On the third day out from the Yellowstone the boat passed Fort Berthold, a fur trading post and the agency of the Arickaree and Mandan Indians, about midway between Fort Union and Fort Rice. For some hours afterward she continued running at a good speed, and at length passed a little below a beautiful forest on the left shore, called the Painted Woods. At this point there was a large sandbar in the middle of the river, while on the bank opposite to the woods the bluffs came sheer up to the river, and the pilot naturally chose the branch of the stream along their base, as the main channel will usually follow along a bluff bank. But in this case he soon found he had made a mistake, for he ran the boat into a pocket and could go no farther. There remained nothing to do but send out the yawl to sound through the other branch and find out if there was enough water there to carry the boat. It occurred to Al that it would be a pleasant diversion to accompany the yawl, so he volunteered to pull one of the oars, and was accepted. The mate of the _Belle Peoria_, who was in charge of the yawl, ran into the other chute and soon found the channel; whereupon he signalled across the bar to the steamer, and while she was backing out and coming around, the crew of the yawl rowed over to the lower end of the Painted Woods and landed. The men pulled the boat's bow a little way out on the bank and then strolled away a few yards into the woods, where it was cool and shady. One man only remained in the yawl, and he, like Al, was a volunteer. He was Jim, the _Island City's_ deck hand who had quarrelled with Al on the up trip. In spite of several attempts to escape while near Fort Union, Jim had been unable to jump his round-trip contract with Captain Lamont, and was now reluctantly returning toward St. Louis and that Southern Confederacy which he supported so loudly in words and so feebly in deeds.