id,
plunging in suddenly, while the man on the mule spurred in below in a
vain effort to turn them back.

That night by the camp fire Hardy mentioned the man on a black mule.

"My old friend, Jasp Swope," explained Creede suavely, "brother of
Jim, the feller I introduced you to. Sure, Jasp and I have had lo-ong
talks together--but he don't like me any more." He twisted his nose
and made a face, as if to intimate that it was merely a childish
squabble, and Hardy said no more. He was growing wise.

The next morning, and the next, Jasper Swope made other attempts at
the crossing; and then, as the snow water from the high mountains
slipped by and the warm weather dried up by so much each little
stream, he was able at last to ford the diminished river. But first,
with that indomitable energy which marked him at every move, he
cleared a passage along the base of the cliff to a place where the
earth-covered moraine broke off at the edge of the water. Here a broad
ledge shot down to the river like a toboggan slide, with a six-foot
jump off at the bottom.

Once on this chute, with the strong tug of the canvas wagon-covers
behind, there was nothing for the sheep to do but to take the plunge,
and as his brawny herders tumbled them head over heels into the deep
current Swope and his helpers waded out in a line below, shunting each
ewe and wading toward the farther shore. There on the edge of the
sand spit they huddled in a bunch, gathering about the hardier bucks
and serving as a lure for those that followed. As cut after cut was
forced into the stream a long row of bobbing heads stretched clear
across the river, each animal striving desperately to gain the
opposite bank and landing, spent and puffing, far below. A Mexican boy
at intervals drove these strays up the shore to the big bunch and then
concealed himself in the bushes lest by his presence he turn some
timid swimmer back and the whirlpool increase its toll. So they
crossed them in two herds, the wethers first, and then the ewes and
lambs--and all the little lambs that could not stem the stream were
floated across in broad pieces of tarpaulin whose edges were held up
by wading men.

From Lookout Point it was a majestic spectacle, the high cliffs, the
silvery river gliding noiselessly out from its black canyon, the white
masses of sheep, clustering on either side of the water--and as the
work went ahead merrily the Mexicans, their naked bodies gleaming like
polished b