Joe was quite handsome above having his pilotage flaunted. The first thing he did after catching up with us was to apologize again for having warned about running the upper river. The good chap seemed really to think that some skill had been displayed in running that chute. As a matter of fact, I simply headed in and let the current do the rest. Pete said I backed water sharply to keep from ramming the gravel bank, and that we both fended with oars against the clutch of the cottonwood snags. Pete also said I was pop-eyed all the way through. I know that he was. I was glad of it, too. Outside of a straight spill, I felt that there wasn't going to be much more that I could do to shake those confoundedly cool scout-trained nerves of his.
This little incident clarified the air on the pilotage question. I let Joe keep the lead as far as I could, but assumed the responsibility of picking my own channel while he concentrated on his quest.
We passed several grim reminders of the tragedies of the past week. A few miles below Livingston we came upon Jim Cutler's raft stranded upon a midstream bar. Even a passing glimpse revealed how well the double tiers of logs were laid—plainly the work of the real old river-rat "Buckskin Jim" must have been. Not far below the raft was the wreck of a Ford, with cushions, wraps, and odds and ends of a camp outfit dotting the bars for the next mile or two. The car, occupied by a young Middle Westerner and his four-months' bride, had gone over the grade at a bend of the road not far above where we saw the wreck. Rolling to the flood-swollen river, it had been carried several hundred yards down stream before stranding. The man crawled clear and reached the bank; the body of his wife had not been recovered. The third recent river tragedy was that of a rancher, but I had not learned the details of it.
I was, of course, much elated over the way in which my little tin boat had behaved in running that side-winding chute. This very smart performance proved conclusively that, with anything like intelligent handling, she would be more than equal to any probable demands I would have to make on her. There might, of course, be places that I would have to avoid on account of her lack of freeboard, but that, at the worst, would mean no more than the loss of a bit of time. She was good for what she would have to do—that was the main thing. There was reassurance, also, in the way her bottom and sides had withstood the bumping from the rocks. There was no question in my mind now that that galvanized tin-like looking stuff was real steel. Nothing else would have stood the bumps. I planned to spare her all that kind of thing I could, but it was good to know that she could stand the gaff if she had to. I was calling her pet names before we had gone twenty miles. It is an astonishing thing the affection a man develops for a boat that is carrying him well on a long river journey.
The thing that I remembered best from my former run was the long, rough rapid that winds down and under the Springdale bridge. I did not recall, however, that the river divided into two channels a half mile above the bridge. Indeed, it is quite possible that it did not do so twenty years ago. Changes like that occur over night during the high-water season on the Yellowstone. Joe led the way down the left-hand side of the left-hand channel, but landed when it became apparent that neither of our boats could live in the wild tumble of rollers where the current drove hard against the side of the bluff above the bridge. Lining back a quarter of a mile up-stream, we pulled across to the opposite side, down which there was rough but fairly open running.
My boat was behaving so well that I couldn't resist the temptation to give her a baptism in some really rough stuff at a point where salvage operations would be so comparatively simple in case of grief. Giving the little lady her head after the worst of the riffle had been passed, I let the undercurrent draw her right over into the main string of rollers. Wild, wallowing water it was, solid white all the way, but with a straight run and no underhand look about it. She took it like a duck, except where two or three of the most broken combers let her down too sharply for her bows to rise to meet the next in turn. There were perhaps a half dozen buckets of water in the forward section when we beached and dumped her a hundred yards below the bridge. As I seem to remember it now, Syd Lamartine's skiff had a foot of water in it when we dumped at about the same point on that other run. On that occasion, however, I have a clear recollection of riding the middle of the riffle all the way down. I should want a batteau and a full crew if I were going to try the same stunt today.
It must have been six or seven miles below the Springdale bridge that Holt, descrying an unusual object on the beach of a long, low island to our left, asked me to pull in closer for a better look. Joe, a hundred yards ahead of us, had already passed it up as a log of driftwood, but the ex-scout's keen eye would not be deceived. At first we thought it was the body of a man—probably the drowned rancher,—but as we drew nearer it was revealed as that of a woman dressed in hiking garb, undoubtedly the bride of the auto wreck.
As we were now in Sweet Grass County, the body was under the jurisdiction of the Coroner at Big Timber. Holt decided it would be best if Joe tried to find some ranch from which he could get in touch with that official by phone, while we continued on down river to carry the word by an alternative route.
Joe was treated to a good deal of a shock while towing the body down stream to an eddy from which it could be landed on the left bank. No sooner had he put off from the beach than the corpse, floating deeply submerged at the end of a thirty-foot line, made straight for the roaring line of rollers on the right side of the channel. As it was a good deal too rough water for his boat to ride, Joe lost no time in bending to his stubby oars and pulling for dear life in the opposite direction. It was a tug-of-war all the way, with the grisly tow on the outer end gaining foot by foot. Holt and I had drifted too far ahead before we realized the seriousness of Joe's difficulty to be of any help. As an upset was inevitable in the event the canoe was dragged into the riffle stern first, the best that we could do was to pick him up at the foot of it and trust that his canoe would strand and anchor the corpse.
If that riffle had been fifty yards longer nothing in the world could have prevented a spill that would have put Joe's football life-preserver to a real test. As far as the tug-of-war was concerned he was beaten completely—dragged over the line. Luckily it was only the smoothening tail of the riffle, and the buoyant little canoe rode the rounded rollers without capsizing. Another hundred yards, and the relentless drag from the other end of his line had eased enough to allow him to pull up and into the eddy. He was mighty white about the gills as Holt gave him a hand ashore, and kept repeating over and over in an awed voice: "Did you see her try to drown me? Did you see her try to drown me?"