rt and the St. Charles. Lest this
sound strange to the uninitiated, the St. Charles was the condensed milk
and the Prince Albert was an old tin can which had once contained
tobacco but which now contained the sugar. Thus, in our camp-etiquette,
one never asked for the sugar, but always for the Prince Albert; not for
the milk, but always for the St. Charles, sometimes corrupted to the
Charlie.

I was late that morning. The men had gone about the business of
preparing the boats for the day. The packers and guides were out after
the horses. The cook, hot and weary, was packing up for the daily
exodus. He turned and surveyed that ghost-forest with a scowl.

"Another camping-place like this, and I'll be braying like a blooming
burro."

On the third day, we went through the Flathead River canon. We had
looked forward to this, both because of its beauty and its danger.
Bitterly complaining, the junior members of the family were exiled to
the trail with the exception of the Big Boy.

It had been Joe's plan to photograph the boat with the moving-picture
camera as we came down the canon. He meant, I am sure, to be on hand if
anything exciting happened. But impenetrable wilderness separated the
trail from the edge of the gorge, and that evening we reached the camp
unphotographed, unrecorded, to find Joe sulking in a corner and inclined
to blame the forest on us.

In one of the very greatest stretches of the rapids, a long
straightaway, we saw a pigmy figure, far ahead, hailing us from the
bank. "Pigmy" is a word I use generally with much caution, since a
friend of mine, in the excitement of a first baby, once published a poem
entitled "My Pigmy Counterpart," which a type-setter made, in the
magazine version, "My Pig, My Counterpart."

Nevertheless, we will use it here. Behind this pigmy figure stretched a
cliff, more than one hundred feet in height, of sheer rock overgrown
with bushes. The figure had apparently but room on which to stand.
George stood up and surveyed the prospect.

"Well," he said, in his slow drawl, "if that's lunch, I don't think we
can hit it."

The river was racing at mad speed. Great rocks caught the current,
formed whirlpools and eddies, turned us round again and again, and sent
us spinning on, drenched with spray. That part of the river the boatmen
knew--at least by reputation. It had been the scene, a few years before,
of the tragic drowning of a man they knew. For now we were getting down
into