Tex was dead or alive, but he would get the body ashore with him, or
go down trying. He bumped into a log and instinctively grasped it. It
turned, and when he came up again it was bobbing five feet ahead of him.
Ages seemed to pass before he flung his numb arm over it and floated
with it. He was not alone in the flood; a coyote was pushing steadily
across his path towards the nearer bank, and on a gliding tree trunk
crouched a frightened cougar, its ears flattened and its sharp claws
dug solidly through the bark. Here and there were cattle and a snake
wriggled smoothly past him, apparently as much at home in the water as
out of it. The log turned again and he just managed to catch hold of it
as he came up for the second time.

Things were growing black before his eyes and strange, weird ideas and
images floated through his brain. When he regained some part of his
senses he saw ahead of him a long, curling crest of yellow water and
foam, and he knew, vaguely, that it was pouring over a bar. The next
instant his feet struck bottom and he fought his way blindly and slowly,
with the stubborn determination of his kind, towards the brush-covered
point twenty feet away.

When he opened his eyes and looked around he became conscious of
excruciating pains and he closed them again to rest. His outflung hand
struck something that made him look around again, and he saw Tex Ewalt,
face down at his side. He released his grasp on the other's collar and
slowly the whole thing came to him, and then the necessity for action,
unless he wished to lose what he had fought so hard to save.

Anything short of the iron man Tex had become would have been dead
before this or have been finished by the mauling he now got from
Hopalong. But Tex groaned, gurgled a curse, and finally opened his eyes
upon his rescuer, who sank back with a grunt of satisfaction. Slowly his
intelligence returned as he looked steadily into Hopalong's eyes, and
with it came the realization of a strange truth: he did not hate this
man at all. Months of right living, days and nights of honest labor
shoulder to shoulder with men who respected him for his ability and
accepted him as one of themselves, had made a new man of him, although
the legacy of hatred from the old Tex had disguised him from himself
until now; but the new Tex, battered, shot-up, nearly drowned, looked at
his old enemy and saw him for the man he really was. He smiled faintly
and reached out his hand.