Getting a pack-outfit ready for a long trip into the wilderness is a serious matter. We were taking thirty-one horses, guides, packers, and a cook. But we were doing more than that—we were taking two boats! This was Bob's idea. Any highly original idea, such as taking boats where not even tourists had gone before, or putting eggs on a bucking horse, or carrying grapefruit for breakfast into the wilderness, was Bob's idea.
"You see, I figure it out like this," he said, when, on our arrival at Belton, we found the boats among our equipment: "If we can get those boats up to the Canadian line and come down the Flathead rapids all the way, it will only take about four days on the river. It's a stunt that's never been pulled off."
"Do you mean," I said, "that we are going to run four days of rapids that have never been run?"
"That's it."
I looked around. There, in a group, were the Head and the Big Boy and the Middle Boy and the Little Boy. And a fortune-teller at Atlantic City had told me to beware of water!
"At the worst places," the Optimist continued, "we can send Joe ahead in one boat with the 'movie' outfit, and get you as you come along."
copyright, 1912, by kiser photo co.
Looking south from Pollock Pass, Glacier National Park
"I dare say," I observed, with some bitterness. "Of course we may upset. But if we do, I'll try to go down for the third time in front of the camera."
But even then the boats were being hoisted into a wagon-bed filled with hay. And I knew that I was going to run four days of rapids. It was written.