The River and I

nt feast. There had been no formalities about that meal. Lying on our blankets under the smoke-drift, we had cut with our jack

nt giant in me, the night pressed down. I closed my eyes, and through me ran the sensuous surface fires of her dream-wrought limbs. Upon my face the weird magnetic lure of ever-nearing,

one vast whole-sun-shot, star-sprent, love-filled, changeless. And in it all, one spot of consciousness more acute than other spots; and that was the something that

-drift; through immeasurable night, pierced capriciously with shafts of paradoxic day; through and beyond the awful circle of yearless duration, my ego lived and knew itself and thrilled with the glory of being. The slowly revolving Milky Way was only a

hunks of venison. And then the universe and I, curiously mixed, swooned into nothi

weeks we had learned of their remarkable ability as cooks. Frank was a little Canadian Frenchman, and Charley was English. Both, in the parlance of the road, were "floaters"; that is to say, no locality ever kn

king, and we would take them in tow. Two days after we dropped out of Benton, they had abruptly "jumped" an

had been uniformly successful in disguising the most familiar articles of diet; and Bill was perhaps least unsuccessful in the making of flapjacks. According to his na?ve statement, he had discovered the trick of mixing the batter wh

d was a hewer and packer of wood, I was a peeler and slicer of things, and Bill, sweetly oblivious of

and bring me this! Oh, yes, and bring me that! And you'll find the other in the bottom of the skiff's forward locker!

er, of course! It was the one thing in the worl

duet; and the raw materials, ranged in the sand about the fire, were the keys. Frank touch

ed. Three or four gasoline cans, transformed by a jack-knife into skillets, ovens, platters, etc., suff

hen the virile, unerring directness, the seemingly easy accomplishment resulting fro

hod struck me as poetic. He scorned the ordinary uninspired cook's manner of turning the half-baked cake. One side being done, he waited until the ditty reached a certain lilting upward leap in the refrain, when,

ste that song i

oked the value of song as an adjunct to cookery. Gateaux

ng carefully impressed upon the Englishman the honor I would do him by allowing him to become chief engineer of the Atom. I carefully avoided the subject of cranking. I was tired cranking. I felt that I had exhausted the possibilities o

sang the praises of the Englishman, with a comfortable fe

nto valleys of wondrous beauty, flanked by jagged miniature mountains transfigured in the slant evening light. It seemed the "f?rie land forlorn"

erent directions, went hunting for the Missouri River. It had flattened out into a lake three or four hundred yards wide and eight inches deep. Slipping poles under the power boat, we ca

Irishman, a Cornishman, and a German. A very strong quintet it was; that is to say, strong on volume. As to quality-we weren't th

arefooted, freckle-faced plowboy singing powerfully and quite out of tune, the stubble fields about him still glistening with the morning dew, and the meadow larks joining in from the fence-posts? I have: and soaring

olled up in our blankets by the fire and "swapped lies," dropping off one at a time into sleep until the last speaker f

each the end of his journey by that method. In addition to this, our gasoline was running low. We had trusted to irrigation plants for replenishing our supply from time to time. But the great flood of the spring had swept the valley clean. Where the year before there were prosperous ranch establishments with gasoline pumping plants, there was only desolation now. It was as though we traveled in the path of a devastating army. Perhaps the summer of 1908 was the most unfavo

cked the switch and the box-car and the sign. Just now Rocky Point lay ahead of us. Rocky Point meant a new supply of food and oil. Stimulated by this thought, Charley cranked heroically under t

on the operating table. Each time we su

he "town" so deeply longed for, a l

Rocky Poin

s!" drawled the horseman. (How carelessly

tle place, isn't

nswered the cow-p

own of importance?" I had visions of a bud

lained the rider; "w'y, they've got ni

successful fit of cranking, straightened the kink out of

ind that the place consisted of a log ranch-house, two women, an old man, and "Texas." The cattle and the other men were scattered over a hundred miles or so of range. The women either would not or could not

son bull's, and a drawling fog-horn voice, ran a saloon in an odd litt

iver," he bellowed drawlingly; "and you sur

okes of Rabelaisian directness. We laughed heartily, and as a mark of his appreciation, he gave u

lves believe that the gasoline was too low in the tank, that the pressure of the oil had something to do with it. At first we

ood and found some half-rotted two-by-sixes. These we hacked into paddle

rovisions, Charley and I, the Kid at the steering rope, set out pushing

nison all day; but there was none for supper. In spite of a night's smoking, all of it had spoiled. This left us without meat. Our provisions now consisted mostly of flour. We had a few potatoes and some toasted wind called "breakfast food." During six or seven hours of hard work at the paddles, we had covered no more than fifteen miles. These facts put together gave no promis

Boats over

er Missouri

th of t

that man to whom it is not given to test all of his friends. This is not cynicism; it is only human nature; and I love human nature, being myself possessed of so much of

ith the joy

er and fail, a

broken hope for a

oad station would hold out no temptation to him. He was a kid, but manhood has little to do with age. It must exist from the first like a tang of iron in the bl

ters" were irritable, quarreling with the fire, the grub, the

e engine under any conditions, I decided to travel day and night, for the water was falling steadily and already the channels were at times hard to find. Charley and Frank gr

wless chilly blue. The surface of the river was like polished ebony-a dream-path wrought of gloom and gleam. The banks were lines of dusk, e

on, yet we moved. The sky seemed as much below as above. We seemed suspended in a hollow globe. Now and then the boom of a diving beaver's tail

t down after it. At random I chose a record and set the machine going. It was a Chopin Nocturne played on a 'cello-a vocal yearning, a wailing of frustrate aspirations, a bru

expressed it! It seemed too humanly near-sighted, too egotistic, too

ng womanly about Night, something loverlike in a vast impersonal way; but too big-she is too terribly big to woo with human sentiment. Only a windlike chant would do-something with an undertone of hu

ar played by an orchestra. It filled the night, swept the glittering reaches, groped about in the glooms; and then, leaving the human theme behind, soul-like the upward yearning

ly. Frank's cigarette glowed intermittently against the dim horizon, like a bonfire far off. Somewhere out in

urora. Not the pale, ragged glow, sputtering like the ghost of a huge lamp-flame, which is familiar to every one, but a billowing of color, rainbows gone mad! In the northeast the long roll

pirouetting across a carpet of stars. Then suddenly it all fell into a dull ember-glow and flashed out. The ragged moon dropp

nly. A light wind had arisen and we were fast on a bar. Frank and

l deer was drinking at the river's edge three hundred yards away. So far as we were concerned, it was a d

ter. We all got out in the stream that felt icy to us, and waded the c

not water but a thick frore fog. I smelled persimmons distinctly-it was that cold; brown spicy persimmons sm

addles, and the waves, rolling at least four feet from trough to crest, made it impossible to hold the boat in course. We quit paddling, and got out in the water with the line. Two pulled and one pushed. All day we waded, sometimes up to our ne

hoddy hope held out by that magic name-Milk River. We knew too well that Milk River was only a snare and a delusion; but one must fight toward someth

ng to the pull. Noon came and still we had not overtaken the skiff. Dark came, and we had not yet sighted it.

We made twelve miles that day, and every foot had been a fight. I wanted to raise it to twenty-five before sunri

o our feet. The moon had set and the sky was overcast. Thick night clung around us. We saw nothin

waters. There was nothing to do but wait. We struck rocks and went rolling, shipping buckets of water at every dip

a reef of rock, and we were obliged to "walk" them for some distance, when suddenly the water deepened

e drifted on until the east paled. Then we built

covered about twenty-five miles every twenty-four hours. Every day the cooks grumbled more; and Bill had a way of

Time and distance, curiously confused,