At White River ford, the men looked at each other in mute inquiry. The stream was a raging torrent. It was swollen until it was half again its ordinary width. The usually placid waters were rushing and twisting into whirlpool-like rapids.
“What now?” asked Baker, the deputy-sheriff.
“I’m thinkin’ this here little pleasure party’ll have to be postponed,” vouchsafed one of the volunteers, nodding his head wisely.
“We’ll sure have to wait for the cloud-bust to run out,” agreed another.
“Why, we can swim that all right,” put in Langford, rallying from his momentary set-back and riding his mount to the very edge of the swirling water.
“Hold on a minute there, Boss,” cried Jim. “Don’t be rash now. What’s the census of ’pinion o’ this here company? Shall we resk the ford or shall we not?”
“Why, Jim,” said Paul, a laugh in his blue eyes, “are you afraid? What’s come over you?”
“Nothin’. I ain’t no coward neither, and ef you wasn’t the Boss I’d show you. I was just a thinkin’ o’—somebody who’d care—that’s all.”
Just for a moment a far away look came into the young ranchman’s eyes. Then he straightened himself in his saddle.
“I, for one, am going to see this thing through,” he said, tersely. “What do you say, Johnson?”