It was while returning from such a hunting
trip that we first met Rust. Many are the trips we have taken with him
since then, Emery, with his wife and the baby, even, making the
"crossing" and the eighty-mile horseback ride to his home in Kanab,
while I had continued on through to Salt Lake City. Rust had been the
first to tell us of Galloway and his boating methods; and had given us
a practical demonstration on the river. Naturally there was no one we
would have been more pleased to see at that place, than Rust.
In our mail we found a letter from him, stating, among other things,
that he had camped the night before on the plateau, a few hundred feet
above a certain big rapid, well known through this section as the Soap
Creek Rapid. This locality is credited with being the scene of the
first fatality which overtook the Brown-Stanton expedition; Brown
being upset and drowned in the next rapid which followed, after having
portaged the Soap Creek Rapid. Rust wrote also that there was a shore
along the rapid, so there would be no difficulty in making the
portage; and concluded by saying that he had a very impressive dream
about us that night, the second of its kind since we had started on
our journey.
We understood from this that he had certain misgivings about this
rapid, and took his dream to be a sort of a warning. Rust should have
known us better. With all the perversity of human nature that letter
made me want to run that rapid if it were possible.
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