Buddy Fox and Tom Kat

Buddy Fox and Tom Kat on the Renegade River

It was Buddy Fox and the Tom Kat who introduced me to the Colorado River the first time, in 1942.

Buddy was a game ranger for the Arizona Game and Fish Commission.

The Tom Kat was Buddy's ten-foot metal boat, powered by an ancient 10horse Evinrude.

Before he became a ranger, Buddy was what you might call a "river rat." He had lived on the Colorado River just above old Fort Mohave since shortly after World War I. He knew the river. He had trapped it for muskrat and poached a few beaver, salvaged a lot of timber that came floating down from the building of Hoover Dam, and he also recovered the bodies of men who had fallen off the dam or canyon walls during construction.

Mohave County paid him $25 for every body he recovered, and that was the way he made his living until he was hired as a game ranger.

I wanted to go down the river and that's what brought the three of us Buddy Fox, the Tom Kat and me together at Willow Beach.

Bedrolls and chuckbox were stowed in the center of the short boat, and I sat on a bedroll camera in hand while Buddy worked the tiller and throttle of the outboard.

Some ten miles below Willow Beach we began our approach to Roaring Rapids, (also called Cave or Tunnel Rapids) the same one that had stopped George Alonzo Johnson from coming up the river in the General Jessup in 1857.

Buddy asked, "Do you want to walk around it or ride through it?"

Instead of replying I just looked down the river. It was wide, deceptively glasssmooth. Ahead I could see the landmarks that had given the rapids another of its names: a mountain, a huge cave above the waterline and a smaller one nearby.

The roar of the tumbling water increased as we drifted nearer, the Evinrude idling just enough to maintain steerage.

I stood up, fascinated by the rising crescendo of sound that was being made by a huge volume of green water trying to funnel itself into a very narrow gap. The lip of the rapids looked like a mirror and the throat a torrent, casting waves five and ten feet high.

Suddenly, I felt the boat move out faster as Buddy opened the throttle. Then his hand was clawing at my back and pulling on my belt, jerking me back and down onto the bedroll.

"Sit down, Charley," he commanded, "and hang on! You took too long to make up your mind."

Then we slipped over the lip and into the throat of Roaring Rapids.

The Tom Kat reared to claw its way over the first wave. Then dead ahead a lone pillar of rock rose over 50 feet, splitting the torrent. And the Tom Kat was heading right for it.

The old Evinrude snarled as Buddy demanded more power from it. And then, before the mind could register the fact we somehow slipped around the pillar of rock and into the pounding turbulence below. It was too much. The Evinrude choked, spit and sputtered and died as backwash poured in over the stern. The Tom Kat floundered, half filling with water.

"Charley, we've got to get out of this and into the eddy." Buddy shouted, jab-bing the handle of a paddle into my ribs. Thanks to two small air tanks, one in the bow and one under the stern boat seat, and the two canvas-covered bedrolls lashed down in the middle, we were still afloat, although the Tom Kat was wal-lowing in water to its gunnels.

Straining at the paddles we managed finally to pull the Tom Kat out of the mainstream and into the smooth, slow moving water of the eddy.

When we arrived at the cave I had spotted earlier we took out our bedrolls, the chuckbox and bailed out the Tom Kat the brave little metal boat that had carried us through one of the worst rapids below Hoover Dam.