The River and I Part 6

I indulged in a little feverish mental calculation. She could make, with the minimum current, eighteen miles per hour. Every day meant fifteen hours of light. Sioux City was two thousand miles away. We could reach Sioux City easily in ten days of actual running!

While I was covering that fast mile back to camp I saw the _Atom I_ pa.s.sing Sioux City with an air of high-nosed contempt. I developed a sort of unreasoning hunger for New Orleans--a kind of violent thirst for the Gulf of Mexico! Nothing short of these, it seemed to me, could be worthy of so fleet a craft. When I shoved her nose into the landing, I found that my companions thoroughly agreed with me.

All that night in my restless sleep I drove speed boats at a terrific pace through impossible channels and rock-toothed Scyllas; and the little Cornishman fought angry seas and heard a dream-wind shrieking in the cordage, and felt the salt spume on his face. "I wonder why I am always dreaming that," he said. "Atavism," I ventured; and he regarded me narrowly, as though I might be maligning his character in some way.

At dawn we had already eaten and were loading the _Atom_ for the voyage.

With her cargo she drew eighteen inches of water. At full speed, she would squat four inches. It was the first of August and the water, which had reached in the spring its highest point for twenty years, had been falling rapidly, and now promised to go far below the average low-water mark. We had ahead of us a long voyage, every mile of which was strange water.

Once again I went over that feverish calculation. This time I was more generous. I decided upon fifteen days. The cable ferry towed us out beyond the gravel bars that, during the last week, had been slowly lifting their bleached ma.s.ses higher. In mid-stream we cut loose.

At the first turn the engine started. We were going at a good half-speed clip, when suddenly the engine changed its mind. "Squas.h.!.+" it said wearily. Then it let off a gasoline sigh and went into a peaceful sleep.

We had reached the brick hotel. We pulled in with the paddles and tied up. The information bureau was there, and at once went into consultation.

"I'm looking for an engine doctor," I said. "How about Mr. Blank? They tell me he knows the unknowable."

"Best man with an engine in town," sad one.

"For gracious' sake, keep that man away from your engine if you don't want it ruined!" said others. A man who can arouse a diversity of opinions is at least a man of originality. I went after that man.

He came--with an air of mystery and a monkey wrench. He sat down in front of the patient (how that word _does_ fit!) and after some time he said: "_Hm!_"

He unscrewed this--and whistled awhile; he unscrewed that--and whistled some more. Then he screwed up both this and that and cranked her.

"Phew-oo-oo-oo!" said the engine. Whereat the doctor smiled knowingly.

It was plain that she was an open book to him.

"What is the trouble?" said I, with that tone of voice you use in a sick-room.

It appeared to be appendicitis.

"Spark-plug," muttered the doctor.

"Shall I get another?" I asked, half apologetically.

"Better," grunted the doctor.

I chased down an automobile owner, and a launch owner and a man who had a small pumping-engine. I was eloquent in my appeal for spark-plugs. I made a very fine collection of them[1] and hastened back to the doctor.

He didn't seem to appreciate my efforts. He had the patient on the operating table. Everything was either unscrewed or pulled out. He was carefully scrutinizing the wreck--for more things to screw out!

"Locate the trouble?" I ventured.

"Buzzer's out of whack," replied the Man of Awe. "Have to get another spark-coil!" In times of sickness even the sternest man submits to medical tyranny. I ran down a man who once owned a power boat, and he had a spark coil. He finally agreed to forgo the pleasure of possessing it for a suitable reward. Considering the size of that reward, he had undoubtedly become greatly attached to his spark-coil!

I returned in triumph to the doctor. He was now s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up all that he had previously unscrewed.

"Think she'll go now?" I pleaded.

He screwed up several dozen things, and whistled a while. Then the oracle gave voice: "'Fraid the batteries won't do; they're awful weak!"

With a bitter heart, I turned on my heel and went forth once more.

Electrical supplies were not on sale at any of the stores. But I found a number of gentlemen who were evidently connoisseurs in the battery business. They had batteries of which they were extremely fond. They parted with some of superior quality upon the consideration of a friendly regard for me--and a slight emolument on my part. I was evidently very popular.

At a breathless speed I returned to--_not_ to the doctor. He had vanished. Rumor had it that he had gone home to lunch, for the sun was now high. So far as I know, he is still at lunch.

Several things were yet unscrewed. I fell to work. Wherever anything seemed to make a snug fit, I screwed it in. Other remaining things I drove into convenient holes. All the while I begged blind fate to guide me. Then I connected the batteries, supplied the new spark-coil, selected a new spark-plug at random, and screwed it in.

Having done various things, I carefully surveyed my environs for a lady.

There were no ladies present, so I spoke out freely. "And now," said I, having exhausted my vocabulary, "I shall crank!"

Bill and the Kid sat on a pile of rocks looking very sullen. For some reason or other they seemed to doubt that engine. I don't know how long I cranked. I know only that the impossible happened. The boat started for the hotel piazza!

I didn't shut her down this time. I leaped out and took her by the nose.

Putting our shoulders against the power of the screw, we walked her out into the current, headed her down stream, and scrambled in, wet to the ears.

My logbook speaks for that day as follows: "Left Benton at 2:30 P.M. Gypsied along under half gasoline for several hours, safely crossing the Shonkin and Grocondunez bars. Struck a rock in Fontenelle Rapids at 4:30, taking off rudder. Landed with difficulty on a gravel-bar and repaired damages. At 5:30 engine bucked. A heavy wind from the west beat us against a ragged sh.o.r.e for an hour and a half.

Impossible to proceed without power, except by cordelling--which we did, walking waist-deep in the water much of the time. Paddles useless in such a head wind. The wind falling at sunset, we drifted, again losing our rudder while shooting Brule Rapids. Tied up at the head of Black Bluff Rapids at dusk, having made twenty miles out of two thousand for the first day's run. Have to extend that fifteen days! Just the same, that information bureau saw us leave under power!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Dear Reader: Should you undertake the Missouri River trip, don't lay anything out on spark-plugs. I sowed them all along up there.

Take a drag-net. You will scoop up several hundred dry batteries, but don't mind them; they are probably spoiled.]

CHAPTER V

THROUGH THE REGION OF WEIR

We awoke with light hearts on the second morning of the voyage. All about us was the sacred silence of the wilderness dawn. The coming sun had smitten the chill night air into a ghostly fog that lay upon the valley like a fairy lake.

We were at the rim of the Bad Lands and there were no birds to sing; but crows, wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung doleful voices downward into the morning hush--the spirit of the place grown vocal.

Cloaked with the fog, our breakfast fire of driftwood glowed ruddily.

What is there about the tang of wood-smoke in a lonesome place that fills one with glories that seem half memory and half dream? Crouched on my haunches, s.h.i.+vering just enough to feel the beauty there is in fire, I needed only to close my eyes, smarting with the smoke, to feel myself the first man huddled close to the first flame, blooming like a mystic flower in the chill dawn of the world!

Perhaps that is what an outing is for--to strip one down to the lean essentials, press in upon one the glorious privilege of being one's self, unique in all the universe of innumerable unique things. Crouched close to your wilderness campfire, the great Vision comes easily out of the smoke. Once again you feel the bigness of your world, the tremendous significance of everything in it--including yourself--and a far-seeing sadness grips you. Living in the flesh seems so transient, almost a pitiful thing in the last a.n.a.lysis. But somehow you feel that there is something bigger--not beyond it, but all about it continually. And you wonder that you ever hated anyone. You know, somehow, there in the smoky silence, why men are n.o.ble or ign.o.ble; why they lie or die for a principle; why they kill, or suffer martyrdom; why they love and hate and fight; why women smile under burdens, sin splendidly or sordidly--and why hearts sometimes break.

And expanded by the bigness of the empty silent s.p.a.ces about you, like a spirit independent of it and outside of it all, you love the great red straining Heart of Man more than you could ever love it at your desk in town. And you want to get up and move--push on through purple distances--whither? Oh, anywhere will do! What you seek is at the end of the rainbow; it is in the azure of distance; it is just behind the glow of the sunset, and close under the dawn. And the glorious thing about it is that you know you'll never find it until you reach that lone, ghostly land where the North Star sets, perhaps. You're merely glad to know that you're not a vegetable--and that the trail never really ends anywhere.

Just now, however, the longing for the abstract had the semblance of a longing for the concrete. It always has that semblance, for that matter.

You never really want what you think you are seeking. Touch the substance--and away you go after the shadow!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ATOM" SAILING UP-STREAM IN A HEAD WIND.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPICAL RAPIDS ON UPPER MISSOURI.]

Around the bend lay Sioux City. Around what bend? What matter? Somewhere down stream the last bend lay, and in between lay the playing of the game. Any bend will do to sail around! There's a lot of fun in merely being able to move about and do things. For this reason I am overwhelmed with grat.i.tude whenever I think that, through some slight error in the cosmic process, the life forces that glow in me might have been flung into a turnip--_but weren't_! The thought is truly appalling--isn't it?