Down the Yellowstone - Lewis R. Freeman

There was something strangely appealing to the imagination in sitting there where the bison in his millions had so lately trod and putting everything and everybody at the Primal Fount in their proper places. Long into the night we rattled on just as though over a table at the Shoreham, the New Williard or Chevy Chase—just as we would have talked in Washington. Knocking Wilson whenever any other subject was exhausted, we bemoaned the predominance of third-class men in Congress, agreed that Harding wouldn't do much harm and might do good, swapped yarns about the funny things Congressmen's wives had said and done, and passed by acclamation a motion that the most unrepresentative institution in America was the House of Representatives. It was highly refreshing to meet people you could be really frank with in discussing the more or less esoteric phases of these and kindred subjects. I enjoyed that evening's yarn only less than I did my couch on a breeze-swept porch that was armoured with a woven copper mesh against the assaults of the common enemy.

Before I pushed off in the morning Mr. Patterson took me around two sides of his ranch and showed me some splendid fields of alfalfa and sweet clover, just ready for cutting. Prices were good, he said, and the prospects were bright for the best clean-up they had known so far. I have often wondered just how those green, fragrant fields looked ten hours later, just how much those optimistic forecasts were modified as a consequence of certain little inequalities of atmospheric pressure that were already making their differences felt in a lightning-shot murkiness hanging low on the northeastern horizon. I did not make sure of the Patterson's address and a postcard of inquiry I subsequently dispatched brought no reply.

I was aware of the heavy humidity of the atmosphere the moment I pulled out in the slow current of the still broadening river. There was plenty of air stirring but with no fixed plan of action in its mind. Now it would swoop down over the banks in sudden gusts; now it would blow down river for a few moments and then turn on its heel and come breezing right back, like a commuter who has forgotten his ticket; now it would deliberately "Box-the-Compass" right round the boat, as a cat circles a rat that it is just a bit chary about springing on.

The easterly gusts paved the surface of the water with evanescent patches of floating grasshoppers, evidently part of a flight that had not yet found lodgment in the growing fields under the irrigation project on the other bank. After each gust the fish would rise greedily to the feast for a few minutes. Satiation would come quickly, however, and most of the hoppers were left to drown or perhaps to gain a few hours longer lease on life by drifting to a bar. One gust that came while I was skirting the shore poured a literal grasshopper cataract over the cut-bank into the boat. There was a sharp, rasping contact where the saw-toothed legs side-swiped my arms and face that would undoubtedly have left abrasions on the skin if it had been kept up for any time. For a few moments there was a layer of hoppers two or three inches deep in the bottom of the skiff; then the most of them hurdled out into the water. The dessicated remains of the few ambuscados that took refuge in the grub-box kept turning up in a variety of frys, stews, and fricassees for the next fortnight.

I pulled up to Riverview Ferry, well on toward the North Dakota line, at one o'clock. Mr. and Mrs. Meadows, with whom I had lunch, once operated a pontoon bridge at this point but had given it up on account of the trouble from high water. They wanted to sell the twenty or more pontoons left on their hands but said they could not see where a buyer would come from. It occurred to me that one of these floats would make an ideal hull for a houseboat, for a Missouri-Mississippi voyage, just as Riverview would be an ideal place for launching one. I have not Mr. Meadows' address, but fancy Sidney, Montana, would reach him. I shall not take the responsibility of urging any one to attempt a trip of this kind, but should the urge have developed spontaneously I think there is a chance here to acquire the makings of an extremely serviceable house-boat at a fraction of what it would cost to go about building it in the ordinary way. Starting at high water in June, an outfit of this kind—with luck and in the hands of the right party—might well go through to New Orleans before Christmas. Manned by a party without much common sense and persistence, it might conceivably be abandoned by some wildly regretful people before it swung out into the "Big Muddy." I utterly refuse to pass upon any one's qualification, or to take other than hostile notice of letters charging me with ruining what but for me might have been a comparatively inexpensive and enjoyable holiday in Bermuda or on the Riviera.

The ferryman at Riverview claimed to have made the voyage from Miles City to somewhere on the lower Mississippi in a house-boat, taking two seasons for it. He was the first ferryman I ever met who was full of doleful warnings about troubles ahead. My little tin boat might be all right for the rapids of the Yellowstone, he said, but just wait till it went up against the white caps kicked up by the winds of the Missouri and the Mississippi. He said no word about the winds of the Yellowstone. If he wasn't prepared for them, I only hope his ferryboat was not caught in midstream by a zephyr that breezed up river about three hours later.

It must have been toward three o'clock that I first noticed how what had been a grey murkiness to the north-east all morning was now rising in a solid bank of swiftly advancing cloud. For a while its front was smooth and rounded, like the rim of a tin-plate. Half-way up to the zenith this front began to reveal itself as a wind-riven line of madly racing nimbus, black, sinister and ominous. And yet, blissfully ignorant of the hell-broth a-brew, I worried not a whit—didn't even begin to edge away from mid-channel for a while, in fact. What a lamb it was! Never again, with so much as a man's-hand-sized cloud blinking on the windward horizon, was I to know the calm, quiet, serenity of a confident soul.

A long, lean, torpedo-like shaft of blue-black cloud, breaking away from the ruck and aiming in a direction that would bring it directly over my head, produced the first splash in the pool of my perfect serenity. That did look just a bit as though I might be running into the centre of a heavy thunder-storm, I confessed to myself. Perhaps, if there was a ranch-house convenient, it might be just as well to be thinking of getting under cover. Yes, there were three or four houses off to the left—places on the irrigation project, doubtless, they were so close together. I started to pull in toward a sandy flat, but sheered off again when it became apparent that a slough and marsh would cut me off from the first of the houses, a place with a silo and the inevitable red barn. Plainly the only way to reach any of the farms would be by landing at the foot of the bluff a quarter of a mile ahead, climbing up and cutting across the fields. That might not be possible before the storm broke—but what did a warm summer rain matter anyhow?

Leaning hard onto my oars, I headed straight down stream for where a coal-streaked yellow bluff blocked the northerly course of the river and bent it off almost directly eastward. Swelling monstrously as it approached, the black arrow-head of the storm, deflecting slightly, began to pass overhead to the left. I distinctly remember thinking how its shape now suggested the picked skeleton of a gigantic mackerel—just a backbone and right-angling ribs. The sun dimmed and reddened as the flying clouds began to drive across its face, and the even ribs barred the dulling glow like a furnace grating. A sulphurous, copperly glare streaming through cast a weird unearthly sheen on the unrhythmically lapping wavelets of the river. My serenity was blotted out with the sun. I recalled only too well now where I had known that ghostly yellow light before—the sullen fore-glow by which the South Sea hurricane slunk upon its helpless prey. It had always been associated in my mind with the shriek of the wind, the roar of the surf and the explosive detonations of snapped coco palm boles. There were no coco palms here to snap, I reflected, but—ah, that was surely a roar, and there came the wind!