Which reminds me that Kipling also found the natives making some pretty big claims for Livingston. Something over thirty years previous to my latest visit he had stopped there over-night on his way to the Yellowstone. He describes it as a little cow-town of about two thousand. Exhausting its resources in a short stroll, he wandered off among the hills, narrowly to avoid being stepped upon by a herd of stampeding horses. He returned to the town to find it was the night before the Fourth of July, with much carousing and large talking going on. His final comment was: "They raise horses and minerals around Livingston, but they behave as though they raised cherubims with diamonds in their wings."
But this is not the Livingston of the present day, nor even the Livingston that I loved so well twenty years syne. Yes, even then almost the only ruffians and carousers were the imported ball players and editors and "Calamity Jane." The natives were very modest, gentle folk, just as they are today. And they raised several things besides horses and minerals—yea, even cherubims. I remember that distinctly, for it was one named "Bunny," who worked in the telephone office, that knitted me a purple tie which I kept for years—for a trunk-strap. It stretched and stretched and stretched, but never weakened or faded. Expressmen and other vulgar people used to think there was a bride in my party on account of that purple ribbon. Bless your heart, "Bunny!" You'll never know until you read this confession how much besides that rough, red neck of mine you snared in the loop of your purple tie.
The Livingston Enterprise had grown with the town—that was evident from a glance at the first copy to fall into my hands. Quite a metropolitan daily it was, with Associated Press service, sporting page and regular boiler-plate Fashion Hint stuff from the Rue de la Paix. The Editor, too, was a considerable advance—at least sartorially—over the one I remembered. Phillips proved a mighty engaging chap, though, and didn't seem a bit ashamed over having had me for a predecessor. People spoke of him to me as an energetic civic and temperance worker, declaring that he had been indefatigable in his efforts to put down drink all over Park County. They called his vigorous editorials on these subjects "Phillipics." They were noted for their jolt.
| By Haynes, St. Paul WHERE CUSTER FELL |
I modestly assured him that I couldn't claim to have done a lot for temperance during the time I sat in his chair, but that I had taken an active interest in civic reform. And then, darn him! he took down the year 1901 from the Enterprise file. I had forgotten all about that. Well, we found a number of columns of right pert comment on local men, women and events and many square feet of baseball write-ups that Phillips seemed highly tickled over; but of civic reform editorials, not a one. Or not quite so bad as that perhaps. It may be that a trenchant leader lashing the municipal council for neglecting to build a certain badly needed sidewalk would come in that class. It was a sidewalk to the baseball grounds. How well I remember the inspiration for that vitriolic attack on the City Fathers! "Bunny" lost a French-heeled slipper in the Yellowstone gumbo while mincing out to the Helena game and swore she would never appear at the Park again unless it could be done without getting muddied to her knees. "Bunny" was very outspoken for a cherubim. In those days it took an outspoken girl to mention anything between her shoe-tops and her pompadour.
I liked Editor Phillips so well that I forthwith asked him to join me for my first day's run down the river. He said he was highly complimented, but that there were a number of reasons why he would not be able to accept. The only one of these I recall was that the water was far too loosely packed between Livingston and Big Timber. Western editors are always picturesque, and Phillips was one of the best of his kind. He mentioned two or three others who might be induced to join me for a day or two. One of these was Joe Evans, curio dealer and trapper. I am not quite sure whether it was Phillips or some one else who recommended "Buckskin Jim" Cutler as the best hand with a boat on the upper river. It took some groping in my memory to place the name, but finally I found it pigeon-holed as that of the man "Yankee Jim" had spoken of in the same connection twenty years before. I had in mind trying to get in touch with Cutler, but gave up the idea the moment I discovered Pete Holt, former Government Scout and my first guide through the Yellowstone, holding down the job of Chief of Police of Livingston. Holt's furious pace on ski had resulted in my leaving jagged fragments of cuticle on most of the trees and much of the crust along the Yellowstone Grand Tour. Here was a chance to lead a measure or two of the dance myself. Pete had ideas of his own about the looseness with which the water was packed below Livingston, but was too good a sport to let that interfere with my pleasure. Indeed, he even went out of his way to make his trip official. Two people—a man and a woman—had been drowned in the Yellowstone the previous week. He ordered himself to go in search of them in my boat, hiring Joe Evans, with his canvas canoe, to accompany us as scout and pilot. The arrangement was ideal. Joe knew the best channel—so I took it for granted,—which would leave me nothing to do but trail his wake and manage my new and untried boat. Holt's hundred and eighty pounds in the stern would give that ballast just where I needed it. The lack of serious responsibilities would give us a chance for a good old yarn while, watching my chances, I could pick favourable riffles and pay back my friend in his own coin the debt of twenty years standing.
It was a great disappointment to find no one of my old baseball team-mates still in Livingston. Jack Mjelde, Captain and second-baseman, had been killed in an electrical accident. That was a typically capricious trick of Fate. As I recall things now, Jack—a family man with a real job, and a legitimate resident of Livingston—was about the most worth preserving of the lot of us. Ed Ray had dropped in and out of town on brake-beams every now and then, and so had two or three others. Paddy Ryan, pitcher and the gentlest mannered of us all, was believed to be still a bar-keeper—somewhat surreptitiously of course. Riley, the never more than semi-Keeley-cured catcher, had last been heard of over Missoula way, and looking rather fit now that there was a more or less closed season on his favourite quarry—mauve mice.
And so it went. A score or more of old-timers who had seen me play turned up at the hotel, but only one of these brought a real thrill. That was a husky chap of about thirty, who said he had been admitted to the park once for retrieving a home-run I had swatted over the fence in a game against Anaconda. "Gosh, how you could line 'em out, boy, " volunteered some one, and grunts of assent ran back and forth through the crowd. That was all very nice, of course; but I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I could have been quite sure that none of them had been present the time we played Red Lodge on Miner's Union Day. This was the morning after the Fireman's Ball of the night before. I believe I could see the ball all right. Indeed, that was just the trouble. I saw too many balls and couldn't swing my bat against the right one. I struck out three times running. The fourth time up I connected for a mighty wallop, but only to get put out through starting for third base instead of first!
Pete Nelson, Sheriff of my former visit and now State Game Warden, called for me at the hotel and together we strolled down the old main street to the river. We had dubbed it "The-Street-That-is-Called-Straight." Just why I fail to remember, but probably some of us wanted to show his biblical learning. Riley, the Keeley-ed catcher, confessed it never had looked straight to him, and there were times—especially late on the nights we had won games—that I had doubts on that score myself. But if there had been crooks in or upon it in the old days, time had ironed them out. I especially called Nelson's attention to the Northern Pacific station at one end of the vista, the nodding cottonwoods at the other, and the glaring new concrete pavement, stretching straight as a white ribbon, connecting them up.
Pete Nelson sadly called my attention to the manner in which all the gay old palaces of carousal had been converted, and said he reckoned that perhaps every one that had patronized them had undergone the same change. I was also sad, but less optimistic than Pete respecting the increasing purpose of the ages. As we leaned on the rail of the river bridge and gazed at the swift green current I tried to recall those lines of Stevenson's which began: