"He dursn't say nuthin' to me," said the driver, "or I'd mash his face in a minute. What do I know about his Sam Argleses? I reckon he is a squawman, aint he?"
"Wal', if he aint, what does he live with them Injuns for? That's what I say," said Backus with an evil laugh. "And I think, if I was you," he added, "I'd be apt to have an accident with them letters crossing the Rio Grande."
"There's a chance for it anyway," said the stage-driver; "the river was rising fast day before yesterday, and I judge 't will be booming by now. I've got to rustle around, for I'm going straight across to San Miguel. I can cross there with the mail, anyway. Get up there, mules." He raised the reins, cracked his whip and departed.
CHAPTER XIV A STERN CHASE
Could Felipe but have known what the stage-driver knew, that the rise of the river had begun two days ago, he would never have made the sad mistake of taking the straight route to Ensenada. Alas, now, when he and Josefa reached the spot where the ford should have been, his cry, "Valgame Dios, the river is up," was only too true. As they passed through the grove of cottonwoods they beheld right from their feet to the farther bank, full a half-mile off, a turbid yellow flood, rolling rapidly southward towards Texas and the Gulf, twelve hundred miles away. All autumn and winter long, a broad expanse of dry water-worn pebbles and boulders, and beds of shingle and sand, through which ran half a dozen easily forded streams of clear water, had been all that lay between La Boca on the west bank and Ensenada on the east. During those seasons both horses and waggons, and people on foot by picking their way through the shallows, could cross almost anywhere without wading much above knee-deep. But all autumn and winter long, on the great mountain ranges of Colorado, two hundred miles away to the north where the river had its sources, the snows of successive storms had been piled up deeper and deeper. And now the sun was well past the vernal equinox, and his growing heat had loosened those snows and was sending their cold floods down ten thousand gulches and tributaries to swell the current of the Rio Grande. This takes place every April, and Felipe ought to have thought of it, but he was young and had not yet learned to think of everything. This was a possibility he had forgotten.
"It must have come down in the last two days," he groaned, as he looked hopelessly at the flood. "I know Juan and Miguel passed here only three days ago from Santa Fé, and it was all light then, and now it is like this."
"We are lost," said Josefa. "What shall we do, Felipe?"—even her brave heart succumbing to this unexpected calamity.
"Don't cry, dear heart, don't cry," said he tenderly, taking her in his arms, and lifting her from the horse. "Perhaps there is a boat. I will go and see." He pulled the bridle from the horse's head. "Do you rest here a minute," he said, spreading his blanket for her to rest her weary limbs, "and let him feed here on the green grass, but don't let him drink. I will run back to La Boca and ask." He threw her the rope, and darted back like the wind in the direction of the houses they had lately passed. The unkempt Mexican was milking a cow in the corral as Felipe dashed up breathless. "Where is the boat?" he asked eagerly. "Is it running? Is it this side?"