Arm in arm, as we had navigated "The-Street-That-is-Called-Straight" in ancient of days, we wended our way back town-ward through the gloom-drenched dusk. By devious ways and obscure Pete piloted, stopping every now and then to introduce me to certain friends as the boy who helped Livingston cop the state champeenship twenty years ago. We were treated with great deference all along the way. There was the glint of a twinkle in the ex-Sheriffian eye as Pete delivered me at the hotel. "That was just to show you, boy, that Gilead is not yet quite drained of Balm," he said, patting me on the back. "Until they give the screw a few more turns, life in little old Livingston will not be entirely without its compensayshuns." I had dinner and spent the evening with Pete Holt's family, and a mighty wholesome interval it was after an afternoon so wild with old regrets. Holt had always been a teetotaler, and so, with nothing much to lose, faced an unclouded future. Whether, as Chief of Police, he has ever given those much-dreaded turns to the screws that would crush the last lees of pleasure from sanguine grapes of pain I have never heard. It made me think of Guelph and Ghibelline, this finding my old-time friends thus arrayed against one another. And good old Peter Nelson--I am wondering, when cock-crow sounds, if he will be found denying or denied. * * * * * "Buckskin Jim" Cutler, premier river man of the upper Yellowstone, came down to Livingston the evening before the morning I had scheduled for my departure. It had been rumoured for a couple of days that he would arrive--some said to respond to a legal summons, others that he had heard I had inquired for him and was hoping to sign on with me for my river voyage. I have never been able to make sure either way. Certainly he had been summoned to court over some dispute with a neighbour, while I have never had definite assurance that he had received any word of my trip. I could not have taken him far in any event, as I had no need of help once my boat was given a thorough trying out. Cutler's arrival in Livingston was sudden and tragic, as is always the case when the Yellowstone takes a hand in real earnest. My boat had been set up in a blacksmith shop on the river, at the foot of the main street. Going down there just before dinner to make sure that everything was ship-shape for the start on the morrow, I found the place deserted, while there was a considerable gathering of people on the next bridge below. Starting in that direction, I met one of the helpers, breathing hard and deathly white, hurrying back to the deserted shop. "Mighty hard luck," he ejaculated brokenly between breaths. "Man just came down past shop--in river--yelling for help. Didn't hear him till he got by. Half a minute sooner, and I could have yanked out your light boat--all set up--and picked him up. Hear they've just got him down by the next bridge--but 'fraid he's croaked. Cussed hard luck."