ss
before the door, and after the frugal dinner we waited for an hour. The
hunchback was a good general. When he went out to the desperate sally he
would go with fresh men and fresh horses. I spent that hour on my back.

Across the road under the chestnut trees the black cattle rested in the
shade, gathering strength for the long swim. On the sod before the door
the horses rolled, turning entirely over with their feet in the air. Jud
lay with his legs stretched out, his back to the earth, and his huge
arms folded across his face.

Ump sat doubled up on the skirt of his saddle, his elbows in his lap,
his long fingers linked together, and the shaggy hair straggling across
his face. He was the king of the crooked men, planning his battle with
the river while his lieutenants slept with their bellies to the sun.

I was moving in some swift dream when the stamping of the horses waked
me and I jumped up. Jud was tightening the girth on El Mahdi. The
Cardinal stood beside him bridled and saddled. Ump was sitting on the
Bay Eagle, his coat and hat off, giving some order to the ferrymen who
were starting to bring up the cattle. The hunchback was saving every
breath of his horses. He looked like some dwarfish general of old times.

I climbed up on El Mahdi bareheaded, in my shirt sleeves, as I had
ridden him before. Jud took off his coat and hat and threw them away.
Then he pulled off his shirt, tied it in a knot to the saddle-ring,
tightened the belt of his breeches, and got on his horse naked to the
waist. It was the order of the hunchback.

"Throw 'em away," he said; "a breath in your horse will be worth all the
duds you can git in a cart."

Danel and Mart laid down the fence and brought the cattle into the
common by the ferry. Directed by the hunchback they moved the leaders of
the drove around to the ferry landing. The great body of the cattle
filled the open behind the house. The six hundred black muleys made the
arc of a tremendous circle, swinging from the ferry landing around to
the road. It was impossible to get farther up the river on this side
because of a dense beech thicket running for a quarter of a mile above
the open.

It was our plan to put the cattle in at the highest point, a few at a
time, and thereby establish a continuous line across the river. If we
could hold this line in a reasonable loop, we might hope to get over. If
it broke and the cattle drifted down-stream we would probably never be
able to