"CALAMITY JANE"
Thrilled with the delights of swift-water boating as they had been vouchsafed to me in running theMulethrough "Yankee Jim's Canyon," I hastened to make arrangements to continue my voyage immediately upon arriving in Livingston. A carpenter called Sydney Lamartine agreed to build me a skiff and have it ready at the end of three days. Hour by hour I watched my argosy grow, and then—on the night before it was ready to launch—came "Calamity."
In every man's life there is one event that transcends all others in the bigness with which it bulks in his memory. This is not necessarily the biggest thing that has really happened to him. Usually, indeed, it is not. It is simply the thing that impresses most deeply the person he happens to be at the time. The thunderbolt of a living, breathing "Calamity Jane" striking at my feet from a clear sky is my biggest thing. One does his little curtsey to a lot of queens, real and figurative, in the course of twenty years' wandering, but not the most regal of them hasstirred my pulse like the "Queen of the Plains." Queens of Dance, Queens of Song, and Queens of real kingdoms, cannibalistic and otherwise, there have been, but only one "Queen of the Rockies." And this was not because "Calamity Jane" was either young, or beautiful or good. (There may have been a time when she was young, and possibly even good, but beautiful—never.) So far as my own heart-storm was concerned, it was because she had been the heroine of that saffron-hued thriller called "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone," the which I had devoured in the hay-mow in my adolescence. The fragrance of dried alfalfa brings the vision of "Calamity Jane" before my eyes even to this day. She is the only flesh-and-blood heroine to come into my life.
My initial meeting with "Calamity" was characteristic. It was a bit after midnight. On my way home to the old Albemarle to bed I became aware of what I thought was a spurred andchap-edcowboy in the act of embracing a lamp-post. A gruff voice hailed me as I came barging by. "Short Pants!" it called; "oh, Short Pants—can't you tell a lady where she lives?"
"Show me where the lady is and I'll try," I replied, edging cautiously in toward the circle of golden glow.
"She's me, Short Pants—Martha Cannary—Martha Burk, better known as 'Calamity Jane.'"
"Ah!" I breathed, and again "Ah!" Then: "Sure, I'll tell you where you live; only you'll have to tell me first." And thus was ushered in the greatest moment of my life.
"Calamity," it appeared, had arrived from Bozeman that afternoon, taken a room over a saloon, gone out for a convivial evening and forgotten where she lived. She was only sure that the bar-keeper of the saloon was named Patsy, and that there was an outside stairway up to the second story. It was a long and devious search, not so much because there was any great number of saloons with outside stairways and mixologists called Patsy, as because every man in every saloon to which we went to inquire greeted "Calamity" as a long-lost mother and insisted on shouting the house. Then, to the last man, they attached themselves to the search-party. When we did locate the proper place, it was only to find that "Calamity" had lost her room-key. After a not-too-well-ordered consultation, we passed her unprotesting anatomy in through a window by means of a fire-ladder and reckoned our mission finished. That was the proudest night on which I am able to look back.
When, agog with delicious excitement, I went toask after Mrs. Burk's health the following morning. I found her smoking a cigar and cooking breakfast. She insisted on my sharing both, but I compromised on the ham and eggs. She had no recollection whatever of our meeting of the previous evening, yet greeted me as "Short Pants" as readily as ever. This name, later contracted to "Pants," was suggested by my omnipresent checkered knickers, the only nether garment I possessed at the time.
Calamity Jane
"CALAMITY JANE" IN 1885
Calamity Jane Smoking
I FOUND "CALAMITY" SMOKING A CIGAR AND COOKING BREAKFAST
The "once-and-never-again 'Calamity Jane,'" was about fifty-five years of age at this time, and looked it, or did not look it, according to where one looked. Her deeply-lined, scowling, sun-tanned face and the mouth with its missing teeth might have belonged to a hag of seventy. The rest of her-well, seeing those leather-clad legs swing by on the other side of a signboard that obscured the wrinkled phiz, one might well have thought they belonged to a thirty-year-old cow-puncher just coming into town for his night to howl. And younger even than her legs was "Calamity's" heart. Apropos of which I recall confiding to Patsy, the bar-keep, that she had the heart of a young god Pan. "Maybe so," grunted Patsy doubtfully (not having had a classical education he couldn't be quite sure, of course); "in any case she's got the voice of an old tin pan." Which was neither gallant nor quite fair to "Calamity." Her voicewasa bit cracked, but notso badly as Patsy had tried to make out. Another thing: that black scowl between her brows belied the dear old girl. There was really nothing saturnine about her. Hers was the sunniest of souls, and the most generous. She was poor all her life from giving away things, and I have heard that her last illness was contracted in nursing some poor sot she found in a gutter.
Naturally, of course, after a decent interval, I blurted out to "Calamity" that I had come to hear the story of her wonderful life. Right gamely did the old girl come through. "Sure, Pants," she replied. "Just run down and rush a can of suds, and I'll rattle off the whole layout for you. I'll meet you down there in the sunshine by those empty beer barrels."
It was May, the month of the brewing of the fragrant dark-brownBock. Returning with a gallon tin pail awash to the gunnels, I found "Calamity" enthroned on an up-ended barrel, with her feet comfortably braced against the side of one of its prostrate brothers. Depositing the nectar on a third barrel at her side, I sank to my ease upon a soft patch of lush spring grass and budding dandelions. "Calamity" blew a mouth-hole in the foam, quaffed deeply of theBock; wiped her lips with a sleeve, and began without further preliminary:
"My maiden name was Martha Cannary. Was born in Princeton, Missouri, May first, 1848." Then, in a sort of parenthesis: "This must be about my birthday, Pants. Drink to the health of the Queen of May, kid." I stopped chewing dandelion, lifted the suds-crowned bucket toward her, muttered "Many happy Maytimes, Queen," and drank deep. Immediately she resumed with "My maiden name was Martha Cannary, etc."... "As a child I always had a fondness for adventure and especial fondness for horses, which I began to ride at an early age and continued to do so until I became an expert rider, being able to ride the most vicious and stubborn horses.
"In 1865 we emigrated from our home in Missouri by the overland route to Virginia City, Montana. While on the way the greater part of my time was spent in hunting along with the men; in fact I was at all times with the men when there was excitement and adventure to be had. We had many exciting times fording streams, for many of the streams on the way were noted for quicksand and boggy places. On occasions of that kind the men would usually select the best way to cross the streams, myself on more than one occasion having mounted my pony and swam across the stream several times merely to amuse myself and had many narrow escapes; but as pioneers of those days had plenty of courage we overcameall obstacles and reached Virginia City in safety.
"Mother died at Blackfoot in 1866, where we buried her. My father died in Utah in 1867, after which I went to Fort Bridger. Remained around Fort Bridger during 1868, then went to Piedmont, Wyoming, with U. P. railway. Joined General Custer as a scout at Fort Russell, Wyoming, in 1870. Up to this time I had always worn the costume of my sex. When I joined Custer I donned the uniform of a soldier. It was a bit awkward at first but I soon got to be perfectly at home in men's clothes.
"I was a scout in the Nez Percé outbreak in 1872. In that war Generals Custer, Miles, Terry and Cook were all engaged. It was in this campaign I was christened 'Calamity Jane.' It was on Goose Creek, Wyoming, where the town of Sheridan is now located. Captain Egan was in command of the post. We were ordered out to quell an uprising of Indians, and were out several days, had numerous skirmishes during which six of the soldiers were killed and several severely wounded. On returning to the post we were ambushed about a mile from our destination. When fired upon Captain Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his sideand got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the fort. Captain Egan on recovering laughingly said: 'I name you "Calamity Jane," the Heroine of the Plains.' I have borne that name up to the present time."
Here, little dreaming what the consequence would be, I interrupted, and for this reason: I had felt that "Calamity" had been doing herself scant justice all along, but in the "christening" incident her matter-of-fact recital was so much at variance with the facts as set down in "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone" that I had to protest. "Excuse me, Mrs. Burk," I said, "but wasn't that officer's name Major Percy Darkleigh instead of Egan? And didn't you cry 'For life and love!' when you caught his reeling form? And didn't you shake your trusty repeater and shout 'To hell with the redskins!' as you turned and headed for the fort? And didn't you ride with your reins in your teeth, the Major under your left arm and your six-shooter in your right hand? And when you had laid the Major safely down inside the Fort, didn't he breathe softly, 'I thank thee Jane from the bottom of a grateful heart. No arm but thine shall ever encircle my waist, for while I honour my wife—'"
Here "Calamity" cut in, swearing hard and pointedly,so hard and pointedly, in fact, that her remarks may not be quoted verbatim here. The gist of them was that "The Beautiful White Devil of the Yellowstone" was highly coloured, was a pack of blankety-blank lies, in fact, and of no value whatever as history. I realize now that she was right, of course, but that didn't soften the blow at the time.
Trying to resume her story, "Calamity," after groping about falteringly for the thread, had to back up again and start with "My maiden name was Martha Cannary." She was in a Black Hills campaign against the Sioux in 1875, and in the spring of '76 was ordered north with General Crook to join Generals Miles, Terry and Custer at the Big Horn. A ninety-mile ride with dispatches after swimming the Platte brought on a severe illness, and she was sent back in General Crook's ambulance to Fort Fetterman. This probably saved her from being present at the massacre of the Little Big Horn with Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
"During the rest of the summer of '76 I was a pony express rider, carrying the U. S. mails between Deadwood and Custer, fifty miles over some of the roughest trails in the Black Hills. As many of the riders before me had been held up and robbed of their packages, it was considered the most dangerous route in the Hills. As my reputation as a rider and quick shotwere well known I was molested very little, for the toll-gatherers looked on me as being a good fellow and they knew I never missed my mark.
"My friend William Hickock, better known as 'Wild Bill,' who was probably the best revolver shot that ever lived, was in Deadwood that summer. On the second of August, while setting at a gambling table of the Bella Union Saloon, he was shot in the back of the head by the notorious Jack McCall, a desperado. I was in Deadwood at the time and on hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting and found that my best friend had been killed by McCall. I at once started to look for the assassin and found him at Shurdy's butcher shop and grabbed a meat cleaver and made him throw up his hands, through excitement on hearing Bill's death having left my weapons on the post of my bed. He was then taken to a log cabin and locked up, but he got away and was afterwards caught at Fagan's ranch on Horse Creek. He was taken to Yankton, tried and hung."
Here, forgetting myself, I interrupted again in an endeavour to reconcile the facts of "Wild Bill's" death as just detailed with the version of that tragic event as depicted in "Jane of the Plain." "Calamity's" language was again unfit to print. "Wild Bill" hadnotexpired with his head on her shoulder, mutteringbrokenly "My heart was yours from the first, oh my love!" Nor had she snipped off a lock of Bill's yellow hair and sworn to bathe it in the heart-blood of his slayer. All blankety-blank lies, just like the "White Devil." Then, as before, in order to get going properly, she had to back up and start all over with: "My maiden name was Martha Cannary." This time I kept chewing dandelions and let her run on to the finish, thereby learning the secret of her somewhat remarkable style of delivery. This is the way the story of her life concluded:
"We arrived in Deadwood on October 9th, 1895. My return after an absence of so many years to the scene of my most noted exploits, created quite an excitement among my many friends of the past, to such an extent that a vast number of citizens who had heard so much of 'Calamity Jane' and her many adventures were anxious to see me. Among the many whom I met were several gentlemen from eastern cities, who advised me to allow myself to be placed before the public in such a manner as to give the people of the eastern cities the opportunity of seeing the lady scout who was made so famous during her daring career in the West and Black Hills countries. An agent of Kohl and Middleton, the celebrated museum men, came to Deadwood through the solicitation of these gentlemen, and arrangements were made toplace me before the public in this manner. My first engagement to begin at the Palace Museum, Minneapolis, January 20th, 1896, under this management.
Hoping that this history of my life may interest all readers, I remain, as in the older days,
"Yours,"Mrs. M. Burk,"Better known as 'Calamity Jane.'"
"Calamity" had been delivering to me her museum tour lecture, the which had also been printed in a little pink-covered leaflet to sell at the door. That was why, like a big locomotive on a slippery track, she had had to back up to get going again every time she was stopped. Oh, well, the golden dust from the butterfly wing of Romance has to be brushed off sometime; only it was rather hard luck to have it get such a devastating side-swipe all at once. That afternoon for the first time I began to discern that there was a more or less opaque webbing underlying the rainbow-bright iridescence of sparkling dust.
With "Calamity Jane," the heroine, evanishing like the blown foam of her lovedBock, there still remained Martha Burk, the human document, the living page of thirty years of the most vivid epoch of Northwestern history. Compared to what I had hoped from my historic researches in the pages of "The BeautifulWhite Devil of the Yellowstone," this was of comparatively academic though none the less real interest. Reclining among the dandelions the while "Calamity" oiled the hinges of her memory with beer, I conned through and between the lines of that record for perhaps a week. Patiently diverting her from her lecture platform delivery, I gradually drew from the strange old character much of intimate and colourful interest. Circulating for three decades through the upper Missouri and Yellowstone valleys and gravitating like steel to the magnet wherever action was liveliest and trouble the thickest, she had known at close range all of the most famous frontier characters of her day. Naturally, therefore, her unrestrained talk was of Indians and Indian fighters, road-agents, desperadoes, gamblers and bad men generally—from "Wild Bill" Hickock and "Buffalo Bill" Cody to Miles and Terry and Custer, to "Crazy Horse," "Rain-in-the-Face," Gall and "Sitting Bull." She told me a good deal of all of them, not a little, indeed, which seemed to throw doubt on a number of popularly accepted versions of various more or less historical events. I made notes of all of her stories on the spot, and at some future time of comparative leisure, when there is a chance to cross-check sufficiently with fully established facts from other sources, I should like to make some record ofthem. These pages are not, of course, the place for controversial matter of that kind.
One morning I kept tryst among the dandelions in vain. Inquiry at the saloon revealed the fact that "Calamity," dressed in her buckskins, had called for her stabled horse at daybreak and ridden off in the direction of Big Timber. She would not pay for her room until she turned up again, Patsy said. It was a perfectly good account, though; she never failed to settle up in the end. I never heard of her again until the papers, a year or two later, had word of her death.
With Romance and Historical Research out of the way, my mind returned to the matter of my river voyage. Giving the newly built skiff a belated trial with Sydney Lamartine, we swamped in a comparatively insignificant rapid and shared a good rolling and wetting. Agreed that the craft needed higher sides, we dragged it back to the yards for alterations. Sydney thought he might find time to complete them inside of a week. Before that week was over I had one foot in a newspaper editorial sanctum and the other on the initial sack of a semi-professional baseball team. As both footings seemed certain to develop into stepping-stones to the realization of the most cherished of my childhood's ambitions (I had never cared much about being President), theriver voyage to the Gulf went into complete discard—or rather into a twenty-year postponement.
I became an editor as a direct consequence of making good on the ball team; I ceased to be an editor as a direct consequence of betraying a sacred trust laid upon me by the ball team. This was something of the way of it: Livingston had high hopes of copping the championship of the Montana bush league, which, at the time of my arrival, was just budding into life with the willows and cottonwood along the river. For this laudable purpose a fearful and wonderful aggregation had been chivvied together from the ends of baseballdom, numbering on its roster about as many names that had once been famous in diamond history as those that were destined to become so. Of the team as finally selected three or four of us were known to the police, and at least two of us came into town on brake-beams. One of us was trying to forget the dope habit, and another—our catcher and greatest star—had just been graduated from a rum-cure institute.
All of us were guaranteed jobs—sinecural in character of course. Paddy Ryan, one of the pitchers, and two or three others were bar-keepers. There was also one night-watchman, one electrician and one compositor. I was rather a problem to the management until the editor of theEnterprisewas sent tothe same institute recently evacuated by our bibulous catcher. Then I was put in his place—I mean that of the editor. I don't seem to recall much of my editorial duties or achievements, save that one important reform I endeavoured to institute—that of getting a roll of pink paper and publishing theEnterpriseas a straight sporting sheet—somehow fell through.
They tried me out at centre in the opening game against Billings, and after the second—at Bozeban—I became a permanency at first-base, my old corner at Stanford. Besides holding down the initial bag, I was told off for the unofficial duty of guarding the only partially rum-cured catcher—seeing that he was kept from even inhaling the fumes of the seductive red-eye, a single séance with which meant his inevitable downfall for the season.
I played fairly promising ball right along through that season, and but for the final disaster which overtook me in my unofficial capacity as Riley's keeper might have gone on to the fulfillment of my life ambition. Up to the final and deciding series with Butte I kept my thirsty ward under an unrelaxing rein, with the result that he played the greatest baseball of his career. Then a gang of Copper City sports, who had been betting heavily on the series, contrived to lure Riley away for a quarter of an hour while I was taking a bath. He was in the clouds bythe time I located him, and rapidly going out of control into a spinning nose-dive. He crashed soon after, and when I left him just as the dawn was breaking through the red smoke above the copper smelters he was as busy chasing mauve mice and purple cockroaches as the substitute we put in his place that afternoon was with passed balls. To cap the climax—in endeavouring to extend a bunt into a two-bagger, or some equally futile stunt—I strained an old "Charley Horse" and went out of the game in the second inning. We lost the game, series and championship, and I, incidentally, ceased to be a rising semi-pro ball player and a somewhat less rising country editor.
I have failed to mention that I did have one more fling at the Yellowstone that summer. Lamartine remodelled his skiff as we had planned, and one Sunday when Livingston had a game on at Big Timber we decided to make the run down by river. Pushing off at daybreak we arrived under the big bluff of Big Timber a good hour or two before noon. I find this run thus celebrated in an ancient clipping from the LivingstonPost, contemporary of theEnterprise.
"Mr. L. R. Freeman, Mr. Armstrong and Sydney Lamartine made the trip from this city to Big Timber last Sunday in a flat-bottomed boat. The river course between this city and Big Timber is fully 50miles, and the gentlemen made the trip without mishap in six hours. Several times the boat had narrow escapes from being turned over, but each time the skill of the boatmen prevented any trouble. Quite a crowd assembled on the Springdale bridge and watched the crew shoot the little craft through the boiling riffle at that point, cheering them lustily for the skill they displayed in swinging their boat into the most advantageous places. The trip is a hazardous one, but full of keen enjoyment and spice and zest. The time made is without doubt the fastest river boating ever done on the Yellowstone, and it is extremely doubtful if the record has been duplicated on any other stream. Mr. Freeman, who has had considerable experience in boating in Alaska, says that he never has seen a small boat make such splendid time."
I don't remember a lot about that undeniably speedy run save that we stopped for nothing but dumping water out of the boat. Last summer, with a number of seasons of swift-water experience to help, I took rather more than nine hours to cover the same stretch. I suppose it was because the river and I were twenty years older. Age is a great slower down, at least where a man is concerned. I do seem to recall now that I stopped a number of times on this last run to see which was the smoother channel. Doubtless the old Yellowstone was just as fast as ever.
DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE
PRESENT-DAY YELLOWSTONE PARK
In embarking anew on a journey from the Continental Divide to the mouth of the Mississippi I was influenced by three considerations in deciding to start on the Yellowstone rather than on one of the three forks of the Missouri. There was the sentimental desire to see again the land of geysers and hot springs and waterfalls, no near rival of which had I ever discovered in twenty years of travel in the out-of-the-way places of the earth. Then I wanted to go all the way by the main river, and there was no question in my mind that the Yellowstone was really the main Missouri, just as the Missouri was the main Mississippi. John Neihardt has put this so well in his inimitable "River and I" that I cannot do better than quote what he has written in this connection.
"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 travellers 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 it by the Yellowstone—its turbulence, its tawniness, its feline treachery, its giant caprices."
I cannot agree with Mr. Neihardt that the Mississippi obliterates the Missouri within a few hundred yards, or even a few hundred miles; for in all but name it is the latter, not the former, that mingles its mud with the Gulf of Mexico. But in his contention that the Yellowstone is the dominant stream where it joins the Missouri he is borne out by all that I sawand the opinion of every authority I talked with, from a half-breed river-rat at Buford to the Army engineers at Kansas City.
My third reason for choosing the Yellowstone was the technical consideration of superior "boatability." The head of continuous small-boat navigation on the Yellowstone is about at the northern boundary of the Park, at an elevation of over five thousand feet. On the Missouri it is at Fort Benton, below the cataracts of Great Falls, whose elevation is less than half that of Gardiner. As the distance from these respective points to the junction of the two rivers near the Montana-North Dakota line is about the same, it is evident that the rate of fall of the Yellowstone is many times greater than that of the Upper Missouri below Benton. Indeed, the figures are, roughly, 3000 feet fall for the former and 500 for the latter. This means that the Yellowstone is much the swifter stream and, being also of considerably greater volume, is infinitely preferable to the boatman who does not mind more or less continuous white water. In addition to these points, the fact that the Yellowstone, from the Park to its mouth, flows through one of the most beautiful valleys in America while the Missouri meanders a considerable distance among the Bad Lands, makes the former route the pleasanter as well as the swifter one. These considerations,pretty well in my mind before I started, were more than borne out in every respect by my subsequent experience. There are two or three large rivers down which boats (by frequent linings and portagings) can be taken which are of greater fall than the Yellowstone, but I know of none anywhere in the world on which such fast time can be made as on the latter—this because its rapids are all runnable.
As I was not out for records of any description upon this trip, it was no part of my plan to start from the remotest source of the Yellowstone, some twenty-five miles south of the southern boundary of the Park, but rather simply to follow down from the most convenient point where the Continental Divide tilted to that river's upper water-shed. Following the river as closely as might be by foot through the Park, it was then my purpose to take train to Livingston and resume my voyage from about where it had been abandoned two decades previously. As the steel skiff I had ordered was extremely light, and of a type quite new to me, I did not care to make my trial run through "Yankee Jim's Canyon."
I entered the Park on June 21st, the second day of the season, by the West Yellowstone entrance. This route, following up the valley of the Madison, was hardly more than opened up on the occasion of my former visit. At that time the nearest railwaypoint was Monida, on the Oregon Short Line. Now I found the Union Pacific terminus chock-ablock with the boundary at West Yellowstone, and fully as many tourists coming in by this entrance as by the northern gateway at Gardiner. The eastern entrance, by Cody, was also regularly served by the transportation company, while a southerly road to the Snake was open for auto traffic. The accessibility of the Park had been increased many-fold.
Probably more than ninety-five per cent. of the tourists visiting the Yellowstone are fluttered folk and wild being rushed through on a four-day schedule. This imposes a terribly hectic program, which, however, is not the fault of the transportation or hotel people, (who offer all facilities and inducements for a calmer survey), but of the tourist himself, who seems imbued with the idea that the more he sees in the day the more he is getting for his money. The American tourist, doubtless a quite mild-demeanoured and amenable person on his native heath, when observedflagrante delictotouring is by long odds the worst-mannered of all of God's creatures. Collectively, that is; individually many of him and her turn out far from offensive. Strangely—perhaps because, for the moment, they are all more or less infected with the same form of hysteria—they never seem to get much on each other's nerves. To a wanderer,however, habituated to the kindness, consideration, dignity and respect for age commonly displayed by such peoples as the Red Indian, the South Sea Islander and the Borneo Dyak, the tourist at close range is rather trying. I proceeded with the regular convoy to Old Faithful, then took a car to the crest of the Continental Divide, and proceeded from there down the Yellowstone on foot in comparative peace and contentment.
With the large and rapidly increasing number of railway tourists coming to the Park every year, each intent upon making the round and getting away in the minimum of time, there is probably no better plan devisable than the present one of shooting them in and out, and from camp to camp, in large busses. The most annoying and unsatisfactory feature of this system is the great amount of time which the tourist must stand by waiting for his bus-seat and room to be allotted. This, however, can hardly be helped with daily shipments numbering several hundred being made from and received at each camp and hotel. Under the circumstances the most satisfactory way of touring the Park is in one's own car, stopping at either hotel or camp, according to one's taste and pocketbook. Delightful as the auto camping grounds are, tenting is hardly to be recommended on account of the mosquitoes.
Allowing for the difference in season, there was little change observable in the natural features of the Park since my former visit. Things looked different, of course, but that was only because there was less snow and more dust. The only appreciable natural changes were in the hot spring and geyser areas, where here or there a formation had augmented or crumbled to dust according to whether or not its supply of mineral-charged water had been maintained or not. The cliffs and mountains, waterfalls, and gorges could have suffered no more than the two decades, infinitesimal geologic modifications—mostly erosive. Even in the geyser basins the changes of a decade are such as few save a scientific observer would note. The first authentic written description of the Fire Hole geysers basins was penned nearly eighty years ago by Warren Angus Ferris, a clerk of the American Fur Company. It describes that region of the present as accurately as would the account of a last summer's tourist.
Not unless we are prepared to accept those delectable yarns of old Jim Bridger as the higher truth is there any evidence that the natural features of the Park have suffered material change since its discovery. But even in his own credulous time people were hardly inclined to swallow the story of that cliff of telescopic glass which tempted Jim into shootingtwenty-five-miles-distant elk under the impression that it was grazing within gunshot. Nor would those ancient sceptics believe the story of the way the hoofs of Bridger's horse were shrunk to pin-points in crossing the Alum Creek, or of how those astringent waters actually shrunk the land and reduced the distance he had to travel. Indeed, it is hard to believe these stories even today. And yet Bridger is credited with being the greatest natural topographer in frontier history—he was said to be able to draw an accurate map of the Rocky Mountains on a buffalo hide.
But if the natural changes in the Yellowstone appeared inappreciable, the artificial, the evolutionary changes were very striking. Roads and trails had been greatly improved and extended, horse-drawn vehicles had given place to motors, and the Rangers of the National Park Service had taken over policing and patrol from the Army. Most heartening of all, Administration seemed at last to have found itself. In the decade or two following the creation of the Park, there were two Superintendents, Langford and Norris, who gave the best that was in them to an all but thankless task. Greatly hampered by lack of co-operation and even by actual obstruction in Washington the achievement of neither was commensurate with his effort.
Golden Gate Canyon
J. E. Haynes, St. Paul
GOLDEN GATE CANYON AND VIADUCT
Besides Langford and Norris these earlier yearssaw two or three political appointees at the head of Park affairs, men whom no less an authority than Captain Chittenden intimates were either incompetent or corrupt. It was largely the lamentable results of the administration or these latter that was responsible for turning the Yellowstone over to the Army, just as was done in the construction of the Panama Canal. The Army, subject to the limitations of military administration for this kind of work, came through as usual with great credit to itself. A military Superintendent—Capt. George W. Goode—was in charge on the occasion of my first visit, and at that time it seemed probable that the army régime might be continued indefinitely. It was plain, however, that an officer who might be sent from the Philippines to the Yellowstone one year, and from the Yellowstone to Alaska the next, was not in a position, no matter what his ability and enthusiasm, to do full justice to the task in hand. What appeared to be needed was a civil administration, with the right sort of men, backed up with sympathy and vigour at Washington.Thatis thedesideratumwhich seems to have been arrived at, both as to men and the support at the National Capital.
If I were going to pay adequate tribute to what the National Park Service is doing and trying to do I should want the rest of this volume in which to expressmyself. So I shall only say in passing that, judging from the members of that service I have met, including the Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent of the Yellowstone, it seems to me to be developing a type that does not suffer in comparison with that fine idealist, the British Civil Servant, whom I have always admired so unreservedly where I have found him at work in India, the Federated Malay States, and other outposts of empire—an official of ability and experience giving his lifetime for the good of others for very modest pay. If I knew how to pay a higher compliment I should do so. In concluding this chapter I shall touch briefly on the future plans and policy of the National Park Service for the Yellowstone.
It was a comparatively modest affluent of Yellowstone Lake that I followed down from the two-ways-draining marsh on the Continental Divide. I did not come upon the Yellowstone proper until I reached the outlet of the Lake. It is a splendid stream even there—broad, deep, swift and crystal-clear. At a point very near where the bridge of the Cody road crosses the river is the site of the projected Yellowstone Lake Dam, a dangerous encroachment of power and irrigation interests which the energetic efforts of the National Park Service appear now to have disposed of for good.
From my previous recollection of the river from the outlet to the Upper Falls I had the impression that perhaps the first six or eight miles of this stretch, with careful lining at one or two rapids, might be run with an ordinary skiff. Finding a number of small fishing boats moored just below the outlet I endeavoured to hire one with the idea of settling this point in my mind. The boatman refused to entertain my proposition for a moment, not even when I offered to deposit the value of the skiff in question. "I don't care if you reckon you can swim out of one of them rapids," he said with finality. "My boat can't swim, and a boat earns its value three times over in a good season." He was a practical chap, that one. Why, indeed, shouldn't it worry him more to have his boat go over the Falls than it would to have me do it?
Walking down from the Lake to the Canyon I used the road only where it ran close to the river. Thus I not only came to a more intimate acquaintance with the latter, but also avoided the blended dust and gasoline wakes of the daily Hegira of yellow busses. At the first rapid—an abrupt fall of from three to six feet formed by a ledge of bedrock extending all the way across the river—I found countless millions of trout bunched where that obstacle blocked their upward movement to the Lake. I had seen salmon jumping falls on many occasions, but never beforetrout. These seemed to be getting in each other's way a good deal, but even so were clearing the barrier like a flight of so many grasshoppers. Many that got their take-off correctly gauged made a clean jump of it. Others, striking near the top of the fall, still had enough kick left in their tails to drive on up through the coiling bottle-green water. But most of those that struck below the middle of the fall were carried back and had their leap for nothing.
Emigrant Peak
By Haynes, St. Paul
EMIGRANT PEAK, YELLOWSTONE RIVER, NEAR LIVINGSTON, MONT.
Immediately under the fall the fish were so thick that thrusting one's hand into a pool near the bank was like reaching into the bumper haul of a freshly-drawn seine. Closing a fist on the slippery creatures was quite another matter, however. I was all of twenty minutes throwing half a dozen two and three-pounders out onto the bank. Stringing these on a piece of willow, I carried them up to the road and offered them as a present to the first load of campers that came along. They appeared to be from Kansas, or Missouri or thereabouts, and so had quite a discussion before accepting them—didn't seem quite agreed as to whether the fish were fresh or not. Finally I handed one of them the string and went back to the trail by the river. They were still so engrossed in their debate that it never occurred to them to say "Thank you." Ford owners are nearly always suspicious Ihave found, and notably so when they come from Pike County or environs.
There is a magnificent stretch of rapids for a quarter of a mile or more above the Upper Falls, where the river takes a running start for its two major leaps. I spent all of an hour lounging along here, speculating as to just how far a man might get in with a boat—and then get out. On a quiet, sunny day, with the mind at peace with the world, I am certain I would not venture beyond the first sharp pitch above the bridge. Fleeing from Indians, tourists or a jazz orchestra, however, I am inclined to think I would chance it for all of three hundred yards. Possibly even, in the event it were either of the two latter that menaced, I would chance the Falls themselves.
To me the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is more inspiring—in a perfectly human, friendly sort of way—than any other of the great sights of the world. There are others that are on a bigger scale and more awesome—the Grand Canyon of the Colorado or the snows of Kinchinjunga from Darjeeling, for examples,—but to the ordinary soul these are too stupendous for him to grasp, they appeal rather than thrill. There may be a few exalted, self-communing souls, like Woodrow Wilson and William Randolph Hearst, who could look the Grand Canyon of the Coloradoright between the eyes and feel quite on a par with it—nay, even a bit condescending perhaps. Lesser mortals never quite get over catching their breath at the more than earthly wonder of it. I have never seen any one save a present-day flapper gaze for the first time on the sombre depths of the great gorge of the Colorado with untroubled eyes.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is not like that—it exhilarates like a glass of old wine, a fresh sea breeze, a master-piece of painting. There are no darksome depths to awaken doubt. You can see right to the bottom of the gorge from almost any vantage point you choose. But it is the rainbow-gaiety of the brilliant colour streaking that gives the real kick.Thatgets over with all and sundry—and grows on them. The ones to whom the Canyon appeals most are those who have seen it most frequently.
Twenty years ago I attempted, in the diary of my winter ski tour, some description of the snow-choked gorge of the Yellowstone as I glimpsed it from the rim. One learns a vast quantity of various kinds of things in two decades, among them a realization of the numerous occasions on which he has been an ass. I shall try not to offend again by attempting to describe Grand Canyons.
Tower Fall
©J. E. Haynes, St. Paul
TOWER FALL AND TOWERS
I descended to the river at several points in the Canyon, but found it quite impossible to proceeddown stream any distance in the bottom of the gorge. The fall is tremendous all the way through and I doubt if there are many stretches of over a few hundred yards in length in which a boat could live. The total fall from the Lake to the foot of the Grand Canyon is something like three thousand feet, probably not far from a hundred feet to the mile. I cannot recall offhand a river of so great a volume anywhere in the world that has so considerable a fall. The Indus, in the great bend above Leh, in Ladakh, may approximate such a drop, and so may the Brahmaputra, where it cleaves the main range of the Himalayas after passing Lhassa. The Yangtse, where it comes tumbling down from the Tibetan plateau into Szechuan, is hardly more than a mountain torrent. With the possible exception of the main affluents of the Upper Amazon in the Peruvian Cordillera, these are the only great rivers in the running for a record of this kind.
In walking from the Grand Canyon to Mammoth Hot Springs I followed the road over Mount Washburn, stopping for the night at Camp Roosevelt, below Tower Falls. This most recently established of the Park camps takes its name from the fact that it is located on the spot where Roosevelt and John Burroughs made headquarters on the occasion of their winter tour of the Yellowstone a decade and a halfago. The best fishing in the Park is found in this section, and for that reason the management has developed and maintained it very largely as a sporting camp. Only those with a really genuine love of the out-of-doors stop there, while the regular ruck of the tourists pass it by. Those facts alone set it apart in a class by itself as the pleasantest spot in the Park for a prolonged sojourn.
On account of the class of people it attracts, Roosevelt has been made rather a pet of the management from its inception. This is especially true of personnel. The wholly charming couple—a Kentucky gentleman and his wife—whom I found in charge last summer presided over the camp as over a country home in the Blue Grass. The staff—all college boys and girls—was practically a complete Glee Club in itself. Good sports, too. Roosevelt was the only camp at which I did not find myself consumed with longing for the primeval solitude of the Park as I had known it on my winter tour—during the closed season for tourists.
Mammoth Hot Springs, in spite of the passing of Fort Yellowstone, I found to have augmented greatly since my former visit. Most of my old friends were gone, however, Assistant Superintendent Lindsay being the only one remaining who recalled my comingand going. In company with a couple of officers from the Post we had, I believe, enjoyed an afternoon of fearful and wonderful tennis on the still ice- and snow-covered court. Federal Judge Meldrum, terror of poachers, had been in the party twenty years ago, but said he did not remember me. I was rather glad he had had no occasion to. Had I ever been connected with the geyser that Private Ikey Einstein soaped, or with aiding and abetting Sergeant Hope to drive a flock of sheep over the bluffs into the Gardiner River, the Judge would doubtless have been able to refer to the official memoranda to jog his memory—possibly some thumb prints and a side and front view of my criminal phiz.
To my great regret I learned that F. Jay Haynes, official photographer of the Park, had died but a few months before. In his place I found Jack Haynes, his son, who is brilliantly maintaining the reputation of his illustrious father, both as an artist and as a factor in forwarding the destiny of the Yellowstone. What the intrepid Kolb Brothers are doing in photographing the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, what Byron Harmon is doing in the Canadian Rockies, that the Haynes family have done for the Yellowstone Park. I say "have done," because their work, having been carried on during nearly four decades, ismuch more nearly complete than that of the others who have worked a shorter time in a rather less concentrated sphere.
But F. Jay Haynes was far more than a great photographic artist. He was a great lover of the out-of-doors generally and of that of Yellowstone Park particularly. In his organization of the transportation companies to serve respectively the east and west entrances to the Park, it was the bringing of the latter to the people that was the main consideration in his mind; the financial success of his ventures was secondary. I believe these were successful on both counts, however. I know that Mr. Haynes is given the credit for inducing the late E. H. Harriman to build a branch of the Union Pacific to the western entrance of the Park, now the principal portal so far as number of tourists is concerned. They have recently done the memory of Mr. Haynes the honour of naming a mountain after him. This is a fitting tribute, and well deserved. Far more impressive a monument, however, are his pictures. Mount Haynes may be seen for a distance of perhaps a hundred miles; the Yellowstone photographs of F. Jay Haynes may be seen at the ends of the world.
Jack Haynes is trying to do everything his father did, both as an artist and as a friend of the Yellowstone. He was on the ground early. He claims tohave had his first ride over the Park roads some thirty years ago—in a baby carriage. Now he burns up those same roads in a Stutz roadster, taking hours to make the Grand Circuit where his father took days or weeks. A Ranger at the Canyon told me that Jack made the round so fast that he often headed back into Norris before the dust from his outward trip had settled down. I think that is somewhat exaggerated; yet Judge Meldrum, who trundled Jack on his knee, has figured that the latter's time for some of his rounds averages about twice the speed limit. The old judge swears that it is his dearest ambition to soak the boy good and plenty for his defiance of Uncle Sam's laws—when he catches him at it. So far, however, the only times that the Judge has had any really unimpeachable evidence in point was when he himself was a passenger in Jack's car! Then, he confesses, he couldn't take out his watch because he was using both hands to hold on. Nor would the watch have been of any use anyhow, he further admits, for they were going so fast that the mile-posts looked just like a white stone wall, with a very impressionistic black streak along near the top where the numbers came!
Not so far behind Jim Bridger and his telescopic glass cliff, that little touch about the mile-posts. And it proves that John Colter's dash from his Indiancaptors can't always hope to stand as a speed record. Surely it is good to know that the best of ancient Yellowstone tradition is being so well maintained.
Jack Haynes drove me down to meet Superintendent Horace M. Albright, who had only returned to Mammoth a couple of hours before I had to leave to catch my train at Gardiner. I had Mr. Albright very much in mind when I tried to pay the most fitting compliment I could to the type of men that are being drawn to the National Park Service. An ever-ready sneer from the common run of political heelers for the man in office who is trying to accomplish something for the common good in a decent and honourable manner is "impractical idealist." The words are all but inseparably linked from long usage. Indeed, it seems rarely to occur to anybody that there might be such a thing as apracticalidealist. And yet just that is what Horace M. Albright impressed me as being; and such, I would gather from all I can learn, is his Chief, Stephen T. Mather, Director of the National Park Service. No one will question that they are idealists, I daresay. That they are also practical, I doubt not that very strong affirmative admissions might be secured from a number of baffled politicians who have tried to encroach upon Yellowstone Park with power and irrigation schemes.
Yellowstone Park Headquarters
YELLOWSTONE PARK HEADQUARTERS
Director Mather
DIRECTOR MATHER, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR FALL, AND SUPERINTENDENTALBRIGHT CAMPING
Superinbtendent Albright
SUPERINTENDENT ALBRIGHT AND MULE DEER
Captain Chittenden, writing of the early days of the Yellowstone, speaks of the menace of the railways—attempts on the part of certain companies to build into or through the Park itself. That threat was disposed of in good time. The railways accepted the "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther!" as final, built as close as practicable to the boundaries, and rested content with allowing transportation within the Park to be carried on by horse-drawn vehicles, later to be replaced by motor busses. The menace of the railways was no longer heard of, but in time a new one arose—that of the power and irrigation interests. This hydra-headed camel tried to crawl under the flap of the Park tent in the form of a dam at the outlet of Yellowstone Lake for the ostensible purpose of preventing floods on the lower river. The bill to authorize the project was introduced in Congress by Senator Thomas P. Walsh and bears his name. Two very practical idealists, called to step into the breach almost at a moment's notice, were able to demolish every claim made for the measure after scarcely more than a hurried reading of it. These two were Superintendent Albright and George E. Goodwin, Chief Engineer of the National Park Service. Mr. Albright, practically offhand, showed the falsity or the fallacy of every contention made in the bill as regards the Park itself, but perhaps the solarplexus was delivered by Mr. Goodwin, when he introduced figures to show that all of the floods on the lower river came a month previous to high water in Yellowstone Lake—that they were directly due in fact, not to the latter, but to the torrential spring discharges of the Big Horn, Tongue, Powder and other tributaries of the main stream.
This blocked the measure at the time, and equally telling action from the Department of Interior has checked every subsequent attempt to advance it. I should really like to know the particular practical idealist of that Department who dissected a circular letter sent out under Mr. Walsh's signature to his Congressional colleagues. Perhaps it was Stephen T. Mather himself, head of the National Park Service. At any rate, the blows dealt were so sharp and jolting that reading the statement somehow made me think of a man walking down a row of plaster images and cracking them with a hammer. If I was not certain this insincere and maladroitly handled bill would not be at rather more than its last gasp before these pages appear in print I would write more about it—that is, against it. As things have shaped, however, this will hardly be necessary.
In explaining why it was that the National Park Service had rallied its forces for so vigorous a defence of the citadel against the Walsh Bill, Mr. Albrightquoted the words of John Barton Payne, Secretary of the Interior under Wilson, in pushing the Jones-Esch Bill, which returned the national parks and monuments to the sole authority of Congress. Said Mr. Payne: "When once you establish a principle that you can encroach on a national park for irrigation or water power, you commence a process which will end only in the commercialization of them all.... There is a heap more in this world," he concluded, "than three meals a day."
I was sorry not to be able to see more of Horace M. Albright. One can put up with a good deal of his kind of practical idealism.
LIVINGSTON TWENTY YEARS AFTER
The train on which I journeyed from the Park to Livingston was a bit late in getting started for some reason, as a consequence of which it was trying to make up the lost time all the way. It was a decidedly rough passage, especially on the curves through the rocky walls of "Yankee Jim's Canyon." Even so, however, I reflected that the careening observation car was making a lot better weather of it than did the oldKentucky Muletwenty years before.
Although past the crest of its spring rise by nearly a fortnight, the Yellowstone was considerably higher than the early May stage at which I ran it before. Even glimpsed from the train the Canyon impressed me as having a lot of very rough water—much too rough for a small open boat to run right through. With frequent landing and careful lining, however, it looked quite feasible; indeed, on arrival at Livingston I learned that a couple of men had worked through with a light canoe the previous Sunday. Letting down with a line over the bad places, they took about an hour for the passage of the roughesttwo miles of the Canyon. My jaunt through in and about theMulewas not clocked. Although the liveliness of the action made it seem longer, I doubt if it was much over ten minutes. Nevertheless I was quite content not to have to chance it again, especially as a trial trip for a new type of boat.
Livingston is located at the bend where the Yellowstone, after running north from the Park for fifty miles, breaks from the mountains and begins its long easterly course to the Missouri through a more open valley. This was the point at which Captain Clark, temporarily separated from Lewis on their return journey from the mouth of the Columbia, first saw the upper Yellowstone. He had, of course, passed its mouth when proceeding westward by the Missouri the previous year. It was now his purpose to explore the whole length of such of the river as flowed between this point and the Missouri, making rendezvous with Lewis at some point below its mouth. Clark had come from the Three Forks of the Missouri with pack-train, but with the intention of building boats and taking to the river just as soon as trees large enough for their construction could be found. Searching every flat for suitable boat-timber, the party proceeded down the north bank of the river, probably pretty well along the route followed by General Gibbon seventy years later in the campaignagainst the Sioux which culminated to the Custer Massacre on the Little Big Horn.
The previous fall, rapid by rapid, I had run the lower Columbia in the wake of Lewis and Clark. Now I was turning into the trail of the Pathfinders again, this time their home trail. One of the things that I had been anticipating above all others was the delight of following that trail to its end, which also had been its beginning—St. Louis. I knew that there was going to be something of Lewis and Clark for me in every mile of the twenty-five hundred—yes, and of many another who had followed in their path. I was not to be disappointed. I only hope I am not going to be boring in telling a little about it. I trust not too much so. Darn it, a man can't be expected to write about bootleggers, and "white mule" and home-brew and ultra-modern institutions all the time. Lewis and Clark and the other pioneers of the North-west have always meant a lot to me. I simply can't help mentioning them now and again—but I'll try and strike a balance in the long run.
Gate of the Mountains
By Haynes, St. Paul
GATE OF THE MOUNTAINS, YELLOWSTONE RIVER
There was a real thrill in the tablet erected by the D. A. R. near the Livingston railway station commemorating the passing of Captain Clark. Perhaps there will be no fitter place for me to acknowledge to the Daughters of the Revolution my gratitude for many another thrill of the same kind similar monumentsof theirs gave me all the way to the end of my journey. Now it was the defence of the stockade at Yankton that was celebrated, now a station of the Pony Express or a crossing of the Santa Fé Trail in Missouri, now a post on some old Indian road at Natchez. Always they were modest and fitting, and always they winged a thrill. I have never met any live Daughters of the Revolution to recognize them, but I am sure from what they have done to make the river way pleasant that they must be eminently kindly folk, like the philanthropists who erect drinking fountains for man and beast and the Burmans who put out little bird-houses in the trees.
Livingston had changed a lot since I had seen it last—that was plain before my train had swung round the long bend and pulled up at the station. The ball ground was gone—pushed right across the river by the growth of the town. Many old landmarks were missing, and the main street, lined with fine new modern buildings, had shifted a whole block west. The shade trees had grown until they arched above the clean, cool streets, now paved from one end of the town to the other. Even the cottonwoods by the river towered higher and bulked bigger with the twenty new rings that the passing years had built out from their hearts. There was a new Post Office and a new railway station. The latter was a handsome,sizable structure, well worthy of the important junction which it served. And yet that station wasn't quite so sizable as certain of the local boosters would have people think. Here, verbatim, is what I read of it in the local Chamber of Commerce publication:
"The Northern Pacific passenger depot, which is the largest and handsomest structure of the kind on the transcontinental line between its terminals, domiciles a large number of general and division officers and covers 100 miles East, and more than that distance West on two lines and the branch railway North from this city and also the line running South." Very likely that wordcoversis intended to refer to the jurisdiction of the officials housed in the building, but if that sentence were to be taken literally there is no doubt that the Grand Central, Liverpool Street, theGare du Nordand a few score more of the world's great terminals might be chucked under those hundred-mile easterly and westerly wings of the Livingston station and never be found again.
Which reminds me that Kipling also found the natives making some pretty big claims for Livingston. Something over thirty years previous to my latest visit he had stopped there over-night on his way to the Yellowstone. He describes it as a little cow-town of about two thousand. Exhausting its resources in a short stroll, he wandered off among thehills, narrowly to avoid being stepped upon by a herd of stampeding horses. He returned to the town to find it was the night before the Fourth of July, with much carousing and large talking going on. His final comment was: "They raise horses and minerals around Livingston, but they behave as though they raised cherubims with diamonds in their wings."
But this is not the Livingston of the present day, nor even the Livingston that I loved so well twenty years syne. Yes, even then almost the only ruffians and carousers were the imported ball players and editors and "Calamity Jane." The natives were very modest, gentle folk, just as they are today. And they raised several things besides horses and minerals—yea, even cherubims. I remember that distinctly, for it was one named "Bunny," who worked in the telephone office, that knitted me a purple tie which I kept for years—for a trunk-strap. It stretched and stretched and stretched, but never weakened or faded. Expressmen and other vulgar people used to think there was a bride in my party on account of that purple ribbon. Bless your heart, "Bunny!" You'll never know until you read this confession how much besides that rough, red neck of mine you snared in the loop of your purple tie.
The LivingstonEnterprisehad grown with the town—that was evident from a glance at the firstcopy to fall into my hands. Quite a metropolitan daily it was, with Associated Press service, sporting page and regular boiler-plate Fashion Hint stuff from theRue de la Paix. The Editor, too, was a considerable advance—at least sartorially—over the one I remembered. Phillips proved a mighty engaging chap, though, and didn't seem a bit ashamed over having had me for a predecessor. People spoke of him to me as an energetic civic and temperance worker, declaring that he had been indefatigable in his efforts to put down drink all over Park County. They called his vigorous editorials on these subjects "Phillipics." They were noted for their jolt.
Where Custer Fell
By Haynes, St. Paul
WHERE CUSTER FELL
I modestly assured him that I couldn't claim to have done a lot for temperance during the time I sat in his chair, but that Ihadtaken an active interest in civic reform. And then, darn him! he took down the year 1901 from theEnterprisefile. I had forgotten all about that. Well, we found a number of columns of right pert comment on local men, women and events and many square feet of baseball write-ups that Phillips seemed highly tickled over; but of civic reform editorials, not a one. Or not quite so bad as that perhaps. It may be that a trenchant leader lashing the municipal council for neglecting to build a certain badly needed sidewalk would come in that class. It was a sidewalk to thebaseball grounds. How well I remember the inspiration for that vitriolic attack on the City Fathers! "Bunny" lost a French-heeled slipper in the Yellowstone gumbo while mincing out to the Helena game and swore she would never appear at the Park again unless it could be done without getting muddied to her knees. "Bunny" was very outspoken for a cherubim. In those days it took an outspoken girl to mention anything between her shoe-tops and her pompadour.
I liked Editor Phillips so well that I forthwith asked him to join me for my first day's run down the river. He said he was highly complimented, but that there were a number of reasons why he would not be able to accept. The only one of these I recall was that the water was fartoo loosely packedbetween Livingston and Big Timber. Western editors are always picturesque, and Phillips was one of the best of his kind. He mentioned two or three others who might be induced to join me for a day or two. One of these was Joe Evans, curio dealer and trapper. I am not quite sure whether it was Phillips or some one else who recommended "Buckskin Jim" Cutler as the best hand with a boat on the upper river. It took some groping in my memory to place the name, but finally I found it pigeon-holed as that of the man "Yankee Jim" had spoken of in the same connectiontwenty years before. I had in mind trying to get in touch with Cutler, but gave up the idea the moment I discovered Pete Holt, former Government Scout and my first guide through the Yellowstone, holding down the job of Chief of Police of Livingston. Holt's furious pace on ski had resulted in my leaving jagged fragments of cuticle on most of the trees and much of the crust along the Yellowstone Grand Tour. Here was a chance to lead a measure or two of the dance myself. Pete had ideas of his own about the looseness with which the water was packed below Livingston, but was too good a sport to let that interfere with my pleasure. Indeed, he even went out of his way to make his trip official. Two people—a man and a woman—had been drowned in the Yellowstone the previous week. He ordered himself to go in search of them in my boat, hiring Joe Evans, with his canvas canoe, to accompany us as scout and pilot. The arrangement was ideal. Joe knew the best channel—so I took it for granted,—which would leave me nothing to do but trail his wake and manage my new and untried boat. Holt's hundred and eighty pounds in the stern would give that ballast just where I needed it. The lack of serious responsibilities would give us a chance for a good old yarn while, watching my chances, I couldpick favourable riffles and pay back my friend in his own coin the debt of twenty years standing.
It was a great disappointment to find no one of my old baseball team-mates still in Livingston. Jack Mjelde, Captain and second-baseman, had been killed in an electrical accident. That was a typically capricious trick of Fate. As I recall things now, Jack—a family man with a real job, and a legitimate resident of Livingston—was about the most worth preserving of the lot of us. Ed Ray had dropped in and out of town on brake-beams every now and then, and so had two or three others. Paddy Ryan, pitcher and the gentlest mannered of us all, was believed to be still a bar-keeper—somewhat surreptitiously of course. Riley, the never more than semi-Keeley-cured catcher, had last been heard of over Missoula way, and looking rather fit now that there was a more or less closed season on his favourite quarry—mauve mice.
And so it went. A score or more of old-timers who had seen me play turned up at the hotel, but only one of these brought a real thrill. That was a husky chap of about thirty, who said he had been admitted to the park once for retrieving a home-run I had swatted over the fence in a game against Anaconda. "Gosh, how you could line 'em out, boy, "volunteered some one, and grunts of assent ran back and forth through the crowd. That was all very nice, of course; but I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I could have been quite sure that none of them had been present the time we played Red Lodge on Miner's Union Day. This was the morning after the Fireman's Ball of the night before. I believe I couldseethe ball all right. Indeed, that was just the trouble. I saw too many balls and couldn't swing my bat against the right one. I struck out three times running. The fourth time up I connected for a mighty wallop, but only to get put out through starting for third base instead of first!