Jocularly remarking that he reckoned he would have to ride this tin broncho with a slick heel, the "dogger" unbuckled his spurs and stepped into the boat. I went up to fetch my remaining bags from the postmaster's house and was delayed ten minutes while the stitching up of my Gieve was completed. When I returned I found a bewhiskered stranger recounting with facile gesture how he fished the floaters out of the eddy below his ranch down-river. He called it "Dead Man's Douse." Last floater he took out was a cow-puncher who had been so rolled in the big rapid above that his spurs were tangled in his hair and he came wheeling through the suds like a doughnut. It was a hells-bells-jingler of a rapid, that one above the "Douse." Water tossed about so fierce that the fishes' brains were spattered on the rocks! That was about all I arrived in time to hear, but the "dogger" had been more fortunate. The good chap was deeply impressed, too, for his iron, bull-nose-biting jaw was sagging in a sickly grin and he was back on the bank offering a free passage to Billings to any of his mates who cared to accept. No takers. The gamest of the lot appeared to be a lady broncho-buster called Lil. She actually stepped into the boat once, but finally decided to take the train because it had a roof on it. It looked like rain, she said, and it always made her broken shoulder ache to get wet. As if rain was the wettest part of riding the Yellowstone. [Illustration: © _L. A. Huffman_ ROUND-UP OUTFIT AT DINNER] Just as I was about to push off the whiskered rancher stepped up and asked if I minded giving him a bit of a down-river lift. Gladly I bade him come along, figuring that his pilotage would give me a better chance of avoiding the dreaded "Douse." The round-up artists sped us with their college yell as I crabbed out of the little slough to the river. I bumped into some of them again in Miles the day after the Round-up. Most of their faces bore the marks of hoof or fist. Lady Lil had lost no cuticle (at least where it showed), but red eyes hoisted the distress signal of a deeper seated wound. The "dogger" had taken up with another girl--a she-dude that had once been a bare-back rider in a circus. Lil had been crying a lot, which was no end of a shame considering how wetness affected her busted shoulder. All of which went to prove that Lilly the Lady Broncho-Buster and Judy O'Grady were sisters under the skin. And Lil had looked so darned exempt from the surge of the soft stuff!