help, I
insisted upon enlisting as a deck hand for the trip.

It was work. I think I should prefer hod-carrying as a profession, for
we had a heavy cargo, ranging from lumber and tiling to flour and beer;
and there are no docks on the Yellowstone. The banks were steep, the sun
was very hot, and the cargo had to be landed by man power. My companions
in toil swore bitterly about everything in general and steamboating in
particular.

"How much are you getting?" asked a young Dane of me, as we trudged up
the plank together.

"Nothing at all," I said.

He swore an oath of wonder, and stopped to look me over carefully for
the loose screw in my make-up.

"--nothing but the fun of it," I added.

He sniffed and looked bewildered.

"Did it ever occur to you," said I, "that a man will do for nothing what
he wouldn't do for money?"

I could see my conundrum playing peek-a-boo all about his stolid
features. After that the Dane treated me with an air of superiority--the
superiority of thirty dollars per month over nothing at all.

We stopped twice to coal, and worked far into the night. There are no
coal chutes on the Yellowstone. We carried and wheeled the stuff aboard
from a pile on the bank. During a brief interval of rest, the young
Dane announced to the others that I was working for nothing; whereat
questioning eyes were turned upon me in the dull lantern light. And I
said to myself: I can conceive of heaven only as an improbable condition
in which all men would be willing and able to work for nothing at all. I
had read in the Dane's face the meaning of a price. Heaving coal, I
built Utopias.

When the boat was under way, I sat in the pilot-house with the Captain,
watching the yellow flood and the yellow cliffs drift past like a
vision. And little by little, this old man who has followed the river
for over sixty years, pieced out the wonderful story of his life--a
story fit for Homer. That story may now be read in a book, so I need not
tell it here. But I came to think of him as the incarnation of the
river's mighty spirit; and I am proud that I served him as a deck hand.

As we steamed out of the Yellowstone into the clear waters of the
Missouri, the Captain pointed out to me the spot upon which Fort Union
stood. Upon landing, I went there and found two heaps of stone at the
opposite corners of a rectangle traced by a shallow ditch where of old
the walls stood. This was all that remained of the powerful
fort--vir