Beaching what I must still call the _Mule_ on a bar where the river fanned out in the open valley at the foot of the Canyon, I dragged her around into an eddy and finally moored her mangled remains to a friendly cottonwood on the left bank. Taking stock of damages, I found that my own scratches and bruises, like Beauty, were hardly more than skin deep, while the _Mule_, especially if her remaining spikes could be tightened up a bit, had still considerable rafting potentialities. As the day was bright and warm and the water not especially cold, I decided to make way while the sun shone--to push on as far toward Livingston as time and tide and my dissolving craft would permit. But first for repairs. [Illustration: _Courtesy Northern Pacific R. R._ FOOT OF "YANKEE JIM'S" CANYON] Crossing a flat covered with a thick growth of willow and cottonwood, I clambered up the railway embankment toward a point where I heard the clank of iron and the voices of men at work. The momentary focus of the section gang's effort turned out to be round a bend from the point where I broke through to the right-of-way, but almost at my feet, lying across the sleepers, was a heavy strip of rusty iron, pierced at even intervals with round holes. Telling myself that I might well go farther and fare worse in my quest for a tool to drive spikes with, I snatched it up and returned to the river. Scarcely had my lusty blows upon the _Mule's_ sagging ribs begun to resound, however, than a great commotion broke forth above, which presently resolved itself into mingled cursings and lamentations in strange foreign tongues. Then a howling-mad Irish section-boss came crashing through the underbrush, called me a train-wrecker, grabbed the piece of iron out of my hand, and, shouting that he would "sittle" with me in a jiffy, rushed back to the embankment. The fellow seemed to attach considerable importance to that strip of rusty iron. Why this was I discovered a couple of minutes later when I found him and three Italians madly bolting it to the loose ends of a couple of rails before the down-bound train hove in sight up the line. "I'll larn ye to steal a fish-plate, ye snakin' spalpheen," he roared as the train thundered by and disappeared around the bend. "I didn't steal any fish-plate," I remonstrated quaveringly, backing off down the track as the irate navvy advanced upon me brandishing a three-foot steel wrench; "I only borrowed a piece of rusty iron. I didn't see any fish-plate. I didn't even know where your lunch buckets are. I wish I did, for I've just swum through the Canyon and I'm darned hungry." Gad, but I was glad the Gingham Gown and "Yankee Jim" couldn't see me then!