New Montana Fiction by Ivan Doig, Writer's Profile by William Kittredge
SPRING I 9 9 6
NEW MONTANA FICTION BY IVAN DOIG, WRITER'S PROFILE BY WILLIAM KITTREDGE
THE LANE RANCHES: A FAMILY BUSINESS FROM THE GROUND UP
61 . FISHING THE BLACKFEET INDIAN RESERVATION
THE IMAGERY OF THE MONTANA DREAM
0 74470 84789 2 $4.95/ $5 .95 CAN . SPRING I 9 9 6
FEATURES George Catlin, Karl Bodmer and the Montana Dream BY DAN FLORES ..... 36 Early impressions and interpretations of Montana. Bucking the Sun BY IVAN DOIG .... -46 New fiction from the author of This House of Sky. \\Triters \\Test BY WILLIAM KITTREDGE .... -48 "Ivan Doig's most important gift is his ability to find significance in the texture of our lives." The Lane Ranches BY S. ALAN SUNDLING ..... 58 A family business from the ground up. Lost Fish and Lost Fishermen on the Blackfeet Reservation BY STEVE SHIMEK ..... 70 "The best discoveries are sometimes made while lost." MONTANA CONSERVATION Love of a Place BY RICK BASS .... . 76 "We must find ways to express properly our passion for this home we have been gifted with." Pine Butte Swamp Preserve BY SAM CURTIS . .... 78 A pattern of nature preservation and human use. The Teller \\Tildlife Refuge BY JIM POSEWITZ ..... 80 "In order to provide a place free from development, to learn, recreate, and rest." Ninepipe National \\Tildlife Refuge BY KEN KNAPP . .... 83 Cooperation in the Mission Valley. DEPARTMENTS
RANCH LIFE• RALPH BEER ... 16 BACK COUNTRY • ALAN KESSELHEIM ... 26 City Limits. Dancing on the Gallatin. EATING •JON A. JACKSON ... 18 IN PLACE AND TIME• LYNN DONALDSON ... 28 Perugia. The Stockyard Cafe: Early Time Montana. ARTISTS OF MONTANA • GAIL JOKERST ... 20 WESTERN DESIGNS • DIANE SMITH ... 32 Linda Tippetts. At Home in the Landscape. THIS SPORTSMAN'S LIFE• STEPHEN J. BODIO ... 22 THE BACK FORTY • JOHN BARSNESS ... 92 Dream Gun, Dream Hunt: Montana c. 70, 000, 000 B. C. Visions on the Land.
SEASON OPENER: 14 • BOOKS: 90 • SPRING ROUNDUP: 86 • MONTANA HAPPENINGS: 87 BIG SKY BRANDS: 88 • CONTRIBUTORS: 90 • ADVERTISER INDEX: 91
COVER A D TABLE OF Co TENTS PHOTOS: Will Brewster. 12 few years ago, Ivan Doig began researching what BUCKING THE SUN will surely be seen as one of the most remarkable A BY IVAN DOIG novels to come out of the western literary landscape in To be published in May, 1996 by Simon & Schuster
some time. BucKING THE SuN, a historical work set our days before the river was to man warned before handing him the during the building of the Fort Peck Dam, opens with F be closed off, in the middle of an phone. already complicated enough after "Owen," said the thin voice on the two bodies in a drowned truck. Two naked bodies. noon of jigsawing the dredgelines other end, "you better come see back together downstream from the something." dam, Owen was called to the field "What, at the trestle again? I'll be telephone. right-" "Sangster. Sounds like he's got a "Huh uh," the fieldphone voice hair crosswise," the pipehaul fore- now sounded as if it was having trou-
FORT PECK D AM, CHANNEL CLOSURE, JUNE 24, 1937.
GRAVEL DUMPING INTO UPSTREAM TOE OF FORT PECK DAM, JULY 19, 1935.
They're both named Duff, and they're both married ... just not to each other.
The plot turns the pages, but Doig's history of the dam
the remarkable, precise documentation of what it was to work and eat and sleep and drink around the largest earth-filled dam in the world-gives this novel breath and life.
We have excerpted one of the later chapters. WRITERS WEST: IVAN DOIG
BY WILLIAM KITTREDGE
ack in the winter of 1978, National Book Award. Like A River Runs BI was hanging around in Through It, his book had been well-rejected by a Missoula bookstore, and the the publishing establishment in the East, and woman who owned it hand then enjoyed great success (it sold something ed me a copy of the gallies of like 130,000 hardback copies). a book called This House of In the spring of 1979, Bob Reid and I staged a Sky: Landscapes of a Western literary conference in Missoula called ''Who Mind. I stayed up late and Owns the West." One of my proudest memories loved the reading-a memoir is of introducing Dorothy Johnson, Bud which starts with the death of Doig's mother, Guthrie, Norman Maclean, Ross Toole, and --...... _-_ Berneta, in 1945, and tells the hard story of Ivan Ivan Doig to one another-had my heroes in growing up with two full-scale westerners-his one place for a weekend. WHEELER, MONTANA: A WORKER'S VILLAGE BY THE DAM. father, Charlie Doig, and his grandmother, Since those days, Ivan has published a whole Bessie Ringer. It was a narrative which rang of line of books: Winter Brothers (1980); The Sea emotional accuracy and the difficult dead-right Runners (1982); the McCaskill family trilogy, ble believing itself. "This is at the truss bridge again." FOUR YEARS OF CALM PLANNING details of life on the blue-collar end of the stick English Creek (1984), Dancing at the Rascal Fair AND TEMPERATE ENGINEERING out east of the Montana Rockies. (1987), Ride With Me, Mariah Montana (1990), is first look at the slumped earth, within spitting There had been Winter in the Blood in 1974, and Heart Earth (1994). H distance of the truss bridge, sent Owen white-faced. ABOUT HOW TO MOST HANDILY CLOSE and A River Runs Through It in 1976, and now Literary people in the northern West owe a Sangster' s was whiter. OFF THE MISSOURI RIVER HAD The slipped section of fill resembled a muddy scallop this book. The northern West was indeed going considerable debt to Ivan Doig. He helped TO BE FED INTO THE MEATGRINDER to have its own literature. prove to agents and editors in the East that shell perhaps two hundred feet long and a hundred high. Reviewers agreed with me. The Christian Sci books about this part of the world could sell, It had slid, still in one arched piece, several feet down in OF THE NEXT TWELVE HOURS. ence Monitor said "This extraordinary, eloquent and sell very well. I owe him a personal debt to the river channel. Scoured away underneath by the memoir heralds a powerful new American he and Carol were among those responsible for flood, loosened by the rapid fall of the floodwater, who writer. Doig poignantly traces his Montana boy encouraging me to write my own memoirs. knew what the precise cause was: it had slid. The arc of hood ... As the land has haunted and shaped But his most important gift is his ability to gap where the shell edge had pulled away from the dam Owen spoke six or eight expletives, rapid-fire. him, so his movingly beautiful prose haunts find significance in the texture of our lives. In was spookily neat, as if a hill had just taken an innocent "I agree," Sangster said. "But we've got to do something us." the West, many of us live far way from the self step forward from the mountain of earthfill. There was besides cuss at it." Literary people in Montana got a chance to importance of the so-called "Great World." It's nothing innocent about it. The shifted heap of fill was They knew they had only minutes before the official car meet Ivan and his wife, Carol, when they came easy to feel cut off from things. Ivan Doig takes throwing enormous weight down against the main pier of delivered Colonel Parmenter and Major Santee and gen through on a book-signing tour, Ivan auto us seriously, reminding us that our doings the railroad bridge. eral hell. graphing copies with green felt-tipped pens un cooking, plowing, fixing fence, caring for the "It holding okay?" Owen tore his eyes away from the til his fingers were blistered (literally), taking kids-are of consequence. In Doig's books we sickening dam slippage to ask about the health of Sang hey alread! ~ad the ~ravel cars going by_ the time his time, enjoying the talk, a country man come see ourselves and our society as in a mirror, de ster' s bridge. T the Ad Bmldmg contmgent descended. First thing home. fined, inherently complex and difficult, interest "Not really." Sangster even still sounded pale. "Out of first, everyone could see that much. If they lost the truss The next year, Doig was nominated for the ing and valuable line about a foot already, and more to come. That pier's bridge they lost the railroad loop, the key to plugging the cracked." river; they would lose the entire dam schedule, they
from from THIS HOUSE OF SKY: LANDSCAPES OF A WESTERN MIND DANCING AT THE RASCAL FAIR HARCOURT BRACE & COMPANY, 1978 ATHENEUM, 1987
Soon before daybreak on my sixth birthday, my mother's breathing wheezed more West. West, the mountains as steady as a sea wall. The most eminent of them in fact raggedly than ever, then quieted. And then stopped. was one of the gray-rock palisades that lay like reefs in the surge of the Rockies, a The remembering begins out of that new silence. Through the time since, I reach back straight up-and-down cliff perhaps the majority of a mile high and, what, three or along my father's tellings and around the urgings which would have me face about more miles long. A stone partition between ground and sky, even-rimmed as and forget, to feel into these oldest shadows for the first sudden edge of it all. though it had been built by hand, countless weathers ago.
49 Spectacular!
trestle the intended three days from now. "Owen, where the hell's that dis patcher, we got to get rolling on- " Which meant that the forty-five-car trainload of plugging boulders could not be jauntily dropped straight into the river-the side girders of the truss bridge were in the way- but needed East Rosebud Canyon, Roscoe MT to be unloaded at both ends of the bridge, spilled down onto gravel ap ONE-OF-A-KIND proaches to the river. Ranchette "I know, I know, Colonel, it's not Log Home • Guest House DERRICK BOAT BEING LAUNCHED, FORT PECK DAM. the greatest field office there ever Garage/Tack• Corrals was, but it's all the ready-built crew All on 20 Riverfront Acres could skid over here to us in a hurry. $600,000 Cash would lose all advantage over the riv Owen took the deep, deep breath What exactly is it? Well, sir, it's a two Additional 20 Riverfront Acres er for Christ knew how long. Thirty needed to go for broke. holer." full rervice interior desi8n firm $100,000 Cash timely railcars of gravel, dumped on Which meant that the crane barge CONTACT the weak side of the cracked concrete ort Peck woke up to dynamite at laboring in the middle of the river 117 Easl Main • 5ozeman, Monlana 59715 BARB , PHIL, OR CHAR pier to temporarily shore it up, saved Fdawn. current had to grapple the boulders (406 ) 587-2fJJJ Carole 0isson MID 406-446-2123 The detonation, at 4:20 a.m. sharp, from the gravel banks one by one, to 1-800-752-2499 them from that at least for the mo ment. But now came the question of breached the dike which had been build a rough sill out into the chan Circle 34 on Reader Service Card holding together both the bridge's holding back the riverwater above nel. Circle 36 on Reader Service Card underpinning and the channel shoul the tunnel portals. That quick, with "Okay, Max, so this is slower than der of the dam until they could get one ka-BOOM and a dirt geyser of the wrath of God, but we don't have the river plugged. blown dike, the map of the Missouri any choice but to keep that crane boat Owen and Sangster and everybody River changed. Now the river forked at-" in the vicinity nervously sized up the at the dam, the main flow still tum Which meant that the rail fleet of Corps officers as the briefing was bling through the channel but an gravel cars couldn't let fly with their convened there at the river. Colonel easternly eddy swirling its way into massive plug of gravel until the boul Parmenter appeared to be wishing the tunnel inlets. It was a bit past der sill was firmly there to keep it for the Philippines. Major Santree dawn when the first riverwater made from washing away. looked a little srnirky, as he often did its passage through the tunnels and "Oh, Jesus, it won't be done until when things went wrong. surged into the outlet channel below WHEN?" The colonel made short work of the dam, frothing white against the To the engineers, this was like be discussion. "What about this, Duff?" confining concrete. ing trapped in a very long game of What about what? What the floodwa At the main channel, at the truss checkers when they had been all set INC. ter did along here, so that neither I nor bridge, four years of calm planning to play bombs-away. God Almighty can guarantee you that and temperate engineering about * Custom Designed Warm chunk of earthfill won't move some more, how to most handily close off the old, you so-and-so. There's no Floor Heating Systems won't cave off and take the bridge with it, Missouri River had to be fed into the H damn reason for you to be falling * Hot Water Baseboard, in the next four days or the next four meatgrinder of the next twelve hours. into the river. Stay with us and you'll be nestled in Big Sky Montana, minutes? That there was only, what, one Improvising every inch of the way, Owen wasn't addressing this between the Gallatin and Madison ranges, on the Radiators, or Fan Coils chance in five that we'd get the highest they were going to make the river in thought to the truss bridge although, banks of the world famous Gallatin River. * Solar Electric Power for water of the whole project this spring, but to the counterweight proposed by heaven knew by the blue smoke of in Enjoy exceptional dining, luxury accommodations, that's exactly the thing we did get? Or Owen Duff, by backing the water up vective and energy he was lending in flyfishing, horseback riding, cross-country Remote Home Sites that what I most want right now, the one against the sloughed section of fill support of Sangster and it, he did not and downhill skiing. 501 East Peach St. Suite C thing I can think of to maybe stabilize the like a liquid retaining wall. Which want to see the steel span hit the wa Call or write for a FREE brochure today. ter either. Bozeman, MT. 59715 fill that's slipped, is to have high water up meant plugging the river here and 1-800-93 7-4132 against it again? What are you going to now, at the downstream end of the Either nobody savvies or nobody's say 406/587-3442 think of any of my whats, Colonel? channel, instead of upstream at the ing-not even you, Ma x-that the truss Circle 35 on Reader Service Card Circle 37 on Reader Service Card 50 51 ~~...... ONT ANA'S PREMIER MOUNTAIN LODGE
bridge could be only the first symptom here. Whatever else he was at, through this longest day, Owen kept the slipped section of damfill guardedly in sight, forever in mind. Just hold. That's not asking such a hell of a lot, is it? Sit there, another few hours is all, and then I can tend to you. If he ran the arithmetic of the situation through his head once this day, he ran it two hundred times. The site of the slippage, the core pool, the dis FORT PECK DAM, Nov. 25, 1936, WORKMEN, ENGINEERS tance between: by every calculation AND FOREMEN. he could think of, the core pool sitting
Circle 38 on Reader Service Card dumb, fat and happy up there in the east half of the dam should be safely BY MIDAFTERNOON, OFFICERS Unique selection of river and creek front properties, 10 acres and far enough from where that odd shell AND ENGINEERS WERE RUNNING of fill had given way; look, millions of larger. Excellent roads and year around access. Located in the ON COFFEE AND HABIT. Bozeman/Livingston and Nye areas of other cubic yards there in the channel shoulder supporting the core pool southern Montana. Spectacular scenery, hadn't given way. Result: the slippage busy at that, having the train dispatcher roll another thir heavy tree cover, lush open meadowlands, as it now stood didn't necessarily ty-car cut of dumper cars in, which Owen envied him. He abundant wildlife, private and secluded. mean that the core pool was going to himself had the pipeline crew hauling and installing along Circle 41 on Reader Service Card We've got what you are looking for! Prices start leaking out of it any minute and the channel shoulder and had called in the bullgang to starting in the $40,000 range. the leak would increase to a gush in help out with the last needed section of the strutworks less time then it took to tell about it there, and all four of his dredges were standing ready MOUNTAIN WILDERNESS PROPERTIES and the gush would speedily grow to downriver, so that as soon as the river was safely plugged Rt. 38 • Box 2145 • Livingston, MT 59047 be a breach and the breach majestical they could pour material like mad into this neck of the ~I GUEST RANCHI I~ (406) 333-4674 ly would cave away and the entire channel and backfill the slipped slope. Begin to end the B I G S K Y MONTANA
Circle 39 on Reader Service Card sonofabitching core pool would rush dam, as well. Oh, there'd be another full year, fifteen out in a 150-foot-high avalanche of months maybe, of building it up and topping it off. But the HISTORIC water and fill, tearing the guts out of vee of the river channel was the last gap, the four mile val WESTERN RooTs WILLIAM the dam. ley between the chosen bluffs had shrunk down to it. Owen Duff, engineer, knew the Owen had ready or was getting ready everything he could RAIN s slipped spot didn't necessarily mean think of to throw at the channel. But for now he was re Jl!l Circle 40 on Reader Service Card Circle 42 on Reader Service Card 52 53 THE BRIDAHAM COLLECTION -~~~~~~~~~~~~~- busy once in a while." Jepperson THEY FINISHED THE FIRST shifted his weight. "But four of you Fine Real Estate for the 21st Century get to be gravelmasters." TRAIN, TWO THOUSAND I specialize in working with clients, either buyers or A silence settled on the crew. TONS OF GRAVEL GONE sellers, on unique properties in Mon tana. 'What this is," Jepperson went on, TO THE RIVER BOTTOM, "they're gonna double up on the W hether you're looking fo r your dream property or selling a AND THE NEXT TRAIN special place, you want someone who is qualified, caring and gravel dumping. Constantly run knowledgeable. I devote myself to a select number of trains until they get the river held. IMMEDIATELY CAME. clients, working to meet their needs. I've been involved with The four guys up there," he jerked his Montana land since 1977, and am a member of Bozeman head in the direction of the railroad Board of Realtors and Bozeman Multiple Listing Service. bridge pier were showing them the bridge, "who're used to doing it will routine. There was a catwalk between My background includes being a cattle rancher, a residential show you how. Oh, and you'll draw the truss girders and where the train and commercial real estate salesperson (since 1980), an extra two bits an hour." Someone ran. Scrambling along that, you had financial consultant for Merrill Lynch and sang out "Our chance to be big rich!" bank trust officer for the Bank of Californ ia. to keep pace with a given dumper and there was a little laughter. car and when the shout of "Pull!" VIVIAN BRIDAHAM "So, let's say-" Jepperson made a came, reach down and yank the big show of looking around "-Mor BROKER~OWNER springpin which opened one of the rie ... Livingston ... Duff .. ." two hopper doors beneath the railcar. P.U. BUX 2C!2 BUZEI\IAJ\, 1\1T 59171 PHONE:(4L16) 5.S6-44c'8 r/\X (406) 587-32'8 Not I, said the man named Me. Your partner on the other side of the The expression on Darius put a Circl e 43 on Reader Service Card train opened the other hopper door at sourball look on the foreman as well. the same time and the dumper car "Not you, Bonnie Prince Darry. Oth was emptied of fifty tons of gravel, er Duff, Neil there." STOP & SMELL THE PONDEROSAS falling with an appalling roar and Neil bit a corner of his mouth, but hellish cloud of rockdust into the riv stepped forward. er. This had to be done constantly at a 1,300-Acre Retreat in western Montana, 20 "And ... " Jepperson shopped miles north of Seeley Lake, nestled between the trot-the trains were not to stop, not through the crew for one more. He Bob Marshall and Mission Mountain Wildernesses for anything-and the newcomers' stopped as Birdie Hinch moved in respect for the gravelmasters rapidly Circle 46 on Reader Service Card • Available Weekly fo r a quiet get-away, dicatively. The three the foreman had rose by hundreds of percent. family reuni on or small conference named so far were all much younger, • Treat Yourself to the rustic comfort and fitter. "Birdie, sorry, but I'm sup his was Sangster's show now, unspoiled beauty of the Gordon Ranch. Call or write Horton for a free brochure. posed to send guys who can run like T the gravel plug to be dumped 3000 Glenwood Lane • Billings, MT 59102 chicken thiev-" He broke off, then down through the bridge car by car (406) 252-410 I • (406) 252-4202 grinned. ''Yeah, okay. And Birdie." and train by train, and Owen caught Circle 44 on Reader Service Ca rd a fleeting look of gratitude on the be ----- y midafternoon, officers and en ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~- spectacled man when he told him he •GALLA TIN GATEWAY INN• Bgineers were running on coffee was clearing out of his way, going up ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ and habit. They had all been up ------to a perch in the bridge girders for a through the night, pitching in on the ringside seat. final readying of the inlet channels He was startled to see Neil, below Compromise Nothing and the tunnels for the river diver on the catwalk, then wished he'd sion, and ever since early morning thought of that himself, getting Neil Scandinav ian Full Scribe or they had watched boulder by boulder Chink Sryle available • assigned out of the bullgang to per narionwide. Exceptional Service as the sill gradually grew, and they form this. With a little softsoap and Send for a free brochure or Convenient Location were close to becoming zombies be pressure, he could have wangled Competitive Pricing $10.00 for a 16-page fore Sangster cured them with: Bruce onto the gravelmaster crew Planning Guide. ((The Ideal Conference "That's as much as we can do with too. Wouldn't that have been some Facility'' rock. Hadn't we better go to gravel, thing, Owen thought to himself, twin Colonel?" Duff brothers plugging the Missouri. A Perfec t Romantic Weekend Get-away! he quartet sent to be apprentice eil developed a lope to keep up T gravelmasters were at the end of N with the dumper cars, although the bridge, receiving the fastest edu Birdie Hinch somehow managed 35 ROOMS • EXCEPT I ONAL DI N I NG cation of their lives. The four men al simply by scampering. The four pairs ready working the gravel cars which For Capacities, Rates and Reservations Contact: 763-4672 or 1-800-676-3522 of men ran a strange looping race, the Or Write P.O. Box 376 •Gallatin Gateway• MT 59730 periodically shored up the ailing lead pair dumping their car of gravel Circle 45 on Reader Service Card Circle 47 on Reader Service Card 54 55 CLOUD DRliFTt=>LOGAN PAS§ and turning to run back past the other three sets of men to by J:..ee Stroncek the fourth dumper car back in line, following beside it un til the "Pull!" signal again. They finished the first train, two thousand tons of gravel gone to the river bottom, and ontana's premier Bed & Breakfasts. the next train immediately came .. . A cozy refuge, hospitality that reaches the level of pampering, and a day started with a delicious meal: It's a recipe for very time a carload was dumped now, some gravel Ewas swept away in the current as if the Missouri was maximum enjoyment of your travel experience. determined to deliver it to St. Louis, but some stayed, a loose and shifting pyramid there under the water. ffiontana Neil, sprinting and wondering along with the other sev mountain ~ en gravelmasters how much more of this there would be, BER~FELD how much more they could take, glanced up at Owen hodge & Llama Ranch whenever he could. Braced there in the girders like a Bed and Breakfast Bed aru:1 B~t 8515 Sypes Canyon Road spiffed-up steelworker in a Stetson and pressed khakis, Dale McAfee 1780 Hwy 89 North Bozeman, Montana 59715 Owen looked somehow distracted, gazing off at the chan BED & BREAKFAST P.O. Box 611 White Sulphur Springs, 406-586-7778 bergfeld [email protected] nel shoulder instead of watching the bombardier-bursts of & GUEST CABIN White Sulphur Springs, Montana 59645 Bring the high country of Glacier Park into your home office. P.O. Box 84 1-800-631-4 713 Minutes from town with spectacular gravel into the river. What do I expect, though, that he's going Montana 59645 views of five mountain ranges. Signed 2nd numbered limited edition of 98 Artist Proof offset Emigrant, MT 5902 7 406-547-3666 406-547-3773 to act like some kind of radio announcer up there calling a fight? A Place for All Seasons. litho prints in full color from the original acrylic. 406-333-4063 A historic home in the "Here's a haymaker from Neil Duff. ..followed by a wallop of http://www. wtp. net/go/paradise Nestled in the Little Belt Mountains. Image size: 18"x24" 110.00 ppd. heart of the Smith River Valley. Fishing, Hiking, Eco-touring. gravel from Birdie Hinch ... but the Missouri is absorbing all the Fly-fishing and vacationing in punishment they can throw at it so far ." Huh uh. Owen is go "Paradise" on the Yellowstone River. Lee Stroncek ing to go about it his own way, whatever it is. Integrity in Outdoor Art Catching himself at this, knowing he was going a little -======- & 818 South Black Avenue • Bozeman, Montana 59715 giddy from exertion, Neil concentrated on his running, -======B A X T E R 0 R E E K (4 06) 587-8836 staying exactly even with the next dumper car, the little Tbe Isl:a.nd 545 Mary Road hop-skip when "Pull!" was shouted again and the thunder Bed & Breakfast Circle 48 on Reader Service Card Bozeman, Montana 59715 of gravel. & Guest House 406-582-8440 79 Island Drive 1-800-431-5010 Livingston, Montana 59047 StJacious guest rooms with jJanoramic e could feel it all, Owen could, through the bridge. 406-222-3788 mountain views, private baths, gounnet MONTANA BY H The slow rumble of the train, the concussive force as 1-800-4 38-3092 breakfast, friendly Montana hospitality. Rail each carload was dumped: the incessant rhythms came up Scenic river location, private ponds. Fishermen and Hunters welcome. JOIN US FORAN UNFORGETTABLE through his shoes, and sideways out of the girders into his gripping hands. Owen knew better but he could wish, RAIL JOURNEY THROUGH BIG SKY COUNTRY ~~cKE~ ~Iel( couldn't he, that he and the bridge were taking into them ON THE MONTANA DAYLIGHT. selves all the tremble of plugging the river, that none ~ could reach and dislodge the slipped area of fill. So far, the ~~ wishing had worked. 165 ."fo Brackett Creek Rd 5157 US Highway 89 Bozeman, MT 59715 n the half-dusk, the gravel dumping slowly but unstop P.O. Box 1551 406-686-4440 Livingston, Montana 5904 7 pably gained, the hail of pebbles building up in a rough Beautiful Bridger Canyon, I 1-800-995-1366 Charming Rooms with private baths. slurry which would show for an instant above the river Designed for the comfort Fishing , Hiking, Horse accom. water and then slip from sight. of the Fly Fisher at the gateway to Tired as they were, the gravelmasters worked like acro Montana's best fishing - bats now, bouncing to the catwalk railing to peek down at the beautiful Paradise Valley. the effect of each dumpload, then back into the rhythm of catching their next dumper car, yanking the springpin- In the end it was a carload dumped by Birdie Hinch and THE•""""'"""""""""""""""""""""""""= a very tired Neil that brought the shout: IGi3ANo Hom I GARDEN WALL "That one's staying dry!" ====INN== 139 McLeod Street 504 Spokane Avenue Neil scooted to the railing beneath Owen's perch and 319 South Willson Big Timber, MT 59011 Whitefish, Montana 59937 the two of them stared down. In the vast wallow of grav Bozeman, Montana 59715 406-932-4459 406-862-3440 406-587-0982 MONTANA ROCKIES RAIL TOURS el mush below, a low conelike heap-as Darius would Montana's Romantic "BEST of the WEST" Victorian Elegance In Historic -Sunset Magazine 218 Cedar Street, Sandpoint, ID 83864 have said, "Not two hands higher than a duck"-was a Bed & Breakfast District, Gourmet Breakfast, drier gray. The Missouri, by just that much, was captured Fine Food & Spirits "CHARMING" Private baths. 1-800-519-RAIL 1-800-519-7245 -Country Living Magazine now. mm Circle 49 on Reader Service Card Circle 50 on Reader Service Card