He had followed close on Walt’s heels and now, while the latter was struggling to maintain a hold on his swimming pony, the captain of the Rangers uncoiled his lariat.
Swish! It shot out in a long rolling coil and fell fairly about the shoulders of the struggling Ralph Stetson. Although half choked into insensibility with the water he had swallowed, Ralph still maintained enough sense to grasp the rawhide while Captain Atkinson drew it tight.
When the coil was fast the captain backed his pony upstream until Ralph had been dragged to shallow water. Then he pulled him out and laid him on the bank, gasping and almost drowned. In the meantime Walt Phelps had succeeded in extricating himself from his perilous position, and he and his pony, drenched through and dripping, arrived on the bank almost at the same time as Ralph was dragged ashore.
Captain Atkinson had some simple remedies in his kit and he applied these to Ralph, who was soon able, as he put it, “to sit up and take notice.” As he did so the stumbling pony, which had been the cause of all the trouble, came up and sniffed at his master curiously.
“Well, Spot–nose,” said Ralph, using the name he had given the little beast, “you almost caused me to find a watery grave.”
The pony whinnied as if to show that he was sorry and was willing to apologize. This view of the circumstance made them all laugh. By this time Captain Atkinson had a roaring fire going, by the side of which they dried themselves, and there was soon a decidedly more cheerful tone to the party.
“It makes me shiver, though, when I think of that narrow escape,” said Ralph as they prepared to continue their journey.
“That is just an incident of life here on the Border,” declared Captain Atkinson. “It’s such things as those that make a man or a boy know that there is a divine Providence watching over us. No man who has lived on the desert or at sea doubts that there is a watchful eye upon us, saving by seeming miracles from disaster and death.”
“That is so,” agreed Walt soberly, “I’ve often heard my father say that the best cure for religious doubts is to have a man come out here on the Borderland. He says that heaven and earth are closer here than in the cities or in the more civilized portions of the country.”
They rode on, following the branch of the Rio, tracing, although they did not at the time know it, the course of the runaway raft on which Jack had made his wild trip.