then, I noticed what afterward I
found was to be a delusion of the entire trip.

This was the impression of riding downhill. I do not remember now how
much the Flathead falls per mile. I have an impression that it is ninety
feet, but as that would mean a drop of nine thousand feet, or almost two
miles, during the trip, I must be wrong somewhere. It was sixteen feet,
perhaps.

But hour after hour, on the straight stretches, there was that
sensation, on looking ahead, of staring down a toboggan-slide. It never
grew less. And always I had the impression that just beyond that glassy
slope the roaring meant uncharted falls--and destruction. It never did.

The outfit, following along the trail, was to meet us at night and have
camp ready when we appeared--if we appeared. Only a few of us could use
the boats. George Locke in one, Mike Shannon in the other, could carry
two passengers each. For the sake of my story, I was to take the entire
trip; the others were to alternate.

I do not know, but I am very confident that no other woman has ever
taken this trip. I am fairly confident that no other men have ever taken
it. We could find no one who had heard of it being taken. All that we
knew was that it was the North Fork of the Flathead River, and that if
we stayed afloat long enough, we would come out at Columbia Falls. The
boatmen knew the lower part of the river, but not the upper two thirds
of it.

[Illustration: _Still-water fishing_]

Now that it is over, I would not give up my memory of that long run for
anything. It was one of the most unique experiences in a not uneventful
career. It was beautiful always, terrible occasionally. There were
dozens of places each day where the boatmen stood up, staring ahead for
the channel, while the boats dodged wildly ahead. But always these
skillful pilots of ours found a way through. And so fast did we go that
the worst places were always behind us before we had time to be
really terrified.

The Flathead River in these upper reaches is fairly alive with trout. On
the second day, I think it was, I landed a bull-trout that weighed nine
pounds, and got it with a six-ounce rod. I am very proud of that. I have
eleven different pictures of myself holding the fish up. There were
trout everywhere. The difficulty was to stop the boat long enough to get
them. In fact, we did not stop, save in an occasional eddy in the midst
of the torrent. We whipped the stream as we flew along. Under gr