize my ridiculous lack of mechanical ability. Charley took the
+bait beautifully.</p>
+
+<p>But just now the engine ran merrily. Above its barking I sang the
+praises of the Englishman, with a comfortable feeling that, at least in
+this, the tail would wag the dog.</p>
+
+<p>Through the clear quiet waters, between soaring canyon walls, we raced
+eastward into the creeping twilight. Here and there the banks widened
+out into valleys of wondrous beauty, flanked by jagged miniature
+mountains transfigured in the <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>slant evening light. It seemed the "f&aelig;rie
+land forlorn" of which Keats dreamed, where year after year come only
+the winds and the rains and the snow and the sunlight and the star-sheen
+and the moon-glow.</p>
+
+<p>In the deepening evening our widening V-shaped wake glowed with
+opalescent witch-fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered wild and
+lost the channel. We all got out and, wading in different directions,
+went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake
+three or four hundred yards wide and eight inches deep. Slipping poles
+under the power boat, we carried it several hundred yards to a point
+where the stream deepened. It was now quite dark, and the engine quit
+work for the day. The skiff towed us another mile or so to a camping
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Having moored the boats, we lined up on the shore and had a song. It was
+a quintet, consisting of a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Irishman, a
+Cornishman, and a German. A very strong quintet it was; that is to say,
+strong on volume. As to quality&mdash;we weren't thrusting ourselves upon an
+audience. The river and the sky didn't seem to mind, and the cliffs sang
+after us, lagging a beat or two.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a></p>
+
+<p>We wished to sing ever so beautifully; and, after all, it would be much
+better to have the whole world wishing to sing melodiously, than to have
+just a few masters here and there who really can! Did you ever hear a
+barefooted, freckle-faced plowboy singing powerfully and quite out of
+tune, the stubble fields about him still glistening with the morning
+dew, and the meadow larks joining in from the fence-posts? I have: and
+soaring above the faulty execution, I heard the lark-heart of the
+never-aging world wooing the far-off eternal dawn. True song is merely a
+hopeful condition of the soul. And so I am sure we sang very wonderfully
+that night.</p>
+
+<p>And how the flapjacks disappeared as a result of that singing! We ate
+until Charley refused to bake any more; then we rolled up in our
+blankets by the fire and "swapped lies," dropping off one at a time into
+sleep until the last speaker finished his story with only the drowsy
+stars for an audience. At least I suppose it was so; I was not the last
+speaker.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! too seldom were we to hail the evening star with song. So far we
+had made in a week little more than one hundred and fifty miles.<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a> With
+the exception of a few hours of head winds, that week had been a week of
+dream. We now awoke fully to the fact that in low water season the
+Missouri is not swift. In our early plans we had fallen in with the
+popular fallacy that one need only cut loose and let the current do the
+rest; whereas, in low water, one would probably never reach the end of
+his journey by that method. In addition to this, our gasoline was
+running low. We had trusted to irrigation plants for replenishing our
+supply from time to time. But the great flood of the spring had swept
+the valley clean. Where the year before there were prosperous ranch
+establishments with gasoline pumping plants, there was only desolation
+now. It was as though we traveled in the path of a devastating army.
+Perhaps the summer of 1908 was the most unfavorable season for such a
+trip in the last fifty years. Steamboating on the upper river is only a
+memory. There are now no wood-yards as formerly. We found ourselves with
+no certainty of procuring grub and oil; our engine became more and more
+untrustworthy; our paddles had been lost. What winds we had generally
+blew against us, and the character of the banks was changing. The cliffs
+gave way to broad <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>alluvial valleys, over which, at times, the gales
+swept with terrific force.</p>
+
+<p>Our map told us of a number of river "towns." We had already been
+partially disillusioned as to the character of those "towns." They were
+pretty much in a class with Goodale, except that they lacked the switch
+and the box-car and the sign. Just now Rocky Point lay ahead of us.
+Rocky Point meant a new supply of food and oil. Stimulated by this
+thought, Charley cranked heroically under the blistering sun and managed
+to arouse the engine now and then into spasms of speed. He had not yet
+begun to swear. Fearfully I awaited the first evidence of the new mood,
+which I knew must come.</p>
+
+<p>At least once a day we put the machinery on the operating table. Each
+time we succeeded only in developing new symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>At a point about fifty miles from the "town" so deeply longed for, a
+lone cow-punch appeared on the bank.</p>
+
+<p>"How far to Rocky Point?" I cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, something less than two hundred miles!" drawled the horseman. (How
+carelessly they juggle with miles in that country!)</p>
+
+<p>"It's just a little place, isn't it?" I continued.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Little place!" answered the cow-puncher; "hell, no!"</p>
+
+<p>"What!" I cried in glee; "Is it really a town of importance?" I had
+visions of a budding metropolis, full of gasoline and grub.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it ain't a little place," explained the rider; "<i>w'y, they've
+got nigh onto ten thousand cattle down there</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes after that, Charley, after a desperate but unsuccessful fit
+of cranking, straightened the kink out of his back, mopped the
+perspiration from his face&mdash;<i>and swore</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Almost immediately I felt, or at least thought I felt, a distinct change
+in the temper of the crew&mdash;for the worse. We used the better part of two
+days covering the last fifty miles into Rocky Point, only to find that
+the place consisted of a log ranch-house, two women, an old man, and
+"Texas." The cattle and the other men were scattered over a hundred
+miles or so of range. The women either would not or could not supply us
+with grub, explaining that the nearest railroad town was ninety miles
+away. Gasoline was out of the question. We might be able to buy some at
+the mouth of Milk River, <i>two hundred miles down stream</i>!</p>
+<p><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Texas," who made me think of Gargantua, and who had a chest like a
+bison bull's, and a drawling fog-horn voice, ran a saloon in an odd
+little shanty boat brought down by the flood. He solved the problem for
+us.</p>
+
+<p>"You cain't get no gasoline short o' Milk River," he bellowed
+drawlingly; "and you sure got to paddle, so you better buy whisky!"</p>
+
+<p>While we were deciding to accept the offered advice, "Texas" whittled a
+stick and got off a few jokes of Rabelaisian directness. We laughed
+heartily, and as a mark of his appreciation, he gave us five quarts for
+a gallon. Which proved, in spite of his appearance, that "Texas" was
+very human.</p>
+
+<p>We gave the engine a final trial. It ran by spasms&mdash;backwards. Then,
+finally, it refused to run at all. We tried to make ourselves believe
+that the gasoline was too low in the tank, that the pressure of the oil
+had something to do with it. At first we really knew better. But days of
+drudgery at the paddles transformed the makeshift hope into something
+almost like a certainty.</p>
+
+<p>There was no lumber at Rocky Point. We rummaged through a pile of
+driftwood and found some half-rotted two-by-sixes. These we hacked <a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>into
+paddles. They weighed, when thoroughly soaked, at least fifteen pounds
+apiece.</p>
+
+<p>Sending Bill and Frank on ahead with the skiff and the small store of
+provisions, Charley and I, the Kid at the steering rope, set out pushing
+the power canoe with the paddles. The skiff was very soon out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Atom</i>, very fast under power, was, with paddles, the slowest boat
+imaginable. There was no lift to her prow, no exhilarating leap as with
+the typical light canoe driven by regulation paddles. And she was as
+unwieldy as a log. A light wind blew up-stream, and the current was very
+slow. After dark we caught up with Bill and Frank, who had supper
+waiting. I had been tasting venison all day; but there was none for
+supper. In spite of a night's smoking, all of it had spoiled. This left
+us without meat. Our provisions now consisted mostly of flour. We had a
+few potatoes and some toasted wind called "breakfast food." During six
+or seven hours of hard work at the paddles, we had covered no more than
+fifteen miles. These facts put together gave no promising result. In
+addition to this, it was impossible to stir up a song. Even the liquor
+wouldn't bring it out. And the flapjacks <a name="Page_126-f" id="Page_126-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_127-f" id="Page_127-f"></a><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>were not served <i>&agrave; la
+chansonnette</i> that night. I tried to explain why the trip was only
+beginning to get interesting; but my words fell flat. And when the
+irrepressible Kid essayed a joke, I alone laughed at it, though rather
+out of gratitude than mirth.</p>
+
+<table class="images" summary="Images">
+<tr><td valign="bottom">
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image26" id="image26"></a>
+<a href="images/img26-full.jpg"><img src="images/img26.jpg" width="300" height="211" alt="&quot;Walking&quot; Boats over Shallows." title="&quot;Walking&quot; Boats over Shallows." /></a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;Walking&quot; Boats over Shallows.</span>
+</div></td>
+
+<td valign="bottom"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image27" id="image27"></a>
+<a href="images/img27-full.jpg"><img src="images/img27.jpg" width="300" height="185" alt="Typical Upper Missouri River Reach." title="Typical Upper Missouri River Reach." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Typical Upper Missouri River Reach.</span>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image28" id="image28"></a>
+<a href="images/img28-full.jpg"><img src="images/img28.jpg" width="500" height="293" alt="The Mouth of the James." title="The Mouth of the James." /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Mouth of the James.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There are many men who live and die with the undisputed reputation of
+being good fellows&mdash;your friends and mine&mdash;who, if put to the test,
+would fail miserably. Fortunate is that man to whom it is not given to
+test all of his friends. This is not cynicism; it is only human nature;
+and I love human nature, being myself possessed of so much of it. I
+admire it when it stands firmly upon its legs, and I love it when it
+wabbles. But when it gains power with increasing odds, grows big with
+obstacles, I worship it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To thrill with the joy of girded men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To go on forever and fail, and go on again&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus it should have been. But that night, staring into the face of three
+of the four, I saw the yellow streak. The Kid was not one of the three.
+The first railroad station would hold out no temptation to him. He was a
+kid, but manhood has <a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>little to do with age. It must exist from the
+first like a tang of iron in the blood. Age does not really create
+anything&mdash;it only develops. Your wonderful and beautiful things often
+come as paradoxes. I looked for a man and found him in a boy.</p>
+
+<p>Bill talked about home and stared into the twilight. The "floaters" were
+irritable, quarreling with the fire, the grub, the cooking-utensils, and
+verbally sending the engine to the devil.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing about eighteen hundred miles of paddle work ahead, knowing that
+at that season of the year the prevailing winds would be head winds, and
+having very little faith in the engine under any conditions, I decided
+to travel day and night, for the water was falling steadily and already
+the channels were at times hard to find. Charley and Frank grumbled. I
+told them we would split the grub fairly, a fifth to a man, and that
+they might travel as slowly as they liked, the skiff being their
+property. They stayed with us.</p>
+
+<p>We lashed the boats together and put off into the slow current. A
+haggard, eerie fragment of moon slinked westward. Stars glinted in the
+flawless chilly blue. The surface of the river was like polished
+ebony&mdash;a dream-path wrought <a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>of gloom and gleam. The banks were lines of
+dusk, except where some lone cottonwood loomed skyward like a giant
+ghost clothed with a mantle that glistered and darkled in the chill
+star-sheen.</p>
+
+<p>There was the feel of moving in eternity about it all. The very
+limitation of the dusk gave the feeling of immensity. There was no sense
+of motion, yet we moved. The sky seemed as much below as above. We
+seemed suspended in a hollow globe. Now and then the boom of a diving
+beaver's tail accented the clinging quiet; and by fits the drowsy
+muttering of waterfowl awoke in the adjacent swamps, and droned back
+into the universal hush.</p>
+
+<p>Frank and I stood watch, the three others rolling up in their blankets
+among the luggage. It occurred to me for the first time that we had a
+phonograph under the cargo. I went down after it. At random I chose a
+record and set the machine going. It was a Chopin <i>Nocturne</i> played on a
+'cello&mdash;a vocal yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, a brushing
+of sick wings across the gates of heavens never to be entered; and then
+the finale&mdash;an insistent, feverish repetition of the human ache, ceasing
+as with utter exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a></p>
+
+<p>I looked about me drinking in the night. How little this music really
+expressed it! It seemed too humanly near-sighted, too egotistic, too
+petty to sound out under those far-seeing stars, in that divine quiet.</p>
+
+<p>I slipped on another record. This time it was a beautiful little song,
+full of the sweet melancholy of love. I shut it down. The thing wouldn't
+do. In the evening&mdash;yes. But <i>now</i>! Truly there is something womanly
+about Night, something loverlike in a vast impersonal way; but too
+big&mdash;she is too terribly big to woo with human sentiment. Only a
+windlike chant would do&mdash;something with an undertone of human despair,
+outsoared by brave, savage flights of invincible soul-hope&mdash;great virile
+singing man-cries, winged as the starlight, weird as space&mdash;Whitman
+sublimated, David's soul poured out in symphony.</p>
+
+<p>I started another going. This time I did not stop it, for the Night was
+singing&mdash;through its nose perhaps, but still it was singing&mdash;out of that
+machine. It was Wagner's <i>Evening Star</i> played by an orchestra. It
+filled the night, swept the glittering reaches, groped about in the
+glooms; and then, leaving the human theme behind, soul-<a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>like the upward
+yearning violins took flight, dissolving at last into starlight and
+immensity. Ages swept by me like a dream-wind. When I got back, the
+machine, all but run down, was scratching hideously.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly we swung about in the scarcely perceptible current. Down among
+the luggage the three snored discordantly. Frank's cigarette glowed
+intermittently against the dim horizon, like a bonfire far off.
+Somewhere out in the gloom coyotes chattered and yelped, and from far
+across the dusky valley others answered&mdash;a doleful <a name="tenson" id="tenson"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="tension">tenson</ins>.</p>
+
+<p>I dozed. Frank awoke us all with a shout. We leaped up and stared
+blinkingly into the north. That whole region of the sky was aflame from
+zenith to horizon with spectral fires. It was the aurora. Not the pale,
+ragged glow, sputtering like the ghost of a huge lamp-flame, which is
+familiar to every one, but a billowing of color, rainbows gone mad! In
+the northeast the long rolling columns formed&mdash;many-colored clouds of
+spectral light whipped up as by a whirlwind&mdash;flung from eastward to
+westward, devouring Polaris and the Wain&mdash;rapid sequent towers of
+smokeless fire!</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a></p>
+
+<p>It dazzled and whirled and mounted and fell like the illumined filmy
+skirts of some invisible Titanic serpentine dancer, madly pirouetting
+across a carpet of stars. Then suddenly it all fell into a dull
+ember-glow and flashed out. The ragged moon dropped out of the
+southwestern sky. In the chill of the night, gray, dense fog wraiths
+crawled upon the hidden face of the waters.</p>
+
+<p>Again I dozed and awakened with the sense of having stopped suddenly. A
+light wind had arisen and we were fast on a bar. Frank and I took our
+blankets out on the sand, rolled up and went to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The red of dawn awoke us as though some one had shouted. Frank and I sat
+up and stared about. A white-tail deer was drinking at the river's edge
+three hundred yards away. So far as we were concerned, it was a
+dream-deer. We blinked complacently at it until it disappeared in the
+brush. Then we thought of the rifle.</p>
+
+<p>We were all stiff and chilled. The boats were motionless in shallow
+water. We all got out in the stream that felt icy to us, and waded the
+crafts into the channel. Incidentally we remembered Texas and his
+wisdom.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a></p>
+
+<p>The time was early August; but nevertheless there was a tang of frost in
+the air and the river seemed to flow not water but a thick frore fog. I
+smelled persimmons distinctly&mdash;it was that cold; brown spicy persimmons
+smashed on crisp autumn leaves down in old Missouri! The smell haunted
+me all morning like a bitter-sweet regret.</p>
+
+<p>We breakfasted on flapjacks and, separating the boats, put off. The
+skiff left us easily and disappeared. A head wind arose with the sun and
+increased steadily. By eleven o'clock it blew so strongly that we could
+make no headway with the rude paddles, and the waves, rolling at least
+four feet from trough to crest, made it impossible to hold the boat in
+course. We quit paddling, and got out in the water with the line. Two
+pulled and one pushed. All day we waded, sometimes up to our necks;
+sometimes we swam a bit, and sometimes we clung to the boat and kicked
+it on to the next shallows. Our progress was ridiculously slow, but we
+kept moving. When we stopped for a few minutes to smoke under the lee of
+a bank, our legs cramped.</p>
+
+<p>To lay up one day would be only to establish a precedent for day after
+day of inactivity. The prevailing winds would be head winds. We clung
+<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>to the shoddy hope held out by that magic name&mdash;Milk River. We knew too
+well that Milk River was only a snare and a delusion; but one must fight
+toward something&mdash;it makes little difference what you call that
+something. A goal, in itself, is an empty thing; all the virtue lies in
+the moving toward the goal.</p>
+
+<p>Often we sank deep in the mud; often at the bends we could scarcely
+forge against the blast that held us leaning to the pull. Noon came and
+still we had not overtaken the skiff. Dark came, and we had not yet
+sighted it. But with the sun, the wind fell, and we paddled on, lank and
+chilled. About ten o'clock we sighted the campfire.</p>
+
+<p>We ate flapjacks once more&mdash;delicious, butterless flapjacks!&mdash;and then
+once more we put off into the chill night. We made twelve miles that
+day, and every foot had been a fight. I wanted to raise it to
+twenty-five before sunrise. No one grumbled this time; but in the light
+of the campfire the faces looked cheerless&mdash;except the Kid's face.</p>
+
+<p>We huddled up in our blankets and, naturally, all of us went to sleep. A
+great shock brought us to our feet. The moon had set and the sky <a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>was
+overcast. Thick night clung around us. We saw nothing, but by the
+rocking of the boats and the roaring of the river, we knew we were
+shooting rapids.</p>
+
+<p>Still dazed with sleep, I had a curious sense of being whirled at a
+terrific speed into some subterranean suck of waters. There was nothing
+to do but wait. We struck rocks and went rolling, shipping buckets of
+water at every dip. Then there was a long sickening swoop through utter
+blackness. It ended abruptly with a thud that knocked us down.</p>
+
+<p>We found that we were no longer moving. We got out, hanging to the
+gunwales. The boats were lodged on a reef of rock, and we were obliged
+to "walk" them for some distance, when suddenly the water deepened, and
+we all went up to our necks. And the night seemed bitterly cold. I never
+shivered more in January.</p>
+
+<p>It was yet too dark to find a camping place; so we drifted on until the
+east paled. Then we built a great log fire and baked ourselves until
+sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>Day after day my log-book begins with the words, "Heavy head winds," and
+ends with "Drifted most of the night." We covered about <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>twenty-five
+miles every twenty-four hours. Every day the cooks grumbled more; and
+Bill had a way of staring wistfully into the distance and talking about
+home, that produced in me an odd mixture of anger and pity.</p>
+
+<p>We had lost our map: we had no calendar. Time and distance, curiously
+confused, were merely a weariness in the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a></p>
+
+<h2 class="sectionhead">CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3 class="chapterhead">ON TO THE YELLOWSTONE</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">A</span>T last one evening (shall I confess it?) we had blue-crane soup for
+supper!</p>
+
+<p>Now a flight of gray-blue cranes across a pearl-gray sky, shot with
+threads of evening scarlet, makes a masterly picture: indeed, an effect
+worthy of reproduction in Art. You see a Japanese screen done in heroic
+size; and it is a sight to make you long exquisitely for things that are
+not&mdash;like a poet. <span class="nowrap">But&mdash;&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>Let us have no illusions about this matter! Crane soup is not
+satisfactory. It looks gray-blue and tastes gray-blue, and gives to your
+psychic inwardness a dull, gray-blue, melancholy tone. And when you
+nibble at the boiled gray-blue meat of an adult crane, you catch
+yourself wondering just what sort of <i>ragout</i> could be made out of
+boots; you have a morbid longing to know just how bad such a <i>ragout</i>
+would really be!</p>
+
+<p>Hereafter on whatever trails I may follow, blue cranes shall be used
+chiefly for Japanese <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>screen effects. Little by little (the latent
+philosopher in me emerges to remark) by experience we place not only
+ourselves but all things in their proper places in the universe. This
+process of fitting things properly in one's cosmos seems to be one of
+the chief aims of conscious life. Therefore I score one for
+myself&mdash;having placed blue cranes permanently in that cosmic nook given
+over to Japanese screen effects!</p>
+
+<p>Next morning we pushed on. The taste of that crane soup clung to me all
+day like the memory of an old sorrow dulled by time.</p>
+
+<p>Deer tracks were plentiful, but it has long been conceded that the
+tracks are by far the least edible things pertaining to an animal.
+Cranes seemed to have multiplied rapidly. Impudently tame, they lined
+the gravel-bars, and regarded us curiously as we fought our way past
+them. Now and then a flock of wild ducks alighted several hundred yards
+from us. We had only a rifle. To shoot a moving duck out of a moving
+boat with a rifle is a feat attended with some difficulties. Once we
+wounded a wild goose, but it got away; which offended our sense of
+poetic justice. After crane soup one would seem to deserve roast goose.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a></p>
+
+<p>I scanned the dreary monotonous valleys stretching away from the river.
+We had for several days been living on scenery, tobacco, and flapjacks.
+The scenery had flattened out, tobacco was running low; but the
+flapjacks bid fair to go on forever. I sought in my head for the exact
+adjective, the particular epithet with the inevitable feel about it,
+with which to describe that monotonous melancholy stretch. Every time I
+tried, I came back to the word "<i>baconless</i>." The word took on exquisite
+overtones of gray meaning, and I worked up those overtones until I had a
+perfectly wrought melancholy poem of one word&mdash;"<i>Baconless</i>." For, after
+all, a poem never existed upon paper, but lives subtly in the
+consciousness of the poet, and in the minds of those who understand the
+poet through the suggestiveness of his written symbols, and their own
+remembered experiences.</p>
+
+<p>But during the next morning, poetic justice worked. A rider mounted on a
+piebald pony appeared on the bank and shouted for us to pull in.</p>
+
+<p>I suddenly realized why a dog wags his tail at a stranger. But the
+feeling I had was bigger than that. This mounted man became at once <a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>for
+me the incarnation of the meaning of bacon!</p>
+
+<p>When two parties meet and each wants what the other can give, it doesn't
+take long to get acquainted. The rider was a youth of about seventeen.
+One glance at his face told you the story of his rearing. He was
+unmistakably city-bred, and his hands showed that his life had begun too
+easy for his own good.</p>
+
+<p>"From the East?" he questioned joyously. "Say, you know little old New
+York, don't you? When were you there last?"</p>
+
+<p>The lad was hungry, but not for bacon. Alas! Our hunger was the
+healthier one! We talked of New York. "Mother's in Paris," he
+volunteered, "and Dad's in New York meeting her bills. But the Old Man's
+got a grouch at me, and so he sent me 'way out here in this God-forsaken
+country! Say, what did they make this country for? Got any tailor-made
+cigarettes about you? How did Broadway look when you were there last?
+Lights all there yet at night? I've been here two years&mdash;it seems like
+two hundred! Talk about Robinson Crusoe! Say, I've got him distanced!"</p>
+
+<p>I helped him build up a momentary Broadway <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>there in the wilderness&mdash;the
+lights, the din, the hurrying, jostling theater crowds, the caf&eacute;s,
+faces, faces&mdash;anguished faces, eager faces, weary faces, painted faces,
+squalor, brilliance. For me the memory of it only made me feel the pity
+of it all. But the lad's eyes beamed. He was homesick for Broadway.</p>
+
+<p>I changed the subject from prose to poetry; that is, from Broadway to
+bacon.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait here till I come back," said the lad, mounting. He spurred up a
+gulch and disappeared. In an hour he reappeared with a half strip of the
+precious stuff. "Take money for it? Not on your life!" he insisted.
+"You've been down there, and that goes for a meal ticket with me!"</p>
+
+<p>Fried bacon! And flapjacks sopped in the grease of it! After all, a
+banquet is very much a state of mind.</p>
+
+<p>When we pulled away, the ostracized New Yorker bade us farewell with a
+snatch of a song once more or less popular: "Give my regards to
+Broadway!"</p>
+
+<p>We pushed on vigorously now. The head wind came up. <i>The head wind</i>! It
+seemed one of the eternal things. We paddled and cordelled valiantly,
+discussing Milk River the while. We <a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>had grown very credulous on that
+subject. Somehow or other an unlimited supply of gasoline was all the
+engine needed for the complete restoration of its health; and Milk River
+stood for gasoline in liberal quantities. Hope is generally represented
+by the poets as a thing winged and ethereal; nevertheless it can be fed
+on bacon.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning we arrived at the mouth of what we took to be Hell
+Creek, which flows (when it has any water in it!) out of the Bad Lands.
+It didn't take much imagination to name that creek. The whole country
+from which it debouches looks like Hell&mdash;"with the lights out," as
+General Sully once remarked. A country of lifeless hills that had the
+appearance of an endless succession of huge black cinder heaps from
+prehistoric fires.</p>
+
+<p>The wind had increased steadily all day, and now we saw ahead of us a
+long rolling stretch of wind-lashed river that discouraged us somewhat.
+A gray mist rolled with the wind, and dull clouds scudded over. We
+pitched camp in a clump of cottonwoods and made flapjacks; after which
+the Kid and I, taking our blankets and the rifle, set out to explore
+Hell Creek.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image29" id="image29"></a>
+<a href="images/img29-full.jpg"><img src="images/img29.jpg" width="500" height="313" alt="Reveille!" title="Reveille!" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Reveille!</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image30" id="image30"></a>
+<a href="images/img30-full.jpg"><img src="images/img30.jpg" width="500" height="310" alt="The Pen and Key Ranch." title="The Pen and Key Ranch." /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Pen and Key Ranch.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The windings of the ravine soon hid us from <a name="Page_142-f" id="Page_142-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_143-f" id="Page_143-f"></a><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>the river, and we found
+ourselves in a melancholy world, without life and without any human
+significance. It was very easy to imagine one's self lost amid the drear
+ashen craters of the moon. We pushed on up the creek, kicking up clouds
+of alkali dust as we went. A creek of a burnt-out hell it was, to be
+sure. It seemed almost blasphemous to call this arid gully a creek. Boys
+swim in creeks, and fishes twinkle over the shallows where the sweet
+eager waters make a merry sound. Creek, indeed! Did a cynic name this
+dry ragged gash in the midst of a bleak black world where nothing lived,
+where never laughter sounded?</p>
+
+<p>A seething, fiery ooze might have flowed there once, but surely never
+did water make music there.</p>
+
+<p>We pushed on five or six miles, and the evening shade began to press in
+about us. At last we issued forth into a flat basin, surrounded by the
+weird hills&mdash;a grotesque, wind-carved amphitheater, admirably suited for
+a witches' orgy. Some bleached bison heads with horns lay scattered
+about the place, and a cluster of soapweeds grew there&mdash;God knows how!
+They thrust their sere yellow sword-blades skyward with the pitiful
+<a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>defiance of desperate things. It seemed natural enough that something
+should be dead in this sepulcher; but the living weeds, fighting
+bitterly for life, seemed out of place.</p>
+
+<p>I looked about and thought of Poe. Surely just beyond those summits
+where the melancholy sky touched the melancholy hills, one would come
+upon the "dank tarn of Auber" and the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."</p>
+
+<p>We gathered a quantity of the dry sword-bladed soapweeds, and with one
+of the blankets made a lean-to shelter against the steep hillside. The
+place was becoming eerie in the gray evening that spread slowly over the
+dead land. The mist driven by the moaning wind became a melancholy
+drizzle. We dragged the soapweeds under cover and lit a fire with
+difficulty. It was a half-hearted, smudgy, cheerless fire.</p>
+
+<p>And then the night fell&mdash;tremendous, overpowering night! The Kid and I,
+huddled close in one blanket, thrust our heads out from under the
+shelter and watched the ghastly world leap by fits out of the dark, when
+the sheet lightning flared through the drizzle. It gave one an odd
+shivery feeling. It was as though one groped about a strange dark room
+and saw, for a brief <a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>moment in the spurting glow of a wind-blown
+sulphur match, the staring face of a dead man. Over us the great wind
+groaned. Water dripped through the blanket&mdash;like tears. We scraped the
+last damp ends of the weeds together that the fire might live a little
+longer. Byron's poem came back to me with a new force; and lying on my
+stomach in the cheerless drip before a drowning fire, I chanted snatches
+of it aloud to the Kid and to that sinister personality that was the
+Night.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">I had a dream which was not all a dream;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Did wander darkling in eternal space,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Rayless and pathless; and the icy earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Low thunder shook the ink-sopped night&mdash;I thought of it as the Spirit of
+Byron applauding his own terrific lines.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A fearful hope was all the world contained;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forests were set on fire&mdash;but hour by hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They fell and faded&mdash;and the crackling trunks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Extinguished with a crash&mdash;and all was black.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Out in the wind-voiced darkness, swept by spasmodic deluges of rapid
+flame and muffled thunder, it seemed I could hear the dream-forests <a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>of
+the moody Master crackling and booming in the gloom.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i1">&mdash;looked up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With mad disquietude on the dull sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pall of a past world.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Say, how long is that piece?" asked the Kid.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And vipers crawled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And twined themselves among the multitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hissing&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We wondered if there might not be some rattlesnakes in that vicinity.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;They raked up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, shivering, scraped with their cold skeleton hands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blew for a little life, and made a flame<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which was a mockery; then they lifted up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their eyes as it grew brighter, and beheld<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each other's aspects&mdash;saw and shrieked and died&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Cut that out!" said the Kid.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Because," said the Kid.</p>
+
+<p>But what are Bad Lands for? I had hoped to chant a bit of James Thomson,
+the younger, also, there in that "dreadful night." I never was in a
+place where it seemed to fit so well.</p>
+
+<p>But we huddled up in our blanket under the <a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>dripping shelter, and that
+was a long night. The soppy gray morning came at length. A midsummer
+morning after a night of rain&mdash;and yet, no bird, no hopeful greenery, no
+sense of the upward yearning Earth-Soul!</p>
+
+<p>When we sighted the Missouri River again, the sun had broken through
+upon the greengirt, glinting stream. It seemed like Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>By almost continuous travel we reached Lismus Ferry on the second
+morning from Hell Creek. The ferryman had a bit of information for us.
+We would find nothing at the mouth of Milk River but a sandbar, he
+advised us. But he had some ointment to apply to the wound thus
+inflicted, in that Glasgow, a town on the Great Northern, was only
+twenty-five miles inland. The weekly stage had left on the morning
+before; but the ferryman understood that the trail was not overcrowded
+with pedestrians.</p>
+
+<p>It was a smarting ointment to apply to so fresh a wound; but we took the
+medicine. Frank, Charley, and I set out at once for Glasgow, leaving the
+others at camp to repair the leaking boat during our absence. The stage
+trail led through an arid, undulating prairie of yellow buffalo grass.
+There were creek beds, but they were filled with <a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>dust at this season of
+the year. The Englishman set the pace with the stride of the
+long-legged. The sun rose high; the dry runs reminded us unpleasantly of
+our increasing thirst, and the puffing wind blew hot as from a distant
+prairie fire.</p>
+
+<p>I followed at the Englishman's heels, and by and by it began to occur to
+me that he could walk rather rapidly. The Frenchman trailed after at a
+steadily increasing distance, until finally I could no longer hear his
+forceful remarks (uttered in two languages) concerning a certain corn
+which he possessed. We had been cramped up in a boat for several weeks,
+and the frequent soakings in the cold water had done little good to our
+joints. None of us was fit for walking. I kept back a limp until the
+Englishman ahead of me began to step with a little jerking of the knees;
+and then with an almost vicious delight, I gave over and limped. I never
+knew before the great luxury of limping. We covered the distance in
+something less than six hours.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, in a drizzling rain, each packing a five-gallon can of
+gasoline and some provisions, we set out for the Ferry; and it was a
+sorry, bedraggled trio that limped up to camp <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>eight hours later. We did
+little more than creep the last five miles. And all for a spiteful
+little engine that might prove ungrateful in the end!</p>
+
+<p>It rained all night&mdash;a cold, insistent downpour. Our log fire was
+drowned out; the tent dripped steadily; our blankets got soppy; and
+three of us were so stiff that the least movement gave keen pain.</p>
+
+<p>Soppy dawn&mdash;wet wood&mdash;bad grub for breakfast&mdash;and bad humor concealed
+with difficulty; but through it all ran a faint note of victory at the
+thought of the gasoline, and the way that engine would go! We lay in
+camp all day&mdash;soppy, sore&mdash;waiting for the rain to let up. By way of
+cheering up I read <i>L'Assomoir</i>; and a grim graveyard substitute for
+cheer it was. But the next day broke with a windy, golden dawn. We
+filled the tank, packed the luggage and lo! the engine worked! It took
+all the soreness out of our legs to see it go.</p>
+
+<p>We rejoiced now in the heavy and steadily increasing head wind; for it
+was like conquering an old enemy to go crashing through the rolling
+water that had for so many days given us pitiless battle.</p>
+
+<p>For five or six miles we plunged on down the <a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>wind-tumbled river. There
+was a distinct change in the temper of the crew. A vote at that time
+would have been unanimous for finishing at New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p><i>Squash!</i></p>
+
+<p>The engine stopped; the <i>Atom</i> swung round in the trough of the waves,
+and the tow-skiff rammed us, trying to climb over our gunwale. We
+wallowed in the wash of a bar, and cranked by turns. At the end of an
+hour no illusions were left us. Holding an inquest over the engine, we
+pronounced it dead.</p>
+
+<p>In the drear fag end of the windy day, soaked from much wading and weary
+of paddling with little headway, we made camp in a clump of scarlet
+bull-berry bushes; and by the evening fire two talked of railroad
+stations, one talked of home, and I thought of that one of the "soldiers
+three" who "swore quietly into the sky."</p>
+
+<p>The Milk River illusion was lost. Two hundred miles below was the mouth
+of the Yellowstone&mdash;the first station in the long journey. A few days
+back we had longed for gasoline; but there was no one to sell. Now we
+had fifteen gallons to sell&mdash;and there was no one to buy. The hope
+without the gasoline was decidedly bet<a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>ter than the gasoline without the
+hope. Whereat the philosopher in me emerges to remark&mdash;but who cares?
+Philosophy proceeds backward, and points out errors of thought and
+action chiefly when it has become too late to mend them. But it is
+possible to be poor in the possession of erstwhile prospective wealth,
+and rich in retrospective poverty. Oh, blessed is he who is negatively
+rich!</p>
+
+<p>Being a bit stunned by the death of the hope conceived in weariness, we
+did not put off that night, but huddled up in our blankets close to the
+log fire; for this midsummer night had in it a tang of frost.</p>
+
+<p>Day came&mdash;cloudy and cold&mdash;blown over the wilderness by a wind that made
+the cottonwoods above us groan and pop. The waves were higher than we
+had seen them before. We had little heart for cordelling, and no
+paddling could make headway against that gale. It was Sunday. Everything
+was damp and chilly. Shivers ran up our backs while we toasted our feet
+and faces; and the wind-whipped smoke had a way of blowing in every
+direction at once. Charley struggled with the engine, which now and then
+made a few revolutions&mdash;backwards&mdash;by way of leading him <a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>on. He heaped
+big curses upon it, and it replied periodically with snorts of rage.</p>
+
+<p>Bad blood developed, and mutiny ensued, which once gave promise of
+pirate-story developments&mdash;fortunately warded off. Before the day was
+done, it was made plain that the Kid and I would travel alone from the
+mouth of the Yellowstone. "For," said the Kid with certain virile
+decorations of speech, "I'm going with you if we have to buy skates!"</p>
+
+<p>The wind fell at sunset. A chill, moonless, starry night lured me, and I
+decided to travel. The mutineers, eager to reach a railroad as soon as
+possible, agreed to go. The skiff led and the <i>Atom</i> followed with
+paddles. A mile or so below we ran into shallows and grounded. We waded
+far around in the cold water that chilled us to the marrow, but could
+find neither entrance nor outlet to the pocket in which we found
+ourselves. Wading ashore, we made a cheerless camp in the brush, leaving
+the boats stuck in the shallows. For the first time, the division in the
+camp was well marked. The Kid and I instinctively made our bed together
+under one blanket, and the others bunked apart. We had become the main
+party of the expedition; the others were now <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>merely enforced camp
+followers. It was funny in an unpleasant way.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning a sea of stiff fog hid our boats. Packing the camp stuff
+on our backs, we waded about and found the crafts.</p>
+
+<p>At last, after a number of cheerless days and nights of continuous
+travel, the great, open, rolling prairies ahead of us indicated our
+approach toward the end of the journey's first stage. The country began
+to look like North Dakota, though we were still nearly two hundred miles
+away. The monotony of the landscape was depressing. It seemed a thousand
+miles to the sunrise. The horizon was merely a blue haze&mdash;and the
+endless land was sere. The river ran for days with a succession of
+regularly occurring right-angled bends to the north and east. Each
+headland shot out in the same way, with, it seemed, the same snags in
+the water under it, and the same cottonwoods growing on it; and opposite
+each headland was the same stony bluff, wind- and water-carved in the
+same way: until at last we cried out against the tediousness of the
+oft-repeated story, wondering whether or not we were continually passing
+the same point, and somehow slipping back to pass it again.</p><p><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a></p>
+
+<p>But at last we reached Wolf Point&mdash;the first town in five hundred miles.
+We had seen no town since we left Benton. An odd little burlesque of a
+town it was; but walking up its main street we felt very metropolitan
+after weeks on those lonesome river stretches.</p>
+
+<p>Five Assiniboine Indian girls seemed to be the only women in the town. I
+coaxed them to stand for a photograph on the incontestable grounds that
+they were by far the prettiest women I had seen for many days! The
+effect of my generous praise is fixed forever on the pictured faces
+presented herewith.</p>
+
+<p>Here, during the day, Frank and Charley disposed of their skiff and we
+saw them no more. We pushed on with little mourning. But in a spirit of
+fairness, let me record that Charley's biscuits were marvels, and that
+Frank's <i>g&acirc;teaux &agrave; la chansonnette</i> were things of beauty and therefore
+joys forever.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 290px;">
+<a name="image31" id="image31"></a>
+<a href="images/img31-full.jpg"><img src="images/img31.jpg" width="290" height="400" alt="Assiniboine Indian Chief." title="Assiniboine Indian Chief." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Assiniboine Indian Chief.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image32" id="image32"></a>
+<a href="images/img32-full.jpg"><img src="images/img32.jpg" width="500" height="327" alt="Assiniboine Indian Camp." title="Assiniboine Indian Camp." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Assiniboine Indian Camp.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The days that followed were long and hard; and half the chilly nights
+were spent in drying ourselves before a roaring fire. There were more
+mosquitoes now. They began to torture us at about five o'clock in the
+afternoon, and left off only when the cold of night came, relieving us
+<a name="Page_154-f" id="Page_154-f"></a><a name="Page_155-f" id="Page_155-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>of one discomfort by the substitution of another. Bill, of whom I had
+come to think as the expatriated turnip, gave me an opportunity to study
+homesickness&mdash;at once pitiful and ludicrous in a man with abundant
+whiskers. But he pulled strenuously at the forward paddle, every stroke
+as he remarked often, taking him closer to home.</p>
+
+<p>The river had fallen alarmingly, and was still falling. Several times we
+were obliged to unload the entire cargo, piling it high in the shallow
+water, that we might be able to carry the empty boat to the channel.</p>
+
+<p>One evening we came upon a typical Montana ranch&mdash;the Pen and Key. The
+residence, barns, sheds, fences were built of logs. The great rolling
+country about it was thickly dotted with horses and cattle. The place
+looked like home. It was a sight from Pisgah&mdash;a glimpse of a Promised
+Land after the Wilderness. We pulled in, intending to buy some
+provisions for the last stage of the journey to the Yellowstone.</p>
+
+<p>I went up to the main ranch-house, and was met at the door by one of
+those blessed creatures that have "mother" written all over them. Hers
+were not the eyes of a stranger. She looked at me as she must look at
+one of her sons when <a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>he returns from an extended absence. I told at
+once the purpose of my errand, explaining briefly what we were doing on
+the river. Why, yes, certainly we could have provisions. But we weren't
+going any farther that night&mdash;were we? The rancher appeared at this
+moment&mdash;a retired major of the army, who looked the part&mdash;and decided
+that we would stay for supper. How many were there in our party? Three?
+"Three more plates," he said to the daughters of the house, busy about
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Let's be frank! It really required no persuasion at all to make a guest
+of me. Had I allowed myself adequate expression of my delight, I should
+have startled the good mother by turning a somersault or a series of
+cartwheels! Oh, the smell of an old-fashioned wholesome meal in process
+of development!</p>
+
+<p>A short while back I sang the praises of the feast in the open&mdash;the
+feast of your own kill, tanged with the wood smoke. And even here I
+cling to the statement that of all meals, the feast of wild meat in the
+wilderness takes precedence. But the supper we ate that evening takes
+close second. Welcome on every face!&mdash;the sort of welcome that the most
+lavish tips could not <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>buy. And after the dishes were cleared away, they
+brought out a phonograph, and we all sat round like one family, swapping
+information and yarns even up, while the music went on. When we left
+next morning at sunrise, it seemed that we were leaving home&mdash;and the
+river reaches looked a bit dismal all that day.</p>
+
+<p>Having once been a vagabond in a non-professional way, I have a theory
+about the physiognomy of houses. Some have a forbidding,
+sick-the-dog-on-you aspect about them, not at all due, I am sure, to
+architectural design. Experience has taught me to be suspicious of such
+houses. Some houses have the appearance of death&mdash;their windows strike
+you as eyeless sockets, the doors look like mouths that cannot speak.
+The great houses along Fifth Avenue seemed like that to me. I could walk
+past them in the night and feel like a ghost. I have seen cottages that
+I wanted to kneel to; and I'm sure this feeling wasn't due to the vine
+growing over the porch or the roses nodding in the yard. Knock at the
+door of such a house, and the chances are in favor of your being met by
+a quiet, motherly woman&mdash;one who will instantly make you think of your
+own mother. Some very well constructed <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>houses look surly, and some
+shabby ones look kind, somehow. If you have ever been a book agent or a
+tramp, how you will revel in this seeming digression! God grant that no
+man in need may ever look wistfully at your house or at mine, and pass
+on with a shake of the head. It is a subtle compliment to have book
+agents and tramps frequently at one's door.</p>
+
+<p>Am I really digressing? My theme is a trip on a great river. Well,
+kindness and nature are not so far apart, let us believe.</p>
+
+<p>Now this ranch-house looked hospitable; there was no mistaking it.
+Wherefore I deduce that the spirit of the inhabitants must pierce
+through and emanate from the senseless walls like an effluvium. Who
+knows but that every house has its telltale aura, plain to a vision of
+sufficient spiritual keenness? Perhaps some one will some day write a
+book <i>On the Physio-Psychological Aspect of Houses</i>: and there will be
+an advance sale of at least one copy on that book.</p>
+
+<p>At noon on the fourth day from the Pen and Key Ranch, we pulled up at
+the Mondak landing two miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. We were
+thoroughly soaked, having dragged the boat the last two or three miles
+through the <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>shallows and intermittent deeps of an inside channel. The
+outer channel was rolling viciously in that eternal thing, the head
+wind. We had covered the first six hundred miles with a power boat
+(called so, doubtless, because it required so much power to shove it
+along!) in a little less than four weeks. During that time we had
+received no mail, and I was making a break for the post-office, oozing
+and feeling like an animated sponge, when a great wind-like voice roared
+above me: "<i>Hey there</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>I looked up to the hurricane deck of a steamer that lay at the bank
+taking on freight. A large elderly man, dressed like a farmer, with an
+exaggerated straw hat shading a face that gripped my attention at once,
+was looking down at me. It was the face of a born commander; it struck
+me that I should like to have it cast in bronze to look at whenever a
+vacillating mood might seize me.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Come aboard</i>!" bawled the man under the ample hat. There was nothing
+in the world just then that I wished for more than my mail; but somehow
+I felt the will to obey&mdash;even the necessity of obeying.</p>
+
+<p>"You came from Benton?" he asked, when I <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>had clambered up the forward
+companionway and stood dripping before the captain of the steamer
+<i>Expansion</i>. At this closer range, the strength of the face was even
+more impressive, with its eagle beak and its lines of firmness; but a
+light of kindness was shed through it, and the eyes took on a gentle
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you find the water?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very low, sir; we cordelled much of the way."</p>
+
+<p>"I tried to get this boat to Benton," he said, "and got hung up on the
+rocks above Lismus Ferry."</p>
+
+<p>"And we drifted over them helter-skelter at midnight!"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, and we were friends. Thus I met Captain Grant Marsh, the
+Grand Old Man of the Missouri River. He was freighting supplies up the
+Yellowstone for the great Crane Creek irrigation dam, sixty miles above
+the mouth. The <i>Expansion</i> was to sail on the following day, and I was
+invited to go along. Seeing that the Captain was short of help, I
+insisted upon enlisting as a deck hand for the trip.</p>
+
+<p>It was work. I think I should prefer hod-carrying as a profession, for
+we had a heavy cargo, ranging from lumber and tiling to flour <a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>and beer;
+and there are no docks on the Yellowstone. The banks were steep, the sun
+was very hot, and the cargo had to be landed by man power. My companions
+in toil swore bitterly about everything in general and steamboating in
+particular.</p>
+
+<p>"How much are you getting?" asked a young Dane of me, as we trudged up
+the plank together.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing at all," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He swore an oath of wonder, and stopped to look me over carefully for
+the loose screw in my make-up.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;nothing but the fun of it," I added.</p>
+
+<p>He sniffed and looked bewildered.</p>
+
+<p>"Did it ever occur to you," said I, "that a man will do for nothing what
+he wouldn't do for money?"</p>
+
+<p>I could see my conundrum playing peek-a-boo all about his stolid
+features. After that the Dane treated me with an air of superiority&mdash;the
+superiority of thirty dollars per month over nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>We stopped twice to coal, and worked far into the night. There are no
+coal chutes on the Yellowstone. We carried and wheeled the stuff aboard
+from a pile on the bank. During a brief <a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>interval of rest, the young
+Dane announced to the others that I was working for nothing; whereat
+questioning eyes were turned upon me in the dull lantern light. And I
+said to myself: I can conceive of heaven only as an improbable condition
+in which all men would be willing and able to work for nothing at all. I
+had read in the Dane's face the meaning of a price. Heaving coal, I
+built Utopias.</p>
+
+<p>When the boat was under way, I sat in the pilot-house with the Captain,
+watching the yellow flood and the yellow cliffs drift past like a
+vision. And little by little, this old man who has followed the river
+for over sixty years, pieced out the wonderful story of his life&mdash;a
+story fit for Homer. That story may now be read in a book, so I need not
+tell it here. But I came to think of him as the incarnation of the
+river's mighty spirit; and I am proud that I served him as a deck hand.</p>
+
+<p>As we steamed out of the Yellowstone into the clear waters of the
+Missouri, the Captain pointed out to me the spot upon which Fort Union
+stood. Upon landing, I went there and found two heaps of stone at the
+opposite corners of a rectangle traced by a shallow ditch where of old
+the walls stood. This was all that remained of the power<a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>ful
+fort&mdash;virtually the capital of the American Fur Company's Upper Missouri
+empire&mdash;where Mackenzie ruled&mdash;Mackenzie who was called King!</p>
+
+<p>Long slough grass grew there, and blue waxen flowers struggled up amid
+the rubble of what were once defiant bastions. I lay down in the
+luxuriant grass, closed my eyes, and longed for a vision of heroic days.
+I thought of the Prince who had been entertained there with his great
+retinue; of the regality of the haughty Scotchman who ruled there; of
+Alexander Harvey, who had killed his enemy on the very spot, doubtless,
+where I lay: killed him as an outraged brave man kills&mdash;face to face
+before the world. I thought of Bourbonais, the golden-haired Paris of
+this fallen Ilium. I thought of the plague that raged there in '37, and
+of Larpenteur and his friend, grim, jesting carters of the dead!</p>
+
+<p>It all passed before me&mdash;the unwritten Iliad of a stronghold forgotten.
+But the vision wouldn't come. The river wind moaned through the grasses.</p>
+
+<p>I looked off a half mile to the modern town of Mondak, and wondered how
+many in that town cared about this spot where so much had <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>happened, and
+where the grass grew so very tall now.</p>
+
+<p>I gathered blue flowers and quoted, with a slight change, the lines of
+Stevenson:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But ah, how deep the grass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the battlefield!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a></p>
+
+<h2 class="sectionhead">CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3 class="chapterhead">DOWN FROM THE YELLOWSTONE</h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="dropcap">T</span>HE geographer tells us that the mouth of the Missouri is about
+seventeen miles above St. Louis, and that the mouth of the Yellowstone
+is near Buford, North Dakota. It appeared to me that the fact is
+inverted. The Missouri's mouth is near Buford, and the Yellowstone
+empties directly into the Mississippi!</p>
+
+<p>I find that I am not alone in this opinion. Father de Smet and other
+early travelers felt the truth of it; and Captain Marsh, who has piloted
+river craft through every navigable foot of the entire system of rivers,
+having sailed the Missouri within sound of the Falls and the Yellowstone
+above Pompey's Pillar, feels that the Yellowstone is the main stem and
+the Missouri a tributary.</p>
+
+<p>Where the two rivers join, even at low water, the Yellowstone pours a
+vast turbulent flood, com<a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>pared with which the clear and quieter
+Missouri appears an overgrown rain-water creek. The Mississippi after
+some miles obliterates all traces of its great western tributary; but
+the Missouri at Buford is entirely lost in the Yellowstone within a few
+hundred yards. All of the unique characteristics by which the Missouri
+River is known are given to it by the Yellowstone&mdash;its turbulence, its
+tawniness, its feline treachery, its giant caprices.</p>
+
+<p>Examine closely, and everything will take on before your eyes either
+masculine or feminine traits. Gender, in a broad sense, is universal,
+and nothing was created neuter. The Upper Missouri is decidedly female:
+an Amazon, to be sure, but nevertheless not a man. Beautiful, she is,
+alluring or terrible, but always womanlike. But when you strike the
+ragged curdling line of muddy water where the Yellowstone comes in, it
+is all changed. You feel the sinewy, nervous might of the man.</p>
+
+<p>So it is, that when you look upon the Missouri at <a name="Kansis" id="Kansis"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="Kansas">Kansis</ins> City, it is the
+Yellowstone that you behold!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image33" id="image33"></a>
+<a href="images/img33-full.jpg"><img src="images/img33.jpg" width="500" height="313" alt="On the Hurricane Deck of the &quot;Expansion&quot;; Capt. Marsh
+Third from the Left." title="On the Hurricane Deck of the &quot;Expansion&quot;; Capt. Marsh
+Third from the Left." /></a>
+<span class="caption">On the Hurricane Deck of the &quot;Expansion&quot;; Capt. Marsh
+Third from the Left.</span>
+</div>
+
+<table class="images" summary="Images">
+<tr><td>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image34" id="image34"></a>
+<a href="images/img34-full.jpg"><img src="images/img34.jpg" width="300" height="195" alt="Fort Union in 1837." title="Fort Union in 1837." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Fort Union in</span> 1837.
+</div></td>
+
+<td><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image35" id="image35"></a>
+<a href="images/img35-full.jpg"><img src="images/img35.jpg" width="300" height="192" alt="Site of Old Fort Union." title="Site of Old Fort Union." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Site of Old Fort Union.</span>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>But names are idle sounds; and being of a peace-loving disposition, I
+would rather withdraw <a name="Page_166-f" id="Page_166-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_167-f" id="Page_167-f"></a><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>my contention than seriously disturb the
+geographical <i>status quo</i>! Let it be said that the Upper Missouri is the
+mother and the Yellowstone the father of this turbulent Titan, who
+inherits his father's might and wonder, and takes through courtesy the
+maiden name of his mother. There! I am quite appeased, and the
+geographers may retain their nomenclature.</p>
+
+<p>At Mondak, Luck stood bowing to receive us. The <i>Atom I</i> had suffered
+more from contact with snags and rocks than we had supposed. For several
+hundred miles her intake of water had steadily increased. We had toiled
+at the paddles with the water halfway to our knees much of the time;
+though now and then&mdash;by spasms&mdash;we bailed her dry. She had become a
+floating lump of discouragement, and still fourteen hundred miles lay
+ahead.</p>
+
+<p>But on the day previous to our sailing, a nervous little man with a
+wistful eye offered us a trade. He had a steel boat, eighteen feet long,
+forty inches beam, which he had built in the hours between work and
+sleep during the greater part of a year.</p>
+
+<p>His boat was some miles up the Yellowstone, but he spoke of her in so
+artless and loving a <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>manner&mdash;as a true workman might speak&mdash;and with
+such a wistful eye cast upon our boat, that I believed in him and his
+boat. He had no engine. It was the engine in our boat that attracted
+him, as he wished to make a hunting trip up river in the fall. He stated
+that his boat would float, that it was a dry boat, that it would row
+with considerable ease. "Then," said I, "paddle her down to the mouth of
+the Yellowstone, and the deal is made." After dark he returned to our
+camp with a motor boat, ready to take us to our new craft, <i>Atom II</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving all our impedimenta to be shipped by rail, that is, Bill, the
+tent, extra blankets, phonograph&mdash;everything but a few cooking-utensils,
+an ax, a tarp, and a pair of blankets&mdash;the Kid and I got in with the
+little man and dropped down to the Yellowstone. The new boat was moored
+under a mud bank. I climbed in, lit a match, and my heart leaped with
+joy. She was staunch and beautiful&mdash;a work of love, which means a work
+of honesty. Fore and aft were air-tight compartments. She had an oil
+tank, a water tank, engine housing, steering wheel, lockers. She was
+ready for the very engine I had ordered to be shipped to me at Bismarck.
+She was dry as a <a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>bone, and broad enough to make a snug bed for two.</p>
+
+<p>The little man and the motor boat dropped out into the gloom and left us
+gloating over our new possession, sending thankful rings of tobacco
+smoke at the stars. When the first flush of triumph had passed, we
+rolled up in the bottom of the boat, lulled to sleep by the cooing of
+the fusing rivers, united under our gunwale. Such a sleep&mdash;a <i>dry</i>
+sleep! and the sides of the boat protected us against the chill night
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>And the dawn came&mdash;shouting merrily like a boy! I once had a chum who
+had a habit of whistling me out of bed now and then of a summer morning,
+when the birds were just awakening, and the dew looked like frost on the
+grass. And the sun that morning made me think of my old boy chum with
+his blithe, persistent whistling. For the first hard stage of the
+journey was done; all had left me but a brave lad who would take his
+share of the hardships with a light heart. (All boys are instinctively
+true sportsmen!) And before us lay the great winding stretch of a savage
+river that I had loved long&mdash;the real Missouri of my boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>A new spirit had come upon us with the pos<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>session of the <i>Atom II</i>&mdash;the
+spirit of the forced march. For nearly a month we had floundered,
+trusting to a sick engine and inefficient paddles. Now we had a staunch,
+dry boat, and eight-foot oars. We trusted only ourselves, and we were
+one in the desire to push the crooked yellow miles behind us. During the
+entire fourteen hundred miles that desire increased, until our progress
+was little more than a retreat. We pitched no camps; we halted only when
+we could proceed no further owing to sandbars encountered in the dark;
+we ate as we found it convenient to do so. Regularly relieving each
+other at the oars, one sat at the steering wheel, feeling for the
+channel. And it was not long until I began to note a remarkable change
+in the muscles of the Kid, for we toiled naked to the waist most of the
+time. His muscles had shown little more than a girl's when we first swam
+together at Benton. Now they began to stand out, clearly defined, those
+of his chest sprawling rigidly downward to the lean ribs, and little
+eloquent knots developed on the bronzed surface of his once smooth arms.
+He was at the age of change, and he was growing into a man before my
+eyes. It was good to see.</p>
+
+<p>All the first day the gods breathed gently upon <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>us, and we made fifty
+miles, passing Trenton and Williston before dark. But the following day,
+our old enemy, the head wind, came with the dawn. We were now sailing a
+river more than twice the size of the Upper Missouri, and the waves were
+in proportion. Each at an oar, with the steering wheel lashed, we forged
+on slowly but steadily. In midstream we found it impossible to control
+the boat, and though we hugged the shore whenever possible, we were
+obliged to cross with the channel at every bend. When the waves caught
+us broadside, we were treated to many a compulsory bath, and our clothes
+were thoroughly washed without being removed. An ordinary skiff would
+have capsized early in the day, but the <i>Atom II</i> could carry a full
+cargo of water and still float.</p>
+
+<p>By sunset the wind fell, the river smoothed as a wrinkled brow at the
+touch of peace. Aided by a fair current, we <a name="skulled" id="skulled"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="sculled">skulled</ins> along in the hush of
+evening through a land of vast green pastures with "cattle upon a
+thousand hills." The great wind had spread the heavens with ever
+deepening clouds. The last reflected light of the sun fell red upon the
+burnished surface of the water. It seemed we were sailing a river of
+liquefied red <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a>flame; only for a short distance about us was the water
+of that peculiar Missouri hue which makes one think of bad coffee
+colored with condensed milk.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the colors changed, until we were in the midst of a stream of
+iridescent opal fires; and quite lost in the gorgeous spectacle, at
+length we found ourselves upon a bar.</p>
+
+<p>We got out and waded around in water scarcely to our ankles, feeling for
+a channel. The sand was hard; the bar seemed to extend across the entire
+river; but a thin rippling line some fifty yards ahead told us where it
+ended. We found it impossible to push the heavy boat over the shallows.
+The clouds were deepening, and the night was coming rapidly. Setting the
+Kid to work digging with an oar at the prow, I pushed and wriggled the
+stern until I saw galaxies. Thus alternately digging and pushing, we at
+last reached navigable depths.</p>
+
+<p>It was now quiet and dark. Low thunder was rolling, and now and then
+vivid flashes of lightning discovered the moaning river to us&mdash;ghastly
+and forbidding in the momentary glare. We decided to pull in for the
+night; but in what direction should we pull? A drizzling rain had <a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>begun
+to fall, and the sheet lightning glaring through it only confused
+us&mdash;more than the sooty darkness that showered in upon us after the
+rapid flashes. We sat still and waited. In the intermittent silences,
+the rain hissed on the surface of the river like a shower of innumerable
+heated pebbles. Ahead of us we heard the dull booming of the cut banks,
+as the current undermined ponderous ledges of sand.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a boat that happens under a falling cut bank, passes at once into
+the region of forgotten things. The boat would follow the main current;
+the main current flows always under the cut banks. How long would it
+take us to get there? Which way should we pull? Put a simpler question:
+In which way were we moving? We hadn't the least conception of
+direction. For us the night had only one dimension&mdash;<i>out</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Finally a great booming and splashing sounded to our left, and the boat
+rocked violently a moment after. We grasped the oars and pulled blindly
+in what we supposed to be the opposite direction, only to be met by
+another roar of falling sand from that quarter.</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be nothing to do but have faith in that divinity which
+is said to superintend <a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>the goings and coming of fools and drunkards.
+Therefore we abandoned the oars, twiddled our thumbs, and let her drift.
+We couldn't even smoke, for the rain was now coming down merrily. The
+Kid thought it a great lark, and laughed boisterously at our
+predicament. By flashes I saw the drenched grin under his dripping nose.
+But for me, some lines written by that sinister genius, Wainwright, came
+back with a new force, and clamored to be spoken:</p>
+
+<p><i>"Darkness&mdash;sooty, portentous darkness&mdash;shrouds the whole scene; as if
+through a horrid rift in a murky ceiling, a rainy deluge&mdash;'sleety flaw,
+discolored water'&mdash;streams down amain, spreading a grisly spectral
+light, even more horrible than that palpable night."</i></p>
+
+<p>At length the sensation of sudden stopping dizzied us momentarily. We
+thrust out an oar and felt a slowly sloping bar. Driving the oar
+half-way into the soft sand, we wrapped the boat's chain about it and
+went to bed, flinging the tarp over us.</p>
+
+<p>A raw dawn wind sprinkled a cheerless morning over us, and we got up
+with our joints grinding rustily. We were in the midst of a desolate
+waste of sand and water. The bar upon which we had <a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>lodged was utterly
+bare. Drinking a can of condensed milk between us, we pushed on.</p>
+
+<p>That day we found ourselves in the country of red barns. It was like
+warming cold hands before an open grate to look upon them. At noon we
+saw the first wheat-field of the trip&mdash;an undulating golden flood,
+dimpled with the tripping feet of the wind. These were two joys&mdash;quite
+enough for one day. But in the afternoon the third came&mdash;the first
+golden-rod. My first impulse was to take off my hat to it, offer it my
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>That evening we pulled up to a great bank, black-veined with outcrops of
+coal, and cooked supper over a civilized fire. For many miles along the
+river in North Dakota, as well as along the Yellowstone in Montana,
+these coal outcrops are in evidence. Doubtless, within another
+generation, vast mining operations will be opened up in these
+localities. Coal barges will be loaded at the mines and dropped down
+stream to the nearest railroad point.</p>
+
+<p>We were in the midst of an idyllic country&mdash;green, sloping, lawn-like
+pastures, dotted sparsely with grotesque scrub oaks. Far over these the
+distant hills lifted in filmy blue. The bluffs along <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>the water's edge
+were streaked with black and red and yellow, their colors deepened by
+the recent rains. Lazy with a liberal supper, we drifted idly and gave
+ourselves over for a few minutes to the spell of this twilight
+dreamland. I stared hard upon this scene that would have delighted
+Theocritus; and with little effort, I placed a half-naked shepherd boy
+under the umbrella top of that scrub oak away up yonder on the lawny
+slope. With his knees huddled to his chin, I saw him, his fresh cheeks
+bulged with the breath of music. I heard his pipe&mdash;clear,
+dream-softened&mdash;the silent music of my own heart. Dream flocks sprawled
+tinkling up the hills.</p>
+
+<p>With a wild burst of scarlet, the sunset flashed out. Black clouds
+darkened the visible idyll. A chill gust swept across the stream,
+showering rain and darkness. Each at an oar, we forged on, until we lost
+the channel in the gloom. At the first peep of day we were off again,
+after a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and coffee.</p>
+
+<p>We were gradually becoming accustomed to the strain of constant rowing.
+For at least sixteen hours a day we fought the wind, during which time
+the oars were constantly dipping; and very often our day lengthened out
+to twenty hours.<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a> We had no time-piece, and a night of drifting was
+divided into two watches. These watches we determined either by the
+dropping of a star toward the horizon, or by the position of the moon
+when it shone. On dark nights, the sleeper trusted to the judgment of
+his friend to call when the watch seemed sufficiently long. Daily the
+water fell, and every inch of fall increased the difficulty of
+traveling.</p>
+
+<p>We were now passing through the country of the Mandans, Gros Ventres,
+and Ricarees, the country through which old Hugh Glass crawled his
+hundred miles with only hate to sustain him. To the west lay the barren
+lands of the Little Missouri, through which Sully pushed with his
+military expedition against the Sioux on the Yellowstone. An army flung
+boldly through a dead land&mdash;a land without forage, and waterless&mdash;a
+labyrinth of dry ravines and ghastly hills! Sully called it "hell with
+the lights out." A magnificent, Quixotic expedition that succeeded! I
+compared it with the ancient expeditions&mdash;and I felt the eagle's wings
+strain within me. <i>Sully!</i> There were trumpets and purple banners for me
+in the sound of the name!</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening we reached the mouth of <a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a>the Little Missouri. There
+we found one of the few remaining mud lodges of the ancient type. We
+landed and found ourselves in the midst of a forsaken little frontier
+town. A shambling shack bore the legend, "Store," with the "S" looking
+backward&mdash;perhaps toward dead municipal hopes. A few tumble-down frame
+and log shanties sprawled up the desultory grass-grown main street, at
+one end of which dwelt a Mandan Indian family in the mud lodge.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen curs from the lodge resented our intrusion with canine
+vituperation. I thrust my head into the log-cased entrance of the
+circular house of mud, and was greeted with a sound of scolding in the
+Mandan jargon, delivered by a squaw of at least eighty years. She arose
+from the fire that burned in the center of the great circular room, and
+approached me with an "I-want-your-scalp" expression. One of her
+daughters, a girl dressed in a caricature of the white girl's garments,
+said to me: "She wants to know what you've got to trade." To this old
+woman of the prairie, all white men were traders.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to buy," I said, "eggs, meat, bread, anything to eat."</p>
+
+<table class="images" summary="Images">
+<tr><td valign="top">
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image36" id="image36"></a>
+<a href="images/img36-full.jpg"><img src="images/img36.jpg" width="300" height="186" alt="Boats Laid Up for the Winter at Washburn, N.D." title="Boats Laid Up for the Winter at Washburn, N.D." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Boats Laid Up for the Winter at Washburn, N.D.</span>
+</div></td>
+
+<td valign="top"><div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="image37" id="image37"></a>
+<a href="images/img37-full.jpg"><img src="images/img37.jpg" width="300" height="188" alt="Washburn, N.D." title="Washburn, N.D." /></a>
+<span class="caption">Washburn, N.D.</span>
+</div></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image38" id="image38"></a>
+<a href="images/img38-full.jpg"><img src="images/img38.jpg" width="500" height="295" alt="The Landing at Bismarck, N.D." title="The Landing at Bismarck, N.D." /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Landing at Bismarck, N.D.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The old woman looked me over with a whimper <a name="Page_178-f" id="Page_178-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_179-f" id="Page_179-f"></a><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>of amused superiority,
+and disappeared, soon reappearing with a dark brown object not wholly
+unlike a loaf of bread. "Wahtoo," she remarked, pointing to the dark
+brown substance.</p>
+
+<p>I gave her a half-dollar. Very quietly she took it and went back to her
+fire. "But," said I, "do you sell your bread for fifty cents per loaf?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl giggled, and the old woman gave me another piece of her Mandan
+mind. She had no change, it appeared. I then insisted upon taking the
+balance in eggs. The old woman said she had no eggs. I pointed to a
+flock of hens that was holding a sort of woman's club convention in the
+yard, discussing the esthetics of egg-laying, doubtless, while
+neglecting their nests.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady arose majestically, disappeared again, and reappeared with
+three eggs. I protested. The Mandan lady forthwith explained (or at
+least it appeared so to me) all the execrable points in my character.
+They seemed to be numerous, and she appeared to be very frank about the
+matter. My moral condition, apparently, was clearly defined in her own
+mind. I withdrew in haste, fearing that the daughter at any moment might
+begin to translate.</p>
+
+<p>We dropped down river a few miles, prepared <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>supper, and attacked the
+dark brown substance which the Indian lady had called "wahtoo." At the
+first bite, I began to learn the Mandan tongue. I swallowed a chunk
+whole, and then enlightened the Kid as to a portion of the Mandan
+language. "Wahtoo," said I, "means 'indigestible'; it is an evident
+fact." Then, being strengthened by our linguistic triumph, we fell upon
+the dark brown substance again. But almost anything has its good points;
+and I can conscientiously recommend Mandan bread for durability!</p>
+
+<p>Once more we had a rainy night. The tarp, stretched across the boat,
+sagged with the water it caught, and poured little persistent streams
+upon us. The chief of these streams, from the point of size, seemed
+consciously aiming at my ear. <a name="Thirce" id="Thirce"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="Thrice">Thirce</ins> I turned over, shifted my position;
+thrice I was awakened by the sound of a merry brooklet pouring into that
+persecuted member.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in the world the white cock was crowing sleepily when we put
+off, stiff and soaked and shivering.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the day the fine sand from banks and bars began to lift in the
+wind. It smarted our faces like little whip lashes. Very often we could
+see no further than a hundred and fifty yards in <a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>any direction. Only by
+a constant, rapid dipping of the oars could the boat be held
+perpendicular to the choppy waves. One stroke missed meant hard work for
+both of us in getting out of the trough.</p>
+
+<p>Fighting every foot of water, we wallowed through the swells&mdash;past Elbow
+Woods, past Fort Berthold, past the forlorn, raggedy little town,
+"Expansion." (We rechristened it "Contraction"!)</p>
+
+<p>During the day the gale swept the sky clear. The evening air was crisp
+and invigorating. We cooked supper early and rowed on silently over the
+mirroring waters, between two vast sheets of stars, through a semilucent
+immensity. Far ahead of us a high cliff loomed black and huge against
+the spangled blue-black velvet of the sky. On its summit a dark mass
+soared higher. We thought it a tree, but surely a gigantic one.
+Approaching it, the soaring mass became a medieval castle sitting
+haughtily with frowning crenellations upon an impregnable rock; and the
+Missouri became for the moment a larger Rhine. At last, rowing up under
+the sheer cliff, the castle resolved itself into a huge grain elevator,
+its base a hundred feet above the stream.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a></p>
+
+<p>Although it was late, we tied our boat, clambered up a zigzag path, and
+found ourselves in one of the oddest little towns in the
+West&mdash;Manhaven&mdash;one of the few remaining steamboat towns.</p>
+
+<p>The main street zigzagged carelessly through a jumble of little houses.
+One light in all the street designated the social center of the town, so
+we went there. It was the grocery store&mdash;a general emporium of ideas and
+canned goods.</p>
+
+<p>Entering, we found ourselves in the midst of "the rustic cackle of the
+burg." I am sure the municipal convention was verbally reconstructing
+the universe; but upon our entrance, the matter was abruptly laid on the
+table. When we withdrew, the entire convention, including the
+grocery-man, adjourned, and accompanied us to the river where the
+general merits of our boat were thoroughly discussed by lantern light.
+Also, various conflicting versions of the distance to Bismarck were
+given&mdash;each party being certain of his own infallibility.</p>
+
+<p>There is something curious about the average man's conception of
+distance. During the entire trip we found no two men who agreed on this
+general subject. After acquiring a book of river <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>distances, we created
+much amusement for ourselves by asking questions. The conversation very
+often proceeded in this manner:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please tell us how far it is to So-and-So?"</p>
+
+<p>"One hundred and fifty-two and a half miles!" (with an air of absolute
+certainty).</p>
+
+<p>"But you are slightly mistaken, sir; the exact distance is sixty-two and
+seven-tenths miles!" (Consternation on the face of the omniscient
+informant.)</p>
+
+<p>Once a man told us that a certain town was one hundred and fifty miles
+down stream. We reached the town in an hour and a half!</p>
+
+<p>However, we had more success with the Indian. One day we came upon an
+old Mandan buck and squaw, who were taking a bath in the river,
+doubtless feeling convinced that they needed it. The current took us
+within fifty yards of them. Upon our approach, they got out of the water
+and sat in the sand quite as nude and unashamed as our first parents
+before the apple ripened.</p>
+
+<p>"Bismarck&mdash;how far?" I shouted, standing up in the boat.</p>
+
+<p>The buck rose in all his unclothed dignity, raised his two hands, shut
+and opened them seven <a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>times, after which he lowered one arm, and again
+opened and shut a hand. Then with a spear-like thrust of the arm toward
+the southeast, he stiffened the index finger in the direction of
+Bismarck. He meant "seventy-five miles as the crow flies." As near as I
+could figure it out afterward, he was doubtless correct.</p>
+
+<p>At noon the next day we reached the mouth of the Knife River, near which
+stood the Mandan village made famous by Lewis and Clark as their winter
+quarters. Fort Clark also stood here. Nothing remains of the Fort but
+the name and a few slight indentations in the ground. A modern steamboat
+town, Deapolis occupies the site of the old post. Across the river there
+are still to be seen the remains of trenches. A farmer pointed them out
+to us as all that remains of the winter camp of the great explorers.</p>
+
+<p>In the late evening we passed Washburn, the "steamboat center" of the
+upper river, fifty water miles from Bismarck. It made a very pretty
+appearance with its neat houses climbing the hillside. Along the water
+front, under the elevators, a half-dozen steamboats of the good
+old-fashioned type, lay waiting for their cargoes. Two more boats were
+building on the ways.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a></p>
+
+<p>Night caught us some five miles below the town, and, wrapping ourselves
+in our blankets, we set to drifting. I went on watch and the Kid rolled
+up forward and went to sleep. After sixteen hours of rowing in the wind,
+it is a difficult matter to keep awake. The night was very calm; the
+quiet waters crooned sleepily about the boat. I set myself the task of
+watching the new moon dip toward the dim hills; I intended to keep
+myself awake in that manner. The moon seemed to have stuck. Slowly I
+passed into an impossible world, in which, with drowsy will, I struggled
+against an exasperating moon that had somehow gotten itself tangled in
+star-sheen and couldn't go down.</p>
+
+<p>I awoke with a start. My head was hanging over the gunwale&mdash;the dawn was
+breaking through the night wall. A chill wind was rolling breakers upon
+us, and we were fast upon a bar. I awakened the Kid and we put off. We
+had no idea of the distance covered while sleeping. It must have been at
+least twenty miles, for, against a heavy wind, we reached Bismarck at
+one o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>We had covered about three hundred and fifty miles in six days, but we
+had paid well for every <a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>mile. As we passed under the Bismarck bridge,
+we confessed that we were thoroughly fagged. It was the thought of the
+engine awaiting us at this town that had kept us from confessing
+weariness before.</p>
+
+<p>I landed and made for the express office three miles away. A half-hour
+later I stood, covered with humility and perspiration, in the awful
+presence of the expressman, who regarded me with that lofty "God-and-I"
+air, characteristic of some emperors and almost all railroad officials.
+I stated to the august personage that I was looking for an engine
+shipped to me by express.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that my statement was insulting. The man snarled and shook his
+head. I have since thought that he was the owner of the Northern Pacific
+system in disguise. I suggested that the personage might look about. The
+personage couldn't stoop to that; but a clerk who overheard my insulting
+remark (he had not yet become the owner of a vast transportation system)
+condescended to make a desultory search. He succeeded in digging up a
+spark-coil&mdash;and that is all I ever saw of the engine.</p>
+
+<p>During my waiting at Bismarck, I had a talk with Captain Baker, manager
+of the Benton<a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a> Packet Line. We agreed in regard to the Government's
+neglect of duty toward the country's most important natural
+thoroughfare, the Missouri River. About Sioux City, the Government
+operates a snag-boat, the <i>Mandan</i>, at an expense ridiculously
+disproportionate to its usefulness. The <i>Mandan</i> is little more than an
+excursion boat maintained for a few who are paid for indulging in the
+excursions. A crew of several hundred men with shovels, picks, and
+dynamite, could do more good during one low water season than such boats
+could do during their entire existence.</p>
+
+<p>The value of the great river as an avenue of commerce is steadily
+increasing; and those who discourage the idea of "reopening" navigation
+of the river, are either railroad men or persons entirely ignorant of
+the geography of the Northwest. Captain Marsh would say, "Reopen
+navigation? I've sailed the river sixty years, and in that time
+navigation has not ceased."</p>
+
+<p>Rocks could and should be removed from the various rapids, and the banks
+at certain points should be protected against further cutting. A natural
+canal, extending from New Orleans in the South and Cincinnati in the
+East to the<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a> Rockies in the Northwest, is not to be neglected long by an
+intelligent Government.</p>
+
+<p>As a slow freight thoroughfare, this vast natural system of waterways is
+unequalled on the globe. Within another generation, doubtless, this
+all-but-forgotten fact will be generally rediscovered.</p>
+
+<p>Having waited four days for the engine, we put off again with oars. It
+was near sundown when we started, hungry for those thousand miles that
+remained. When we had pulled in to the landing at Bismarck, we were like
+boxers who stagger to their corners all but whipped. But we had
+breathed, and were ready for another round. A kind of impersonal anger
+at the failure of another hope nerved us; and this new fighting spirit
+was like another man at the oars. Many of the hard days that followed
+left on our memories little more than the impress of a troubled dream.
+We developed a sort of contempt for our old enemy, the head wind&mdash;that
+tireless, intangible giant that lashed us with whips of sand, drove us
+into shallows, set its mighty shoulders against our prow, roared with
+laughter at us when, soaked and weary, we walked and pushed our boat for
+miles at a time. The quitter <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>that is in all men more or less, often
+whispered to us when we were weariest: "Why not take the train? What is
+it all for?" Well, what is life for? We were expressing ourselves out
+there on the windy river. The wind said we couldn't and our muscles said
+we shouldn't, and the snag-boat captain had said we couldn't get
+down&mdash;so we went on. We were now in full retreat&mdash;retreat from the
+possibility of quitting.</p>
+
+<p>During the first night out, an odd circumstance befell us that, for some
+hours, seemed likely to lose us our boat. As usual, we set to drifting
+at dark. The moon, close on its half, was flying, pale and frightened,
+through scudding clouds. However, the wind blew high and the surface of
+the water was unruffled. There could be nothing more eerie than a night
+of drifting on the Missouri, with a ghastly moon dodging in and out
+among the clouds. The strange glimmer, peculiar to the surface of the
+tawny river at night, gives it a forbidding aspect, and you seem
+surrounded by a murmuring immensity.</p>
+
+<p>We were, presumably, drifting into a great sandy bend, for we heard the
+constant booming of falling sand ahead. It was impossible to trace the
+channel, so we swung idly about with the <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a>current. Suddenly, we stopped.
+Our usual proceeding in such cases was to leap out and push the boat
+off. That night, fortunately, we were chilly, and did not fancy a
+midnight ducking. Each taking an oar, we thrust at the bar. The oars
+went down to the grip in quicksand. Had we leaped out as usual, there
+would have been two burials that night without the customary singing.</p>
+
+<p>We rocked the boat without result. We were trapped; so we smoked awhile,
+thought about the matter, and decided to go to bed. In the morning we
+would fasten on our cork belts and reach shore&mdash;perhaps. Having reached
+shore, we would find a stray skiff and go on. But the <i>Atom II</i> seemed
+booked for a long wait on that quicksand bar.</p>
+
+<p>During the night a violent shaking of the boat awakened us. A heavy wind
+was blowing, and the prow of the boat was swinging about. It soon
+stopped with a chug. We stood up and rocked the boat vigorously. It
+broke loose again, and swung half-way around. Continuing this for a
+half-hour, we finally drifted into deep water.</p>
+
+<p>The next day we passed Cannon Ball River, and reached Standing Rock
+Agency in the late evening. Sitting Bull is buried there. After a late
+supper, we went in search of his grave. We found <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>it after much lighting
+of matches at headstones, in a weed-grown corner of the Agency
+burying-ground. A slab of wood, painted white, bears the following
+inscription in black: "In Memory of Sitting Bull. Died Dec. 15, 1890."</p>
+
+<p>Perched upon the ill-kept grave, we smoked for an hour under the flying
+moon. A dog howled somewhere off in the gloomy waste.</p>
+
+<p>That night the Erinnyes, in the form of a swarm of mosquitoes, attacked
+us lying in our boat. The weary Kid rolled and swore till dawn, when a
+light wind sprang up <i>astern</i>. We hoisted our sail, and for one whole
+day cruised merrily, making sixty miles by sunset. This took us to the
+town of Mobridge.</p>
+
+<p>I was charmed with the novelty of driving our old enemy in harness. So,
+letting the Kid go to sleep forward under the sail, I cruised on into
+the night. The wind had fallen somewhat, but it kept the canvas filled.
+The crooning of the water, the rustling of the sail, the thin voices of
+bugs on shore, and the guttural song of the frogs, shocking the general
+quiet&mdash;these sounds only intensified the weird calm of the night. The
+sky was cloudless, and the moon shone so brightly that I wrote my day's
+notes by its glow.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a></p>
+
+<p>The winking lights of Mobridge slowly dropped astern and faded into the
+glimmering mist.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lonely seamen all the night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sail astonished amid stars.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The remembered lines gave me the divine itch for quoting verses. I did
+so, until the poor tired Kid swore drowsily in his sleep under the mast.
+The air was of that invigorating coolness that makes you think of cider
+in its sociable stage of incipient snappiness. Sleepy dogs bayed far
+away. Lone trees approached me, the motion seeming to belong to them
+rather than to me, and drifted slowly past&mdash;austere spectral figures.
+Somewhere about midnight I fell asleep and was awakened by a flapping
+sail and a groaning mast, to find myself sprawling over the wheel. The
+wind had changed; it was once more blowing up-stream, and a drizzling
+rain was driving through the gloom. During my sleep the boat had gone
+ashore. I moored her to a drift log, lowered sail, flung a tarp over us,
+and went to sleep again. And the morning came&mdash;blanketed with gray
+oozing fog. The greater part of that day we rowed on in the rain without
+a covering. In the evening we reached Forest City, an odd little old
+town, <a name="Page_192-f" id="Page_192-f"></a><a name="Page_193-f" id="Page_193-f"></a>
+<a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>looking wistfully across stream at the youthful red and white
+government buildings of the Cheyenne Agency.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image39" id="image39"></a>
+<a href="images/img39-full.jpg"><img src="images/img39.jpg" width="500" height="298" alt="The Yankton Landing in the Old Days." title="The Yankton Landing in the Old Days." /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Yankton Landing in the Old Days.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="image40" id="image40"></a>
+<a href="images/img40-full.jpg"><img src="images/img40.jpg" width="500" height="292" alt="&quot;Atom II&quot; Landing at Sioux City." title="&quot;Atom II&quot; Landing at Sioux City." /></a>
+<span class="caption">&quot;Atom II&quot; Landing at Sioux City.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Despite its name, this town is utterly treeless! I once knew a
+particularly awkward, homely, and freckled young lady named "Lily." The
+circumstance always seemed grimly humorous to me, and I remembered it as
+we strolled through the town that couldn't live up to its name.</p>
+
+<p>We were ravenously hungry, and as soon as possible we got our feet under
+the table of the town's dingy restaurant. A long, lean man came to take
+our orders. He was a walking picture of that condition known to patent
+medicine as "before taking." I looked for the fat, cheerful person who
+should illustrate the effect of eating at that place, but in vain. When
+the lean man reappeared with the two orders carefully tucked away in the
+palms of his bony hands, I thought I grasped the etiology of his
+thinness. It was indeed a frugal repast. We took in the situation at a
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Please consider us four hearty men, if you will," I said kindly; "and
+bring two more meals." The man obeyed. My <i>third</i> order, it seems, met
+objections from the cook. The lean man, after a <a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>half audible colloquy
+with the presiding spirit of the kitchen, reported with a whipped
+expression that the house was "all out of grub." I regretted the matter
+very much, as I had looked forward to a long, unbroken series of meals
+that evening.</p>
+
+<p>Setting out at moonrise, just after sunset, we reached Pascal Island,
+fifteen miles below, before sleep came upon us in a manner not to be
+resisted. All night coyotes yelped from the hilltops about us,
+recounting their immemorial sorrows to the wandering moon.</p>
+
+<p>At sunset of the fifth day from Bismarck, we pulled in at Pierre.
+Although I had never been there before, Carthage was not more hospitable
+to storm-tossed &AElig;neas than Pierre to the weather-beaten crew of the
+<i>Atom</i>. At a reception given us by Mr. Doane Robinson, secretary of the
+State Historical Society, I felt again the warmth of the great heart of
+the West.</p>
+
+<p>During the first night out of Pierre, the Kid, having stood his watch,
+called me at about one o'clock. The moon was sailing high. I grasped the
+oars and fell to rowing with a resolute swing, meaning, in the shortest
+possible time, to wear off the disagreeable stupor incident to arising
+at that time of night. I had been rowing for some <a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>time when I noted a
+tree on the bank near which the current ran. Still drowsy, I turned my
+head away and pulled with a will. After another spell of energetic
+rowing, I looked astern, expecting to see that tree at least a mile
+behind. There was no tree in sight, and yet I could see in that
+direction with sufficient clearness to discern the bulk of a tree if any
+were there.</p>
+
+<p>"I am rowing to beat the devil!" thought I; "that tree is away around
+the bend already!" So I increased the speed and length of my stroke, and
+began to come out of my stupor. Some time later, I happened to look
+behind me. <i>The tree in question was about three hundred yards ahead of
+the boat!</i> I had been rowing up-stream for at least a half-hour in a
+strenuous race with that tree! The Kid, aroused by my laughter, asked
+sleepily what in thunder tickled me. I told him I had merely thought of
+a funny story; whereat he mumbled some <a name="unintelligble" id="unintelligble"></a>
+<ins class="correction" title="unintelligible">unintelligble</ins> anathema, and
+lapsed again into a snoring state. But I claim the distinction of being
+the only man on record who ever raced a half-hour with a tree, and
+finished three city blocks to the bad!</p>
+
+<p>The next day we rounded the great loop, in which the river makes a
+detour of thirty miles.<a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a> Having rowed the greater part of the day, we
+found ourselves in the evening only two or three miles from a point we
+had reached in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>In a drizzling rain we passed Brule Agency. In the evening, soppy and
+chilled, we were pulling past a tumble-down shanty built under the
+bluffs, when a man stepped from the door and hailed us. We pulled in.
+"You fellers looks like you needed a drink of booze," said the man as we
+stepped ashore. "Well, I got it for sale, and it ain't no harm to
+advertise!"</p>
+
+<p>This strenuous liquor merchant bore about him all the wretched marks of
+the stuff he sold.</p>
+
+<p>"Have your wife cook us two meals," said I, "and I'll deal with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Jump in my boat," said he. I got in his skiff, wondering what his whim
+might mean. After several strokes of the oars, he pulled a flask from
+his pocket, took my coin and rowed back to shore. "Government license,"
+he explained; "got to sell thirty feet from the bank." "Poor old
+Government," thought I; "they beat you wherever they deal with you!"</p>
+
+<p>We went up to the wretched shanty, built of driftwood, and entered. The
+interior was a m&ecirc;l&eacute;e of washtubs, rickety chairs, babies, and flies. The
+<a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>woman of the house hung out a ragged smile upon her puckered mouth,
+etched at the lips with many thin lines of worry, and aped hospitality
+in a manner at once pathetic and ridiculous. A little girl, who looked
+fifty or five, according to how you observed her, dexterously dodged the
+drip from the cracks in the roof, as she backed away into a corner, from
+whence she regarded us with eyes already saddened with the ache of life.</p>
+
+<p>After many days and nights in the great open, fraternizing with the
+stars and the moon and the sun and the river, it gave me a heartache to
+have the old bitter human fact thrust upon me again. "What is there left
+here to live for?" thought I. And just then I noted, hanging on the wall
+where the water did not drip, a neatly framed marriage certificate. This
+was the one attempt at decoration.</p>
+
+<p>It was the household's 'scutcheon of respectability. This woman, even in
+her degradation, true to the noblest instinct of her sex, clung to this
+holy record of a faded glory.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later, pushing on in the starlit night, we heard ahead the
+sullen boom of waters in turmoil. For a half-hour, as we proceeded, the
+sound increased, until it seemed close under our <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>prow. We knew there
+was no cataract in the entire lower portion of the river; and yet, only
+from a waterfall had I ever heard a sound like that. We pulled for the
+shore, and went to bed with the sinister booming under our bow.</p>
+
+<p>Waking in the gray dawn, we found ourselves at the mouth of the Niobrara
+River. Though a small stream compared with the Missouri, so great is its
+speed, and so tremendous the impact of its flood, that the mightier, but
+less impetuous Missouri is driven back a quarter of a mile.</p>
+
+<p>Reaching Springfield&mdash;twelve miles below&mdash;before breakfast, in the
+evening we lifted Yankton out of a cloud of flying sand. The next day
+Vermilion and Elk Point dropped behind; and then, thirty miles of the
+two thousand remained.</p>
+
+<p>In the weird hour just before the first faint streak of dawn grows out
+of dark, we were making coffee&mdash;the last outdoor coffee of the year. Oh,
+the ambrosial stuff!</p>
+
+<p>We were under way when the stars paled. At sunrise the smoke of Sioux
+City was waving huge ragged arms of welcome out of the southeast. At
+noon we landed. We had rowed fourteen hundred miles against almost
+continual head winds in a month, and we had finished our two thousand
+<a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>miles in two months. It was hard work. And <span class="nowrap">yet&mdash;&mdash;</span></p>
+
+<p>The clang of the trolleys, the rumble of the drays, the rushing of the
+people!</p>
+
+<p>I prefer the drifting of the stars, the wandering of the moon, the
+coming and going of the sun, the crooning of the river, the shout of the
+big, manly, devil-may-care winds, the boom of the diving beaver in the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>I never felt at home in a town. Up river when the night dropped over me,
+somehow I always felt comfortably, kindly housed. Towns, after all, are
+machines to facilitate getting psychically lost.</p>
+
+<p>When I started for the head of navigation a friend asked me what I
+expected to find on the trip. "Some more of myself," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>And, after all, that is the Great Discovery.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><a name="Note" id="Note"></a>Transcriber's Note:</p>
+
+<p>The original text has a number of typographical errors and spelling
+inconsistencies, which have been maintained in this text. The following
+list details these errors:</p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="Typographical Errors">
+<tr><td valign="bottom">Original<br />
+Page No.</td>   <td valign="bottom">Typographical error</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4</td> <td><a href="#marvelled">marvelled</a> for marveled</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;8</td> <td><a href="#tighen">tighen</a> for tighten</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;9</td> <td><a href="#Danubes">Danube's</a> for Danubes</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;14</td> <td>"... <a href="#that">to me that Theseus.</a> ..." "that" should read "than"</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;24</td> <td><a href="#pealing">pealing</a> for peeling</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;32</td> <td><a href="#terriffic1">terriffic</a> for terrific</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;47</td> <td><a href="#lamp">lamp</a> for lamb</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;60</td> <td><a href="#egshell">egshell</a> for eggshell<br />
+           <a href="#terriffic2">terriffic</a> for terrific</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;61</td> <td><a href="#inded">inded</a> for indeed</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;66</td> <td><a href="#ride">ride</a> for pride</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;70</td> <td><a href="#voluntered">voluntered</a> for volunteered</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;78</td> <td><a href="#sad">sad</a> for said</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;92</td> <td><a href="#intelligble">intelligble</a> for intelligible</td></tr>
+<tr><td>109</td> <td><a href="#gunwhale">gunwhale</a> for gunwale</td></tr>
+<tr><td>119</td> <td><a href="#of">"I was tired cranking."</a> for "I was tired of cranking."</td></tr>
+<tr><td>131</td> <td><a href="#tenson">tenson</a> for tension</td></tr>
+<tr><td>166</td> <td><a href="#Kansis">Kansis</a> for Kansas</td></tr>
+<tr><td>171</td> <td><a href="#skulled">skulled</a> for sculled</td></tr>
+<tr><td>180</td> <td><a href="#Thirce">Thirce</a> for Thrice</td></tr>
+<tr><td>195</td> <td><a href="#unintelligble">unintelligble</a> for unintelligible</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>Inconsistent spellings</p>
+
+<p>cross-cut / crosscut<br />
+Encleadus / Enceladus<br />
+f&aelig;rie / fa&euml;rie<br />
+half-way / halfway<br />
+Hole-in-the-Wall / Hole-in-the-wall<br />
+log-book / logbook<br />
+mid-stream / midstream<br />
+sand-bar / sandbar<br />
+"Texas" / Texas<br />
+wind-like / windlike</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The River and I, by John G. Neihardt
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The River and I, by John G. Neihardt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The River and I
+
+Author: John G. Neihardt
+
+Release Date: October 3, 2005 [EBook #16793]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVER AND I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Julia Miller and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note: Typographical errors and inconsistent spellings
+found in the original publication have been maintained in this text. A
+list of these is found at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER AND I
+
+
+
+
+_Other Books by_
+JOHN G. NEIHARDT
+
+INDIAN TALES AND OTHERS
+POETIC VALUES
+THE QUEST
+THE SONG OF HUGH GLASS
+THE SONG OF THE INDIAN WARS
+THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS
+THE SPLENDID WAYFARING
+TWO MOTHERS
+COLLECTED POEMS
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: NIGHT IN CAMP.]
+
+
+
+
+                 THE
+              RIVER AND
+                  I
+
+
+
+
+                  BY
+           JOHN G. NEIHARDT
+
+
+
+
+             _Illustrated
+              New Edition_
+
+
+
+
+               New York
+         THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+                 1927
+         _All rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+           COPYRIGHT, 1910,
+         BY JOHN G. NEIHARDT.
+
+       Set up and electrotyped.
+Reissued in new format, October, 1927.
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+         BY THE CORNWALL PRESS
+
+
+
+
+                  TO
+               MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+The following account of a youthful adventure was written during the
+winter of 1908, ran as a serial in _Putnam's Magazine_ the following
+year, and appeared as a book in 1910, five years before "The Song of
+Hugh Glass," the first piece of my Western Cycle. Many who have cared
+for my narrative poems, feeling the relation between those and this
+earlier avowal of an old love, have urged that "The River and I" be
+reprinted.
+
+J.G.N.
+
+St. Louis, 1927.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                          PAGE
+   I. THE RIVER OF AN UNWRITTEN EPIC                1
+
+  II. SIXTEEN MILES OF AWE                         22
+
+ III. HALF-WAY TO THE MOON                         40
+
+  IV. MAKING A GETAWAY                             65
+
+   V. THROUGH THE REGION OF WEIR                   84
+
+  VI. GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS                    113
+
+ VII. ON TO THE YELLOWSTONE                       137
+
+VIII. DOWN FROM THE YELLOWSTONE                   165
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Night in Camp                               _Frontispiece_
+                                              FACING PAGE
+"Off on the Perilous Floods"                        6
+Barriers Formed before Him                          7
+The Boats Wrecked in an Ice Gorge                   7
+After the Spring Break-Up                          18
+"Hole-in-the-Wall" Rock on the Upper Missouri      19
+Palisades of the Upper Missouri                    19
+Great Falls from Cliff Above                       30
+Great Falls from the Front                         31
+"This was Benton"                                  52
+Ruins of Old Fort Benton                           52
+The House of the Bourgeois                         53
+A Round-Up Outfit on the March                     62
+Joe                                                62
+Montana Sheep                                      63
+A Montana Wool-Freighter                           63
+The "Atom I" under Construction                    74
+The Cable Ferry Towed Us Out                       74
+Laid Up with a Broken Rudder                       75
+"Atom" Sailing Up-Stream in a Head Wind            86
+Typical Rapids on Upper Missouri                   87
+Wolf Point, the First Town in 500 Miles            98
+Entrance to the Bad Lands                          99
+Fresh Meat!                                       110
+Supper!                                           111
+"Walking" Boats over Shallows                     126
+Typical Upper Missouri River Reach                126
+The Mouth of the James                            127
+Reveille!                                         142
+The Pen and Key Ranch                             143
+Assiniboine Indian Chief                          154
+Assiniboine Indian Camp                           155
+On the Hurricane Deck of the "Expansion";
+    Capt. Marsh Third from the Left               166
+Fort Union in 1837                                167
+Site of Old Fort Union                            167
+Boats Laid Up for the Winter at Washburn, N.D.    178
+Washburn, N.D.                                    178
+The Landing at Bismarck, N.D.                     179
+The Yankton Landing in the Old Days               192
+"Atom II" Landing at Sioux City                   193
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER AND I
+
+
+
+
+THE RIVER AND I
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RIVER OF AN UNWRITTEN EPIC
+
+
+It was Carlyle--was it not?--who said that all great works produce an
+unpleasant impression on first acquaintance. It is so with the Missouri
+River. Carlyle was not, I think, speaking of rivers; but he was speaking
+of masterpieces--and so am I.
+
+It makes little difference to me whether or not an epic goes at a
+hexameter gallop through the ages, or whether it chooses to be a flood
+of muddy water, ripping out a channel from the mountains to the sea. It
+is merely a matter of how the great dynamic force shall express itself.
+
+I have seen trout streams that I thought were better lyrics than I or
+any of my fellows can ever hope to create. I have heard the moaning of
+rain winds among mountain pines that struck me as being equal, at least,
+to _Adonais_. I have seen the solemn rearing of a mountain peak into the
+pale dawn that gave me a deep religious appreciation of my significance
+in the Grand Scheme, as though I had heard and understood a parable from
+the holy lips of an Avatar. And the vast plains of my native country are
+as a mystic scroll unrolled, scrawled with a cabalistic writ of infinite
+things.
+
+In the same sense, I have come to look upon the Missouri as something
+more than a stream of muddy water. It gave me my first big boy dreams.
+It was my ocean. I remember well the first time I looked upon my
+turbulent friend, who has since become as a brother to me. It was from a
+bluff at Kansas City. I know I must have been a very little boy, for the
+terror I felt made me reach up to the saving forefinger of my father,
+lest this insane devil-thing before me should suddenly develop an
+unreasoning hunger for little boys. My father seemed as tall as
+Alexander--and quite as courageous. He seemed to fear it almost not at
+all. And I should have felt little surprise had he taken me in his arms
+and stepped easily over that mile or so of liquid madness. He talked
+calmly about it--quite calmly. He explained at what angle one should
+hold one's body in the current, and how one should conduct one's legs
+and arms in the whirlpools, providing one should swim across.
+
+_Swim across!_ Why, it took a giant even to talk that way! For the
+summer had smitten the distant mountains, and the June floods ran. Far
+across the yellow swirl that spread out into the wooded bottom-lands, we
+watched the demolition of a little town. The siege had reached the
+proper stage for a sally, and the attacking forces were howling over the
+walls. The sacking was in progress. Shacks, stores, outhouses suddenly
+developed a frantic desire to go to St. Louis. It was a weird retreat in
+very bad order. A cottage with a garret window that glared like the eye
+of a Cyclops, trembled, rocked with the athletic lift of the flood, made
+a panicky plunge into a convenient tree; groaned, dodged, and took off
+through the brush like a scared cottontail. I felt a boy's pity and
+sympathy for those houses that got up and took to their legs across the
+yellow waste. It did not seem fair. I have since experienced the same
+feeling for a jack-rabbit with the hounds a-yelp at its heels.
+
+But--to _swim_ this thing! To fight this cruel, invulnerable, resistless
+giant that went roaring down the world with a huge uprooted oak tree in
+its mouth for a toothpick! This yellow, sinuous beast with hell-broth
+slavering from its jaws! This dare-devil boy-god that sauntered along
+with a town in its pocket, and a steepled church under its arm for a
+moment's toy! Swim _this_?
+
+For days I marvelled at the magnificence of being a fullgrown man,
+unafraid of big rivers.
+
+But the first sight of the Missouri River was not enough for me. There
+was a dreadful fascination about it--the fascination of all huge and
+irresistible things. I had caught my first wee glimpse into the
+infinite; I was six years old.
+
+Many a lazy Sunday stroll took us back to the river; and little by
+little the dread became less, and the wonder grew--and a little love
+crept in. In my boy heart I condoned its treachery and its giant sins.
+For, after all, it sinned through excess of strength, not through
+weakness. And that is the eternal way of virile things. We watched the
+steamboats loading for what seemed to me far distant ports. (How the
+world shrinks!) A double stream of "roosters" coming and going at a
+dog-trot rushed the freight aboard; and at the foot of the gang-plank
+the mate swore masterfully while the perspiration dripped from the point
+of his nose.
+
+And then--the raucous whistles blew. They reminded me of the lions
+roaring at the circus. The gang-plank went up, the hawsers went in. The
+snub nose of the steamer swung out with a quiet majesty. Now she feels
+the urge of the flood, and yields herself to it, already dwindled to
+half her size. The pilot turns his wheel--he looks very big and quiet
+and masterful up there. The boat veers round; bells jangle. And now the
+engine wakens in earnest. She breathes with spurts of vapor!
+
+Breathed? No, it was sighing; for about it all clung an inexplicable
+sadness for me--the sadness that clings about all strong and beautiful
+things that must leave their moorings and go very, very far away. (I
+have since heard it said that river boats are not beautiful!) My throat
+felt as though it had smoke in it. I felt that this queenly thing really
+wanted to stay; for far down the muddy swirl where she dwindled,
+dwindled, I heard her sobbing hoarsely.
+
+Off on the perilous flood for "faerie lands forlorn"! It made the world
+seem almost empty and very lonesome.
+
+And then the dog-days came, and I saw my river tawny, sinewy, gaunt--a
+half-starved lion. The long dry bars were like the protruding ribs of
+the beast when the prey is scarce, and the ropy main current was like
+the lean, terrible muscles of its back.
+
+In the spring it had roared; now it only purred. But all the while I
+felt in it a dreadful economy of force, just as I have since felt it in
+the presence of a great lean jungle-cat at the zoo. Here was a thing
+that crouched and purred--a mewing but terrific thing. Give it an
+obstacle to overcome--fling it something to devour; and lo! the crushing
+impact of its leap!
+
+And then again I saw it lying very quietly in the clutch of a bitter
+winter--an awful hush upon it, and the white cerement of the snow flung
+across its face. And yet, this did not seem like death; for still one
+felt in it the subtle influence of a tremendous personality. It slept,
+but sleeping it was still a giant. It seemed that at any moment the
+sleeper might turn over, toss the white cover aside and, yawning,
+saunter down the valley with its thunderous seven-league boots. And
+still, back and forth across this heavy sleeper went the pigmy wagons of
+the farmers taking corn to market!
+
+[Illustration: "OFF ON THE PERILOUS FLOODS."]
+
+[Illustration: BARRIERS FORMED BEFORE HIM.]
+
+[Illustration: THE BOATS WRECKED IN AN ICE GORGE.]
+
+But one day in March the far-flung arrows of the geese went over. _Honk!
+honk!_ A vague, prophetic sense crept into the world out of
+nowhere--part sound, part scent, and yet too vague for either. Sap
+seeped from the maples. Weird mist-things went moaning through the
+night. And then, for the first time, I saw my big brother win a fight!
+
+For days, strange premonitory noises had run across the shivering
+surface of the ice. Through the foggy nights, a muffled intermittent
+booming went on under the wild scurrying stars. Now and then a staccato
+crackling ran up the icy reaches of the river, like the sequent
+bickering of Krags down a firing line. Long seams opened in the
+disturbed surface, and from them came a harsh sibilance as of a line of
+cavalry unsheathing sabres.
+
+But all the while, no show of violence--only the awful quietness with
+deluge potential in it. The lion was crouching for the leap.
+
+Then one day under the warm sun a booming as of distant big guns began.
+Faster and louder came the dull shaking thunders, and passed swiftly up
+and down, drawling into the distance. Fissures yawned, and the sound of
+the grumbling black water beneath came up. Here and there the surface
+lifted--bent--broke with shriekings, groanings, thunderings. And
+then----
+
+The giant turned over, yawned and got to his feet, flinging his arms
+about him! Barriers formed before him. Confidently he set his massive
+shoulders against them--smashed them into little blocks, and went on
+singing, shouting, toward the sea. It was a glorious victory. It made me
+very proud of my big brother. And yet all the while I dreaded him--just
+as I dread the caged tiger that I long to caress because he is so strong
+and so beautiful.
+
+Since then I have changed somewhat, though I am hardly as tall, and
+certainly not so courageous as Alexander. But I have felt the sinews of
+the old yellow giant tighen about my naked body. I have been bent upon
+his hip. I have presumed to throw against his Titan strength the craft
+of man. I have often swum in what seemed liquid madness to my boyhood.
+And we have become acquainted through battle. No friends like fair foes
+reconciled!
+
+And I have been panting on his bars, while all about me went the lisping
+laughter of my brother. For he has the strength of a god, the headlong
+temper of a comet; but along with these he has the glad, mad,
+irresponsible spirit of a boy. Thus ever are the epic things.
+
+The Missouri is unique among rivers. I think God wished to teach the
+beauty of a virile soul fighting its way toward peace--and His precept
+was the Missouri. To me, the Amazon is a basking alligator; the Tiber is
+a dream of dead glory; the Rhine is a fantastic fairy-tale; the Nile a
+mummy, periodically resurrected; the Mississippi, a convenient
+geographical boundary line; the Hudson, an epicurean philosopher.
+
+But the Missouri--my brother--is the eternal Fighting Man!
+
+I love things that yearn toward far seas: the singing Tennysonian brooks
+that flow by "Philip's farm" but "go on forever"; the little Ik Walton
+rivers, where one may "study to be quiet and go a-fishing"! The
+Babylonian streams by which we have all pined in captivity; the
+sentimental Danube's which we can never forget because of "that night in
+June"; and at a very early age I had already developed a decent respect
+for the verbose manner in which the "waters come down at Lodore."
+
+But the Missouri is more than a sentiment--even more than an epic. It is
+the symbol of my own soul, which is, I surmise, not unlike other souls.
+In it I see flung before me all the stern world-old struggle become
+materialized. Here is the concrete representation of the earnest desire,
+the momentarily frustrate purpose, the beating at the bars, the
+breathless fighting of the half-whipped but never-to-be-conquered
+spirit, the sobbing of the wind-broken runner, the anger, the madness,
+the laughter. And in it all the unwearying urge of a purpose, the
+unswerving belief in the peace of a far away ocean.
+
+If in a moment of despair I should reel for a breathing space away from
+the fight, with no heart for battle-cries, and with only a desire to
+pray, I could do it in no better manner than to lift my arms above the
+river and cry out into the big spaces: "You who somehow
+understand--behold this river! It expresses what is voiceless in me. It
+prays for me!"
+
+Not only in its physical aspect does the Missouri appeal to the
+imagination. From Three Forks to its mouth--a distance of three thousand
+miles--this zigzag watercourse is haunted with great memories. Perhaps
+never before in the history of the world has a river been the
+thoroughfare of a movement so tremendously epic in its human appeal, so
+vastly significant in its relation to the development of man. And in the
+building of the continent Nature fashioned well the scenery for the
+great human story that was to be enacted here in the fullness of years.
+She built her stage on a large scale, taking no account of miles; for
+the coming actors were to be big men, mighty travelers, intrepid
+fighters, laughers at time and space. Plains limited only by the rim of
+sky; mountains severe, huge, tragic as fate; deserts for the trying of
+strong spirits; grotesque volcanic lands--dead, utterly
+ultra-human--where athletic souls might struggle with despair; impetuous
+streams with their rapids terrible as Scylla, where men might go down
+fighting: thus Nature built the stage and set the scenes. And that the
+arrangements might be complete, she left a vast tract unfinished, where
+still the building of the world goes on--a place of awe in which to feel
+the mighty Doer of Things at work. Indeed, a setting vast and weird
+enough for the coming epic. And as the essence of all story is struggle,
+tribes of wild fighting men grew up in the land to oppose the coming
+masters; and over the limitless wastes swept the blizzards.
+
+I remember when I first read the words of Vergil beginning _Ubi tot
+Simois_, "where the Simois rolls along so many shields and helmets and
+strong bodies of brave men snatched beneath its floods." The far-seeing
+sadness of the lines thrilled me; for it was not of the little stream of
+the _AEneid_ that I thought while the Latin professor quizzed me as to
+constructions, but of that great river of my own epic country--the
+Missouri. Was I unfair to old Vergil, think you? As for me, I think I
+flattered him a bit! And in this modern application, the ancient lines
+ring true. For the Missouri from Great Falls to its mouth is one long
+grave of men and boats. And such men!
+
+It is a time-honored habit to look back through the ages for the epic
+things. Modern affairs seem a bit commonplace to some of us. A horde of
+semi-savages tears down a town in order to avenge the theft of a
+faithless wife who was probably no better than she should have been--and
+we have the _Iliad_. A petty king sets sail for his native land, somehow
+losing himself ten years among the isles of Greece--and we have the
+_Odyssey_. (I would back a Missouri River "rat" to make the distance in
+a row boat within a few months!) An Argive captain returns home after an
+absence of ten years to find his wife interested overmuch in a friend
+who went not forth to battle; a wrangle ensues; the tender spouse
+finishes her lord with an axe--and you have the _Agamemnon_. (To-day we
+should merely have a sensational trial, and hysterical scareheads in the
+newspapers.) Such were the ancient stories that move us all--sordid
+enough, be sure, when you push them hard for fact. But time and genius
+have glorified them. Not the deeds, but Homer and AEschylus and the
+hallowing years are great.
+
+We no longer write epics--we live them. To create an epic, it has been
+said somewhere, the poet must write with the belief that the immortal
+gods are looking over his shoulder.
+
+We no longer prostrate ourselves before the immortal gods. We have long
+since discovered the divinity within ourselves, and so we have flung
+across the continents and the seas the visible epics of will.
+
+The history of the American fur trade alone makes the Trojan War look
+like a Punch and Judy show! and the Missouri River was the path of the
+conquerors. We have the facts--but we have not Homer.
+
+An epic story in its essence is the story of heroic men battling, aided
+or frustrated by the superhuman. And in the fur trade era there was no
+dearth of battling men, and the elements left no lack of superhuman
+obstacles.
+
+I am more thrilled by the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition than
+by the tale of Jason. John Colter, wandering three years in the
+wilderness and discovering the Yellowstone Park, is infinitely more
+heroic to me that Theseus. Alexander Harvey makes AEneas look like a
+degenerate. It was Harvey, you know, who fell out with the powers at
+Fort Union, with the result that he was ordered to report at the
+American Fur Company's office at St. Louis before he could be reinstated
+in the service. This was at Christmas time--Christmas of a Western
+winter. The distance was seventeen hundred miles, as the crow flies.
+"Give me a dog to carry my blankets," said he, "and by God I'll report
+before the ice goes out!" He started afoot through the hostile tribes
+and blizzards. He reported at St. Louis early in March, returning to
+Union by the first boat out that year. And when he arrived at the Fort,
+he called out the man who was responsible for the trouble, and quietly
+killed him. That is the stern human stuff with which you build realms.
+What could not Homer do with such a man? And when one follows him
+through his recorded career, even Achilles seems a bit ladylike beside
+him!
+
+The killing of Carpenter by his treacherous friend, Mike Fink, would
+easily make a whole book of hexameters--with a nice assortment of gods
+and goddesses thrown in. There was a woman in the case--a half-breed.
+Well, this half-breed woman fascinates me quite as much as she whose
+face "launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium"!
+In ancient times the immortal gods scourged nations for impieties; and,
+as we read, we feel the black shadow of inexorable fate moving through
+the terrific gloom of things. But the smallpox scourge that broke out at
+Fort Union in 1837, sweeping with desolation through the prairie tribes,
+moves me more than the storied catastrophes of old. It was a Reign of
+Terror. Even Larpenteur's bald statement of it fills me with the fine
+old Greek sense of fate. Men sickened at dawn and were dead at sunset.
+Every day a cartload or two of corpses went over the bluff into the
+river; and men became reckless. Larpenteur and his friend joked daily
+about the carting of the gruesome freight. They felt the irresistible,
+and they laughed at it, since struggle was out of the question. Some
+drank deeply and indulged in hysterical orgies. Some hollowed out their
+own graves and waited patiently beside them for the hidden hand to
+strike. At least fifteen thousand died--Audubon says one hundred and
+fifty thousand; and the buffalo increased rapidly--because the hunters
+were few.
+
+Would not such a story--here briefly sketched--move old Sophocles?
+
+The story of the half-breed woman--a giantess--who had a dozen sons, has
+about it for me all the glamour of an ancient yarn. The sons were
+free-trappers, you know, and, incidentally, thieves and murderers. (I
+suspect some of our classic heroes were as much!) But they were
+doubtless living up to the light that was in them, and they were game to
+the finish. So was the old woman; they called her "the mother of the
+devils." Trappers from the various posts organized to hunt them down,
+and the mother and the sons barricaded their home. The fight was a hard
+one. One by one the "devils" fell fighting about their mother. And then
+the besieging party fired the house. With all her sons wounded or dead,
+the old woman sallied forth. She fought like a grizzly and went down
+like a heroine.
+
+A sordid, brutal story? Ah, but it was life! Fling about this story of
+savage mother-love the glamour of time and genius, and it will move you!
+
+And the story of old Hugh Glass! Is it not fateful enough to be the
+foundation of a tremendous AEschylean drama? A big man he was--old and
+bearded. A devil to fight, a giant to endure, and an angel to forgive!
+He was in the Leavenworth campaign against the Aricaras, and afterward
+he went as a hunter with the Henry expedition. He had a friend--a mere
+boy--and these two were very close. One day Glass, who was in advance of
+the party, beating up the country for game, fell in with a grizzly; and
+when the main party came up, he lay horribly mangled with the bear
+standing over him. They killed the bear, but the old man seemed done
+for; his face had all the features scraped off, and one of his legs went
+wabbly when they lifted him.
+
+It was merely a matter of one more man being dead, so the expedition
+pushed on, leaving the young friend with several others to see the old
+man under ground. But the old man was a fighter and refused to die,
+though he was unconscious: held on stubbornly for several days, but it
+seemed plain enough that he would have to let go soon. So the young
+friend and the others left the old man in the wilderness to finish up
+the job by himself. They took his weapons and hastened after the main
+party, for the country was hostile.
+
+But one day old Glass woke up and got one of his eyes open. And when he
+saw how things stood, he swore to God he would live, merely for the sake
+of killing his false friend. He crawled to a spring near by, where he
+found a bush of ripe bull-berries. He waited day after day for strength,
+and finally started out to _crawl_ a small matter of one hundred miles
+to the nearest fort. And he did it, too! Also he found his friend after
+much wandering--and forgave him.
+
+Fancy AEschylus working up that story with the Furies for a chorus and
+Nemesis appearing at intervals to nerve the old hero!
+
+[Illustration: AFTER THE SPRING BREAK-UP.]
+
+[Illustration: "HOLE-IN-THE-WALL" ON THE UPPER MISSOURI.]
+
+[Illustration: PALISADES OF THE UPPER MISSOURI.]
+
+And Rose the Renegade, who became the chief of a powerful tribe of
+Indians! And Father de Smet, one of the noblest figures in history,
+carrying the gospel into the wilderness! And Le Barge, the famous pilot,
+whose biography reads like a romance! In the history of the Missouri
+River there were hundreds of these heroes, these builders of the epic
+West. Some of them were violent at times; some were good men and some
+were bad. But they were masterful always. They met obstacles and
+overcame them. They struck their foes in front. They thirsted in
+deserts, hungered in the wilderness, froze in the blizzards, died with
+the plagues, and were massacred by the savages. Yet they conquered.
+Heroes of an unwritten epic! And their pathway to defeat and victory was
+the Missouri River.
+
+If you wish to have your epic spiced with the glamour of kings, the
+history of the river will not fail you; for in those days there were
+kings as well as giants in the land. Though it was not called such, all
+the blank space of the map of the Missouri River country and even to the
+Pacific, was one vast empire--the empire of the American Fur Company;
+and J.J. Astor in New York spoke the words that filled the wilderness
+with deeds. Thus democratic America once beheld within her own confines
+the paradox of an empire truly Roman in character.
+
+Here and there on the banks of the great waterway--an imperial road that
+would have delighted Caesar--many forts were built. These were the
+ganglia of that tremendous organism of which Astor was the brain. The
+bourgeois of one of these posts was virtually proconsul with absolute
+power in his territory. Mackenzie at Union--which might be called the
+capital of the Upper Missouri country--was called "King of the
+Missouri." He had an eye for seeing purple. At one time he ordered a
+complete suit of armor from England; and even went so far as to have
+medals struck, in true imperial fashion, to be distributed among his
+loyal followers.
+
+Far and wide these Western American kings flung the trappers, their
+subjects, into the wilderness. Verily, in the unwritten "Missouriad"
+there is no lack of regal glamour.
+
+The ancients had a way of making vast things small enough to be
+familiar. They make gods of the elements, and natural phenomena became
+to them the awful acts of the gods.
+
+These moderns made no gods of the elements--they merely conquered them!
+The ancients idealized the material. These moderns materialized the
+ideal. The latter method is much more appealing to me--an American--than
+the former. I love the ancient stories; but it is for the modern
+marvellous facts that I reserve my admiration.
+
+When one looks upon his own country as from a height of years, old tales
+lose something of their wonder for him. It is owing to this attitude
+that the prospect of descending the great river in a power canoe from
+the head of navigation gave me delight.
+
+Days and nights filled with the singing and muttering of my big brother!
+And I would need only to close my eyes, and all about me would come and
+go the ghosts of the mighty doers--who are my kin. Big men, bearded and
+powerful, pushing up stream with the cordelle on their shoulders!
+Voyageurs chanting at the paddles! Mackinaws descending with precious
+freights of furs! Steamboats grunting and snoring up stream! Old forts
+sprung up again out of the dusk of things forgotten, with all the old
+turbulent life, where in reality to-day the plough of the farmer goes or
+the steers browse! Forgotten battles blowing by in the wind! And from a
+bluff's summit, here and there, ghostly war parties peering down upon
+me--the lesser kin of their old enemies--taking a summer's outing where
+of old went forth the fighting men, the builders of the unwritten epic!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SIXTEEN MILES OF AWE
+
+
+Our party of three left the railroad at Great Falls, a good two-days'
+walk up river from Benton, the head of Missouri River navigation, to
+which point our boat material had been shipped and our baggage checked.
+
+A vast sun-burned waste of buffalo-grass, prickly pears, and sagebrush
+stretched before us to the north and east; and on the west the filmy
+blue contour of the Highwoods Mountains lifted like sun-smitten thunder
+clouds in the July swelter. One squinting far look, however, told you
+that these were not rain clouds. The very thought of rain came to you
+with the vagueness of some birth-surviving memory of a former time. You
+looked far up and out to the westward and caught the glint of snow on
+the higher peaks. But the sight was unconvincing; it was like a story
+told without the "vital impulse." Always had these plains blistered
+under this July sun; always had the spots of alkali made the only
+whiteness; and the dry harsh snarl and snap of the grasshoppers' wings
+had pricked this torrid silence through all eternity.
+
+A stern and pitiless prospect for the amateur pedestrian, to be sure;
+for devotees of the staff and pack have come to associate pedestrianism
+with the idyllic, and the idyllic nourishes only in a land of frequent
+showers. Theocritus and prickly pears are not compatible. Yet it was not
+without a certain thrill of exaltation that we strapped on our packs and
+stretched our legs after four days on the dusty plush.
+
+And though ahead of us lay no shady, amiably crooked country roads and
+bosky dells, wherein one might lounge and dawdle over Hazlitt, yet we
+knew how crisscross cattle-trails should take us skirting down the
+river's sixteen miles of awe.
+
+Five hundred miles below its source, the falls of the Missouri begin
+with a vertical plunge of sixty feet. This is the Black Eagle Falls,
+presumably named so by Lewis and Clark and other explorers, because of
+the black eagles found there.
+
+With all due courtesy to my big surly grumbling friend, the Black Eagle
+Falls, I must say that I was a bit disappointed in him. Oh! he is quite
+magnificent enough, and every inch a Titan, to be sure; but of late
+years it seems he has taken up with company rather beneath him. First of
+all, he has gone to work in a most plebeian, almost slave-like fashion,
+turning wheels and making lights and dragging silly little trolley cars
+about a straggling town. Also, he hobnobs continually with a sprawling,
+brawling, bad-breathed smelter, as no respectable Titan should do. And
+on top of it all--and this was the straw that broke the back of my
+sentimental camel--he allows them to maintain a park on the cliffs above
+him, where the merest white-skinned, counter-jumping pigmy may come of a
+Sunday for his glass of pop and a careless squint at the toiling Titan.
+Puny Philistines eating peanuts and watching Samson at his Gaza stunt! I
+like it not. Rather would I see the Muse Clio pealing potatoes or
+Persephone busy with a banana cart! Encleadus wriggling under a mountain
+is well enough; but Enceladus composedly turning a crank for little
+men--he seemed too heavy for that light work.
+
+Leaning on the frame observation platform, I closed my eyes, and in the
+dull roar that seemed the voices of countless ages, the park and the
+smelter and the silly bustling trolley cars and the ginger-ale and the
+peanuts and my physical self--all but my own soul--were swallowed up. I
+saw my Titan brother as he was made--four hundred yards of writhing,
+liquid sinew, strenuously idle, magnificently worthless, flinging
+meaningless thunders over the vast arid plain, splendidly empty under
+sun and stars! I saw him as La Verendrye must have seen him--busy only
+at the divine business of being a giant. And for a moment behind shut
+eyes, it seemed very inconsequential to me that cranks should be turned
+and that trolley cars should run up and down precisely in the same
+place, never getting anywhere, and that there should be anything in all
+that tract but an austere black eagle or two, and my own soul, and my
+Titan brother.
+
+When I looked again, I could half imagine the old turbulent fellow
+winking slyly at me and saying in that undertone you hear when you
+forget the thunders for a moment: "Don't you worry about me, little man.
+It's all a joke, and I don't mind. Only to-morrow and then another
+to-morrow, and there won't be any smelters or trolley cars or ginger-ale
+or peanuts or sentimentalizing outers like yourself. But I'll be here
+howling under sun and stars."
+
+Whereupon I posed the toiling philosopher before the camera, pressed
+the bulb, and descended from the summit of the cliff (as well as from my
+point of view) to the trail skirting northward up the river, leaving
+Encleadus grumbling at his crank.
+
+Perhaps, after all, cranks really have to be turned. Still, it seems too
+bad, and I have long bewailed it almost as a personal grief, that
+utility and ugliness should so often be running mates.
+
+They tell me that the Matterhorn never did a tap of work; and you
+couldn't color one Easter egg with all the gorgeous sunsets of the
+world! May we all become, some day, perfectly useless and beautiful!
+
+At the foot of the first fall, a mammoth spring wells up out of the
+rock. Nobody tells you about it; you run across it by chance, and it
+interests you much more in that way. It would seem that a spring
+throwing out a stream equivalent to a river one hundred yards wide and
+two feet deep would deserve a little exploitation. Down East they would
+have a great white sprawling hotel built close by it wherein one could
+drink spring water (at a quarter the quart), with half a pathology
+pasted on the bottle as a label. But nobody seems to care much about so
+small an ooze out there: everything else is so big. And so it has
+nothing at all to do but go right on being one of the very biggest
+springs of all the world. This is really something; and I like it better
+than the quarter-per-quart idea.
+
+In sixteen miles the Missouri River falls four hundred feet.
+Incidentally, this stretch of river is said to be capable of producing
+the most tremendous water-power in the world.
+
+After skirting four miles of water that ran like a mill-race, we came
+upon the Rainbow Falls, where a thousand feet of river takes a drop of
+fifty feet over a precipice regular as a wall of masonry. This was much
+more to my liking--a million horse-power or so busy making rainbows!
+Bully!
+
+It was a very hot day and the sun was now high. I sat down to wipe the
+sweat out of my eyes. I wished to get acquainted with this weaver of
+iridescent nothings who knew so well the divine art of doing nothing at
+all and doing it good and hard! After all, it isn't so easy to do
+nothing and make it count!
+
+And in the end, when all broken lights have blended again with the
+Source Light, I'm not so sure that rainbows will seem less important
+than rows and rows of arc lights and clusters and clusters of
+incandescent globes. Are you? I can contract an indefinable sort of
+heartache from the blue sputter of a city light that snuffs out moon and
+stars for tired scurrying folks: but the opalescent mist-drift of the
+Rainbow Falls wove heavens for me in its sheen, and through its
+whirlwind rifts and crystal flaws, far reaches opened up with all the
+heart's desire at the other end. You shut your eyes with that thunder in
+your ears and that gusty mist on your face, and you see it very
+plainly--more plainly than ever so many arc lights could make you see
+it--the ultimate meaning of things. To be sure, when you open your eyes
+again, it's all gone--the storm-flung rainbows seem to hide it again.
+
+A mile below, we came upon the Crooked Falls of twenty feet. Leaving the
+left bank and running almost parallel with it for some three hundred
+yards, then turning and making a horseshoe, and returning to the right
+bank almost opposite the place of first observation, this fall is nearly
+a mile in length, being an unbroken sheet for that distance. This one,
+also, does nothing at all, and in a beautifully irregular way. Somehow
+it made me think of Walt Whitman! But we left it soon, swinging out
+into the open parched country. We knew all this turbulence to be merely
+the river's bow before the great stunt.
+
+As we swung along, kicking up the acrid alkali dust from the
+cattle-trail that snaked its way through the cactus and sagebrush, the
+roar behind us died; and before us, far away, dull muffled thunders grew
+up in the hush of the burning noon. Thunders in a desert, and no cloud!
+For an hour we swung along the trail, and ever the thunders
+increased--like the undertone of the surf when the sea whitens. We were
+approaching the Great Falls of the Missouri. There were no sign posts in
+that lonesome tract; no one of whom to ask the way. Little did we need
+direction. The voice of thunder crying in the desert led us surely.
+
+A half-hour more of clambering over shale-strewn gullies, up sun-baked
+watercourses, and we found ourselves toiling up the ragged slope of a
+bluff; and soon we stood upon a rocky ledge with the thunders beneath
+us. Damp gusts beat upward over the blistering scarp of the cliff. I lay
+down, and crawling to the edge, looked over. Two hundred feet below
+me--straight down as a pebble drops--a watery Inferno raged, and
+far-flung whirlwinds all but exhausted with the dizzy upward reach,
+whisked cool, invisible mops of mist across my face.
+
+Flung down a preliminary mile of steep descent, choked in between
+soaring walls of rock four hundred yards apart, innumerable crystal tons
+rushed down ninety feet in one magnificent plunge. You saw the long bent
+crest--shimmering with the changing colors of a peacock's back--smooth
+as a lake when all winds sleep; and then the mighty river was snuffed
+out in gulfs of angry gray. Capricious river draughts, sucking up the
+damp defile, whipped upward into the blistering sunlight gray spiral
+towers that leaped into opal fires and dissolved in showers of diamond
+and pearl and amethyst.
+
+[Illustration: GREAT FALLS FROM CLIFF ABOVE.]
+
+[Illustration: GREAT FALLS FROM THE FRONT.]
+
+I caught myself tightly gripping the ledge and shrinking with a
+shuddering instinctive fear. Then suddenly the thunders seemed to stifle
+all memory of sound--and left only the silent universe with myself and
+this terribly beautiful thing in the midst of utter emptiness. And I
+loved it with a strange, desperate, tigerish love. It expressed itself
+so magnificently; and that is really all a man, or a waterfall, or a
+mountain, or a flower, or a grasshopper, or a meadow lark, or an ocean,
+or a thunderstorm has to do in this world. And it was doing it right
+out in the middle of a desert, bleak, sun-leprosied, forbidding, with
+only the stars and the moon and the sun and a cliff-swallow or two to
+behold. Thundering out its message into the waste places, careless of
+audiences--like a Master! Bully, grizzled old Master-Bard singing--as
+most of them do--to empty benches! And it had been doing that ten
+thousand thousand years, and would do so for ten thousand thousand more,
+and never pause for plaudits. I suspect the soul of old Homer did
+that--and is still doing it, somehow, somewhere. After all there isn't
+much difference between really tremendous things--Homer or waterfalls or
+thunderstorms--is there? It's only a matter of how things happen to be
+big.
+
+I was absent-mindedly chasing some big thundering line of Sophocles when
+Bill, the little Cornishman, ran in between me and the evasive line:
+"Lord! what a waste of power!"
+
+There is some difference in temperaments. Most men, I fancy, would have
+enjoyed a talk with a civil engineer upon that ledge. I should have
+liked to have Shelley there, myself! It's the difference between poetry
+and horse-power, dithyrambics and dynamos, Keats and Kipling! What is
+the energy exerted by the Great Falls of the Missouri? How many
+horse-power did Shelley fling into the creation of his _West Wind_? How
+many foot-pounds did the boy heart of Chatterton beat before it broke?
+Something may be left to the imagination!
+
+We backtrailed to a point where the cliff fell away into a rock-strewn
+incline, and clambered down a break-neck slope to the edge of the
+crystal broil. There was a strange exhilaration about it--a novel sense
+of discovering a natural wonder for ourselves. We seemed the first men
+who had ever been there: that was the most gripping thing about it.
+
+Aloof, stupendous, terriffic, staggering in the intensity of its wild
+beauty, you reach it by a trail. There are no 'busses running and you
+can't buy a sandwich or a peanut or a glass of beer within ten miles of
+its far-flung thunders. For twentieth century America, that is doing
+rather well!
+
+Skirting the slippery rocks at the lip of the mad flood, we swung
+ourselves about a ledge, dripping with the cool mist-drift; descended to
+the level of the lower basin, where a soaking fog made us shiver; pushed
+through a dripping, oozing, autumnal sort of twilight, and came out
+again into the beat of the desert sun, to look squarely into the face of
+the giant.
+
+A hawk wheeled and swooped and floated far up in the dazzling air.
+Somehow that hawk seemed to make the lonely place doubly lonely. Did you
+ever notice how a lone coyote on a snow-heaped prairie gives you a
+heartache, whereas the empty waste would only have exhilarated you?
+Always, it seemed, that veering hawk had hung there, and would hang so
+always--outliving the rising of suns and the drifting of stars and the
+visits of the moon.
+
+A vague sense of grief came over me at the thought of all this eternal
+restlessness, this turbulent fixity; and, after all, it seemed much
+greater to be even a very little man, living largely, dying, somehow,
+into something big and new; than to be this Promethean sort of thing, a
+giant waterfall in a waste.
+
+I have known men who felt dwarfed in the presence of vast and awful
+things. I never felt bigger than when I first looked upon the ocean. The
+skyward lift of a mountain peak makes me feel very, very tall. And when
+a thunderstorm comes down upon the world out of the northwest, with
+jagged blades of fire ripping up the black bellies of the clouds, I know
+all about the heart of Attila and the Vikings and tigers and Alexander
+the Great! So I think I grew a bit out there talking to that water-giant
+who does nothing at all--not even a vaudeville stunt--and does it so
+masterfully.
+
+By and by they'll build a hotel in the flat at the edge of the lower
+basin; plant prim flowers in very prim beds; and rob you on the genteel
+European plan. Comfortably sitting in a willow chair on the broad
+veranda, one will read the signs on those cliffs--all about the best
+shoes to wear, and what particular pill of all the pills that be, should
+be taken for that ailing kidney. But it will not be I who shall sit in
+that willow chair on that broad, as yet unbuilt, veranda.
+
+The sun was glinting at the rim of the cliffs, and the place of awe and
+thunders was slowly filling with shadow. We found a steep trail,
+inaccessible for vehicles, leading upward in the direction of Benton. It
+was getting that time of day when even a sentimentalist wants a
+beefsteak, especially if he has hiked over dusty scorching trails and
+scrambled over rocks all day.
+
+Some kind man back in the town, with a fund of that most useless
+article, information, had told us of a place called Goodale,
+theoretically existing on the Great Northern Railroad between Great
+Falls and Benton. We had provided only for luncheon, trusting to fate
+and Goodale for supper.
+
+Goodale! A truly beautiful name! No doubt in some miraculous way the
+character of the country changed suddenly just before you got there
+merely to justify the name. Surely no one would have the temerity to
+conjure up so beautiful a name for a desert town. Yet, half unwillingly,
+I thought of a little place I once visited--against my will, since the
+brakeman put me off there--by the name of Forest City. I remembered with
+misgivings how there wasn't a tree within something like four hundred
+miles. But I pushed that memory aside as a lying prophet. I believed in
+Goodale and beefsteak. Goodale would be a neat, quiet little town, set
+snugly in a verdant valley. We would come into it by starlight--down a
+careless gypsying sort of country road; and there would be the sound of
+a dear little trickling bickering cool stream out in the shadows of the
+trees fringing the approach to Goodale. And we'd pass pretty little
+cottages with vines growing over the doors, and hollyhocks peeping over
+the fences, and cheerful lights in the windows.
+
+Goodale! And then, right in the middle of the town (no, _village_--the
+word is cosier somehow)--right in the middle of the village there would
+be a big restaurant, with such alluring scents of beefsteak all about
+it.
+
+I set the pace up that trail. It was a swinging, loose, cavalry-horse
+sort of pace--the kind that rubs the blue off the distance and paints
+the back trail gray. Goodale was a sort of Mecca. I thought of it with
+something like a religious awe. How far was Goodale, would you suppose?
+Not far, certainly, once we found the railroad.
+
+We made the last steep climb breathlessly, and came out on the level. A
+great, monotonous, heartachy prairie lay before us--utterly featureless
+in the twilight. Far off across the scabby land a thin black line swept
+out of the dusk into the dusk--straight as a crow's flight. It was the
+railroad. We made a cross-cut for it, tumbling over gopher holes,
+plunging through sagebrush, scrambling over gullies that told the
+incredible tale of torrents having been there once. I ate quantities of
+alkali dust and went on believing in Goodale and beefsteak. Beefsteak
+became one of the principal stations on the Great Northern Railroad, so
+far as I was concerned personally. That is what you might call the
+geography of a healthy stomach.
+
+With the falling of the sun the climate of the country had changed. It
+was no longer blistering. You sat down for a moment and a shiver went up
+your spine. At noon I thought about all the lime-kilns I had ever met.
+Now I could hear the hickory nuts dropping in the crisp silence down in
+the old Missouri woods.
+
+We struck the railroad and went faster. Since my first experience with
+railroad ties, I have continued to associate them with hunger. I need
+only look an ordinary railroad tie in the face to contract a wonderful
+appetite. It works on the principle of a memory system. So, as we put
+the ties behind us, I increased my order at that restaurant in the sweet
+little pedestrian's village of Goodale. "A couple of eggs on the side,
+waiter," I said half audibly to the petite woman in the white apron who
+served the tables in the restaurant there. She was very real to me. I
+could count the rings on her fingers; and when she smiled, I noted that
+her teeth were very white--doubtless they got that way from eating
+quantities and quantities of thick juicy beefsteak!
+
+The track took a sudden turn ahead. "Around that bend," I said aloud,
+"lies Goodale." We went faster. We rounded the bend, only to see the
+dusky, heartachy, barren stretch.
+
+"Railroads," explained I to myself, "have a way of going somewhere; it
+is one of their peculiarities." No doubt this track had been laid for
+the express purpose of guiding hungry folks to the hospitable little
+village. We plunged on for an hour. Meanwhile my orders to the trim
+little woman in the white apron increased steadily. She smiled broadly
+but winsomely, showing those charming beefsteak-polished teeth. They
+shone like a beacon ahead of me, for it was now dark.
+
+Suddenly we came upon a signboard. We went up to it, struck a match, and
+read breathlessly--"GOODALE."
+
+We looked about us. Goodale was a switch and a box car.
+
+              Nothing beside remains,
+
+I quoted,
+
+                'round the decay
+    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
+    The lone and level sands stretch far away.
+
+Alas for the trim little lady with the white teeth and the smile and the
+beefsteak!
+
+We said bitter things there in that waste about the man with the
+information. We loaded his memory with anathemas. One cannot eat a
+signboard, even with so inviting a name upon it. An idea struck me--it
+seemed a very brilliant one at the moment. I sat down and delivered
+myself of it to my companions, who also had lusted after the flesh-pots.
+"We have wronged that man with the information," said I. "He was no
+ordinary individual; he was a prophet: he simply got his dates mixed. In
+precisely one hundred years from now, there will be a town on this
+spot--and a restaurant! Shall we wait?"
+
+They cursed me bitterly. I suspect neither of them is a philosopher.
+Thereat I proceeded to eat a thick juicy steak from the T-bone portion
+of an unborn steer, served by the trim little lady of a hundred years
+hence, there in that potential village of Goodale. And as I smoked my
+cigarette, I felt very thankful for all the beautiful things that do not
+exist.
+
+And I slept that night in the great front bedroom, the ceiling of which
+is of diamond and turquoise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HALF-WAY TO THE MOON
+
+
+At last the sinuous yellow road dropped over the bluff rim and, to all
+appearances, dissolved into the sky--a gray-blue, genius-colored sky.
+
+It was sundown, and this was the end of the trail for us. Beneath the
+bluff rim lay Benton. We flung ourselves down in the bunch-grass that
+whispered dryly in a cool wind fresh from the creeping night-shade. Now
+that Benton lay beneath us, I was in no hurry to look upon it.
+
+_Fort Benton?_ What a clarion cry that name had been to me! Old men--too
+old for voyages--had talked about this place; a long time ago, 'way down
+on the Kansas City docks, I had heard them. How far away it was then!
+Reach after reach, bend after bend, grunting, snoring, toiling, sparring
+over bars, bucking the currents, dodging the snags, went the snub-nosed
+steamers--brave little steamers!--forging on toward Fort Benton. And it
+was so very, very far away--half-way to the moon no doubt! St. Louis was
+indeed very far away. But Fort Benton!----
+
+Well, they spoke of the Fort Benton traffic as "the mountain trade," and
+I had not then seen a mountain. You could stand on the very tallest
+building in Kansas City, and you could look and look and never see a
+mountain. And to think how far the brave little steamers had to go! How
+_did_ they ever manage to get back?
+
+But the old men on the docks--they had been there and all the way back,
+perhaps hundreds of times. And they were such heroes! Great paw-like
+hands they had, toughened with the gripping of cables; eyes that had
+that way of looking through and far beyond things. (Seamen and plainsmen
+have it.) And they had such romantic, crinkly, wrinkly, leathery faces.
+They got so on the way to Benton and back. And they talked about
+it--those old men lounging on the docks--because it was so far away and
+they were so old that they couldn't get there any more.
+
+What a picture I made out of their kaleidoscopic chatter; beautifully
+inaccurate, impossibly romantic picture, in which big muscley men had
+fights with yawping painted savages that always got gloriously licked,
+in the approved story-book manner! I could shut my eyes and see it all
+very plainly, away off there half-way to the moon. And I used to wonder
+how my father could be such a strong man and never have any hankering to
+go up there at all! The two facts were quite incompatible. He should
+have been a captain and taken me on for cub pilot, or at least a
+"striker" engineer; though I wouldn't have objected seriously to the
+business of a cabin boy. I thought it would be very nice to engage in
+the mountain trade.
+
+And then, after a while, in the new light that creeps in with years, I
+began to rearrange my picture of things up there; and Benton crept a wee
+bit closer--until I could see its four adobe walls and its two adobe
+bastions, stern with portholes, sitting like bulldogs at the opposite
+corners ready to bark at intruders. And in and out at the big gate went
+the trappers--sturdy, rough-necked, hirsute fellows in buckskins, with
+Northwest fusils on their shoulders; lean-bodied, capable fellows, with
+souls as lean as their bodies, survivors of long hard trails, men who
+could go far and eat little and never give up. I was very fond of that
+sort of man.
+
+Little by little the picture grew. Indian bull boats flocked at the
+river front beneath the stern adobe walls; moored mackinaws swayed in
+the current, waiting to be loaded with peltries and loosed for the long
+drift back to the States; and the keel-boats, looking very fat and lazy,
+unloaded supplies in the late fall that were loaded at St. Louis in the
+early spring. And these had come all the way without the stroke of a
+piston or the crunch of a paddle-wheel or a pound of steam. Nothing but
+grit and man-muscle to drag them a small matter of two or three thousand
+miles up the current of the most eccentric old duffer of a river in the
+world!
+
+What men it did take to do that! I saw them on the wild shelterless
+banks of the yellow flood--a score or so of them--stripped and sweating
+under the prairie sun, with the cordelle on their calloused shoulders,
+straightening out to the work like honest oxen. What _males_ those
+cordelle men were--what _stayers_! Fed on wild, red meat, lean and round
+of waist, thick of chest, thewed for going on to the finish. Ten or
+fifteen miles a day and every inch a fight! Be sure they didn't do it
+merely for the two or three hundred dollars a year they got from the
+Company. They did it because they were that sort of men, and had to
+express themselves. Everything worth while is done that way.
+
+Do they raise that breed now? Never doubt it! You need only find your
+keel-boats or their equivalents, and the men will come around for the
+job, I'm sure. But when you speak enthusiastically of the old Greek
+doers of things, I'd like to put in a few words for those old up-river
+men. They belong to the unwritten American epic.
+
+And then the keel-boats and the bull-boats and the mackinaws and the
+up-river men flashed out--like a stereopticon picture when the man moves
+the slide; and I saw a little ragged village of log houses scattered
+along the water front. I saw the levees piled with merchandise, and a
+score or more of packets rushing fresh cargoes ashore--mates bawling
+commands down the gangplanks where the roustabouts came and went at a
+trot. Gold-mad hundreds thronged the wagon-rutted streets of this raw
+little village, the commercial center of a vast new empire. Six-horse
+freighters trundled away toward the gold fields; and others trundled in,
+their horses jaded with the precious freight they pulled. And I saw
+steamers dropping out for the long voyage back to the States, freighted
+with cargoes of gold dust--really truly story-book treasure-ships that
+would have made old Captain Kidd's men mad with delight.
+
+As I lay dreaming in the bunch-grass, it all grew up so real that I had
+to get up and take my first look, half expecting to find it all there
+just as in the old days.
+
+We stood at the rim of the bluff and looked down into a cup-like valley
+upon a quiet little village, winking with scattered lights in the
+gloaming. Past it swept the river--glazed with the twilight and
+silver-splotted with early stars.
+
+This was Benton--it could have been almost any other town as well. And
+yet, once upon a time, it had filled my day-dreams with wonders--this
+place that seemed half-way to the moon.
+
+The shrill shriek of a Great Northern locomotive, trundling freight cars
+through the gloom, gave the death-stroke to the old boy-dream. It was
+the cry of modernity. This boisterous, bustling, smoke-breathing thing,
+plunging through the night with flame in its throat, had made the
+change, dragged old Benton out of the far-off lunar regions and set
+what is left of it right down in the back yard of the world. Even a very
+little boy could get there now.
+
+"And yet," thought I, as we set out rapidly for the village in the
+valley, "the difference between the poetry of mackinaws and Great
+Northern locomotives is merely a matter of perspective. If those old
+cordelle men could only come back for a while from their Walhalla, how
+they would crowd about that wind-splitting, fire-eating, iron beast,
+panting from its long run, and catching its breath for another plunge
+into the waste places and the night! And I? I would be gazing
+wide-mouthed at the cordelle men. It's only the human curiosity about
+the other side of the moon. How perfect the nights would be if we could
+only see that lost Pleiad!"
+
+Ankle-deep in the powdery sand, we entered the little town with its
+business row facing the water front. One glance at the empty levees told
+you of the town's dead glory. Not a steamboat's stacks, blackening in
+the gloom, broke the peaceful glitter of the river under the stars. But
+along the sidewalk where the electric-lighted bar-rooms buzzed and
+hummed, brawny cow-men, booted and spurred, lounged about, talking in
+that odd but not unpleasant Western English that could almost be called
+a dialect.
+
+But it was not the Benton of the cow-men that I felt about me. It was
+still for me the Benton of the fur trade and the steamboats and the gold
+rush--my boyhood's Benton half-way to the moon--the ghost of a dead
+town.
+
+At Goodale I had sought a substantial town and found a visionary one. At
+Benton I had sought a visionary town and found a substantial one.
+Philosophy was plainly indicated as the proper thing. And, after all, a
+steaming plate of lamp chops in a Chinese chuck-house of a substantial
+though disappointing town, is more acceptable to even a dreamer than the
+visionary beefsteak I ate out there in that latent restaurant of a
+potential village.
+
+This was a comfortable thought; and for a quarter of an hour, the far
+weird cry of things that are no more, was of no avail. The rapid music
+of knife and fork drowned out the asthmatic snoring of the ghostly
+packets that buck the stream no more. How grub does win against
+sentiment!
+
+Swallowing the last of the chops, "Where will I find the ruins of the
+old fort?" I asked of my bronze-faced neighbor across the wreck of
+supper. He looked bored and stiffened a horny practical thumb in the
+general direction of the ruins. "Over there," he said laconically.
+
+I caught myself wondering if a modern Athenian would thus carelessly
+direct you to the Acropolis. Is the comparison faulty? Surely a ruin is
+sacred only for what men did there. We are indeed a headlong race. We
+keep our ruins behind us. Perhaps that is why we get somewhere. And yet,
+what beauty blooms flowerlike to the backward gaze! Music and
+poetry--all the deepest, purest sentiments of the heart--are fed greatly
+upon the memory of the things that were but can never be again.
+Mnemosyne is the mother of all the Muses.
+
+I got up and went out. By the light of a thin moon, I found the place
+"over there." An odd, pathetic little ruin it is, to be sure. Nothing
+imposing about it. It doesn't compel through admiration: it woos through
+pity--the great, impersonal kind of pity.
+
+    "A single little turret that remains
+    On the plains"--
+
+Browning tells about all there is to tell about it, though he never
+heard of it; only they called it a "bastion" in the old days--the
+little square adobe blockhouse that won't stand much longer. One
+crumbling bastion and two gaunt fragments of adobe walls in a waste of
+sand beside the river--that's Fort Benton.
+
+A thin pale grudging strip of moon lit it up: just the moon by which to
+see ruins--a moon for backward looking and regrets. A full round
+love-moon wouldn't have served at all.
+
+Out of pure moon-haze I restored the walls of the house where the
+bourgeois lived. The fireplace and the great mud chimney are still
+there, and the smut of the old log fires still clings inside. The man
+who sat before that hearth was an American king. A simple word of
+command spoken in that room was the thunder of the law in the wilderness
+about, and men obeyed. There's a bat living there now. He tumbled about
+me in the dull light, filling the silence with the harsh whir of
+pinions.
+
+I thought about that night a long, long time ago when all the people
+under the protection of the newly erected fort, gathered here for a
+house-warming. How clearly I could hear that squawking, squeaking,
+good-natured fiddle and the din of dancing feet! Only the sound got
+mixed up with the dim, weird moonlight, until you didn't know whether
+you were hearing or seeing or feeling it--the music of the fiddles and
+the feet. Oh, the dim far music!
+
+I thought about the other ruins of the world, the exploited,
+tourist-haunted ruins; and I wondered why the others attract so much
+attention while this one attracts practically none at all. How they do
+dig after old Troy--poor old long-buried, much-abused Troy! And nobody
+even cares to steal a brick from this ruined citadel that took so great
+a part in the American epic. Indeed, you would not be obliged to steal a
+brick; there are no guards.
+
+Some one has said that the history of our country as taught in the
+common schools is the history of a narrow strip of land along the
+Atlantic coast. The statement is significant. The average school-teacher
+knows very little about Fort Benton, I suspect.
+
+And yet, one of the most tremendous of all human movements centered
+about it--the movement that brought about the settlement of the
+Northwest. One of these days they will plant a potato patch there!
+
+But modern Benton?
+
+Get on a train in the East, snuggle up in your berth, plunge on to the
+Western coast, and you run through the real West in the night. They are
+getting Eastern out there at the rim of the big sea. Benton is in the
+West--the big, free, heart-winning West; and it gives promise of staying
+there for a while yet.
+
+Charter a bronco and canter out across the river for an hour, and it
+will be very plain to you that the romantic West still lives--the West
+of the cowboy and the bronco and the steer. Not the average story-book
+West, to be sure. Perhaps that West never existed. But it is the West
+that has bred and is still breeding a race of men as beautiful in a
+virile way (and how else should men be beautiful?) as this dear old
+mother of an Earth ever suckled.
+
+I stood once on the yellow slope of a hill and watched a round-up outfit
+passing in the gulch below. Four-horse freighters grumbling up the dusty
+trail; cook wagons trundling after; whips popping over the sweating
+teams; a hundred or more saddle ponies trailing after in rolling clouds
+of glinting dust; a score of bronze-faced, hard-fisted outriders,
+mounted on gaunt, tough, wise little horses--such strong, outdoor,
+masterful Americans, truly beautiful in a big manly way!
+
+The sight of it all put that glorious little achy feeling in my throat
+that you get when they start the fife and drum, or when a cavalry column
+wheels at the word of command, or when a regiment swings past with even
+tread, or when you stand on a dock and watch a liner dropping out into
+the fog. It's the feeling that you're a man and mighty proud of it. But
+somehow it always makes you just a little sad.
+
+I felt proud of that bunch of strong capable fellows--proud as though I
+had created them myself.
+
+[Illustration: "THIS WAS BENTON."]
+
+[Illustration: RUINS OF OLD FORT BENTON.]
+
+[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF THE BOURGEOIS.]
+
+And once again the glorious little achy feeling in the throat came. The
+Congressman from Choteau County had returned from Washington with fresh
+laurels; and Benton turned out to welcome her Great Man. Down the dusty,
+poorly lighted, front street came the little band--a shirt-sleeved
+squad. Halting under the dingy glow of a corner street-lamp, they struck
+up the best-intentioned, noisiest noise I ever heard. The tuba raced
+lumberingly after the galloping cornet, that ran neck-and-neck with the
+wheezing clarinet; and the drums beat up behind, pounding like the hoofs
+of stiff-kneed horses half a stretch behind.
+
+It was a mad, exciting race of sounds--a sort of handicap. The circular
+glow of the street-lamp became the social center of Benton. At last the
+mad race was ended. I think it was the cornet that won, with the
+clarinet a close second. The tuba, as I recollect it, complacently
+claimed third money, and the bass-drum finished last with a shameless,
+resolute boom!
+
+A great hoarse cry went up--probably for the winning cornet; a
+big-lunged, generous, warrior cry that made you think of a cavalry
+charge in the face of bayonets. And the shirt-sleeved band swung off
+down the street in the direction of the little cottage where the Great
+Man lived. All Benton fell in behind--clerks and bar-keeps and sheepmen
+and cowboys tumbling into fours. Under the yellow flare of the kerosene
+torches they went down the street like a campaigning company in rout
+step, scattering din and dust.
+
+Great, deep-chested, happy-looking, open air fellows, they were; big
+lovers, big haters, good laughers, eaters, drinkers--and every one of
+them potentially a fighting man.
+
+And suddenly, as I watched them pass, something deep down in me cried
+out: "Great God! What a fighting force we can drum up out of the cactus
+and the sagebrush when the time comes!" And when I looked again, not one
+of the sun-bronzed faces was strange to me, but every one was the face
+of a brother. Choteau's Congressman was my Congressman! Benton's Great
+Man was my Great Man! I fell into line alongside a big bronco-buster
+with his high-heeled boots and his clanking spurs and his bandy-legged,
+firm-footed horseman's stride. Thirty yards farther on we were old
+comrades. That is the Western way.
+
+Once again the little band struck up a march, which was very little more
+than a rhythmic snarling and booming of the drums, with now and then the
+shrill savage cry of the clarinet stabbing the general dim. Irresistibly
+the whole line swung into step.
+
+What is it about the rhythmic stride of many men down a dusty road that
+grips you by the throat and makes your lungs feel like overcharged
+balloons? I felt something like the maddening, irritating tang of
+powder-smoke in my throat. Trumpet cries that I had never heard, yet
+somehow dimly remembered, wakened in the night about us--far and faint,
+but haughty with command. It took very little imagination for me to
+feel the whirlwind of battles I may never know, to hear the harsh
+metallic snarl of high-power bullets I may never face. For, marching
+there in the dusty, torch-painted night, with that ragged procession of
+Westerners, a deep sense of the essential comradeship of free men had
+come upon me; and I could think of these men in no other way than as
+potential fighting men--the stern hard stuff with which you build and
+keep your empires. What a row Napoleon could have kicked up with half a
+million of these sagebrush boys to fling foeward under his
+cannon-clouds!
+
+We reached the cottage of the Great Man with the fresh laurels. He met
+us at the gate. He called us Jim and Bill and Frank and Kid something or
+other. We called him Charlie. And he wasn't the least bit stiff or
+proud, though we hadn't the least doubt that half of Washington was in
+tears at his departure for the West.
+
+The sudden flare of a torch betrayed his moist eyes as he told us how he
+loved us. And I'm sure he meant it. He said, with that Western drawl of
+his: "Boys, while I was back there trying to do a little something for
+you in Congress, I heard a lot of swell bands; but I didn't hear any
+such music as this little old band of ours has made to-night!" The
+unintentional humor somehow didn't make you want to laugh at all.
+
+We're all riding with his outfit; and next year we're going to send
+Charlie back East again. May we all die sheepmen if we don't--and that's
+the limit in Montana!
+
+Talking about sheepmen, reminds me of Joe, the big bronco-buster, and
+his _mot_. I was doing the town with Joe, and he was carefully educating
+me in the Western mysteries. He told me all about "day-wranglers" and
+"night-hawks" and "war-bags" and "round-ups"; showed me how to tie a
+"bull-noose" and a "sheep-shank" and a "Mexican hacamore"; put me onto
+the twist-of-the-wrist and the quick arm-thrust that puts half-hitches
+'round a steer's legs; showed me how a cowboy makes dance music with a
+broom and a mouth-harp--and many other wonderful feats, none of which I
+can myself perform.
+
+I wanted to feel the mettle of the big typical fellow, and so I said
+playfully: "Say, Joe, come to confession--you're a sheepman, now aren't
+you?"
+
+He clanked down a glass of long-range liquid, and glared down at me with
+a monitory forefinger pointing straight between my eyes: "Now you look
+here, Shorty," he drawled; "you're a friend of mine, and whatever you
+say _goes_, as long as I ain't all caved in! But you cut that out, and
+don't you say that out loud again, or you and me'll be having to scrap
+the whole outfit!"
+
+He resumed his glass. I told him, still playfully, that a lot of mighty
+good poetry had been written about sheep and sheepmen and crooks and
+lambs and things like that, and that I considered my question
+complimentary.
+
+"You're talkin' about sheepmen in the old country, Shorty," he drawled.
+"There ain't any cattle ranges there, you know. Do you know the
+difference between a sheepman in Scotland, say, and in Montana?"
+
+I did not.
+
+"Well," he proceeded, "over in Scotland when a feller sees a sheepman
+coming down the road with his sheep, he says: 'Behold the gentle
+shepherd with his fleecy flock!' That's poetry. Now in Montana, that
+same feller says, when he sees the same feller coming over a ridge with
+the same sheep: '_Look at that crazy blankety-blank with his woolies!_'
+That's fact. You mind what I say, or you'll get spurred."
+
+I don't quite agree with Joe, however. Once, lying in my tent across
+the river, I looked out over the breaks through that strange purple
+moonlight, such as I had always believed to exist only in the staging of
+a melodrama, and saw four thousand sheep descending to the ferry.
+
+Like lava from a crater they poured over the slope above me; and above
+them, seeming prodigiously big against the weird sky, went the sheepman
+with his staff in his hand and a war-bag over his arm, while at his
+heels a wise collie followed. It was a picture done by chance very much
+as Millet could have done it. And somehow Joe's _mot_ couldn't stand
+before that picture.
+
+There is indeed a big Pindaric sort of poetry about a plunging mass of
+cattle. And just as truly there is a sort of Theocritus poetry about
+sheep. Only in the latter case, the poetical vanishing point is farther
+away for me than is the case with cattle. I think I couldn't write very
+good verses about a flock of sheep, unless I were at least five hundred
+yards away from them. I haven't figured the exact distance as yet. But
+when you have a large flock of sheep camping about you all night, making
+you eat fine sand and driving you mad with that most idiotic of all
+noises (which happened once to me), you don't get up in the morning
+quoting Theocritus. You remember Joe's _mot_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We found a convenient gravel bar on the farther side of the river, where
+we established our navy-yard. There we proceeded to set up the keel of
+the _Atom I_--a twenty-foot canoe with forty-inch beam, lightly ribbed
+with oak and planked with quarter-inch cypress.
+
+No sooner had we screwed up the bolts in the keel, than our ship-yard
+became a sort of free information bureau. Every evening the cable ferry
+brought over a contingent of well-wishers, who were ardent in their
+desire to encourage us in our undertaking, which was no less than that
+of making a toboggan slide down the roof of the continent.
+
+The salient weakness of the _genus homo_, it has always seemed to me, is
+an overwhelming desire to give advice. Through several weeks of toil, we
+were treated to a most liberal education on marine matters. It appeared
+that we had been laboring under a fatal misunderstanding regarding the
+general subject of navigation. Our style of boat was indeed
+admirable--for a lake, if you please, _but_--well, of course, they did
+not wish to discourage us. It was quite possible that we were
+unacquainted with the Upper Missouri. Now the Upper River (hanging out
+that bleached rag of a sympathetic smile), the Upper River was _not_ the
+Lower River, you know. (That really _did_ seem remarkably true, and we
+became alarmed.) The Upper River, mind you, was terriffic. Why, those
+frail ribs and that impossible planking would go to pieces on the first
+rock--like an egshell! Of course, we were free to do as we pleased--they
+would not discourage us for the world. And the engine! Gracious! Such a
+boat would never stand the vibration of a four-horse, high-speed engine
+driving a fourteen-inch screw! It appeared plainly that we were almost
+criminally wrong in all our calculations. Shamefacedly we continued to
+drive nails into the impossible hull, knowing full well--poor misguided
+heroes--that we were only fashioning a death trap! There could be no
+doubt about it. The free information bureau was unanimous. It was all
+very pathetic. Nothing but the tonic of an habitual morning swim in the
+clear cold river kept us game in the face of the inevitable!
+
+We saw it all. With a sort of forlorn cannon-torn-cavalry-column hope we
+pushed on with the fatal work. Never before did I appreciate old Job in
+the clutches of good advice. I used to accuse him of rabbit blood. In
+the light of experience, I wish to record the fact that I beg his
+pardon. He was in the house of his friends. I think Job and I understand
+each other better now. It was not the boils, but the free advice!
+
+At last the final nail was driven and clenched, the canvas glued on and
+ironed, the engine installed. The trim, slim little craft with her
+admirable speed lines, tapering fore and aft like a fish, lay on the
+ways ready for the plunge.
+
+We had arranged to christen her with beer. The Kid stood at the prow
+with the bottle poised, awaiting his cue. The little Cornishman knelt at
+the prow. He was _not_ bowed in prayer. He was holding a bucket under
+the soon-to-be-broken bottle. "For," said he, "in a country where beer
+is so dear and advice so cheap, let us save the beer that we may be
+strong to stand the advice!"
+
+The argument was inded Socratic.
+
+"And now, little boat," said I, in that dark brown tone of voice of
+which I am particularly proud, "be a good girl! Deliver me not unto the
+laughter of my good advisers. I christen thee _Atom_!"
+
+The bottle broke--directly above that bucket.
+
+And now before us lay the impossible as plainly pointed out, not only by
+local talent, but by no less a man that the august captain of a
+government snag-boat. Several weeks before the launching, an event had
+taken place at Benton. The first steamboat for sixteen years tied up
+there one evening. She was a government snag-boat. Now a government
+snag-boat may be defined as a boat maintained by the government for the
+sole purpose of sailing the river _and dodging snags_. This particular
+snag-boat, I learned afterward in the course of a long cruise behind
+her, holds the snag-boat record. I consider her pilot a truly remarkable
+man. He seemed to have dodged them all.
+
+All Benton turned out to view the big red and white government steamer.
+There was something almost pathetic about the public demonstration when
+you thought of the good old steamboat days. During her one day's visit
+to the town, I met the captain.
+
+[Illustration: A ROUND-UP OUTFIT ON THE MARCH.]
+
+[Illustration: JOE.]
+
+[Illustration: MONTANA SHEEP.]
+
+[Illustration: A MONTANA WOOL-FREIGHTER.]
+
+He was very stiff and proud. He awed me. I stood before him fumbling my
+hat. Said I to myself: "The personage before me is more than a snag-boat
+captain. This is none other than the gentleman who invented the Missouri
+River. No doubt even now he carries the patent in his pocket!"
+
+"Going down river in a power canoe, eh?" he growled, regarding me
+critically. "Well, you'll never get down!"
+
+"That so?" croaked I, endeavoring to swallow my Adam's apple.
+
+"No, you won't!"
+
+"Why?" ventured I timidly, almost pleadingly; "isn't there--uh--isn't
+there--uh--_water enough_?"
+
+"Water enough--yes!" growled the personage who invented the longest
+river in the world and therefore knew what he was talking about. "Plenty
+of water--_but you won't find it_!"
+
+Now as the _Atom_ slid into the stream, I thought of the captain's
+words. Since that time the river had fallen three feet. We drew eighteen
+inches.
+
+Sixty-five days after that oraculous utterance of the captain, the Kid
+and I, half stripped, sun-burned, sweating at the oars, were forging
+slowly against a head wind at the mouth of the Cheyenne, sixteen hundred
+miles below the head of navigation. A big white and red steamer was
+creeping up stream over the shallow crossing of the Cheyenne's bar,
+sounding every foot of the water fallen far below the usual summer
+level.
+
+It was the snag-boat. Crossing her bows and drifting past her slowly, I
+stood up and shouted to the party in the pilot house:
+
+"I want to speak to the captain."
+
+He came out on the hurricane deck--the man who invented the river. He
+was still stiff and proud, but a swift smile crossed his face as he
+looked down upon us, half-naked and sun-blackened there in our dinky
+little craft.
+
+"Captain," I cried, and perhaps there was the least vainglory in me; "I
+talked to you at Benton."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, _I have found that water!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MAKING A GETAWAY
+
+
+Tell a Teuton that he can't, and very likely he will show you that he
+can. It's in the blood. Between the prophecy of the snag-boat captain
+and my vainglorious answer at the Cheyenne crossing, I learned to
+respect the words of the man who invented the eccentric old river. In
+the face of heavy head winds, I quoted the words, "You'll never get
+down"--and they bit deep like whip lashes. On many a sand-bar and gravel
+reef, with the channel far away, I heard the words, "Plenty of water,
+yes, but you won't find it!" And always something stronger than my
+muscles cried out within me: "The devil I won't, O, you inventor of
+rain-water creeks!" Hour by hour, day by day, against almost continual
+head winds and with the lowest water in years, that discouraging
+prophecy invaded me and was repulsed. And that is why we have pessimists
+in the world. A pessimist is merely a counter-irritant.
+
+I stood on the bank for some time after the _Atom I_ slid into the
+water, admiring her truly beautiful lines. Once I was captain of a trunk
+lid that sailed a frog-pond down in Kansas City; and at that time I
+thought I knew the meaning of pride. I did not. All three of us were a
+bit puffed up over that boat. Something of that ride that goes before a
+fall awoke in my captain's breast as I loved her with my eyes--that
+trim, slim speed-thing, tugging at her forward line, graceful and
+slender and strong and fleet as a Diana.
+
+I said at last: "I will now get in her, drop down to the town landing,
+and proceed to put to shame a few of these local motor-tubs that make so
+much fuss and don't go anywhere!"
+
+I loved her as a man should love all things that are swift and strong
+and honest, keen for marks and goals--a big, clean-limbed, thoroughbred
+horse that will break his heart to get under the wire first; a
+high-power rifle, slim of muzzle, thick of breech, with its wicked
+little throaty cry, doing its business over a flat trajectory a thousand
+yards away: I love her as a man should love those. Little did I dream
+that she would betray me.
+
+I took in the line and went aboard. At that moment I almost understood
+the snag-boat captain's bearing. To be master of the _Atom I_ seemed
+quite enough; but to be the really truly captain of a big red and white
+snag-boat--it must have been overwhelming!
+
+I dropped out into the current that, fresh from its plunge of four
+hundred feet in sixteen miles, ran briskly. Everything was in readiness.
+I meant to put a crimp in the vanity of that free-information bureau.
+
+I turned on the switch, opened the needle valve, swung the throttle over
+to the notch numbered with a big "2." I placed the crank on the wheel
+and gave it a vigorous turn.
+
+"Poof!" said the engine sweetly, and the kind word encouraged me
+immensely. Again I cranked.
+
+"Poof! Poof!"
+
+It seemed that I had somehow misunderstood the former communication, and
+it was therefore repeated with emphasis. Like a model father who walks
+the floor with the weeping child, tenderly seeking the offending pin, I
+looked over the engine. "What have I neglected?" said I. I intended to
+be quite logical and fair in the matter.
+
+I once presided over a country newspaper that ran its presses with a
+gasoline engine with a most decided artistic temperament. That engine
+used to have a way of communing silently with its own soul right in the
+middle of press day. I remembered this with forebodings. I remembered
+how firm but kind I was obliged to be with that old engine. I remembered
+how it always put its hands in its pockets and took an extended vacation
+every time I swore at it. I decided to be nothing but a perfect
+gentleman with this engine. I even endeavored to be a jovial good
+fellow.
+
+"What is it, Little One?" said I mentally; "does its little carburetor
+hurt it? Or did the bad man strangle it with that horrid old gasoline?"
+
+I tenderly jiggled its air valve, fiddled gently with its spark-control
+lever. I cranked it again. It barked at me like a dog! I had been kind
+to it, and it barked right in my face. I wanted to slap it. I lifted my
+eyes and saw that the rapid current would soon carry me past the town
+landing. I seized a paddle and shoved her in. Of course, a member of the
+free-information bureau was at the landing. He had with him a bland
+smile and a choice bit of information.
+
+"Having trouble with your engine, aren't you?" he said as I leaped
+ashore with the line. "There must be something wrong with it!" The
+remark was indeed illuminating. It struck me with the force of an
+inspiration. It seemed so true.
+
+"Strange that I hadn't thought of that!" I remarked. "That really must
+be the trouble--there's something wrong with it. Thanks!"
+
+I tied the boat and went up-town, hoping to sidetrack the benevolent
+member of that ubiquitous bureau. When I returned, I found half a dozen
+other benevolent members at the landing. They were holding a
+consultation, evidently; and the very air felt gummy with latent advice.
+
+"What's the matter with your engine?" they chorused.
+
+"Why, there's something wrong with it!" I explained cheerfully, as I
+went aboard again. I began to crank, praying steadily for a miracle. Now
+and then I managed to coax forth a gaseous chortle or two. The
+convention on the landing understood every chortle in a truly marvellous
+way.
+
+"It's the spark-plug, that's sure!" announced one with an air of
+finality. "When an engine has run for a while (!) the spark-plug gets
+all smutted up. Have you cleaned your spark-plug?"
+
+"No, Jim!" contradicted another, "it's all in the oil feed! Look how she
+puffs! W'y it's in the oil feed--plain as day! Now if you'll take off
+that carburetor and----"
+
+I cranked on heroically.
+
+"It's in the timer," voluntered another. "You see that little brass
+lever back there? Well, you take and remove that and you'll find
+that----"
+
+I cranked on shamelessly.
+
+"The batteries ain't no good!" growled a man with a big voice that
+reminded me of a bass-drum booming up among the wind instruments in a
+medley. Like the barber who owned the white owl, I stuck to my business.
+I cranked on.
+
+"It ain't _in_ them batteries--them batteries is all right!" piped a
+weazened little man who had been grinning wisely at the lack of
+mechanical ability so shamelessly exposed by his fellows.
+
+"Now in a jump-spark engine," he explained leisurely, with a knowing
+squint of his eyes and an uplifted explanatory forefinger: "in a
+jump-spark engine, gentlemen, there is a number of things to consider.
+Now if you'll take and remove that cylinder-head, pull out the piston,
+and----"
+
+The voice of the expounder was suddenly drowned out by the earsplitting
+rapid-fire of the exhaust! The miracle had happened! Hooray!
+
+I grasped the steering cords and jammed her rudder hard to port. Her
+fourteen-inch screw, suddenly started at full speed ahead, made the
+light, slim craft leap like a spike-spurred horse.
+
+But the turn was too short. She thrust her sharp haughty nose into the
+air like an offended lady, and started up the bank after that
+information bureau. If a tree had been convenient, I think she would
+have climbed it.
+
+I shut her down.
+
+"_She went that time!_" chorused the information bureau. Coming from an
+information bureau, the statement was marvellously correct. But I had
+suddenly become too glad-hearted for a sharp retort.
+
+"If you will please throw me the line, and push me off," I said
+confidently, "I'll drop out into the current."
+
+I dropped out.
+
+"Now for putting a crimp in some people's vanity!" I exulted.
+
+I cranked. Nothing doing! I cranked some more. No news from the crimping
+department. I continued to crank; also, I continued to drift. Somehow
+the current seemed to have increased alarmingly in speed.
+
+I thought I heard a sound of merriment. I looked up. The little weazened
+man was gesticulating wildly with that forefinger of his. He was
+explaining something. The information bureau, steadily dwindling into
+the distance, was not listening. It seemed to be enjoying itself
+immensely.
+
+I swallowed a half-spoken word that tasted bitter as it went down. Then
+I cranked again. There seemed to be nothing else to do. It was a hot
+day; hot sweat blinded me, and trickled off the tip of my nose. My hands
+began to develop blisters. Finally, a deep disgust seized me. I once saw
+a tender-hearted lady on her knees in the dust before a balky auto. I
+remembered her half-sobbed words: "_You mean thing, you! What is the
+matter with you, anyway! Oh, you mean, mean thing!_"
+
+I sat down in front of that engine and abandoned myself to a great
+feeling of tenderness and chivalry for that unfortunate lady. In that
+moment I believe I would have fought a bear for her! Oh that all the
+gasoline engines in the world could be concentrated somehow into one
+big woolly, scary black bear, how I could have set my teeth in its neck
+and died chewing!
+
+I heard a roaring of waters that broke my vision of bear fights and
+gentle ladies in distress. A hundred yards ahead of me I saw rapids. The
+words of the information bureau came back to me with terrible
+distinctness: "Why, her light timbers will go to pieces on the first
+rock!"
+
+Although I am no hero, I didn't get frightened. I got sore. "Go ahead,
+and smash yourself up, if you like!" I cried to the balky craft. And
+then I waited to see her do it. She swung 'round sharply with the first
+suck of the rapids, struck a rock, side-stepped, struck another, and
+went on down, grinding and dragging on a stony reef.
+
+It suddenly came to me that this was what they called the Grocondunez
+Rapids. I remembered that they said the name meant "the big bridge of
+the nose." The name had a powerful fascination for me--I wanted to hit
+something good and hard somewhere in that region!
+
+Finally she swung clear of the reef, caught the swirl of the main
+current, and started for New Orleans with the bit in her teeth. I wasn't
+ready to arrive in New Orleans at once; I had made other arrangements.
+So I grasped a paddle and drove her into shallow water. I leaped out,
+waist-deep in the cold stream, and threw my weight against her.
+Pantingly, I wondered what was the exact distance to the nearest axe. I
+resolved to crank her once more, and then for the axe hunt!
+
+I leaned over the gunwale and began to grind. For the life of me, I
+don't know just what I did to her; but it seemed that she had taken some
+offence. Without the least warning, she leaped forward at three-quarter
+speed, and started up stream with that haughty head of her thrust
+skyward!
+
+I clung desperately to her gunwale, and she dragged me insultingly in
+the drink! She made a soppy rag of me! I managed to scramble
+aboard--something after the fashion of a bronco-buster who mounts at a
+gallop.
+
+But the way she _traveled_! I forgot the ducking and forgave her with
+all my heart. I held her nose well out into the channel where the
+current ran with swells, though no wind blew.
+
+[Illustration: THE "ATOM I" UNDER CONSTRUCTION.]
+
+[Illustration: THE CABLE FERRY TOWED US OUT.]
+
+[Illustration: LAID UP WITH A BROKEN RUDDER.]
+
+Bucking the rapids, she split the fast water over her nose and sent it
+aft in two clean-cut masses, that hissed about her like angry skirts. A
+light, V-shaped wake spread after, scarcely agitating the surface. She
+dragged no water. There was no churning at her stern. Only the dull,
+sub-aqueous drone, felt rather than heard beneath the rapid banging of
+her exhaust, told me how the honest little screw thrust hard.
+
+I pushed the spark-lever close to the reversing point, and opened her
+throttle wide. This acted like a bottle-fly on the flank of a spirited
+mare. She shook herself, quivering through all her light, pliable
+construction, lifted her prow another inch or two, and flung the rapids
+behind her.
+
+Slim, fleet, clean-heeled, and hungry for distance, she raced toward the
+Benton landing two miles up.
+
+In my anxiety to show her to the benevolent ones, I left the current and
+took a crosscut over a rocky ford. Pebbles flung from her pounding heels
+showered down upon me. I climbed forward and let her hammer away. She
+cleared the gravel bar, and as she plunged past the now silent
+information bureau on the landing, condescendingly I waved a hand at
+them and went on splitting water.
+
+We shot under the bridge, forged into the crossing current, passed the
+big brick hotel, where a considerable number came out to salute us.
+They dubbed her the fastest boat that had ever climbed that current, I
+learned afterward. Alas! I was getting my triumph early and in one big
+chunk! I figure that that one huge breakfast of triumph, if properly
+distributed, would have fed me through the whole two thousand miles of
+back-strain and muscle-cramp. And yet, through all the days of
+snail-paced toil that followed, I remained truly thankful for that early
+breakfast.
+
+The Kid and the Cornishman, busy in camp with the packing for the
+voyage, had shared in the gloom of my temporary defeat. But now, as I
+plunged past them, I could see them leaping into the air and cracking
+their heels together with delight. They had wet every plank of her with
+their sweat, and they were as proud as I. In the light of the following
+days, their delight dwindled into a pathetic thing.
+
+I held her on her course up-stream, reached the bend a mile above, swung
+round and--discovered that she had only then begun to lift her heels!
+With the rapid current to aid, her speed was truly wonderful. She could
+have kept pace with any respectable freight train at least.
+
+I indulged in a little feverish mental calculation. She could make, with
+the minimum current, eighteen miles per hour. Every day meant fifteen
+hours of light. Sioux City was two thousand miles away. We could reach
+Sioux City easily in ten days of actual running!
+
+While I was covering that fast mile back to camp I saw the _Atom I_
+passing Sioux City with an air of high-nosed contempt. I developed a
+sort of unreasoning hunger for New Orleans--a kind of violent thirst for
+the Gulf of Mexico! Nothing short of these, it seemed to me, could be
+worthy of so fleet a craft. When I shoved her nose into the landing, I
+found that my companions thoroughly agreed with me.
+
+All that night in my restless sleep I drove speed boats at a terrific
+pace through impossible channels and rock-toothed Scyllas; and the
+little Cornishman fought angry seas and heard a dream-wind shrieking in
+the cordage, and felt the salt spume on his face. "I wonder why I am
+always dreaming that," he said. "Atavism," I ventured; and he regarded
+me narrowly, as though I might be maligning his character in some way.
+
+At dawn we had already eaten and were loading the _Atom_ for the voyage.
+With her cargo she drew eighteen inches of water. At full speed, she
+would squat four inches. It was the first of August and the water,
+which had reached in the spring its highest point for twenty years, had
+been falling rapidly, and now promised to go far below the average
+low-water mark. We had ahead of us a long voyage, every mile of which
+was strange water.
+
+Once again I went over that feverish calculation. This time I was more
+generous. I decided upon fifteen days. The cable ferry towed us out
+beyond the gravel bars that, during the last week, had been slowly
+lifting their bleached masses higher. In mid-stream we cut loose.
+
+At the first turn the engine started. We were going at a good half-speed
+clip, when suddenly the engine changed its mind. "Squash!" it said
+wearily. Then it let off a gasoline sigh and went into a peaceful sleep.
+We had reached the brick hotel. We pulled in with the paddles and tied
+up. The information bureau was there, and at once went into
+consultation.
+
+"I'm looking for an engine doctor," I said. "How about Mr. Blank? They
+tell me he knows the unknowable."
+
+"Best man with an engine in town," sad one.
+
+"For gracious' sake, keep that man away from your engine if you don't
+want it ruined!" said others. A man who can arouse a diversity of
+opinions is at least a man of originality. I went after that man.
+
+He came--with an air of mystery and a monkey wrench. He sat down in
+front of the patient (how that word _does_ fit!) and after some time he
+said: "_Hm!_"
+
+He unscrewed this--and whistled awhile; he unscrewed that--and whistled
+some more. Then he screwed up both this and that and cranked her.
+
+"Phew-oo-oo-oo!" said the engine. Whereat the doctor smiled knowingly.
+It was plain that she was an open book to him.
+
+"What is the trouble?" said I, with that tone of voice you use in a
+sick-room.
+
+It appeared to be appendicitis.
+
+"Spark-plug," muttered the doctor.
+
+"Shall I get another?" I asked, half apologetically.
+
+"Better," grunted the doctor.
+
+I chased down an automobile owner, and a launch owner and a man who had
+a small pumping-engine. I was eloquent in my appeal for spark-plugs. I
+made a very fine collection of them[1] and hastened back to the doctor.
+He didn't seem to appreciate my efforts. He had the patient on the
+operating table. Everything was either unscrewed or pulled out. He was
+carefully scrutinizing the wreck--for more things to screw out!
+
+"Locate the trouble?" I ventured.
+
+"Buzzer's out of whack," replied the Man of Awe. "Have to get another
+spark-coil!" In times of sickness even the sternest man submits to
+medical tyranny. I ran down a man who once owned a power boat, and he
+had a spark coil. He finally agreed to forgo the pleasure of possessing
+it for a suitable reward. Considering the size of that reward, he had
+undoubtedly become greatly attached to his spark-coil!
+
+I returned in triumph to the doctor. He was now screwing up all that he
+had previously unscrewed.
+
+"Think she'll go now?" I pleaded.
+
+He screwed up several dozen things, and whistled a while. Then the
+oracle gave voice: "'Fraid the batteries won't do; they're awful weak!"
+
+With a bitter heart, I turned on my heel and went forth once more.
+Electrical supplies were not on sale at any of the stores. But I found a
+number of gentlemen who were evidently connoisseurs in the battery
+business. They had batteries of which they were extremely fond. They
+parted with some of superior quality upon the consideration of a
+friendly regard for me--and a slight emolument on my part. I was
+evidently very popular.
+
+At a breathless speed I returned to--_not_ to the doctor. He had
+vanished. Rumor had it that he had gone home to lunch, for the sun was
+now high. So far as I know, he is still at lunch.
+
+Several things were yet unscrewed. I fell to work. Wherever anything
+seemed to make a snug fit, I screwed it in. Other remaining things I
+drove into convenient holes. All the while I begged blind fate to guide
+me. Then I connected the batteries, supplied the new spark-coil,
+selected a new spark-plug at random, and screwed it in.
+
+Having done various things, I carefully surveyed my environs for a lady.
+There were no ladies present, so I spoke out freely. "And now," said I,
+having exhausted my vocabulary, "I shall crank!"
+
+Bill and the Kid sat on a pile of rocks looking very sullen. For some
+reason or other they seemed to doubt that engine. I don't know how long
+I cranked. I know only that the impossible happened. The boat started
+for the hotel piazza!
+
+I didn't shut her down this time. I leaped out and took her by the nose.
+Putting our shoulders against the power of the screw, we walked her out
+into the current, headed her down stream, and scrambled in, wet to the
+ears.
+
+My logbook speaks for that day as follows: "Left Benton at 2:30
+P.M. Gypsied along under half gasoline for several hours,
+safely crossing the Shonkin and Grocondunez bars. Struck a rock in
+Fontenelle Rapids at 4:30, taking off rudder. Landed with difficulty on
+a gravel-bar and repaired damages. At 5:30 engine bucked. A heavy wind
+from the west beat us against a ragged shore for an hour and a half.
+Impossible to proceed without power, except by cordelling--which we did,
+walking waist-deep in the water much of the time. Paddles useless in
+such a head wind. The wind falling at sunset, we drifted, again losing
+our rudder while shooting Brule Rapids. Tied up at the head of Black
+Bluff Rapids at dusk, having made twenty miles out of two thousand for
+the first day's run. Have to extend that fifteen days! Just the same,
+that information bureau saw us leave under power!"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Dear Reader: Should you undertake the Missouri River trip,
+don't lay anything out on spark-plugs. I sowed them all along up there.
+Take a drag-net. You will scoop up several hundred dry batteries, but
+don't mind them; they are probably spoiled.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THROUGH THE REGION OF WEIR
+
+
+We awoke with light hearts on the second morning of the voyage. All
+about us was the sacred silence of the wilderness dawn. The coming sun
+had smitten the chill night air into a ghostly fog that lay upon the
+valley like a fairy lake.
+
+We were at the rim of the Bad Lands and there were no birds to sing; but
+crows, wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung doleful voices downward
+into the morning hush--the spirit of the place grown vocal.
+
+Cloaked with the fog, our breakfast fire of driftwood glowed ruddily.
+What is there about the tang of wood-smoke in a lonesome place that
+fills one with glories that seem half memory and half dream? Crouched on
+my haunches, shivering just enough to feel the beauty there is in fire,
+I needed only to close my eyes, smarting with the smoke, to feel myself
+the first man huddled close to the first flame, blooming like a mystic
+flower in the chill dawn of the world!
+
+Perhaps that is what an outing is for--to strip one down to the lean
+essentials, press in upon one the glorious privilege of being one's
+self, unique in all the universe of innumerable unique things. Crouched
+close to your wilderness campfire, the great Vision comes easily out of
+the smoke. Once again you feel the bigness of your world, the tremendous
+significance of everything in it--including yourself--and a far-seeing
+sadness grips you. Living in the flesh seems so transient, almost a
+pitiful thing in the last analysis. But somehow you feel that there is
+something bigger--not beyond it, but all about it continually. And you
+wonder that you ever hated anyone. You know, somehow, there in the smoky
+silence, why men are noble or ignoble; why they lie or die for a
+principle; why they kill, or suffer martyrdom; why they love and hate
+and fight; why women smile under burdens, sin splendidly or
+sordidly--and why hearts sometimes break.
+
+And expanded by the bigness of the empty silent spaces about you, like a
+spirit independent of it and outside of it all, you love the great red
+straining Heart of Man more than you could ever love it at your desk in
+town. And you want to get up and move--push on through purple
+distances--whither? Oh, anywhere will do! What you seek is at the end of
+the rainbow; it is in the azure of distance; it is just behind the glow
+of the sunset, and close under the dawn. And the glorious thing about it
+is that you know you'll never find it until you reach that lone, ghostly
+land where the North Star sets, perhaps. You're merely glad to know that
+you're not a vegetable--and that the trail never really ends anywhere.
+
+Just now, however, the longing for the abstract had the semblance of a
+longing for the concrete. It always has that semblance, for that matter.
+You never really want what you think you are seeking. Touch the
+substance--and away you go after the shadow!
+
+[Illustration: "ATOM" SAILING UP-STREAM IN A HEAD WIND.]
+
+[Illustration: TYPICAL RAPIDS ON UPPER MISSOURI.]
+
+Around the bend lay Sioux City. Around what bend? What matter? Somewhere
+down stream the last bend lay, and in between lay the playing of the
+game. Any bend will do to sail around! There's a lot of fun in merely
+being able to move about and do things. For this reason I am overwhelmed
+with gratitude whenever I think that, through some slight error in the
+cosmic process, the life forces that glow in me might have been flung
+into a turnip--_but weren't_! The thought is truly appalling--isn't it?
+The avoidance of that one awful possibility is enough to make any man
+feel lucky all his life. It's such fun to awaken in the morning with all
+your legs and arms and eyes and ears about you, waiting to be used
+again! So strong was this thought in me when we cast off, that even the
+memory of Bill's amateurish pancakes couldn't keep back the whistle.
+
+The current of the Black Bluffs Rapids whisked us from the bank with a
+giddy speed, spun us about a right-angled bend, and landed us in a long
+quiet lake. Contrary to the average opinion, the Upper Missouri is
+merely a succession of lakes and rapids. In the low-water season, this
+statement should be italicised. When you are pushing down with the power
+of your arms alone the rapids show you how fast you want to go, and the
+lakes show you that you can't go that fast. For the teaching of
+patience, the arrangement is admirable. But when head winds blow, a
+three-mile reach means about a two-hour fight.
+
+This being a very invigorating morning, however, the engine decided to
+take a constitutional. It ran. Below the mouth of the Marias River,
+twenty minutes later, we grounded on Archer's Bar and shut down. After
+dragging her off the gravel, we discovered that the engine wished to
+sleep. No amount of cranking could arouse it. Now and then it would say
+"_squash_," feebly rolling its wheel a revolution or two--like a
+sleepy-head brushing off a fly with a languid hand.
+
+A light breeze had sprung up out of the west. The stream ran east and
+northeast. We hastily rigged a tarp on a pair of oars spliced for a
+mast, and proceeded at a care-free pace. The light breeze ruffled the
+surface of the slow stream;
+
+      "----yet still the sail made on
+    A pleasant noise till noon."
+
+In the lazy heat of the mounting sun, tempered by the cool river
+draught, the yellow sandstone bluffs, whimsically decorated with sparse
+patches of greenery, seemed to waver as though seen through shimmering
+silken gauze. And over it all was the hush of a dream, except when, in a
+spasmodic freshening of the breeze, the rude mast creaked and a sleepy
+watery murmur grew up for a moment at the wake.
+
+Now and then at a break in the bluffs, where a little coulee entered the
+stream, the gray masses of the bull-berry bushes lifted like smoke, and
+from them, flame-like, flashed the vivid scarlet of the berry-clusters,
+smiting the general dreaminess like a haughty cry in a silence.
+
+A wilderness indeed! It seemed that waste land of which Tennyson sang,
+"where no man comes nor hath come since the making of the world." I
+thought of the steamboats and the mackinaws and the keel-boats and the
+thousands of men who had pushed through this dream-world and the thought
+was unconvincing. Fairies may have lived here, indeed; and in the youth
+of the world, a glad young race of gods might have dreamed gloriously
+among the yellow crags. But surely we were the first men who had ever
+passed that way--and should be the last.
+
+Suddenly the light breeze boomed up into a gale. The _Atom_, with
+bellying sail, leaped forward down the roughening water, swung about a
+bend, raced with a quartering wind down the next reach, shot across
+another bend--and lay drifting in a golden calm. Still above us the
+great wind buzzed in the crags like a swarm of giant bees, and the
+waters about us lay like a sheet of flawless glass.
+
+With paddles we pushed on lazily for an hour. At the next bend, where
+the river turned into the west, the great gale that had been roaring
+above us, suddenly struck us full in front. Sucking up river between the
+wall rocks on either side, its force was terrific. You tried to talk
+while facing it, and it took your breath away. In a few minutes, in
+spite of our efforts with the paddles, we lay pounding on the shallows
+of the opposite shore.
+
+We got out. Two went forward with the line and the third pushed at the
+stern. Progress was slow--no more than a mile an hour. The clear water
+of the upper river is always cold, and the great wind chilled the air.
+Even under the August noon it took brisk work to keep one's teeth from
+chattering. The bank we were following became a precipice rising sheer
+from the river's edge, and the water deepened until we could no longer
+wade. We got in and poled on to the next shallows, often for many
+minutes at a time barely holding our own against the stiff gusts. For
+two hours we dragged the heavily laden boat, sometimes walking the bank,
+sometimes wading in mid-stream, sometimes poling, often swimming with
+the line from one shallow to another. And the struggle ended as suddenly
+as it began. Upon rounding the second bend the head wind became a stern
+wind, driving us on at a jolly clip until nightfall.
+
+During the late afternoon, we came upon a place where the Great Northern
+Railroad touches the river for the last time in five hundred miles. Here
+we saw two Italian section hands whiling away their Sunday with fishing
+rods. I went ashore, hoping to buy some fish. Neither of the two could
+speak English, and Italian sounds to me merely like an unintelligible
+singing. However, they gave me to understand that the fish were not for
+sale, and my proffered coin had no persuasive powers.
+
+Still wanting those fish, I rolled a smoke, carelessly whistling the
+while a strain from an opera I had once heard. For some reason or other
+that strain had been in my head all day. I had gotten up in the morning
+with it; I had whistled it during the fight with the head wind. The Kid
+called it "that Dago tune." I think it was something from _Il
+Trovatore_.
+
+Suddenly one of the little Italians dropped his rod, stood up to his
+full height, lifted his arms very much after the manner of an orchestra
+leader and joined in with me. I stopped--because I saw that he _could_
+whistle. He carried it on with much expression to the last thin note
+with all the ache of the world in it. And then he grinned at me.
+
+"Verdi!" he said sweetly.
+
+I applauded. Whereat the little Italian produced a bag of tobacco. We
+sat down on the rocks and smoked together, holding a wordless but
+perfectly intelligble conversation of pleasant grins.
+
+That night we had fish for supper! I got them for a song--or, rather,
+for a whistle. I was fed with more than fish. And I went to sleep that
+night with a glorious thought for a pillow: Truth expressed as Art is
+the universal language. One immortal strain from Verdi, poorly whistled
+in a wilderness, had made a Dago and a Dutchman brothers!
+
+Scarcely had the crackling of the ruddy log lulled us to sleep, when the
+night had flitted over like a shadow, and we were cooking breakfast. A
+lone, gray wolf, sitting on his haunches a hundred paces away, regarded
+us curiously. Doubtless we were new to his generation; for in the
+evening dusk we had drifted well into the Bad Lands.
+
+Bad Lands? Rather the Land of Awe!
+
+A light stern wind came up with the sun. During the previous evening we
+had rigged a cat-sail, and noiselessly we glided down the glinting trail
+of crystal into the "Region of Weir."
+
+On either hand the sandstone cliffs reared their yellow masses against
+the cloudless sky. Worn by the ebbing floods of a prehistoric sea,
+carved by the winds and rains of ages, they presented a panorama of
+wonders.
+
+Rows of huge colonial mansions with pillared porticoes looked from their
+dizzy terraces across the stream to where soaring mosques and mystic
+domes of worship caught the sun. It was all like the visible dream of a
+master architect gone mad. Gaunt, sinister ruins of medieval castles
+sprawled down the slopes of unassailable summits. Grim brown towers,
+haughtily crenellated, scowled defiance on the unappearing foe. Titanic
+stools of stone dotted barren garden slopes, where surely gods had once
+strolled in that far time when the stars sang and the moon was young.
+Dark red walls of regularly laid stone--huge as that the Chinese flung
+before the advance of the Northern hordes--held imaginary empires
+asunder. Poised on a dizzy peak, Jove's eagle stared into the eye of the
+sun, and raised his wings for the flight deferred these many centuries.
+Kneeling face to face upon a lonesome summit, their hands clasped before
+them, their backs bent as with the burdens of the race, two women prayed
+the old, old woman prayer. The snow-white ruins of a vast cathedral lay
+along the water's edge, and all about it was a hush of worship. And near
+it, arose the pointed pipes of a colossal organ--with the summer silence
+for music.
+
+With a lazy sail we drifted through this place of awe; and for once I
+had no regrets about that engine. The popping of the exhaust would have
+seemed sacrilegious in this holy quiet.
+
+Seldom do men pass that way. It is out of the path of the tourist. No
+excursion steamers ply those awesome river reaches. Across the sacred
+whiteness of that cathedral's imposing mass, no sign has ever been
+painted telling you the merits of the best five-cent cigar in the world!
+Few besides the hawks and the crows would see it, if it were there.
+
+And yet, for all the quiet in this land of wonder, somehow you cannot
+feel that the place is unpeopled. Surely, you think, invisible knights
+clash in tourney under those frowning towers. Surely a lovelorn maiden
+spins at that castle window, weaving her heartache into the magic
+figures of her loom. Stately dames must move behind the shut doors of
+those pillared mansions; devotees mutter Oriental prayers beneath those
+sun-smitten domes. And amid the awful inner silence of that cathedral,
+white-robed priests lift wan faces to their God.
+
+Under the beat of the high sun the light stern wind fell. The slack sail
+drooped like a sick-hearted thing. Idly drifting on the slow glassy
+flood, we seemed only an incidental portion of this dream in which the
+deepest passions of man were bodied forth in eternal fixity. Towers of
+battle, domes of prayer, fanes of worship, and then--the kneeling women!
+Somehow one couldn't whistle there. Bill and the Kid, little given to
+sentiment, sat quietly and stared.
+
+Late in the afternoon we found ourselves out of this "Region of Weir."
+Great wall rocks soared above us. Consulting our map, we found that we
+were nearing Eagle Rapids, the first of a turbulent series. I had fondly
+anticipated shooting them all under power. So once more I decided to go
+over that engine. We landed at the wooded mouth of a little ravine,
+having made a trifle over twenty miles that day.
+
+With those tools of the engine doctor--an air of mystery and a
+monkey-wrench--I unscrewed everything that appeared to have a thread on
+it, and pulled out the other things. The odds, I figured, were in my
+favor. A sick engine is useless, and I felt assured of either killing or
+curing. I did something--I don't know what; but having achieved the
+complete screwing up and driving in of things--_it went_!
+
+So on the morning of the fourth day, we were up early, eager for the
+shooting of rapids. We had understood from the conversation of the
+seemingly wise, that Eagle Rapids was the first of a series that made
+the other rapids we had passed through look like mere ripples on the
+surface. In some of those we had gone at a very good clip, and several
+times we had lost our rudder.
+
+I remembered how the steamboats used to be obliged to throw out cables
+and slowly wind themselves up with the power of the "steam nigger." I
+also remembered the words of Father de Smet: "There are many rapids, ten
+of which are very difficult to ascend and very dangerous to go down."
+
+We had intended from the very first to get wrecked in one or all of
+these rapids. For this reason we had distributed forward, aft, and
+amidships, eight five-gallon cans, soldered air-tight. The frail craft
+would, we figured, be punctured. The cans would displace nearly three
+hundred and fifty pounds of water, and the boat and engine, submerged,
+would lose a certain weight. I had made the gruesome calculation with
+fond attention to detail. I decided that she should be wrecked quite
+arithmetically. We should be able, the figures said, to recover the
+engine and patch the boat. We had provided three life-preservers, but
+one had been stolen; so I had fancied what a bully fight one might have
+if he should be thrown out into the mad waters without a life-preserver.
+
+I have never been able to explain it satisfactorily; it is one of the
+paradoxes; but human nature seems to take a weird delight in placing in
+jeopardy that which is dearest. Even a coward with his fingers clenched
+desperately on the ragged edge of hazard, feels an inexplicable thrill
+of glory. Having several times been decently scared, I know.
+
+One likes to take a sly peep behind the curtain of the big play, hoping
+perhaps to get a slight hint as to what machinery hoists the moon, and
+what sort of contrivance flings the thunder and lightning, and many
+other things that are none of his business. Only, to be sure, he intends
+to get away safely with his information. When you think you see your
+finish bowing to receive you, something happens in your head. It's like
+a sultry sheet of rapid fire lapping up for a moment the thunder-shaken
+night--and discovering a strange land to you. And it's really good for
+you.
+
+Under half speed we cruised through the windless golden morning; and the
+lonesome canyon echoed and re-echoed with the joyful chortle of the
+resurrected engine. We had covered about ten miles, when a strange
+sighing sound grew up about us. It seemed to emanate from the soaring
+walls of rock. It seemed faint, yet it arose above the din of the
+explosions, drowned out the droning of the screw.
+
+Steadily the sound increased. Like the ghost of a great wind it moaned
+and sighed about us. Little by little a new note crept in--a sibilant,
+metallic note as of a tense sheet of silk drawn rapidly over a thin
+steel edge.
+
+[Illustration: WOLF POINT, THE FIRST TOWN IN 500 MILES.]
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE BAD LANDS.]
+
+We knew it to be the mourning voice of the Eagle Rapids; but far as we
+could see, the river was quiet as a lake. We jogged on for a mile,
+with the invisible moaning presence about us. It was somewhat like the
+intangible something you feel about a powerful but sinister personality.
+The golden morning was saturated with it.
+
+Suddenly, turning a sharp bend about the wall of rock that flanked the
+channel, a wind of noise struck us. It was like the hissing of
+innumerable snakes against a tonal background of muffled continuous
+thunder. A hundred yards before us was Eagle Rapids--a forbidding patch
+of writhing, whitening water, pricked with the upward thrust of
+toothlike rocks.
+
+The first sight of it turned the inside of me mist-gray. Temporarily,
+wrecks and the arithmetic of them had little charm for me. I seized the
+spark-lever, intending to shut down. Instead, I threw it wide open. With
+the resulting leap of the craft, all the gray went out of me.
+
+I grasped the rudder ropes and aimed at a point where the sinuous
+current sucked through a passage in the rocks like a lean flame through
+a windy flue. Did you ever hear music that made you see purple? It was
+that sort of purple I saw (or did I hear it like music?) when we plunged
+under full speed into the first suck of the rapids. We seemed a
+conscious arrow hurled through a gray, writhing world, the light of
+which was noise. And then, suddenly, the quiet, golden morning flashed
+back; and we were ripping the placid waters of a lake.
+
+The Kid broke out into boisterous laughter that irritated me strangely:
+"Where the devil do you suppose our life-preservers are?" he bawled.
+"They're clear down under all the cargo!"
+
+A world of wonderful beauty was forging past us. In the golden calm, the
+scintillant sheet of water seemed to be rushing backward, splitting
+itself over the prow, like a fabric woven of gold and silver drawn
+rapidly against a keen stationary blade.
+
+The sheer cliffs had fallen away into pine-clad slopes, and vari-colored
+rocks flung notes of scarlet and gold through the sombre green of the
+pines--like the riotous treble cries of an organ pricking the sullen
+murmur of the bass. So still were the clean waters that we seemed midway
+between two skies.
+
+We skirted the base of a conical rock that towered three hundred feet
+above us--a Titan sentinel. It was the famous Sentinel Rock of the old
+steamboat days. I shut the engine down to quarter speed, for somehow
+from the dizzy summit a sad dream fell upon me and bade me linger.
+
+I stared down into the cold crystal waters at the base of the rock.
+Many-colored mosses, sickly green, pale, feverish red, yellow like fear,
+black like despair, purple like the lips of a strangled man, clung
+there. I remembered an old spring I used to haunt when I was just old
+enough to be awed by the fact of life and frightened at the possibility
+of death. Just such mosses grew in the depths of that spring. I used to
+stare into it for hours.
+
+It fascinated me in a terrible way. I thought Death looked like that.
+Even now I am afraid I could not swim long in clear waters with those
+fearful colors under me. I am sure they found Ophelia floating like a
+ghastly lily in such a place.
+
+Filled with a shadow of the old childish dread, I looked up to the
+austere summit of the Sentinel. Scarred and haggard with time it caught
+the sun. I thought of how long it had stood there just so, under the
+intermittent flashing of moon and sun and star, since first its flinty
+peak had pricked through the hot spume of prehistoric seas.
+
+Fantastic reptiles, winged and finned and fanged, had basked upon
+it--grotesque, tentative vehicles of the Flame of Life! And then these
+flashed out, and the wild sea fell, and the land arose--hideous and
+naked, a steaming ooze fetid with gasping life. And all the while this
+scarred Sentinel stared unmoved. And then a riot of giant vegetation all
+about it--divinely extravagant, many-colored as fire. And this too
+flashed out--like the impossible dream of a god too young. And the Great
+Change came, and the paradox of frost was in the world, stripping life
+down to the lean essentials till only the sane, capable things might
+live. And still the Titan stared as in the beginning. And then, men were
+in the land--gaunt, terrible, wolf-like men, loving and hating. And La
+Verendrye forged past it; and Lewis and Clark toiled under it through
+these waters of awful quiet. And then the bull boats and the mackinaws
+and the packets. And all these flashed out; and still it stood unmoved.
+And I came--and I too would flash out, and all men after me and all
+life.
+
+I viewed the colossal watcher with something like terror--the aspect of
+death about its base and that cynical glimmer of sunlight at its top. I
+flung the throttle open, and we leaped forward through the river hush.
+I wanted to get away from this thing that had seen so much of life and
+cared so little. It depressed me strangely; it thrust bitter questions
+within the charmed circle of my ego. It gave me an almost morbid desire
+for speed, as though there were some place I should reach before the
+terrible question should be answered against me.
+
+We fled down five or six miles of depressingly quiet waters. Once again
+the wall rocks closed about us. We seemed to be going at a tediously
+slow pace, yet the two thin streams of water rushed hissing from prow to
+stern. A strange mood was upon me. Once when I was a boy and far from
+home, I awoke in the night with a bed of railroad ties under me, and the
+chill black blanket of the darkness about me. I wanted to get up and run
+through that damned night--anywhere, just so I went fast
+enough--stopping only when exhaustion should drag me down. And yet I was
+afraid of nothing tangible; hunger and the stranger had sharpened
+whatever blue steel there was in my nature. I was afraid of being still!
+Were you ever a homesick boy, too proud to tell the truth about it?
+
+I felt something of that boy's ache as we shot in among the wall rocks
+again. It was a psychic hunger for something that does not exist. Oh, to
+attain the terrible speed one experiences in a fever-dream, to get
+somewhere before it is too late, before the black curtain drops!
+
+To some this may sound merely like the grating of overwrought nerves.
+But it is more than that. All religions grew out of that most human
+mood. And whenever one is deeply moved, he feels it. For even the most
+matter-of-fact person of us all has now and then a suspicion that this
+life is merely episodic--that curtain after curtain of darkness is to be
+pierced, world after world of consciousness and light to be passed
+through.
+
+Once more the rocks took on grotesque shapes--utterly ultra-human in
+their suggestiveness. Those who have marveled at the Hudson's beauty
+should drop down this lonesome stretch.
+
+We shot through the Elbow Rapids at the base of the great
+Hole-in-the-wall Rock. It was deep and safe--much like an exaggerated
+mill-race. It ran in heavy swells, yet the day was windless.
+
+In the late afternoon we shot the Dead Man's Rapids, a very turbulent
+and rocky stretch of water. We went through at a freight-train speed,
+and began to develop a slight contempt for fast waters. That night we
+camped at the mouth of the Judith River on the site of the now forgotten
+Fort Chardon. We had made only ninety-eight miles in four days. It began
+to appear that we might be obliged to finish on skates!
+
+We were up and off with the first gray of the morning. We knew Dauphin
+Rapids to be about seventeen miles below, and since this particular
+patch of water had by far the greatest reputation of all the rapids, we
+were eager to make its acquaintance.
+
+The engine began to show unmistakable signs of getting tired of its job.
+Now and then it barked spitefully, had half a notion to stop, changed
+its mind, ran faster than it should, wheezed and slowed down--acting in
+an altogether unreasonable way. But it kept the screw humming
+nevertheless.
+
+Fortunately it was going at a mad clip when we sighted the Dauphin.
+There was not that sibilance and thunder that had turned me a bit gray
+inside at first sight of the Eagle. The channel was narrow, and no rocks
+appeared above the surface. But speed _was_ there; and the almost
+noiseless rolling of the swift flood ahead had a more formidable
+appearance than that of the Eagle. Rocks above the surface are not much
+to be feared when you have power and a good rudder. But we drew about
+twenty-two inches of water, and I thought of the rocks under the
+surface.
+
+I had, however, only a moment to think, for we were already traveling a
+good eighteen miles, and when the main swirl of the rapids seized us, we
+no doubt reached twenty-five. I was grasping the rudder ropes and we
+were all grinning a sort of idiotic satisfaction at the amazing spurt of
+speed, when----
+
+Something was about to happen!
+
+The Kid and I were sitting behind the engine in order to hold her screw
+down to solid water. Bill, decorated with a grin, sat amidships facing
+us. I caught a pink flash in the swirl just under our bow, and then _it
+happened_!
+
+The boat reared like a steeple-chaser taking a fence! The Kid shot
+forward over the engine and knocked the grin off Bill's face! Clinging
+desperately to the rudder ropes, I saw, for a brief moment, a good
+three-fourths of the frail craft thrust skyward at an angle of about
+forty-five degrees. Then she stuck her nose in the water and her screw
+came up, howling like seven devils in the air behind me! Instinctively,
+I struck the spark-lever; the howling stopped,--and we were floating in
+the slow waters below Dauphin Rapids.
+
+All the cargo had forged forward, and the persons of Bill and the Kid
+were considerably tangled. We laughed loud and long. Then we gathered
+ourselves up and wondered if she might be taking water under the cargo.
+It developed that she wasn't. But one of our grub boxes, containing all
+the bacon, was missing. So were the short oars that we used for paddles.
+While we laughed, these had found some convenient hiding-place.
+
+We had struck a smooth bowlder and leaped over it. A boat with the
+ordinary launch construction would have opened at every seam. The light
+springy tough construction of the _Atom_ had saved her. Whereat I
+thought of the Information Bureau and was well pleased.
+
+Altogether we looked upon the incident as a purple spot. But we were
+many miles from available bacon, and when, upon trial, the engine
+refused to make a revolution, we began to get exceedingly hungry for
+meat.
+
+Having a dead engine and no paddles, we drifted. We drifted very slowly.
+The Kid asked if he might not go ashore and drive a stake in the bank.
+For what purpose? Why, to ascertain whether we were going up or down
+stream! While we drifted in the now blistering sun, we talked about
+_meat_. With a devilish persistence we quite exhausted the subject. We
+discussed the best methods for making a beefsteak delicious. It made us
+very hungry for meat. The Kid announced that he could feel his backbone
+sawing at the front of his shirt. But perhaps that was only the
+hyperbole of youth. Bill confessed that he had once grumbled at his good
+wife for serving the steak too rare. He now stated that at the first
+telegraph station he would wire for forgiveness. I advised him to wire
+for money instead and buy meat with it. Personally I felt a sort of
+wistful tenderness for packing-houses.
+
+That day passed somehow, and the next morning we were still hungry for
+meat. We spent most of the morning talking about it. In the blistering
+windless afternoon, we drifted lazily. Now and then we took turns
+cranking the engine.
+
+We were going stern foremost and I was cranking. We rounded a bend
+where the wall rocks sloped back, leaving a narrow arid sagebrush strip
+along both sides of the stream. I had straightened up to get the kink
+out of my back and mop the sweat out of my eyes, when I saw something
+that made my stomach turn a double somersault.
+
+A good eight hundred yards down stream at the point of a gravel-bar,
+something that looked like and yet unlike a small cluster of drifting,
+leafless brush moved slowly into the water. Now it appeared quite
+distinct, and now it seemed that a film of oil all but blotted it out. I
+blinked my eyes and peered hard through the baffling yellow glare. Then
+I reached for the rifle and climbed over the gunwhale. I smelled raw
+meat.
+
+Fortunately, we were drifting across a bar, and the slow water came only
+to my shoulders. The thing eight hundred yards away was forging across
+stream by this time--heading for the mouth of a coulee. I saw plainly
+now that the brush grew out of a head. It was a buck with antlers.
+
+Just below the coulee's mouth, the wall rocks began again. The buck
+would be obliged to land above the wall rocks, and the drifting boat
+would keep him going. I reached shore and headed for that coulee. The
+sagebrush concealed me. At the critical moment, I intended to show
+myself and start him up the steep slope. Thus he would be forced to
+approach me while fleeing me. When I felt that enough time had passed, I
+stood up. The buck, shaking himself like a dog, stood against the yellow
+sandstone at the mouth of the gulch. He saw me, looked back at the
+drifting boat, and appeared to be undecided.
+
+I wondered what the range might be. Back home in the plowed field where
+I frequently plug tin cans at various long ranges, I would have called
+it six hundred yards--at first. Then suddenly it seemed three or four
+hundred. Like a thing in a dream the buck seemed to waver back and forth
+in the oily sunlight.
+
+"Call it four hundred and fifty," I said to myself, and let drive. A
+spurt of yellow stone-dust leaped from the cliff a foot or so above the
+deer's back. Only four hundred? But the deer had made up his mind. He
+had urgent business on the other side of that slope--he appeared to be
+overdue.
+
+[Illustration: FRESH MEAT.]
+
+[Illustration: SUPPER!]
+
+I pumped up another shell and drew fine at four hundred. That time
+his rump quivered for a second as though a great weight had been dropped
+on it. But he went on with increased speed. Once more I let him have it.
+That time he lost an antler. He had now reached the summit, two hundred
+feet up at the least.
+
+He hesitated--seemed to be shivering. I have hunted with a full stomach
+and brought down game. But there's a difference when you are empty. In
+that moment before you kill, you became the sort of fellow your mother
+wouldn't like. Perhaps the average man would feel a little ashamed to
+tell the truth about that savage moment. I got down on my knee and put a
+final soft-nosed ball where it would do the most good. The buck reared,
+stiffened, and came down, tumbling over and over.
+
+That night we pitched camp under a lone scrubby tree at the mouth of an
+arid gulch that led back into the utterly God-forsaken Bad Lands. It was
+the wilderness indeed. Coyotes howled far away in the night, and diving
+beaver boomed out in the black stream.
+
+We built half a dozen fires and swung above them the choice portions of
+our kill. And how we ate--with what glorious appetites!
+
+It is good to sit with a glad-hearted company flinging words of joyful
+banter across very tall steins. It is good to draw up to a country table
+at Christmas time with turkey and pumpkin-pies and old-fashioned
+puddings before you, and the ones you love about you. I have been deeply
+happy with apples and cider before an open fireplace. I have been
+present when the brilliant sword-play of wit flashed across a banquet
+table--and it thrilled me. _But_----
+
+There is no feast like the feast in the open--the feast in the flaring
+light of a night fire--the feast of your own kill, with the tang of the
+wild and the tang of the smoke in it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
+
+
+It all came back there by the smoldering fires--the wonder and the
+beauty and the awe of being alive. We had eaten hugely--a giant feast.
+There had been no formalities about that meal. Lying on our blankets
+under the smoke-drift, we had cut with our jack-knives the tender
+morsels from a haunch as it roasted. When the haunch was at last cooked
+to the bone, only the bone was left.
+
+Heavy with the feast, I lay on my back watching the gray smoke brush my
+stars that seemed so near. _My stars!_ Soft and gentle and mystical!
+Like a dark-browed Yotun woman wooing the latent giant in me, the night
+pressed down. I closed my eyes, and through me ran the sensuous surface
+fires of her dream-wrought limbs. Upon my face the weird magnetic lure
+of ever-nearing, never-kissing lips made soundless music. Like a sister,
+like a mother she caressed me, lazy with the huge feast; and yet, a
+drowsy, half-voluptuous joy shimmered and rippled in my veins.
+
+Drowsing and dreaming under the drifting smoke-wrack, I felt the sense
+of time and self drop away from me. No now, no to-morrow, no yesterday,
+no I! Only eternity, one vast whole--sun-shot, star-sprent, love-filled,
+changeless. And in it all, one spot of consciousness more acute than
+other spots; and that was the something that had eaten hugely, and that
+now felt the inward-flung glory of it all; the swooning, half-voluptuous
+sense of awe and wonder, the rippling, shimmering, universal joy.
+
+And then suddenly and without shock--like the shifting of the wood
+smoke--the mood veered, and there was nothing but I. Space and eternity
+were I--vast projections of myself, tingling with my consciousness to
+the remotest fringe of the outward swinging atom-drift; through
+immeasurable night, pierced capriciously with shafts of paradoxic day;
+through and beyond the awful circle of yearless duration, my ego lived
+and knew itself and thrilled with the glory of being. The slowly
+revolving Milky Way was only a glory within me; the great woman-star
+jeweling the summit of a cliff, was only an ecstasy within me; the
+murmuring of the river out in the dark was only the singing of my heart;
+and the deep, deep blue of the heavens was only the splendid color of my
+soul.
+
+Bill snored. Among the glowing fires moved the black bulk of the Kid,
+turning the hunks of venison. And then the universe and I, curiously
+mixed, swooned into nothing at all, and I was blinking at a golden glow,
+and from the river came a shouting.
+
+It was broad day. We leaped up, and rubbing the sleep from our eyes, saw
+a light skiff drifting toward us. It contained two men--Frank and
+Charley. We had met them at Benton, and during an acquaintance of three
+weeks we had learned of their remarkable ability as cooks. Frank was a
+little Canadian Frenchman, and Charley was English. Both, in the
+parlance of the road, were "floaters"; that is to say, no locality ever
+knew them long; the earth was their floor, the sky their ceiling--and
+their god was Whim. Naturally our trip had appealed to them, and one
+month in Benton had aggravated that hopelessly incurable
+disease--_Wanderlust_.
+
+So we had agreed that somewhere down river we would camp for a week and
+wait for them. They would do the cooking, and we would take them in tow.
+Two days after we dropped out of Benton, they had abruptly "jumped" an
+unfinished job and put off after us in a skiff, rowing all day and most
+of the night in order to overtake us.
+
+Certainly they had arrived at the moment most psychologically favorable
+for the beginning of an odd sort of tyranny that followed. Cooking is a
+weird mystery to me. As for Bill and the Kid, courtesy forbids detailed
+comment. The Kid had been uniformly successful in disguising the most
+familiar articles of diet; and Bill was perhaps least unsuccessful in
+the making of flapjacks. According to his naive statement, he had
+discovered the trick of mixing the batter while manufacturing
+photographer's mounting paste. His statement was never questioned. My
+only criticism on his flapjacks was simply that he left too much to the
+imagination. For these and kindred reasons, we gladly hailed the
+newcomers.
+
+Ten minutes after the skiff touched shore, the camp consisted of two
+cooks and three scullions. The Kid was a hewer and packer of wood, I was
+a peeler and slicer of things, and Bill, sweetly oblivious of his
+bewhiskered dignity, danced about in the humblest of moods, handing this
+and that to the grub-lords.
+
+"You outfitted like greenhorns!" announced the usurpers. "What you want
+is raw material. Run down to the boat, please, and bring me this! Oh,
+yes, and bring me that! And you'll find the other in the bottom of the
+skiff's forward locker! Put a little more wood on the fire, Kid; and
+say, Bill, hand me that, won't you? Who's going to get a pail of water?"
+
+All three of us were going to get a pail of water, of course! It was the
+one thing in the world we wanted to do very much--get a pail of water!
+
+But the raw materials--how they played on them! I regarded their
+performance as a species of duet; and the raw materials, ranged in the
+sand about the fire, were the keys. Frank touched this, Charley touched
+that, and over the fire the music grew--perfectly stomach-ravishing!
+
+We had bought with much care all, or nearly all the ordinary
+cooking-utensils. These the usurpers scorned. Three or four gasoline
+cans, transformed by a jack-knife into skillets, ovens, platters, etc.,
+sufficed for these masters of their craft. The downright Greek
+simplicity of their methods won me completely.
+
+"This is indeed Art," thought I; "first, the elimination of the
+non-essential, and then the virile, unerring directness, the seemingly
+easy accomplishment resulting from effort long forgotten; and, above
+all, the final, convincing delivery of the goods."
+
+Out of the chaos of the raw material, beneath the touch of Charley's
+wise hands, emerged a wondrous cosmos of biscuits, light as the heart of
+a boy. And Frank, singing a French ditty, created wheat cakes. His
+method struck me as poetic. He scorned the ordinary uninspired cook's
+manner of turning the half-baked cake. One side being done, he waited
+until the ditty reached a certain lilting upward leap in the refrain,
+when, with a dexterous movement of the frying-pan, he tossed the cake
+into the air, making it execute a joyful somersault, and catching it
+with a sizzling _splat_ in the pan, just as the lilting measure ceased
+abruptly.
+
+Why, I could taste that song in the pancakes!
+
+I wonder why domestic economy has so persistently overlooked the value
+of song as an adjunct to cookery. _Gateaux a la chansonnette!_ Who
+wouldn't eat them for breakfast?
+
+At six in the evening we put off, Charley, the Kid and I manning the
+power boat, Bill and Frank the skiff, which was towed by a thirty-foot
+line. I had, during the day, transformed my unquestioned slavery into a
+distinct advantage, having carefully impressed upon the Englishman the
+honor I would do him by allowing him to become chief engineer of the
+_Atom_. I carefully avoided the subject of cranking. I was tired
+cranking. I felt that I had exhausted the possibilities of enjoyment in
+that particular form of physical exercise. It had developed during the
+day that Charley had once run a gasoline engine. I was careful to
+emphasize my ridiculous lack of mechanical ability. Charley took the
+bait beautifully.
+
+But just now the engine ran merrily. Above its barking I sang the
+praises of the Englishman, with a comfortable feeling that, at least in
+this, the tail would wag the dog.
+
+Through the clear quiet waters, between soaring canyon walls, we raced
+eastward into the creeping twilight. Here and there the banks widened
+out into valleys of wondrous beauty, flanked by jagged miniature
+mountains transfigured in the slant evening light. It seemed the "faerie
+land forlorn" of which Keats dreamed, where year after year come only
+the winds and the rains and the snow and the sunlight and the star-sheen
+and the moon-glow.
+
+In the deepening evening our widening V-shaped wake glowed with
+opalescent witch-fires. Watching the oily ripples, I steered wild and
+lost the channel. We all got out and, wading in different directions,
+went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake
+three or four hundred yards wide and eight inches deep. Slipping poles
+under the power boat, we carried it several hundred yards to a point
+where the stream deepened. It was now quite dark, and the engine quit
+work for the day. The skiff towed us another mile or so to a camping
+place.
+
+Having moored the boats, we lined up on the shore and had a song. It was
+a quintet, consisting of a Frenchman, an Englishman, an Irishman, a
+Cornishman, and a German. A very strong quintet it was; that is to say,
+strong on volume. As to quality--we weren't thrusting ourselves upon an
+audience. The river and the sky didn't seem to mind, and the cliffs sang
+after us, lagging a beat or two.
+
+We wished to sing ever so beautifully; and, after all, it would be much
+better to have the whole world wishing to sing melodiously, than to have
+just a few masters here and there who really can! Did you ever hear a
+barefooted, freckle-faced plowboy singing powerfully and quite out of
+tune, the stubble fields about him still glistening with the morning
+dew, and the meadow larks joining in from the fence-posts? I have: and
+soaring above the faulty execution, I heard the lark-heart of the
+never-aging world wooing the far-off eternal dawn. True song is merely a
+hopeful condition of the soul. And so I am sure we sang very wonderfully
+that night.
+
+And how the flapjacks disappeared as a result of that singing! We ate
+until Charley refused to bake any more; then we rolled up in our
+blankets by the fire and "swapped lies," dropping off one at a time into
+sleep until the last speaker finished his story with only the drowsy
+stars for an audience. At least I suppose it was so; I was not the last
+speaker.
+
+Alas! too seldom were we to hail the evening star with song. So far we
+had made in a week little more than one hundred and fifty miles. With
+the exception of a few hours of head winds, that week had been a week of
+dream. We now awoke fully to the fact that in low water season the
+Missouri is not swift. In our early plans we had fallen in with the
+popular fallacy that one need only cut loose and let the current do the
+rest; whereas, in low water, one would probably never reach the end of
+his journey by that method. In addition to this, our gasoline was
+running low. We had trusted to irrigation plants for replenishing our
+supply from time to time. But the great flood of the spring had swept
+the valley clean. Where the year before there were prosperous ranch
+establishments with gasoline pumping plants, there was only desolation
+now. It was as though we traveled in the path of a devastating army.
+Perhaps the summer of 1908 was the most unfavorable season for such a
+trip in the last fifty years. Steamboating on the upper river is only a
+memory. There are now no wood-yards as formerly. We found ourselves with
+no certainty of procuring grub and oil; our engine became more and more
+untrustworthy; our paddles had been lost. What winds we had generally
+blew against us, and the character of the banks was changing. The cliffs
+gave way to broad alluvial valleys, over which, at times, the gales
+swept with terrific force.
+
+Our map told us of a number of river "towns." We had already been
+partially disillusioned as to the character of those "towns." They were
+pretty much in a class with Goodale, except that they lacked the switch
+and the box-car and the sign. Just now Rocky Point lay ahead of us.
+Rocky Point meant a new supply of food and oil. Stimulated by this
+thought, Charley cranked heroically under the blistering sun and managed
+to arouse the engine now and then into spasms of speed. He had not yet
+begun to swear. Fearfully I awaited the first evidence of the new mood,
+which I knew must come.
+
+At least once a day we put the machinery on the operating table. Each
+time we succeeded only in developing new symptoms.
+
+At a point about fifty miles from the "town" so deeply longed for, a
+lone cow-punch appeared on the bank.
+
+"How far to Rocky Point?" I cried.
+
+"Oh, something less than two hundred miles!" drawled the horseman. (How
+carelessly they juggle with miles in that country!)
+
+"It's just a little place, isn't it?" I continued.
+
+"Little place!" answered the cow-puncher; "hell, no!"
+
+"What!" I cried in glee; "Is it really a town of importance?" I had
+visions of a budding metropolis, full of gasoline and grub.
+
+"I guess it ain't a little place," explained the rider; "_w'y, they've
+got nigh onto ten thousand cattle down there_!"
+
+Ten minutes after that, Charley, after a desperate but unsuccessful fit
+of cranking, straightened the kink out of his back, mopped the
+perspiration from his face--_and swore_!
+
+Almost immediately I felt, or at least thought I felt, a distinct change
+in the temper of the crew--for the worse. We used the better part of two
+days covering the last fifty miles into Rocky Point, only to find that
+the place consisted of a log ranch-house, two women, an old man, and
+"Texas." The cattle and the other men were scattered over a hundred
+miles or so of range. The women either would not or could not supply us
+with grub, explaining that the nearest railroad town was ninety miles
+away. Gasoline was out of the question. We might be able to buy some at
+the mouth of Milk River, _two hundred miles down stream_!
+
+"Texas," who made me think of Gargantua, and who had a chest like a
+bison bull's, and a drawling fog-horn voice, ran a saloon in an odd
+little shanty boat brought down by the flood. He solved the problem for
+us.
+
+"You cain't get no gasoline short o' Milk River," he bellowed
+drawlingly; "and you sure got to paddle, so you better buy whisky!"
+
+While we were deciding to accept the offered advice, "Texas" whittled a
+stick and got off a few jokes of Rabelaisian directness. We laughed
+heartily, and as a mark of his appreciation, he gave us five quarts for
+a gallon. Which proved, in spite of his appearance, that "Texas" was
+very human.
+
+We gave the engine a final trial. It ran by spasms--backwards. Then,
+finally, it refused to run at all. We tried to make ourselves believe
+that the gasoline was too low in the tank, that the pressure of the oil
+had something to do with it. At first we really knew better. But days of
+drudgery at the paddles transformed the makeshift hope into something
+almost like a certainty.
+
+There was no lumber at Rocky Point. We rummaged through a pile of
+driftwood and found some half-rotted two-by-sixes. These we hacked into
+paddles. They weighed, when thoroughly soaked, at least fifteen pounds
+apiece.
+
+Sending Bill and Frank on ahead with the skiff and the small store of
+provisions, Charley and I, the Kid at the steering rope, set out pushing
+the power canoe with the paddles. The skiff was very soon out of sight.
+
+The _Atom_, very fast under power, was, with paddles, the slowest boat
+imaginable. There was no lift to her prow, no exhilarating leap as with
+the typical light canoe driven by regulation paddles. And she was as
+unwieldy as a log. A light wind blew up-stream, and the current was very
+slow. After dark we caught up with Bill and Frank, who had supper
+waiting. I had been tasting venison all day; but there was none for
+supper. In spite of a night's smoking, all of it had spoiled. This left
+us without meat. Our provisions now consisted mostly of flour. We had a
+few potatoes and some toasted wind called "breakfast food." During six
+or seven hours of hard work at the paddles, we had covered no more than
+fifteen miles. These facts put together gave no promising result. In
+addition to this, it was impossible to stir up a song. Even the liquor
+wouldn't bring it out. And the flapjacks were not served _a la
+chansonnette_ that night. I tried to explain why the trip was only
+beginning to get interesting; but my words fell flat. And when the
+irrepressible Kid essayed a joke, I alone laughed at it, though rather
+out of gratitude than mirth.
+
+[Illustration: "WALKING" BOATS OVER SHALLOWS.]
+
+[Illustration: TYPICAL UPPER MISSOURI RIVER REACH.]
+
+[Illustration: THE MOUTH OF THE JAMES.]
+
+There are many men who live and die with the undisputed reputation of
+being good fellows--your friends and mine--who, if put to the test,
+would fail miserably. Fortunate is that man to whom it is not given to
+test all of his friends. This is not cynicism; it is only human nature;
+and I love human nature, being myself possessed of so much of it. I
+admire it when it stands firmly upon its legs, and I love it when it
+wabbles. But when it gains power with increasing odds, grows big with
+obstacles, I worship it.
+
+    "To thrill with the joy of girded men,
+    To go on forever and fail, and go on again--
+    With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night--"
+
+Thus it should have been. But that night, staring into the face of three
+of the four, I saw the yellow streak. The Kid was not one of the three.
+The first railroad station would hold out no temptation to him. He was a
+kid, but manhood has little to do with age. It must exist from the
+first like a tang of iron in the blood. Age does not really create
+anything--it only develops. Your wonderful and beautiful things often
+come as paradoxes. I looked for a man and found him in a boy.
+
+Bill talked about home and stared into the twilight. The "floaters" were
+irritable, quarreling with the fire, the grub, the cooking-utensils, and
+verbally sending the engine to the devil.
+
+Seeing about eighteen hundred miles of paddle work ahead, knowing that
+at that season of the year the prevailing winds would be head winds, and
+having very little faith in the engine under any conditions, I decided
+to travel day and night, for the water was falling steadily and already
+the channels were at times hard to find. Charley and Frank grumbled. I
+told them we would split the grub fairly, a fifth to a man, and that
+they might travel as slowly as they liked, the skiff being their
+property. They stayed with us.
+
+We lashed the boats together and put off into the slow current. A
+haggard, eerie fragment of moon slinked westward. Stars glinted in the
+flawless chilly blue. The surface of the river was like polished
+ebony--a dream-path wrought of gloom and gleam. The banks were lines of
+dusk, except where some lone cottonwood loomed skyward like a giant
+ghost clothed with a mantle that glistered and darkled in the chill
+star-sheen.
+
+There was the feel of moving in eternity about it all. The very
+limitation of the dusk gave the feeling of immensity. There was no sense
+of motion, yet we moved. The sky seemed as much below as above. We
+seemed suspended in a hollow globe. Now and then the boom of a diving
+beaver's tail accented the clinging quiet; and by fits the drowsy
+muttering of waterfowl awoke in the adjacent swamps, and droned back
+into the universal hush.
+
+Frank and I stood watch, the three others rolling up in their blankets
+among the luggage. It occurred to me for the first time that we had a
+phonograph under the cargo. I went down after it. At random I chose a
+record and set the machine going. It was a Chopin _Nocturne_ played on a
+'cello--a vocal yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, a brushing
+of sick wings across the gates of heavens never to be entered; and then
+the finale--an insistent, feverish repetition of the human ache, ceasing
+as with utter exhaustion.
+
+I looked about me drinking in the night. How little this music really
+expressed it! It seemed too humanly near-sighted, too egotistic, too
+petty to sound out under those far-seeing stars, in that divine quiet.
+
+I slipped on another record. This time it was a beautiful little song,
+full of the sweet melancholy of love. I shut it down. The thing wouldn't
+do. In the evening--yes. But _now_! Truly there is something womanly
+about Night, something loverlike in a vast impersonal way; but too
+big--she is too terribly big to woo with human sentiment. Only a
+windlike chant would do--something with an undertone of human despair,
+outsoared by brave, savage flights of invincible soul-hope--great virile
+singing man-cries, winged as the starlight, weird as space--Whitman
+sublimated, David's soul poured out in symphony.
+
+I started another going. This time I did not stop it, for the Night was
+singing--through its nose perhaps, but still it was singing--out of that
+machine. It was Wagner's _Evening Star_ played by an orchestra. It
+filled the night, swept the glittering reaches, groped about in the
+glooms; and then, leaving the human theme behind, soul-like the upward
+yearning violins took flight, dissolving at last into starlight and
+immensity. Ages swept by me like a dream-wind. When I got back, the
+machine, all but run down, was scratching hideously.
+
+Slowly we swung about in the scarcely perceptible current. Down among
+the luggage the three snored discordantly. Frank's cigarette glowed
+intermittently against the dim horizon, like a bonfire far off.
+Somewhere out in the gloom coyotes chattered and yelped, and from far
+across the dusky valley others answered--a doleful tenson.
+
+I dozed. Frank awoke us all with a shout. We leaped up and stared
+blinkingly into the north. That whole region of the sky was aflame from
+zenith to horizon with spectral fires. It was the aurora. Not the pale,
+ragged glow, sputtering like the ghost of a huge lamp-flame, which is
+familiar to every one, but a billowing of color, rainbows gone mad! In
+the northeast the long rolling columns formed--many-colored clouds of
+spectral light whipped up as by a whirlwind--flung from eastward to
+westward, devouring Polaris and the Wain--rapid sequent towers of
+smokeless fire!
+
+It dazzled and whirled and mounted and fell like the illumined filmy
+skirts of some invisible Titanic serpentine dancer, madly pirouetting
+across a carpet of stars. Then suddenly it all fell into a dull
+ember-glow and flashed out. The ragged moon dropped out of the
+southwestern sky. In the chill of the night, gray, dense fog wraiths
+crawled upon the hidden face of the waters.
+
+Again I dozed and awakened with the sense of having stopped suddenly. A
+light wind had arisen and we were fast on a bar. Frank and I took our
+blankets out on the sand, rolled up and went to sleep.
+
+The red of dawn awoke us as though some one had shouted. Frank and I sat
+up and stared about. A white-tail deer was drinking at the river's edge
+three hundred yards away. So far as we were concerned, it was a
+dream-deer. We blinked complacently at it until it disappeared in the
+brush. Then we thought of the rifle.
+
+We were all stiff and chilled. The boats were motionless in shallow
+water. We all got out in the stream that felt icy to us, and waded the
+crafts into the channel. Incidentally we remembered Texas and his
+wisdom.
+
+The time was early August; but nevertheless there was a tang of frost in
+the air and the river seemed to flow not water but a thick frore fog. I
+smelled persimmons distinctly--it was that cold; brown spicy persimmons
+smashed on crisp autumn leaves down in old Missouri! The smell haunted
+me all morning like a bitter-sweet regret.
+
+We breakfasted on flapjacks and, separating the boats, put off. The
+skiff left us easily and disappeared. A head wind arose with the sun and
+increased steadily. By eleven o'clock it blew so strongly that we could
+make no headway with the rude paddles, and the waves, rolling at least
+four feet from trough to crest, made it impossible to hold the boat in
+course. We quit paddling, and got out in the water with the line. Two
+pulled and one pushed. All day we waded, sometimes up to our necks;
+sometimes we swam a bit, and sometimes we clung to the boat and kicked
+it on to the next shallows. Our progress was ridiculously slow, but we
+kept moving. When we stopped for a few minutes to smoke under the lee of
+a bank, our legs cramped.
+
+To lay up one day would be only to establish a precedent for day after
+day of inactivity. The prevailing winds would be head winds. We clung
+to the shoddy hope held out by that magic name--Milk River. We knew too
+well that Milk River was only a snare and a delusion; but one must fight
+toward something--it makes little difference what you call that
+something. A goal, in itself, is an empty thing; all the virtue lies in
+the moving toward the goal.
+
+Often we sank deep in the mud; often at the bends we could scarcely
+forge against the blast that held us leaning to the pull. Noon came and
+still we had not overtaken the skiff. Dark came, and we had not yet
+sighted it. But with the sun, the wind fell, and we paddled on, lank and
+chilled. About ten o'clock we sighted the campfire.
+
+We ate flapjacks once more--delicious, butterless flapjacks!--and then
+once more we put off into the chill night. We made twelve miles that
+day, and every foot had been a fight. I wanted to raise it to
+twenty-five before sunrise. No one grumbled this time; but in the light
+of the campfire the faces looked cheerless--except the Kid's face.
+
+We huddled up in our blankets and, naturally, all of us went to sleep. A
+great shock brought us to our feet. The moon had set and the sky was
+overcast. Thick night clung around us. We saw nothing, but by the
+rocking of the boats and the roaring of the river, we knew we were
+shooting rapids.
+
+Still dazed with sleep, I had a curious sense of being whirled at a
+terrific speed into some subterranean suck of waters. There was nothing
+to do but wait. We struck rocks and went rolling, shipping buckets of
+water at every dip. Then there was a long sickening swoop through utter
+blackness. It ended abruptly with a thud that knocked us down.
+
+We found that we were no longer moving. We got out, hanging to the
+gunwales. The boats were lodged on a reef of rock, and we were obliged
+to "walk" them for some distance, when suddenly the water deepened, and
+we all went up to our necks. And the night seemed bitterly cold. I never
+shivered more in January.
+
+It was yet too dark to find a camping place; so we drifted on until the
+east paled. Then we built a great log fire and baked ourselves until
+sunrise.
+
+Day after day my log-book begins with the words, "Heavy head winds," and
+ends with "Drifted most of the night." We covered about twenty-five
+miles every twenty-four hours. Every day the cooks grumbled more; and
+Bill had a way of staring wistfully into the distance and talking about
+home, that produced in me an odd mixture of anger and pity.
+
+We had lost our map: we had no calendar. Time and distance, curiously
+confused, were merely a weariness in the shoulders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ON TO THE YELLOWSTONE
+
+
+At last one evening (shall I confess it?) we had blue-crane soup for
+supper!
+
+Now a flight of gray-blue cranes across a pearl-gray sky, shot with
+threads of evening scarlet, makes a masterly picture: indeed, an effect
+worthy of reproduction in Art. You see a Japanese screen done in heroic
+size; and it is a sight to make you long exquisitely for things that are
+not--like a poet. But----
+
+Let us have no illusions about this matter! Crane soup is not
+satisfactory. It looks gray-blue and tastes gray-blue, and gives to your
+psychic inwardness a dull, gray-blue, melancholy tone. And when you
+nibble at the boiled gray-blue meat of an adult crane, you catch
+yourself wondering just what sort of _ragout_ could be made out of
+boots; you have a morbid longing to know just how bad such a _ragout_
+would really be!
+
+Hereafter on whatever trails I may follow, blue cranes shall be used
+chiefly for Japanese screen effects. Little by little (the latent
+philosopher in me emerges to remark) by experience we place not only
+ourselves but all things in their proper places in the universe. This
+process of fitting things properly in one's cosmos seems to be one of
+the chief aims of conscious life. Therefore I score one for
+myself--having placed blue cranes permanently in that cosmic nook given
+over to Japanese screen effects!
+
+Next morning we pushed on. The taste of that crane soup clung to me all
+day like the memory of an old sorrow dulled by time.
+
+Deer tracks were plentiful, but it has long been conceded that the
+tracks are by far the least edible things pertaining to an animal.
+Cranes seemed to have multiplied rapidly. Impudently tame, they lined
+the gravel-bars, and regarded us curiously as we fought our way past
+them. Now and then a flock of wild ducks alighted several hundred yards
+from us. We had only a rifle. To shoot a moving duck out of a moving
+boat with a rifle is a feat attended with some difficulties. Once we
+wounded a wild goose, but it got away; which offended our sense of
+poetic justice. After crane soup one would seem to deserve roast goose.
+
+I scanned the dreary monotonous valleys stretching away from the river.
+We had for several days been living on scenery, tobacco, and flapjacks.
+The scenery had flattened out, tobacco was running low; but the
+flapjacks bid fair to go on forever. I sought in my head for the exact
+adjective, the particular epithet with the inevitable feel about it,
+with which to describe that monotonous melancholy stretch. Every time I
+tried, I came back to the word "_baconless_." The word took on exquisite
+overtones of gray meaning, and I worked up those overtones until I had a
+perfectly wrought melancholy poem of one word--"_Baconless_." For, after
+all, a poem never existed upon paper, but lives subtly in the
+consciousness of the poet, and in the minds of those who understand the
+poet through the suggestiveness of his written symbols, and their own
+remembered experiences.
+
+But during the next morning, poetic justice worked. A rider mounted on a
+piebald pony appeared on the bank and shouted for us to pull in.
+
+I suddenly realized why a dog wags his tail at a stranger. But the
+feeling I had was bigger than that. This mounted man became at once for
+me the incarnation of the meaning of bacon!
+
+When two parties meet and each wants what the other can give, it doesn't
+take long to get acquainted. The rider was a youth of about seventeen.
+One glance at his face told you the story of his rearing. He was
+unmistakably city-bred, and his hands showed that his life had begun too
+easy for his own good.
+
+"From the East?" he questioned joyously. "Say, you know little old New
+York, don't you? When were you there last?"
+
+The lad was hungry, but not for bacon. Alas! Our hunger was the
+healthier one! We talked of New York. "Mother's in Paris," he
+volunteered, "and Dad's in New York meeting her bills. But the Old Man's
+got a grouch at me, and so he sent me 'way out here in this God-forsaken
+country! Say, what did they make this country for? Got any tailor-made
+cigarettes about you? How did Broadway look when you were there last?
+Lights all there yet at night? I've been here two years--it seems like
+two hundred! Talk about Robinson Crusoe! Say, I've got him distanced!"
+
+I helped him build up a momentary Broadway there in the wilderness--the
+lights, the din, the hurrying, jostling theater crowds, the cafes,
+faces, faces--anguished faces, eager faces, weary faces, painted faces,
+squalor, brilliance. For me the memory of it only made me feel the pity
+of it all. But the lad's eyes beamed. He was homesick for Broadway.
+
+I changed the subject from prose to poetry; that is, from Broadway to
+bacon.
+
+"Wait here till I come back," said the lad, mounting. He spurred up a
+gulch and disappeared. In an hour he reappeared with a half strip of the
+precious stuff. "Take money for it? Not on your life!" he insisted.
+"You've been down there, and that goes for a meal ticket with me!"
+
+Fried bacon! And flapjacks sopped in the grease of it! After all, a
+banquet is very much a state of mind.
+
+When we pulled away, the ostracized New Yorker bade us farewell with a
+snatch of a song once more or less popular: "Give my regards to
+Broadway!"
+
+We pushed on vigorously now. The head wind came up. _The head wind!_ It
+seemed one of the eternal things. We paddled and cordelled valiantly,
+discussing Milk River the while. We had grown very credulous on that
+subject. Somehow or other an unlimited supply of gasoline was all the
+engine needed for the complete restoration of its health; and Milk River
+stood for gasoline in liberal quantities. Hope is generally represented
+by the poets as a thing winged and ethereal; nevertheless it can be fed
+on bacon.
+
+The next morning we arrived at the mouth of what we took to be Hell
+Creek, which flows (when it has any water in it!) out of the Bad Lands.
+It didn't take much imagination to name that creek. The whole country
+from which it debouches looks like Hell--"with the lights out," as
+General Sully once remarked. A country of lifeless hills that had the
+appearance of an endless succession of huge black cinder heaps from
+prehistoric fires.
+
+The wind had increased steadily all day, and now we saw ahead of us a
+long rolling stretch of wind-lashed river that discouraged us somewhat.
+A gray mist rolled with the wind, and dull clouds scudded over. We
+pitched camp in a clump of cottonwoods and made flapjacks; after which
+the Kid and I, taking our blankets and the rifle, set out to explore
+Hell Creek.
+
+[Illustration: REVEILLE!]
+
+[Illustration: THE PEN AND KEY RANCH.]
+
+The windings of the ravine soon hid us from the river, and we found
+ourselves in a melancholy world, without life and without any human
+significance. It was very easy to imagine one's self lost amid the drear
+ashen craters of the moon. We pushed on up the creek, kicking up clouds
+of alkali dust as we went. A creek of a burnt-out hell it was, to be
+sure. It seemed almost blasphemous to call this arid gully a creek. Boys
+swim in creeks, and fishes twinkle over the shallows where the sweet
+eager waters make a merry sound. Creek, indeed! Did a cynic name this
+dry ragged gash in the midst of a bleak black world where nothing lived,
+where never laughter sounded?
+
+A seething, fiery ooze might have flowed there once, but surely never
+did water make music there.
+
+We pushed on five or six miles, and the evening shade began to press in
+about us. At last we issued forth into a flat basin, surrounded by the
+weird hills--a grotesque, wind-carved amphitheater, admirably suited for
+a witches' orgy. Some bleached bison heads with horns lay scattered
+about the place, and a cluster of soapweeds grew there--God knows how!
+They thrust their sere yellow sword-blades skyward with the pitiful
+defiance of desperate things. It seemed natural enough that something
+should be dead in this sepulcher; but the living weeds, fighting
+bitterly for life, seemed out of place.
+
+I looked about and thought of Poe. Surely just beyond those summits
+where the melancholy sky touched the melancholy hills, one would come
+upon the "dank tarn of Auber" and the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
+
+We gathered a quantity of the dry sword-bladed soapweeds, and with one
+of the blankets made a lean-to shelter against the steep hillside. The
+place was becoming eerie in the gray evening that spread slowly over the
+dead land. The mist driven by the moaning wind became a melancholy
+drizzle. We dragged the soapweeds under cover and lit a fire with
+difficulty. It was a half-hearted, smudgy, cheerless fire.
+
+And then the night fell--tremendous, overpowering night! The Kid and I,
+huddled close in one blanket, thrust our heads out from under the
+shelter and watched the ghastly world leap by fits out of the dark, when
+the sheet lightning flared through the drizzle. It gave one an odd
+shivery feeling. It was as though one groped about a strange dark room
+and saw, for a brief moment in the spurting glow of a wind-blown
+sulphur match, the staring face of a dead man. Over us the great wind
+groaned. Water dripped through the blanket--like tears. We scraped the
+last damp ends of the weeds together that the fire might live a little
+longer. Byron's poem came back to me with a new force; and lying on my
+stomach in the cheerless drip before a drowning fire, I chanted snatches
+of it aloud to the Kid and to that sinister personality that was the
+Night.
+
+      I had a dream which was not all a dream;
+    The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
+        Did wander darkling in eternal space,
+        Rayless and pathless; and the icy earth
+    Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
+
+Low thunder shook the ink-sopped night--I thought of it as the Spirit of
+Byron applauding his own terrific lines.
+
+    A fearful hope was all the world contained;
+    Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
+    They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
+    Extinguished with a crash--and all was black.
+
+Out in the wind-voiced darkness, swept by spasmodic deluges of rapid
+flame and muffled thunder, it seemed I could hear the dream-forests of
+the moody Master crackling and booming in the gloom.
+
+      --looked up
+    With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
+    The pall of a past world.
+
+"Say, how long is that piece?" asked the Kid.
+
+    And vipers crawled
+    And twined themselves among the multitude,
+    Hissing--
+
+We wondered if there might not be some rattlesnakes in that vicinity.
+
+    --They raked up
+    And, shivering, scraped with their cold skeleton hands
+    The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
+    Blew for a little life, and made a flame
+    Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
+    Their eyes as it grew brighter, and beheld
+    Each other's aspects--saw and shrieked and died--
+
+"Cut that out!" said the Kid.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Because," said the Kid.
+
+But what are Bad Lands for? I had hoped to chant a bit of James Thomson,
+the younger, also, there in that "dreadful night." I never was in a
+place where it seemed to fit so well.
+
+But we huddled up in our blanket under the dripping shelter, and that
+was a long night. The soppy gray morning came at length. A midsummer
+morning after a night of rain--and yet, no bird, no hopeful greenery, no
+sense of the upward yearning Earth-Soul!
+
+When we sighted the Missouri River again, the sun had broken through
+upon the greengirt, glinting stream. It seemed like Paradise.
+
+By almost continuous travel we reached Lismus Ferry on the second
+morning from Hell Creek. The ferryman had a bit of information for us.
+We would find nothing at the mouth of Milk River but a sandbar, he
+advised us. But he had some ointment to apply to the wound thus
+inflicted, in that Glasgow, a town on the Great Northern, was only
+twenty-five miles inland. The weekly stage had left on the morning
+before; but the ferryman understood that the trail was not overcrowded
+with pedestrians.
+
+It was a smarting ointment to apply to so fresh a wound; but we took the
+medicine. Frank, Charley, and I set out at once for Glasgow, leaving the
+others at camp to repair the leaking boat during our absence. The stage
+trail led through an arid, undulating prairie of yellow buffalo grass.
+There were creek beds, but they were filled with dust at this season of
+the year. The Englishman set the pace with the stride of the
+long-legged. The sun rose high; the dry runs reminded us unpleasantly of
+our increasing thirst, and the puffing wind blew hot as from a distant
+prairie fire.
+
+I followed at the Englishman's heels, and by and by it began to occur to
+me that he could walk rather rapidly. The Frenchman trailed after at a
+steadily increasing distance, until finally I could no longer hear his
+forceful remarks (uttered in two languages) concerning a certain corn
+which he possessed. We had been cramped up in a boat for several weeks,
+and the frequent soakings in the cold water had done little good to our
+joints. None of us was fit for walking. I kept back a limp until the
+Englishman ahead of me began to step with a little jerking of the knees;
+and then with an almost vicious delight, I gave over and limped. I never
+knew before the great luxury of limping. We covered the distance in
+something less than six hours.
+
+The next morning, in a drizzling rain, each packing a five-gallon can of
+gasoline and some provisions, we set out for the Ferry; and it was a
+sorry, bedraggled trio that limped up to camp eight hours later. We did
+little more than creep the last five miles. And all for a spiteful
+little engine that might prove ungrateful in the end!
+
+It rained all night--a cold, insistent downpour. Our log fire was
+drowned out; the tent dripped steadily; our blankets got soppy; and
+three of us were so stiff that the least movement gave keen pain.
+
+Soppy dawn--wet wood--bad grub for breakfast--and bad humor concealed
+with difficulty; but through it all ran a faint note of victory at the
+thought of the gasoline, and the way that engine would go! We lay in
+camp all day--soppy, sore--waiting for the rain to let up. By way of
+cheering up I read _L'Assomoir_; and a grim graveyard substitute for
+cheer it was. But the next day broke with a windy, golden dawn. We
+filled the tank, packed the luggage and lo! the engine worked! It took
+all the soreness out of our legs to see it go.
+
+We rejoiced now in the heavy and steadily increasing head wind; for it
+was like conquering an old enemy to go crashing through the rolling
+water that had for so many days given us pitiless battle.
+
+For five or six miles we plunged on down the wind-tumbled river. There
+was a distinct change in the temper of the crew. A vote at that time
+would have been unanimous for finishing at New Orleans.
+
+_Squash!_
+
+The engine stopped; the _Atom_ swung round in the trough of the waves,
+and the tow-skiff rammed us, trying to climb over our gunwale. We
+wallowed in the wash of a bar, and cranked by turns. At the end of an
+hour no illusions were left us. Holding an inquest over the engine, we
+pronounced it dead.
+
+In the drear fag end of the windy day, soaked from much wading and weary
+of paddling with little headway, we made camp in a clump of scarlet
+bull-berry bushes; and by the evening fire two talked of railroad
+stations, one talked of home, and I thought of that one of the "soldiers
+three" who "swore quietly into the sky."
+
+The Milk River illusion was lost. Two hundred miles below was the mouth
+of the Yellowstone--the first station in the long journey. A few days
+back we had longed for gasoline; but there was no one to sell. Now we
+had fifteen gallons to sell--and there was no one to buy. The hope
+without the gasoline was decidedly better than the gasoline without the
+hope. Whereat the philosopher in me emerges to remark--but who cares?
+Philosophy proceeds backward, and points out errors of thought and
+action chiefly when it has become too late to mend them. But it is
+possible to be poor in the possession of erstwhile prospective wealth,
+and rich in retrospective poverty. Oh, blessed is he who is negatively
+rich!
+
+Being a bit stunned by the death of the hope conceived in weariness, we
+did not put off that night, but huddled up in our blankets close to the
+log fire; for this midsummer night had in it a tang of frost.
+
+Day came--cloudy and cold--blown over the wilderness by a wind that made
+the cottonwoods above us groan and pop. The waves were higher than we
+had seen them before. We had little heart for cordelling, and no
+paddling could make headway against that gale. It was Sunday. Everything
+was damp and chilly. Shivers ran up our backs while we toasted our feet
+and faces; and the wind-whipped smoke had a way of blowing in every
+direction at once. Charley struggled with the engine, which now and then
+made a few revolutions--backwards--by way of leading him on. He heaped
+big curses upon it, and it replied periodically with snorts of rage.
+
+Bad blood developed, and mutiny ensued, which once gave promise of
+pirate-story developments--fortunately warded off. Before the day was
+done, it was made plain that the Kid and I would travel alone from the
+mouth of the Yellowstone. "For," said the Kid with certain virile
+decorations of speech, "I'm going with you if we have to buy skates!"
+
+The wind fell at sunset. A chill, moonless, starry night lured me, and I
+decided to travel. The mutineers, eager to reach a railroad as soon as
+possible, agreed to go. The skiff led and the _Atom_ followed with
+paddles. A mile or so below we ran into shallows and grounded. We waded
+far around in the cold water that chilled us to the marrow, but could
+find neither entrance nor outlet to the pocket in which we found
+ourselves. Wading ashore, we made a cheerless camp in the brush, leaving
+the boats stuck in the shallows. For the first time, the division in the
+camp was well marked. The Kid and I instinctively made our bed together
+under one blanket, and the others bunked apart. We had become the main
+party of the expedition; the others were now merely enforced camp
+followers. It was funny in an unpleasant way.
+
+In the morning a sea of stiff fog hid our boats. Packing the camp stuff
+on our backs, we waded about and found the crafts.
+
+At last, after a number of cheerless days and nights of continuous
+travel, the great, open, rolling prairies ahead of us indicated our
+approach toward the end of the journey's first stage. The country began
+to look like North Dakota, though we were still nearly two hundred miles
+away. The monotony of the landscape was depressing. It seemed a thousand
+miles to the sunrise. The horizon was merely a blue haze--and the
+endless land was sere. The river ran for days with a succession of
+regularly occurring right-angled bends to the north and east. Each
+headland shot out in the same way, with, it seemed, the same snags in
+the water under it, and the same cottonwoods growing on it; and opposite
+each headland was the same stony bluff, wind- and water-carved in the
+same way: until at last we cried out against the tediousness of the
+oft-repeated story, wondering whether or not we were continually passing
+the same point, and somehow slipping back to pass it again.
+
+But at last we reached Wolf Point--the first town in five hundred miles.
+We had seen no town since we left Benton. An odd little burlesque of a
+town it was; but walking up its main street we felt very metropolitan
+after weeks on those lonesome river stretches.
+
+Five Assiniboine Indian girls seemed to be the only women in the town. I
+coaxed them to stand for a photograph on the incontestable grounds that
+they were by far the prettiest women I had seen for many days! The
+effect of my generous praise is fixed forever on the pictured faces
+presented herewith.
+
+Here, during the day, Frank and Charley disposed of their skiff and we
+saw them no more. We pushed on with little mourning. But in a spirit of
+fairness, let me record that Charley's biscuits were marvels, and that
+Frank's _gateaux a la chansonnette_ were things of beauty and therefore
+joys forever.
+
+[Illustration: ASSINIBOINE INDIAN CHIEF.]
+
+[Illustration: ASSINIBOINE INDIAN CAMP.]
+
+The days that followed were long and hard; and half the chilly nights
+were spent in drying ourselves before a roaring fire. There were more
+mosquitoes now. They began to torture us at about five o'clock in the
+afternoon, and left off only when the cold of night came, relieving us
+of one discomfort by the substitution of another. Bill, of whom I had
+come to think as the expatriated turnip, gave me an opportunity to study
+homesickness--at once pitiful and ludicrous in a man with abundant
+whiskers. But he pulled strenuously at the forward paddle, every stroke
+as he remarked often, taking him closer to home.
+
+The river had fallen alarmingly, and was still falling. Several times we
+were obliged to unload the entire cargo, piling it high in the shallow
+water, that we might be able to carry the empty boat to the channel.
+
+One evening we came upon a typical Montana ranch--the Pen and Key. The
+residence, barns, sheds, fences were built of logs. The great rolling
+country about it was thickly dotted with horses and cattle. The place
+looked like home. It was a sight from Pisgah--a glimpse of a Promised
+Land after the Wilderness. We pulled in, intending to buy some
+provisions for the last stage of the journey to the Yellowstone.
+
+I went up to the main ranch-house, and was met at the door by one of
+those blessed creatures that have "mother" written all over them. Hers
+were not the eyes of a stranger. She looked at me as she must look at
+one of her sons when he returns from an extended absence. I told at
+once the purpose of my errand, explaining briefly what we were doing on
+the river. Why, yes, certainly we could have provisions. But we weren't
+going any farther that night--were we? The rancher appeared at this
+moment--a retired major of the army, who looked the part--and decided
+that we would stay for supper. How many were there in our party? Three?
+"Three more plates," he said to the daughters of the house, busy about
+the kitchen.
+
+Let's be frank! It really required no persuasion at all to make a guest
+of me. Had I allowed myself adequate expression of my delight, I should
+have startled the good mother by turning a somersault or a series of
+cartwheels! Oh, the smell of an old-fashioned wholesome meal in process
+of development!
+
+A short while back I sang the praises of the feast in the open--the
+feast of your own kill, tanged with the wood smoke. And even here I
+cling to the statement that of all meals, the feast of wild meat in the
+wilderness takes precedence. But the supper we ate that evening takes
+close second. Welcome on every face!--the sort of welcome that the most
+lavish tips could not buy. And after the dishes were cleared away, they
+brought out a phonograph, and we all sat round like one family, swapping
+information and yarns even up, while the music went on. When we left
+next morning at sunrise, it seemed that we were leaving home--and the
+river reaches looked a bit dismal all that day.
+
+Having once been a vagabond in a non-professional way, I have a theory
+about the physiognomy of houses. Some have a forbidding,
+sick-the-dog-on-you aspect about them, not at all due, I am sure, to
+architectural design. Experience has taught me to be suspicious of such
+houses. Some houses have the appearance of death--their windows strike
+you as eyeless sockets, the doors look like mouths that cannot speak.
+The great houses along Fifth Avenue seemed like that to me. I could walk
+past them in the night and feel like a ghost. I have seen cottages that
+I wanted to kneel to; and I'm sure this feeling wasn't due to the vine
+growing over the porch or the roses nodding in the yard. Knock at the
+door of such a house, and the chances are in favor of your being met by
+a quiet, motherly woman--one who will instantly make you think of your
+own mother. Some very well constructed houses look surly, and some
+shabby ones look kind, somehow. If you have ever been a book agent or a
+tramp, how you will revel in this seeming digression! God grant that no
+man in need may ever look wistfully at your house or at mine, and pass
+on with a shake of the head. It is a subtle compliment to have book
+agents and tramps frequently at one's door.
+
+Am I really digressing? My theme is a trip on a great river. Well,
+kindness and nature are not so far apart, let us believe.
+
+Now this ranch-house looked hospitable; there was no mistaking it.
+Wherefore I deduce that the spirit of the inhabitants must pierce
+through and emanate from the senseless walls like an effluvium. Who
+knows but that every house has its telltale aura, plain to a vision of
+sufficient spiritual keenness? Perhaps some one will some day write a
+book _On the Physio-Psychological Aspect of Houses_: and there will be
+an advance sale of at least one copy on that book.
+
+At noon on the fourth day from the Pen and Key Ranch, we pulled up at
+the Mondak landing two miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. We were
+thoroughly soaked, having dragged the boat the last two or three miles
+through the shallows and intermittent deeps of an inside channel. The
+outer channel was rolling viciously in that eternal thing, the head
+wind. We had covered the first six hundred miles with a power boat
+(called so, doubtless, because it required so much power to shove it
+along!) in a little less than four weeks. During that time we had
+received no mail, and I was making a break for the post-office, oozing
+and feeling like an animated sponge, when a great wind-like voice roared
+above me: "_Hey there!_"
+
+I looked up to the hurricane deck of a steamer that lay at the bank
+taking on freight. A large elderly man, dressed like a farmer, with an
+exaggerated straw hat shading a face that gripped my attention at once,
+was looking down at me. It was the face of a born commander; it struck
+me that I should like to have it cast in bronze to look at whenever a
+vacillating mood might seize me.
+
+"_Come aboard!_" bawled the man under the ample hat. There was nothing
+in the world just then that I wished for more than my mail; but somehow
+I felt the will to obey--even the necessity of obeying.
+
+"You came from Benton?" he asked, when I had clambered up the forward
+companionway and stood dripping before the captain of the steamer
+_Expansion_. At this closer range, the strength of the face was even
+more impressive, with its eagle beak and its lines of firmness; but a
+light of kindness was shed through it, and the eyes took on a gentle
+expression.
+
+"How did you find the water?"
+
+"Very low, sir; we cordelled much of the way."
+
+"I tried to get this boat to Benton," he said, "and got hung up on the
+rocks above Lismus Ferry."
+
+"And we drifted over them helter-skelter at midnight!"
+
+He smiled, and we were friends. Thus I met Captain Grant Marsh, the
+Grand Old Man of the Missouri River. He was freighting supplies up the
+Yellowstone for the great Crane Creek irrigation dam, sixty miles above
+the mouth. The _Expansion_ was to sail on the following day, and I was
+invited to go along. Seeing that the Captain was short of help, I
+insisted upon enlisting as a deck hand for the trip.
+
+It was work. I think I should prefer hod-carrying as a profession, for
+we had a heavy cargo, ranging from lumber and tiling to flour and beer;
+and there are no docks on the Yellowstone. The banks were steep, the sun
+was very hot, and the cargo had to be landed by man power. My companions
+in toil swore bitterly about everything in general and steamboating in
+particular.
+
+"How much are you getting?" asked a young Dane of me, as we trudged up
+the plank together.
+
+"Nothing at all," I said.
+
+He swore an oath of wonder, and stopped to look me over carefully for
+the loose screw in my make-up.
+
+"--nothing but the fun of it," I added.
+
+He sniffed and looked bewildered.
+
+"Did it ever occur to you," said I, "that a man will do for nothing what
+he wouldn't do for money?"
+
+I could see my conundrum playing peek-a-boo all about his stolid
+features. After that the Dane treated me with an air of superiority--the
+superiority of thirty dollars per month over nothing at all.
+
+We stopped twice to coal, and worked far into the night. There are no
+coal chutes on the Yellowstone. We carried and wheeled the stuff aboard
+from a pile on the bank. During a brief interval of rest, the young
+Dane announced to the others that I was working for nothing; whereat
+questioning eyes were turned upon me in the dull lantern light. And I
+said to myself: I can conceive of heaven only as an improbable condition
+in which all men would be willing and able to work for nothing at all. I
+had read in the Dane's face the meaning of a price. Heaving coal, I
+built Utopias.
+
+When the boat was under way, I sat in the pilot-house with the Captain,
+watching the yellow flood and the yellow cliffs drift past like a
+vision. And little by little, this old man who has followed the river
+for over sixty years, pieced out the wonderful story of his life--a
+story fit for Homer. That story may now be read in a book, so I need not
+tell it here. But I came to think of him as the incarnation of the
+river's mighty spirit; and I am proud that I served him as a deck hand.
+
+As we steamed out of the Yellowstone into the clear waters of the
+Missouri, the Captain pointed out to me the spot upon which Fort Union
+stood. Upon landing, I went there and found two heaps of stone at the
+opposite corners of a rectangle traced by a shallow ditch where of old
+the walls stood. This was all that remained of the powerful
+fort--virtually the capital of the American Fur Company's Upper Missouri
+empire--where Mackenzie ruled--Mackenzie who was called King!
+
+Long slough grass grew there, and blue waxen flowers struggled up amid
+the rubble of what were once defiant bastions. I lay down in the
+luxuriant grass, closed my eyes, and longed for a vision of heroic days.
+I thought of the Prince who had been entertained there with his great
+retinue; of the regality of the haughty Scotchman who ruled there; of
+Alexander Harvey, who had killed his enemy on the very spot, doubtless,
+where I lay: killed him as an outraged brave man kills--face to face
+before the world. I thought of Bourbonais, the golden-haired Paris of
+this fallen Ilium. I thought of the plague that raged there in '37, and
+of Larpenteur and his friend, grim, jesting carters of the dead!
+
+It all passed before me--the unwritten Iliad of a stronghold forgotten.
+But the vision wouldn't come. The river wind moaned through the grasses.
+
+I looked off a half mile to the modern town of Mondak, and wondered how
+many in that town cared about this spot where so much had happened, and
+where the grass grew so very tall now.
+
+I gathered blue flowers and quoted, with a slight change, the lines of
+Stevenson:
+
+    But ah, how deep the grass
+    Along the battlefield!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+DOWN FROM THE YELLOWSTONE
+
+
+The geographer tells us that the mouth of the Missouri is about
+seventeen miles above St. Louis, and that the mouth of the Yellowstone
+is near Buford, North Dakota. It appeared to me that the fact is
+inverted. The Missouri's mouth is near Buford, and the Yellowstone
+empties directly into the Mississippi!
+
+I find that I am not alone in this opinion. Father de Smet and other
+early travelers felt the truth of it; and Captain Marsh, who has piloted
+river craft through every navigable foot of the entire system of rivers,
+having sailed the Missouri within sound of the Falls and the Yellowstone
+above Pompey's Pillar, feels that the Yellowstone is the main stem and
+the Missouri a tributary.
+
+Where the two rivers join, even at low water, the Yellowstone pours a
+vast turbulent flood, compared with which the clear and quieter
+Missouri appears an overgrown rain-water creek. The Mississippi after
+some miles obliterates all traces of its great western tributary; but
+the Missouri at Buford is entirely lost in the Yellowstone within a few
+hundred yards. All of the unique characteristics by which the Missouri
+River is known are given to it by the Yellowstone--its turbulence, its
+tawniness, its feline treachery, its giant caprices.
+
+Examine closely, and everything will take on before your eyes either
+masculine or feminine traits. Gender, in a broad sense, is universal,
+and nothing was created neuter. The Upper Missouri is decidedly female:
+an Amazon, to be sure, but nevertheless not a man. Beautiful, she is,
+alluring or terrible, but always womanlike. But when you strike the
+ragged curdling line of muddy water where the Yellowstone comes in, it
+is all changed. You feel the sinewy, nervous might of the man.
+
+So it is, that when you look upon the Missouri at Kansis City, it is the
+Yellowstone that you behold!
+
+[Illustration: ON THE HURRICANE DECK OF THE "EXPANSION"; CAPT. MARSH
+THIRD FROM THE LEFT.]
+
+[Illustration: FORT UNION IN 1837.]
+
+[Illustration: SITE OF OLD FORT UNION.]
+
+But names are idle sounds; and being of a peace-loving disposition, I
+would rather withdraw my contention than seriously disturb the
+geographical _status quo_! Let it be said that the Upper Missouri is the
+mother and the Yellowstone the father of this turbulent Titan, who
+inherits his father's might and wonder, and takes through courtesy the
+maiden name of his mother. There! I am quite appeased, and the
+geographers may retain their nomenclature.
+
+At Mondak, Luck stood bowing to receive us. The _Atom I_ had suffered
+more from contact with snags and rocks than we had supposed. For several
+hundred miles her intake of water had steadily increased. We had toiled
+at the paddles with the water halfway to our knees much of the time;
+though now and then--by spasms--we bailed her dry. She had become a
+floating lump of discouragement, and still fourteen hundred miles lay
+ahead.
+
+But on the day previous to our sailing, a nervous little man with a
+wistful eye offered us a trade. He had a steel boat, eighteen feet long,
+forty inches beam, which he had built in the hours between work and
+sleep during the greater part of a year.
+
+His boat was some miles up the Yellowstone, but he spoke of her in so
+artless and loving a manner--as a true workman might speak--and with
+such a wistful eye cast upon our boat, that I believed in him and his
+boat. He had no engine. It was the engine in our boat that attracted
+him, as he wished to make a hunting trip up river in the fall. He stated
+that his boat would float, that it was a dry boat, that it would row
+with considerable ease. "Then," said I, "paddle her down to the mouth of
+the Yellowstone, and the deal is made." After dark he returned to our
+camp with a motor boat, ready to take us to our new craft, _Atom II_.
+
+Leaving all our impedimenta to be shipped by rail, that is, Bill, the
+tent, extra blankets, phonograph--everything but a few cooking-utensils,
+an ax, a tarp, and a pair of blankets--the Kid and I got in with the
+little man and dropped down to the Yellowstone. The new boat was moored
+under a mud bank. I climbed in, lit a match, and my heart leaped with
+joy. She was staunch and beautiful--a work of love, which means a work
+of honesty. Fore and aft were air-tight compartments. She had an oil
+tank, a water tank, engine housing, steering wheel, lockers. She was
+ready for the very engine I had ordered to be shipped to me at Bismarck.
+She was dry as a bone, and broad enough to make a snug bed for two.
+
+The little man and the motor boat dropped out into the gloom and left us
+gloating over our new possession, sending thankful rings of tobacco
+smoke at the stars. When the first flush of triumph had passed, we
+rolled up in the bottom of the boat, lulled to sleep by the cooing of
+the fusing rivers, united under our gunwale. Such a sleep--a _dry_
+sleep! and the sides of the boat protected us against the chill night
+wind.
+
+And the dawn came--shouting merrily like a boy! I once had a chum who
+had a habit of whistling me out of bed now and then of a summer morning,
+when the birds were just awakening, and the dew looked like frost on the
+grass. And the sun that morning made me think of my old boy chum with
+his blithe, persistent whistling. For the first hard stage of the
+journey was done; all had left me but a brave lad who would take his
+share of the hardships with a light heart. (All boys are instinctively
+true sportsmen!) And before us lay the great winding stretch of a savage
+river that I had loved long--the real Missouri of my boyhood.
+
+A new spirit had come upon us with the possession of the _Atom II_--the
+spirit of the forced march. For nearly a month we had floundered,
+trusting to a sick engine and inefficient paddles. Now we had a staunch,
+dry boat, and eight-foot oars. We trusted only ourselves, and we were
+one in the desire to push the crooked yellow miles behind us. During the
+entire fourteen hundred miles that desire increased, until our progress
+was little more than a retreat. We pitched no camps; we halted only when
+we could proceed no further owing to sandbars encountered in the dark;
+we ate as we found it convenient to do so. Regularly relieving each
+other at the oars, one sat at the steering wheel, feeling for the
+channel. And it was not long until I began to note a remarkable change
+in the muscles of the Kid, for we toiled naked to the waist most of the
+time. His muscles had shown little more than a girl's when we first swam
+together at Benton. Now they began to stand out, clearly defined, those
+of his chest sprawling rigidly downward to the lean ribs, and little
+eloquent knots developed on the bronzed surface of his once smooth arms.
+He was at the age of change, and he was growing into a man before my
+eyes. It was good to see.
+
+All the first day the gods breathed gently upon us, and we made fifty
+miles, passing Trenton and Williston before dark. But the following day,
+our old enemy, the head wind, came with the dawn. We were now sailing a
+river more than twice the size of the Upper Missouri, and the waves were
+in proportion. Each at an oar, with the steering wheel lashed, we forged
+on slowly but steadily. In midstream we found it impossible to control
+the boat, and though we hugged the shore whenever possible, we were
+obliged to cross with the channel at every bend. When the waves caught
+us broadside, we were treated to many a compulsory bath, and our clothes
+were thoroughly washed without being removed. An ordinary skiff would
+have capsized early in the day, but the _Atom II_ could carry a full
+cargo of water and still float.
+
+By sunset the wind fell, the river smoothed as a wrinkled brow at the
+touch of peace. Aided by a fair current, we skulled along in the hush of
+evening through a land of vast green pastures with "cattle upon a
+thousand hills." The great wind had spread the heavens with ever
+deepening clouds. The last reflected light of the sun fell red upon the
+burnished surface of the water. It seemed we were sailing a river of
+liquefied red flame; only for a short distance about us was the water
+of that peculiar Missouri hue which makes one think of bad coffee
+colored with condensed milk.
+
+Slowly the colors changed, until we were in the midst of a stream of
+iridescent opal fires; and quite lost in the gorgeous spectacle, at
+length we found ourselves upon a bar.
+
+We got out and waded around in water scarcely to our ankles, feeling for
+a channel. The sand was hard; the bar seemed to extend across the entire
+river; but a thin rippling line some fifty yards ahead told us where it
+ended. We found it impossible to push the heavy boat over the shallows.
+The clouds were deepening, and the night was coming rapidly. Setting the
+Kid to work digging with an oar at the prow, I pushed and wriggled the
+stern until I saw galaxies. Thus alternately digging and pushing, we at
+last reached navigable depths.
+
+It was now quiet and dark. Low thunder was rolling, and now and then
+vivid flashes of lightning discovered the moaning river to us--ghastly
+and forbidding in the momentary glare. We decided to pull in for the
+night; but in what direction should we pull? A drizzling rain had begun
+to fall, and the sheet lightning glaring through it only confused
+us--more than the sooty darkness that showered in upon us after the
+rapid flashes. We sat still and waited. In the intermittent silences,
+the rain hissed on the surface of the river like a shower of innumerable
+heated pebbles. Ahead of us we heard the dull booming of the cut banks,
+as the current undermined ponderous ledges of sand.
+
+Now, a boat that happens under a falling cut bank, passes at once into
+the region of forgotten things. The boat would follow the main current;
+the main current flows always under the cut banks. How long would it
+take us to get there? Which way should we pull? Put a simpler question:
+In which way were we moving? We hadn't the least conception of
+direction. For us the night had only one dimension--_out_!
+
+Finally a great booming and splashing sounded to our left, and the boat
+rocked violently a moment after. We grasped the oars and pulled blindly
+in what we supposed to be the opposite direction, only to be met by
+another roar of falling sand from that quarter.
+
+There seemed to be nothing to do but have faith in that divinity which
+is said to superintend the goings and coming of fools and drunkards.
+Therefore we abandoned the oars, twiddled our thumbs, and let her drift.
+We couldn't even smoke, for the rain was now coming down merrily. The
+Kid thought it a great lark, and laughed boisterously at our
+predicament. By flashes I saw the drenched grin under his dripping nose.
+But for me, some lines written by that sinister genius, Wainwright, came
+back with a new force, and clamored to be spoken:
+
+_"Darkness--sooty, portentous darkness--shrouds the whole scene; as if
+through a horrid rift in a murky ceiling, a rainy deluge--'sleety flaw,
+discolored water'--streams down amain, spreading a grisly spectral
+light, even more horrible than that palpable night."_
+
+At length the sensation of sudden stopping dizzied us momentarily. We
+thrust out an oar and felt a slowly sloping bar. Driving the oar
+half-way into the soft sand, we wrapped the boat's chain about it and
+went to bed, flinging the tarp over us.
+
+A raw dawn wind sprinkled a cheerless morning over us, and we got up
+with our joints grinding rustily. We were in the midst of a desolate
+waste of sand and water. The bar upon which we had lodged was utterly
+bare. Drinking a can of condensed milk between us, we pushed on.
+
+That day we found ourselves in the country of red barns. It was like
+warming cold hands before an open grate to look upon them. At noon we
+saw the first wheat-field of the trip--an undulating golden flood,
+dimpled with the tripping feet of the wind. These were two joys--quite
+enough for one day. But in the afternoon the third came--the first
+golden-rod. My first impulse was to take off my hat to it, offer it my
+hand.
+
+That evening we pulled up to a great bank, black-veined with outcrops of
+coal, and cooked supper over a civilized fire. For many miles along the
+river in North Dakota, as well as along the Yellowstone in Montana,
+these coal outcrops are in evidence. Doubtless, within another
+generation, vast mining operations will be opened up in these
+localities. Coal barges will be loaded at the mines and dropped down
+stream to the nearest railroad point.
+
+We were in the midst of an idyllic country--green, sloping, lawn-like
+pastures, dotted sparsely with grotesque scrub oaks. Far over these the
+distant hills lifted in filmy blue. The bluffs along the water's edge
+were streaked with black and red and yellow, their colors deepened by
+the recent rains. Lazy with a liberal supper, we drifted idly and gave
+ourselves over for a few minutes to the spell of this twilight
+dreamland. I stared hard upon this scene that would have delighted
+Theocritus; and with little effort, I placed a half-naked shepherd boy
+under the umbrella top of that scrub oak away up yonder on the lawny
+slope. With his knees huddled to his chin, I saw him, his fresh cheeks
+bulged with the breath of music. I heard his pipe--clear,
+dream-softened--the silent music of my own heart. Dream flocks sprawled
+tinkling up the hills.
+
+With a wild burst of scarlet, the sunset flashed out. Black clouds
+darkened the visible idyll. A chill gust swept across the stream,
+showering rain and darkness. Each at an oar, we forged on, until we lost
+the channel in the gloom. At the first peep of day we were off again,
+after a breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and coffee.
+
+We were gradually becoming accustomed to the strain of constant rowing.
+For at least sixteen hours a day we fought the wind, during which time
+the oars were constantly dipping; and very often our day lengthened out
+to twenty hours. We had no time-piece, and a night of drifting was
+divided into two watches. These watches we determined either by the
+dropping of a star toward the horizon, or by the position of the moon
+when it shone. On dark nights, the sleeper trusted to the judgment of
+his friend to call when the watch seemed sufficiently long. Daily the
+water fell, and every inch of fall increased the difficulty of
+traveling.
+
+We were now passing through the country of the Mandans, Gros Ventres,
+and Ricarees, the country through which old Hugh Glass crawled his
+hundred miles with only hate to sustain him. To the west lay the barren
+lands of the Little Missouri, through which Sully pushed with his
+military expedition against the Sioux on the Yellowstone. An army flung
+boldly through a dead land--a land without forage, and waterless--a
+labyrinth of dry ravines and ghastly hills! Sully called it "hell with
+the lights out." A magnificent, Quixotic expedition that succeeded! I
+compared it with the ancient expeditions--and I felt the eagle's wings
+strain within me. _Sully!_ There were trumpets and purple banners for me
+in the sound of the name!
+
+Late in the evening we reached the mouth of the Little Missouri. There
+we found one of the few remaining mud lodges of the ancient type. We
+landed and found ourselves in the midst of a forsaken little frontier
+town. A shambling shack bore the legend, "Store," with the "S" looking
+backward--perhaps toward dead municipal hopes. A few tumble-down frame
+and log shanties sprawled up the desultory grass-grown main street, at
+one end of which dwelt a Mandan Indian family in the mud lodge.
+
+A dozen curs from the lodge resented our intrusion with canine
+vituperation. I thrust my head into the log-cased entrance of the
+circular house of mud, and was greeted with a sound of scolding in the
+Mandan jargon, delivered by a squaw of at least eighty years. She arose
+from the fire that burned in the center of the great circular room, and
+approached me with an "I-want-your-scalp" expression. One of her
+daughters, a girl dressed in a caricature of the white girl's garments,
+said to me: "She wants to know what you've got to trade." To this old
+woman of the prairie, all white men were traders.
+
+"I want to buy," I said, "eggs, meat, bread, anything to eat."
+
+[Illustration: BOATS LAID UP FOR THE WINTER AT WASHBURN, N.D.]
+
+[Illustration: WASHBURN, N.D.]
+
+[Illustration: THE LANDING AT BISMARCK, N.D.]
+
+The old woman looked me over with a whimper of amused superiority,
+and disappeared, soon reappearing with a dark brown object not wholly
+unlike a loaf of bread. "Wahtoo," she remarked, pointing to the dark
+brown substance.
+
+I gave her a half-dollar. Very quietly she took it and went back to her
+fire. "But," said I, "do you sell your bread for fifty cents per loaf?"
+
+The girl giggled, and the old woman gave me another piece of her Mandan
+mind. She had no change, it appeared. I then insisted upon taking the
+balance in eggs. The old woman said she had no eggs. I pointed to a
+flock of hens that was holding a sort of woman's club convention in the
+yard, discussing the esthetics of egg-laying, doubtless, while
+neglecting their nests.
+
+The old lady arose majestically, disappeared again, and reappeared with
+three eggs. I protested. The Mandan lady forthwith explained (or at
+least it appeared so to me) all the execrable points in my character.
+They seemed to be numerous, and she appeared to be very frank about the
+matter. My moral condition, apparently, was clearly defined in her own
+mind. I withdrew in haste, fearing that the daughter at any moment might
+begin to translate.
+
+We dropped down river a few miles, prepared supper, and attacked the
+dark brown substance which the Indian lady had called "wahtoo." At the
+first bite, I began to learn the Mandan tongue. I swallowed a chunk
+whole, and then enlightened the Kid as to a portion of the Mandan
+language. "Wahtoo," said I, "means 'indigestible'; it is an evident
+fact." Then, being strengthened by our linguistic triumph, we fell upon
+the dark brown substance again. But almost anything has its good points;
+and I can conscientiously recommend Mandan bread for durability!
+
+Once more we had a rainy night. The tarp, stretched across the boat,
+sagged with the water it caught, and poured little persistent streams
+upon us. The chief of these streams, from the point of size, seemed
+consciously aiming at my ear. Thirce I turned over, shifted my position;
+thrice I was awakened by the sound of a merry brooklet pouring into that
+persecuted member.
+
+Somewhere in the world the white cock was crowing sleepily when we put
+off, stiff and soaked and shivering.
+
+Early in the day the fine sand from banks and bars began to lift in the
+wind. It smarted our faces like little whip lashes. Very often we could
+see no further than a hundred and fifty yards in any direction. Only by
+a constant, rapid dipping of the oars could the boat be held
+perpendicular to the choppy waves. One stroke missed meant hard work for
+both of us in getting out of the trough.
+
+Fighting every foot of water, we wallowed through the swells--past Elbow
+Woods, past Fort Berthold, past the forlorn, raggedy little town,
+"Expansion." (We rechristened it "Contraction"!)
+
+During the day the gale swept the sky clear. The evening air was crisp
+and invigorating. We cooked supper early and rowed on silently over the
+mirroring waters, between two vast sheets of stars, through a semilucent
+immensity. Far ahead of us a high cliff loomed black and huge against
+the spangled blue-black velvet of the sky. On its summit a dark mass
+soared higher. We thought it a tree, but surely a gigantic one.
+Approaching it, the soaring mass became a medieval castle sitting
+haughtily with frowning crenellations upon an impregnable rock; and the
+Missouri became for the moment a larger Rhine. At last, rowing up under
+the sheer cliff, the castle resolved itself into a huge grain elevator,
+its base a hundred feet above the stream.
+
+Although it was late, we tied our boat, clambered up a zigzag path, and
+found ourselves in one of the oddest little towns in the
+West--Manhaven--one of the few remaining steamboat towns.
+
+The main street zigzagged carelessly through a jumble of little houses.
+One light in all the street designated the social center of the town, so
+we went there. It was the grocery store--a general emporium of ideas and
+canned goods.
+
+Entering, we found ourselves in the midst of "the rustic cackle of the
+burg." I am sure the municipal convention was verbally reconstructing
+the universe; but upon our entrance, the matter was abruptly laid on the
+table. When we withdrew, the entire convention, including the
+grocery-man, adjourned, and accompanied us to the river where the
+general merits of our boat were thoroughly discussed by lantern light.
+Also, various conflicting versions of the distance to Bismarck were
+given--each party being certain of his own infallibility.
+
+There is something curious about the average man's conception of
+distance. During the entire trip we found no two men who agreed on this
+general subject. After acquiring a book of river distances, we created
+much amusement for ourselves by asking questions. The conversation very
+often proceeded in this manner:
+
+"Will you please tell us how far it is to So-and-So?"
+
+"One hundred and fifty-two and a half miles!" (with an air of absolute
+certainty).
+
+"But you are slightly mistaken, sir; the exact distance is sixty-two and
+seven-tenths miles!" (Consternation on the face of the omniscient
+informant.)
+
+Once a man told us that a certain town was one hundred and fifty miles
+down stream. We reached the town in an hour and a half!
+
+However, we had more success with the Indian. One day we came upon an
+old Mandan buck and squaw, who were taking a bath in the river,
+doubtless feeling convinced that they needed it. The current took us
+within fifty yards of them. Upon our approach, they got out of the water
+and sat in the sand quite as nude and unashamed as our first parents
+before the apple ripened.
+
+"Bismarck--how far?" I shouted, standing up in the boat.
+
+The buck rose in all his unclothed dignity, raised his two hands, shut
+and opened them seven times, after which he lowered one arm, and again
+opened and shut a hand. Then with a spear-like thrust of the arm toward
+the southeast, he stiffened the index finger in the direction of
+Bismarck. He meant "seventy-five miles as the crow flies." As near as I
+could figure it out afterward, he was doubtless correct.
+
+At noon the next day we reached the mouth of the Knife River, near which
+stood the Mandan village made famous by Lewis and Clark as their winter
+quarters. Fort Clark also stood here. Nothing remains of the Fort but
+the name and a few slight indentations in the ground. A modern steamboat
+town, Deapolis occupies the site of the old post. Across the river there
+are still to be seen the remains of trenches. A farmer pointed them out
+to us as all that remains of the winter camp of the great explorers.
+
+In the late evening we passed Washburn, the "steamboat center" of the
+upper river, fifty water miles from Bismarck. It made a very pretty
+appearance with its neat houses climbing the hillside. Along the water
+front, under the elevators, a half-dozen steamboats of the good
+old-fashioned type, lay waiting for their cargoes. Two more boats were
+building on the ways.
+
+Night caught us some five miles below the town, and, wrapping ourselves
+in our blankets, we set to drifting. I went on watch and the Kid rolled
+up forward and went to sleep. After sixteen hours of rowing in the wind,
+it is a difficult matter to keep awake. The night was very calm; the
+quiet waters crooned sleepily about the boat. I set myself the task of
+watching the new moon dip toward the dim hills; I intended to keep
+myself awake in that manner. The moon seemed to have stuck. Slowly I
+passed into an impossible world, in which, with drowsy will, I struggled
+against an exasperating moon that had somehow gotten itself tangled in
+star-sheen and couldn't go down.
+
+I awoke with a start. My head was hanging over the gunwale--the dawn was
+breaking through the night wall. A chill wind was rolling breakers upon
+us, and we were fast upon a bar. I awakened the Kid and we put off. We
+had no idea of the distance covered while sleeping. It must have been at
+least twenty miles, for, against a heavy wind, we reached Bismarck at
+one o'clock.
+
+We had covered about three hundred and fifty miles in six days, but we
+had paid well for every mile. As we passed under the Bismarck bridge,
+we confessed that we were thoroughly fagged. It was the thought of the
+engine awaiting us at this town that had kept us from confessing
+weariness before.
+
+I landed and made for the express office three miles away. A half-hour
+later I stood, covered with humility and perspiration, in the awful
+presence of the expressman, who regarded me with that lofty "God-and-I"
+air, characteristic of some emperors and almost all railroad officials.
+I stated to the august personage that I was looking for an engine
+shipped to me by express.
+
+It seems that my statement was insulting. The man snarled and shook his
+head. I have since thought that he was the owner of the Northern Pacific
+system in disguise. I suggested that the personage might look about. The
+personage couldn't stoop to that; but a clerk who overheard my insulting
+remark (he had not yet become the owner of a vast transportation system)
+condescended to make a desultory search. He succeeded in digging up a
+spark-coil--and that is all I ever saw of the engine.
+
+During my waiting at Bismarck, I had a talk with Captain Baker, manager
+of the Benton Packet Line. We agreed in regard to the Government's
+neglect of duty toward the country's most important natural
+thoroughfare, the Missouri River. About Sioux City, the Government
+operates a snag-boat, the _Mandan_, at an expense ridiculously
+disproportionate to its usefulness. The _Mandan_ is little more than an
+excursion boat maintained for a few who are paid for indulging in the
+excursions. A crew of several hundred men with shovels, picks, and
+dynamite, could do more good during one low water season than such boats
+could do during their entire existence.
+
+The value of the great river as an avenue of commerce is steadily
+increasing; and those who discourage the idea of "reopening" navigation
+of the river, are either railroad men or persons entirely ignorant of
+the geography of the Northwest. Captain Marsh would say, "Reopen
+navigation? I've sailed the river sixty years, and in that time
+navigation has not ceased."
+
+Rocks could and should be removed from the various rapids, and the banks
+at certain points should be protected against further cutting. A natural
+canal, extending from New Orleans in the South and Cincinnati in the
+East to the Rockies in the Northwest, is not to be neglected long by an
+intelligent Government.
+
+As a slow freight thoroughfare, this vast natural system of waterways is
+unequalled on the globe. Within another generation, doubtless, this
+all-but-forgotten fact will be generally rediscovered.
+
+Having waited four days for the engine, we put off again with oars. It
+was near sundown when we started, hungry for those thousand miles that
+remained. When we had pulled in to the landing at Bismarck, we were like
+boxers who stagger to their corners all but whipped. But we had
+breathed, and were ready for another round. A kind of impersonal anger
+at the failure of another hope nerved us; and this new fighting spirit
+was like another man at the oars. Many of the hard days that followed
+left on our memories little more than the impress of a troubled dream.
+We developed a sort of contempt for our old enemy, the head wind--that
+tireless, intangible giant that lashed us with whips of sand, drove us
+into shallows, set its mighty shoulders against our prow, roared with
+laughter at us when, soaked and weary, we walked and pushed our boat for
+miles at a time. The quitter that is in all men more or less, often
+whispered to us when we were weariest: "Why not take the train? What is
+it all for?" Well, what is life for? We were expressing ourselves out
+there on the windy river. The wind said we couldn't and our muscles said
+we shouldn't, and the snag-boat captain had said we couldn't get
+down--so we went on. We were now in full retreat--retreat from the
+possibility of quitting.
+
+During the first night out, an odd circumstance befell us that, for some
+hours, seemed likely to lose us our boat. As usual, we set to drifting
+at dark. The moon, close on its half, was flying, pale and frightened,
+through scudding clouds. However, the wind blew high and the surface of
+the water was unruffled. There could be nothing more eerie than a night
+of drifting on the Missouri, with a ghastly moon dodging in and out
+among the clouds. The strange glimmer, peculiar to the surface of the
+tawny river at night, gives it a forbidding aspect, and you seem
+surrounded by a murmuring immensity.
+
+We were, presumably, drifting into a great sandy bend, for we heard the
+constant booming of falling sand ahead. It was impossible to trace the
+channel, so we swung idly about with the current. Suddenly, we stopped.
+Our usual proceeding in such cases was to leap out and push the boat
+off. That night, fortunately, we were chilly, and did not fancy a
+midnight ducking. Each taking an oar, we thrust at the bar. The oars
+went down to the grip in quicksand. Had we leaped out as usual, there
+would have been two burials that night without the customary singing.
+
+We rocked the boat without result. We were trapped; so we smoked awhile,
+thought about the matter, and decided to go to bed. In the morning we
+would fasten on our cork belts and reach shore--perhaps. Having reached
+shore, we would find a stray skiff and go on. But the _Atom II_ seemed
+booked for a long wait on that quicksand bar.
+
+During the night a violent shaking of the boat awakened us. A heavy wind
+was blowing, and the prow of the boat was swinging about. It soon
+stopped with a chug. We stood up and rocked the boat vigorously. It
+broke loose again, and swung half-way around. Continuing this for a
+half-hour, we finally drifted into deep water.
+
+The next day we passed Cannon Ball River, and reached Standing Rock
+Agency in the late evening. Sitting Bull is buried there. After a late
+supper, we went in search of his grave. We found it after much lighting
+of matches at headstones, in a weed-grown corner of the Agency
+burying-ground. A slab of wood, painted white, bears the following
+inscription in black: "In Memory of Sitting Bull. Died Dec. 15, 1890."
+
+Perched upon the ill-kept grave, we smoked for an hour under the flying
+moon. A dog howled somewhere off in the gloomy waste.
+
+That night the Erinnyes, in the form of a swarm of mosquitoes, attacked
+us lying in our boat. The weary Kid rolled and swore till dawn, when a
+light wind sprang up _astern_. We hoisted our sail, and for one whole
+day cruised merrily, making sixty miles by sunset. This took us to the
+town of Mobridge.
+
+I was charmed with the novelty of driving our old enemy in harness. So,
+letting the Kid go to sleep forward under the sail, I cruised on into
+the night. The wind had fallen somewhat, but it kept the canvas filled.
+The crooning of the water, the rustling of the sail, the thin voices of
+bugs on shore, and the guttural song of the frogs, shocking the general
+quiet--these sounds only intensified the weird calm of the night. The
+sky was cloudless, and the moon shone so brightly that I wrote my day's
+notes by its glow.
+
+The winking lights of Mobridge slowly dropped astern and faded into the
+glimmering mist.
+
+    Lonely seamen all the night
+    Sail astonished amid stars.
+
+The remembered lines gave me the divine itch for quoting verses. I did
+so, until the poor tired Kid swore drowsily in his sleep under the mast.
+The air was of that invigorating coolness that makes you think of cider
+in its sociable stage of incipient snappiness. Sleepy dogs bayed far
+away. Lone trees approached me, the motion seeming to belong to them
+rather than to me, and drifted slowly past--austere spectral figures.
+Somewhere about midnight I fell asleep and was awakened by a flapping
+sail and a groaning mast, to find myself sprawling over the wheel. The
+wind had changed; it was once more blowing up-stream, and a drizzling
+rain was driving through the gloom. During my sleep the boat had gone
+ashore. I moored her to a drift log, lowered sail, flung a tarp over us,
+and went to sleep again. And the morning came--blanketed with gray
+oozing fog. The greater part of that day we rowed on in the rain without
+a covering. In the evening we reached Forest City, an odd little old
+town, looking wistfully across stream at the youthful red and white
+government buildings of the Cheyenne Agency.
+
+[Illustration: THE YANKTON LANDING IN THE OLD DAYS.]
+
+[Illustration: "ATOM II" LANDING AT SIOUX CITY.]
+
+Despite its name, this town is utterly treeless! I once knew a
+particularly awkward, homely, and freckled young lady named "Lily." The
+circumstance always seemed grimly humorous to me, and I remembered it as
+we strolled through the town that couldn't live up to its name.
+
+We were ravenously hungry, and as soon as possible we got our feet under
+the table of the town's dingy restaurant. A long, lean man came to take
+our orders. He was a walking picture of that condition known to patent
+medicine as "before taking." I looked for the fat, cheerful person who
+should illustrate the effect of eating at that place, but in vain. When
+the lean man reappeared with the two orders carefully tucked away in the
+palms of his bony hands, I thought I grasped the etiology of his
+thinness. It was indeed a frugal repast. We took in the situation at a
+glance.
+
+"Please consider us four hearty men, if you will," I said kindly; "and
+bring two more meals." The man obeyed. My _third_ order, it seems, met
+objections from the cook. The lean man, after a half audible colloquy
+with the presiding spirit of the kitchen, reported with a whipped
+expression that the house was "all out of grub." I regretted the matter
+very much, as I had looked forward to a long, unbroken series of meals
+that evening.
+
+Setting out at moonrise, just after sunset, we reached Pascal Island,
+fifteen miles below, before sleep came upon us in a manner not to be
+resisted. All night coyotes yelped from the hilltops about us,
+recounting their immemorial sorrows to the wandering moon.
+
+At sunset of the fifth day from Bismarck, we pulled in at Pierre.
+Although I had never been there before, Carthage was not more hospitable
+to storm-tossed AEneas than Pierre to the weather-beaten crew of the
+_Atom_. At a reception given us by Mr. Doane Robinson, secretary of the
+State Historical Society, I felt again the warmth of the great heart of
+the West.
+
+During the first night out of Pierre, the Kid, having stood his watch,
+called me at about one o'clock. The moon was sailing high. I grasped the
+oars and fell to rowing with a resolute swing, meaning, in the shortest
+possible time, to wear off the disagreeable stupor incident to arising
+at that time of night. I had been rowing for some time when I noted a
+tree on the bank near which the current ran. Still drowsy, I turned my
+head away and pulled with a will. After another spell of energetic
+rowing, I looked astern, expecting to see that tree at least a mile
+behind. There was no tree in sight, and yet I could see in that
+direction with sufficient clearness to discern the bulk of a tree if any
+were there.
+
+"I am rowing to beat the devil!" thought I; "that tree is away around
+the bend already!" So I increased the speed and length of my stroke, and
+began to come out of my stupor. Some time later, I happened to look
+behind me. _The tree in question was about three hundred yards ahead of
+the boat!_ I had been rowing up-stream for at least a half-hour in a
+strenuous race with that tree! The Kid, aroused by my laughter, asked
+sleepily what in thunder tickled me. I told him I had merely thought of
+a funny story; whereat he mumbled some unintelligble anathema, and
+lapsed again into a snoring state. But I claim the distinction of being
+the only man on record who ever raced a half-hour with a tree, and
+finished three city blocks to the bad!
+
+The next day we rounded the great loop, in which the river makes a
+detour of thirty miles. Having rowed the greater part of the day, we
+found ourselves in the evening only two or three miles from a point we
+had reached in the morning.
+
+In a drizzling rain we passed Brule Agency. In the evening, soppy and
+chilled, we were pulling past a tumble-down shanty built under the
+bluffs, when a man stepped from the door and hailed us. We pulled in.
+"You fellers looks like you needed a drink of booze," said the man as we
+stepped ashore. "Well, I got it for sale, and it ain't no harm to
+advertise!"
+
+This strenuous liquor merchant bore about him all the wretched marks of
+the stuff he sold.
+
+"Have your wife cook us two meals," said I, "and I'll deal with you."
+
+"Jump in my boat," said he. I got in his skiff, wondering what his whim
+might mean. After several strokes of the oars, he pulled a flask from
+his pocket, took my coin and rowed back to shore. "Government license,"
+he explained; "got to sell thirty feet from the bank." "Poor old
+Government," thought I; "they beat you wherever they deal with you!"
+
+We went up to the wretched shanty, built of driftwood, and entered. The
+interior was a melee of washtubs, rickety chairs, babies, and flies. The
+woman of the house hung out a ragged smile upon her puckered mouth,
+etched at the lips with many thin lines of worry, and aped hospitality
+in a manner at once pathetic and ridiculous. A little girl, who looked
+fifty or five, according to how you observed her, dexterously dodged the
+drip from the cracks in the roof, as she backed away into a corner, from
+whence she regarded us with eyes already saddened with the ache of life.
+
+After many days and nights in the great open, fraternizing with the
+stars and the moon and the sun and the river, it gave me a heartache to
+have the old bitter human fact thrust upon me again. "What is there left
+here to live for?" thought I. And just then I noted, hanging on the wall
+where the water did not drip, a neatly framed marriage certificate. This
+was the one attempt at decoration.
+
+It was the household's 'scutcheon of respectability. This woman, even in
+her degradation, true to the noblest instinct of her sex, clung to this
+holy record of a faded glory.
+
+Two days later, pushing on in the starlit night, we heard ahead the
+sullen boom of waters in turmoil. For a half-hour, as we proceeded, the
+sound increased, until it seemed close under our prow. We knew there
+was no cataract in the entire lower portion of the river; and yet, only
+from a waterfall had I ever heard a sound like that. We pulled for the
+shore, and went to bed with the sinister booming under our bow.
+
+Waking in the gray dawn, we found ourselves at the mouth of the Niobrara
+River. Though a small stream compared with the Missouri, so great is its
+speed, and so tremendous the impact of its flood, that the mightier, but
+less impetuous Missouri is driven back a quarter of a mile.
+
+Reaching Springfield--twelve miles below--before breakfast, in the
+evening we lifted Yankton out of a cloud of flying sand. The next day
+Vermilion and Elk Point dropped behind; and then, thirty miles of the
+two thousand remained.
+
+In the weird hour just before the first faint streak of dawn grows out
+of dark, we were making coffee--the last outdoor coffee of the year. Oh,
+the ambrosial stuff!
+
+We were under way when the stars paled. At sunrise the smoke of Sioux
+City was waving huge ragged arms of welcome out of the southeast. At
+noon we landed. We had rowed fourteen hundred miles against almost
+continual head winds in a month, and we had finished our two thousand
+miles in two months. It was hard work. And yet----
+
+The clang of the trolleys, the rumble of the drays, the rushing of the
+people!
+
+I prefer the drifting of the stars, the wandering of the moon, the
+coming and going of the sun, the crooning of the river, the shout of the
+big, manly, devil-may-care winds, the boom of the diving beaver in the
+night.
+
+I never felt at home in a town. Up river when the night dropped over me,
+somehow I always felt comfortably, kindly housed. Towns, after all, are
+machines to facilitate getting psychically lost.
+
+When I started for the head of navigation a friend asked me what I
+expected to find on the trip. "Some more of myself," I answered.
+
+And, after all, that is the Great Discovery.
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+The original text has a number of typographical errors and spelling
+inconsistencies, which have been maintained in this text. The following
+list details these errors:
+
+Original
+Page No.   Typographical error
+  4        marvelled for marveled
+  8        tighen for tighten
+  9        Danube's for Danubes
+ 14        "... to me that Theseus. ..." "that" should read "than"
+ 24        pealing for peeling
+ 32        terriffic for terrific
+ 47        lamp for lamb
+ 60        egshell for eggshell
+           terriffic for terrific
+ 61        inded for indeed
+ 66        ride for pride
+ 70        voluntered for volunteered
+ 78        sad for said
+ 92        intelligble for intelligible
+109        gunwhale for gunwale
+119        "I was tired cranking." for "I was tired of cranking."
+131        tenson for tension
+166        Kansis for Kansas
+171        skulled for sculled
+180        Thirce for Thrice
+195        unintelligble for unintelligible
+
+Inconsistencies
+
+cross-cut / crosscut
+Encleadus / Enceladus
+faerie / faerie
+half-way / halfway
+Hole-in-the-Wall / Hole-in-the-wall
+log-book / logbook
+mid-stream / midstream
+sand-bar / sandbar
+"Texas" / Texas
+wind-like / windlike
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The River and I, by John G. Neihardt
+
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