George Locke in one, Mike Shannon in the other, could carry
two passengers each. For the sake of my story, I was to take the entire
trip; the others were to alternate.
I do not know, but I am very confident that no other woman has ever
taken this trip. I am fairly confident that no other men have ever taken
it. We could find no one who had heard of it being taken. All that we
knew was that it was the North Fork of the Flathead River, and that if
we stayed afloat long enough, we would come out at Columbia Falls. The
boatmen knew the lower part of the river, but not the upper two thirds
of it.
[Illustration: _Still-water fishing_]
Now that it is over, I would not give up my memory of that long run for
anything. It was one of the most unique experiences in a not uneventful
career. It was beautiful always, terrible occasionally. There were
dozens of places each day where the boatmen stood up, staring ahead for
the channel, while the boats dodged wildly ahead. But always these
skillful pilots of ours found a way through. And so fast did we go that
the worst places were always behind us before we had time to be
really terrified.
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