Otis rose slowly to his feet. His right leg was still numb. The sleeves of his coat, above the manacles, were ripped and frayed. Blood trickled in a thin stream from beneath one cuff. His clothing was saturated with the muddy water. Every muscle in his body was stiff and sore. He felt of a good-sized lump above one ear, but noted that there was no abrasion.
Gradually, as he stared at the mass of roots jammed in the boulders, it dawned on him what had happened. The tree—his tree—had collided with the boulders with terrific force. The impact had been so great that the trunk had been shattered. The upper part of the tree had been swept downstream by the current, which had dragged him along the splintered portion of the trunk until it had swept him free. It had carried him, too, downstream, to cast him up on the high gravel bar as if he had been but another fragment of driftwood.
He wondered how far downstream he had been swept by the flood. The time he had been buffeted about by the onrush of waters had seemed interminable. He cast about to get his bearings—and to his surprise, he found he was barely three hundred yards from the spot where he had been manacled to the tree.
Slowly, because of his stiffened limbs and handcuffed wrists, he climbed up the rocks and out of the gorge. He made for the Buffalo Forks road sixty yards away, and started back upstream. Rounding a bend in the road, he beheld Pie-face standing, ears upraised inquiringly, not one hundred feet above the spot where Otis had been swept away with the tree.
Otis swung into the saddle, and immediately Pie-face started down the road at a trot. Unlike the cavalry horse, which is trained to stand after the rider mounts until a touch of the heels gives him the signal to go, the range horse moves the instant he feels the weight of the rider in the stirrup. So Otis without directing the horse, found himself headed back toward the Footstool ranch.
For the first time he realized that it might be unwise to return to the ranch, particularly with his wrists in manacles. His narrow escape from the flood had driven from his mind, for the time being, all thought of his predicament resulting from his arrest for the murder of Fyffe. Now it was brought home to him forcibly by the instinctive course of his horse.
What should he do? Undoubtedly he could make his way to the ranch and rid himself of the handcuffs. Any of the ranch employees, he knew, would assist him in filing them off, and would aid in his concealment from the Sheriff, if he asked it. For that matter, virtually any of the cattle men between Jackson and Two-Gwo-Tee would do as much, if they knew he was sought for the slaying of the ranger.
It would be easy enough to make his escape. Nowhere in the United States were conditions more favorable for flight from pursuing officers. Jackson’s Hole lay but a few miles to the west, and beyond the Hole lay the Tetons, offering a secure and inviting sanctuary. More than that, he knew the pursuit would be far from diligent. Undoubtedly Sheriff Ogden, to save his face, would follow him as far as the Tetons. But he knew the Sheriff, if he possessed any sort of an excuse, would probably prefer to have him escape.
And then, the Sheriff might believe him drowned, swept away in the flood, which was still roaring through the gorge. Again, Otis could, if need be, bring pressure to bear upon Ogden if he became too conscientious, simply by revealing that he had left a prisoner, chained and helpless, in the path of the flood.