“You’d better get out,” he said shortly.

“But I won’t!” she retorted hurriedly.  “And, since we are going to make the crossing ... go ahead, quick!”

He winked both eyes at the rain driving into his face and sat still, measuring his chances.  While he did so she looked up and down; not a hundred paces from them, upstream on the near bank, the figure of a man loomed unnaturally large in the wet air.  He was mounted upon a tall, rangy horse that might have been foaled just for the purpose of carrying a man of his ilk, a pale yellow-sorrel whose two forefeet, had it not been for the mud, would have shone whitely.  She wondered what he was doing there.  His attitude was that of one who was patiently waiting.

“Hold on good an’ tight,” said Smith suddenly.  “I’m goin’ to tackle it.”

She gripped the back of the seat firmly, braced her feet, set her teeth together, a little in quick fear, a great deal in determination.  Smith swung his team upstream fifty paces, then in a short arc out and away from the creek; then, getting their heads again to the stream he called to them, one by one, each of the four in turn, saying crisply:  “You, Babe!  Charlie! that’s the boy!  Baldy!  You Tom, you Tom!  Into it; into it; get up!”

With shaking heads that flung the raindrops from tossing manes, with gingerly lifted forefeet, with a snort here and a crablike sidling dance there, they came down to the water’s edge at a brisk trot.  The off-lead, Charlie, fought shy and snorted again; the long whip in Hap Smith’s hand shot out, uncurled, flicked Charlie’s side, and with a last defiant shake of the head the big bay drove his obedient neck into his collar and splashed mightily in the muddy current.  Babe plunged forward at his side; the two other horses followed as they were in the habit of following.

The girl, fascinated, saw the water curl and eddy and whiten about their knees; she saw it surge onward and rise about the hubs of the slow turning wheels.  Higher it came and higher until the rushing sound of it filled her ears, the dark yellow flash of it filled her eyes and she sat breathless and rigid....  A quick glance showed her the man, Thornton, still above them on the bank of the stream.  She noted that he had drawn a little closer to the water’s edge.

They were half way across, fairly in midstream, and Hap Smith, utterly oblivious of his one passenger, cursing mightily, when the mishap came.  The mad stream, rolling its rocks and boulders and jagged tree trunks, had gouged holes in the bank here and there and had digged similar holes in the uneven bed itself.  Into such a hole the two horses on the lower side floundered, with no warning and with disastrous suddenness.  Then went down, until only their heads were above the current.  They lost all solid ground under their threshing hoofs and, as they rose a little, began to swim, flailing about desperately.  Hap Smith yelled at them, yanked at his reins, seeking to turn them straight down stream for a spell until the hole be passed.  But already another horse was in and engulfed, the wagon careened, was whipped about in the furious struggle, a wheel struck a submerged boulder and Hap Smith leaped one way while Winifred Waverly sprang the other as the awkward stage tipped and went on its side.