Part 7 (1/2)
CHAPTER II
LIVINGSTON TWENTY YEARS AFTER
The train on which I journeyed from the Park to Livingston was a bit late in getting started for some reason, as a consequence of which it was trying to make up the lost time all the way. It was a decidedly rough pa.s.sage, especially on the curves through the rocky walls of ”Yankee Jim's Canyon.” Even so, however, I reflected that the careening observation car was making a lot better weather of it than did the old _Kentucky Mule_ twenty years before.
Although past the crest of its spring rise by nearly a fortnight, the Yellowstone was considerably higher than the early May stage at which I ran it before. Even glimpsed from the train the Canyon impressed me as having a lot of very rough water--much too rough for a small open boat to run right through. With frequent landing and careful lining, however, it looked quite feasible; indeed, on arrival at Livingston I learned that a couple of men had worked through with a light canoe the previous Sunday. Letting down with a line over the bad places, they took about an hour for the pa.s.sage of the roughest two miles of the Canyon. My jaunt through in and about the _Mule_ was not clocked. Although the liveliness of the action made it seem longer, I doubt if it was much over ten minutes. Nevertheless I was quite content not to have to chance it again, especially as a trial trip for a new type of boat.
Livingston is located at the bend where the Yellowstone, after running north from the Park for fifty miles, breaks from the mountains and begins its long easterly course to the Missouri through a more open valley. This was the point at which Captain Clark, temporarily separated from Lewis on their return journey from the mouth of the Columbia, first saw the upper Yellowstone. He had, of course, pa.s.sed its mouth when proceeding westward by the Missouri the previous year. It was now his purpose to explore the whole length of such of the river as flowed between this point and the Missouri, making rendezvous with Lewis at some point below its mouth. Clark had come from the Three Forks of the Missouri with pack-train, but with the intention of building boats and taking to the river just as soon as trees large enough for their construction could be found. Searching every flat for suitable boat-timber, the party proceeded down the north bank of the river, probably pretty well along the route followed by General Gibbon seventy years later in the campaign against the Sioux which culminated to the Custer Ma.s.sacre on the Little Big Horn.
The previous fall, rapid by rapid, I had run the lower Columbia in the wake of Lewis and Clark. Now I was turning into the trail of the Pathfinders again, this time their home trail. One of the things that I had been antic.i.p.ating above all others was the delight of following that trail to its end, which also had been its beginning--St. Louis. I knew that there was going to be something of Lewis and Clark for me in every mile of the twenty-five hundred--yes, and of many another who had followed in their path. I was not to be disappointed. I only hope I am not going to be boring in telling a little about it. I trust not too much so. Darn it, a man can't be expected to write about bootleggers, and ”white mule” and home-brew and ultra-modern inst.i.tutions all the time. Lewis and Clark and the other pioneers of the North-west have always meant a lot to me. I simply can't help mentioning them now and again--but I'll try and strike a balance in the long run.
[Ill.u.s.tration:
_By Haynes, St. Paul_
GATE OF THE MOUNTAINS, YELLOWSTONE RIVER]
There was a real thrill in the tablet erected by the D. A. R. near the Livingston railway station commemorating the pa.s.sing of Captain Clark.
Perhaps there will be no fitter place for me to acknowledge to the Daughters of the Revolution my grat.i.tude for many another thrill of the same kind similar monuments of theirs gave me all the way to the end of my journey. Now it was the defence of the stockade at Yankton that was celebrated, now a station of the Pony Express or a crossing of the Santa Fe Trail in Missouri, now a post on some old Indian road at Natchez. Always they were modest and fitting, and always they winged a thrill. I have never met any live Daughters of the Revolution to recognize them, but I am sure from what they have done to make the river way pleasant that they must be eminently kindly folk, like the philanthropists who erect drinking fountains for man and beast and the Burmans who put out little bird-houses in the trees.
Livingston had changed a lot since I had seen it last--that was plain before my train had swung round the long bend and pulled up at the station. The ball ground was gone--pushed right across the river by the growth of the town. Many old landmarks were missing, and the main street, lined with fine new modern buildings, had s.h.i.+fted a whole block west. The shade trees had grown until they arched above the clean, cool streets, now paved from one end of the town to the other. Even the cottonwoods by the river towered higher and bulked bigger with the twenty new rings that the pa.s.sing years had built out from their hearts.
There was a new Post Office and a new railway station. The latter was a handsome, sizable structure, well worthy of the important junction which it served. And yet that station wasn't quite so sizable as certain of the local boosters would have people think. Here, verbatim, is what I read of it in the local Chamber of Commerce publication:
”The Northern Pacific pa.s.senger depot, which is the largest and handsomest structure of the kind on the transcontinental line between its terminals, domiciles a large number of general and division officers and covers 100 miles East, and more than that distance West on two lines and the branch railway North from this city and also the line running South.” Very likely that word _covers_ is intended to refer to the jurisdiction of the officials housed in the building, but if that sentence were to be taken literally there is no doubt that the Grand Central, Liverpool Street, the _Gare du Nord_ and a few score more of the world's great terminals might be chucked under those hundred-mile easterly and westerly wings of the Livingston station and never be found again.
Which reminds me that Kipling also found the natives making some pretty big claims for Livingston. Something over thirty years previous to my latest visit he had stopped there over-night on his way to the Yellowstone. He describes it as a little cow-town of about two thousand.
Exhausting its resources in a short stroll, he wandered off among the hills, narrowly to avoid being stepped upon by a herd of stampeding horses. He returned to the town to find it was the night before the Fourth of July, with much carousing and large talking going on. His final comment was: ”They raise horses and minerals around Livingston, but they behave as though they raised cherubims with diamonds in their wings.”
But this is not the Livingston of the present day, nor even the Livingston that I loved so well twenty years syne. Yes, even then almost the only ruffians and carousers were the imported ball players and editors and ”Calamity Jane.” The natives were very modest, gentle folk, just as they are today. And they raised several things besides horses and minerals--yea, even cherubims. I remember that distinctly, for it was one named ”Bunny,” who worked in the telephone office, that knitted me a purple tie which I kept for years--for a trunk-strap. It stretched and stretched and stretched, but never weakened or faded. Expressmen and other vulgar people used to think there was a bride in my party on account of that purple ribbon. Bless your heart, ”Bunny!” You'll never know until you read this confession how much besides that rough, red neck of mine you snared in the loop of your purple tie.
The Livingston _Enterprise_ had grown with the town--that was evident from a glance at the first copy to fall into my hands. Quite a metropolitan daily it was, with a.s.sociated Press service, sporting page and regular boiler-plate Fas.h.i.+on Hint stuff from the _Rue de la Paix_.
The Editor, too, was a considerable advance--at least sartorially--over the one I remembered. Phillips proved a mighty engaging chap, though, and didn't seem a bit ashamed over having had me for a predecessor.
People spoke of him to me as an energetic civic and temperance worker, declaring that he had been indefatigable in his efforts to put down drink all over Park County. They called his vigorous editorials on these subjects ”Phillipics.” They were noted for their jolt.
I modestly a.s.sured him that I couldn't claim to have done a lot for temperance during the time I sat in his chair, but that I _had_ taken an active interest in civic reform. And then, darn him! he took down the year 1901 from the _Enterprise_ file. I had forgotten all about that.
Well, we found a number of columns of right pert comment on local men, women and events and many square feet of baseball write-ups that Phillips seemed highly tickled over; but of civic reform editorials, not a one. Or not quite so bad as that perhaps. It may be that a trenchant leader las.h.i.+ng the munic.i.p.al council for neglecting to build a certain badly needed sidewalk would come in that cla.s.s. It was a sidewalk to the baseball grounds. How well I remember the inspiration for that vitriolic attack on the City Fathers! ”Bunny” lost a French-heeled slipper in the Yellowstone gumbo while mincing out to the Helena game and swore she would never appear at the Park again unless it could be done without getting muddied to her knees. ”Bunny” was very outspoken for a cherubim.
In those days it took an outspoken girl to mention anything between her shoe-tops and her pompadour.
[Ill.u.s.tration:
_By Haynes, St. Paul_
WHERE CUSTER FELL]
I liked Editor Phillips so well that I forthwith asked him to join me for my first day's run down the river. He said he was highly complimented, but that there were a number of reasons why he would not be able to accept. The only one of these I recall was that the water was far _too loosely packed_ between Livingston and Big Timber. Western editors are always picturesque, and Phillips was one of the best of his kind. He mentioned two or three others who might be induced to join me for a day or two. One of these was Joe Evans, curio dealer and trapper.
I am not quite sure whether it was Phillips or some one else who recommended ”Buckskin Jim” Cutler as the best hand with a boat on the upper river. It took some groping in my memory to place the name, but finally I found it pigeon-holed as that of the man ”Yankee Jim” had spoken of in the same connection twenty years before. I had in mind trying to get in touch with Cutler, but gave up the idea the moment I discovered Pete Holt, former Government Scout and my first guide through the Yellowstone, holding down the job of Chief of Police of Livingston.