An Upper Missouri Trip 
II.—Running the Rapids 
O N Oct. io, after going a few miles beyond 
what appeared to be the dry mouth of 
a stream coming in from the south, we 
saw some men crossing in a boat. Believing we 
were still fifty miles or more from that river, 
we asked them how far it was to the Mussel¬ 
shell. “You’ve passed it,” was the reply. "How 
far is it to Kismet?” we called. "Right here,’ 
said one; so we pulled in to the right bank, and 
found a store and a few ranch buildings, but the 
postoffice had been discontinued. This was a 
disappointment as we had ordered Our mail sent 
here. There were several men about, but “old 
timers” were scarce. 
It would hardly do, I fear, to pass the mouth 
of the Musselshell without mentioning at least 
two names which have helped to make this re¬ 
gion famous, Flopping Bill and Liver Eating 
Johnson, of illustrious memory. Joseph Henry 
Taylor, of Washburn, North Dakota, says in his 
"Sketches of Frontier and Indian Life,” p. 64: 
“On the morning of June 6 (1869), a down 
stream steamer landed at our yard to take on 
wood. It had just returned from the mountains 
and reported large Sioux war parties moving 
down both sides of the Missouri, and but a few 
miles away. On this boat was a passenger from 
the mouth of Musselshell River, a frontiersman 
who had ‘made his name.’ He had on board 
about thirty whitened skulls of Santee Sioux, 
from which he had boiled the flesh in big kettles, 
while lengthening out his stay at Clendening’s 
trading post. This place was attacked in the 
spring by abouj sixty of Standing Buffalo’s band 
of Santee Sioux, and very fortunate for Clen¬ 
dening’s men a crowd of wolfers and buffalo 
hunters happened along about the same time. 
The Santees were on foot, and finding the 
garrison stronger than they had calculated on, 
attempted to retreat. In this, however, they were 
foiled by the good generalship of George Gren- 
'nell, a noted frontier character, and ably sec¬ 
onded by Johnson, the head-boiling passenger 
mentioned. The outcome was the Indians were 
flanked and hemmed in a deep cut, and one- 
half of them exterminated. The whites lost but 
one. It was after this fight that our worthy re¬ 
ceived his name, viz.: Liver Eating Johnson. 
He was afterwards a trusty scout on several 
military expeditions against • hostile Indians.” 
Just how he got his name is left to the imagi¬ 
nation of the reader. On the river, they say, that 
By DeCOST SMITH 
he carried the Indian s liver on a stick, but “only 
pretended to eat it.” Larpenteur mentions an¬ 
other instance of this kind of bravado which 
happened in 1842, at Fort McKenzie, the Black- 
foot trading post above Marias River, a few 
miles below the present Benton. Alexander 
Harvey was the hero of this particular exploit. 
“Harvey came out of the bastion and finished 
the wounded Indians with his large dagy. I 
was told he then licked the blood off the dagy 
and afterward made the squaws of the fort dance 
the scalp dance around the scalps which he had 
raised himself.” * 
Flopping Bill Cantrell’s fame rests on a dif¬ 
ferent basis. His was a crusade against what 
was thought to be a lawless and dangerous ele¬ 
ment among the-whites, and he appears to have 
done his gruesome work without bravado, and 
more from a sense of duty than for the love of 
it. About 1885, the bands of rustlers and horse 
thieves were so troublesome that it was decided 
to fight fire with fire, the legal machinery being 
insufficient, apparently, to cope with them. It 
is said that Cantrell was sent out with a party 
of cowboys on this errand of death by an asso¬ 
ciation of stock owners, among whom was a 
prominent citizen of Montana who is still living 
in that State. His name is almost invariably 
mentioned with that of Flopping Bill whenever 
this affair is alluded to, and, justly or unjustly, 
he has been made to share whatever credit or 
blame attaches to it. Starting at the mouth of 
the Musselshell, so the story goes, this band of 
executioners worked down the river, hanging or 
shooting an unknown number of men. Joseph 
H. Taylor says thirty-two-, and Theodore. Roose¬ 
velt, in “Ranch Life in the Far West” (The 
Century Magazine, Vol. XXXV., February, 1888, 
p. 505), says: “A little over a year ago one 
committee of vigilantes in eastern Montana shot 
or hung nearly sixty—not, however, with the 
best judgment in all cases,” and allowing for 
the time which usually elapses between the writ¬ 
ing and publication of an article, this would co¬ 
incide with the Flopping Bill period. 
Most of those familiar with the facts concede 
that many of those killed were of the very worst 
class, though asserting that some were entirely 
innocent. We found one man who was cap¬ 
tured on suspicion and held a prisoner for sev¬ 
eral days by Cantrell’s party. He said that 
Flopping Bill is still living, or was, quite re j 
cently, and that he had seen him within a few 
years. Along the river we found no lack of 
apologies for Johnson, and a general willingness 
to explain away the repellant features of his act, 
but there was an almost universal tendency to 
condemn Cantrell and all who were associated 
with him. (See Joseph H. Taylor’s “Kaleido¬ 
scopic Lives,” Washburn, North Dakota, 1902.) 
Leaving Kismet, we continued on to the head 
of the timbered bottom at Squaw Creek, where 
we camped for several days. Here on the right 
side of the river the bluffs are bold and pic¬ 
turesque, and at their tops are bordered by per¬ 
pendicular masses of light fawn-colored rim 
rock, with a good deal of coniferous timber on 
the hillside in the breaks. The upper part of 
the creek has several forks, and the broken 
country extends some distance back toward the 
southeast. One day we caught a sturgeon four 
feet or more in length and weighing probably 
thirty pounds. On Oct. 13 .we saw two trees 
about sixteen inches in diameter which had been 
felled by beavers, also many tracks in the mud; 
in fact, for several miles above and below the 
Musselshell these animals seem to be more 
numerous than on any other part of the river 
we traversed. At this camp we frequently heard 
beaver, and sometimes caught a glimpse of them 
at dusk. That evening, as we walked along the 
beach, we saw a beaver swimming up stream 
near shore, and gradually approaching us. When 
he saw us he changed his course, and, reaching 
the middle of the river, began that series of 
splashings and plungings which has so often 
been described as flapping or slapping the water 
with the tail. The light was so dim that we 
were not able to see how it was done, but the 
noise, whenever we heard it, resembled that 
made by a stone of fifteen or twenty pounds 
weight dropped from a height of several feet 
into deep water, and the splash was just such as 
would be produced by the same process. The. 
sound is a deep “ka-choog,” accompanied by a 
huge splash of water rising to a height of four 
or five feet, with a diameter about the same. The 
beaver seems to plunge heavily and disappear 
under water, coming to the surface almost imme¬ 
diately and repeating the performance several 
times, at intervals of a minute or two. Some¬ 
times in the evening we heard it but once, with¬ 
out repetition, and at times it seemed to come 
from near the boat. I am told , that the beaver 
