"What are you doing," the Head said to me that last day, as I sat in the
stern busily working at the line. "Knitting?"
We got few fish that day, but nobody cared. The river was wide and
smooth; the mountains had receded somewhat; the forest was there to the
right and left of us. But it was an open, smiling forest. Still far
enough away, but slipping toward us with the hours, were settlements,
towns, the fertile valley of the lower river.
We lunched that night where, just a year before, I had eaten my first
lunch on the Flathead, on a shelving, sandy beach. But this time the
meal was somewhat shadowed by the fact that some one had forgotten to
put in butter and coffee and condensed milk.
However, we were now in that part of the river which our boatmen knew
well. From a secret cache back in the willows, George and Mike produced
coffee and condensed milk and even butter. So we lunched, and far away
we heard a sound which showed us how completely our wilderness days were
over--the screech of a railway locomotive.
Late that afternoon, tired, sunburned, and unkempt, we drew in at the
little wharf near Columbia Falls.
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