We were close to the ragged black wall all the way, and I have an idea that the back-waves thrown off by the projecting points had about as much to do with keeping us from striking as had the sweep. Such waves will often buffer off a canoe or batteau, and they must have helped some with the raft. There is no doubt, however, that, if the raft had once been allowed to swing broadside, either she or the rock island would have had to change shape or else hold up the million or so horse-power driving the Columbia. That could have only resulted in a one-two-three climax, with the island, Columbia and raft finishing in the order named. Or, to express it in more accurate race-track vernacular; “Island,” first; “Columbia,” second; “Raft,” nowhere!
My spine was a bar of red-hot iron rasping up and down along the exposed ends of all its connecting nerves, when a throaty “Aw right!” from Ike signalled that the worst was past. Hanging over the end of the trailing sweep-handle, I saw that the raft had swung into a big eddy at the foot of the island, and that the launch, with its engine still spraying scattered pops, was trying to help the back-current carry her in to the right bank. Middle and Lower Rapids of Hell Gate were still below us, but Earl had evidently determined not to run them until his engine was hitting on all fours again. It was characteristic of him that he didn’t offer any explanation as to what had gone wrong, or why; but the trouble must have been a consequence of the terrific strain put on the engine in towing the head of the raft clear of the upper point of the island. At the end of a quarter hour’s tinkering Earl reckoned that the engine would go “purty good” now; leastways, he hoped so, for there was nothing more he could do outside of a machine-shop. To save tying up again below, he ran across and picked up Roos and the camera before casting off.
Middle and Lower Rapids were just straight, fast, white water, and we ran them without trouble. Roos set up on the raft and shot a panorama of the reeling rollers and the flying black curtains of the rocky walls as they slid past. Then he made a close-up of the weird, undulating Chinese-Dragon-wiggle of the “deck” of the raft, and finally, when we had recovered a bit of breath, of Ike and me toiling at the sweep. To save time, we had lunch on the raft, taking Earl’s portion up to him in the skiff.
Ike, announcing that he would need a crew of four or five men to handle the raft in Box Canyon, was scouting for hands all afternoon. Whenever a farm or a ferry appeared in the distance, we would pull ahead in the skiff and he would dash ashore and pursue intensive recruiting until the raft had come up and gone on down river. Then we would push off and chase it, repeating the performance as soon as another apple orchard or ferry tower crept out beyond a bend. For all our zeal, there was not a man to show when we finally pulled the skiff aboard as darkness was falling on the river. Most of the men Ike talked to took one look at the nearing raft and cut him off with a “Good-night” gesture, the significance of which was not lost on me even in the distant skiff. The nearest we came to landing any one was at Plum, where the half-breed ferry-man said he would have gone if it hadn’t been for the fact that his wife was about to become a mother. It wasn’t that he was worried on the woman’s account (she did that sort of thing quite regularly without trouble), but he had bet a horse with the blacksmith that it was going to be a boy, and he kind of wanted to be on hand to be sure they didn’t put anything over on him.
At Clark’s Ferry an old pal of Ike’s, whom he had confidently counted on getting, not only refused to go when he saw the raft, but even took the old river rat aside and talked to him long and earnestly, after the manner of a brother. Ike was rather depressed after that, and spent the next hour slouching back and forth across the stern runway, nursing the handle of the gently-swung sweep against his cheek like a pet kitten. He was deeply introspective, and seemed to be brooding over something. It was not until the next morning that he admitted that the raft had not proved quite as handy as he had calculated.
Again we ran well into the dark, but this time in a somewhat opener canyon than the black gorge we had threaded the night before. It was Spring Canyon we were making for, where Ike had left his last raft. No one was living there, he said, but it was a convenient place for the ranchers from up on the plateau to come and get the wood. Earl found the place and made the landing with not even a window-light to guide. We moored to the lower logs of the cedar raft, most of which was now lying high and dry on the rocks, left by the falling river. We cooked supper on the bank and—after Roos had deftly picked the lock with a bent wire—slept on the floor of an abandoned farm-house on the bench above.
Ike had complained a good deal of his gasoline-burned back during the day, and was evidently suffering not a little discomfort from the chafing of his woollen undershirt. He was restless during the night, and when he got up at daybreak I saw him pick up and shake out an old white table-cloth that had been thrown in one corner. When I went down to the raft a little later, I found the old rat stripped to the waist and Earl engaged in swathing the burned back in the folds of the white table-cloth. As the resultant bundle was rather too bulky to allow a shirt to be drawn over it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as he was, for all the world like “the noblest Roman of them all”—from neck to the waist, that is. The long, drooping, tobacco-stained moustaches, no less than the sagging overalls, would have had rather a “foreign” look on the Forum Romanum.