get the boat emptied so we
don't have to sit in the water. My shirt's most dry already."

"The wind has changed!" cried the girl. "It's blowing crosswise of the
river, now."

"More likely we've rounded a bend," opined the Texan. "I don't know the
river below Claggett."

"If we're blown ashore, now, it will be the wrong shore."

"Most any old shore'd look good to me. I ain't what you might call
aquatic by nature--I ain't even amphibious." Alice laughed and the
sound was music to the Texan's ears. "That's right, laugh," he hastened
to say, and the girl noticed that the cheerfulness was not forced, "I've
never heard you laugh much owin' to the fact that our acquaintance has
been what you might call tribulations to an extent that has be'n plumb
discouragin' to jocosity. But, what was so funny?"

"Oh, nothing. Only one would hardly expect a cowboy, adrift in the
middle of a swollen river to be drawing distinctions between words."

"Bailin' water out of a boat with a boot don't overtax the mental
capacity of even a cowboy to absolute paralysis."

"You're certainly the most astonishing cowboy I've ever known."

"You ain't known many----"

"If I'd known a thousand--" The sentence was never finished. The boat
came to a sudden stop. Both occupants were thrown violently to the
bottom where they floundered helplessly in their efforts to regain their
feet. "What happened?" asked the girl, as she struggled to her knees,
holding fast to the gunwale. "Oh, maybe we're ashore!" Both glanced
about them as a distant flash of lightning threw its pale radiance over
the surface of the flood. On every side was water--water, and the
tossing branches of floating trees. The Texan was quieting the terrified
horse that crouched at the farther end of the boat, threatening
momentarily to become a very real menace by plunging and lashing out
blindly in the darkness.

"Struck a rock, I reckon," said the cowboy. "This cayuse'll be all right
in a minute, an' I'll try to shove her off. Must be we've headed along
some new channel. There hadn't ought to be rocks in the main river."

The clumsy craft shifted position with an ugly grating sound as the
current sucked and gurgled about it, and the whitecapped waves pounded
its sides and broke in white foam over the gunwales. The Texan took
soundings with the pole. "Deep water on three sides," he announced, "an'
about a foot down to solid rock on the other. Maybe I can climb out an'
shove her off."