Down the Yellowstone

er holds the gate to heaven. Horatius stopped all-comers, while Jim, like St. Peter, passed all whom he deemed worthy-that is to say, those able to pay the toll. For the old chap had grade

s, both going and coming. As there were several spare rooms in his comfortable cabin home at the head of the Canyon, many,

to Butte, 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, v

ing 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 g

g a finger at the bar-keeper of the old Albermarle; "but-yes-withou

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E JIM'

s, 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 hav

he 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 régime, I philosophically decided to go ahead with my ski trip th

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 relinquishing that line by asking him if he was afraid I was going to bump 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 t

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

defiance to the rapids of the Yellowstone with the slogan "HICKMAN OR BUST." The letters were still discernible in tarry basrelief. So also the name on bow and stern. (Or

de or on her back rather than right side up. This had caused her to fill with water, and that, while apparently not affecting her buoyancy greatly, had made her cabin uncomfortable. Her owner abandoned her just as soon as she could be brought to bank, selling what was salvable of his outfit and leaving th

frequent intervals along the water lines similar timbers had been spiked, evidently for the purpose of absorbing the impact of rocks and cliffs. She was plainly unsinkable whatever side was upward, but as it was my idea to ballast her in an endeavour to maintain an even keel, I went over her caulking of tarry rags in the h

e in for a while, but gradually stopped as the dry pine swelled with the long-denied moisture. She still rode high after receiving all of a thousand pounds of rocks, but as I did not want to reduce her freeboard too much I let it go at that. She was amazingly steady withal

to be no other eligible candidates. Of "Buckskin Jim" I was not to hear for twenty years, when it chanced that he was again recommended to me as the best available river-man on the

unication with his "little friends up thar." Finally he called me in, closed the door, took my hand and talked balderdash for a quarter of an hour or more. I made note in my diary of only three of the several dozen things he told me. One w

hat he needed to get in touch with his "little friends up thar" to know that there was more than an even break that I was going to be doing some floundering ar

e that Curley, the Crow Scout, was not a real survivor of the Custer massacre, but only witnessed a part of the battle from concealment in a nearby coul

he whole forty miles to hear it. When the lecture was over Bob came up to me in the Albermarle and asked me what I thought of it. 'Mr. Ingersoll,' said I, 'I don't like to tell you.' 'I like a man that speaks his mind,' says he; 'go on.' 'Well, Mr. Ingersoll,' said I, 'I think you're making a grievous mistake in standing there and hurting the feelings, an

ad Bob's hide on the fence at the end of five minutes of verbal pyrotechnics. But it was characteristic of Jim that he would neither boast nor talk of Injuns during his non-drinking periods

Of Roscoe Conkling his impressions were not friendly, even in the benevolence of his present mood. "Conkling caught the biggest fish a tourist ever caught in the Canyon," he said, "He was a great hand with a rod, but, in my candid opinion, greatly over-rated

eddy until Jim could amble down to the second fall and stand-by to signal me my course into that one in turn. And so on down through. Once out of the Canyon there were no bad rapids above Livingston. I was to take nothing with me save my camera. My bags were to remain in Jim's cabin until he had seen me pass from s

o meeting the Canyon walls strength for strength. I knew I had considerable endurance as a swimmer, and I was fairly confident that a head that had survived several seasons of old style mass-play football ought not to be seriously damaged by the rocks of the Yellowstone. Well, I was not right-only lucky. Not one of the considerations on which my confidence was based really weighed the weight of a straw in my f

sun-shot morning sky. I think the presence of that girl had a deal to do with the impending disaster, for I would never have thought of showing off if none but Jim had been there. But something told me that the exquisite creature could not but admire the sang froid of a youth who would let his boat

I might have worried the Mule over in that direction, and headed right for a clean run through. As it was, the contrary brute simply took the bit in her teeth and went waltzing straight for the reef of barely submerged rock at the head of th

ame time the refluent wave from below began pouring across the down-stream gunwale. The more she heeled the more ballast she lost and the more water she shipped. Fortunately most of the boulders had gone before the pin of the stern-sweep broke and precipitated me

WITH A TROUT

IRST DROP IN "YA

d started to follow me. Right down the middle of the riffle she came, wallowing mightily but shipping very little additional water. Holding my oar under one arm and paddling lightly against the current with my other, I waited till the

regained her head and was running away down mid-channel regardless of obstacles. He stumbled and went down even as I watched him with the tail of my eye. The Gingham Girl pulled him to his feet and he seemed to be leaning heavily against her fine shoulder as the Mule whisked me out of sight around the next b

e oar, so it was rather by good luck than anything else that the Mule hit the next pitch head-on and galloped down it with considerable smartness. When she reeled through another rapid beam-on without shipping more than a bucket or two of green water I concluded she was quite able to take care of herself, and so sat down to enjo

breadth of a hair when the Mule, driving at all of fifteen miles an hour, crashed into it with the shattering force of a battering-ram. Indeed, everything considered, it speaks a lot for her construction that she simply telescoped instead of resolving into cosmic star-dust. Even the telescoping was not quite complete. Although there were a number of loose planks and timbers floati

ly built raft of logs is its stability. It is almost impossible to upset. The remains of the Mule had about as much stability as a toe-dancer, and all of

dvance of the times, for she reduced both weight and bulk by all of a quarter in that one series of rolls. I myself, after she had spilled me out at the head

I found it best to swim ahead and flounder through on my own. I was not in serious trouble at any time, for much the worst of the rapids had been those at the head of the Canyon. Had I been really hard put for it, there were a dozen plac

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YANKEE JI

bank. Taking stock of damages, I found that my own scratches and bruises, like Beauty, were hardly more than skin deep, while the Mule, especially if her remaining spikes could be tightened up a bit, had still considerable rafting po

across the sleepers, was a heavy strip of rusty iron, pierced at even intervals with round holes. Telling myself that I might well go farther and fare worse in my quest for a tool to drive spikes with, I snatched it up and returned to the river. Scarcely had my lusty blows upon the Mule's sagging ribs begun to resound, however, than a great commoti

I discovered a couple of minutes later when I found him and three Italians madly bolting it

akin' spalpheen," he roared as the train t

foot steel wrench; "I only borrowed a piece of rusty iron. I didn't see any fish-plate. I didn't even know where your lunch buckets are. I wish

a contryvance fer to eat off uv! An' it's jest through the Canyon he's swam! An' it's hoongry an' wet thot he is! Bejabbers then, we won't be afth

-shape as possible for a further run. The boss led his gang in a cheer as they pushed me off into the current, and the last I saw of him he was still guffawing mightily over his little fish-plate joke. As a matter of fact, since Mike in his exciteme

and each of these was sprinkled as thickly with spike-points as a Hindu fakir's bed of nails. One plank, by a curious coincidence, was the strake that had originally borne the defiant slogan. "HICKMAN OR BUST." Prying it loose from its cumbering mates, I shoved it gently out into the current. There was no question that Kentucky Mule was busted, but it struck me as the sportin

ags and camera, which good old "Yankee Jim" had punctually forwarded by the train I had so nearly wrecked