Listen closely, and you can almost hear the footsteps of the Hollaway and Scoffield children running across the floor of the Rillway cabin.

Tucked back near a moss-covered canyon wall 14 miles up Deep Creek east of Townsend, the Rillway cabin is the newest addition to the Helena National Forest's stock of inexpensive getaways, available for only $30 a night. It's one of the cleanest Forest Service rental cabins, made so in part by the tender loving care bestowed upon it for almost a century by the descendents of Townsend icon and newspaper woman Nellie Hale Averill.

Nellie Averill was the widow of Truman Averill, the editor and publisher of the Townsend Star from 1897 to 1921. After Truman's death in 1921, she took the helm of the newspaper, establishing herself as one of Montana's most respected newspaper publishers, and was honored for her work in 1946 by the Montana Press Association.

She also knew the value of getting out of the office, and in 1921, along with her daughter and son-in-law, Grace and Floyd Hollaway, purchased an 18-by-24-foot cabin in Deep Creek from its builder, Dr. A.C. Kelly. They named the cabin "Rillway" by combining the second part of their last names.

"My grandmother, Nellie's daughter Grace, and Floyd Holloway shared that cabin with my grandmother until she died in the '40s," Trenna Scoffield recalled recently in a telephone interview from her winter home in Yuma, Ariz. "They entertained their friends there; mother was a great entertainer.

"My grandmother loved to cook and would bake biscuits, pies and everything else on that old stove. We would entertain up to 100 people up there, although we did it differently than my grandmother did, but with the same premise - gather together all your good friends and have a good time."

The doorjamb bears silent testimony to the guests, many of whom signed their names along with dates back to the early 1930s.

"Sometimes, they would leave messages too if we weren't there," Scoffield said, laughing. "Hale Snyder came up once and couldn't find anybody to answer the phone, so he wrote his name on the wall. All my grandkids' names are there as well as my kids' names."

In 1947, Floyd Hollaway added a 16-by-24 extension to the cabin for a bedroom area. The cabin grounds also included a log-slab shed, a hidden outhouse, a large iron barbecue, and a bridge spanning Deep Creek, which runs through the back yard.

"We would sit on the bridge and dangle our feet in the creek and catch fish, little brook trout," Scoffield said. "We had a tennis court where all the tall grass is on the side of the cabin ... and when I was a child, my friends and I would go across the highway and climb that big hill, then slide down the shale and burst our britches."

Trenna Scoffield and her husband, Dennis, bought the cabin from her grandparents in the 1970s. But the cabin was on National Forest lands that had been leased to the family, and about 15 years ago, Forest Service officials decided they wanted the land back.

"They told us we would have to tear down the cabin, or they would," Scoffield said. "That broke my heart, to think that it wouldn't be there anymore. But we finally struck a deal with some very nice people, and now the cabin is there for other people to enjoy."

Steve Wyatt with the Townsend Ranger District said it also was a difficult decision for the Forest Service.

"Those cabins are on a 10-year special-use permit, and it's discretionary whether the permits get reissued once it expires," Wyatt said. "Sometime in the late 1980s the Forest Service decided that it

wasn't really a wise thing to give out because we were having some prime places in the forest for some select people to enjoy, and it wasn't fair to the public. So the direction we got was to phase out those special-use permits when the opportunities arose.

"But it was tough for us. It wasn't an easy thing to go through."

During the time that the cabin's future was in limbo, little upkeep was performed. So when the Forest Service took this one over, they had some work to do. They replaced the roof, sanded, stained and sealed the wood floor and stabilized the back deck, which overlooks Deep Creek. They removed the bridge for safety reasons, as well as a few large fir trees, and replaced the outhouse with a new vault toilet.

The old gate, made from two wooden wagon wheels and an ice tong surrounded by Dennis Scoffield's initials, was replaced with the standard Forest Service gate. But the original will be hung on the wood shed, as part of a display for visitors.

Scoffield said she hasn't been to the cabin for a while, but she was pleased to hear the tradition of TLC still resides within its walls. Although the fact that their family no longer owns the Rillway cabin still saddens her, knowing that a wide spectrum of people are enjoying it provides her some solace.

"I would just like them to kind of respect the people who have come and gone in the past," she said. "And respect the way of life that people were able to live when it was a simpler, slower time. They might sit down and contemplate what it would have been like with Dolly the horse in the front yard and all the people who put their feet under the picnic table."

Reporter Eve Byron can be reached at 447-4076 or by e-mail at eve.byron@helenair.com