Then an explanation came to him.
“It isn’t a circle!” he exclaimed. “It’s a loop and I would have gone straight across it if I had kept on the way I was going when I first struck it. There must be a bend in the river down here somewhere.”
Billie’s surmise was quite correct. It was a bend in the river, and in a few minutes more, pushing straight through the chaparral, he came in sight of the water.
“Well!” declared the lad as he drew a deep breath, “I’m certainly glad to see you! And now to get to the other side.”
He sprang down the bank in three long strides and peered out toward the American shore. It seemed a long way and the water was running at a good speed.
“What a fool I was not to stick to the broncho,” he muttered. “If he couldn’t walk, he could swim. If I was sure he was still there I’d go back and get him; but that’s altogether unlikely. No sir, I’ve just got to swim it alone and the sooner the better.”
He threw off his jacket and began to unbuckle his cartridge belt.
“If I could only find a log of some kind, it wouldn’t be so bad; but I don’t see any.”
He took a few steps along the shore, peering into the darkness, as he rolled his belt about his six-shooter and deposited them in his hat.
Then he turned again to the water, and, throwing off his boots—which together with his jacket he tossed up on the bank, as if perchance he might come back for them on the morrow—he waded in.