The River and I Part 15

It was the household's 'scutcheon of respectability. This woman, even in her degradation, true to the n.o.blest instinct of her s.e.x, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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.

_Other Books by_ JOHN G. NEIHARDT

INDIAN TALES AND OTHERS

POETIC VALUES

THE QUEST

THE SONG OF HUGH GLa.s.s

THE SONG OF THE INDIAN WARS

THE SONG OF THREE FRIENDS

THE SPLENDID WAYFARING

TWO MOTHERS

COLLECTED POEMS