"That's better," said she, "how good you are to me!"
Old man Brown was coming across with the punt, mighty peevish because I'd dropped a horse carcass to rot at his cabin door, and still worse when he seen I had a lunatic roped in his bunk. Moreover, he wasn't broke to seeing ladies used for cargo on pack-animals, or me naked to the belt, and making free with his rifle. I give him his Winchester, which he set down by his door, also a dollar bill, but he was still crowded full of peevishness, wasting the lady's time. At last I hustled the ponies aboard the punt, and set the guide lines so that we started out along the cable, leaving the old man to come or stay as he pleased. He came. Fact is, I remembered that while I took Mrs. Trevor to my home, I'd need a messenger to ride for doctor, nurse, groceries, and constable. I'm afraid old man Brown was torn some, catching on a nail while I lifted him into the punt. His language was plentiful.
Now I thought I'd arranged Mrs. Trevor and Mr. Trevor and Mr. Brown, and added up the sum so that old Geometry himself couldn't have figured it better. Whereas I'd left out the fact that Brown's bunk was nailed careless to the wall of his cabin. As Trevor struggled, the pegs came adrift, the bed capsized, the rope slacked, and the polecat, breaking loose, found Brown's rifle. I'd led the ponies out of the punt, and was instructing Brown, when the polecat let drive at me from across the river. With all his faults he could shoot good, for his first grazed my scalp, half blinding me. At that the lady attracted attention by screaming, so the third shot stampeded poor Jones.
I ain't religious, being only thirty, and not due to reform this side of rheumatism, but all the sins I've enjoyed was punished sudden and complete in that one minute. Blind with blood, half stunned, and reeling sick, I heard the mare as she plunged along the bank dispensing boulders. No top-heavy cargo was going to stand that strain without coming over, so the woman I loved—yes, I knew that now for a fact—was going to be dragged until her brains were kicked out by the mare. It seemed to me ages before I could rouse my senses, wipe my eyes, and mount the gelding. When sight and sense came back, I was riding as I had never dared to ride in all my life, galloped Mr. Swift on rolling boulders steep as a roof, and all a-slither. I got Swift sidewise up the bank to grass, raced past the mare, then threw Swift in front of Jones. Down went the mare just as her load capsized, so that she and the lady, Swift and I, were all mixed up in a heap.
My little dog Mick was licking my scalp when I woke, and it seemed to me at first that something must have gone wrong. My head was between two boulders, with the mare's shoulder pressing my nose, my legs were under water, and somewhere close around was roaring rapids. Swift was scrambling for a foothold, and Mrs. Trevor shouting for all she was worth. I waited till Swift cleared out, and the lady quit for breath.
"Yes, ma'am," says I.
"Oh, say you're not dead, Jesse!"
"Only in parts," said I, "and how are you?"
"I'm cutting the ropes, but oh, this knife's so blunt!"
"Don't spoil your knife. Will you do what I say?"