He hurried down the hogback, every nerve of him quivering with desire to answer that appeal for help. He must get to her—at once—before the smashing current tore down and devoured her precarious and doubtful haven. Even as he went leaping down the hillside to the shore, his mind was considering ways and means.
A swimmer could not make it straight through the tumbling waters to the Steeples. He would be swept down and miss his goal. From what point should he start? He tried to decide this as he ran up the valley close to the edge of the water.
Opposite the point where the pasture-wire fence ran up the hill, a spit of higher land extended into the flooded area. He found a cedar post flung up by the waves.
Tug took off his shoes and his coat. He waded out, pushing the post before him. Presently he was in deep water. The swift current was sweeping him before it. He fought to get farther out in the stream, but he saw that the fencepost was impeding him. It came to him that he would be carried past the Steeples if he could not make more headway across the valley.
He let the fencepost go and struck straight across with a strong, long stroke. The drag of the rushing water was very powerful, and he had continually to watch out for floating planks and timbers racing toward the gap between the hogbacks.
The cold from the melted snow in the uplands chilled him to the marrow. He had not fully rebuilt his blood from the illness he had been through. Before he had been in the stream many minutes, he knew that the force in him was failing. The velocity of the flow was too mighty for him to resist. Tossed here and there by conflicting sets of the current, he drifted as helplessly as a chip in a rough sea. His arms moved feebly. His legs were as though weighted. Soon now, he had no doubt, his head would sink and the waters close above it.
Then, out of a clear sky, a miracle occurred. It took the form of a rope that dropped from heaven, descended in a loop over his head and one arm, tightened, and dragged him from the racing channel into an eddy.
Three men were at the other end of the rope. They were standing on the roof of a one-story building that had stranded on a submerged island. A group of three cottonwoods had caught the floating building and held it against the pressure of the flood.
The exhausted swimmer was dragged to the roof. He lay there, completely done, conscious, but no more than that.
“Where in Mexico you haided for, anyhow?” a voice drawled.