Down the Columbia Part 10

Another mile took us to the head of Priest Rapids, so named because two French-Canadian priests had been drowned there. This was to be our great rapid-running picture. Bad light had prevented our getting anything of the kind in Surprise and Kinbasket rapids, and "Twelve-Mile," though white and fast, was hardly the real thing. But Priest Rapids was reputed the fastest on the whole river--certainly over twenty miles an hour, Blackmore reckoned. It had almost as much of a pitch as the upper part of the first drop of Surprise Rapids down to the abrupt fall. But, being straight as a city street and with plenty of water over the rocks, running it was simply a matter of having a large enough boat and being willing to take the soaking. Blackmore had the boat, and, for the sake of a real rip-snorting picture, he said he was willing to take the soaking. So were Andy and I.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING ACROSS TO BOAT ENCAMPMENT (_above_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WOOD SMOKE AT TWILIGHT" ABOVE TWELVE-MILE (_below_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINING DOWN ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (_above_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHEN THE COLUMBIA TOOK HALF OF MY RIDING BREECHES (_below_)]

We dropped Roos at the head of the rumbling "intake," and while Andy went down to help him set up in a favourable position, Blackmore and I lined back up-stream a hundred yards so as to have a good jump on when we started. Andy joined us presently, to report that Roos appraised the "back-lighting" effect across the white caps as "cheap at a million dollars." He was going to make the shot of his life. Pushing off we laid on our oars, floating down until we caught Roos' signal to come on. Then Andy and I swung into it with all of the something like four hundred and fifty pounds of beef we scaled between us. Blackmore headed her straight down the "V" into the swiftest and roughest part of the rapid. It was a bit less tempestuous toward the right bank, but a quiet pa.s.sage was not what he was looking for this trip.

The boat must have had half her length out of water when she hurdled off the top of that first wave. I couldn't see, of course, but I judged it must have been that way from the manner in which she slapped down and buried her nose under the next comber. That brought over the water in a solid green flood. Andy and I only caught it on our hunched backs, but Blackmore, on his feet and facing forward, had to withstand a full frontal attack. My one recollection of him during that mad run is that of a freshly emerged Neptune shaking his grizzly locks and trying to blink the water out of his eyes.

Our team-work, as usual, went to sixes-and-sevens the moment we hit the rough water, but neither Andy nor I stopped pulling on that account.

Yelling like a couple of _locoed_ Apaches, we kept slapping out with our oar-blades into every hump of water within reach, and I have an idea that we managed to keep a considerable way even over the speeding current right to the finish. It was quite the wettest river run I ever made. A number of times during the war I was in a destroyer when something turned up to send it driving with all the speed it had--or all its plates would stand, rather--into a head sea. That meant that it made most of the run tunnelling under water. And that was the way it seemed going down Priest Rapids, only not so bad, of course. We were only about a quarter full of water when we finally pulled up to the bank in an eddy to wait for the movie man.

I could see that something had upset Roos by the droop of his shoulders, even when he was a long way off; the droop of his mouth confirmed the first impression on closer view. "You couldn't do that again, could you?" he asked Blackmore, with a furtive look in his eyes. The "Skipper"

stopped bailing with a snort. "Sure I'll do it again," he growled sarcastically. "Just line the boat back where she was and I'll bring her down again--only not to-night. I'll want to get dried out first. But what's the matter anyhow? Didn't we run fast enough to suit you?"

"Guess _you_ ran fast enough," was the reply; "but the film didn't.

Buckled in camera. Oil-can! Washout! Out of luck!" Engulfed in a deep purple aura of gloom, Roos climbed back into the boat and asked how far it was to camp and dinner.

For a couple of miles we had a fast current with us, but by the time we reached the mouth of Downie Creek--the centre of a great gold rush half a century ago--the river was broadening and deepening and slowing down.

A half hour more of sharp pulling brought us to Keystone Creek and Boyd's Ranch, where we tied up for the night. This place had the distinction of being the only ranch on the Big Bend, but it was really little more than a clearing with a house and barn. Boyd had given his name to a rapid at the head of Revelstoke Canyon--drowned while trying to line by at high water, Blackmore said--and the present owner was an American Civil War Pensioner named Wilc.o.x. He was wintering in California for his health, but Andy, being a friend of his, knew where to look for the key. Hardly had the frying bacon started its sizzling prelude than there came a joyous yowl at the door, and as it was opened an enormous tiger-striped tomcat bounded into the kitchen. Straight for Andy's shoulder he leaped, and the trapper's happy howl of recognition must have met him somewhere in the air. Andy hugged the ecstatically purring bundle to his breast as if it were a long-lost child, telling us between nuzzles into the arched furry back that this was "Tommy" (that was his name, of course), with whom he had spent two winters alone in his trapper's cabin. It was hard to tell which was the more delighted over this unexpected reunion, man or cat.

He had little difficulty in accounting for "Tommy's" presence at Boyd's.

He had given the cat to Wilc.o.x a season or two back, and Wilc.o.x, when he left for California, had given him to "Wild Bill," who had a cabin ten miles farther down the river. "Bill" already had a brother of "Tommy,"

but a cat of much less character. As "Bill" was much given to periodic sprees, Andy was satisfied that "Tommy," who was a great sizer-up of personality, had left him in disgust and returned to his former deserted home to shift for himself. As he would pull down rabbits as readily as an ordinary cat caught mice, this was an easy matter as long as the snow did not get too deep. Of what might happen after that Andy did not like to think. He would have to make some provision for his pet before full winter set in.

That evening we sat around the kitchen fire, telling all the cat stories we knew and quarrelling over whose turn it was to hold "Tommy" and put him through his tricks. The latter were of considerable variety. There was all the usual "sit-up," "jump-through" and "roll-over" stuff, but with such "variations" as only a trapper, snow-bound for days with nothing else to do, would have the time to conceive and perfect. For instance, if you only waved your hand in an airy spiral, "Tommy" would respond with no more than the conventional "once-over;" but a gentle tweak of the tail following the spiral, brought a roll to the left, while two tweaks directed him to the right. Similarly with his "front"

and "back" somersaults, which took their inspiration from a slightly modified form of aerial spiral. Of course only Andy could get the fine work out of him, but the ordinary "jump-through" stuff he would do for any of us.

I am afraid the cat stories we told awakened, temporarily at least, a good deal of mutual distrust. Roos didn't figure greatly, but Andy and Blackmore and I were glowering back and forth at each other with "I-suppose-you-don't-believe-_that_" expressions all evening. The two woodsmen, "hunting in couples" for the occasion, displayed considerable team-work. One of their best was of a trapper of their acquaintance--name and present address mentioned with scrupulous particularity--who had broken his leg one winter on Maloney Creek, just as he was at the end of his provisions. Dragging himself to his cabin, he lay down to die of starvation. The next morning his cat jumped in through the window with a rabbit in his mouth. Then the trapper had his great idea. Leaving the cat just enough to keep him alive, he took the rest for himself. That made the cat go on hunting, and each morning he came back with a rabbit.

And so it went on until springtime brought in his partner and relief. I asked them why, if the cat was so hungry, he didn't eat the rabbit up in the woods; but they said that wasn't the way of a cat, or at least of this particular cat.

Then I told them of a night, not long before the war, that I spent with the German archaeologists excavating at Babylon. Hearing a scratching on my door, I got up and found a tabby cat there. Entering the room, she nosed about under my mosquito netting for a few moments with ingratiating mewings and purrings, finally to trot out through the open door with an "I'll-see-you-again-in-a-moment" air. Presently she returned with a new-born kitten in her mouth. Nuzzling under the net and coverlets, she deposited the mewing atom in my bed, and then trotted off after another. When the whole litter of five was there, she crawled in herself and started nursing them. I spent the night on the couch, and without a net.

According to the best of my judgment, that story of mine was the only true one told that night. And yet--confound them--they wouldn't believe it--any more than I would theirs!

Considerable feeling arose along toward bed-time as to who was going to have "Tommy" to sleep with. Roos--who hadn't cut much ice in the story-telling--came strong at this juncture by adopting cave-man tactics and simply picking "Tommy" up and walking off with him. Waiting until Roos was asleep, I crept over and, gently extricating the furry pillow from under his downy cheek, carried it off to snuggle against my own ear. Whether Andy adopted the same Sabine methods himself, I never quite made sure. Anyhow, it was out of his blankets that "Tommy" came crawling in the morning.

As we made ready to pack off, Andy was in considerable doubt as to whether it would be best to leave his pet where he was or to take him down to "Wild Bill" again. "Tommy" cut the Gordian Knot himself by following us down to the boat like a dog and leaping aboard. He was horribly upset for a while when he saw the bank slide away from him and felt the motion of the boat, but Roos, m.u.f.fling the dismal yowls under his coat, kept him fairly quiet until "Wild Bill's" landing was reached.

Here he became his old self again, following us with his quick little canine trot up to the cabin. Outside the door he met his twin brother, and the two, after a swift sniff of identification, slipped away across the clearing to stalk rabbits.

"Wild Bill," as Andy had antic.i.p.ated, was still in bed, but got up and welcomed us warmly as soon as he found who it was. He was a small man--much to my surprise, and looked more like a French-Canadian gentleman in reduced circ.u.mstances than the most tumultuous booze-fighter on the upper Columbia. I had heard scores of stories of his escapades in the days when Golden and Revelstoke were wide-open frontier towns and life was really worth living. But most of them just miss being "drawing-room," however, and I refrain from setting them down. There was one comparatively polite one, though, of the time he started the biggest free-for-all fight Revelstoke ever knew by using the white, woolly, cheek-cuddling poodle of a dance-hall girl to wipe the mud off his boots with. And another--but no, that one wouldn't quite pa.s.s censor.

"Bill" had shot a number of bear in the spring, and now asked Andy to take the unusually fine skins to Revelstoke and sell them for him. He also asked if we could let him have any spare provisions, as he was running very short. He was jubilant when I told him he could take everything we had left for what it had cost in Golden. That was like finding money, he said, for packing in his stuff cost him close to ten cents a pound. But it wasn't the few dollars he saved on the grub that etched a silver--nay, a roseate--lining on the sodden rain clouds for "Wild Bill" that day; rather it was the sequel to the consequences of a kindly thought I had when he came down to the boat to see us off.

"'Bill,'" I said, as he started to wring our hands in parting, "they tell me you've become a comparative teetotaler these last few years. But we have a little 'thirty per over-proof' left--just a swallow.

Perhaps--for the sake of the old days...."

That quick, chesty cough, rumbling right from the diaphragm, was the one deepest sound of emotion I ever heard--and I've heard a fair amount of "emoting," too. "Don't mind--if I do," he mumbled brokenly, with a long intake of breath that was almost a sob. I handed him a mug--a hulking big half-pint coffee mug, it was--and uncorked the bottle. "Say when...."

"Thanks--won't trouble you," he muttered, s.n.a.t.c.hing the bottle from me with a hand whose fingers crooked like claws. Then he inhaled another deep breath, took out his handkerchief, brushed off a place on one of the thwarts, sat down, and, pouring very deliberately, emptied the contents of the bottle to the last drop into the big mug. The bottle--a British Imperial quart--had been a little less than a quarter full; the mug was just short of br.i.m.m.i.n.g. "Earzow!" he mumbled, with a sweepingly comprehensive gesture with the mug. Then, crooking his elbow, he dumped the whole half pint down his throat. Diluted four-to-one, that liquid fire would have made an ordinary man wince; and "Wild Bill" downed it without a blink. Then he wiped his lips with his sleeve, set mug and bottle carefully down on the thwart, bowed low to each of us, and stepped ash.o.r.e with dignified tread. Blackmore, checking Roos'

hysterical giggle with a prod of his paddle handle, pushed off into the current. "Wait!" he admonished, eyeing the still figure on the bank with the fascinated glance of a man watching a short length of fuse sputter down toward the end of a stick of dynamite.

We had not long to wait. The detonation of the dynamite was almost instantaneous. The mounting fumes of that "thirty per" fired the slumbering volcano of the old trapper as a dash of kerosene fires a bed of dormant coals. And so "Wild Bill" went wild. Dancing and whooping like an Indian, he shouted for us to come back--that he would give us his furs, his cabin, the Columbia, the Selkirks, Canada.... What he was going to offer next we never learned, for just then a very sobering thing occurred--"Tommy" and his twin brother, attracted by the noise, came trotting down the path from the cabin to learn what it was all about.

Andy swore that he had told "Bill" that we had brought "Tommy" back, and that "Bill" had heard him, and replied that he hoped the cat would stay this time. But even if this was true, it no longer signified. "Bill" had forgotten all about it, and _knew_ that there ought to be only one tiger-striped tomcat about the place, whereas his eyes told him there were two. So he kept counting them, and stopping every now and then to hold up two fingers at us in pathetic puzzlement. Finally he began to chase them--or rather "it"--now one of "it" and now the other. The last we saw of him, as the current swept the boat round a point, he had caught "Tommy's" twin brother and was still trying to enumerate "Tommy." Very likely by that time there were two of him in fancy as well as in fact--possibly mauve and pink ones.

Blackmore took a last whiff at the neck of the rum bottle and then tossed it gloomily into the river. "The next time you ask a man to take a 'swallow,'" he said, "probably you'll know enough to find out how big his 'swallow' is in advance."

We pulled hard against a head wind all morning, and with not much help from the current. The latter began to speed up at Rocky Point Rapids, and from there the going was lively right on through Revelstoke Canyon.

Sand Slide Rapid, a fast-rolling serpentine cascade near the head of the Canyon, gave us a good wetting as Blackmore slashed down the middle of it, and he was still bailing when we ran in between the sides of the great red-and-black-walled gorge. Between cliffs not over a hundred feet apart for a considerable distance, the river rushes with great velocity, throwing itself in a roaring wave now against one side, now against the other. As the depth is very great (Blackmore said he had failed to get bottom with a hundred-and-fifty-foot line), the only things to watch out for were the cliffs and the whirlpools. Neither was a serious menace to a boat of our size at that stage of water, but the swirls would have made the run very dangerous for a skiff or canoe at any time.

Unfortunately, the drizzling rain and lowering clouds made pictures of what is one of the very finest scenic stretches of the Big Bend quite out of the question. If it had been the matter of a day or two, we would gladly have gone into camp and waited for the light; but Blackmore was inclined to think the spell of bad weather that had now set in was the beginning of an early winter, in which event we might stand-by for weeks without seeing the sky. It was just as well we did not wait. As I have already mentioned, we did not feel the touch of sunlight again until we were on the American side of the border.

From the foot of the Canyon to Blackmore's boat-house was four miles.

Pulling down a broadening and slackening river flanked by ever receding mountains, we pa.s.sed under the big C. P. R. bridge and tied up at four o'clock. In spite of taking it easy all the time, the last twenty miles had been run in quite a bit under two hours.

CHAPTER IX

REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE

The voyage round the Big Bend, in spite of the atrocious weather, had gone so well that I had just about made up my mind to continue on down river by the time we reached Revelstoke. A letter which awaited me at the hotel there from Captain Armstrong, stating that he would be free to join me for my first week or ten days south from the foot of the lakes, was all that was needed to bring me to a decision. I wired him that I would pick him up in Nelson as soon as I had cleaned up a pile of correspondence which had pursued me in spite of all directions to the contrary, and in the meantime for him to endeavour to find a suitable boat. Nelson, as the metropolis of western British Columbia, appeared to be the only place where we would have a chance of finding what was needed in the boat line on short notice. While I wrote letters, Roos got his exposed film off to Los Angeles, laid in a new stock, and received additional instructions from Chester in connection with the new picture--the one for which the opening shots had already been made at Windermere, and which we called "The Farmer Who Would See the Sea."

As there was no swift water whatever between Revelstoke and Kootenay Rapids, I had no hesitation in deciding to make the voyage down the Arrow Lakes by steamer. Both on the score of water-stage and weather, it was now a good month to six weeks later than the most favourable time for a through down-river voyage. Any time saved now, therefore, might be the means of avoiding so many days of winter further along. I was hoping that, with decreasing alt.i.tude and a less humid region ahead, I would at least be keeping ahead of the snows nearly if not quite all the way to Portland. I may mention here that, all in all, I played in very good luck on the score of weather. There were to be, however, a few _geesly_ cold days on the river along about Wenatchee, and two or three mighty bl.u.s.tery blows in the Cascades.

The Arrow Lakes are merely enlargements of the Columbia, keeping throughout their lengths the same general north-to-south direction of this part of the river. The upper lake is thirty-three miles in length, and has an average width of about three miles. Sixteen miles of comparatively swift river runs from the upper to the lower lake. The latter, which is forty-two miles long and two and a half wide, is somewhat less precipitously walled than the upper lake, and there are considerable patches of cultivation here and there along its banks--mostly apple orchards. There is a steamer channel all the way up the Columbia to Revelstoke, but the present service, maintained by the Canadian Pacific at its usual high standard, starts at the head of the upper lake and finishes at West Robson, some miles down the Columbia from the foot of the lower lake. This is one of the very finest lake trips anywhere in the world; I found it an unending source of delight, even after a fortnight of the superlative scenery of the Big Bend.

There is a stock story they tell of the Arrow Lakes, and which appears intended to convey to the simple tourist a graphic idea of the precipitousness of their rocky walls. The skipper of my steamer told it while we were ploughing down the upper lake. Seeing a man struggling in the water near the bank one day, he ran some distance off his course to throw the chap a line. Disdaining all aid, the fellow kept right on swimming toward the sh.o.r.e. "Don't worry about me," he shouted back; "this is only the third time I've fallen off my ranch to-day."

I told the Captain that the story sounded all right to me except in one particular--that even my gla.s.s failed to reveal any ranches for a man to fall off of. "Oh, that's all right," was the unperturbed reply; "there _was_ one when that yarn was started, but I guess it fell into the lake too. But mebbe I _had_ ought to keep it for the lower lake, though," he added; "there is still some un-slid ranches down there."

Nelson is a fine little city that hangs to a rocky mountainside right at the point where Kootenay Lake spills over and discharges its surplus water into a wild, white torrent that seems to be trying to atone at the last for its long delay in making up its mind to join the Columbia.

Nelson was made by the rich silver-lead mines of the Kootenay district, but it was so well made that, even now with the first fine frenzy of the mining excitement over, it is still able to carry on strongly as a commercial distributing and fruit shipping centre. It is peopled by the same fine, out-door loving folk that one finds through all of western Canada, and is especially noted for its aquatic sports. I am only sorry that I was not able to see more of both Nelson and its people.

As soon as I saw Captain Armstrong I made a clean breast to him about my failure to unearth the treasure at the Bend. He was a good sport and bore up better than one would expect a man to under the circ.u.mstances.

"I wish that matter of K---- and his D. T.'s had come up before you left," was his only comment.

"Why?" I asked. "I can't see what difference that would have made. We didn't waste a lot of time digging."

"That's just it," said the Captain with a wry grin. "Wouldn't you have gone right on digging if you had known that the spell of jim-jams that finished K---- came from some stuff he got from a section-hand at Beavermouth? Now I suppose I'll have to watch my chance and run down and salvage that keg of old Scotch myself." It shows the stuff that Armstrong was made of when I say that, even after the way I had betrayed the trust he had reposed in me, he was still game to go on with the Columbia trip. That's the sort of man he was.

Boats of anywhere near the design we would need for the river were scarce, the Captain reported, but there was one which he thought might do. This proved to be a sixteen-foot, clinker-built skiff that had been constructed especially to carry an out-board motor. She had ample beam, a fair freeboard and a considerable sheer. The princ.i.p.al thing against her was the square stern, and that was of less moment running down river than if we had been working up. It _did_ seem just a bit like asking for trouble, tackling the Columbia in a boat built entirely for lake use; but Captain Armstrong's approval of her was quite good enough for me. Save for her amiable weakness of yielding somewhat overreadily to the seductive embraces of whirlpools--a trait common to all square-sterned craft of inconsiderable length--she proved more than equal to the task set for her. We paid fifty-five dollars for her--about half what she had cost--and there was a charge of ten dollars for expressing her to West Robson, on the Columbia.