Our plan of operation for the morrow was something like this: Bill and Herb, the neighbouring ranchers, were to go up and help me push off, while Jim went down to the first fall at the head of the Canyon to be on hand to pilot me through. If I made the first riffle all right, I was to try to hold up the boat in an eddy until Jim could amble down to the second fall and stand-by to signal me my course into that one in turn. And so on down through. Once out of the Canyon there were no bad rapids above Livingston. I was to take nothing with me save my camera. My bags were to remain in Jim's cabin until he had seen me pass from sight below the Canyon. Then he was to return, flag the down train from Cinnabar, and send the stuff on to me at Livingston. Looking back on it from the vantage of a number of years' experience with rough water, that decision to leave the luggage to come on by train was the only intelligent feature of the whole plan. Steering a boat in swift water with any kind of a stern oar is an operation demanding a skill only to be acquired by long practice. For a greenhorn to try to throw over the head of a craft like _Kentucky Mule_ was about comparable to swinging an elephant by the tail. This fact, which it took me about half a minute of pulling and tugging to learn, did not bother me a whit however. I felt sure the _Mule_ was equal to meeting the Canyon walls strength for strength. I knew I had considerable endurance as a swimmer, and I was fairly confident that a head that had survived several seasons of old style mass-play football ought not to be seriously damaged by the rocks of the Yellowstone. Well, I was not right--only lucky. Not one of the considerations on which my confidence was based really weighed the weight of a straw in my favour. That I came out at the lower end comparatively unscathed was luck, pure luck. Subsequently I paid dearly for my initial success in running rapids like a bull at a gate. In the long run over-confidence in running rough water is about as much of an asset as a millstone tied round the neck. Humility is the proper thing; humility and a deep distrust of the wild beast into whose jaws you are poking your head.