with a vengeance, requiring intelligent, sober, quickwitted
and courageous men to handle the boats. On the Missouri the word "pilot"
was a term of distinction.

The river was high at this time of the year, caused less by the
excessive rains and melting snows in the mountains, being a little early
for them, than by the rains along the immediate valley; bottom lands
were flooded, giving the stream a width remarkable in places and adding
greatly to the amount of drift going down with the current.

The afternoon waned and the wind died, the latter responsible for the
pilot's good nature, and the shadows of evening grew longer and longer
until they died, seeming to expand into a tenuity which automatically
effaced them. But sundown was not mooring time, for the twilight along
the river often lasted until nine o'clock, and not a minute was wasted.

When St. Charles had been left astern Tom had led his companion up onto
the hurricane deck and placed two chairs against the pilot house just
forward of the texas, where the officers had their quarters. The water
was now smooth, barring the myriads of whirling, boiling eddies, and
from their elevated position they could see the configuration of the
submerged bars. The afterglow in the sky turned the mud-colored water
into a golden sheen, and the wind-distorted trees on the higher banks
and ridges were weirdly silhouetted against the colored sky. Gone was
the drab ugliness. The finely lined branches of the distant trees, the
full bulks of the pines and cedars and the towering cottonwoods,
standing out against the greenery of grass covered hills, provided a
soft beauty; while closer to the boat and astern where sky reflections
were not seen, the great, tawny river slipped past with a powerful,
compelling, and yet furtive suggestion of mystery, as well it might.

Tom was telling of the characteristics of the river when the boat veered
sharply and caused him to glance ahead. A great, tumultuous ripple tore
the surface of the water, subsided somewhat and boiled anew, the
wavelets gold and crimson and steel blue against the uniform lavender
shade around them. The many-fanged snag barely had been avoided as it
reached the upward limit of its rhythmic rising and falling.

Soon a bell rang below and the boat slowed as it headed in toward a
high, wooded bank. Nudging gently against it the packet stopped, men
hurried lines ashore, made them fast to the trees and then set a spring
line, wh