The River and I Part 11

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 h.e.l.l Creek.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REVEILLE!]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 h.e.l.l 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 cl.u.s.ter of soapweeds grew there--G.o.d 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 quant.i.ty 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 m.u.f.fled 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 mult.i.tude, Hissing--

We wondered if there might not be some rattlesnakes in that vicinity.

--They raked up And, shivering, sc.r.a.ped 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 h.e.l.l 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 gra.s.s.

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'a.s.somoir_; and a grim graveyard subst.i.tute 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 p.r.o.nounced it dead.

In the drear f.a.g 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sing the same point, and somehow slipping back to pa.s.s 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 a.s.siniboine 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: a.s.sINIBOINE INDIAN CHIEF.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: a.s.sINIBOINE INDIAN CAMP.]