emed to doubt that engine. I don't know how long
I cranked. I know only that the impossible happened. The boat started
for the hotel piazza!

I didn't shut her down this time. I leaped out and took her by the nose.
Putting our shoulders against the power of the screw, we walked her out
into the current, headed her down stream, and scrambled in, wet to the
ears.

My logbook speaks for that day as follows: "Left Benton at 2:30
P.M. Gypsied along under half gasoline for several hours,
safely crossing the Shonkin and Grocondunez bars. Struck a rock in
Fontenelle Rapids at 4:30, taking off rudder. Landed with difficulty on
a gravel-bar and repaired damages. At 5:30 engine bucked. A heavy wind
from the west beat us against a ragged shore for an hour and a half.
Impossible to proceed without power, except by cordelling--which we did,
walking waist-deep in the water much of the time. Paddles useless in
such a head wind. The wind falling at sunset, we drifted, again losing
our rudder while shooting Brule Rapids. Tied up at the head of Black
Bluff Rapids at dusk, having made twenty miles out of two thousand for
the first day's run. Have to extend that fifteen days! Just the same,
that information bureau saw us leave under power!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Dear Reader: Should you undertake the Missouri River trip,
don't lay anything out on spark-plugs. I sowed them all along up there.
Take a drag-net. You will scoop up several hundred dry batteries, but
don't mind them; they are probably spoiled.]

CHAPTER V

THROUGH THE REGION OF WEIR

We awoke with light hearts on the second morning of the voyage. All
about us was the sacred silence of the wilderness dawn. The coming sun
had smitten the chill night air into a ghostly fog that lay upon the
valley like a fairy lake.

We were at the rim of the Bad Lands and there were no birds to sing; but
crows, wheeling about a sandstone summit, flung doleful voices downward
into the morning hush--the spirit of the place grown vocal.

Cloaked with the fog, our breakfast fire of driftwood glowed ruddily.
What is there about the tang of wood-smoke in a lonesome place that
fills one with glories that seem half memory and half dream? Crouched on
my haunches, shivering just enough to feel the beauty there is in fire,
I needed only to close my eyes, smarting with the smoke, to feel myself
the first man huddled close to the first flame, blooming like a mystic
flower in the chill dawn