OCR Text |
Show RTVER XL MONTEZUMA BEND It was a gray morning, blustery enough to raise white caps on the river, but the warm and heavy wind blowing out of the south carried no threat of a storm. I rounded out of the harbor at Helena and rowed into the channel and the current. The river was very high, so despite the wind and the rough water the current swept me along at four or five miles an hour. My boat spun down the river and under the high arching highway bridge where the sound of engines and tires on the wind-played steel sounded like amplified music. Watching the river buckle and howl against the bridge's massive concrete pilings, I slipped past the massive soybean silo below town and into the empty, open river country. Despite the overcast it was springtime and the air tasted sweet. I took out my maps and plotted the next stage of my trip down the river. I carefully looked over all the bayous and backwaters and towheads, mudbanks, and islands in the next hundred miles of river. There was an excellent situation thirty or forty miles downstream near the mouth of the White River where several islands were clustered near a long, navigable bayou, just the right kind of prospect for a reefer plantation. It was an easy day's drifting away, so with luck I could begin planting by tomorrow. I considered rowing and riding the current closely so as to get to the projected site early, but I had a bad case of spring fever and laziness persuaded me to relax and take it easy. Thor was anxious at being on the water again. He circled around the bow of the boat till he finally made himself comfortable and settled down for the long haul. -203- |