Down the Yellowstone Part 3

Wade, coming through to Norris with us this afternoon, got into more trouble. Unfortunately, too, it was under conditions which made it impracticable to relieve his feelings in a swear-fest. The snow around the Fountain was nearly all gone when we started, and we found it only in patches along the road down to the Madison. After carrying our ski for a mile without being able to use them, we decided on Holt's advice, to take the old wood trail over the hills. This, though rough and steep, was well covered with snow. We all took a good many tumbles in dodging trees and scrambling through the brush, Wade being particularly unfortunate. Finally, however, we reached the top of the long winding hill that leads back to the main road by the Gibbon River. Here we stopped to get our wind and tighten our ski-thongs for the downward plunge. At this point we discovered that the snow of the old road had been much broken and wallowed by some large animals.

"Grizzlies," p.r.o.nounced Holt, as he examined the first of a long row of tracks that led off down the hill. "Do you see those claw marks? Nothing like a grizzly for nailing down his footprints. Doesn't seem to care if you do track him home."

The last words were almost lost as he disappeared, a grey streak, around the first bend. Carr and I hastened to follow, and Wade, awkwardly astride of his pole, brought up the rear. I rounded the turn at a sharp clip, cutting hard on the inside with my pole to keep the trail. Then, swinging into the straight stretch beyond, I waved my pole on high in the approved manner of real ski cracks, and gathered my breath for the downward plunge. And not until the air was beginning to whip my face and my speed was quite beyond control, did I see two great hairy beasts standing up to their shoulders in a hole in the middle of the trail.

Holt was on them even as I looked. Holding his course until he all but reached the wallow, he swerved sharply to the right against the steeply sloping bank, pa.s.sed the bears, and then eased back to the trail again.

A few seconds later he was a twinkling shadow, flitting down the long lane of spruces in the river bottom.

The stolid brutes never moved from their tracks. I made no endeavour to stop, but, adopting Holt's tactics, managed to give a clumsy imitation of his superlatively clever avoidance of the blockade. Venturing to glance back over my shoulder as I regained the trail, I crossed the points of my ski and was thrown headlong onto the crust. Beyond filling my eyes with snow I was not hurt in the least. My ski thongs were not even broken.

My momentary glance had revealed Wade, eyes popping from his head and face purple with frantic effort, riding his pole and straining every muscle to come to a stop. But all in vain. While I still struggled to get up and under way again, there came a crash and a yell from above, followed by a scuffle and a gust of snorts and snarls. When I regained my feet a few seconds later nothing was visible on the trail but the ends of two long strips of hickory. Scrambling up the side of the cut and falling over each other in their haste, went two panic stricken grizzlies.

Wade kicked out of his ski, crawled up from the hole, and was just about to spread his swear-mat and tell everything and everybody between high heaven and low h.e.l.l what he thought of them for the trick they had played on him when, with a rumbling, quizzical growl, a huge hairy Jack-in-the-Box shot forth from a deep hole on the lower side of the road. Burrowing deep for succulent roots sweet with the first run of spring sap, the biggest grizzly of the lot had escaped the notice of both of us until he reared up on his haunches in an effort to learn what all the racket was about. A push with my pole quickly put me beyond reach of all possible complications. Poor Wade rolled and floundered for a hundred yards through the deep snow before stopping long enough to look back and observe that the third grizzly was beating him three-to-one--in the opposite direction. So profound was his relief that he seemed to forget all about the swear-fest. My companions claim they never knew anything of the kind to happen before.

Norris Station, April 19.

There are a number of things that are forbidden in Yellowstone Park, but the worst one a man can do, short of first degree murder, is to "soap" a geyser. Because the unnatural activity thus brought about is more than likely to result in the destruction of a geyser's digestive system, this offence--and most properly so--is very heavily penalized. Wherefore we are speculating tonight as to what will happen to little Ikey Einstein in case the Superintendent finds out what he did this afternoon.

Ikey has had nothing to do with my tour at any time. That is one thing to be thankful for. Discharged from the Army a few days ago, he had been given some kind of job at the Lake Hotel for the summer. He is on his way there now, he says, and is holding over here for the crust to freeze before pus.h.i.+ng on. Time was hanging rather heavily on his hands this afternoon, which is probably the reason that he cooked up a case of laundry soap in a five-gallon oil can and poured the resultant mess down the crater of "The Minute Man." The latter won its name as a consequence of playing with remarkable regularity practically upon the sixtieth tick of the minute from its last spout. Or, at least, that was what was claimed for it. Ikey maintains that he clocked it for half an hour, and that it never did better than once in eighty seconds, and that it was increasing its interval as the sun declined. He held that a geyser that refused to recognize its duty to live up to its name and reputation should be disciplined--just like in the Army. Perhaps it was discouraged from getting so far behind schedule. If that was the case, plainly the proper thing to do was to help it to make up lost time in one whale of an eruption, and then it might start with a clean slate and live up to its name. He was only acting for the geyser's own good. Thus Ikey, but only after he had put his theory into practice.

Ikey waited until he had the station to himself before cooking up his dope. Holt had pushed on to Mammoth Hot Springs and Carr and I had gone out to watch for the eruption of the Monarch. With no scout and non-com present, he doubtless figured he would run small chance of having his experiment interfered with. Carr and I, sitting on the formation over by the crater of the Monarch, saw him come down with an oil can on his shoulder and start fussing round in the vicinity of "The Minute Man."

Suddenly a series of heavy reverberations shook the formation beneath our feet, and at the same instant Ikey turned tail and started to run.

He was just in time to avoid the deluge from a great gush of water and steam that shot a hundred feet in the air, but not to escape the mountainous discharge of soapsuds that followed in its wake. Within a few seconds that original five gallons of soft soap had been beaten to a million times its original volume, and for a hundred yards to windward it covered the formation in great white, fluffy, iridescent heaps.

Pear's Soap's original "Bubbles" boy wasn't a patch on the sputtering little Hebrew who finally pawed his way to fresh air and suns.h.i.+ne from the outermost of the sparkling saponaceous hillocks. Carr, whose mother had been a washer-woman, almost wept at the visions of his innocent childhood conjured up by the sight of such seas of suds.

For a good half hour "The Minute Man" retched and coughed in desperate efforts to spew forth the nauseous mess that had been poured down its throat. Then its efforts became scattering and spasmodic, finally ceasing entirely. For an hour longer a diminuendo of gasps and gurgles rattled in its racked throat. At last even these ceased, and a death-bed silence fell upon the formation. There has not been the flutter of a pulse since. It really looks as though "The Minute Man," his innermost vitals torn asunder by the terrific expansion of boiling water acting upon soft soap, is dead for good and all. I only hope I am not going to be mixed up in the inquest.

Crystal Springs Emergency Cabin, April 20.

Wade and I had a long and heated session of religious argument at Norris last night, of which I am inclined to think I had a shade the best. A half hour ago, however, he pulled off a coup which he seems to feel has about evened the score. At least I just overheard him telling Carr that, while that "dern'd reporter was a mighty slippery cuss," he reckoned that he finally got the pesky dude where he didn't have nothing more to say. This was something the way of it:

Wade is a sort of amateur agnostic, and, next to swearing, his favourite pastime is arguing "agin the church." He has read Voltaire and Bob Ingersoll in a haphazard way, and also sopped up some queer odds and ends from works on metaphysics and philosophy. These give him his basic ideas which, alchemized in the wonderworking laboratory of his mind, produce some golden theories. He holds, for instance, that no wise and beneficent being would cast a devil out of a woman and into a drove of hogs, because hogs were good to eat and women wasn't. Making the hogs run off a cut-bank into the sea meant spoiling good meat, and no wise and beneficent being would do that. He reckoned the whole yarn was just a bit of bull anyhow, and if it really did happen, wasn't modern science able to account for it by the fact that the girl was plain daffy and the hogs had "trichiny" worms and stampeded?

Little touches like that go a long way toward brightening the gloom of a winter evening, and for that reason I have done what I could to keep Wade on production. Unfortunately, my knowledge of theology is not profound, while Wade, with his wits sharpened on every itinerant sky-pilot who has ever endeavoured to herd in the black sheep of the Yellowstone, has all his guns ready to bear at a moment's notice.

Naturally, therefore, in a matter of straight argument, he has had me on the run from his opening salvo. But always at the last I have robbed his victories of all sweetness by ducking back into the citadel of dogma, and telling him that I can't consent to argue with him unless he sticks to premises--that the Church cannot eliminate the element of faith, which he persists in ignoring. Then, leaving him fuming, I turn in and m.u.f.fle my exposed ear with a pillow.

That was about the way it went last night at Norris, except that both of us, very childishly, lost our tempers and indulged in personalities.

Wade refused to accept the fact of my retirement and violated my rest by staying up and poking the stove. When I uncovered my head to protest, he took the occasion to ask me how I reconciled the theory of the "conservashun" of matter with the story of the loaves and the fishes. I snapped out pettishly that I could reconcile myself to the story of the loaves and fishes a darn site easier than I could to the stories of a fish and a loafer. It was a shameful and inexcusable lapse of breeding on my part, especially as Wade, being a hotel watchman without active duties, was abnormally sensitive about being referred to as a loafer.

At first he seemed to be divided between rus.h.i.+ng me with a poker and sitting down for a swear-fest. Finally, however, he did a much more dignified thing than either by serving flat notice that he would never again speak to me upon any subject whatever.

Wade made a brave effort to stand by his resolve. To my very contrite apology in the morning he turned a deaf ear. Getting himself a hasty breakfast, he kicked into his ski and pushed off down the Mammoth Springs road at four o'clock. When Carr and I started an hour later a drizzling rain had set in, making the going the hardest and most disagreeable of the whole trip. The snow, honey-combed by the rain, offered no support to our ski, and we wallowed to our knees in soft slush. The drizzle increased to a steady downpour as the morning advanced, drenching our clothes till the water ran down and filled our rubber shoes. Buckskin gauntlets soaked through faster then they could be wrung out. It was not long before chilled hands became almost powerless to grasp the slippery steering poles and numbing fingers fumbled helplessly in their efforts to tighten the stretching thongs of rawhide that bound on our ski.

Wade was spitting a steady stream of curses where we pulled up on his heels at the mud flats by Beaver Lake, but sullenly refused to make way for me to take the lead and break trail. Past Obsidian Cliff, on the still half-frozen pavement of broken gla.s.s, the going was better, and I managed to pa.s.s and cut in ahead of the wallowing watchman just before we came to the long avenue of pines running past Crystal Springs. He seemed barely able to drag one sagging knee up past the other, and his half-averted face was seamed deep with lines of weariness. Only the spasmodic movement of his lips told of the unborn curses that his overworked lungs lacked the power to force forth upon the air.

Realizing from the fact that he lacked the breath to curse how desperately near a collapse the fellow must be, I whipped up my own flagging energies with the idea of pus.h.i.+ng on ahead to the cabin and getting a fire started and a pot of coffee boiling. Shouting to Carr to stand by to bring in the remains, I spurted on as fast as I could over the crust which was still far from rotted by the rain. I was a good three hundred yards ahead of my companions when I turned from the road to cross Obsidian Creek to the cabin. A glance back before I entered the trees revealed Wade reeling drunkenly from side to side, with Carr hovering near to catch him when he fell.

A large fir log spanned the deep half-frozen pool beyond which stood the half-snow-buried cabin. The near bank was several feet higher than the far, so that the log sloped downward at a sharp angle. Since, on our outward trip, we had crossed successfully by coasting down the snow-covered top of the log, I a.s.sumed that the feat might be performed again, especially as I was far more adept of the ski now than then. But I failed to reckon on the softening the snow had undergone in the elapsed fortnight. Half-way over the whole right side of the slushy cap sliced off and let me flounder down into the waist-deep pool.

Wade, so Carr says, seemed to sense instantly the meaning of the wild yell that surged up from the creek, and the realization of the glad fact that his tormentor had come a cropper at the log acted like a galvanic shock to revive his all-but-spent energies. I had just got my head above the slushy ice and started cutting loose my ski thongs when he appeared on the bank above. There was triumph in his fatigue-drawn visage, but no mirth. Such was the intensity of his eagerness to speak that for a few moments the gush of words jammed in his throat and throttled coherence.

Then out it came, short, sharp and to the point.

"Now, gol dern ye--what d'ye think o' G.o.d now?" was all he said. Then he kicked out of one of his ski and reached it down for me to climb out by. We did not, nor shall, resume the argument. The man is too terribly in earnest. He has the same spirit--with the reverse English on it, of course--that I had taken for granted had died with the early martyrs.

Mammoth Hot Springs, April 25.

The outside world of ordinary people has pushed in and taken possession of Fort Yellowstone in the fortnight since I left here, and the invasion of the rest of the Park will speedily follow. Two hundred labourers for road work and the first installment of the hotel help arrived last night and today they are swarming over the formations, gaping into the depths of the springs, and setting nails and horseshoes to coat and crust in the mineral-charged water as it trickles down the terraces. Irish and Swedes predominate among both waitresses and shovel-wielders, and as they flock about, open-mouthed with wonder and chattering at the tops of their voices, they remind one of a throng of immigrants just off the steamer. More of the same kind are due today, and still more tomorrow.

Then, worst of all, in another week will come the tourists. But Lob, the good G.o.d of the snows and all his works will be gone by then, thank heaven, and so shall I. Today there has come a letter from "Yankee Jim"

stating that he has located a boat which he reckons will do for a start down the Yellowstone. He fails to say what he reckons it will do after it starts, but I shall doubtless know more on that score at the end of a couple of days.

CHAPTER IV

RUNNING "YANKEE JIM'S CANYON"

Thirty or forty years ago, before the railway came, "Yankee Jim" held the gate to Yellowstone Park very much as Horatius held the bridge across the Tiber. Or perhaps it was more as St. Peter holds the gate to heaven. Horatius stopped all-comers, while Jim, like St. Peter, pa.s.sed all whom he deemed worthy--that is to say, those able to pay the toll.

For the old chap had graded a road over the rocky cliffs hemming in what has since been called "Yankee Jim's Canyon of the Yellowstone," and this would-be Park tourists were permitted to travel at so much per head. As there was no other road into the Park in the early days, Jim established more or less intimate contact with all visitors, both going and coming.

As there were several spare rooms in his comfortable cabin home at the head of the Canyon, many, like Kipling, stopped over for a few days to enjoy the fis.h.i.+ng. The fis.h.i.+ng never disappointed them, and neither did Jim.

But people found Jim interesting and likable for very diverse reasons--that became plain to me before ever I met the delicious old character and was able to form an opinion of my own. A city official of Spokane who had fished at Jim's canyon sometime in the nineties characterized him to me as the most luridly picturesque liar in the North-west. A few days later a fairly well known revivalist, who shared my seat on the train to b.u.t.te, averred that "Yankee Jim" was one of the gentlest and most saintly characters he ever expected to meet outside of heaven. This same divergence of opinion I found to run through all the accounts of those who had written of Jim in connection with their Park visits. He had undoubtedly poured some amazingly bloodthirsty stories into the ready ears of the youthful Kipling when the latter, homeward bound from India, visited the Yellowstone in the late eighties. Some hint of these yarns is given in the second volume of "From Sea to Sea."

Yet it could not have been much earlier than this that Bob Ingersoll and Jim struck sparks, when the famous orator endeavoured to expound his atheistic doctrines on the lecture platform in Livingston. And the witty Bob admitted that on this occasion he found himself more preached against than preaching.

It remained for the Sheriff of Park County, whom I met in Livingston on my way to the Park, to reveal the secret spring of Jim's dual personality. "It all depends upon whether old 'Yankee' is drinking or not," he said. "He puts in on an average of about five days lapping up corn juice and telling the whoppingest lies ever incubated on the Yellowstone and ten days neutralizing the effects of them by talking and living religion. Latterly he's been more and more inclining to spiritualism and clairvoyance. Tells you what is going to happen to you.

Rather uncanny, some of the stuff he gets off; but on the whole a young fellow like you that's looking for copy will find him to pan out better when the black bottle's setting on the table and the talk runs to Injun atrocities. But you're sure to get spirits in any event--if old 'Yankee'

isn't pouring 'em he'll be talking with 'em."

"Spirits are good in any form," I said, nodding gravely and crooking a finger at the bar-keeper of the old Albermarle; "but--yes--without doubt the black bottle promises better returns from my standpoint."

But it was not to be, either sooner or later. Silver of beard and of hair and lamb-gentle of eye, old 'Yankee' fairly swam in an aura of benevolence when I dropped in upon him a couple of days later--and the table was bare. He raised his hands in holy horror when I asked him to tell me Injun fighting stories, and especially of the tortures he had seen and had inflicted. He admitted that such stories had been attributed to him, but couldn't imagine how they had got started. He had lived with the Crows and the Bannocks, it was true, but only as a friend and a man of peace, never as a warrior. Far from ever having been even a pa.s.sive spectator of torture, he had always exerted himself to prevent, or at least to minimise it. And he flattered himself that his efforts along this line had not been without success. He felt that no village in which he had lived but had experienced the civilizing effect of his presence.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

_Courtesy Northern Pacific R. R._

"YANKEE JIM'S" CABIN]

Of course all this was terribly disappointing to a youth who had read of the hair-raising exploits of "Yankee Jim, the White Chief," in yellow-backed shockers, and who had looked forward for weeks to hearing from his thin, hard lips the story of the burning of the squaw at the stake, immortalized by Kipling. Forewarned, however, that it was something like ten to five against my stumbling upon the felicitude of a black-bottle regime, I philosophically decided to go ahead with my ski trip through the Park on the chance that the process of the seasons might bring me better luck on my return. After inducing Jim to undertake either to find or to build me a boat suitable for my contemplated down-river trip, I pushed on to Fort Yellowstone.

Whether the sign of the black bottle wheeled into the ascendant according to calendar reckoning during the three weeks of my absence I never learned. Certainly there was no sign of it either above or below the horizon on my return. Jim was more benevolent than ever, and also (so he a.s.sured me almost at once) in direct communication with his "little friends up thar." He tried hard to dissuade me from tackling the river, urging that a fine upstanding young feller like myself ought to spend his life doing good to others rather than going outer his way to do harm to hisself. I chaffed him into relinquis.h.i.+ng that line by asking him if he was afraid I was going to b.u.mp the edges off some of his canyon scenery. Finally he consented to take me up-river to where an abandoned boat he had discovered was located, but only on condition I should try to get another man to help me run the Canyon. He said he would give what help he could from the bank, but didn't care to expose his old bones to the chance of a wetting. He thought "Buckskin Jim"

Cutler, who owned a ranch nearby, might be willing to go with me as far as Livingston. He was not sure that Cutler had run the Canyon, but in any event he knew it foot by foot, and would be of great help in letting the boat down with ropes at the bad places.

We found the craft we sought about a mile up-stream, where it had been abandoned at the edge of an eddy at the last high-water. It was high and dry on the rocks, and the now rapidly rising river had some ten or twelve feet to go before reaching the careened hull. Plain as it was that neither boat-builder nor even carpenter had had a hand in its construction, there was still no possible doubt of its tremendous strength and capacity to withstand punishment. Jim was under the impression that the timbers and planking from a wrecked bridge had been drawn upon in building it. That boat reminded me of the pictures in my school history of the _Merrimac_, and later, on my first visit to the Nile, the ma.s.sive Temple of Karnak reminded me of that boat.