The River and I Part 8

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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 G.o.d 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 t.i.tan 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed 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 ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRESH MEAT.]

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

I pumped up another sh.e.l.l 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 G.o.d-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 appet.i.tes!

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.