“They’re hoping she’s alive on a bank,” said Polly, who felt as though she should be looking, too.

“Not likely,” said Jane. “After two days. When do they give up?”

“Not yet,” said Polly. She waved to a man in one of the drift boats, her skinny cousin Harry Swanberg, grandson of the redoubtable Maude. It wasn’t his first search.

Two days earlier, on Friday, June 28, when eleven people headed to the Yellowstone, putting in at about three in the afternoon just south of Livingston for their first float of the year, the river was too high to be safe, but the group wanted to stay ahead of the onslaught of summer tourists. An older crew had talked about going but bowed out—Vinnie was dealing with a client’s suicide attempt in jail, Polly and Ned had an appointment in Bozeman, Josie and Harry were squabbling about their wedding. There would be nothing relaxing about a float when the river was flowing this fast, but many of this younger group were used to the Colorado and the Salmon. They’d floated a dozen times the year before and wanted to see which channels had deepened or filled with gravel during high water, where beaches had formed or banks collapsed. One drift boat held two people delusional enough to think they could fish in the cloudy, turbid water; a large raft carried seven others who only wanted to have fun; and a couple—Ariel Delgado and Graham Susak—chose a double kayak. The group packed beer, fried chicken, and coleslaw. They brought coats, though when they shuttled cars to their take-out, on the east end of town, it was ninety degrees. When they put in, ten miles south of town, it was slightly cooler, with a puff of clouds to the west.

They passed many downed trees, some hard to see in the milky water. The people in the raft and drift boat—bartenders, teachers, carpenters—watched the kayak, worried, but Ariel was careful, and Graham had spent his childhood on Puget Sound and the Columbia River and swum on a college team.

They saw two bald eagles, one golden eagle, many ducks, bank swallows, a fox, dozens of whitetails, hundreds of cows. Someone’s goat ran along the riverbank, watching the flotilla. Graham said he saw a bear, but no one believed him. The river was too violent to hear much, and people shouted conversations. Hail loomed when they were an hour in, nearly to the canyon. You could feel a sudden sharp edge to the air even before an extreme darkness appeared to the northwest. The threat passed quickly, with just a little wind, and though the people in the raft and the drift boat decided to get home, Ariel and Graham pulled over on a pretty island. They waved, and Ariel disappeared from the world.