Frosty looked across to the farther shore, then at the sagging cable, and then at me.  I gathered that he had his doubts, too, but he wouldn’t say anything.  Nobody did, for that matter.  Even Pochette wasn’t doing anything but chew his whiskers and watch the cable.

Then she broke, with a snap like a rifle, and a jolt that came near throwing us off our feet.  Pochette gave a yell and relapsed into French that I’d hate to translate; it would shock even his own countrymen.  The ferry ducked and bobbed, now there was nothing to hold its nose steady to the current, and went careering down river with all hands aboard and looking for trouble.

We didn’t do anything, though; there wasn’t anything to do but stay right where we were and take chances.  If she stayed right side up we would probably land eventually.  If she flopped over—­which she seemed trying to do, we’d get a cold bath and lose our teams, if no worse.

Soon as I thought of that, I began unhooking the traces of the horse nearest.  The poor brutes ought at least to have a chance to swim for it.  Frosty caught on, and went to work, too, and in half a minute we had them free of the wagon and stripped of everything but their bridles.  They would have as good a show as we, and maybe better.

I looked back to see what King was doing.  He was having troubles of his own, trying to keep one of his cayuses on all its feet at once.  It was scared, poor devil, and it took all his strength on the bit to keep it from rearing and maybe upsetting the whole bunch.  Pochette wasn’t doing anything but lament, so I went back and unhooked King’s horses for him, and took off the harness and threw it in the back of his wagon so they wouldn’t tangle their feet in it when it came to a show-down.

I don’t think he was what you could call grateful; he never looked my way at all, but went on cussing the horse he was holding, for acting up just when he should keep his wits.  I went back to Frosty, and we stood elbows touching, waiting for whatever was coming.

For what seemed a long while, nothing came but wind and water.  But I don’t mind saying that there was plenty of that, and if either one had been suddenly barred out of the game we wouldn’t any of us have called the umpire harsh names.  We drifted, slippety-slosh, and the wind ripped holes in the atmosphere and made our eyes water with the bare force of it when we faced the west.  And none of us had anything to say, except Pochette; he said a lot, I remember, but never mind what.  I don’t suppose he was mentally responsible at the time.

Then, a long, narrow, yellow tongue of sand-bar seemed to reach right out into the river and lap us up.  We landed with a worse jolt than when we broke away from the cable, and the gray-blue river went humping past without us.  Frosty and I looked at each other and grinned; after all, we were coming out of the deal better than we had expected, for we were still right side up and on the side of the river toward home.  We were a mile or so down river from the trail, but once we were on the bank with our rig, that was nothing.