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!



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."



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.



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

THE END