Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1905-02-22
/ ELIAS LUCK
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How the Columbia River Made a Match
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES:
By MAX McNEILL-

TWICE year the Columbia river
i rises above its banks in the valley
below the mouth of the Willamette,
and changes the property rights of
tribe of scow-dwellers who skirt its
shores. These arbitrary transpositions
by the resistless stream of the river
lead to many complications; some
times to bloodshed In one case to
solution of a problem that had vexed
the tender hearts Of two young peo-
pie.
On Wild Mans island, which lies be-
low Kalama, and is tucked under the
high shores of the Washington side,
there lived in comparative state
rancher named Walker, with his dog
and his son. He was a proud man.
and his house, originally a scow, was
surrounded by fence painted yellow
He also possessed chicken yard and
raised potatoes in patch of ground
elevated slightly above the water
mark. The dog drowsed most of the
time in the muddy foreyard, and The
son fished on the swelling river and
cut cordwood for the steamers
Six miles above, gayly-painted
houseboat had come ashore during an
unusually high flood and the master of
1t, lonely Missourian, had slid
skids under it, put out gang-plank
and accepted the adjoining land as a
perquisite of discovery. His daughter
had grown up till she was an efficient
aid to her father in handling his net
and the two of them called the Shiny
strip of bar home. Their one grievance
was that the water was not low enough
to Justify fence. They were simply
squatters; no more.
1t was the difference in the social
standing of these two men, Walker and
Stowler, that caused much anguish to
the children, Hennery and Eliza.
Hennery tried to blind himself to the
fact that his father was a proper
rancher, while Eliza was simply the
daughter of scOw-dweller But Eliza
knew very we'll that old man Walker
would never forget And as she was
proud, she assumed disdain of Hem
nerys clumsy efforts to obliterate the
dividing line between responsibility
anu SulItleSS poverty.
Walker, like most men signally fa-
vored of Fortune, attributed his own
position of affiuence to personal en-
ergy, and as authority must have a
subject, he was fond of slyly meeting
Stowler to nag him into the rage of an
inferior, and these encounters he re-
tailed with gusto to Hennery and the
dog, knowing that the boy resented
keenly every sighting reference to
the father OF the girl he loved. Hen
merry many times attempted to re-
taliate. but somehow it never entered
his head that his fathers place in So
clety was due solely to lucky eddy
IN q swift current some ten years be-
fore. So his words fell emptily and
fruitlessly, except in so far as they
gave the old man opportunity for
shrewd sarcasm.
In the spring of a new year. when
the alders on the bank were thicken-
Ing with foliage and the clouds on the
hills were worn thin and rifted with
summer, Hennery met Eliza by the
xix Rock. and told her many things
that had little reference to ANYBODY
but themselves. Eliza responded slow
~ and with tears. womanlike. she
was unable to see how she was to be
made happier by Hennery's love unless
the entire world acquiesced. But she
kissed him passionately, and saw the
towering peaks Of the Cascade range
as in a dream.
Driven beyond himself by ELIAS
kisses. Hennery went, late in the
spring, and told his father that he was
{, going to marry the scow-dweller's
daughter. Walker stroIed his scrawny
beard. and called the dog for an execu-
tive session. When he had introduced
his measure and carried it by two to
one. he turned his back on Hennery
4rsw his Hath ed skin into the