Wolfing great porterhouse steaks and quaffing steaming mugs of coffee, Pete and I sat long at a lunch-counter table and talked of our ancient ski jaunt over the snows of the Yellowstone. He spoke much of coasting and jumping and spills--especially of spills that I took. Just why he did this didn't occur to me until after he had left for Livingston by the midnight train. I figured it out walking back to the hotel. It was merely the subtle chap's way of letting me know that he still reckoned I was a bit in his debt on the score of thrills and spills. Maybe so. Maybe so. Twenty-year thrills more readily than forty-year, just as forty-year is more reluctant to take a chance at a spill. CHAPTER IV BIG TIMBER TO BILLINGS A troop of round-up artists jingled into Big Timber the morning of July first, just as I was leaving the hotel to go down to my boat. They were in from the ranges on their way to compete at the annual cow-carnival at Miles City. Having read of my voyage in the paper, they came to me with the proposal that I book the lot of them as passengers. They assumed that I would easily make the two hundred and fifty mile run in a day, and that my boat had unlimited cabin capacity. I replied by inviting them down to my moorings. The sight of the tiny tin shallop tied up under the willows brought them to a more reasonable view of the situation. They readily admitted that it would not carry anything like ten people, even without their saddles, but they were inclined to argue that it would carry at least four besides myself. I assured them I was game to try it if they were, but suggested that the four elected should get in first. Now four light-footed sailors _might_ have stepped into that little boat and taken their seats without upsetting it. Four booted and spurred cow-punchers could not, or at least did not. In fact the third one precipitated the swamping when he stumbled and fell over the two who had preceded him. After we had raised, dumped and launched her again, I assured them that a single passenger was my outside limit, but that I would be highly honoured by the company of any one of them whom they would agree to nominate for the run to Billings. As I was planning to stop over a day or two there, my arrival by river in Miles would be too late for the opening of the Round-up. After some debate they picked the "bulldogger" of the outfit. "Bulldogging" is a stock round-up stunt, and I shall hardly need to explain that the _modus operandi_ involves throwing a steer by seizing its nose in the teeth and upsetting its centre of gravity by a sudden twist of the neck. One sees it in every rodeo, but it is a feat withal that requires much nerve, strength and skill.