Part 7 (2/2)
Blackmore piloted me up to the main area of drift in the afternoon. It occupied a hundred acres or more of sand and mud flats which const.i.tuted the lower part of the extensive delta deposited on the edge of the lake by the waters of the good-sized stream of Middle River. At a first glance it seemed nothing more than a great wilderness of tree trunks--prostrate, upended, woven and packed together--extending for hundreds of yards below high-water-mark. It was between these logs that the smaller things had lodged. There were a number of boats, not greatly damaged, and fragments enough to have reconstructed a dozen more. I am convinced that a half day's search would have discovered the material for building and furnis.h.i.+ng a house, though carpets and wall paper would hardly have been all one could desire. I even found a curling iron--closely clasped by the bent nail upon which it had been hung on the log of a cabin--and a corset. The latter seemed hardly worth salving, as it appeared--according to Blackmore--to be a ”military model” of a decade or so back, and the steel-work was badly rusted.
However, it was not gewgaws or house-furnis.h.i.+ng we were after. One could hardly be expected to slither about in soft slush for second-hand things of that kind. I gave a great glad whoop at my first sight of a silt-submerged cask, only to find the head missing and nothing but mud in it. So, too, my second and third. Then it was Blackmore who gave the ”View Halloo,” and my heart gave a mighty leap. _His_ treasure trove had the head intact, and even the bung _in situ_. But alas! the latter had become slightly started, and although the contents had both smell and colour they were so heavily impregnated with river mud that they would hardly have been deemed fit for consumption except in New York and California, and not worth the risk of smuggling even there. That cask was the high-water-mark of our luck. Several others had the old familiar smell, and that was all. But there is no doubt in the world that there is whisky in that drift pile--hundreds of gallons of it, and some very old. Blackmore swears to that, and I never knew him to lie--about serious matters, I mean. In hunting and trapping yarns a man is expected to draw a long bead. I pa.s.s on this undeniably valuable information to any one that cares to profit by it. There are no strings attached. But of course ... in the event of success ... Pasadena always finds me!...
We did have one find, though, that was so remarkable as to be worth all the trouble and disappointment of our otherwise futile search. This was a road-bridge, with _instinct_. The manner in which this had been displayed was so astonis.h.i.+ng as to be almost beyond belief; indeed, I would hesitate about setting down the facts had I not a photograph to prove them. This bridge was perhaps sixty feet in length, and had doubtless been carried away by a freshet from some tributary of the upper river which it had spanned. This was probably somewhere between Golden and Windermere, so that it had run a hundred miles or more of swift water, including the falls of Surprise Rapids, without losing more than a few planks. This in itself was remarkable enough, but nothing at all to the fact that, when it finally decided it had come far enough, the sagacious structure had gone and planked itself down squarely across another stream. It was still a bridge in fact as well as in form. It had actually saved my feet from getting wet when I rushed to Blackmore's aid in up-ending the cask of mud-diluted whisky. My photograph plainly shows Blackmore standing on the bridge, with the water flowing directly beneath him. It would have been a more comprehensive and convincing picture if there had been light enough for a snapshot. As it was, I had to set up on a stump, and in a position which showed less of both stream and bridge than I might have had from a better place. I swear (and so does Blackmore) that we didn't place the bridge where it was. It was much too large for that. Roos wanted to shoot the whole three of us standing on it and registering ”unbounded wonderment,” but the light was never right for it up to the morning of our departure, and then there wasn't time.
It rained and snowed all that night and most of the following day.
During the afternoon of the latter the clouds broke up twice or thrice, and through rifts in the drifting wracks we had transient glimpses of the peaks and glaciers of the Selkirks gleaming above the precipitous western walls of the lake. The most conspicuous feature of the sky-line was the three-peaked ”Trident,” rising almost perpendicularly from a glittering field of glacial ice and impaling great ma.s.ses of pendant _c.u.mulo-nimbi_ on its splintered p.r.o.ngs. Strings of lofty glacier-set summits marked the line of the back-bone of the Selkirks to southeast and northwest, each of them sending down rain-swollen torrents to tumble into the lake in cataracts and cascades. Behind, or east of us, we knew the Rockies reared a similar barrier of snow and ice, but this was cut off from our vision by the more imminent lake-wall under which we were camped. If Kinbasket Lake is ever made accessible to the tourist its fame will reach to the end of the earth. This is a consummation which may be effected in the event the Canadian Pacific wipes out Surprise Rapids with its hydro-electric project dam and backs up a lake to Beavermouth. The journey to this spot of incomparable beauty could then be made soft enough to suit all but the most effete.
A torrential rain, following a warm southerly breeze which sprang up in the middle of the afternoon, lowered the dense cloud-curtain again, and shortly, from somewhere behind the scenes, came the raucous rumble and roar of a great avalanche. Blackmore's practised ear led him to p.r.o.nounce it a slide of both earth and snow, and to locate it somewhere on Trident Creek, straight across the lake from our camp. He proved to be right on both counts. When the clouds lifted again at sunset, a long yellow scar gashed the shoulder of the mountain half way up Trident Creek to the glacier, and the clear stream from the latter had completely disappeared. Blackmore said it had been dammed up by the slide, and that there would be all h.e.l.l popping when it broke through.
Scouting around for more boughs to soften his bed, Roos, just before supper, chanced upon Steinhoff's grave. It was under a small pine, not fifty feet from our tent, but so hidden by the dense undergrowth that it had escaped our notice for two days. It was marked only by a fragment split from the stern of a white-painted boat nailed horizontally on the pine trunk and with the single word ”STEINHOFF” carved in rude capitals.
At one corner, in pencil, was an inscription stating that the board had been put up in May, 1920, by Joe French and Leo Tennis. With the golden sunset light streaming through the trees, Roos, always strong for ”pathetic human touches” to serve as a sombre background for his Mack Sennett stuff, could not resist the opportunity for a picture. Andy and Blackmore and I were to come climbing up to the grave from the lake, read the inscription, and then look at each other and shake our heads ominously, as though it was simply a matter of time until we, too, should fall prey to the implacable river. I refused straightaway, on the ground that I had signed up to act the part of a light comedy sportsman and not a heavy mourner. Blackmore and Andy were more amenable. In rehearsal, however, the expressions on their honest faces were so wooden and embarra.s.sed that Roos finally called me up to stand out of range and ”say something to make 'em look natural.” I refrain from recording what I said; but I still maintain that shot was an interruption of the ”continuity” of my ”gentleman-sportsman” picture. I have not yet heard if it survived the studio surgery.
Shortly before dark, Andy, going down to look at his set-line, found a three-foot ling or fresh-water cod floundering on the end of it. Roos persuaded him to keep it over night so that the elusive ”fis.h.i.+ng picture” might be made the following morning in case the light was good.
As there were five or six inches of water in the bottom of the boat, Andy threw the ling in there for the night in preference to picketing him out on a line. There was plenty of water to have given the husky shovel-nose ample room to circulate with comfort if only he had been content to take it easy and not wax temperamental. Doubtless it was his imminent movie engagement that brought on his attack of flightiness. At any rate, he tried to burrow under a collapsible sheet-iron stove (which, preferring to do with a camp-fire, we had left in the boat) and got stuck. The forward five pounds of him had water enough to keep alive in, but in the night--when it cleared off and turned cold--his tail, which was bent up sharply under a thwart, froze stiff at almost right angles. But I am getting ahead of my story.
The next morning, the sixth of October, broke brilliantly clear, with the sun gilding the p.r.o.ngs of the ”Trident” and throwing the whole snowy line of the Selkirks in dazzling relief against a deep turquoise sky.
Blackmore, keen for an early start, so as not to be rushed in working down through the dreaded ”Twenty-One-Mile” Rapids to Canoe River, rooted us out at daybreak and began breaking camp before breakfast. He had reckoned without the ”fis.h.i.+ng picture,” however. Roos wanted bright sunlight for it, claiming he was under special instructions to make something sparkling and snappy. All through breakfast he coached me on the intricate details of the action. ”Make him put up a stiff fight,” he admonished through a mouthful of flapjack. ”Of course he won't fight, 'cause he ain't that kind; but if you jerk and wiggle your pole just right it'll make it look like he was. That's what a real actor's for--making things look like they is when they ain't. Got me?” Then we went down and discovered that poor half-frozen fish with the eight-point alteration of the continuity of his back-bone.
The ling or fresh-water cod has an underhung, somewhat shark-like mouth, not unsuggestive of the new moon with its points turned downward. Roos'
mouth took on a similarly dejected droop when he found the condition the princ.i.p.al animal actor in his fish picture was in. But it was too late to give up now. Never might we have so husky a fighting fish ready to hand, and with a bright sun s.h.i.+ning on it. Roos tried osteopathy, applied chiropractics and Christian Science without much effect. Our ”lead” continued as rigid and unrelaxing as the bushman's boomerang, whose shape he so nearly approximated. Then Andy wrought the miracle with a simple ”laying on of hands.” What he really did was to thaw out the frozen rear end of the fish by holding it between his big, warm red Celtic paws; but the effect was as magical as a cure at Lourdes. The big ling was shortly flopping vigorously, and when Andy dropped him into a bit of a boulder-locked pool he went charging back and forth at the rocky barriers like a bull at a gate. Roos almost wept in his thankfulness, and forthwith promised the restorer an extra rum ration that night. Andy grinned his thanks, but reminded him that we ought to be at the old ferry by night, where something even better than ”thirty per over-proof” rum would be on tap. It was indeed the morning of our great day. Stimulated by that inspiring thought, I prepared to outdo myself in the ”fish picture,” the ”set” for which was now ready.
[Ill.u.s.tration: BLACKMORE AND THE LING THAT REFUSED TO ”REGISTER”]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WRITER, WITH PIKE-POLE JUST BEFORE LINING DEATH RAPIDS]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ANDY AND I PULLING DOWN KINBASKET LAKE]
Standing on the stern of the beached boat, I made a long cast, registering ”concentrated eagerness.” Then Roos stopped cranking, and Andy brought the ling out and fastened it to the end of my line with a snug but comfortable hitch through the gills. (We were careful not to hurt him, for Chester's directions had admonished especially against ”showing brutality”.) When I had nursed him out to about where my opening cast had landed, Roos called ”Action!” and started cranking again. Back and forth in wide sweeps he dashed, while I registered blended ”eagerness” and ”determination,” with frequent interpolations of ”consternation” as carefully timed tugs (by myself) bent my s.h.i.+vering pole down to the water. When Roos had enough footage of ”fighting,” I brought my catch in close to the boat and leered down at him, registering ”near triumph.” Then I towed him ash.o.r.e and Andy and Blackmore rushed in to help me land him. After much struggling (by ourselves) we brought him out on the beach. At this juncture I was supposed to grab the ling by the gills and hold him proudly aloft, registering ”full triumph” the while. Andy and Blackmore were to crowd in, pat me on the back and beam congratulations. Blackmore was then to a.s.sume an expression intended to convey the impression that this was the hardest fighting ling he had ever seen caught. All three of us were action perfect in our parts; but that miserable turn-tail of a ling--who had nothing to do but flop and register ”indignant protest”--spoiled it all at the last. As I flung my prize on high, a shrill scream of ”Rotten!” from Roos froze the action where it was. Then I noticed that what was supposed to be a gamy denizen of the swift-flowing Columbia was hanging from my hand as rigid as a coupling-pin--a bent coupling-pin at that, for he had resumed his former cold-storage curl.
”Rotten!” shrieked Roos in a frenzy; ”do it again!” But that was not to be. For the ”chief actor” the curtain had rung down for good. ”You must have played him too fierce,” said Andy sympathetically. Blackmore was inclined to be frivolous. ”P'raps he was trying to register 'Big Bend,'”
said he.
Just after we had pushed off there came a heavy and increasing roar from across the lake. Presently the cascade of Trident Creek sprang into life again, but now a squirt of yellow ochre where before it was a flutter of white satin. Rapidly augmenting, it spread from wall to wall of the rocky gorge, discharging to the bosky depths of the delta with a prodigious rumbling that reverberated up and down the lake like heavy thunder. A moment later the flood had reached the sh.o.r.e, and out across the lucent green waters of the lake spread a broadening fan of yellow-brown. ”I told you h.e.l.l would be popping after that big slide,”
said Blackmore, resting on his paddle. ”That's the backed-up stream breaking through.”
Kinbasket Lake is a broadening and slackening of the Columbia, backed up behind the obstructions which cause the long series of rapids between its outlet and the mouth of Canoe River. It is six or seven miles long, according to the stage of water, and from one to two miles wide. Its downward set of current is slight but perceptible. The outlet, as we approached it after a three-mile pull from our camp at Middle River, appeared strikingly similar to the head of Surprise Rapids. Here, however, the transition from quiet to swift water was even more abrupt.
The surface of the lake was a-dance with the ripples kicked up by the crisp morning breeze, and blindingly bright where the facets of the tiny wavelets reflected the sunlight like shaken diamonds. The shadowed depths of the narrow gorge ahead was Stygian by contrast. Blackmore called my attention to the way the crests of the pines r.i.m.m.i.n.g the river a few hundred yards inside the gorge appeared just about on the level with the surface of the lake. ”When you see the tree-tops fall away like that,” he said, standing up to take his final bearings for the opening run, ”look out. It means there's water running down hill right ahead faster'n any boat wants to put its nose in.” The roar rolling up to us was not quite so deep-toned or thunderous as the challenging bellow of the first fall of Surprise; but it was more ”permeative,” as though the sources from which it came ran on without end. And that was just about the situation. We were sliding down to the intake of Kinbasket or ”The Twenty-One-Mile” Rapids, one of the longest, if not _the_ longest, succession of practically unbroken riffles on any of the great rivers of the world.
From the outlet of Kinbasket Lake to the mouth of Canoe River is twenty-one miles. For the sixteen miles the tail of one rapid generally runs right into the head of the next, and there is a fall of two hundred and sixty feet, or more than sixteen feet to the mile. For the last five miles there is less white water, but the current runs from eight to twelve miles an hour, with many swirls and whirlpools. The river is closely canyoned all the way. This compels one to make the whole run through in a single day, as there is no camping place at any point.
Cliffs and sharply-sloping boulder banks greatly complicate lining down and compel frequent crossings at points where a failure to land just right is pretty likely to leave things in a good deal of a mess.
Blackmore ran us down through a couple of hundred yards of slap-banging white water, before coming to bank above a steep pitch where the river tore itself to rags and tatters across a patch of rocks that seemed to block the whole channel. From Captain Armstrong's description, this was the exact point where the trouble with his tipsy bow-paddler had occurred, the little difficulty which had been the cause of his leaving the salvaged cask of Scotch at his next camp. Like pious pilgrims approaching the gateway of some long-laboured-toward shrine, therefore, we looked at the place with much interest, not to say reverence.
Blackmore was perhaps the least sentimental of us. ”I wouldn't try to run that next fall for all the whisky ever lost in the old Columbia,” he said decisively, beginning to re-coil his long line. Then we turned to on lining down the most accursed stretch of river boulders I ever had to do with.
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