There is a fairly rough riffle just below the Big Timber, and then a lot of rather mean navigating through the shallows where the boulders of Clark's famous "Rivers Across" litter the channel of the Yellowstone. The whiskered stranger, stroking with an oar from the stern, was of real help in making the passage of both comparatively quiet and dry. He also found me a smooth-running strip of green through the almost solid tumble of white where the river was chasing its tail in a sharply notched bend about five miles farther on. These little riffles didn't bother me much, though. My mind was too much occupied by the "Dead Man's Douse" for that. I was wondering whether the old chap intended to run me through that fish-brain-spattering-rapid, or if he might be considerate enough to help me portage round. I was trying to get my nerve up to broaching the latter procedure when my pilot dug hard with his steering oar and brought the skiff up to a gravelly landing below a pretty little tree-covered bench. His cabin was back behind the bull-berries, he said, and he would have to leave me here. Or perhaps I would hang on for an hour and have some coffee and a mess of sinkers with him. "But aren't you going to see me through the Dead Man's Douse?" I exclaimed in dismay, adding in a feeble attempt at funniness: "It might save you fishing out my remains later." A corner of the tobacco-stained mouth drew out in a highly amused chuckle. "By jingo, sonny," he giggled finally, "it wasn't youse I was shootin' for with that yarn. I thought youse savvied all the time. I jest was wantin' this here seat that bull-biting cow-puncher had perempted. There ain't no 'Dead Man's Douse.' Fack is, youse got most of the sloppy stuff ahint youse already. Don't get too gosh-all-fired sure of you'self an' youse all right--tin boat an' all." It was with real regret that the threat of coming storm made it necessary for me to keep going while I could. The good old chap had made casual mention of Terry and Miles and Gibbon, of hunting buffalo and elk on the river in the early days, and of many comparatively recent jaunts down the Yellowstone searching for agates. He would have been well worth listening to. I never learned his name, but I have always thought of him as "Jim Bridger"--because he lied with so classic a simplicity, painting his pictures as--well, as a river paints its rocks with fish-brains!