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"By Jove! it is Stephen," he says at last, in an indescribable tone; and then, knowing he cannot reach him in time to prevent the coming catastrophe, he stands up in his stirrups and shouts to the unconscious Stephen, with all the strength of his fresh, young lungs, to turn back before it is too late. But all in vain; Stephen either does not or cannot hear.
For a quarter of a mile they proceeded with scarcely a perceptible rise and then the cowboy turned his horse into a deep fissure that slanted upward at a most precarious angle seemingly straight into the heart of the mountain. Just when it seemed that the trail must end in a blind pocket, the Texan swung into a cross fissure so narrow that the stirrups brushed either side.
"Here, Jim, old pard," interposed Nick Undrell. "You'd best dry up. You dunno who you'se talkin' to, sure. His lordship rid in the Pony Express 'fore ever you shoved your toes in stirrups. He was the slickest Express rider along the whole trail. Thar wasn't a skilfuller horseman than Kiddie between Saint Joseph an' Sacramento. Couldn't do it, says you! Well, I should smile!" "Kiddie, d'ye say?
Though I had no fear of absolute danger, yet my mare was tired, and I had made up my mind to remain on that side till the flood abated; but I could not make the natives understand that I wished to turn, and while I was screaming "No, no," and trying to withdraw my stiffened limbs from the stirrups, the noose was put round the mare's nose, and she went in.
"A range-horse, you idiot, and a range-saddle. I did ride some on a fancy-gaited steed with a saddle that resembled a porus plaster and stirrups like a lady's bracelet; it didn't fill the aching void a little bit." "Well, maybe yuh won't feel any aching void out here," he said, "but if yuh follow round-up this season you'll sure have plenty of other brands of ache."
I clutched him, and there we remained sitting face to face, astride on the capsized boat! I sat on it as though it were a horse, making use of the rope as if it had been stirrups; but our position there was anything but safe a wave might easily have knocked us out of our saddle. Shakro held tightly by my knees, and dropped his head on my breast. He shivered, and I could hear his teeth chattering.
As he did this, the close observer, had one been present, might have noted that though his movements were now alert and eager, they no longer were betrayed by any sound, and that his spurs had ceased to jangle. Yet that he purposed to ride abroad was evident from the fact that from a far corner he dragged out a heavy saddle. He flung this upon the counter, and swiftly stripped it of its stirrups.
Then he bade one of his people saddle him his mule with a padded saddle. Now she was a dapple mule, high-backed, like a dome builded upon columns; her saddle was of cloth of gold and her stirrups of Indian steel, her housings of Ispahan velvet, and she was like a bride on her wedding night.
A kind of dread came over me that the mighty spirit of Peter the Great would come riding through the scorching hot air on a gale of snowflakes, at the head of a bloody phalanx of Muscovites, and, rising in his stirrups as he approached, would demand of me in a voice of thunder, "Stranger, how much money have you got?" to which I could only answer, "Sublime and potent Czar, taking the average value of my Roaring Grizzly, Dead Broke, Gone Case, and Sorrowful Countenance, and placing it against the present value of Russian securities, I consider it within the bounds of reason to say that I hold about a million of rubles!"
The swift glance he gave the nearby river was significant as well as apprehensive. It moved him to increased but unpolished haste. He leaped frantically for the saddle, scorning the stirrups landing broadside but with sufficient nervous energy in reserve to scramble on and upward into the seat.
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