27 
American Agriculturist, July 12, 1924 
Swift 
Currents 
By Edwin Balmer 
(By arrangement with William Gerard Chapman) 
F ELICIA SHELBY was standing alone 
on the rocks before Mt. Mower look¬ 
out-station, gazing steadily off to the 
south to make out the source and charac¬ 
ter of the smoke rising above the trees on 
the flank of Muleback Ridge five miles 
away. The morning, almost windless and 
sunny, had followed a clear, still night, 
free both from thunder-showers and from 
those lightning-storms without rains 
which are the particular terror of forest 
officers in the dry season. 
The smoke, therefore, arose from a fire 
lit by hands—in all likelihood by the 
hands of campers following the trail from 
Acheron to the Snake River. But camp¬ 
ers, even with the best intentions, were 
apt to be careless, and if from the East, as 
most campers were, they would under¬ 
estimate the tinder-like inflammability of 
the Idaho forest after a season of drought. 
The time was past when the supervisor 
and his deputies and the rangers and 
lookouts of Milliard National Forest 
credited all fire-lighters with innocence. 
This summer dangerous and violent 
people had seemed dismayingly numer¬ 
ous; so Felicia was keeping very close 
watch indeed when the telephone jangled 
in the cabin behind her, and she hastily 
put down her binoculars and went in. 
When the Government took over this 
end of the forest and chose the summit 
of Mt. Mower for the forest-fire lookout- 
station, carpenters had first built this 
tiny cabin at a shop in Acheron twenty- 
eight miles away; then the forest officers 
had taken it to pieces and packed it to the 
foot of Mower; for the last two miles they 
carried it piece by piece on their backs, to 
reassemble it finally upon this pinnacle, 
nine thousand three hundred and eighty 
feet above the sea, a mile higher than its 
immediate valley and two thousand feet 
or so loftier than any neighboring summit 
till Lassiter Mountain, sixteen miles west¬ 
ward, topped it. 
F ELICLA, upon lifting the telephone- 
receiver, found that the call came from 
Lassiter, where was a similar Spartan-like 
station, the nearest in that direction. A 
young man, Howard Dwyer, was on duty 
there, as a man should have been on duty 
at Mower. 
Accordingly, Felicia quickly explained: 
“It’s Felix, Howard. Mr, Shirley needed 
Griggs for the fire over on Kingdom. I’m 
up for the day.” 
“Hello, there, Felix!” Howard then 
hailed heartily. “Glad to hear your 
voice. D’ you spot something back of 
Puma Ridge?” 
“Yes, it’s on Muleback,” 
“Reckon you’re right; you’re nearer. 
What do you think about it?” 
“I see it pretty plainly now. Camp¬ 
fire.” 
“All right, if you’ve spotted it. Say, 
how’re they making out at Kingdom?” 
“Cleaned out headquarters and getting 
more men from Acheron this morning.” 
“Thought the town already was busy 
down in the lodge-pole beyond the creek?” 
“They are. These were men on a train 
going through.” 
“Wherefrom? Seattle? A fine bunch, 
I bet. Start more fire’n they’d put out. 
Got a gun there, Felix?” 
“Yes.” 
“That’s good. By the way Felix, 
there’s cars on Crandall’s road this morn¬ 
ing. You can’t see ’em yet. Four cars: 
that’s all I can see, but they’re by the 
crossroad and keepin’ on. They’re sure 
makin’ for the camp. Thought you’d 
want to know.” 
Felicia’s hand trembled so that she 
almost lost the last words in the receiver 
she held to her ear. “Thank you. 
Howard,” she managed, and Dwyer con¬ 
siderately hung up without demanding 
other conversation. 
Felicia stared out unsteadily for a mo¬ 
ment before she recollected her duty, 
returned to the sunlight on the bare rocks 
and, picking up her glass, dutifully leveled 
it first on the spire of smoke wafted above 
Muleback. With a sigh of relief she ob¬ 
served that it had not thickened and then, 
more hurriedly scanned the southern 
slopes for traces of other fires. At last she 
turned away from the government-owned 
forest to the pine-clad slopes which were 
the property of Jared Crandall, and 
searched the endless expanse of blue fir 
and pine for the gray crack, winding up 
and down the valley of the Acheron, 
which was the road to the camp. 
The Crandalls meant by a camp a 
great, log mansion forty by sixty feet, 
outwardly rough-hewn from yellow Idaho 
pine and red fir from the lower slopes of 
Kingdom; the interior also was in wood 
from their own forests—mostly cedar 
from the marshes beyond Acheron Lake. 
It had a great, antlered, double-hearthed 
room running the whole width of the 
house which they called the lounge; it had 
a monstrous dining-room and kitchen, 
billiard-room, music-room and den; and 
besides the dozen or so bedrooms and 
baths in the main house, there were half 
a dozen little cottages scattered about 
near by for the entertainment of guests. 
For the Crandalls were Eastern people— 
Jared being of the branch of the family 
which lived in Stamford, Connecticut; 
and when they came to the camp, they 
usually brought a house-party of twenty 
or thirty friends with them. 
When they first arrived in the West— 
that was ten years ago—they had come 
quite differently, seeking not diversion, 
but life itself. For Winthrop, the elder of 
the two sons, was threatened with tuber¬ 
culosis; so Mr. and Mrs. Crandall had 
come alone with Win and his brother 
Tony, leaving the girls in school in the 
East. Felicia vividly recalled to herself 
the first encounter with Tony. 
I T was April, a sunny, still day, warm 
even under the trees of the valley, 
though half-way up the slope of Mower 
white snow still glistened; Felicia, who 
was just twelve years old, was on her 
way home from the little school in 
Acheron. 
She had heard that day that the rich 
Eastern people who had bought the old 
Crowder place by the river and had been 
fixing it over, had arrived; so she was go¬ 
ing up the river trail to have a distant 
peek at them when suddenly a boy of 
about her own age stepped into the path 
before her. 
“Hullo!” he hailed her with belligerent 
friendliness. 
“Hullo!” Felicia returned; and each 
stopped and looked the other over. 
She saw a straight-standing, well-built 
and reckless-looking boy with brown hair 
and blue eyes of the sort which seemed to 
say, “Take a dare?” He had a particu¬ 
larly nice brow, she noticed, when with a 
reluctant recollection of formal courtesy, 
he dragged off his cloth cap and stood 
bar-headed; he had nice, well-shaped 
hands, which very evidently did many 
things. 
He was better dressed than any other 
boy she had ever seen; but he was not 
at all conscious of it, as other well-dressed 
boys always seemed to be. Indeed, he 
was not conscious of himself at all, but 
was absorbed in her, staring at her coolly 
from head to foot, and evidently liking 
her; when he returned to other considera¬ 
tions, it was not of himself but of the bow 
which he held that he spoke. 
“This is a rotten bow!” he showed it to 
her accusingly. “I thought you had 
decent Indian bows in the West.” 
Felicia looked it over with defensive 
scorn quite equal to his. “Huh! I bet 
you bought that at a railroad station. 
No Indian made that. Some Yankee 
made it to sell to Easterners.” 
'T'HE boy stared hostilely for an instant, 
and then laughed at himself pleasantly 
and fairly; he broke the bow over his knee 
and hurled it away. “What’s your 
name?” he demanded. 
“Felicia Shelby. What’s yours?” 
“Tony Grandall.” 
“Oh, you’re not the sick one, then!” 
“No, that’s Win,” Tony said. “He 
studied too hard, I think. Wanted to 
stick around the house all the time. 
Thought he’d get into Harvard next year. 
He's fifteen.” 
“How old V you?” 
“Fourteen in seven months.” 
“Weren’t you in school?” 
“Sure I was in school—on the second 
nine and the hockey team, I tell you. 
They wouldn’t ’ve got me to leave, but I 
wouldn’t throw down Win. He’s got to 
stay here all the time for five years, may¬ 
be, they say. I’ll stay with him—out¬ 
doors mostly. Father’s got a tutor for us 
—don’t care much for that. But I like it 
here—” he looked about at the woods, 
breathing deep with his pleasure. 
“What d’ you call that river?” he asked, 
looking down at the torrent below them. 
“The Acheron.” 
“What?” And when Felicia repeated, 
he commented—“Funny name. How’d 
it get it?” 
“It means,” said Felicia, “River of 
Grief.” 
“Oh, now I get you! Thought I’d 
heard it somewhere. Greek history stuff, 
Pluto and all that. What’d they call it 
that for?” 
“You ought to see it five miles below 
here.” 
“Faster than this?” 
“Faster? I should just say! No one 
dares try to go down it.” 
“Bet I would!” 
“Bet you wouldn’t!” 
“Bet I will! Where do you live?” 
“Over there,” Felicia pointed into the 
forest to the right. 
“Got any brothers?” 
“No.” 
“What have you got?” 
“My father.” 
“What’s he out here?” 
“Just Mr. Shelby,” Felicia explained. 
“He’s sick, but getting well.” 
“That’s good. That your land that 
way?” 
“No; we haven’t got any land. We 
came two years ago from Chicago. 
That’s govenment land, anyway; that’s 
national forest. Father’s working there 
now; he’s forest clerk for Mr. Shirley.” 
Draw through the dots in sequence to complete the question. 
Felicia found no different expression in 
the rich boy’s eyes after this confession of 
her humble station. “Can you ride?” he 
demanded. 
“Of course; but I’ve no pony of my 
own.” 
“We’ve two. I'll take Win’s horse — he 
won’t ride yet; you take mine. Will you 
show me that fast river to-morrow?” 
Thus the next day she rode with her 
new friend down beside the torrent of the 
Acheron, and she showed him the deadly 
run — the mile and more of hurtling, toss¬ 
ing, sucking cascade and whirlpool which 
had destroyed every one caught in the 
swift current above and swept down to 
the gorge. Felicia saw Tony’s eyes light 
and sparkle at the sight. 
“Some river you have got here!” he 
admitted ungrudgingly. “But I bet a 
good man with the right boat can go 
down. I bet I will — some day!” 
Felicia’s impulse was to defy him, but 
her instinct forbade the taunt. She was 
beginning to understand that this nice boy 
very likely might try it; not then, but 
“some day.” So she said, half-frightened, 
“Let’s look at the mountain road.” 
There were climbs of all sorts there to 
allure him, some safe enough, others dan¬ 
gerous; but at worst, less deadly than the 
river. He made most of those climbs in 
the next few years, either with Felicia or 
with boys from Acheron Lake, and in the 
winter skated and played hockey with 
them. But always Felicia, though a girl—- 
or was it because of that? — was his espe¬ 
cial confidant. 
1V/TRS. CRANDALL often invited her to 
* the house on snow-bound days to 
help interest Win, who was not gaining 
strength as rapidly as he should; so they’d 
play authors and checkers. Then, while 
Win slept, Tony and Felicia would read 
Henty, and “TreasureIsland,” and“ Huck 
Finn,” or Tony would “imagine” things 
with her, and tell her hopes and ambitions 
of his own which he would not have 
dreamed of telling any one else. 
Tony went East every now and then 
with his father or with his mother, who 
journeyed back and forth often, but Win 
always remained; so Tony soon returned, 
and their father purchased additional 
tracts of the wide woodland and ordered 
the building of the camp for a home for all 
the family from June to October. And 
the girls, Barbara and Charlotte, came 
also and brought their friends from the 
East. 
Felicia, after a few encounters with 
these guests, learned to keep away from 
camp, so Tony would hunt her up. 
“See here, Felix,” he once demanded, 
“why didn’t you come to Charlotte’s 
birthday party yesterday?” 
Felicia tried to make evasions, but her 
eyes filled in spite of herself, and Tony 
seized her arm. “Who hurt you, Felicia? 
Char.otte? Barbara? I guess I'll fix 
them? Now r you look here, any place 
that’s good enough for me’s good enough 
for you.” 
Which was not at all what he meant; 
but Felicia knew what he meant and why 
Mrs. Crandall did not ask her to the 
house. She was seventeen and Tony 
eighteen and a half—almost a young man, 
and she was rounding into young woman¬ 
hood, Gone was her straight, lithe, boy¬ 
ish figure; gone her straight doubled 
braids of dark hair; gone her child’s bold 
gaze and quick, thoughtless speech; gone, 
indeed, was the little girl; and in her place 
had come a maiden who surprised herself 
with awareness of her sex, who at first 
opposed such consciousness, but had to 
submit at last. 
So, with her money earned by working 
in the supervisor’s office, she bought by 
mail pretty feminine blouses; she learned 
to “do up” her hair, which became beau¬ 
tiful and lustrous without need of Char¬ 
lotte’s hundred nightly brushings; her 
blue eyes seemed to deepen a little in hue 
and to soften, though they looked at one 
Continued on page 28) 
