over
him to my waist. The sun beat into this mighty dish. Sometimes, when it
caught the water at a proper angle, I was blinded and closed my eyes.
Neither of these things seemed to give El Mahdi the slightest annoyance.
I heard Ump shout and turned the horse toward the south shore. He swam
straight out of the eddy with that same mysterious ease that
characterised every effort of this eccentric animal, and headed for the
bank of the river on the line of a bee. He struck the current beyond the
dead water, turned a little up stream and came out on the sod not a
hundred paces below the ferry. Both Ump and Jud rode down to meet me.

El Mahdi shook the clinging water from his hide and resumed his attitude
of careless indifference.

"Great fathers!" exclaimed Jud, looking the horse over, "you ain't
turned a hair on him. He ain't even blowed. It must be easy swimmin'."

"Don't fool yourself," said the hunchback. "You can't depend on that
horse. He'd let on it was easy if it busted a girt."

"It was easy for him," I said, rising to the defence.

"Ho, ho," said Ump, "I wouldn't think you'd be throwin' bokays after
that duckin'. I saw him. It wasn't so killin' easy."

"It couldn't be so bad," said Jud; "the horse ain't a bit winded."

"Laddiebuck," cried the hunchback, "you'll see before you get through.
That current's bad."

I turned around in the saddle. "Then you're not going to put them in?" I
said.

"Damn it!" said the hunchback, "we've got to put 'em in."

"Don't you think we'll get them over all right?" said I, bidding for the
consolation of hope.

"God knows," answered the hunchback.

"It'll be the toughest sleddin' that we ever went up against." Then he
turned his mare and rode back to the house of the ferrymen, and we
followed him.

Ump stopped at the door and called to the old woman. "Granny," he said,
"set us out a bite." Then he climbed down from the Bay Eagle, one leg at
a time, as a spider might have done.

"Quiller," he called to me, "pull off your saddle, an' let Jud feed that
long-legged son of a seacook. He'll float better with a full belly."

Jud dismounted from the Cardinal. "When does the dippin' begin?" he
said. "Mornin' or afternoon service?"

The hunchback squinted at the sun. "It's eleven o'clock now," he
answered. "In an hour we'll lock horns with Hawk Rufe an' hell an' high
water, an' the devil keeps what he gits."

Jud took off the saddles and fed the horses shelled corn in the gra