Down the Yellowstone - Lewis R. Freeman

The annual Round-up had come to an end the previous day, so that I found Miles City, if not quite a banquet hall deserted, at least in something of a morning-after frame of mind. It rather warmed one's heart to see so many people rubbing throbbing temples, and I seemed to see in it some explanation of what a cowboy meant when he told me that the only critter at the Round-up that he couldn't ride was the "White Mule."

By Haynes, St. Paul STOCKYARDS, MILES CITY

All the cities of the Yellowstone have character and individuality, and none more than Miles City. Not so beautifully located as Livingston, not quite so metropolitan as Billings, there is something in the fine, broad streets of Miles that suggests the frank, bluff, open-heartedness of a cowboy straight from the ranges. The town looks you squarely between the eyes and says "Put it there"! in a deep, mellow voice that goes straight to the heart. That voice and that look embody the quintessence of reassurance. You know in an instant that you are face to face with the kind of a town that couldn't play a mean trick on a man if it tried—that there isn't going to be any need of slinking around with one hand on your wallet and the other on your hip-pocket. Even though you may have been warned that various sorts of rough stuff have been pulled in Miles, you are certain that outsiders will have been found at the bottom of it if all the facts were known. (My over-night stop in Miles was hardly sufficient to prove out the truth of all this. Just the same, that's the way I felt about the town, and that's the way I still feel.)

Miles City owed its early importance to sheep and cattle, and still has the distinction of being the principle horse market of America. Agriculture has played an increasingly important part in its later growth. The splendid valleys of the Powder and the Tongue are both tributary territory, while the irrigation of the rich lands of the Yellowstone is bringing year by year an augmented flow of wealth to the city's gates. (Darn it! I wonder if I have cribbed that last sentence from Chamber of Commerce literature. In any event, it is quite true in this case.)

Besides its extensive cattle and sheep ranges, the Miles City region distinguishes itself by having the greatest range of temperature of any place in the world. The Government Weather Bureau is authority for the fact that a winter temperature of sixty-five degrees below Zero has been balanced by a summer one of one hundred and fifteen above. Neither California nor the Riviera can give the tourist anything like that variety to choose from. From Esquimo to Hottentot, what race couldn't establish itself right there by the Yellowstone under almost normal home weather conditions? Of course, if they were going to establish themselves for long some kind of a meteorological Joshua would be needed to command the thermometer to stand still; also some one to see that the command was carried out. And there would lie the way to complications and friction, for one can hardly imagine a Hottentot Joshua quite in agreement with an Esquimo Joshua as to just what point the thermometer should be commanded to stand at. That might be solved by the establishment of thermostat villages, but then would arise the endless train of legal complications inevitably following in the wake of infringing on the riparian rights (whatever they are) of the irrigation people. No, probably Miles had best be left to its present inhabitants, who appear to have waxed both amiable and prosperous by browsing on their temperature ranges just as Nature provided them.

I made special inquiry about Buffalo Rapids while in Miles City. This was for two reasons. Reading that Clark had been compelled to let down his boats over an abrupt fall of several feet at that point, I thought it just as well not to go blundering into it myself without further information. I also heard that there was a project for developing extensive power at this series of riffles. I spent a pleasant and profitable afternoon with Mr. Doane, the engineer of the project. He said that I ought to have little trouble in running right through all of the rapids, but suggested it might be well to land at a farmhouse near the head and see for myself. He also gave me a few facts about the power project. I would have to refer to my notes (which I never do if at all avoidable) to recall the hydro-electric data; but I need no such adventitious aid to remember Mrs. Doane's freshly distilled "Essence of Dandelion." Literal liquid golden sunshine it was, with a bouquet recalling to me that of an ambrosial decoction made by the monks of Mount Athos from buds of asphodel, and which a masked hermit lets down to you on a string from the tower in which he is supposed to be walled up with the makings and his retorts. Buffalo Rapids never troubled me again.

I pushed off about eleven in the forenoon of July 8th, and an hour's run in moderately fast water took me within sight and sound of the white caps of the first pitch of Buffalo Rapids. Clark had originally named these riffles "Buffaloe Shoal, from the circumstance of one of these animals being found in them." He describes it further as a "succession of bad shoals, interspersed with hard, brown, gritty rock, extending for six miles; the last shoal stretches nearly across the river, and has a descent of about three feet. At this place we were obliged to let the canoes down by hand, for fear of their splitting on a concealed rock; though when the shoals are known a large canoe could pass with safety through the worst of them. This is the most difficult part of the whole Yellowstone River...."

Captain Clark would hardly have registered the latter verdict had he run the Yellowstone all the way from the Big Bend, where he first came upon it. Indeed, it seems to me that he must have run rapids above Billings that were quite as menacing as the one which now put his party to so much trouble to avoid. I would not be too dogmatic on that point, however. A hundred years of time bring great changes even to bedrock riffles, and these latter themselves also vary greatly according to the stage of water. I was assured that from August on there is still a nearly abrupt drop of several feet at one point in Buffalo Rapids.

Although I was sure I could see my way past the first riffle without serious difficulty, I still thought it best to learn what I could at the farmhouse Doane had indicated. This proved to be a comfortable old log structure at a point where the right bank was being rapidly torn down by the swift current. A very deaf chap at the first door I approached strongly urged that I line all the way down, saying that there was at least one point where my boat could not possibly live. As that wasn't quite what I wanted to hear, I went round the house and tried another door. Here, in a big, fragrant kitchen, I found a family at lunch, but with one nice, juicy helping of cream-splashed tapioca pudding still unconsumed. I helped them out with that, and in return asked for information about the rapids. None of them was river-broke, but they said they had seen a rowboat run down the left side of the first riffle the previous summer and that they afterwards heard it was not upset until it got to Wolf Rapids, down Terry-way. That was more encouraging, at least as far as Buffalo Rapids were concerned, and I decided to push off and let Nature take its course. All of them, including the careful deaf brother, came down to speed me on. Rather anxious for a bit more weight aft to bring the head higher, I asked if any of them cared to run through with me to the railway bridge below the bend. All of them shook their heads save a flower-like slip of a girl of fourteen or thereabouts. She would have been game, I think—had the proper encouragement from her mother been forthcoming. What a handicap a solicitous mother is to a flower-like child! This mother was rather an old dear, too. All I really held against her at the last was on the score of letting her emergency reserve of tapioca and cream sink so low.