Tenting Tonight Part 4

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Bear-gra.s.s_]

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-gra.s.s. But there were ma.s.ses everywhere of June roses, true forget-me-nots, and larkspur. And everywhere in the burnt areas was the fireweed, that phoenix 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. I loathed 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 pa.s.sed 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 a point and frequently hidden under a cap of clouds.

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 b.u.t.ter. Breakfast would have to be a repet.i.tion minus the potatoes. We were just a little low in our minds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A Glacier Park lake_]

The last thing I saw that night was the cook'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 s.p.a.ce, 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 wild cheering 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 a.s.sistant cook, the college boy who was taking his vacation in the wilds, whistling the Dvo[vr]ak "Humoresque" as he dried the dishes on a piece of clean sacking.

VI

RUNNING THE RAPIDS OF THE FLATHEAD

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, detoured, 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-gla.s.s 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 canons we were to travel. I turned around and looked at the Family. It was my ambition that had brought them to this. We might never again 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 not going 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 had been 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 gla.s.sy 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 pa.s.sengers each. For the sake of my story, I was to take the entire trip; the others were to alternate.

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.