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.