The Project Gutenberg EBook of Down the Yellowstone, by Lewis R. Freeman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Down the Yellowstone Author: Lewis R. Freeman Release Date: August 27, 2011 [EBook #37220] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE *** Produced by Christian Boissonnas, Greg Bergquist and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES" SEA-HOUNDS IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES HELL'S HATCHES DOWN THE COLUMBIA © J. E. Haynes, St. Paul THE YELLOWSTONE DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE BY LEWIS R. FREEMAN Author of "In the Tracks of the Trades," "Down the Columbia," etc., etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1922 Copyright, 1922, By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. PRINTED IN U. S. A. VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK To "MY FRIENDS ALONG THE YELLOWSTONE, WHO HAVE KEPT ALIVE ALL THAT IS BEST IN THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD WEST" INTRODUCTION It must have been close to twenty years ago that I first started to boat from the head of the Yellowstone to the Gulf of Mexico. On that occasion I covered something over a hundred miles from the source of the Yellowstone—a good part of it on the ice, on the bank, or floundering in the water. As a start it was not auspicious, nor was it destined to be anything more than a start. Shrouded in the mists of comparative antiquity, the reason for my embarking on this voyage is only less obscure than my reason for failing to continue it. As nearly as I can figure it today, it was a series of tennis tournaments in Washington and British Columbia that lured me to the North-west in the first place. Then a hunting trip in eastern Washington merged into an enchanting interval of semi-vagabondage through the silver- lead mining camps of the Cœur d'Alene and the copper camps of Montana, at that time in the hey-day of their glory. From Butte to the Yellowstone was only a step. That it was still winter at those altitudes, and that the Park, under from ten to forty feet of snow, would not be opened to tourists for another two months, were only negligible incidentals. That deep snow, far from being a hindrance, actually facilitated travel over a rough country, I had learned the previous year in Alaska. I should have known better than to expect that permission would be granted me to make a tour of the Park out of season, and, as a matter of fact, it doubtless would not have been had I proceeded by the proper official channels via Washington. Knowing nothing of either propriety or officialdom at my then immature age (would that I could say the same today!), I simply journeyed jauntily up to Fort Yellowstone and told the U. S. Army officer in command that I was a writer on game protection, and that I wanted the loan of a pair of ski in order to fare forth and study the subject at first hand. When he asked me if I knew how to use ski, adding that he could not let me proceed if I did not, I replied that I did. Now each of these confident assertions was made with a mental reservation. I was really only a potential writer on game protection, just as I was only a potential ski-runner. I knew that I could write something about game protection, just as surely as I knew I could do something with the ski. As to just what I should write about game protection I was in some doubt, never having written about anything at all up to that time. Similarly, in the matter of the ski, never having seen a ski before. But I knew I could use them, for something, and hoped it would be as aids to linear progression over snow. Thanks to some previous experience with web snowshoes, I came through fairly well with the ski, but at the cost of many bumps and bruises and strained muscles. What it cost me to make good that game protection scribe boast would require some figuring. I recall that there was one old shark of an editor of a yellow-covered outdoor magazine in New York who quoted me advertising rates for the article I submitted him, but I believe we compromised by my taking twenty paid-in-advance subscriptions. Another editor sent me a bill for the cost of the cuts, and offered to include my own photograph—in evening clothes if desired—for five dollars extra. I still have several game protection articles on hand. It must have been sometime previous to the two or three weeks that I spent mushing about the valleys of the upper Yellowstone on the ice and snow that the idea came to me that it would be a nice thing to float down on the spring rise to the Missouri, the Mississippi and the Gulf. In any event, I knew that the thought came to me before arriving at the Park. I have a distinct recollection of pre-empting for my own use a big iron staple which some soldier had put in the mineral-charged water of Mammoth Hot Springs to acquire a frosty coating. I purposed driving it into the bow of my boat to bend the painter to. The boat I secured about ten miles down river from the Park boundary. The famous "Yankee Jim" gave it to me. This may sound generous on Jim's part, but seeing the boat didn't belong to him it wasn't especially so. Nor was the craft really a boat, either. It had been built by a coal miner from Aldridge, with the intention of using it to float down the Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi to his childhood home in Hickman, Kentucky. It had done such strange things in the comparatively quiet ten-mile stretch below Gardiner that the miner abandoned it a good safe distance above "Yankee Jim's" Canyon, went back to Cinnabar and bought a ticket to Hickman by rail. I knocked the top-heavy house off the queer contraption, and in, under and round about the shell-like residue bumped and battered my way through the Canyon, and about twenty miles beyond. The last five miles were made astride of the only three remaining planks. I walked the ties the intervening fifteen miles to Livingston. It was undoubtedly my intention to build a real boat in Livingston and proceed on my voyage before the spring rise went down. Just why I came to falter in my enterprise I can't quite remember, but I am almost certain it was because the local semi-pro baseball team of the Montana League needed a first baseman the same day that the editor of the local paper was sent to the Keeley Institute with delirium tremens. Never having been an editor before, there was a glamour about the name that I must confess hardly surrounds it in my mind today. I can see now, therefore, how I came to fall when a somewhat mixed delegation waited upon me with the proposal that I edit the Enterprise five days of the week and play ball Saturdays and Sundays. I would fall for the same thing again today, that is, without the editor stuff. At any rate, summer and the tide of the Yellowstone waxed and began to wane without my boating farther seaward than the timberless bluffs of Big Timber, to where, with a couple of companions, I went slap- banging in a skiff one Sunday morning when the team was scheduled for a game there in the afternoon. Finally, it seems to me, it was tennis and some challenge mugs that had to be defended that took me back to Washington, and so to California. I was destined to form more or less intimate boating acquaintance with practically every one of the great rivers of South America, Asia, and Africa before returning to resume my interrupted voyage down the Yellowstone. There were several moving considerations operative in bringing about my decision to attempt a Yellowstone-Missouri-Mississippi voyage last summer. Not the least of these, doubtless, was the desire to complete the unfinished business of the original venture. A more immediate inspiration, however, was traceable to a voyage I had made down the Columbia the previous autumn. Second only to the scenic grandeur and the highly diverting sport of running the rapids of this incomparable stream, was the discovery that the supposedly long-quenched flame of frontier kindliness and hospitality still flickered in the West, that there were still a few folk in existence to whom the wayfarer was neither a bird to be plucked nor a lemon to be squeezed. It wasn't quite a turning of the calendar back to frontier days, but rather, perhaps, to about those not unhappy pre-war times before the yellow serum of profiteering was injected into the red blood of so many Americans. Living well off the main arteries of travel, these river folk seemed to have escaped the corroding infection almost to a man, and it was a mightily reassuring experience to meet them, if no more than to shake hands and exchange greetings in passing. So few will have had the experience of late, that I quite despair of being understood when I speak of the good it does one to encounter a fellow being whom one knows wants and expects no more than is coming to him. Meeting a number of such was like going into a new world. I told myself frankly that I could do with a lot more people of that kind, and perhaps come out rather less of an undesirable myself as a consequence of the contact. If I found them all along the Columbia, why not along the Yellowstone, and perhaps the Missouri and the Mississippi? And what wouldn't four or five months' association with such do in the way of eradicating incipient Bolshevism? And so I planned, embarked upon, and finally completed the journey from the snows of the Continental Divide where the Yellowstone takes its rise, to New Orleans where the Mississippi meets the tide of the Gulf of Mexico. I trust the dedication to this rambling volume of reminiscence may give some hint of the extent to which my hopes for the voyage were justified. To maintain perspective, I am beginning my story by sketching in a few high lights from my earlier jaunt to the sources of the Yellowstone. I saw things then that few have had the opportunity to see since, just as I embarked lightsomely on several little enterprises that I have neither the nerve nor the wind to attempt today. Also, I had fairly intimate glimpses in the course of that delectable interval of vagabondage of several notable frontier characters whom no present-day wanderer by the ways of the Yellowstone can ever hope to meet. The priceless "Yankee Jim" was inextricably mixed up with my rattle- headed attempt to flounder through the canyon to which he had given his name. He really belongs in the picture. "Calamity Jane" is more of an exotic (to shift my metaphoric gear), so that the chapter I have devoted to the most temperamental lady of a tempestuous epoch will have to be its own justification. Frequent historical allusions will be found in the pages of the narrative of my later down- river voyage. I am sorry about this, but it couldn't be helped. History-makers have boated upon, and camped by, the Missouri for a hundred years, just as the Mississippi has known them for thrice a hundred. Most of the things that path-finders leave behind them are imponderable. In the thousands of miles between the mouth of the Missouri and the mouth of the Columbia a few practically obliterated scratches on a rock in Montana are all that one can point to as left by the Lewis and Clark expedition; yet memories of those two lurk in the shadows of every cliff, spring to meet one across the sandy bars of every muddy tributary. And so with all who came after them, from Hunt and his trapper contemporaries on down to Custer, "Buffalo Bill" and Sitting Bull. And so on the Mississippi, from Marquette and La Salle to Grant and Mark Twain. You can't ignore them, try as you will; that is, if you're going to write at all about your voyagings. I've done the best I could on that score. For the rest, I have written freely of rivers and mountains, of adventure and misadventure, and somewhat of cities and towns; much of men and little of institutions. In short, I seem to have picked on about the same things that a commuter on his summer vacation would choose to write of to a fellow-commuter who has staid at home. I only hope that my view-point has been half as fresh. CONTENTS PART I PAGE I The Yellowstone in Winter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 II Ski Snaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 III High Lights and Low Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 IV Running Yankee Jim's Canyon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 V "Calamity Jane" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 PART II I Present Day Yellowstone Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 II Livingston Twenty Years After . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 III Livingston to Big Timber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 IV Big Timber to Billings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 V Billings to Glendive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 VI Glendive to the Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 ILLUSTRATIONS The Yellowstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece Elk in gathering storm, Jackson's Hole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Elk stalled in snow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 As we pulled up close behind him . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 The Falls in winter from Point Lookout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 The Giant is the biggest geyser in North America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 "Yankee Jim's" cabin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 "Yankee Jim" with a trout from his canyon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Just above the first drop in "Yankee Jim's" Canyon . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 Foot of "Yankee Jim's" Canyon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 "Calamity Jane" in 1885 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 I found "Calamity" smoking a cigar and cooking breakfast . . . . . . . . 80 Golden Gate Canyon and Viaduct . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Emigrant Peak, Yellowstone River, near Livingston, Mont. . . . . . . . 108 Tower Fall and Towers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Yellowstone Park Headquarters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Director Mather, Secretary of the Interior Fall, and Super- intendent Albright camping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Superintendent Albright and Mule Deer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Gate of the Mountains, Yellowstone River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Where Custer fell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 The blacksmith shop where my boat was set up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 We launched the boat below the Livingston bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 A difficult riffle below Springdale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Pete Holt and Joe Evans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Hauled out at the foot of a rough rapid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 A sharp pitch on the upper Yellowstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Joe Evans who piloted me the first half day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Pete Holt and Joe Evans with their inflated life preservers . . . . . . . 156 "Chickens, children and hogs" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Round-up outfit at dinner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 A savage riffle near the site of Captain Clark's boat camp . . . . . . . . 176 Sunrise on a quiet reach of the lower Yellowstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176 The Yellowstone below the outlet of the Lake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Rough water and a bad bend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Herd, Powder River Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 Sheep by the water, Big Powder River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 The County bridge over the Yellowstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Pompey's Pillar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 The Yellowstone from the top of Pompey's Pillar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Custer's Pillar, Bad Lands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 The grating which protects the initials carved by Captain Clark on the side of Pompey's Pillar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Stockyards, Miles City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 "Freightin'" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 One of the famous school bands of Glendive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 Buffalo stampede . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242 The dam across the Yellowstone at Intake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 Portaging my boat round the Intake Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 Completing the portage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246 The "Old-N" crossing the Powder River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 The Yellowstone just above Livingston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 The Yellowstone just after receiving the Big Horn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 The broad stream of the Yellowstone below Glendive . . . . . . . . . . . 280 The last bridge above the Missouri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280 Where the Yellowstone takes possession of the Missouri . . . . . . . . . 280 PART I TWENTY YEARS BEFORE DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE CHAPTER I THE YELLOWSTONE IN WINTER The present-day Indian inhabitants of the Yellowstone and Big Horn valleys, whose ancestors hunted bear, buffalo and elk in the Devil's Land now known as Yellowstone Park, preserve a legend to the effect that when the world was made, because this region was the most desirable section of Creation, Mog the God of Fire, and Lob the God of rains and snows, contended for the control of it. After some preliminary skirmishing, the disputants carried the matter to the court of the Great Spirit for settlement. Here the ruling was that Mog should occupy the land for six moons, when Lob should follow with possession for a similar interval, thus dividing the year equally between them. But Mog, being a bad god as well as a tricky one, spent his first six moons in connecting the valleys with hell by a thousand passages, and thus bringing up fire and sulphur and boiling water wherever it suited his fiendish fancy. Then he threw dust on all of the beautiful colored mountains, dried up the grass and shook the leaves from the trees, so that when it came to his rival's turn to take charge, Lob found affairs in a very sad way indeed. But Lob set himself to work, like the good god that he was, and dusted and furbished up [Pg 1] [Pg 2] the mountains, watered the grass and trees, and heaped the snow in mighty drifts on geyser and hot spring in an effort to stop their mouths and force their boiling waters back from whence they came. But the latter task was too much for him. When the end of his allotted time came, though the grass was springing green and fresh and the trees were bursting into leaf again, the geysers and hot springs spouted merrily on. All the incoming Mog had to do was to kick up a few clouds of dust and turn the sun loose on the grass and trees to have the place just as he had left it. And so for some thousands of alternating tenancies the fight has gone on, all the best of it with the bad god. Although Lob is gaining somewhat year by year, and has already dried many a spouting geyser and bubbling hot spring and reduced countless pots of boiling sulphur to beds of yellow crystals, he still has many a moon to work before he can force hell to receive its own and leave him free to complete his mighty task of reclamation. In strong support of this legend is the fact that at the time of year when the Indians say that Lob is compelled to abdicate, and before Mog begins his annual dust-throwing—the middle of April or thereabouts,—the Yellowstone Park is incomparably more beautiful than at any other season. And moreover, there are those who maintain that even at other seasons it is still more beautiful than any other place in the world, just as it was in the beginning when it aroused the jealousies of the rival gods and precipitated their eternal conflict. What the Yellowstone is in the early spring only those who have seen it at that season can realize, and only those who have made the summer tour are in a position to imagine. Let one who has breasted the sweltering heat-waves that radiate from Obsidian Cliff in July, trying to picture the impressive beauty of that massive pile of volcanic glass through the translucent dust-clouds raised by the passage of two or three score cars—let him fancy that cliff, its summit crowned with a feathered crest of snow, huge drifts at its base, and its whole face, washed and polished by the elements, glittering as though panelled with shining ebony. Let him think of the time his car was halted on the Continental Divide and the driver endeavoured to point out one of the distant eminences, guessed dimly through the smoke-clouds rising beyond Shoshone Lake, as the Grand Teton, and then fancy himself standing at the same point and looking out across the valley through air that, windowed and cleansed by the winds and snows of the winter, is so clear that the bottle- green in the rims of the glaciers is discernible at forty miles. Let him who has admired the transcendent beauty of the steam-clouds swirling above Old Faithful in the summer imagine these clouds increased two-fold in whiteness and density, and ten-fold in volume, by the quicker condensation of a zero morning. Let him picture the black gorge of the Fire Hole Canyon, where the river plunges down to the Upper Geyser Basin, forming Kepplar Cascade, transformed to a shining fairyland of sparkling crystal and silver, everything in range of the flying spray spangled and plated and jewelled by the ice and frost, as though a whole summer day's sunshine had been shaken up with a winter night's snowfall, and then fashioned by an army of elfin workmen into a marvellous million-pieced fretwork, adorned with traceries ethereal and delicate, and of a fragile loveliness beyond words to describe. All these things, and many more, the summer tourist will have to picture in coming near to a conception of what the wizardry of winter has effected. There is the novelty of seeing a rim of ice around the Devil's Frying Pan, and the great hole that the up-shooting gush of a geyser tears in a cloud of driven snow. There is the massive beauty of the ice bulwark upon Virginia Cascade, and then, in winter as in summer the scenic climax, the lower falls and the Grand Canyon. And nowhere more than in the incomparable Canyon is the general effect heightened by the presence of the ice and the snow and the clean-washed air. The very existence of the brilliant streaks and patches of yellow and umber and a dozen shades of red depends upon the water from the rain and melting snow dissolving the colouring matters from the rocks of the upper levels and depositing them upon the canyon walls as it trickles down to the river. Clear and sharp in the early springtime, the bright pigments are bleached and blended by the sun and winds of the summer until, by the time the fall storms set in, the contrast between streak and streak is far less marked than when, chrysalis like, they first burst from their snow cocoons of winter. It is in the spring, when the blaze of the great colour-drenched diorama is set off by patches of dazzling snow, when every vagrant sunbeam glancing from the canyon side is caught and refracted in the mazes of glittering icicles that fringe every jutting cornice and battlement till it reaches the eyes of the beholder like a flash from a thousand-hued star; [Pg 3] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] [Pg 6] when the slide from the mountainside forms a snow dam in the river, and the angry torrent, leaping like a lion at the bars of its cage, brushes away the obstruction and rages onward in renewed fury to the valley; when the great mouth under the snow-cap at the top of the falls is tearing itself wider day by day in its frantic efforts to disgorge the swollen stream that comes surging down from the over-flowing lake—it is at this time, when Nature has whipped on her mightiest forces to the extreme limit of their powers in a grandstand finish to her spring house-cleaning, that the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone has a beauty and a depth of appeal beyond all other seasons. From the time that I first conceived the idea of an early springtime trip through the Yellowstone Park the difficulties in the way of carrying out such a plan, like rolled snowballs, seemed to grow as my inquiries progressed. Every objection was urged, from the possibility of snow-blindness to the certainty of death from cold, snow-slides, or wild animals, from the probability of opposition from the Fort to the improbability of securing provisions en route. Old "Yankee Jim" even told me that the spirits of the hot springs and geysers, while peaceable enough in the mild days of summer, were not to be trusted after they had been "riled and fruz" by the winds and snows of winter. That was about the last straw. I felt that I was literally between the devil and the deep snow. But when I reached Fort Yellowstone, at the entrance to the Park, I learned that nearly the whole of the hundred and fifty miles of road followed on the summer tour were patrolled by soldiers, and that the scouts made a complete round several times during the winter. The officer in command received me most kindly. He had no objection at all to my going out with the scouts or the soldiers on game patrol. If I would satisfy him that I could conduct myself properly on ski he would see that all necessary equipment and facilities were provided me for the winter tour. I learned later that the sergeant who was detailed to test me out had boasted that he intended to break me of my fool notion if he had to break my fool neck. From the way he started, I am actually inclined to believe he meant it. He led me on foot up the road to Golden Gate, circled round to the west, ordered me to put on my ski, and then started down through the timber toward the terraces of Mammoth Hot Springs. I, of course, fell at the end of ten feet. Having little way on, my worst difficulty was getting my head out from under the toe of my left ski the while that same toe was held down by the rear end of my right ski. It was just the usual ski beginner's mix-up. My instructor, however, had descended about five hundred feet right side up when a loop of willow caught the toe of one of his ski and sent him spinning the next five hundred end over end. It was only by the greatest of good luck that he kissed lightly off five or six trees in passing instead of colliding with one head-on. Even as it was they had to send a sled up from the fort to bring down his much-abused anatomy. The remainder of my ski novitiate, thank heaven, was served under the skilful and considerate tutelage of Peter Holt, the scout. Thanks to my Alaska snow-shoe work and the fact that I was hard as nails physically, I was pronounced ready to take the road at the end of a couple of days. It was intensive training, and accompanied by many bumps and thrills. I shall probably always be in Holt's debt for the bumps. Most of the thrills I paid back last June when, finding him the Chief of Police of Livingston, I took him along as passenger for the first fifty miles of my run down the Yellowstone. The morning after I was adjudged sufficiently ski-broke to attempt the winter tour of the Park with a fair chance of finishing I was attached to a party of troopers detailed to pack in bacon to the station at Norris Basin. The memories of the doings of the delectable weeks that followed, which I spent with bear and elk and spouting geysers and bubbling mud springs as my daily play-fellows, are still tinged with rose at the end of a score of years. I am appending here—in the form of verbatim extracts from my religiously kept diary—some account of a few of the more amusing episodes. The wording follows hard upon the original; the spelling, I regret to say, I have just had to go over with a dictionary and dephonetize. If the view-point is a bit naïve in spots, please remember that you are reading the babblings of a very moony and immature youth, more or less tipsy with his first draughts of life, who had just discovered that he was standing on the verge of a world full of innumerable things and imagining that they were all put there for his own special entertainment. CHAPTER II [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] SKI SNAPS Lake Station, April 13. Corporal Hope and I set out this morning from the Patrol Station, going after elk and buffalo pictures. Heading in the direction of Hayden Valley, we encountered two buffalo cows and their calves crossing a half-bare opening in the trees near the Mud Geyser. We had little difficulty in heading them as they tried to break away and driving them off on a course that offered me a favourable exposure. The calves were a month or more old, but tottered on their thin legs and seemed very weak, the consequence, no doubt, of continued inbreeding. The rapidly thinning herd is badly in need of an infusion of new blood. We came upon the main herd farther down the valley, making some long-distance snap- shots on various individuals and sections of it as they went lunging off through the drifts at our approach. It was old "Tuskegee," reputed to be the largest specimen of the Bison Americanus in existence, whose picture I most cared for. The old fellow is estimated to weigh over 3000 pounds, is covered with a net-work of scars from his lifetime of fighting, and has only one eye and the remnant of a tail left. He has been seen to give battle to three pugnacious bull elk at once, and has killed numbers of them in single combat. It was but a few summers ago that old "Tuskegee" left the herd, charged a coach full of tourists, goring one of the horses so badly that it had to be shot. The big vehicle was nearly overturned by the plunging horses, while its occupants—a party of New England school-teachers—were driven into frenzies of terror. Neither the bullets from a nickel- plated revolver in the hands of one of the schoolmarms, nor the long stinging whip of the driver, nor even his equally long and stinging oaths, affected "Tuskegee" in the least. He continued butting about among the frightened horses as though the wrecking of a six-in- hand coach was a regular part of his daily routine. At last, however, the sustained hysteria of the females seemed to get upon the old fellow's nerves. Wheeling about, he turned the stub of his tail to the swooning tourists and galloped, bellowing, over the hill. An order was at once issued that "Tuskegee" should be shot on sight, and for a month a special detail from the Fort scoured the hills and valleys in search of the renegade. But all to no purpose. The old warrior, as though understanding that he was persona non grata with the authorities, retreated into the impenetrable fastnesses of the mountain spurs above Thorofare Plateau, and nothing was seen or heard of him for many months. For two years there was an interregnum in buffalodom, during which the big herd gradually dropped to pieces and wandered about in leaderless fragments. Then, one day, a big bull elk was found, crushed and torn, trampled into the mud of Violet Springs, and the scouts told each other that the King had returned. A few days later a soldier of the game patrol, on a run through Hayden Valley, saw the reunited herd debouch from a canyon, with old "Tuskegee" puffing proudly in the lead. His tail was stubbier than ever, the grizzled red hair was more patchy on the rump and more matted on the neck, and a new set of scars was criss-crossed and etched into the old ones upon his flanks. The old fighting spirit still flamed, however, and the trooper owed his life to the fact that the snow was deep, the crust firm, the slope down and his ski well waxed. But a new superintendent was in charge, and his satisfaction at seeing the scattered herd once more united was so great that he stayed the order of execution. Since that time, strangely enough, "Tuskegee" has appeared to show his appreciation of this official clemency by behaving in a most exemplary manner. I was endeavouring to get a picture of the main herd before it broke up, when Hope espied old "Stub Tail" in the rear of a bunch of young cows who were heading away for the hills. Shouting for me to join him, he gave chase. We gained on them easily in the heavy snow of the valley, and almost overtook them where they floundered, belly-deep, on their erratic course. Then they struck the wind-swept slopes of the lower hills, where the agile cows drew away from us rapidly and scampered out of sight. But not so old "Tuskegee." Whether it was rheumatism in his stiff old joints that made him stop, or simple weariness, or, as is most likely, the unconquerable pride that would not permit him to turn his back upon an enemy, I shall not attempt to say. In any case, he wheeled and faced us, head low, hoofs pawing the moss, and snorting in angry defiance. As he stood with his rugged form towering against the white background of the snowy hillside, two jets of steam rushing from his nostrils, his jaws flecked with bloody foam, his one eye gleaming green as the starboard light of a steamer, and his bellows of rage so deep that they seemed to come from beneath the earth, old "Tuskegee" might have been [Pg 11] [Pg 12] [Pg 13] the vindictive incarnation of the spirit of all the geysers and hell holes in the Yellowstone bent on an errand of wrath and destruction. Right then and there I forgot what I came for, forgot the picture I had intended to take, forgot everything but that snorting colossus in front of me and the fact that the hillside sloped invitingly in the opposite direction. Wherefore I tried to swing around, and in swinging turned too short, crossed my ski, and fell in a heap with my face in the snow. They say that an ostrich will snuggle its head contentedly into the sand and let a band of Arabs with drawn scimitars charge right into its tail feathers. This may be quite true. Perhaps the climate of the Sahara has something to do with it. But it won't work with a man, a bull buffalo and a snowdrift, particularly if the man is strapped to two ten-foot-six strips of hickory and the bull buffalo has a bad reputation. The faith, folly, foolishness, or whatever it is of the ostrich would have saved me a lot of unpleasant apprehensions. Every moment of the time I struggled to unsocket my head from under the nose of one of my ski I was sure I was going to be gored the next. And I am certain I was down all of five minutes, notwithstanding Hope's assertion that he had me straightened out and on my feet inside of ten seconds. Photo by S. N. Leek ELK IN GATHERING STORM, JACKSON'S HOLE "Steady, young feller," I heard him saying as I rubbed the snow from my eyes; "don't lose your head like that again." (I wonder if he meant that literally.) "Old 'Tusky' won't hurt a fly nowadays. He's just posing for his picture. Gimme that camera. Hold up there; tain't nothing to be scared of! That last was shouted at me as I gave a push with my pole and began to slide off down the hill out of the danger zone. Swinging round to a reluctant standstill, I meekly unslung my camera as Hope came down for it. Then, all set for a start, I watched him as he zigzagged back up the hill toward the buffalo. "Tusky" was blowing like a young Vesuvius, but the nervy fellow, not a whit daunted, edged up to within twenty feet of the steaming monster, waited calmly for the sun to come out from behind a cloud, and snapped the camera. Then we coasted back to the valley—I well in the lead,—leaving the resolute old monster in full possession of the field. Our chase of the fleet-footed wapita was attended by less excitement but more exertion than was our pursuit of the bison. Following a trail from Violet Springs, we were lucky in encountering a herd of from four to five hundred grazing where the spring sunshine was uncovering the grass on a broad expanse of southerly sloping upland. We circled to the higher hills in an endeavour to drive a portion of the herd to the deeper snow of the valley, where we could overtake them on our ski. In the course of our climb we came upon a fine young bull of two years or thereabouts, lying in an alder thicket badly wounded from fighting. One of his graceful horns was snapped squarely off a foot from the head, his sides were frightfully bruised and torn, and so weak was he from loss of blood that he took no notice whatever of our approach. Hope said that few bulls are killed outright in their fights, but that most of the badly wounded ones ultimately die from "scab." Our efforts to turn the elk to the valley was only partially successful, for the main herd, as though divining our purpose, set off on a mad stampede for the mountains, and on a course which made it impossible to head them. Hope, however, at imminent risk of his neck, dropped like a meteor over the rim of the mesa, negotiated a precarious serpentine curve among the butts of a lot of deadfalls, and just succeeded in cutting off a large bunch of cows, half a dozen "spike" bulls, and a fine old fourteen-pointer. The bulls were brave enough at the beginning of the chase, where the snow was light and the going easy. The old fellow in particular kept well to the rear of his flying family, stopping every now and then to brandish his horns and give voice to clear, penetrating cries of defiance and anger. But as the herd wallowed into the coulée that skirted the foot of the hills his courage deserted him. He, in turn, deserted his family, and it was sauve qui peut for the lot of them. By the time our glistening hickories pulled us up on the flank of the bunch of heaving, sobbing cows, old "Fourteen Points" was a good hundred yards ahead, with the "spikes" scattered in between. We easily headed the frightened cows as they floundered shoulder-deep, and I snapped them several times without much trouble. Then we turned our attention to the big bull. He, [Pg 14] [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] in his terror, had charged straight on down the coulée, going into increasingly deep snow at every bound. His efforts were magnificent to behold. At times only the tips of his shining antlers were visible; again, he would break through with his fore feet and fall with his muzzle in the snow, only his hind quarters showing above the crust. At times he would be down fore and aft, disappearing completely from sight, only the sound of his mighty limbs as they churned the honey-combed snow telling the story of the struggle. His agility was wonderful. Every ounce of bone, every shred of muscle, every fiber of nerve was strained to its utmost. Time and again I saw his rear hoofs drawn as far forward and as high as his shoulders in an effort to gain a solid footing. When the hold of his hind legs was lost he would reach out and bury his fore hoofs and nose in the sinking crust, and then, arching his back, try to drag his great body up to them. As we pulled up close behind him he wallowed into the shadow of some tall pines where the crust, unexposed to the sun, was hard and firm. He struggled to the surface, tottered across the shadowed space and began to break through on the farther side. Backing up, he tried a fresh place, but only to break through with all fours. Finally, all his former courage seeming to return with a rush, he staggered back against a tree, lowered his head, and with a shrill trumpet of defiance dared us to come on. That was just what we had hoped and planned for. Circling on the soft snow, well beyond the reach of a rush, I made several snaps before we coasted away and left him free to return to his family and explain his desertion as best he might. The grating of his teeth, as he ground them together in elk-ish fury, followed us for some distance as we slid away down the coulée. J. E. Haynes, St. Paul ELK STALLED IN SNOW J. E. Haynes, St. Paul AS WE PULLED UP CLOSE BEHIND HIM My attempt to secure some mountain sheep pictures by following the same methods employed with the bison and elk was brought to a sudden termination by what came so near to proving a serious disaster to the quarry that it quite destroyed my zest for the new sport and made me decide with regret to give it up as incompatible with my career as a writer on game protection. This occurred on the mountains above the Gardiner River not long after I had returned to Mammoth Hot Springs from my circular tour on ski. Hope, whose time in the Army was about up, was my fellow culprit. Both of us doubtless deserved to be clapped in the guard-house, as we surely would have been had the true account of what happened come out at the time. Now, at the end of twenty years, probably it won't matter a lot. Certainly not to Hope in any event. After serving out three or four more re-enlistments, he was killed in the Argonne in one of the last actions of the war. I quote again from my diary. Mammoth Hot Springs, April 23. Hope and I came within a hair of wiping out the cream of the Yellowstone Park herd of Ovis Montana this morning while trying to take its picture. I took the picture all right, but as a consequence of it the herd took a header into the river. I think all of them got out, but it was a narrow squeeze at the best. If there is ever an official inquiry into our operations, I am afraid my reputation as a game protector will be gone beyond all hope. This was the way the thing happened: We had located with our glasses a large flock of fine animals several hundred yards below our lookout on Gardiner Mountain. Hope set off along the ridge to the windward of them, holding their interest so successfully in that direction that I was able to coast down from the opposite side and bring up almost in their midst before one of them knew [Pg 18] [Pg 19] [Pg 20] what had happened. I had time for one hurried snap before they were off, and another when a swift quarter-mile coast brought me up almost on the heels of the vanguard of the flying flock. Down a couple of hundred yards of easy slope I held even with the tail of the flock, and was manœuvring for another exposure when they came out upon a stretch of almost level bench above the river and began to beat me three-to-one. The leaders had all but reached the shelter of the timber when Hope, brandishing his pole and whooping like a wild Indian, dropped with the suddenness of a thunderbolt from somewhere among the snowy cliffs above and turned them back. The unexpected appearance of a new enemy sent glimmering such wits as the grizzled old leader still had. With one frightened glance to where I came labouring down on him from the rear, he turned and went plunging over the rim of the cliff onto the honey-combed ice and snow that bridged the river torrent, the whole flock following in his wake. Hope, wide eyed with consternation, was peering over the edge of the cliff as I came up, and together we watched the various members of the flock pull themselves together, flounder through to the opposite bank and make off into the alder thicket beyond. The game struggle of the old patriarch was splendid. The first to leap, his unfortunate anatomy, half buried in the yielding snow, had received the impact of more than a few of the flying hoofs and horns that followed. For four or five long minutes after the last of his mates had struggled through to safety he lay, stunned and bleeding, on a slender peninsula of firm snow that jutted out over the surging stream. As the sound of our voices, loud and tense with guilty anxiety, floated down to him, he roused, pulled himself together, and at almost the first flounder broke through and went whirling off in the clutch of the angry current. At the lower end of the cave-in his high-flung horns caught against the rim of soft ice, giving him a brief, but what we felt sure could be no more than a temporary, respite from an apparently certain fate. But we underrated the mettle of the brave old veteran, for even while his sturdy hind quarters drew down in the grip of the powerful undercurrent, one sharp fore hoof after the other gained hold on the trembling crust, and his sinewy body was almost lifted to safety before the sagging mass gave way again and left him struggling in the water. Twice, and then once again, was this same plucky manœuvre repeated, but only to end each time in the same heart-breaking failure. Every fibre of rippling muscle seemed strained to the limit in his final effort, and when the soggy ice broke away it looked certain that the river was to be the victor after all. And such, no doubt, would have been the end had not the last cave-in carried the resolute old patriarch to a submerged bar of shingle. Here, rallying his seemingly inexhaustible strength, he gathered himself and leaped cleanly to a solid stretch of crust. A moment later he was off in the wake of the rest of his flock. With long-drawn breaths of relief we turned and tightened up the thongs of our ski for the climb out of the canyon. It was not until half an hour later, when we paused for rest on the mesa rim, that Hope's drawling voice broke the silence that had held between us. "Young feller," he said jerkedly between breaths, "if the old one had drownded down there, the best thing you and I could do would be to jump in and be drownded with him. Even as it is, if the Super gets wind of that monkey show, it's me for a disonerable discharge and you for over the border." But as neither Hope nor I is inclined to do any talking, the chances seem good that we'll steer clear of the trouble we were so surely asking for. But no more ski-snapping for me, just the same. CHAPTER III HIGH LIGHTS AND LOW LIGHTS Grand Canyon Station, April 9. We made a three o'clock start from Norris this morning and came all the way to the Canyon on the crust. Carr, one of the troopers accompanying me, took a fearful tumble on the winding hill that leads down to the Devil's Elbow, breaking his "gee-pole" and badly wrenching one of his ankles. A fierce thunder-storm overtook us about seven. The vivid flashes of the lightning produced a most striking effect in illuminating the inky clouds [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] as they were blown across the snowy peaks. A flock of mountain sheep, driven from the upper spurs by the fury of the storm, crossed close to the road. I snapped a very unusual silhouette of them as they paused on the crest of a hill, with the blown storm-clouds in the background. We reached the hotel before the storm was over. Bursting into the rear entrance, we were just in time to find Clark, the winter keeper, picking himself up from the middle of the floor, where he had been thrown after coming in contact with an electric current brought in on the telephone wire while he was tinkering with the receiver. The chap seems to be an inventive genius. He has, so the soldiers told me, dissected over a dozen clocks in an effort to secure the machinery for a model of an automobile sled he is working on. His last model was destroyed by his dog, which took the strangely acting thing for a bird or a rat and shook it to pieces before any one could interfere. A few days later the brute essayed to follow Clark on one of his wild slides down the side of the canyon to the brink of the falls, but lost his footing and went over into the scenery. The inventor considers this a propitious sign from heaven. "For why should that dog go over the very first time he tried the slide after he did that destruction," he asked us, "if it wasn't because the Lord thought he stood in the way of good work? Now, with nothing to bother me, I shall build another model and reap my reward." "But was the dog your only obstacle?" I asked. "By no means," was the reply; "but all the others will be brushed away just as was the dog." Hearken to that, oh ye of little faith! If faith will move mountains there surely ought to be no trouble about the movement of Clark's automobile sled. Clark took me down the sidling snow-choked trail to the top of the falls this afternoon, saying that he wanted to show me how he did his famous "Devil's Slide." Utterly unable, in my comparative inexperience, to keep the road, I was about to beg off when Clark suggested that I remove my ski and ride the rest of the way by standing on the back of his. It was a hair-raising coast, but we made the brink without a spill. More important still —a point respecting which I had been most in doubt,—we stopped there. Already considerably shaken in nerve, I tried to dissuade Clark from attempting his slide. Replying that the stunt was a part of his daily r...