A few inquiries brought out the information that I was not likely to get a boat.  The stores did not keep them.  I should have given my order two weeks before to an Indian who built boats to order at $2.00 a foot.  This was a new one on me.  Suppose a fellow wanted—­well say, about $15.00 worth.  It would look something like a tub, wouldn’t it?  Perhaps it was to be the coast, for me, after all.

The Colorado River in flood is a terrible stream.  Unlike the Eastern rivers, there are no populous cities—­with apologies to Needles and Yuma—­along its shores, to be inundated with the floods.  Unlike the rivers of the South, few great agricultural districts spread across its bottoms.  Along the upper seven hundred miles there are not a half-dozen ranches with twenty-five acres under cultivation.  But if destructive power and untamed energy are terrible, the Colorado River, in flood, is a terrible stream.

After changing into some comfortable clothes I sauntered past the railway machine shops down to the river, and up to where a fight was being waged to save the upper part of the town from being torn away by the flood.  For a month past, car after car of rock had been dumped along the river bank, only to disappear in the quicksands; and as yet no bottom had been reached.  Up to this point the fight was about equal.  The flood would not reach its crest until two or three weeks later.

Beyond a fisherman or two there were few men by the river.  The workmen had finished their day’s labour.  A ferryman said that I might talk an Indian into selling his boat, but it was doubtful.  My next job was to find such an Indian.

A big, greasy Mojave buck lay on an uncovered, rusty bed spring, slung on a home-made frame, before his willow and adobe home, close to the Colorado River.  In answer to my repeated question he uncoiled and stretched the full length of his six foot six couch, grunted a few words in his native tongue to other Indians without a glance in my direction, then indifferently closed his eyes again.  A young Indian in semi-cowboy garb,—­not omitting a gorgeous silk handkerchief about his neck,—­jabbered awhile with some grinning squaws, then said in perfectly understandable English, “He will sell his boat for $18.00.  It is worth $30.00.”  This was decisive for an Indian.  It usually takes a half-day of bickering to get them to make any kind of a bargain.  I told him I would take it in the morning.

It was a well-constructed boat, almost new, built of inch pine, flat-bottomed, and otherwise quite similar in shape to the boats my brother and I had used on our twelve hundred mile journey through the canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers,—­but without the graceful lines and swells that made those other boats so valuable to us in rapids.  The boat was nearly new and well worth $30.00, as boat prices went in that town.  Why he was willing to sell it for $18.00, or at the rate of $1.00 a foot, I could not imagine.  It was the first bargain an Indian had ever offered me.  But if I paid for it that evening, there were doubts in my mind if I should find it in the morning, so I delayed closing the bargain and went back again to inspect the boat.