Another day had been lost, and still the South Canadian defied us.  We drifted the cattle back to the previous night camp, using the same bed ground for our herd.  It was then that The Rebel broached the subject of a crossing at the island which we had examined that morning, and offered to show it to our foreman by daybreak.  We put two extra horses on picket that night, and the next morning, before the sun was half an hour high, the foreman and The Rebel had returned from the island down the river with word that we were to give the ford a trial, though we could not cross the wagon there.  Accordingly we grazed the herd down the river and came opposite the island near the middle of the forenoon.  As usual, we cut off about one hundred of the lead cattle, the leaders naturally being the heaviest, and started them into the water.  We reached the island and scaled the farther bank without a single animal losing his footing.  We brought up a second bunch of double, and a third of triple the number of the first, and crossed them with safety, but as yet the Canadian was dallying with us.  As we crossed each successive bunch, the tramping of the cattle increasingly agitated the sands, and when we had the herd about half over, we bogged our first steer on the farther landing.  As the water was so shallow that drowning was out of the question, we went back and trailed in the remainder of the herd, knowing the bogged steer would be there when we were ready for him, The island was about two hundred yards long by twenty wide, lying up and down the river, and in leaving it for the farther bank, we always pushed off at the upper end.  But now, in trailing the remainder of the cattle over, we attempted to force them into the water at the lower end, as the footing at that point of this middle ground had not, as yet, been trampled up as had the upper end.  Everything worked nicely until the rear guard of the last five or six hundred congested on the island, the outfit being scattered on both sides of the river as well as in the middle, leaving a scarcity of men at all points.  When the final rear guard had reached the river the cattle were striking out for the farther shore from every quarter of the island at their own sweet will, stopping to drink and loitering on the farther side, for there was no one to hustle them out.

All were over at last, and we were on the point of congratulating ourselves,—­for, although the herd had scattered badly, we had less than a dozen bogged cattle, and those near the shore,—­when suddenly up the river over a mile, there began a rapid shooting.  Satisfied that it was by our own men, we separated, and, circling right and left, began to throw the herd together.  Some of us rode up the river bank and soon located the trouble.  We had not ridden a quarter of a mile before we passed a number of our herd bogged, these having reentered the river for their noonday drink, and on coming up with the men who had done the shooting, we found them throwing the herd out from the water.  They reported that a large number of cattle were bogged farther up the river.