Little enough could the bravest or most skilled men do now. What men could do, the two riders now caught in the mill attempted. They did not try to swim free of the mass, but drove into it, attempting to break and point out the mill so that the cattle would find footing somewhere below. At times the head and shoulders of their ponies showed, climbing upon the shoulders of the swimming cattle, the men beating with their quirts, kicking, urging, shouting. But the cattle would not swim into the sun.
Those upon the nearer shore heard the sound of the rush of waters and a combined low moan, indescribable. It was hopeless. Not the best efforts of the entire company could have broken that fatal midstream mêlée. As though in a dream, Taisie Lockhart, wringing her hands, stood dumb and saw go forward one of the sudden tragedies of the trail.
“Leave them go, men! Come back! We can’t save them now! Come on out!” Nabours ordered back his men on the farther side of the bar.
They stood looking at the moving mass which made a dark blot below the bar, where the current once more headed for the east. Neither head of horse nor man long showed above the floating island.
“That was Dan and Billy,” said Jim Nabours, the first tears in his eyes any man had seen there. “I done it my own self! Look at that sun!”
It was dusk when he and half a dozen of his best men once more rode up the shore to the take-off. Taisie met him, sobbing unreservedly. The veteran herdsman himself could not speak.
CHAPTER XXII
“TILL ABILENE”
“WE can’t do nothing more to-night.” Nabours had joined his companions at the fire. “Find a critter if you can, and kill it for supper,” he added, turning to Cinquo, who white and silent, had stood at the side of his mistress through all the late tragic scene.
Stripped, wet and cold, the trail men sat in silence. The sound of a distant shot in the brush promised them food—a straggling yearling from the drag which had been lost among the willows; but they were so dulled with fatigue, regret, sorrow, that they hardly would have cooked for themselves had not Taisie and Cinquo taken a hand.
The night settled down with a certain chill along the water’s edge. The darkness held unusual terrors for the lone girl. Suddenly she dropped her face in her hands, huddling against the wet shoulder of the man who came nearest to being her protector.