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Updated: June 22, 2025
He swam as on the former trial to the bank on the homeward side. There was nothing for Van but to follow as before. When he came out, dripping and panting, by the animal, whose sides were fairly heaving as he labored for breath, he was still all cheer and encouragement. "Suvy," said he, "a failure is a chap who couldn't make a fire in hell. We've got to cross this river if we have to burn it up."
This Van realized as he sat there on his sweating horse, measuring up the banks. The depth had encroached upon the slope whereon he was wont to ascend the further side. There was one place only where he felt assured a landing might be achieved. "Well, Suvy," he said to the animal presently, "it looks more like a swim than a waltz quadrille, and neither of us built web-footed."
He had ridden here with Beth, and therefore the mockery was all the more intense. His inward heat and the outward heat combined to make him savage. There was nothing, however, on which to vent his feelings. Suvy he loved. Perhaps, he reflected, the horse was his one faithful friend. Certainly the broncho toiled most willingly across the zone of lifelessness to bear him on his way.
One wild, sweeping glance Van cast about, for a horse or something to ride. Suvy was stabled, unsaddled, up the street. Bostwick and his cloud of dust were dropping away in a swiftly narrowing perspective. And there stood a powerful, dusty-red car empty its motor in motion! There was no time to search for its owner. There were half a dozen different cars with which Van Buren was familiar.
Van had thought that Suvy might resent a stranger's liberties. He turned to the broncho peculiarly. "How about it, boy?" he asked the horse gravely. "I want you to stand for it, savvy?" He looked at the animal inquiringly. How he knew that Suvy consented was only for him to comprehend. He squared about to Beth, who was watching with wonder, and something far softer, in her heart.
To keep himself afloat and offer no resistance to the broncho was the most that he could do, and the best. The struggle was tremendous. Suvy had headed more obliquely than before against the current, and having encountered a greater resistance, with his strength somewhat sapped, was toiling like an engine. Inch by inch, foot by foot, he forged his way against the liquid wall that split upon him.
He entered "Solid Canyon" finally, and mounting once more let Suvy pick the way between great boulders, where gray rattlesnakes abounded in exceptional numbers. These were the hardships of the ride, all there were that Van felt worth the counting. He had reckoned without that far-off storm, which had raged in the darkness of the night.
Why don't you show them? Where's your pride? My boy! my boy! don't you love me any more? You're a baby, Suvy! You're a baby!" He paused for a moment, following still and watching narrowly. "Suvy! Suvy! You're gone if you let him ride you, lad! If you love me, boy, don't break my heart with shame!" Suvy and a hundred men heard his wild, impassioned appeal.
"You're a friend of mine, Suvy, and even if you weren't, you'd have to last to get back." He turned his back on death, unwittingly, to spare the horse he loved. Delayed no less than an hour by this enforced retreat, he patiently led the broncho back to the opening of the pass, and, still on foot, led the steep way up over the mountain.
"Get on," he said. "He was raised as a cradle for babies." Beth was pale, but she had to be a man. She stepped to the broncho's side and mounted to the saddle. Suvy trembled in every sinew of his being. Van gave him a pat on the neck again, turned his back and started straight northward. The pony followed at his heels like a dog with a master he loves.
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