Yes, there was "something" there. His heart came into his mouth, he gasped for breath, and the cold sweat stood on his face in great drops. A long, lance like pole from a nearby pile of drift wood, furnished him with a tool to sound the depth of water along the bank. It was not over waist deep, the bottom was firm, and, dropping off the bank, he waded down under the overhanging brush. There, floating in the stream, was the body of the Kid. A bough had caught in the belt of his leather "chaps" and held it firmly. It was the work of a moment for Jim to attach one end of his saddle rope to the belt and carry the other back with him to the open spot above the willows. His first intention was to tow the body up to a place where it could be taken out and then go for help.
Wading up the stream, he climbed out on the bank and sat down to rest for a moment. It was second nature for him to get out his pipe and tobacco, and as he sat there the talk between himself and the singer around the herd the night before the crossing came to his mind. What could he do? The body was found on Mexican soil. About a hundred yards from the bank behind his was a little Mexican jacal, or hut, where he had noticed half a dozen children—even now he could hear their shouts as they played. To get it away from there was seemingly impossible.
The twilight was nearly over and in the east the sky was glowing with the light of the moon, which almost at the full would soon rise. For half an hour he sat there thinking, the pipe smoked out and dead between his teeth. Then he rose, knocked the ashes out on his boot heel, slipped the pipe into his pocket, and worked his way carefully up to the top of the bank behind him. Peering through the fringe of trees, he saw in the moonlight the mud daubed jacal. A dog barked, in the distance a coyote answered with its shrill "yip, yip," and from the limbs of a mesquite—the family chicken coop—a rooster saluted the rising of the moon with a cheerful crow. In front of the jacal a bright spark glowed where the fire of mesquite limbs over which the evening supper had been cooked, was dying away, and he could dimly make out the forms of the family asleep on the ground near the hut.
Then, satisfied with the condition of things, he carefully worked his way back to the edge of the river, and, having looked to the rope, which he had fastened to a sharp piece of drift driven into the sand, lay down by it and in ten seconds was fast asleep.
About three o'clock the next morning, just as the moon dropped behind the cottonwoods along the river, throwing deep shadows over its sullen tide, four steers, probably lost from the herd the day before, came down to the river to drink. As they reached the edge of the water one raised his head quickly and snuffed the air. The others also threw up their heads and tested the air with their keen noses, their great ears cocked forward to catch the slightest sound. High headed and suspicious, they all stood for an instant, and then as if with one impulse ran back a few steps and stopped to look again.
Out there in the deep shadow something moved slowly and heavily. Now and then a splash came from the object as the water struck against it.
The steers snuffed and licked their lips as do such animals where fear and curiosity is struggling in them for the mastery. Then as the something moved more distinctly, with terror in their eyes they all turned and burst into the darkness behind them, crashing through the young cottonwoods and over piles of loose driftwood in their mad haste to escape—they knew not what. Still, the "something" came on; slowly it moved through the muddy waters until the form of a man could be distinguished in the uncertain light, carrying some heavy load.
At the edge of the river the man placed his burden on the soft sand and dropped down, panting for breath.
At noon that day, a single horseman rode a tired, sweat-covered animal into a little town on the railroad some thirty miles from the river. Two hours later, away to the north, under the snow-capped Rockies, where the city of Trinidad nestles below the Raton Pass, a lone woman received this brief message: