One by one, by fives and tens and scores, the other cattle followed the lead thus established. The inshore leg of the long moving U passed out and down, the cattle swimming steadily, gently, their muzzles level, their tails spread. They knew well enough where they were to land.
The stream of the herd seemed almost endless, but when the great U once was established—the cattle finding footing on the bar at midstream and wading over the shallows beyond—the line of action was perfectly apparent to every animal as it was pushed up to the river brink. They took the water as had those before them, and formed a continuous living line across the river. It was a magnificent spectacle. It was a triumph of personal courage combined with knowledge of the art of cows. But surely fate aided in this first and riskiest crossing of the Red by any herd passing northbound to the rails.
There was little need of guidance after the first of the herd had reached the bar in midstream, and here some of the riders turned back to the south shore, riding up to the take-off. Again and again they took the water below the swimming stream of cattle. They could see the long line of the cattle elevate itself like a great parti-colored snake at the bar, thence writhing along as though upon the ground, and fully visible as it topped the farther shore. The great adventure seemed in a fair way to conclude itself upon the side of courage.
The old Del Sol foreman was a good cowman, as good as the next, and there were few phenomena in the trade of cows with which he was not familiar. One might have seen him all that day looking up anxiously at the sky. The heavens were dull and overcast; a bad day to put cattle at a ford. Rain portended; for long there was no glimpse of the sun. But had there been any glimpse of the sun the veteran foreman would never have pushed his herd into the river late in the afternoon, for a reason which any trail man would have understood.
At that point the river ran almost north and south, so that the course of the cattle was almost westward. In the evening any rays of the sun would lie like a path across the water.
But cattle will not swim into the sun. No good trail boss ever undertook to cross a herd into a sunset. The one hope of Nabours was in a continuous cloudiness of the evening sky. He did not want the sun to shine.
But now, as he turned his own anxious face toward the west, he saw a greater definition of the piling clouds. The lower edge of yonder heavy bank was tinged with silver. By and by the sun would drop through. Then its light would lie across the water, straight into the eyes of the swimming cattle.
The sudden oath of old Jim Nabours had many factors in it—pity for what he knew might happen, regret for his own hastiness, apprehension for the property which was not his, resentment at what seemed to him an unjust fate and a poor reward for the courage which his men had shown. Nature, always merciless, now seemed mockingly vindictive.
No act of man could affect that which was now to happen. The almost level rays of the sun did fling their burnished path across the yellow waters. It was cast straight into the eyes of the drag, some three or four hundred animals which had not yet crossed the swimming channel. It half blinded for a moment even the eyes of the men. A floating log came down among them, caught the upper cattle, swung crosswise.
The line broke. There was a great uptossing of horns, a jumbling of shoulders as some animals attempted to find floatage on the backs of others. The spaces were lost, the bodies were packed together in a mass, struggling, moaning—and steadily passing downstream. The dreaded swimming mill was on!