The bottom that we were heading into proved to be all of a mile long, and we traversed it and went over a rather easy point into the next bottom before real night set in. We had starlight then, just enough light to enable us to see in a rather uncertain way forty or fifty feet ahead of our horses. Midway up the bottom we came to the first of our troubles, a cut coulee that ran across it from the bad lands to the river. We turned up along it almost to the slope of the valley before Pitamakan, on foot and leading his horse, found a game trail that crossed it. Presently we arrived at the point at the head of the bottom, and could find no trail leading up it, in itself a bad sign. We both dismounted and began the ascent. Our horses' feet sank deep into the sun-baked, surface-glazed volcanic ash with a ripping, crunching sound as if they were breaking through snow crust. Almost before we knew it we found ourselves on a steep slope with a cut bluff above us and the murmuring river below us. Our horses began to slip. "We shall have to make a quick run for it!" Pitamakan called back to me. The horses slipped and frantically pawed upward in a strenuous effort to avoid plunging down into the river. We made it and, gasping for breath, found ourselves upon the gently sloping ground of the next bottom. "Almost we went into the river!" Pitamakan exclaimed. "Don't talk about it!" I replied. "The Under-Water People almost got us!" "Oh, do be quiet! Mount and lead on, or let me lead!" I cried. We went on up through that bottom, across a point, through another bottom and over a very rough point seamed with coulees. In the next bottom I called a halt. "The boat must be somewhere close ahead. We can no longer travel outside the timber; from here on we have to see both shores of the river--" "It will be impossible for us to see the far shore," Pitamakan broke in. "Of course. But the boat has lights burning all night long. We shall see them," I explained. We mounted, and I took the lead into the timber close ahead. I let my horse pick his way, reining him only sufficiently to keep him close to the river and guiding myself by its sullen murmur. We groped our way through the timber of that bottom and of another; then from the next bare point we saw the lights of the boat some little distance up the river against the blackness of the north shore. We rode through a belt of cottonwoods and some willows to the head of the bottom and then out upon a sandy shore right opposite the boat. White though it was, we could see nothing of it except its two lights, and they were so faint that we knew the river was of great width. We dismounted, and I told Pitamakan that I would fire my rifle to attract the attention of the watchman, and then shout to him, as loudly as possible, to send a small boat across for us.