“Take ’em on out now, Sinker; it’s safe from here on. We’ve got to go back oncet more, to get the boss. Come on, you, Cal and Del. This is the last trip. Hurry! She’ll be scared there by herself.”
To the primitive brain of the old Texan, who trusted nothing so much as a horse, the uncertain raftage of the previous day had made the carts seem riskier than the back of a swimming horse. For that reason he had decreed that Taisie Lockhart should remain until the very last. His plan now was revealed.
“Miss Taisie,” said he, when at length he had regained the take-off, “you’ve seen us all cross there time and again. It’s perfectly safe for a good swimming horse like yours. I’m a-going to cross you like we done everything else. I’m a-going on ahead my own self, and put Del and Cal above and below you, with ropes to your saddle, so’s to steady you if anything should happen. There ain’t no cows now. Just keep your hands off your bridle; don’t try to guide your horse none at all. You mustn’t look down at the water, for if you do you think you are going downstream, when you ain’t. Just you look on ahead, right at the top of my hat; then you’ll be perfectly safe. Us men ain’t going to let nothing happen to you.”
The girl was pale, but the family courage and the traditions of the border were her own. She got into saddle without a word and spurred the snorting Blancocito directly into the curling waters when Nabours gave the word. It seemed to her to be facing death. She resigned her soul.
But suddenly she felt under her a certain lightness, accompanied with a throbbing vibration—movement, progress. She knew her horse was swimming. On ahead, Jim Nabours sat as though upon the surface of the tawny water, the top of his saddle cantle showing over the streaming tail of his horse, which swam on, steadily and confidently, after the gallant fashion of the Texas strain. She looked right and left. Two other men were advancing also strangely over the water, only the upper portion of their bodies visible. It was like some fantastic dream.
In absolute silence they crossed the swimming channel, saw the face of the sand bar come nearer, as though it were approaching upstream across the swirling flood. Fifty yards, thirty yards, twenty yards—they would be safe! And then came one more jest of the immortal gods! It was an accident made more readily possible by the mistaken attempt of using guide ropes on a swimming horse.