IV

Mem: After this, must lie over the camp-ground until I find a place that fits me to sleep on. Then have the tent erected over it.

There was a little dissension in the party that morning, Joe having wakened in the night while being violently shoved out under the edge of his tent by his companion, who was a restless sleeper. But ill-temper cannot live long in the open. We settled to the swinging walk of the trail. In the mountain meadows there were carpets of flowers. They furnished highly esthetic if not very substantial food for our horses during our brief rests. They were very brief, those rests. All too soon, Pete would bring Angel to me, and I would vault into the saddle—extremely figurative, this—and we would fall into line, Pete swaying with the cowboy's roll in the saddle, the Optimist bouncing freely, Joe with an eye on that pack-horse which carried the delicacies of the trip, the Big Boy with long legs that almost touched the ground, the Middle Boy with eyes roving for adventure, the Little Boy deadly serious and hoping for a bear. And somewhere in the rear, where he could watch all responsibilities and supply the smokers with matches, the Head.

That second day, we crossed Dutch Ridge and approached the Flathead. What I have called here the Flathead is known locally as the North Fork. The pack-outfit had started first. Long before we caught up with them, we heard the bells on the lead horses ringing faintly.

Passing a pack-outfit on the trail is a difficult matter. The wise little horses, traveling free and looked after only by a wrangler or two, do not like to be passed. One of two things happens when the saddle-outfit tries to pass the pack. Either the pack starts on a smartcanter ahead, or it turns wildly off into the forest to the accompaniment of much complaint by the drivers. A pack-horse loose on a narrow trail is a dangerous matter. With its bulging pack, it worms its way past anything on the trail, and bad accidents have followed. Here, however, there was room for us to pass.

Tiny gophers sat up beside the trail and squeaked at us. A coyote yelped. Bumping over fallen trees, creaking and groaning and swaying, came the boat-wagon. Mike had found a fishing-line somewhere, and pretended to cast from the bow.

"Ship ahoy!" he cried, when he saw us, and his instructions to the driver were purely nautical. "Hard astern!" he yelled, going down a hill, and instead of "Gee" or "Haw" he shouted "Port" or "Starboard."

An acquaintance of George and Mike has built a boat which is intended to go up-stream by the force of the water rushing against it and turning a propeller. We had a spirited discussion about it.

"Because," as one of the men objected, "it'sall right until you get to the head of the stream. Then what are you going to do?" he asked. "She'll only go up—she won't go down."

Pete, the chief guide, was a German. He was rather uneasy for fear we intended to cross the Canadian line. But we reassured him. A big blond in a wide-flapping Stetson, black Angora chaps, and flannel shirt with a bandana, he led our little procession into the wilderness and sang as he rode. The Head frequently sang with him. And because the only song the Head knew very well in German was the "Lorelei," we had it hour after hour. Being translated to one of the boatmen, he observed: "I have known girls like that. I guess I'd leave most any boat for them. But I'd leave this boat for most any girl."

We were approaching the mountains, climbing slowly but steadily. We passed through Lone Tree Prairie, where one great pine dominated the country for miles around, and stopped by a small river for luncheon.

Of all the meals that we took in the open, perhaps luncheon was the most delightful.Condensed milk makes marvelous cocoa. We opened tins of things, consulted maps, eased the horses' cinches, rested our own tired bodies for an hour or so. For the going, while much better than we had expected, was still slow. It was rare, indeed, to be able to get the horses out of a walk. And there is no more muscle-racking occupation than riding a walking horse hour after hour through a long day.

By the end of the second day we were well away from even that remote part of civilization from which we had started, and a terrible fact was dawning on us. The cook did not like us!

Now, we all have our small vanities, and mine has always been my success with cooks. I like cooks. As time goes on, I am increasingly dependent on cooks. I never fuss a cook, or ask how many eggs a cake requires, or remark that we must be using the lard on the hardwood floors. I never make any of the small jests on that order, with which most housewives try to reduce the cost of living.

No; I really go out of my way to ignore theleft-overs, and not once on this trip had I so much as mentioned dish-towels or anything unpleasant. I had seen my digestion slowly going with a course of delicious but indigestible saddle-bags, which were all we had for bread.

But—I was failing. Bill unpacked and cooked and packed up again and rode on the chuck-wagon. But there was something wrong. Perhaps it was the fall out of the wagon. Perhaps we were too hungry. We were that, I know. Perhaps he looked ahead through the vista of days and saw that formidable equipment of fishing-tackle, and mentally he was counting the fish to clean and cook and clean and cook and clean and—

The center of a camping-trip is the cook. If, in the spring, men's hearts turn to love, in the woods they turn to food. And cooking is a temperamental art. No unhappy cook can make a soufflé. Not, of course, that we had soufflé.

A camp cook should be of a calm and placid disposition. He has the hardest job that Iknow of. He cooks with inadequate equipment on a tiny stove in the open, where the air blows smoke into his face and cinders into his food. He must cook either on his knees or bending over to within a foot or so of the ground. And he must cook moving, as it were. Worse than that, he must cook not only for the party but for a hungry crowd of guides and packers that sits around in a circle and watches him, and urges him, and gets under his feet, and, if he is unpleasant, takes his food fairly out of the frying-pan under his eyes if he is not on guard. He is the first up in the morning and the last in bed. He has to dry his dishes on anything that comes handy, and then pack all of his grub on an unreliable horse and start off for the next eating-ground.

A mountain lake in Glacier National Park

So, knowing all this, and also that we were about a thousand miles from the nearest employment-office and several days' hard riding from a settlement, we went to Bill with tribute. We praised his specialties. We gave him a college lad, turned guide for the summer, to assist him. We gathered up our own dishes.We inquired for his bruise. But gloom hung over him like a cloud.

And hecouldcook. Well—

We had made a forced trip that day, and the last five miles were agonizing. In vain we sat sideways on our horses, threw a leg over the pommel, got off, and walked and led them. Bowman Lake, our objective point, seemed to recede.

Very few people have ever seen Bowman Lake. Yet I believe it is one of the most beautiful lakes in this country. It is not large, perhaps only twelve miles long and from a mile to two miles in width. Save for the lower end, it lies entirely surrounded by precipitous and inaccessible peaks—old Rainbow, on whose mist-cap the setting sun paints a true rainbow day after day, Square Peak, Reuter Peak, and Peabody, named with the usual poetic instinct of the Geological Survey. They form a natural wall, round the upper end of the lake, of solid-granite slopes which rise over a mile in height above it. Perpetual snow covers the tops of these mountains, and, meltingin innumerable waterfalls, feeds the lake below.

So far as I can discover, we were taking the first boat, with the possible exception of an Indian canoe long ago, to Bowman Lake. Not the first boat, either, for the Geological Survey had nailed a few boards together, and the ruin of this venture was still decaying on the shore.

There was a report that Bowman Lake was full of trout. That was one of the things we had come to find out. It was for Bowman Lake primarily that all the reels and flies and other lure had been arranged. If it was true, then twenty-four square miles of virgin lake were ours to fish from.

After our first view of the lake, the instant decision was to make a permanent camp there for a few days. And this we did. Tents were put up for the luxurious-minded, three of them. Mine was erected over me, when, as I had pre-determined, I had found a place where I could lie comfortably. The men belonging to the outfit, of course, slept under the stars. A packer, a guide, or the cook with an outfit like ours has, outside of such clothing as he wears or carries rolled in his blankets, but one possession—and that is his tarp bed. With such a bed, a can of tomatoes, and a gun, it is said that a cow-puncher can go anywhere.

Once or twice I was awake in the morning before the cook's loud call of "Come and get it!" brought us from our tents. I never ceased to view with interest this line of tarp beds, each with its sleeping occupant, his hat on theground beside him, ready, when the call came, to sit up blinking in the sunlight, put on his hat, crawl out, and be ready for the day.

Getting ready for the day's fishing at camp on Bowman LakeGetting ready for the day's fishing at camp on Bowman Lake

The boats had traveled well. The next morning, after a breakfast of ham and eggs, fried potatoes, coffee, and saddle-bags, we were ready to try them out.

And here I shall be generous. For this means that next year we shall go there and find other outfits there before us, and people in the latest thing in riding-clothes, and fancy trout-creels and probably sixty-dollar reels.

Bowman Lake is a fisherman's paradise. The first day on the lake we caught sixty-nine cut-throat trout averaging a pound each, and this without knowing where to look.

In the morning, we could see them lying luxuriously on shelving banks in the sunlight, only three to six feet below the surface. They rose, like a shot, to the flies. For some reason, George Locke, our fisherman, resented their taking the Parmachene Belle. Perhaps because the trout of his acquaintance had not cared for this fly. Or maybe he considered theBelle not sportsmanly. The Brown Hackle and Royal Coachman did well, however, and, in later fishing on this lake, we found them more reliable than the gayer flies. In the afternoon, the shallows failed us. But in deep holes where the brilliant walls shelved down to incredible depths, they rose again in numbers.

It was perfectly silent. Doubtless, countless curious wild eyes watched us from the mountain-slopes and the lake-borders. But we heard not even the cracking of brushwood under cautious feet. The tracks of deer, where they had come down to drink, a dead mountain-lion floating in a pool, the slow flight of an eagle across the face of old Rainbow, and no sound but the soft hiss of a line as it left the reel—that was Bowman Lake, that day, as it lay among its mountains. So precipitous are the slopes, so rank the vegetation where the forest encroaches, that we were put to it to find a ridge large enough along the shore to serve as a foothold for luncheon. At last we found a tiny spot, perhaps ten feet long by three feet wide, and on that we landed. The sun wentdown; the rainbow clouds gathered about the peaks above, and still the trout were rising. When at last we turned for our ten-mile row back to camp, it was almost dusk.

Now and then, when I am tired and the things of this world press close and hard, I think of those long days on that lonely lake, and the home-coming at nightfall. Toward the pin-point of glow—the distant camp-fire which was our beacon light—the boat moved to the long, tired sweep of the oars; around us the black forest, the mountains overhead glowing and pink, as if lighted from within. And then, at last, the grating of our little boat on the sand—and night.

During the day, our horses were kept in a rope corral. Sometimes they were quiet; sometimes a spirit of mutiny seemed to possess the entire thirty-one. There is in such a string always one bad horse that, with ears back and teeth showing, keeps the entire bunch milling. When such a horse begins to stir up trouble, the wrangler tries to rope him and get him out. Mad excitement follows as the noosewhips through the air. But they stay in the corral. So curious is the equine mind that it seldom realizes that it could duck and go under the rope, or chew it through, or, for that matter, strain against it and break it.

At night, we turned the horses loose. Almost always in the morning, some were missing, and had to be rounded up. The greater part, however, stayed close to the bell-mare. It was our first night at Bowman Lake, I think, that we heard a mountain-lion screaming. The herd immediately stampeded. It was far away, so that we could not hear the horses running. But we could hear the agitated and rapid ringing of the bell, and, not long after, the great cat went whining by the camp. In the morning, the horses were far up the mountain-side.

Sometime I shall write that article on "Wild Animals I Have Missed." We were in a great game-country. But we had little chance to creep up on anything but deer. The bells of the pack-outfit, our own jingling spurs, the accouterments, the very tinkle of the tin cups on our saddles must have made our presenceknown to all the wilderness-dwellers long before we appeared.

The horses in the rope corralThe horses in the rope corral

After we had been at Bowman Lake a day or two, while at breakfast one morning, we saw two of the guides racing their horses in a mad rush toward the camp. Just outside, one of the ponies struck a log, turned a somersault, and threw his rider, who, nothing daunted, came hurrying up on foot. They had seen a bull moose not far away. Instantly all was confusion. The horses were not saddled. One of the guides gave me his and flung me on it. The Little Boy made his first essay at bareback riding. In a wild scamper we were off, leaping logs and dodging trees. The Little Boy fell off with a terrific thud, and sat up, looking extremely surprised. And when we had got there, as clandestinely as a steam calliope in a circus procession, the moose was gone. I sometimes wonder, looking back, whether there really was a moose there or not. Did I or did I not see a twinkle in Bill Shea's eye as he described the sweep of the moose's horns? I wonder.

Birds there were in plenty; wild ducks that swam across the lake at terrific speed as we approached; plover-snipe, tiny gray birds with long bills and white breasts, feeding along the edge of the lake peacefully at our very feet; an eagle carrying a trout to her nest. Brown squirrels came into the tents and ate our chocolate and wandered over us fearlessly at night. Bears left tracks around the camp. But we saw none after we left the Lake McDonald country.

Yet this is a great game-country. The warden reports a herd of thirty-six moose in the neighborhood of Bowman Lake; mountain-lion, lynx, marten, bear, and deer abound. A trapper built long ago a substantial log shack on the north shore of the lake, and although it is many years since it was abandoned, it is still almost weather-proof. All of us have our dreams. Some day I should like to go back and live for a little time in that forest cabin. In the long snow-bound days after he set his traps, the trapper had busied himself fitting it up. A tin can made his candle-bracket on thewall, axe-hewn planks formed a table and a bench, and diagonally across a corner he had built his fireplace of stones from the lakeside.

He had a simple method of constructing a chimney; he merely left without a roof that corner of the cabin and placed slanting boards in it. He had made a crane, too, which swung out over the fireplace. All of the Rocky Mountains were in his back garden, and his front yard was Bowman Lake.

We had had fair weather so far. But now rain set in. Hail came first; then a steady rain. The tents were cold. We got out our slickers and stood out around the beach fire in the driving storm, and ate our breakfast of hot cakes, fried ham, potatoes and onions cooked together, and hot coffee. The cook rigged up a tarpaulin over his little stove and stood there muttering and frying. He had refused to don a slicker, and his red sweater, soaking up the rain, grew heavy with moisture and began to stretch. Down it crept, down and down.

The cook straightened up from his frying-pan and looked at it. Then he said:—

"There, little sweater, don't you cry;You'll be a blanket by and by."

This little touch of humor on his part cheered us. Perhaps, seeing how sporting we were about the weather, he was going to like us after all. Well—

Our new tents leaked—disheartening little drips that came in and wandered idly over our blankets, to lodge in little pools here and there. A cold wind blew. I resorted to that camper's delight—a stone heated in the camp-fire—to warm my chilled body. We found one or two magazines, torn and dejected, and read them, advertisements and all. And still, when it seemed the end of the day, it was not high noon.

By afternoon, we were saturated; the camp steamed. We ate supper after dark, standing around the camp-fire, holding our tin plates of food in our hands. The firelight shone on our white faces and dripping slickers. The horses stood with their heads low against the storm. The men of the outfit went to bed on the sodden ground with the rain beating in their faces.

The next morning was gray, yet with a hint of something better. At eight o'clock, the clouds began to lift. Their solidity broke. The lower edge of the cloud-bank that had hung in a heavy gray line, straight and ominous, grew ragged. Shreds of vapor detached themselves and moved off, grew smaller, disappeared. Overhead, the pall was thinner. Finally it broke, and a watery ray of sunlight came through. And, at last, old Rainbow, at the upper end of the lake, poked her granite head through its vapory sheathings. Angel, my white horse, also eyed the sky, and then, putting her pink nose under the corral-rope, she gently worked her way out. The rain was over.

The horses provided endless excitement. Whether at night being driven off by madly circling riders to the grazing-ground or rounded up into the corral in the morning, they gave the men all they could do. Getting them into the corral was like playing pigs-in-clover. As soon as a few were in, and the wrangler started for others, the captivesescaped and shot through the camp. There were times when the air seemed full of flying hoofs and twitching ears, of swinging ropes and language.

On the last day at Bowman Lake, we realized that although the weather had lifted, the cook's spirits had not. He was polite enough—he had always been polite to the party. But he packed in a dejected manner. There was something ominous in the very way he rolled up the strawberry jam in sacking.

The breaking-up of a few days' camp is a busy time. The tents are taken down at dawn almost over one's head. Blankets are rolled and strapped; the pack-ponies groan and try to roll their packs off.

Bill Shea quotes a friend of his as contending that the way to keep a pack-pony cinched is to put his pack on him, throw the diamond hitch, cinch him as tight as possible, and then take him to a drinking-place and fill him up with water. However, we did not resort to this.

We had washed at dawn in the cold lake. The rain had turned to snow in the night, and the mountains were covered with a fresh white coating. And then, at last, we were off, the wagons first, although we were soon to pass them. We had lifted the boats out of the water and put them lovingly in their straw again. And Mike and George formed the crew. The guides were ready with facetious comments.

"Put up a sail!" they called. "Never give up the ship!" was another favorite. The Head, who has a secret conviction that he should have had his voice trained, warbled joyously:—

"I'll stick to the ship, lads;You save your lives.I've no one to love me;You've children and wives."

And so, still in the cool of the morning, our long procession mounted the rise which somegreat glacier deposited ages ago at the foot of what is now Bowman Lake. We turned longing eyes back as we left the lake to its winter ice and quiet. For never again, probably, will it be ours. We have given its secret to the world.

At two o'clock we found a ranger's cabin and rode into its enclosure for luncheon. Breakfast had been early, and we were very hungry. We had gone long miles through the thick and silent forest, and now we wanted food. We wanted food more than we wanted anything else in the world. We sat in a circle on the ground and talked about food.

And, at last, the chuck-wagon drove in. It had had a long, slow trip. We stood up and gave a hungry cheer, and then—Bill was gone!Some miles back he had halted the wagon, got out, taken his bed on his back, and started toward civilization afoot. We stared blankly at the teamster.

"Well," we said; "what did he say?"

"All he said to me was, 'So long,'" said the teamster.

And that was all there was to it. So therewe were in the wilderness, far, far from a cook. The hub of our universe had departed. Or, to make the figure modern, we had blown out a tire. And we had no spare one.

I made my declaration of independence at once. I could cook; but I would not cook for that outfit. There were too many; they were too hungry. Besides, I had come on a pleasure-trip, and the idea of cooking for fifteen men and thirty-one horses was too much for me. I made some cocoa and grumbled while I made it. We lunched out of tins and in savage silence. When we spoke, it was to impose horrible punishments on the defaulting cook. We hoped he would enjoy his long walk back to civilization without food.

"Food!" answered one of the boys. "He's got plenty cached in that bed of his, all right. What you should have done," he said to the teamster, "was to take his bed from him and let him starve."

In silence we finished our luncheon; in silence, mounted our horses. In black and hopeless silence we rode on north, farther andfarther from cooks and hotels and tables-d'hôte.

We rode for an hour—two hours. And, at last, sitting in a cleared spot, we saw a man beside the trail. He was the first man we had seen in days. He was sitting there quite idly. Probably that man to-day thinks that he took himself there on his own feet, of his own volition. We know better. He was directed there for our happiness. It was a direct act of Providence. For we rode up to him and said:—

"Do you know of any place where we can find a cook?"

And this man, who had dropped from heaven, replied:

"I am a cook."

So we put him on our extra saddle-horse and took him with us. He cooked for us with might and main, day and night, until the trip was over. And if you don't believe this story, write to Norman Lee, Kintla, Montana, and ask him if it is true. What is more, Norman Lee could cook. He could cook on his knees,bending over, and backward. He had been in Cuba, in the Philippines, in the Boxer Rebellion in China, and was now a trapper; is now a trapper, for, as I write this, Norman Lee is trapping marten and lynx on the upper left-hand corner of Montana, in one of the empty spaces of the world.

We were very happy. We caracoled—whatever that may be. We sang and whistled, and we rode. How we rode! We rode, and rode, and rode, and rode, and rode, and rode, and rode. And, at last, just when the end of endurance had come, we reached our night camp.

Here and there upon the west side of Glacier Park are curious, sharply defined treeless places, surrounded by a border of forest. On Round Prairie, that night, we pitched our tents and slept the sleep of the weary, our heads pillowed on war-bags in which the heel of a slipper, the edge of a razor-case, a bottle of sunburn lotion, and the tooth-end of a comb made sleeping an adventure.

It was cold. It was always cold at night.But, in the morning, we wakened to brilliant sunlight, to the new cook's breakfast, and to another day in the saddle. We were roused at dawn by a shrill yell.

Startled, every one leaped to the opening of his tent and stared out. It proved, however, not to be a mountain-lion, and was, indeed, nothing more than one of the packers struggling to get into a wet pair of socks, and giving vent to his irritation in a wild fury of wrath.

As Pete and Bill Shea and Tom Farmer threw the diamond hitch over the packs that morning, they explained to me that all camp cooks are of two kinds—the good cooks, who are evil of disposition, and the tin-can cooks, who only need a can-opener to be happy. But I lived to be able to refute that. Norman Lee was a cook, and he was also amiable.

But that morning, in spite of the bright sunlight, started ill. For seven horses were missing, and before they were rounded up, the guides had ridden a good forty miles of forest and trail. But, at last, the wanderers were brought in and we were ready to pack.

Bear-grassBear-grass

On a pack-horse there are two sets of rope. There is a sling-rope, twenty or twenty-five feet long, and a lash-rope, which should be thirty-five feet long. The sling-rope holds the side pack; the top pack is held by the lash-rope and the diamond hitch. When a cow-puncher on a bronco yells for a diamond, he does not refer to a jewel. He means a lash-rope. When the diamond is finally thrown, the packer puts his foot against the horse's face and pulls. The packer pulls, and the horse grunts. If the packer pulls a shade too much, the horse bucks, and there is an exciting time in which everybody clears and the horse has the field—every one, that is, but Joe, whose duty it was to be on the spot in dangerous moments. Generally, however, by the time he got his camera set up and everything ready, the bucker was feeding placidly and the excitement was over.

We rather stole away from Round Prairie that morning. A settler had taken advantage of a clearing some miles away to sow a little grain. When our seven truants were found that brilliant morning, they had eaten up practically the grain-field and were lying gorged in the center of it.

So "we folded our tents like the Arabs, and as silently stole away." (This has to be used in every camping-story, and this seems to be a good place for it.)

We had come out on to the foothills again on our way to Kintla Lake. Again we were near the Flathead, and beyond it lay the blue and purple of the Kootenai Hills. The Kootenais on the left, the Rockies on the right, we were traveling north in a great flat basin.

The meadow-lands were full of flowers. There was rather less Indian paint-brush than on the east side of the park. We were too low for much bear-grass. But there were masses everywhere of June roses, true forget-me-nots, and larkspur. And everywhere in the burnt areas was the fireweed, that phœnix plant that springs up from the ashes of dead trees.

There were, indeed, trees, flowers, birds, fish—everything but fresh meat. We had had no fresh meat since the first day out. And now my soul revolted at the sight of bacon. Iloathed all ham with a deadly loathing. I had eaten canned salmon until I never wanted to see it again. And our provisions were getting low.

Just to the north, where we intended to camp, was Starvation Ridge. It seemed to be an ominous name.

Norman Lee knew a man somewhere within a radius of one hundred miles—they have no idea of distance there—who would kill a forty-pound calf if we would send him word. But it seemed rather too much veal. We passed it up.

On and on, a hot day, a beautiful trail, but no water. No little rivulets crossing the path, no icy lakes, no rolling cataracts from the mountains. We were tanned a blackish purple. We were saddle-sore. One of the guides had a bottle of liniment for saddle-gall and suggested rubbing it on the saddle. Packs slipped and were tightened. The mountain panorama unrolled slowly to our right. And all day long the boatmen struggled with the most serious problem yet, for the wagon-trail was now hardly good enough for horses.

Where the trail turned off toward the mountains and Kintla Lake, we met a solitary horseman. He had ridden sixty miles down and sixty miles back to get his mail. There is a sort of R.F.D. in this corner of the world, but it is not what I should call in active operation. It was then August, and there had been just two mails since the previous Christmas!

Aside from the Geological Survey, very few people, except an occasional trapper, have ever seen Kintla Lake. It lies, like Bowman Lake, in a recess in the mountains. We took some photographs of Kintla Peak, taking our boats to the upper end of the lake for the work. They are, so far as I can discover, the only photographs ever taken of this great mountain which towers, like Rainbow, a mile or so above the lake.

Across from Kintla, there is a magnificent range of peaks without any name whatever. The imagination of the Geological Survey seemed to die after Starvation Ridge; at least, they stopped there. Kintla is a curious lemon-yellow color, a great, flat wall tapering to apoint and frequently hidden under a cap of clouds.

A Glacier Park lake

But Kintla Lake is a disappointment to the fisherman. With the exception of one of the guides, who caught a four-pound bull-trout there, repeated whippings of the lake with the united rods and energies of the entire party failed to bring a single rise. No fish leaped of an evening; none lay in the shallows along the bank. It appeared to be a dead lake. I have a strong suspicion that that guide took away Kintla's only fish, and left it without hope of posterity.

We rested at Kintla,—for a strenuous time was before us,—rested and fasted. For supplies were now very low. Starvation Ridge loomed over us, and starvation stared us in the face. We had counted on trout, and there were no trout. That night, we supped off our last potatoes and off cakes made of canned salmon browned in butter. Breakfast would have to be a repetition minus the potatoes. We were just a little low in our minds.

The last thing I saw that night was thecook's shadowy figure as he crouched working over his camp-fire.

And we wakened in the morning to catastrophe. In spite of the fact that we had starved our horses the day before, in order to keep them grazing near camp that night, they had wandered. Eleven were missing, and eleven remained missing. Up the mountain-slopes and through the woods the wranglers rode like madmen, only to come in on dejected horses with failure written large all over them. One half of the saddlers were gone; my Angel had taken wings and flown away.

We sat dejectedly on the bank and fished those dead waters. We wrangled among ourselves. Around us was the forest, thick and close save for the tiny clearing, perhaps forty feet by forty feet. There was no open space, no place to walk, nothing to do but sit and wait.

At last, some of us in the saddle and some afoot, we started. It looked as though the walkers might have a long hike. But sometime about midday there was a sound of wildcheering behind us, and the wranglers rode up with the truants. They had been far up on the mountain-side.

It is curious how certain comparatively unimportant things stand out about such a trip as this. Of Kintla itself, I have no very vivid memories. But standing out very sharply is that figure of the cook crouched over his dying fire, with the black forest all about him. There is a picture, too, of a wild deer that came down to the edge of the lake to drink as we sat in the first boat that had ever been on Kintla Lake, whipping a quiet pool. And there is a clear memory of the assistant cook, the college boy who was taking his vacation in the wilds, whistling the Dvořák "Humoresque" as he dried the dishes on a piece of clean sacking.

It was now approaching time for Bob's great idea to materialize. For this, and to this end, had he brought the boats on their strange land-journey—such a journey as, I fancy, very few boats have ever had before.

The project was, as I have said, to run the unknown reaches of the North Fork of the Flathead from the Canadian border to the town of Columbia Falls.

"The idea is this," Bob had said: "It's never been done before, do you see? It makes the trip unusual and all that."

"Makes it unusually risky," I had observed.

"Well, there's a risk in pretty nearly everything," he had replied blithely. "There's a risk in crossing a city street, for that matter. Riding these horses is a risk, if you come to that. Anyhow, it would make a good story."

So that is why I did it. And this is the story:

We were headed now for the Flathead just south of the Canadian line. To reach the river, it was necessary to take the boats through a burnt forest, without a trail of any sort. They leaped and plunged as the wagon scrambled, jerked, careened, stuck, détoured, and finally got through. There were miles of such going—heart-breaking miles—and at the end we paused at the top of a sixty-foot bluff and looked down at the river.

Now, I like water in a tub or drinking-glass or under a bridge. I am very keen about it. But I like still water—quiet, well-behaved, stay-at-home water. The North Fork of the Flathead River is a riotous, debauched, and highly erratic stream. It staggers in a series of wild zigzags for a hundred miles of waterway from the Canadian border to Columbia Falls, our destination. And that hundred miles of whirlpools, jagged rocks, and swift and deadly cañons we were to travel. I turned around and looked at the Family. It was my ambition that had brought them to this. We might neveragain meet, as a whole. We were sure to get to Columbia Falls, but not at all sure to get there in the boats. I looked at the boats; they were, I believe, stout river-boats. But they were small. Undeniably, they were very small.

The river appeared to be going about ninety miles an hour. There was one hope, however. Perhaps they could not get the boats down over the bluff. It seemed a foolhardy thing even to try. I suggested this to Bob. But he replied, rather tartly, that he had not brought those boats at the risk of his life through all those miles of wilderness to have me fail him now.

He painted the joys of the trip. He expressed so strong a belief in them that he said that he himself would ride with the outfit, thus permitting most of the Family in the boats that first day. He said the river was full of trout. I expressed a strong doubt that any trout could live in that stream and hold their own. I felt that they had all been washed down years ago. And again I looked at the Family.

Because I knew what would happen. The Family would insist on going along. It was notgoing to let mother take this risk alone; it was going to drown with her if necessary.

The Family jaws were set.They were going.

The entire outfit lowered the wagon by roping it down. There was one delicious moment when I thought boats and all were going over the edge. But the ropes held. Nothing happened.

They put the boats in the water.

I had one last rather pitiful thought as I took my seat in the stern of one of them.

"This is my birthday," I said wistfully. "It's rather a queer way to spend a birthday, I think."

But this was met with stern silence. I was to have my story whether I wanted it or not.

Yet once in the river, the excitement got me. I had run brief spells of rapids before. There had been a gasp or two and it was over. But this was to be a prolonged four days' gasp, with intervals only to sleep at night.

Fortunately for all of us, it began rather quietly. The current was swift, so that, once out into the stream, we shot ahead as if we hadbeen fired out of a gun. But, for all that, the upper reaches were comparatively free of great rocks. Friendly little sandy shoals beckoned to us. The water was shallow. But, even then, I noticed what afterward I found was to be a delusion of the entire trip.

This was the impression of riding downhill. I do not remember now how much the Flathead falls per mile. I have an impression that it is ninety feet, but as that would mean a drop of nine thousand feet, or almost two miles, during the trip, I must be wrong somewhere. It was sixteen feet, perhaps.

But hour after hour, on the straight stretches, there was that sensation, on looking ahead, of staring down a toboggan-slide. It never grew less. And always I had the impression that just beyond that glassy slope the roaring meant uncharted falls—and destruction. It never did.

The outfit, following along the trail, was to meet us at night and have camp ready when we appeared—if we appeared. Only a few of us could use the boats. George Locke in one,Mike Shannon in the other, could carry two passengers each. For the sake of my story, I was to take the entire trip; the others were to alternate.

Still-water fishingStill-water fishing

I do not know, but I am very confident that no other woman has ever taken this trip. I am fairly confident that no other men have ever taken it. We could find no one who had heard of it being taken. All that we knew was that it was the North Fork of the Flathead River, and that if we stayed afloat long enough, we would come out at Columbia Falls. The boatmen knew the lower part of the river, but not the upper two thirds of it.

Now that it is over, I would not give up my memory of that long run for anything. It was one of the most unique experiences in a not uneventful career. It was beautiful always, terrible occasionally. There were dozens of places each day where the boatmen stood up, staring ahead for the channel, while the boats dodged wildly ahead. But always these skillful pilots of ours found a way through. And so fast did we go that the worst places were always behind us before we had time to be really terrified.

The Flathead River in these upper reaches is fairly alive with trout. On the second day, I think it was, I landed a bull-trout that weighed nine pounds, and got it with a six-ounce rod. I am very proud of that. I have eleven different pictures of myself holding the fish up. There were trout everywhere. The difficulty was to stop the boat long enough to get them. In fact, we did not stop, save in an occasional eddy in the midst of the torrent. We whipped the stream as we flew along. Under great boulders, where the water seethed and roared, under deep cliffs where it flew like a mill-race, there were always fish.

It was frightful work for the boatmen. It required skill every moment. There was not a second in the day when they could relax. Only men trained to river rapids could have done it, and few, even, of these. To the eternal credit of George and Mike, we got through. It was nothing else.

On the evening of the first day, in the duskwhich made the river doubly treacherous, we saw our camp-fire far ahead.

With the going-down of the sun, the river had grown cold. We were wet with spray, cramped from sitting still and holding on. But friendly hands drew our boats to shore and helped us out.

In a way, this is a fairy-story. Because a good fairy had been busy during our absence. Days before, at the ranger's cabin, unknown to most of us, an order had gone down to civilization for food. During all those days under Starvation Ridge, food had been on the way by pack-horse—food and an extra cook.

So we went up to camp, expecting more canned salmon and fried trout and little else, and beheld—

A festive board set with candles—the board, however, in this case is figurative; it was the ground covered with a tarpaulin—fried chicken, fresh green beans, real bread, jam, potatoes, cheese, cake, candy, cigars, and cigarettes. And—champagne!

That champagne had traveled a hundred miles on horseback. It had been cooled in the icy water of the river. We drank it out of tincups. We toasted each other. We toasted the Flathead flowing just beside us. We toasted the full moon rising over the Kootenais. We toasted the good fairy. The candles burned low in their sockets—this, also, is figurative; they were stuck on pieces of wood. With due formality I was presented with a birthday gift, a fishing-reel purchased by the Big and the Middle and the Little Boy.

Of all the birthdays that I can remember—and I remember quite a few—this one was the most wonderful. Over mountain-tops, glowing deep pink as they rose above masses of white clouds, came slowly a great yellow moon. It turned the Flathead beside us to golden glory, and transformed the evergreen thickets into fairy glades of light and shadow. Flickering candles inside the tents made them glow in luminous triangles against their background of forest.

Behind us, in the valley lands at the foot of the Rockies, the horses rested and grazed, and eased their tired backs. The men lay out in the open and looked at the stars. The air wasfragrant with pine and balsam. Night creatures called and answered.

And, at last, we went to our tents and slept. For the morning was a new day, and I had not got all my story.

That first day's run of the river we got fifty trout, ranging from one half-pound to four pounds. We should have caught more, but they could not keep up with the boat. We caught, also, the most terrific sunburn that I have ever known anything about. We had thought that we were thoroughly leathered, but we had not passed the primary stage, apparently. In vain I dosed my face with cold-cream and talcum powder, and with a liquid warranted to restore the bloom of youth to an aged skin (mine, however, is not aged).

My journal for the second day starts something like this:—

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