Down the Yellowstone Part 2

More important still--a point respecting which I had been most in doubt,--we stopped there.

Already considerably shaken in nerve, I tried to dissuade Clark from attempting his slide. Replying that the stunt was a part of his daily routine for keeping his wits on edge, he "corduroyed" off up the side of the canyon, which at that point has a slope of about forty-five degrees.

When he was perhaps a hundred feet above my head, he laid hold of a sapling, swung quickly around, and shot full-tilt for the icy brink. I was sure he intended to kill himself, just as so many cracked inventors do. A sudden numbness seized me. The roar of the fall grew deafening, and I involuntarily closed my eyes. There was a thud and a crash, a shower of fine snow flew over me. Then the roar of the fall resumed.

When I mustered up the courage to open my eyes, it was to discover my mad companion cautiously drawing himself back from the brink. He had stopped, as usual, by throwing himself on his side and digging the edges of his ski into the frozen snow. Although he wouldn't admit it, I am certain he kept going an inch or two more than was his wont, for one long strip of hickory was swinging free beyond the icy edge and the other held by only a thin ridge of hard snow.

While he was still thus poised on the brink of Kingdom Come, or rather the Falls of the Yellowstone, Clark insisted on explaining to me the principle of a parachute cape he had devised for use in such an emergency. He reckoned that it would not only help in checking his momentum at the proper moment, but would also have a tendency to make his landing much less painful in the event he went over. I am wondering tonight if all inventors are like that. Clark is the first genius I have ever known, so I can't be quite sure.

Grand Canyon Station, April 10.

Clark and Smith took me out for a ski-jumping lesson this morning. Clark seems to be rather a star performer in all departments of ski work, but he claims that he is better at jumping than at anything else. What the long, straight drive, hit cleanly from the tee, is to the golfer, what the five rails, fairly taken, is to the cross-country rider, what the dash down a rocky-walled canyon is to the river boatman, the jump is to the ski-runner. But what the foozle is to the golfer, the cropper to the rider, the spill in midstream to the boatman, the fall at the end of the jump is to the ski-man. I saw both the jump and the fall today. Or rather, I saw the jump and _felt_ the fall. If I saw anything at all, it was stars.

The jump is made from a raised "take-off" at the foot of a hill. The steeper the hill the better. The snow slopes up from the foot of the hill to the brink of the "take-off," where it ends abruptly. The jumper goes off up the hill for a quarter of a mile or so, turns round and coasts down at full speed. Leaving the "take-off" at a mile or more a minute, it is inevitable that he must be shot a considerable distance through the air. If he is well balanced at the proper moment he naturally sails a lot farther than if he is floundering and Dutch-windmilling with his arms. Also, he messes himself and the snow up a lot less when he lands.

Considering their short runway and crudely built "take-off," the sixty feet Clark cleared this morning was a fairly creditable performance, though probably less than half what some of the cracks do in Norway.

Naturally, I could hardly be expected to do as well as that. It was only on the last of a dozen trials that I managed to coast all the way to the brink of the "take-off" without falling, and even then I was not sufficiently under control to stream-line properly and so minimize air resistance. Under the circ.u.mstances, therefore, I am rather pleased with Clark's verdict anent my maiden effort. He said I hit harder and showed less damage from it than any man in the Park.

Grand Canyon Station, April 11.

This morning we went down to Inspiration Point to watch the sunrise.

Never before did I realize how inadequate the most pretentious descriptions of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone all are. The greatest of the world's word painters have only succeeded in stringing together a lot of colours like the variegated tags on a paint company's sample sheet, throwing in a liberal supply of trope and hyperbole, making a few comparisons to heaven and h.e.l.l, sunrise and sunset and a field of flowers, and mixing the whole together and serving it up garnished with adjectives of the awful, terrible, immense and stupendous order.

It is not in singling out each crag and pinnacle, or in separating each bright streak of colour from its neighbour and admiring it alone, that one comes to the fullest appreciation of the grandeur and beauty of the canyon. It is rather in being gradually taken possession of by the spirit of the place, an influence that lasts long after you have ceased to look, a feeling far deeper than the mere transient delight of gazing on a beautiful picture.

Yesterday's thaw must have raised the water in the Lake. The river is much higher today, and the snow-bridges above the falls, as well as the heaped-in drifts below, are breaking away in huge ma.s.ses. The snow-cap on the brink, with the water gus.h.i.+ng forth from under it, has much the appearance of a gigantic alabaster gargoyle. The river shoots down under the snow and leaps out over the chasm in a clean compact stream of bottle-green. Half-way down the resistance of the air has whitened the jet, and as it disappears behind the great pile at its foot it is dashed to a spray so snowy that, from a distance, the line between water and drift defies the eye to fix.

As we edged our way out to a better position the sun rose and threw a series of three rainbows in the mist clouds as they floated up out of the shadowed depths. The lowest and clearest of these semi-circles of irised spray seemed to spring from a patch of bright saffron sand, where it was laid bare by the melting snow. Now I know where the story of the gold at the end of the rainbow came from.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

THE FALLS IN WINTER FROM POINT LOOKOUT]

Lake Station, April 12.

Carr and I tried to come through from the Canyon by moonlight last night and had rather a bad time of it. First a fog obscured the moon. Then we tried to take a short cut by following the telephone line, got lost in the dark, and staid lost till the moon set and made it darker still. In cutting across the hills to get back into Hayden Valley, Carr fell over a snow-bank and landed right in the middle of the road, where it had been laid bare by the heat of hot springs. Starting again, we came to the top of a hill and coasted down at a smart gait. As we sped to the bottom I became aware of a dark blur beyond the white of the snow. Then there was a sudden stoppage, and I seemed to see a re-risen moon, with a whole cortege of comets in its wake, dancing about the sky. I came to at the touch of a handful of snow on my face, to learn that I had coasted right onto a bare spot in the road and stopped in half a ski-length. My heavily loaded knapsack, shooting along the line of least resistance up my spine, had come into violent contact with the back of my head, producing the astronomical pyrotechnic illusion.

After a while we were lost again, this time in a level s.p.a.ce bounded on four sides by a winding creek. I know it was on four sides of the place, for we carefully walked off toward each point of the compa.s.s in rotation, and each time landed in the creek. We finally escaped by wading. How we got in without wading will always be a mystery. Carr said the stream was called Trout Creek. Doubtless he is right; but if there were any trout over six inches long there last night they must have been permanently disjointed at more than one vertebral connection by having to conform to those confounded bends.

We pa.s.sed the famous and only Mud Geyser an hour before daybreak. Things were in a bad way with him, judging from the noise. The mutterings of the old mud-slinger in his quieter moments reminds me very much of a Chilkat Mission Indian reciting the Lord's Prayer in his native tongue--just a rapid succession of deep gutturals. But when some particularly indigestible concoction--served, possibly by subterranean dumb-waiter from the adjacent Devil's Kitchen--interferes with the gastronomies of the old epicure, his voice is anything but prayerful.

Carr said it reminded him of something between a mad bull buffalo and a boat load of seasick tourists when the summer wind stirs up the Lake.

But Carr was too tired and disgusted to be elegant. Indeed, we were both pretty well played out. Personally, I felt just about like the Mud Geyser sounded.

After about an hour's groping in the dark, we found an emergency cabin near the Mud Geyser. Building a fire, we warmed and ate a can of salmon.

When it was light enough to see, we slipped on the ski and came through on the crust in short order.

Thumb Emergency Cabin, April 15.

Making a start before daybreak, we crossed Yellowstone Lake on the ice.

It was a wonderful opportunity to watch the light and shade effects on the encircling mountains. Far to the south-west there is a very striking pyramidal peak. Two flat snow-paved slopes of the mighty pile, divided by an even ridge of black rock that rears itself in sharp contrast to the beds of white that bulwark the base, form the sides of the pyramid.

The southeastern side so lies that it catches the first rays of the morning sun and sends them off in s.h.i.+mmering streamers across the lake--Nature's heliographic signal of the coming day.

An hour or more later the sun itself appears above the eastern hills, silvering the tops of the frosted fir trees and whitening the vaporous clouds above Steamboat Point and Brimstone Basin. The green ice in the little glaciers near the summit of the big mountain kindle and sparkle like handfuls of emeralds, and the reflected sun-flashes play in quivering motes of dancing light on the snowy flanks of Elephant Back.

Meanwhile the south-west face of the great pyramid, lying in heavy shadow, sleeps dull and black until the morning is well advanced. Then, suddenly, without a perceptible premonitory fading of the shadow plane, the whole snow-field becomes a s.h.i.+ning sheet, as white and clear-cut as thought carved from alabaster. At noon the sun, standing full above the black dividing line of rock, sheds an impartial light on either side of the mountain. Perspective is lost for the moment, and there appears to be but one broad field of snow, with a black line traced down its middle.

Toward midafternoon the eastern side draws on its coat of black as suddenly as that of the other was cast aside in the morning. Now the former is almost indiscernible, while the latter, gleaming in the sunlight like a great sheet of white paper, seems suspended in the air by invisible wires. And there it continues to hang, while the shadows deepen along the sh.o.r.es and creep out over the ice in wavering lines as night descends upon the frozen lake. Gradually the white sheet fades to nothingness, until at last its position is marked only by a blank blur unp.r.i.c.ked by the twinkle of awakening stars.

It is as though the page of the day, new, bright, pure and unsullied in the morning, had at last been turned to the place reserved for it from the dawn of creation, blackened and blemished and stained by the sins of a world of men.

(1922--I am considerably moved--I won't say how or to what--by that little "sins-of-a-world-of-men" touch. It is something to have _begun_ life as a moralist, anyhow.)

Fountain Station, April 17.

This morning it was colder again, and we were witness of a most wonderful sight when a snow squall chanced along while the Fountain Geyser was in full eruption. The storm swooped down with sudden fury while we were watching the steam jets in the Mammoth Paint Pot throw evanescent lilies and roses in the coloured mud. We were waiting for the Great Fountain, most beautiful of all the geysers of the Park, to get over her fit of coyness and burst into action. The Fountain, by the way, is one of the few geysers always spoken of in the feminine gender. I asked if this was on account of her beauty, but Carr, who had a wife once, thinks her uncertainty of temper had more to do with it.

The imperious advance of the Storm King seemed still further to intimidate the bashful beauty, and at first she only shrank the deeper into her subterranean bower. But when the little snowflakes, like gentle but persistent caresses, began to shower softly upon the bosom of the pool the silver bubbles came surging up with a rush. In a moment more, as a maid overcome with the fervour of her love springs to the arms of her lover, the queenly geyser leaped forth in all her splendour, eight feet of beaming, bubbling green and white thrown with precipitate eagerness upon the bosom of the Storm King. Whereupon the latter threw all restraint to the winds and responded with a gust of bold, bl.u.s.tering, ungovernable pa.s.sion. Roaring in his triumph, beating and winding her in sheets of driven snow, he grappled her in his might and bent her back and down until the great steam-clouds from her crest, like coils of flowing hair, were blown in curling ma.s.ses along the earth.

For a full half hour they struggled in reckless abandon, granting full play to the ardour of their elemental pa.s.sions, reeling and swaying in advance and retreat, as the mighty forces controlling them alternated in mastery. When the gusts fell light the geyser played to her full height, melting a wide circle in the snow that had been driven up to her very mouth. When the wind came again she bent, quivering to his will, but only to spring back erect as the gust weakened and died down.

Presently the storm pa.s.sed, the sun came out and the north wind ceased to blow. Full of the gladness of her love, the queenly geyser reared, rippling, to her full height, held for a moment, a coruscating tower of brilliants, and then, with little sobs and gasps of happiness and contentment, sank back into her crystal chamber to dream and await the next coming of her impetuous northern lover. Or so I fancied, at any rate, as we watched the water sink away into the beryline depths of its crater. But I failed to reckon with the s.e.x of the beauty. This afternoon, returning from a visit to Fairy Falls, we pa.s.sed over the formation. An indolent young breeze, just awakened from his siesta among the southern hills, came picking his way up the valley of the Madison, and the fickle Fountain was fairly choking in her eagerness to tell how glad she was to see him. But her faithlessness had its proper reward.

The blase blade pa.s.sed the flirtatious jade by without deigning even to ruffle her steam-cloud hair. The soldiers said he had probably gone on to keep an engagement at the Punch Bowl, where he has been in the habit of stirring things up a bit with a giddy young zephyr who blows in to meet him there from down Snake River way.

Norris Station, April 18.

This has been a memorable day, for in the course of it I have seen two of the most famous manifestations of the Yellowstone in action--the Giant Geyser erupting and Bill Wade swearing. The Giant is the biggest geyser in America, and Bill Wade is reputed to have the largest vocabulary of one-language profanity in the North-west. True, there is said to be a chap over in the legislature at Helena that can out-cuss Wade under certain conditions, but he is college bred, speaks four languages and has to be under the influence of liquor to do consistent work. Wade requires no artificial stimulants, but he does have to get mad before he can do himself full justice. Today something happened to make him sizzling mad. The eruption of the Giant is startling and beautiful, the river, as it takes its three-hundred-foot leap to the depths of the Grand Canyon, is sublime and awe-inspiring, but for sheer fearsomeness Wade's swearing--viewed dispa.s.sionately and with no consideration of its ethical bearing--is the real wonder of the Yellowstone.

We were climbing the hill back of the Fountain Hotel--Wade, two troopers and myself. Wade, who is the winter keeper of the hotel and not too skilled with ski, tried to push straight up the steep slope. Half-way to the top he slipped, fell over a stump, gained fresh impetus and came bounding to the bottom over the hard crust, a wildly waving pin-wheel of arms, legs and clattering ski. He was torn, bruised and scratched from the brush and trees, and one of his long "hickories" was snapped at the instep. For the moment he uttered no word, but the soldiers, who knew what was coming, held their breath and waited in trembling antic.i.p.ation.

The air was charged as before a thunder-storm. A hush fell upon us all, a hush like the silence that settles upon a ring of tourists around Old Faithful as the boiling water, sinking back with gurgling growls, heralds the imminent eruption.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_J. E. Haynes, St. Paul_

THE GIANT IS THE BIGGEST GEYSER IN NORTH AMERICA]

Wade removed his ski, laid the fragments on the snow and folded his coat across them, as a pious Mussulman spreads his prayer-mat. Seating himself cross-legged on the coat, he cast his eyes heavenward, on his face an expression as pure and pa.s.sionless as that on the countenance of the Sistine Madonna. For a few moments he was silent, as though putting away earthly things and concentrating his mind on the business in hand.

Then he began to summon the powers of heaven and the powers of h.e.l.l and call them to reckoning. He held them all accountable. Then came the saints--every ill.u.s.trious one in the calendar. Saint by saint he called them and bade them witness the state they had brought him to. Spirits of light, imps of darkness--all were charged in turn.

His voice grew shriller and shriller as his pent-up fury was unleashed.

He cursed snow, hill, snags, stumps, trees and ski. He cursed by the eyes, as the sailor curses, and by the female progenitor, as the cowboy. He cursed till his face turned from white to red, from red to purple, from purple to black; he cursed till the veins in knots and cords seemed bursting from his forehead; he cursed till his voice sunk from a bellow to a raucous howl, weakened to convulsive gasps and died rattling in his throat, till brain and body reeled under the strain and he sank into a quivering heap at our feet.

I shall always regret that the eruption of the Park's greatest geyser came after, rather than before, that of Wade. Frankly, the spouting of the mighty Giant seemed a bit tame after the forces we had just seen unleashed over behind the hotel.