The River and I

by John G. Neihardt

NOTE

The following account of a youthful adventure was written during the winter of 1908, ran as a serial in Putnam's Magazine the following year, and appeared as a book in 1910, five years before "The Song of Hugh Glass," the first piece of my Western Cycle. Many who have cared for my narrative poems, feeling the relation between those and this earlier avowal of an old love, have urged that "The River and I" be reprinted.

J.G.N.

St. Louis, 1927.

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CONTENTS

• CHAPTER PAGE
• 
  I. The River of an Unwritten Epic [1]
• 
  II. Sixteen Miles of Awe [22]
• 
  III. Half-Way to the Moon [40]
• 
  IV. Making a Getaway [65]
• 
  V. Through the Region of Weir [84]
• 
  VI. Getting Down to Business [113]
• 
  VII. On to the Yellowstone [137]
• 
  VIII. Down from the Yellowstone [165]

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ILLUSTRATIONS

• Night in Camp [Frontispiece]
• 
  FACING PAGE
• "Off on the Perilous Floods" [6]
• Barriers Formed before Him [7]
• The Boats Wrecked in an Ice Gorge [7]
• After the Spring Break-Up [18]
• "Hole-in-the-Wall" Rock on the Upper Missouri [19]
• Palisades of the Upper Missouri [19]
• Great Falls from Cliff Above [30]
• Great Falls from the Front [31]
• "This was Benton" [52]
• Ruins of Old Fort Benton [52]
• The House of the Bourgeois [53]
• A Round-Up Outfit on the March [62]
• Joe [62]
• Montana Sheep [63]
• A Montana Wool-Freighter [63]
• The "Atom I" under Construction [74]
• The Cable Ferry Towed Us Out [74]
• Laid Up with a Broken Rudder [75]
• "Atom" Sailing Up-Stream in a Head Wind [86]
• Typical Rapids on Upper Missouri [87]
• Wolf Point, the First Town in 500 Miles [98]
• Entrance to the Bad Lands [99]
• Fresh Meat! [110]
• Supper! [111]
• "Walking" Boats over Shallows [126]
• Typical Upper Missouri River Reach [126]
• The Mouth of the James [127]
• Reveille! [142]
• The Pen and Key Ranch [143]
• Assiniboine Indian Chief [154]
• Assiniboine Indian Camp [155]
• On the Hurricane Deck of the "Expansion"; Capt. Marsh Third from the Left [166]
• Fort Union in 1837 [167]
• Site of Old Fort Union [167]
• Boats Laid Up for the Winter at Washburn, N.D. [178]
• Washburn, N.D. [178]
• The Landing at Bismarck, N.D. [179]
• The Yankton Landing in the Old Days [192]
• "Atom II" Landing at Sioux City [193]

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