swam deep, the water running across the
middle of their backs, their long tails, the tips of their shoulders,
and their quaint inky faces visible above the yellow water.

One after another they took the river until there were fifty behind me.
Then Jud rode in, and the advance of the line was under way. Ump shouted
to swing with the current as far as I could without getting into the
eddy, and I forced El Mahdi gradually down-stream, holding his bit with
both hands to make him swim as slow as he could.

We seemed to creep to the middle of the river. A Polled-Angus bullock
with an irregular white streak running across his nose led the drove,
following close at the horse's tail. That steer was Destiny. No criminal
ever watched the face of his judge with more desperate interest than I
watched the dish-face of that muley. I was now at the very middle of the
river, and the turn must be made against the current. Would the steer
follow me, or would he take the natural line of least resistance into
the swinging water of the eddy? It was not a dozen yards below, whirling
around to its boiling centre. The steer swam almost up to the horse's
tail. I turned El Mahdi slowly against the current, and watched the
black bullock over my shoulder. He turned after the horse. The current
struck him in the deep forequarters; he swung out below the horse, threw
his big chest to the current, and followed El Mahdi's tail like a fish
following a bait. I arose in the stirrups and wiped the sweat off my
face with my sleeve.

I could have shouted as I looked back. Jud and the fifty were turning
the loop as though they were swinging at the end of a pendulum, every
steer following his fellow like a sheep. Jud's red horse was the only
bit of colour against that long line of black bobbing heads.

Behind him a string of swimming cattle reached in a long curve to the
south bank of the Valley River. We moved slowly up the north curve of
the long loop to the ferry landing. It was vastly harder swimming
against the current, but the three-year-old steer is an animal of great
strength. To know this, one has but to look at his deep shoulders and
his massive brisket. The yellow water bubbled up over the backs of the
cattle. The strong current swung their bodies around until their tails
were down-stream, and the little waves danced in fantastic eddies around
their puffing muzzles. But they clung to the crupper of El Mahdi with
dogged tenacity, and when he climb