LANDING AT SUNSET ABOVE CANOE RIVER (above)
ANDY AND BLACKMORE SWINGING THE BOAT INTO THE HEAD OF ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (centre)
THE BIG ROLLERS, FROM 15 TO 20 FEET FROM HOLLOW TO CREST, AT HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (below)
We ran the next eighteen miles in less than two hours, tying up for the night at a well-built Government cabin three miles below Big Mouth Creek. It was occupied for the winter by a Swede trapper named Johnston. He was out running his trap-lines when we arrived, but came back in time to be our guest for dinner. He made one rather important contribution to the menu—a “mulligan,” the pièce de résistance of which, so he claimed, was a mud-hen he had winged with his revolver that morning. There were six or seven ingredients in that confounded Irish stew already, and—much to the disgust of Roos and myself, who didn’t fancy eating mud-hen—Andy dumped into it just about everything he had been cooking except the prunes. That’s the proper caper with “mulligans,” and they are very good, too, unless some one of the makings chances to be out of your line. And such most decidedly was mud-hen—fish-eating mud-hen! As we were sort of company, Roos and I put on the best faces we could and filled up on prunes and marmalade. It was only after the other three had cleaned out the “mulligan” can that Andy chanced to mention that “mud-hen” was the popularly accepted euphemism for grouse shot out of season!
Andy and Blackmore and Johnston talked “trapper stuff” all evening—tricks for tempting marten, how to prevent the pesky wolverine from robbing traps, “stink-baits,” prices, and the prospects for beaver when it again became lawful to take them. Johnston was a typical Swede, with little apparent regard for his physical strength if money could be made by drawing upon it. The previous season he had had to sleep out in his blankets many nights while covering his lines, and he counted himself lucky that this year he had two or three rough cabins for shelter. He was a terrific worker and ate sparingly of the grub that cost him twenty cents a pound to bring in. He was already looking a bit drawn, and Blackmore said the next morning that he would be more or less of a physical wreck by spring, just as he had been the previous season. The hardships these trappers endure is something quite beyond the comprehension of any one who has not been with them. A city man, a farmer, even a sailor, knows nothing to compare with it.
We were a mile down stream the next morning before Blackmore discovered that his rifle had been left in Johnston’s cabin, and it took him an hour of hard breaking through the wet underbrush to recover it. The river was still rising from the rains, and the current swift with occasional rapids. Blackmore approached the head of Gordon Rapids (named, of course, from a man of that name who had lost his life there) with considerable caution. He intended to run them, he said, but the convergence of currents threw a nasty cross-riffle that was not to be taken liberties with. He appeared considerably relieved when he found that the high water made it possible to avoid the main rapid by a swift but comparatively clear back-channel. We had a good view of the riffle from below when we swung back into the main channel. It was certainly a vicious tumble of wild white water, and even with our considerable freeboard it would have been a sloppy run. I should have been very reluctant to go into it all with a smaller boat.
Still deeply canyoned between lofty mountains, the scenery in this part of the Bend was quite equal to the finest through which we had passed above Canoe River. The steady drizzle which had now set in, however, made pictures out of the question. This did not deter Roos from looking for “location.” He was under special instructions to make some effective camp shots, and had been on the lookout for a suitable place ever since we started. This day he found what he wanted. Shooting down a swift, rough rapid shortly after noon, we rounded a sharp bend and shot past the mouth of a deep black gorge with the white shimmer of a big waterfall just discernible in its dusky depths. Almost immediately opposite a rocky point jutted out into the eddy. It was thickly carpeted with moss and grass, and bright with the reds and yellows of patches of late flowers. At its base was an almost perfect circle of towering cedars and sugar pines, their dark green foliage standing out in fret-work against the pale purple mists filling the depths of a wedge-shaped bit of mountain valley behind. There were glaciers and peaks hanging giddily above, but these were obscured by the rain clouds.
In response to Roos’ glad “Eureka!” Blackmore threw the boat’s head sharply toward the left bank, and hard pulling just won us the edge of the eddy. Missing that, we would have run on into the rough-and-tumble of Twelve-Mile Rapids, where (as we found the next day) there was no landing for another half mile. The place looked even lovelier at close range than from the river, and Roos announced decisively that we were not going to stir from there until the sun came to give him light for his camp shots. Fortunately, this befell the next morning. After that, to the best of my recollection, we did not see the sun again until we crossed over to the U. S. A. many days later.
Roos took a lot of trouble with his camp picture, and I have since heard that it was most favourably reported upon from the studio. Setting up on the end of the point, he made his opening shot as the boat ran down the rapid (we had had to line back above for this, of course) and floundered through the swirls and whirlpools past the mouth of the gloomy gorge and its half-guessed waterfall. After landing and packing our outfit up the bank, trees were felled, boughs cut and spread and the tent set up. Finally, we fried bacon, tossed flapjacks and baked bannocks. I could tell by his expression that Roos dearly wanted to lend a Mack Sennett “custard-pie” touch by having some one smear some one else in the face with a mushy half-baked bannock, but discretion prevailed. Qualified “smearers” there were in plenty—Andy and Blackmore were wood-choppers and I was an ex-pitcher and shot-putter,—but the designation of a “smear-ee” was quite another matter. Roos did well to stop where he did.