Part 10 (1/2)
Another mile took us to the head of Priest Rapids, so named because two French-Canadian priests had been drowned there. This was to be our great rapid-running picture. Bad light had prevented our getting anything of the kind in Surprise and Kinbasket rapids, and ”Twelve-Mile,” though white and fast, was hardly the real thing. But Priest Rapids was reputed the fastest on the whole river--certainly over twenty miles an hour, Blackmore reckoned. It had almost as much of a pitch as the upper part of the first drop of Surprise Rapids down to the abrupt fall. But, being straight as a city street and with plenty of water over the rocks, running it was simply a matter of having a large enough boat and being willing to take the soaking. Blackmore had the boat, and, for the sake of a real rip-snorting picture, he said he was willing to take the soaking. So were Andy and I.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING ACROSS TO BOAT ENCAMPMENT (_above_)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”WOOD SMOKE AT TWILIGHT” ABOVE TWELVE-MILE (_below_)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: LINING DOWN ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (_above_)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: WHEN THE COLUMBIA TOOK HALF OF MY RIDING BREECHES (_below_)]
We dropped Roos at the head of the rumbling ”intake,” and while Andy went down to help him set up in a favourable position, Blackmore and I lined back up-stream a hundred yards so as to have a good jump on when we started. Andy joined us presently, to report that Roos appraised the ”back-lighting” effect across the white caps as ”cheap at a million dollars.” He was going to make the shot of his life. Pus.h.i.+ng off we laid on our oars, floating down until we caught Roos' signal to come on. Then Andy and I swung into it with all of the something like four hundred and fifty pounds of beef we scaled between us. Blackmore headed her straight down the ”V” into the swiftest and roughest part of the rapid. It was a bit less tempestuous toward the right bank, but a quiet pa.s.sage was not what he was looking for this trip.
The boat must have had half her length out of water when she hurdled off the top of that first wave. I couldn't see, of course, but I judged it must have been that way from the manner in which she slapped down and buried her nose under the next comber. That brought over the water in a solid green flood. Andy and I only caught it on our hunched backs, but Blackmore, on his feet and facing forward, had to withstand a full frontal attack. My one recollection of him during that mad run is that of a freshly emerged Neptune shaking his grizzly locks and trying to blink the water out of his eyes.
Our team-work, as usual, went to sixes-and-sevens the moment we hit the rough water, but neither Andy nor I stopped pulling on that account.
Yelling like a couple of _locoed_ Apaches, we kept slapping out with our oar-blades into every hump of water within reach, and I have an idea that we managed to keep a considerable way even over the speeding current right to the finish. It was quite the wettest river run I ever made. A number of times during the war I was in a destroyer when something turned up to send it driving with all the speed it had--or all its plates would stand, rather--into a head sea. That meant that it made most of the run tunnelling under water. And that was the way it seemed going down Priest Rapids, only not so bad, of course. We were only about a quarter full of water when we finally pulled up to the bank in an eddy to wait for the movie man.
I could see that something had upset Roos by the droop of his shoulders, even when he was a long way off; the droop of his mouth confirmed the first impression on closer view. ”You couldn't do that again, could you?” he asked Blackmore, with a furtive look in his eyes. The ”Skipper”
stopped bailing with a snort. ”Sure I'll do it again,” he growled sarcastically. ”Just line the boat back where she was and I'll bring her down again--only not to-night. I'll want to get dried out first. But what's the matter anyhow? Didn't we run fast enough to suit you?”
”Guess _you_ ran fast enough,” was the reply; ”but the film didn't.
Buckled in camera. Oil-can! Washout! Out of luck!” Engulfed in a deep purple aura of gloom, Roos climbed back into the boat and asked how far it was to camp and dinner.
For a couple of miles we had a fast current with us, but by the time we reached the mouth of Downie Creek--the centre of a great gold rush half a century ago--the river was broadening and deepening and slowing down.
A half hour more of sharp pulling brought us to Keystone Creek and Boyd's Ranch, where we tied up for the night. This place had the distinction of being the only ranch on the Big Bend, but it was really little more than a clearing with a house and barn. Boyd had given his name to a rapid at the head of Revelstoke Canyon--drowned while trying to line by at high water, Blackmore said--and the present owner was an American Civil War Pensioner named Wilc.o.x. He was wintering in California for his health, but Andy, being a friend of his, knew where to look for the key. Hardly had the frying bacon started its sizzling prelude than there came a joyous yowl at the door, and as it was opened an enormous tiger-striped tomcat bounded into the kitchen. Straight for Andy's shoulder he leaped, and the trapper's happy howl of recognition must have met him somewhere in the air. Andy hugged the ecstatically purring bundle to his breast as if it were a long-lost child, telling us between nuzzles into the arched furry back that this was ”Tommy” (that was his name, of course), with whom he had spent two winters alone in his trapper's cabin. It was hard to tell which was the more delighted over this unexpected reunion, man or cat.
He had little difficulty in accounting for ”Tommy's” presence at Boyd's.
He had given the cat to Wilc.o.x a season or two back, and Wilc.o.x, when he left for California, had given him to ”Wild Bill,” who had a cabin ten miles farther down the river. ”Bill” already had a brother of ”Tommy,”
but a cat of much less character. As ”Bill” was much given to periodic sprees, Andy was satisfied that ”Tommy,” who was a great sizer-up of personality, had left him in disgust and returned to his former deserted home to s.h.i.+ft for himself. As he would pull down rabbits as readily as an ordinary cat caught mice, this was an easy matter as long as the snow did not get too deep. Of what might happen after that Andy did not like to think. He would have to make some provision for his pet before full winter set in.
That evening we sat around the kitchen fire, telling all the cat stories we knew and quarrelling over whose turn it was to hold ”Tommy” and put him through his tricks. The latter were of considerable variety. There was all the usual ”sit-up,” ”jump-through” and ”roll-over” stuff, but with such ”variations” as only a trapper, snow-bound for days with nothing else to do, would have the time to conceive and perfect. For instance, if you only waved your hand in an airy spiral, ”Tommy” would respond with no more than the conventional ”once-over;” but a gentle tweak of the tail following the spiral, brought a roll to the left, while two tweaks directed him to the right. Similarly with his ”front”
and ”back” somersaults, which took their inspiration from a slightly modified form of aerial spiral. Of course only Andy could get the fine work out of him, but the ordinary ”jump-through” stuff he would do for any of us.
I am afraid the cat stories we told awakened, temporarily at least, a good deal of mutual distrust. Roos didn't figure greatly, but Andy and Blackmore and I were glowering back and forth at each other with ”I-suppose-you-don't-believe-_that_” expressions all evening. The two woodsmen, ”hunting in couples” for the occasion, displayed considerable team-work. One of their best was of a trapper of their acquaintance--name and present address mentioned with scrupulous particularity--who had broken his leg one winter on Maloney Creek, just as he was at the end of his provisions. Dragging himself to his cabin, he lay down to die of starvation. The next morning his cat jumped in through the window with a rabbit in his mouth. Then the trapper had his great idea. Leaving the cat just enough to keep him alive, he took the rest for himself. That made the cat go on hunting, and each morning he came back with a rabbit.
And so it went on until springtime brought in his partner and relief. I asked them why, if the cat was so hungry, he didn't eat the rabbit up in the woods; but they said that wasn't the way of a cat, or at least of this particular cat.
Then I told them of a night, not long before the war, that I spent with the German archaeologists excavating at Babylon. Hearing a scratching on my door, I got up and found a tabby cat there. Entering the room, she nosed about under my mosquito netting for a few moments with ingratiating mewings and purrings, finally to trot out through the open door with an ”I'll-see-you-again-in-a-moment” air. Presently she returned with a new-born kitten in her mouth. Nuzzling under the net and coverlets, she deposited the mewing atom in my bed, and then trotted off after another. When the whole litter of five was there, she crawled in herself and started nursing them. I spent the night on the couch, and without a net.
According to the best of my judgment, that story of mine was the only true one told that night. And yet--confound them--they wouldn't believe it--any more than I would theirs!
Considerable feeling arose along toward bed-time as to who was going to have ”Tommy” to sleep with. Roos--who hadn't cut much ice in the story-telling--came strong at this juncture by adopting cave-man tactics and simply picking ”Tommy” up and walking off with him. Waiting until Roos was asleep, I crept over and, gently extricating the furry pillow from under his downy cheek, carried it off to snuggle against my own ear. Whether Andy adopted the same Sabine methods himself, I never quite made sure. Anyhow, it was out of his blankets that ”Tommy” came crawling in the morning.
As we made ready to pack off, Andy was in considerable doubt as to whether it would be best to leave his pet where he was or to take him down to ”Wild Bill” again. ”Tommy” cut the Gordian Knot himself by following us down to the boat like a dog and leaping aboard. He was horribly upset for a while when he saw the bank slide away from him and felt the motion of the boat, but Roos, m.u.f.fling the dismal yowls under his coat, kept him fairly quiet until ”Wild Bill's” landing was reached.
Here he became his old self again, following us with his quick little canine trot up to the cabin. Outside the door he met his twin brother, and the two, after a swift sniff of identification, slipped away across the clearing to stalk rabbits.
”Wild Bill,” as Andy had antic.i.p.ated, was still in bed, but got up and welcomed us warmly as soon as he found who it was. He was a small man--much to my surprise, and looked more like a French-Canadian gentleman in reduced circ.u.mstances than the most tumultuous booze-fighter on the upper Columbia. I had heard scores of stories of his escapades in the days when Golden and Revelstoke were wide-open frontier towns and life was really worth living. But most of them just miss being ”drawing-room,” however, and I refrain from setting them down. There was one comparatively polite one, though, of the time he started the biggest free-for-all fight Revelstoke ever knew by using the white, woolly, cheek-cuddling poodle of a dance-hall girl to wipe the mud off his boots with. And another--but no, that one wouldn't quite pa.s.s censor.
”Bill” had shot a number of bear in the spring, and now asked Andy to take the unusually fine skins to Revelstoke and sell them for him. He also asked if we could let him have any spare provisions, as he was running very short. He was jubilant when I told him he could take everything we had left for what it had cost in Golden. That was like finding money, he said, for packing in his stuff cost him close to ten cents a pound. But it wasn't the few dollars he saved on the grub that etched a silver--nay, a roseate--lining on the sodden rain clouds for ”Wild Bill” that day; rather it was the sequel to the consequences of a kindly thought I had when he came down to the boat to see us off.