LINING DOWN ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (above)
WHEN THE COLUMBIA TOOK HALF OF MY RIDING BREECHES (below)
We dropped Roos at the head of the rumbling “intake,” and while Andy went down to help him set up in a favourable position, Blackmore and I lined back up-stream a hundred yards so as to have a good jump on when we started. Andy joined us presently, to report that Roos appraised the “back-lighting” effect across the white caps as “cheap at a million dollars.” He was going to make the shot of his life. Pushing off we laid on our oars, floating down until we caught Roos’ signal to come on. Then Andy and I swung into it with all of the something like four hundred and fifty pounds of beef we scaled between us. Blackmore headed her straight down the “V” into the swiftest and roughest part of the rapid. It was a bit less tempestuous toward the right bank, but a quiet passage was not what he was looking for this trip.
The boat must have had half her length out of water when she hurdled off the top of that first wave. I couldn’t see, of course, but I judged it must have been that way from the manner in which she slapped down and buried her nose under the next comber. That brought over the water in a solid green flood. Andy and I only caught it on our hunched backs, but Blackmore, on his feet and facing forward, had to withstand a full frontal attack. My one recollection of him during that mad run is that of a freshly emerged Neptune shaking his grizzly locks and trying to blink the water out of his eyes.
Our team-work, as usual, went to sixes-and-sevens the moment we hit the rough water, but neither Andy nor I stopped pulling on that account. Yelling like a couple of locoed Apaches, we kept slapping out with our oar-blades into every hump of water within reach, and I have an idea that we managed to keep a considerable way even over the speeding current right to the finish. It was quite the wettest river run I ever made. A number of times during the war I was in a destroyer when something turned up to send it driving with all the speed it had—or all its plates would stand, rather—into a head sea. That meant that it made most of the run tunnelling under water. And that was the way it seemed going down Priest Rapids, only not so bad, of course. We were only about a quarter full of water when we finally pulled up to the bank in an eddy to wait for the movie man.
I could see that something had upset Roos by the droop of his shoulders, even when he was a long way off; the droop of his mouth confirmed the first impression on closer view. “You couldn’t do that again, could you?” he asked Blackmore, with a furtive look in his eyes. The “Skipper” stopped bailing with a snort. “Sure I’ll do it again,” he growled sarcastically. “Just line the boat back where she was and I’ll bring her down again—only not to-night. I’ll want to get dried out first. But what’s the matter anyhow? Didn’t we run fast enough to suit you?”
“Guess you ran fast enough,” was the reply; “but the film didn’t. Buckled in camera. Oil-can! Washout! Out of luck!” Engulfed in a deep purple aura of gloom, Roos climbed back into the boat and asked how far it was to camp and dinner.
For a couple of miles we had a fast current with us, but by the time we reached the mouth of Downie Creek—the centre of a great gold rush half a century ago—the river was broadening and deepening and slowing down. A half hour more of sharp pulling brought us to Keystone Creek and Boyd’s Ranch, where we tied up for the night. This place had the distinction of being the only ranch on the Big Bend, but it was really little more than a clearing with a house and barn. Boyd had given his name to a rapid at the head of Revelstoke Canyon—drowned while trying to line by at high water, Blackmore said—and the present owner was an American Civil War Pensioner named Wilcox. He was wintering in California for his health, but Andy, being a friend of his, knew where to look for the key. Hardly had the frying bacon started its sizzling prelude than there came a joyous yowl at the door, and as it was opened an enormous tiger-striped tomcat bounded into the kitchen. Straight for Andy’s shoulder he leaped, and the trapper’s happy howl of recognition must have met him somewhere in the air. Andy hugged the ecstatically purring bundle to his breast as if it were a long-lost child, telling us between nuzzles into the arched furry back that this was “Tommy” (that was his name, of course), with whom he had spent two winters alone in his trapper’s cabin. It was hard to tell which was the more delighted over this unexpected reunion, man or cat.
He had little difficulty in accounting for “Tommy’s” presence at Boyd’s. He had given the cat to Wilcox a season or two back, and Wilcox, when he left for California, had given him to “Wild Bill,” who had a cabin ten miles farther down the river. “Bill” already had a brother of “Tommy,” but a cat of much less character. As “Bill” was much given to periodic sprees, Andy was satisfied that “Tommy,” who was a great sizer-up of personality, had left him in disgust and returned to his former deserted home to shift for himself. As he would pull down rabbits as readily as an ordinary cat caught mice, this was an easy matter as long as the snow did not get too deep. Of what might happen after that Andy did not like to think. He would have to make some provision for his pet before full winter set in.
That evening we sat around the kitchen fire, telling all the cat stories we knew and quarrelling over whose turn it was to hold “Tommy” and put him through his tricks. The latter were of considerable variety. There was all the usual “sit-up,” “jump-through” and “roll-over” stuff, but with such “variations” as only a trapper, snow-bound for days with nothing else to do, would have the time to conceive and perfect. For instance, if you only waved your hand in an airy spiral, “Tommy” would respond with no more than the conventional “once-over;” but a gentle tweak of the tail following the spiral, brought a roll to the left, while two tweaks directed him to the right. Similarly with his “front” and “back” somersaults, which took their inspiration from a slightly modified form of aerial spiral. Of course only Andy could get the fine work out of him, but the ordinary “jump-through” stuff he would do for any of us.
I am afraid the cat stories we told awakened, temporarily at least, a good deal of mutual distrust. Roos didn’t figure greatly, but Andy and Blackmore and I were glowering back and forth at each other with “I-suppose-you-don’t-believe-that” expressions all evening. The two woodsmen, “hunting in couples” for the occasion, displayed considerable team-work. One of their best was of a trapper of their acquaintance—name and present address mentioned with scrupulous particularity—who had broken his leg one winter on Maloney Creek, just as he was at the end of his provisions. Dragging himself to his cabin, he lay down to die of starvation. The next morning his cat jumped in through the window with a rabbit in his mouth. Then the trapper had his great idea. Leaving the cat just enough to keep him alive, he took the rest for himself. That made the cat go on hunting, and each morning he came back with a rabbit. And so it went on until springtime brought in his partner and relief. I asked them why, if the cat was so hungry, he didn’t eat the rabbit up in the woods; but they said that wasn’t the way of a cat, or at least of this particular cat.