“Come a little farther,” called Father José.
“My horse is sinking!”
That moment, with a shudder, then a quick backward plunge that struck up a shower of spray, the mustang threw himself toward the bank and floundered out.
The girl was panting and crouching on her saddle again. “The crossing’s bad!” she wept. “He rode right into it. Oh, Father José!”
The father did not answer. He had waded out a few steps. And now as he stood in the water, the current was catching at the bottom of his gown and whirling it. To and fro he swept the lantern.
All at once the girl sat up and faced riverward. “What’s that?” she asked. “Didn’t you hear it? And, look! There—down there, away out!”
The light had grown. She pointed below them to the middle of the flood. It had divided at one point and was running on either side of a sand-bar which showed above the surface of the water. At the near edge of the bar lay something black—something that moved a little.
Almost before the father knew where she pointed, the spotted mustang was fighting the current once more, now making his way through water that only washed above the stirrups, now falling suddenly into deep channels that he swam. All the while she encouraged him, or shouted ahead, or back to Father José.
The father had put down his lantern. Now he ran to the cross, pried it out of the sand and started along the bank with it, stopped at a point a little above where he judged she could come out, for the cross was heavy and the current could help him to carry it.
Now, she had stopped in midstream and was heading the spotted mustang about. Next, she had leaned down and reached a hand to the exhausted man lying in water to his shoulders. Then, very slowly, the spotted mustang, alternately swimming and walking as before, she began the return.