s, the horses
rested and grazed, and eased their tired backs. The men lay out in the
open and looked at the stars. The air was fragrant with pine and
balsam. Night creatures called and answered.

And, at last, we went to our tents and slept. For the morning was a new
day, and I had not got all my story.

That first day's run of the river we got fifty trout, ranging from one
half-pound to four pounds. We should have caught more, but they could
not keep up with the boat. We caught, also, the most terrific sunburn
that I have ever known anything about. We had thought that we were
thoroughly leathered, but we had not passed the primary stage,
apparently. In vain I dosed my face with cold-cream and talcum powder,
and with a liquid warranted to restore the bloom of youth to an aged
skin (mine, however, is not aged).

My journal for the second day starts something like this:--

Cold and gray. Stood in the water fifteen minutes
in hip-boots for a moving picture. River looks
savage.

Of that second day, one beautiful picture stands out with distinctness.

The river is lovely; it winds and twists through deep forests with
always that marvelous background of purple mountains capped with snow.
Here and there, at long intervals, would come a quiet half-mile where,
although the current was incredibly swift, there were, at least, no
rocks. It was on coming round one of these bends that we saw, out from
shore and drinking quietly, a deer. He was incredulous at first, and
then uncertain whether to be frightened or not. He threw his head up and
watched us, and then, turning, leaped up the bank and into the forest.

Except for fish, there was surprisingly little life to be seen. Bald
eagles sat by the river, as intent on their fishing as we were on ours.
Wild ducks paddled painfully up against the current. Kingfishers fished
in quiet pools. But the real interest of the river, its real life, lay
in its fish. What piscine tragedies it conceals, with those murderous,
greedy, and powerful assassins, the bull-trout, pursuing fish, as I have
seen them, almost into the landing-net! What joyous interludes where, in
a sunny shallow, tiny baby trout played tag while we sat and watched
them!

[Illustration: _Mountains of Glacier National Park from the North Fork
of the Flathead River_]

The danger of the river is not all in the current. There are quicksands
along the Flathead, sands underlain with water, appa