The Missouri sprawled everywhere, flaunting its mastery of the valley, and we had to follow tree lines that delineated the river from the inundated everything else. Nikawa, as if recognizing her baptismal stream, ran atop the boils and eddies so slickly I had to restrain her, hold her back since the current wasn't doing it. No boat can be built for all waters, but I was beginning to see that Nikawa -- although she was almost certainly the first C-Dory ever on the Missouri--might prove herself a match for this most cantankerously challenging of American rivers, a good thing because the long Big Muddy was the key to reaching the Pacific.