We were beside the Colorado at last. I had a good view of the stream below, as we crossed the bridge—the Colorado in flood, muddy, turbulent, sweeping onward like an affrighted thing,—repulsive, yet with a fascination for me, born of an intimate acquaintance with the dangers of this stream. The river had called again! The heat was forgotten, the visions of the coast faded, for me the train could not reach Needles, ten miles up the river, quickly enough.
With my brother, I had followed this stream down to Needles, through a thousand miles of canyon. I had seen how it carved its way through the mountains, carrying them on, in solution, toward the ocean. At last I would see what became of all these misplaced mountains. I would see the tidal bore as it swept in from the Gulf. I had heard there were wild hogs which burrowed through the cane-brake. It may be that I would learn of a vessel at some port down on the Mexican coast, which I might reach and which would take me around the Lower California Peninsula. I felt sure there was such a port. No doubt I could have found books to tell me exactly what I would see, but too much information would spoil all the romance of such an adventure. It was all very alluring. With the spring flood on, the river could not help but be interesting and exciting, a pretty good imitation of the rapids, perhaps. If I could only secure a boat!
Half an hour later I was meeting old acquaintances about the hotel, connected with the station. The genial hotel manager, with the Irish name, was smilingly explaining to some newcomers that this was not hot; that "a dry heat at 110 degrees was not nearly as bad as 85 degrees back in Chicago," "and as for heat," he continued, "why down in Yuma"—then he caught sight of me, with a grin on my face, and perhaps he remembered that I had heard him say the same thing two years before, when it was even hotter; and he came over with out-stretched hand,—calling me uncomplimentary names, under his breath, for spoiling the effect of his explanation; all which was belied by his welcome. It takes an Irishman to run a big hotel in the middle of the desert.
A few inquiries brought out the information that I was not likely to get a boat. The stores did not keep them. I should have given my order two weeks before to an Indian who built boats to order at $2.00 a foot. This was a new one on me. Suppose a fellow wanted—well say, about $15.00 worth. It would look something like a tub, wouldn't it? Perhaps it was to be the coast, for me, after all.
The Colorado River in flood is a terrible stream. Unlike the Eastern rivers, there are no populous cities—with apologies to Needles and Yuma—along its shores, to be inundated with the floods. Unlike the rivers of the South, few great agricultural districts spread across its bottoms. Along the upper seven hundred miles there are not a half-dozen ranches with twenty-five acres under cultivation. But if destructive power and untamed energy are terrible, the Colorado River, in flood, is a terrible stream.
After changing into some comfortable clothes I sauntered past the railway machine shops down to the river, and up to where a fight was being waged to save the upper part of the town from being torn away by the flood. For a month past, car after car of rock had been dumped along the river bank, only to disappear in the quicksands; and as yet no bottom had been reached. Up to this point the fight was about equal. The flood would not reach its crest until two or three weeks later.
Beyond a fisherman or two there were few men by the river. The workmen had finished their day's labour. A ferryman said that I might talk an Indian into selling his boat, but it was doubtful. My next job was to find such an Indian.
A big, greasy Mojave buck lay on an uncovered, rusty bed spring, slung on a home-made frame, before his willow and adobe home, close to the Colorado River. In answer to my repeated question he uncoiled and stretched the full length of his six foot six couch, grunted a few words in his native tongue to other Indians without a glance in my direction, then indifferently closed his eyes again. A young Indian in semi-cowboy garb,—not omitting a gorgeous silk handkerchief about his neck,—jabbered awhile with some grinning squaws, then said in perfectly understandable English, "He will sell his boat for $18.00. It is worth $30.00." This was decisive for an Indian. It usually takes a half-day of bickering to get them to make any kind of a bargain. I told him I would take it in the morning.
It was a well-constructed boat, almost new, built of inch pine, flat-bottomed, and otherwise quite similar in shape to the boats my brother and I had used on our twelve hundred mile journey through the canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers,—but without the graceful lines and swells that made those other boats so valuable to us in rapids. The boat was nearly new and well worth $30.00, as boat prices went in that town. Why he was willing to sell it for $18.00, or at the rate of $1.00 a foot, I could not imagine. It was the first bargain an Indian had ever offered me. But if I paid for it that evening, there were doubts in my mind if I should find it in the morning, so I delayed closing the bargain and went back again to inspect the boat.
That evening I inquired among my acquaintances if there was any one who would care to accompany me. If so I would give them passage to Yuma, or to the Gulf of California in Mexico, if they wished it. But no one could go, or those who could, wouldn't. One would have thought from the stories with which I was regaled, that the rapids of the Grand Canyon were below Needles, and as for going to the Gulf, it was suicide. I was told of the outlaws along the border, of the firearms and opium smugglers, who shot first and questioned afterward, and of the insurrectos of Lower California. The river had no real outlet to the ocean, they said, since the break into Salton Sea, but spread over a cane-brake, thirty miles or more in width. Many people had gone into these swamps and never returned, whether lost in the jungles or killed by the Cocopah Indians, no one knew. They simply disappeared. It was all very alluring.