Part 13 (1/2)

Where Ike displayed the concentration of a true artist was in the skiff-lifting shot. Just as the green bow of _Imshallah_ came over the side, a boy who had been stacking cordwood, in rus.h.i.+ng forward to clear the fouled painter, stepped on an unsecured log and went through into the river. By this time, of course, I knew better than to spoil a shot by suspending or changing action in the middle of it, but that Ike should be thus esoterically sapient was rather too much to expect. Yet the sequel proved how much more consummate an artist of the two of us that untutored (even by Roos) old river rat was. When we had finished ”Yo-heave-ho-ing” as the skiff settled into place, I (dropping my histrionics like a wet bathing suit) shouted to Ike to come and help me fish that kid out. ”What kid?” he drawled in a sort of languid surprise.

Then, after a kind of dazed once-over of the raft, fore-and-aft: ”By cripes, the kid _is_ gone!” Now has that ever been beaten for artistic concentration?

The lad, after b.u.mping down along the bottom to the lower end of the raft, had come to the surface no whit the worse for his ducking. He was clambering up over the logs like a wet cat before either Ike or I, teetering across the crooked, wobbly cordwood, had stumbled half the distance to the ”stern.” ”It must be a right sma't betta goin' daun unda than up heah,” was Ike's only comment.

The motor-boat which Ike had engaged to tow the raft was already on hand. It had been built by a Spokane mining magnate for use at his summer home on Lake Coeur d'Alene, and was one of the prettiest little craft of the kind I ever saw. With its lines streaming gracefully back from its sharp, beautifully-flared bow, it showed speed from every angle. Hardwood and bra.s.s were in bad shape, but the engines were resplendent; and the engines were the finest thing about it. They had been built to drive it twenty-five miles an hour when she was new, the chap running it said, and were probably good for all of twenty-two yet when he opened up. Except that its hull wasn't rugged enough to stand the banging, it was an ideal river boat, though not necessarily for towing rafts. However, it was mighty handy even at that ignominious work.

I couldn't quite make up my mind about the engineer of the motor boat--not until he settled down to work, that is. His eye was quite satisfactory, but his habit of hesitating before answering a question, and then usually saying ”I dunno,” conveyed rather the impression of torpid mentality if not actual dulness. Nothing could have been further from the truth, as I realized instantly the moment he started swinging the raft into the current. He merely said ”I dunno” because he really didn't know, where an ordinary man would have felt impelled to make half an answer, or at least to say something about the weather or the stage of the river. Earl (I never learned his last name) was sparing with his tongue because he was unsparing with his brain. His mind was always ready to act--and to react. There were to arise several situations well calculated to test the mettle of him, and he was always ”there.” I have never known so thoroughly useful and dependable a man for working a launch in swift water.

While Ike was completing his final ”snugging down” operations, I chanced to observe a long steel-blue and slightly reddish-tinged body working up the bottom toward the stern of the raft. It looked like a salmon, except that it was larger than any member of that family I had ever seen. A blunt-pointed pike-pole is about the last thing one would use for a fish-spear, but, with nothing better ready to hand, I tried it. My first thrust was a bad miss, but, rather strangely, I thought--failed to deflect the loggily nosing monster more than a foot or two from his course. The next thrust went home, but where I was half expecting to have the pole torn from my hands by a wild rush, there was only a sluggish, unresentful sort of a wriggle. As there was no hook or barb to the pike, the best I could do was to worry my prize along the bottom to the bank, where a couple of Indians lifted it out for me. It was a salmon after all--a vicious looking ”dog,” with a wicked mouthful of curving teeth--but of extraordinary size. It must have weighed between fifty and sixty pounds, for the pike-pole all but snapped when I tried to lift the monster with it. Indeed, its great bulk was undoubtedly responsible for the fact that it was already half-dead from battering on the rocks before I speared it. As the flesh was too soft even for the Indians, I gave it to a German farmer from a nearby clearing to feed to his hogs. Or rather, I traded it. The German had a dog which, for the sake of ”human interest,” Roos very much wanted to borrow. (Why, seeing it was a dog, he should not have called it ”canine interest,” I never quite understood; but it was the ”heart touch” he wanted, at any rate).

So Ike proposed to the ”Dutchman” that we give him fifty pounds of dead ”dog” for half that weight of live dog, the latter to be returned when we were through with him. That was Ike's _proposition_. As soon as we were under way, however, he confided to me that he never was going to give that good collie back to a Dutchman. A people that had done what the ”Dutchmen” did to Belgium had no right to have a collie anyhow. If they must have dogs, let them keep dachshunds--or pigs. And he forthwith began to alienate that particular collie's affection by feeding him milk chocolate. Poor old Ike! Being only a fresh-water sailor, I fear he did not have a wife in every port, so that there was an empty place in his heart that craved affection.

We cast off at ten o'clock, Earl swung the raft's head out by a steady pull with the launch, and the current completed the operation of turning. Once in mid-stream she made good time, the motor-boat maintaining just enough of a tug to keep the towing-line taut and give her a mile an hour or so of way over the current. That gave Earl a margin to work with, and, pulling sharply now to one side, now to the other, he kept the great pile of logs headed where the current was swiftest and the channel clearest. It was all in using his power at the right time and in the right way. A hundred-ton tugboat would have been helpless in stopping the raft once it started to go in the wrong direction. The trick was to start it right and not let it go wrong, Ike explained--just like raising pups or kids. It was certainly no job for a novice, and I found constant rea.s.surance in the consummate ”raftsmans.h.i.+p” our taciturn engineer was displaying.

The hills on both sides of the river grew loftier and more rugged as we ran to the south, and the trees became patchier and scrubbier. The bunch gra.s.s on the diminis.h.i.+ng benches at the bends was withered and brown. It was evident from every sign that we were nearing the arid belt of eastern Was.h.i.+ngton, the great semi-desert plateau that is looped in the bend of the Columbia between the mouth of the Spokane and the mouth of the Snake. The towering split crest of Mitre Rock marked the approach to the slack stretch of water backed up by the boulder barrage over which tumbles Spokane Rapids. The run through the latter was to be our real baptism; a short rapid pa.s.sed a few miles above proving only rough enough to set the raft rolling in fluent undulations and throw a few light gobs of spray over her ”bows.” We were now going up against something pretty closely approximating the real thing. It wasn't h.e.l.l Gate or Box Canyon by a long way, Ike said, but at the same time it wasn't any place to risk any slip-up.

Save for two or three of the major riffles on the Big Bend of Canada, Spokane Rapids has a stretch of water that must go down hill just about as fast as any on all the Columbia. The channel--although running between boulders--was narrow in the first place, and the deepest part of it was still further restricted by an attempt to clear a way through for steamer navigation in the years when a through service up and down the Columbia was still dreamed of. The channel was deepened considerably, but the effect of this was to divert a still greater flow into it and form a sort of a chute down which the water rushed as through a flume.

Being straight, this channel is not very risky to run, even with a small boat--provided one keeps to it. A wild tumble of rollers just to the left of the head must be avoided, however, even by a raft. That was why we had the motor-boat--to be sure of ”hitting the intake right,” as Ike put it. And the motor-boat ought to be able to handle the job without help. He had been working hard ever since we started on a gigantic stern-sweep, but that was for h.e.l.l Gate and Box Canyon. Here, with her nose once in right, she should do it on her own.

Mooring the raft against the right bank in the quiet water a couple of hundred yards above the ”intake,” Earl ran us down to the mouth of the Spokane River in the launch. We were purchasing gasoline and provisions in the little village of Lincoln, just below the Spokane, and Ike thought that the lower end of the rapid would be the best place for Roos to set up to command the raft coming through. It was indeed terrifically fast water, but--because the launch had the power to pick the very best of the channel--the run down just missed the thrill that would have accompanied it had it been up to one's oars to keep his boat out of trouble. Earl shut off almost completely as he slipped into the ”V,”

keeping a bare steerage-way over the current. Twenty miles an hour was quite fast enough to be going in the event she _did_ swerve from the channel and hit a rock; there was no point in adding to the potential force of the impact with the engine. As there was a heavy wash from the rapids in even the quietest eddy he could find opposite the town, Earl stayed with the launch, keeping her off the rocks with a pole while Ike, Roos and myself went foraging. Ike spilled gasoline over his back in packing a leaking can down over the boulders, causing burns from which he suffered considerable pain and annoyance when he came to man the sweep the following day.

After dropping Roos on the right bank to set up for the picture, Earl drove the launch back up the rapid to the raft. I hardly know which was the more impressive, the power of the wildly racing rapid or the power of the engine of the launch. It was a ding-dong fight all the way.

Although he nosed at times to within a few inches of the overhanging rocks of the bank in seeking the quietest water, the launch was brought repeatedly to a standstill. There she would hang quivering, until the accelerating engine would impart just the few added revolutions to the propellers that would give her the upper hand again. The final struggle at the ”intake” was the bitterest of all, and Earl only won out there by sheering to the right across the ”V”--at imminent risk of being swung round, it seemed to me--and reaching less impetuous water.

Throwing off her mooring lines, Earl towed the raft out into the sluggish current. There was plenty of time and plenty of room to manoeuvre her into the proper position. All he had to do was to bring her into the ”intake” well clear of the rocks and rollers to the left, and then keep towing hard enough to hold her head down-stream. It was a simple operation--compared, for instance, with what he would have on the morrow at h.e.l.l Gate--but still one that had to be carried out just so if an awful mess-up was to be avoided. Novice as I was with that sort of a raft, I could readily see what would happen if she once got to swinging and turned broadside to the rapid.

That was about the first major rapid I ever recall running when I didn't have something to do, and it was rather a relief to be able to watch the wheels go round and feel that there was nothing to stand-by for. Even Ike, with no sweep to swing, was foot-loose, or rather hand-free.

Knowing Earl's complete capability, he prepared to cast aside navigational worries for the nonce. He had picked up his axe and was about to turn to hewing at the blade of his big steering-oar, when I reminded him that he was still an actor and that he had been ordered to run up and down the raft and register ”great anxiety” while within range of the camera.

Perhaps the outstanding sensation of that wild run was the feeling of surprise that swept over me at the almost uncanny speed with which that huge unwieldy ma.s.s of half submerged wood gathered way. In still water it would have taken a powerful tug many minutes to start it moving; here it picked up and leapt ahead like a motor-boat. One moment it was drifting along at three miles an hour; five seconds later, having slid over the ”intake,” it was doing more than twenty. The actual slope of that first short pitch must have been all of one-in-ten, so that I found myself bracing against the incline of the raft, as when standing in a wagon that starts over the brow of a hill. Then the pitch eased and she hit the rollers, grinding right through them like a floating Juggernaut.

The very worst of them--haughty-headed combers that would have sent the skiff sky-rocketing--simply dissolved against the logs and died in hissing anguish in the tangle of cordwood. The motion had nothing of the jerkiness of even so large a craft as the launch, and one noticed it less under his feet than when he looked back and saw the wallowing undulations of the ”deck.”

But best of all was the contemptuous might with which the raft stamped out, obliterated, abolished the accursed whirlpools. Spokane was not deep and steep-sided enough to be a dangerous whirlpool rapid, like the Dalles or h.e.l.l Gate, but there were still a lot of mighty mean-mouthed ”suckers” lying in ambush where the rollers began to flatten. There was no question of their arrogance and courage. The raft might have been the dainty _Imshallah_, with her annoying feminine weakness for clinging embraces, for all the hesitancy they displayed in attacking it. But, oh, what a difference! Where the susceptible _Imshallah_ had edged off in coy dalliance and ended by all but surrendering, the raft simply thundered ahead. The siren ”whouf!” of the lurking brigand was forced back down its black throat as it was literally effaced, smeared from the face of the water. Gad, how I loved to see them die, after all _Imshallah_ and I had had to endure at their foul hands! _Imshallah_, perched safely aloft on a stack of cordwood, took it all with the rather languid interest one would expect from a lady of her quality; but I--well, I fear very much that I was leaning out over the ”bows,” at an angle not wholly safe under the circ.u.mstances, and registering ”ghoulish glee” at the exact point where Roos had told me three times that I must be running up and down in the wake of Ike and registering ”great anxiety.”

As there was no stopping the raft within a mile or two of the foot of the rapid, it had been arranged that we should launch the skiff as soon as we were through the worst water, and pull in to the first favourable eddy to await Roos and his camera. It was Ike bellowing to me to come and lend him a hand with the skiff that compelled me to relinquish my position at the ”bow,” where, ”thumbs down” at every clash, I had been egging on the raft to slaughter whirlpools. The current was still very swift, so that Ike was carried down a considerable distance before making a landing. As it was slow going for Roos, laden with camera and tripod, over the boulders, ten or fifteen minutes elapsed before they pushed off in pursuit of the raft. The latter, in the meantime, had run a couple of miles farther down river before Earl found a stretch sufficiently quiet to swing her round and check her way by towing up against the current.

In running down to this point the raft had splashed through a slas.h.i.+ng bit of riffle, which I afterwards learned was called Middle Rapid locally. There was a short stretch of good rough white water. Offhand, it looked to me rather sloppier than anything we had put the skiff into so far; but, as it appeared there would be no difficulty in steering a course in fairly smooth water to the left of the rollers, I was not greatly concerned over it. Presently Ike came pulling round the bend at a great rate, and the next thing I knew _Imshallah_ was floundering right down the middle of the frosty-headed combers. Twice or thrice I saw the ”V” of her bow shoot skyward, silhouetting like a black wedge against a fan of sun-shot spray. Then she began riding more evenly, and shortly was in smoother water. It was distinctly the kind of thing she did best, and she had come through with flying colours. Roos was grinning when he climbed aboard, but still showed a tinge of green about the gills. ”Why didn't you head her into that smooth stretch on the left?” I asked. ”_You_ had the steering paddle.” ”I tried to hard enough,” he replied, still grinning, ”but Ike wouldn't have it. Said he kinda suspected she'd go through that white stuff all right, and wanted to see if his suspicions were correct.” And that was old Ike Emerson to a ”T.”

We wallowed on through French Rapids and Hawk Creek Rapids in the next hour, and past the little village of Peach, nestling on a broad bench in the autumnal red and gold of its cl.u.s.tering orchards. Ike, pacing the ”bridge” with me, said that they used to make prime peach brandy at Peach, and reckoned that p'raps.... ”No,” I cut in decisively; ”_I_ have no desire to return to Kettle Falls.” I had jumped at the chance to draw Ike on that remarkable up-river journey of his after the disaster in h.e.l.l Gate, but he sheered off at once. I have grave doubts as to whether that strange phenomenon ever will be explained.

We were now threading a great canyon, the rocky walls of which reared higher and higher in fantastic pinnacles, spires and weird castellations the deeper we penetrated its glooming depths. There had been painters at work, too, and with colourings brighter and more varied than any I had believed to exist outside of the canyons of the Colorado and the Yellowstone. Saffron melting to fawn and dun was there, and vivid streaks that were almost scarlet where fractures were fresh, but had changed to maroon and terra cotta under the action of the weather. A fluted cliff-face, touched by the air-brush of the declining sun, flushed a pink so delicate that one seemed to be looking at it through a rosy mist. There were intenser blocks and ma.s.ses of colours showing in vivid lumps on a b.u.t.tressed cliff ahead, but they were quenched before we reached them in a flood of indigo and mauve shadows that drenched the chasm as the sun dropped out of sight. From the heights it must have been a brilliant sunset, flaming with intense reds and yellows as desert sunsets always are; but looking out through the purple mists of the great gorge there was only a flutter of bright pennons--crimson, gold, polished bronze and dusky olive green--streaming across an ever widening and narrowing notch of jagged rock, black and opaque like splintered ebony. For a quarter of an hour we seemed to be steering for those s.h.i.+mmering pennons as for a harbor beacon; then a sudden up-thrust of black wall cut them off like a sliding door. By the time we were headed west again the dark pall of fallen night had smothered all life out of the flame-drenched sky, leaving it a pure transparent black, p.r.i.c.ked with the twinkle of kindling stars. Only by the absence of stars below could one trace the blank opacity of the blacker black of the towering cliffs.

No one had said anything to me about an all-day-and-all-night schedule for the raft, and, as a matter of fact, running in the night had not entered into the original itinerary at all. The reason we were b.u.mping along in the dark now was that Ike, who had no more idea of time than an Oriental, had pushed off from Gerome an hour late, wasted another unnecessary hour in Lincoln yarning across the sugar barrel at the general store, and, as a consequence, had been overtaken by night ten miles above the point he wanted to make. As there was no fast water intervening, and as Earl had shown no signs of dissent, Ike had simply gone right on ahead regardless. When I asked him if it wasn't a bit risky, he said he thought not very; adding comfortingly that he had floated down on rafts a lot of times before, and hadn't ”allus b.u.mped.”

If he could see to tighten up stringer pegs, he reckoned Earl ought to be able to see rocks, ”'cose rocks was a sight bigger'n pegs.”

It was not long after Ike had nullified the effect of his rea.s.suring philosophy by smearing the end of his thumb with a mallet that Earl's night-owl eyes played him false to the extent of overlooking a rock. It may well have been a very small rock, and it was doubtless submerged a foot or more; so there was no use expecting a man to see the ripple above it when there wasn't light enough to indicate the pa.s.sage of his hand before his eyes. It was no fault of Earl's at all, and even the optimistic Ike had claimed no more than that he hadn't ”allus b.u.mped.”

Nor was it a very serious matter at the worst. The raft merely hesitated a few seconds, swung part way round, slipped free again and, her head brought back at the pull of the launch, resumed her way. The jar of striking was not enough to throw a well-braced man off his feet. (The only reason Roos fell and pulped his ear was because he had failed to set himself at the right angle when the shock came.) The worst thing that happened was the loss of a dozen or so cords of wood which, being unsecurely stacked, toppled over when she struck. Luckily, the boat was parked on the opposite side, as was also Roos. It would have been hard to pick up either before morning, and Roos would hardly have lasted. The wood was a total loss to Ike, of course; but he was less concerned about that than he was over the fact that it reduced her ”freeboard” on that quarter by three feet, so that she wouldn't make so much of a ”showin'

in the picters.” He _did_ raise a howl the next morning, though. That was when he found that his old denim jacket had gone over with the cordwood. It wasn't the ”wamus” itself he minded so much, he said, but the fact that in one of that garment's pockets had been stored the milk chocolate which he was using to alienate the affections of the Dutchman's collie. ”It's all in gettin' a jump on a pup's feelin's at the fust offsta't,” he philosophied bitterly; ”an' naow I'll be losin'

mah jump.” Rather keen on the psychology of alienation, that observation of old Ike, it struck me.