But the fat was already in the fire. Allstein halted my Miles City Marathon with a gesture half weary, half contemptuous. "That taxi looks about as much like you're hoboing as did them three dishes of strawberries at the _Northern_ this morning," he growled, glowering. I caved at once and meekly asked him to get in and come down to see my little steel boat. Lightest outfit that ever went down river.... Boat and all my stuff weighed less than I did myself.... I was in the taxi by that time. Allstein had continued to register "Betrayed! Betrayed!" but had not moved to cut off my retreat. That was something to be thankful for anyhow. Not knowing what else to say, I remarked to the driver that it must be getting along toward boat-time. And so away we went. Allstein's reproachful gaze bored into my back until we swung out of eye-range into the Custer Trail. I know that I shall be reminded of him every time I see a ruined maiden in the movies or at Drury Lane to the end of my days. Billings is a fine modern city, which makes me regret all the more that most of my daylight impressions of it had to be gained by peeking under a taxicab curtain. It is by long odds the largest town on the Yellowstone; in fact, I saw no city comparable with it for size and vigour until at Sioux City I came to the first of the packing-house metropolises of the Missouri. Billings owed its first prosperity to cattle and sheep and its fine strategic situation for distribution. Pastoral industries cut less of a figure today, but the town has continued to gain ground as the principal distributing centre for western Montana. That, with agricultural and power development, has brought mills and factories, and the town now ranks high among the manufacturing centres of the North-west. I shall live in hopes of going back some-day and seeing Billings properly--as a visiting Chamber of Commerce booster or a Rotary excursionist, or something equally _sans reproche_. The point where the Northern Pacific Railway bridge crosses the Yellowstone below Billings is of considerable interest historically. It was here that Clark ferried Sergeant Pryor and his remaining pack animals across the river, preliminary to the overland journey that was to be attempted with the animals to the Mandan Villages. Here, also, is the point that is popularly credited with being the high-water mark of steamboat navigation on the Yellowstone. On June 6, 1875, Captain Grant Marsh in the _Josephine_, conducting a rough survey of the river under the direction of General J. W. Forsyth, reached a point which he estimated to be forty-six miles above Pompey's Pillar, 250 miles above Powder River and 483 miles above the mouth of the Yellowstone. Major Joseph Mills Hanson, in his "Conquest of the Missouri," stirringly describes the climax of this remarkable voyage.