Chapter IX: Revelstoke to the Spokane (2)

The river is broad and slow for a few miles below Grand Rapids (they are called Rickey's Rapids locally), with steep-sided benches rising on either hand, and the green of apple orchards showing in bright fringes along their brinks. There had been the usual warnings in Kettle Falls of a bad rapid to be encountered "somewhere below," but the data available on this part of the river made us practically certain that nothing worse than minor riffles existed until the swift run of Spokane Rapids was reached. Seven miles below Grand Rapids several islands of black basalt contracted the river considerably, but any one of two or three channels offered an easy way through them. The highest of them had a driftwood crown that was not less than fifty feet above the present stage of the river, showing graphically the great rise and fall at this point.

At the shallow San Poil bar we saw some Indians from the Colville Reservation fishing for salmon--the crooked-nosed "dogs" of the final run. If they were of the tribe from which the bar must have been named, civilization had brought them its blessing in the form of hair-restorer. They were as hirsute a lot of ruffians as one could expect to find out of Bolshevia--and as dirty.

Turtle Rapid was the worst looking place we found during the day, but the menace was more apparent than real. The riffle took its name from a number of turtle-backed outcroppings of bedrock pushing up all the way across the river. The current was swift and deep, making it just the sort of place one would have expected to encounter bad swirls. These were, indeed, making a good deal of a stir at the foot of several of the narrow side runs, but by the broader middle channel which we followed the going was comparatively smooth. We finished an easy day by tying up at four o'clock where the road to the Colville Reservation comes down to the boulder-bordered bank at Hunter's Ferry.

Columbia River ferry-men are always kindly and hospitable, and this one invited us to sleep on his hay and cook our meals in his kitchen. He was an amiable "cracker" from Kentucky, with a delectable drawl, a tired-looking wife and a houseful of children. Ferry-men's wives always have many children. This one was still pretty, though, and her droop--for a few years yet--would be rather appealing than otherwise. I couldn't be quite sure--from a remark she made--whether she had a sense of humor, or whether she had not. Seeing her sitting by the kitchen stove with a baby crooked into her left arm, a two-year-old on her lap, and a three-year-old riding her foot, the while she was trying to fry eggs, bake biscuit and boil potatoes, I observed, by way of bringing a brighter atmosphere with my presence, that it was a pity that the human race hadn't been crossed with octopi, so that young mothers would have enough arms to do their work with. She nodded approvingly at first, brightening visibly at the emancipative vision conjured up in her tired brain, but after five minutes of serious cogitation relapsed into gloom. "I reckon it wouldn't be any use, mistah," she said finally; "them octupusses would only give the young 'uns mo' ahms to find troubl' with." Now _did_ she have a sense of humour, or did she not?

We had a distinctly bad night of it hitting the hay. The mow was built with a horseshoe-shaped manger running round three sides of it, into which the hay was supposed to descend by gravity as the cows devoured what was below. As a labour-saving device it had a good deal to recommend it, but as a place to sleep--well, it might not have been so bad if each of the dozen cows had not been belled, and if the weight of our tired bodies on the hay had not kept pressing it into the manger all night, and so made a continuous performance of feeding and that bovine bell-chorus. I dozed off for a spell along toward morning, awakening from a Chinese-gong nightmare to find my bed tilted down at an angle of forty-five degrees and a rough tongue lapping my face. With most of my mattress eaten up, I was all but in the manger myself. Turning out at daybreak, we pushed off at an early hour.

A run of nine miles, made in about an hour, took us to Gerome, where another ferry crossed to the west or Colville Reservation bank. A couple of swift, shallow rapids above and below Roger's Bar was the only rough water encountered. We were looking for a point from which Spokane could be reached by car, as Captain Armstrong, who had originally planned to go with us only to Kettle Falls, was now quite at the end of the time he was free to remain away from Nelson and business. There were two reasons for our making a temporary halt at Gerome Ferry. One was the fact that Spokane could be reached as readily from there as from any point lower down, and the other was Ike Emerson. I shall have so much to say of Ike a bit further along that I shall no more than introduce him for the moment.

As much of the worst water on the American course of the Columbia occurs in the two hundred and thirty miles between the head of Spokane Rapids and the foot of Priest Rapids,[2] I was considerably concerned about finding a good river man to take Captain Armstrong's place and help me with the boat. Roos made no pretensions to river usefulness, and I was reluctant to go into some of the rapids that I knew were ahead of us without a dependable man to handle the steering paddle and to help with lining. Men of this kind were scarce, it appeared--even more so than on the Big Bend, in Canada, where there was a certain amount of logging and trapping going on. Two or three ferry-men had shaken their heads when I brought the matter up. There was nothing they would like better if they were free, they said, but, as ferries couldn't be expected to run by themselves, that was out of the question on such short notice.

[2] Not be confused with the rapids of the same name we had
run on the Big Bend in Canada. L. R. F.

It was that genial "cracker" at Hunter's Ferry who was the first to mention Ike Emerson. Ike would be just my man, he said, with that unmistakable grin that a man grins when the person he speaks of is some kind of a "character." Or, leastways, Ike would be just my man--_if I could find him_. "And where shall I be likely to find him?" I asked. He wasn't quite sure about that, but probably "daun rivah sumwhah." There was no telling about Ike, it appeared. Once he had been seen to sink when his raft had gone to pieces in Hell Gate, and he had been mourned as dead for a fortnight. At the end of that time he had turned up in Kettle Falls, but quite unable--or else unwilling--to tell why the river had carried him eighty-five miles _up_ stream instead of down to the Pacific. A keg of moonshine which had been Ike's fellow passenger on the ill-fated raft _may_ have had something to do both with the wreck and that long up-stream swim after the wreck. At any rate, it had never been explained. However, Gerome was Ike's headquarters--if any place might be called that for a man who lived on or in the river most of the time--and that would be the place to inquire for him.

When I asked the ferry-man at Gerome if Ike Emerson had been seen thereabouts recently, he grinned the same sort of grin his colleague at Hunter's had grinned when the same subject was under discussion. Yes, he had seen Ike only the night before. He was a real old river rat; just the man I wanted--_if I could find him_. He was as hard as a flea to put your hand on when you _did_ want him, though. Well, it took us four hours to run our man down, but luck was with us in the end. Every lumber-jack, farmer and Indian that we asked about Ike, grinned that same grin, dropped whatever he was doing and joined in the search. There were a score of us when the "View Halloo" was finally sounded, and we looked more like a lynching party on vengeance bent than anything else I can think of. Ike, who was digging potatoes (of all the things in the world for a river rat to be doing), glowered suspiciously as we debouched from a _coulee_ and streamed down toward him, but his brow cleared instantly when I hastily told him what we had come for.

You bet, he would go with us. But, wait a moment! Why should we not go with him? He was overdue with a raft of logs and cordwood he had contracted to take down below Hell Gate, and was just about to get to work building it. We could just throw our boat aboard, and off we would go together. If he could get enough help, he could have the raft ready in two or three days, and, once started, it would not be a lot slower than the skiff, especially if we took a fast motor-boat he knew of for towing purposes and to "put her into the rapids right." It would make a lot more of a show for the movies, and he had always dreamed of having himself filmed on a big raft running Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Just let us leave it to him, and he would turn out something that would be the real thing.

All of this sounded distinctly good to me, but I turned to Roos and Captain Armstrong for confirmation before venturing a decision. Roos said it would be "the cat's ears" (late slang meaning _au fait_, or something like that, in English); that a raft would photograph like a million dollars. Armstrong's face was beaming. "It will be the chance of a lifetime," he said warmly. "Go by all means. I'm only sorry I can't be with you." So we gave Ike _carte blanche_ and told him to go ahead; we would arrange the financial end when he knew more about what he would be spending. I was glad of the wait for one reason; it would give us a chance to speed the Captain on his way as far as Spokane.

Running over a Spokane paper in the post office and general store at Gerome, the program of the Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the morrow, October the twenty-sixth, recalled to me that I had a conditional engagement to perform at that function. Major Laird, the Publicity Secretary of the Chamber, had phoned me before we left Nelson, asking if I would run up to Spokane from some convenient point on the river and give them a bit of a yarn about our voyage at the next Tuesday luncheon. I had replied that, as it was quite out of the question keeping to any definite schedule in river travel, I could give him no positive assurance of turning up in time, but suggested that if he would sign up some one else for _piece de resistance_, he could be free to use me for soup or nuts in the event I put in an appearance. As it now appeared that we had arrived within a few hours of Spokane, I phoned Major Laird, and he said he would start a car off at once to take us there.

We spent the afternoon helping Roos patch up the continuity of his "farmer" picture. Although Captain Armstrong had appeared in all the scenes shot since we started with the skiff, he had never made his official entry into the picture. Properly, this should have been done in one of the introductory scenes shot at the source of the river, near Lake Windermere. It will be remembered that, when I leaned on my hay-fork and gazed pensively off toward the river, I was supposed to see a prospector tinkering with his boat. I had walked out of two scenes on my way to join that prospector: the first time to ask if he would take me with him, and the second time, with a blanket-roll on my shoulder (the improvised one with the two "nicht-goons" and other foreign knick-knacks in it), to jump into the boat and push off. Obviously, as we had neither prospector nor boat at the time, these shots could not be made until later. Now, with the "prospector" about to leave us, it was imperative to continuity that we should get him into the picture before we could go ahead getting him out of it.

"Location" was our first care, and in this fortune favoured us. The mouth of a small creek flowing in just below Gerome furnished a "source of the Columbia" background that would have defied an expert to tell from an original. In fact, it looked more like the popular idea of a "source" than did the real one; and that is an important point with the movies. Here we made the "tinkering" and the "first push-off" shots. Of course, I had a different blanket-roll on my shoulder this time, but I took great care to make it as close an imitation as possible of the one I had so hastily flung together out of "Jock's" bedding. A close imitation externally, I mean--there were no "frou-frous" in it.

Now that we had the "prospector" properly into the picture, we were ready for the "farewell" shot--the getting him out of it. For this the Captain and I were "picked up" on a picturesque rocky point, regarding with interest something far off down-river. Presently he registers "dawning comprehension," and tells me in fluent French-Canadian pantomime that it is a raft--a whale of a big one. That will offer a way for me to continue my voyage now that he has to leave me. Then we go down to the boat, which he presents to me with a comprehensive "it-is-all-yours" gesture, before shouldering his sack of ore (one of our bags of canned stuff answered very well for this) and climbing off up the bank toward the "smelter." (We had intended to make a real smelter scene at Trail or Northport, but the light was poor at both places.) Finally I pushed off alone, pulling down and across the current to throw in my fortunes with the "raft." That left the thread of "continuity" dangling free, to be spliced up as soon as Ike had the raft completed. That worthy was losing no time. All afternoon we heard the rumble of logs rolling over boulders, and every now and then a fan-shaped splash of spray would flash up with a spangle of iridescence in the light of the declining sun.

The car arrived for us at seven-thirty that evening. It was driven by Commissioner Howard, of the Spokane County Board, who had courteously volunteered to come for us when it appeared there would be some delay in getting a hired car off for the hundred and sixty-mile round trip. He was accompanied by his son, a high-school youngster. As they had eaten lunch on the way, they announced themselves ready to start on the return trip at once. The road turned out to be a rough mountain track, and rather muddy. Ten miles out from Gerome a suspicious clicking set in somewhere under the rear seat, and at twenty miles the differential had gone. Mr. Howard finally induced an empty truck to take us in tow, and behind that lumbering vehicle we did the last sixty miles. The tow-chain parted on an average of once a mile while we were still in the mountains, but did better as the roads improved. The temperature fell as the altitude increased, and it must have been well under twenty before daylight--and a mean, marrow-searching cold at that. Mr. Howard, refusing every offer of relief, stuck it out at the wheel all the way in--a remarkable example of nerve and endurance, considering that he had only recently come out of a hospital. Armstrong, as always, was indomitable, singing French-Canadian boating songs of blood-stirring _tempo_ most of the way. I shall ever associate his

"_Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,
En roulant, ma boule roulant!_"

rather with the chug-chugging of a motor truck than with the creak of oars from which it derived its inspiration.

We struck the paved state highway at Davenport about four o'clock, and in the very grey dawn of the morning after came rumbling into Spokane. Somewhere in the dim shadowy outskirts we stopped rumbling. The truck driver reported he had run out of gas. Assiduous milking of the Cole's tank yielded just enough to carry us on to the hotel. The Davenport of Spokane is one of the very finest hotels in all the world, but if it had been just a cabin with a stove, it would still have seemed a rose-sweet paradise after those last two nights we had put in--one on the hay with belled cows eating up the beds beneath our backs, and the other jerked over a frosty road in the wake of a skidding truck. Soaking for an hour in a steaming bath, I rolled in between soft sheets, leaving orders not to be called until noon.

Spokane is one of the finest, cleanest and most beautiful cities of the West, and I have never left it after a visit without regret. This time, brief as our stay had to be, was no exception. It was an unusually keen looking lot of business and professional men that turned out for the Chamber luncheon, among whom I found not a few old college friends and others I had not seen for a number of years. Notable of these were Herbert Moore and Samuel Stern, with whom I had spent six weeks on a commercial mission in China in 1910. I was also greatly interested to meet Mr. Turner, the field engineer of the great project for reclaiming a million and three-quarters acres of land in the Columbia Basin of eastern Washington by diverting to it water from the Pend d'Oreille. The incalculable possibilities, as well as the great need of this daring project I was to see much of at firsthand during that part of my voyage on which I was about to embark.

Captain Armstrong left by train for Nelson the evening of the 27th, and the following morning Major Laird drove Roos and me back to Gerome. For a considerable part of the distance we followed the highly picturesque route along the Spokane River, stopping for lunch at the hydro-electric plant of the Washington Power Company at Long Lake. This enterprising corporation has power installations already in operation on the Spokane which must make that stream pretty nearly the most completely harnessed river of its size in America. The lofty concrete barrier which backs up Long Lake has the distinction of being the highest spillway dam in the world. The "Spokane interval" proved a highly enjoyable spell of relaxation before tackling the rough stretch of river ahead. I knew I was going to miss greatly the guiding hand and mind of Captain Armstrong, but had high hopes of Ike Emerson. I was not to be disappointed.