The River and I

was the sacred silence of the wilderness dawn. The coming sun had smitten the

; but crows, wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung doleful voice

lories that seem half memory and half dream? Crouched on my haunches, shivering just enough to feel the beauty there is in fire, I needed only to close my

e 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 analysis. But somehow you feel that there is something bigger-not beyond it, but all about it continually. And

o 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 gl

the concrete. It always has that semblance, for that matter. You never really want

g Up-Stream i

ids on Uppe

med with gratitude 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? The avoidance of that one awful possibility is enough to make any ma

souri is merely a succession of lakes and rapids. In the low-water season, this statement should be italicised. When you are pushing down with the power of your arms alone the rapids show you how fast

later, we grounded on Archer's Bar and shut down. After dragging her off the gravel, we discovered that the engine wished to sleep. No amount of cranking

t. We hastily rigged a tarp on a pair of oars spliced for a mast, and proceede

ill the s

t noise t

rse patches of greenery, seemed to waver as though seen through shimmering silken gauze. And over it all was the hush of a dream, exc

ses of the bull-berry bushes lifted like smoke, and from them, flame-like, flashed the vivid

naws and the keel-boats and the thousands of men who had pushed through this dream-world and the thought was unconvincing. Fairies may have lived here, indeed; and in the youth o

out a bend, raced with a quartering wind down the next reach, shot across another bend-and lay drifting in a golden calm. Still a

, suddenly struck us full in front. Sucking up river between the wall rocks on either side, its force was terrific. You tried to talk while facing

ank we were following became a precipice rising sheer from the river's edge, and the water deepened until we could no longer wade. We got in and poled on to the next shallows, often for many minutes at a time barely holding our own against the stiff gusts. For two hours we dragged the heavily laden

ian section hands whiling away their Sunday with fishing rods. I went ashore, hoping to buy some fish. Neither of the two could speak English, and Italian sounds

r some reason or other that strain had been in my head all day. I had gotten up in the morning with it; I had whistled

the manner of an orchestra leader and joined in with me. I stopped-because I saw that he could whistle. He carried

he said

co. We sat down on the rocks and smoked together, holding a wor

. And I went to sleep that night with a glorious thought for a pillow: Truth expressed as Art is the universal la

and we were cooking breakfast. A lone, gray wolf, sitting on his haunches a hundred paces away, regarded us cur

Rather the

evening we had rigged a cat-sail, and noiselessly we glided

the cloudless sky. Worn by the ebbing floods of a prehistoric sea, carv

ring foe. Titanic stools of stone dotted barren garden slopes, where surely gods had once strolled in that far time when the stars sang and the moon was young. Dark red walls of regularly laid stone-huge as that the Chinese flung before the advance of the Northern hordes-held imaginary empires asunder. Poised on a dizzy peak, Jove's eagle stared into the eye of the sun, and raised his wings for the flig

or once I had no regrets about that engine. The popping of t

aches. Across the sacred whiteness of that cathedral's imposing mass, no sign has ever been painted telling you the

towers. Surely a lovelorn maiden spins at that castle window, weaving her heartache into the magic figures of her loom. Stately dames must move behind the shut doors of those pill

emed only an incidental portion of this dream in which the deepest passions of man were bodied forth in eternal fixity. Towers of battle, domes of prayer

that we were nearing Eagle Rapids, the first of a turbulent series. I had fondly anticipated shooting them all under power. So once mo

it, and pulled out the other things. The odds, I figured, were in my favor. A sick engine is useless, and I felt assured of either

ion of the seemingly wise, that Eagle Rapids was the first of a series that made the other rapids we had passed through look

ves up with the power of the "steam nigger." I also remembered the words of Father de Smet: "T

splace nearly three hundred and fifty pounds of water, and the boat and engine, submerged, would lose a certain weight. I had made the gruesome calculation with fond attention to detail. I decided that she should be wrecked quite arithmetically. We should

eird delight in placing in jeopardy that which is dearest. Even a coward with his fingers clenched desperately on t

lightning, and many other things that are none of his business. Only, to be sure, he intends to get away safely with his information. When you think you see your finish bowing to receive yo

le of the resurrected engine. We had covered about ten miles, when a strange sighing sound grew up about us. It seemed to emanate f

d sighed about us. Little by little a new note crept in-a sibilant, metal

he First Town

to the

lake. We jogged on for a mile, with the invisible moaning presence about us. It was somewhat like the intan

e the hissing of innumerable snakes against a tonal background of muffled continuous thunder. A hundred yards before

tic of them had little charm for me. I seized the spark-lever, intending to shut down. Inste

t made you see purple? It was that sort of purple I saw (or did I hear it like music?) when we plunged under full speed into the first suck of the rapids. We seemed a conscious ar

strangely: "Where the devil do you suppose our life-preserv

nt sheet of water seemed to be rushing backward, splitting itself over the prow, l

t and gold through the sombre green of the pines-like the riotous treble cries of an organ pricking

inel. It was the famous Sentinel Rock of the old steamboat days. I shut the engine down to

ike despair, purple like the lips of a strangled man, clung there. I remembered an old spring I used to haunt when I was just old enough to be awed

I am afraid I could not swim long in clear waters with those fearful colors und

aggard with time it caught the sun. I thought of how long it had stood there just so, under the intermittent fla

t it-divinely extravagant, many-colored as fire. And this too flashed out-like the impossible dream of a god too young. And the Great Change came, and the paradox of frost was in the world, stripping life down to the lean essentials till only the sane, capable things might live. And still the Titan stared as in the beginning. And then, men were in t

forward through the river hush. I wanted to get away from this thing that had seen so much of life and cared so little. It depressed me strangely; it thrust bitter questions within

when I was a boy and far from home, I awoke in the night with a bed of railroad ties under me, and the chill black blanket of the darkness about me. I wanted to get up and run through that damned night-anywhere, just so I went fast enough-stopping only w

hic hunger for something that does not exist. Oh, to attain the terrible speed one experien

. And whenever one is deeply moved, he feels it. For even the most matter-of-fact person of us all has now and then a suspicion that this life

-human in their suggestiveness. Those who have marveled at

-in-the-wall Rock. It was deep and safe-much like an exaggerat

d, and began to develop a slight contempt for fast waters. That night we camped at the mouth of the Judith River on the site of the now f

e about seventeen miles below, and since this particular patch of water had by far

spitefully, had half a notion to stop, changed its mind, ran faster than it should, wheezed and

l was narrow, and no rocks appeared above the surface. But speed was there; and the almost noiseless rolling of the swift flood ahead had a more formidable appearance than that of the E

n the main swirl of the rapids seized us, we no doubt reached twenty-five. I was grasping the rudder

was about

wn to solid water. Bill, decorated with a grin, sat amidships facing us. I

w, for a brief moment, a good three-fourths of the frail craft thrust skyward at an angle of about forty-five degrees. Then she stuck her nose in the water and her screw came

ourselves up and wondered if she might be taking water under the cargo. It developed that she wasn't. But one of our grub boxes, containing

struction would have opened at every seam. The light springy tough construction of the

many miles from available bacon, and when, upon trial, the engine ref

a devilish persistence we quite exhausted the subject. We discussed the best methods for making a beefsteak delicious. It made us very hungry for meat. The Kid announced that he could feel his backbone sawing at the front of his shirt. But perhaps that was only the hyperbole of youth. Bill c

We spent most of the morning talking about it. In the blistering windless a

a narrow arid sagebrush strip along both sides of the stream. I had straightened up to get the kink out of

eafless brush moved slowly into the water. Now it appeared quite distinct, and now it seemed that a film of oil all but blotted it out. I bli

thing eight hundred yards away was forging across stream by this time-heading for the mouth

ee. The sagebrush concealed me. At the critical moment, I intended to show myself and start him up the steep slope. Thus he would be forced to approach me while fleeing me. When I felt that enough ti

various long ranges, I would have called it six hundred yards-at first. Then suddenly it seemed three

leaped from the cliff a foot or so above the deer's back. Only four hundred? But the deer had ma

sh

pp

hough a great weight had been dropped on it. But he went on with increased speed. Once more I let him

e you kill, you became the sort of fellow your mother wouldn't like. Perhaps the average man would feel a little ashamed to tell the truth about that savage mo

at led back into the utterly God-forsaken Bad Lands. It was the wilderness indeed. Co

e them the choice portions of our kill. An

ristmas time with turkey and pumpkin-pies and old-fashioned puddings before you, and the ones you love about you. I have been deeply happy with apple

he flaring light of a night fire-the feast of your own kill