"Buckskin Jim" Cutler, premier river man of the upper Yellowstone, came down to Livingston the evening before the morning I had scheduled for my departure. It had been rumoured for a couple of days that he would arrive—some said to respond to a legal summons, others that he had heard I had inquired for him and was hoping to sign on with me for my river voyage. I have never been able to make sure either way. Certainly he had been summoned to court over some dispute with a neighbour, while I have never had definite assurance that he had received any word of my trip. I could not have taken him far in any event, as I had no need of help once my boat was given a thorough trying out.

Cutler's arrival in Livingston was sudden and tragic, as is always the case when the Yellowstone takes a hand in real earnest. My boat had been set up in a blacksmith shop on the river, at the foot of the main street. Going down there just before dinner to make sure that everything was ship-shape for the start on the morrow, I found the place deserted, while there was a considerable gathering of people on the next bridge below. Starting in that direction, I met one of the helpers, breathing hard and deathly white, hurrying back to the deserted shop.

"Mighty hard luck," he ejaculated brokenly between breaths. "Man just came down past shop—in river—yelling for help. Didn't hear him till he got by. Half a minute sooner, and I could have yanked out your light boat—all set up—and picked him up. Hear they've just got him down by the next bridge—but 'fraid he's croaked. Cussed hard luck."

They were carrying a man to a waiting auto as I approached the crowd. "Yep—drowned," I heard some one say; "but he made a hell of a fight. That was old 'Buckskin Jim' to the last kick—always fighting." My glimpse of the rugged face and dripping form was of the briefest, but amply reassuring as to the truth of the statement I had overheard. It was the frame of a man that could put up a hell of a fight, and the face of a man who would—a real river-rat if there ever was one.

Next morning's issue of the Livingston Enterprise, which bore in the lower left-hand corner of its front page a modest announcement of my departure, on its upper right-hand corner carried a prominently featured account of Jim Cutler's last run on the Yellowstone. As it contains about all I have ever been able to learn in connection with the tragic finish of a character who, in 1901 as in 1921, was recommended to me as the best river hand on the upper Yellowstone, I reproduce the latter in full herewith.

"BUCKSKIN JIM" CUTLER
USES RAFT AND DIES IN
FIGHT WITH YELLOWSTONE.

LACKING FUNDS TO PAY FOR TRANSPORTATION FROM CARBELLA TO LIVINGSTON, PIONEER MAKES PERILOUS TRIP OF 40 MILES DOWN RIVER ONLY TO WAGE LOSING BATTLE WITH WATER AS HE PREPARED TO END JOURNEY.

Without funds to pay for transportation which would bring him into court as defendant in a water case, R. E. Cutler, Justice of the Peace at Carbella, and known throughout Park County as "Buckskin Jim," elected to travel the 40 miles to Livingston on a small raft yesterday and after riding the flood until he could leap ashore here he was pitched into the river by an overhanging limb and after struggling with the current for half a mile died either from drowning or the exertion of his fight.

Of massive physique Cutler made a wonderful fight for life despite his 65 years. A tree limb on the upper end of McLeod Island knocked the voyager from his raft. Crying for help he attempted to reach the shore, only a few feet away. Beneath the Main Street bridge, down past the tourist camp packed with tents and travellers and down river to C Street, Cutler was seen battling with the high water.

TONER CATCHES BODY