ng
brook, dignified by a bigger name; it is not even a succession of mill
ponds like the dammed-up streams of the East: in its own name the
Salagua is a _Rio_, broad and swift, with a current that clutches
treacherously at a horse's legs and roars over the brink of stony
reefs in a long, fretful line of rapids. At the head of a broad mill
race, where the yellow flood waters boiled sullenly before they took
their plunge, Creede pulled up and surveyed the river doubtfully.

"Swim?" he inquired, and when Hardy nodded he shrugged his shoulders
and turned his horse into the water. "Keep your head upstream, then,"
he said, "we'll try it a whirl, anyhow."

Head to tail the two horses plodded heavily across the ford, feeling
their way among the submerged bowlders, while twenty feet below them
the irresistible onrush of the current slipped smoothly over the rim,
sending up a roar like the thunder of breakers. As they struggled up
the opposite bank after a final slump into a narrow ditch Creede
looked back and laughed merrily at his bedraggled companion.

"How's that for high?" he inquired, slapping his wet legs. "I tell
you, the old Salagua is a hell-roarer when she gits started. I
wouldn't cross there this afternoon for a hundred dollars. She's away
up since we took the wagon over last night, but about to-morrow you'll
hear her talk--snow's meltin' on the mountains. I wish to God she'd
_stay_ up!" he added fervently, as he poured the water out of his
boots.

"Why?" asked Hardy innocently. "Won't it interfere with your bringing
in supplies?"

"Sure thing," said Creede, and then he laughed maliciously. "But when
you've been up here a while," he observed, "you'll savvy a lot of
things that look kinder curious. If the old river would git up on its
hind legs and walk, forty feet high, and stay there f'r a month, we
cowmen would simply laugh ourselves to death. We don't give a dam' for
supplies as long as it keeps the sheep out.

"Begin to see light, eh?" he queried, as he pushed on up the river.
"Well, that's the only thing in God's world that wasn't made to order
for these sheepmen; the old Salagua cuts right square across the
country east and west without consultin' nobody, not even Jim Swope,
and the sheep move north and south.

"How'd you like to have the job of crossing a hundred thousand
_borregos_ and half of 'em with lambs, when the _rio_ was on a bender?
I've seen some of these sheepmen wadin' around up to their ch