The river was broader and slower below Pompey's Pillar, with the rapids shorter and farther between. At five I landed at a very pretty alfalfa ranch on the left bank to inquire about passing what appeared to be a submerged dam some hundreds of yards ahead. Only two women were at home--a beaming old lady and her very stout daughter. They insisted on my staying to tea, which required no great persuasiveness on their part after Joanna remarked that she was out of breath from turning the ice-cream freezer. The girl was astonishingly red, round and sweet--a veritable bifurcated apple. She seemed to have a very good knowledge of the river, and assured me I should have no trouble at the diversion dam provided I kept well toward the left bank. Indeed, if I thought it would help at all, she would ride down with me and show the way. There was a path back home from their lower pasture. [Illustration: CUSTER'S PILLAR, BAD LANDS] [Illustration: THE GRATING WHICH PROTECTS THE INITIALS CARVED BY CAPTAIN CLARK ON THE SIDE OF POMPEY'S PILLAR] Considering how shy I had found most of the rancher folk to be of the river, this game offer pretty nearly took my breath away. I would have been all for accepting it save for one very good and sufficient reason--it was physically impossible. I had noticed that Joanna's personal chair was of home construction, and considerable amplitude of beam--certainly six inches more than the stern-sheets of my slender shallop. She could wedge in sidewise, of course, but that still left the matter of a life-preserver. I didn't feel it was quite the thing to take an only child into a rapid without some provision for floating her out in case of an upset. And my Gieve wouldn't do. The inflated "doughnut" that slipped so easily up and down my own brawny brisket would just about have served Joanna as an armlet. So I declined with what grace I could, and we all parted on the best of terms--I with a fragrant flitch of their home-cured bacon, they with three double handfuls of my California home-dried apricots. I had no trouble at the dam, which was only on the right side, where it had been erected to divert the water into the head of an irrigation ditch. Running until nearly dark, I landed and made camp on a breeze-swept bar away from the mosquitos.