Without further ado he placed Beth’s letter in his hat, then rode his pony down the bank and into the angry-looking water.  Suvy halted a moment uncertainly, then, like his master, determined to proceed.

Five feet out he was swimming, headed instinctively up the stream and buried deep under the surface.  Van still remained in the saddle.  He was more than waist under, loosely clinging to his seat and giving the pony the reins.

Suvy was powerful, he swam doggedly, but the current was tremendous in its sheer liquid mass and momentum.  Van slipped off and swam by the broncho’s side.  Together the two breasted the surge of the tide, and now made more rapid progress.  It required tremendous effort to forge ahead and not be swept headlong to a choppy stretch of rapids, just below.

“Up stream, boy, up stream,” said Van, as if to a comrade, for he had noted the one likely place to land, and Suvy was drifting too far downward.

They came in close to the bank, as Van had feared, below the one fair landing.  Despite his utmost efforts, to which the pony willingly responded, they could not regain what had been lost.  The broncho made a fine but futile attempt to gain a footing and scramble up the almost perpendicular wall of rock and earth by which he was confronted.  Time after time he circled completely in the surge, to no avail.  He may have become either confused or discouraged, Whichever it was, he turned about, during a moment when Van released the reins, and swam sturdily back whence he come.

Van, in the utmost patience, turned and followed.  Suvy awaited his advent on the shore.

“Try to keep a little further up, boy, if you can,” said the man, and he mounted and rode as before against the current.

The broncho was eager to obey directions, eager to do the bidding of the man he strangely loved.  All of the first hard struggle was repeated—­and the current caught them as before.  Again, as formerly, Van slipped off and swam by his pony’s side.  He could not hold his shoulder against the animal, and guide him thus up the stream, but was trailed out lengthwise and flung about in utter helplessness, forming a drag against which the pony’s most desperate efforts could not prevail.

They came to the bank precisely as they had before, and once again, perhaps more persistently, Suvy made wild, eager efforts to scramble out where escape was impossible.  Again and again he circled, pawed the bank, and turned his eyes appealingly to Van, as if for help or suggestions.

At last he acknowledged defeat, or lost comprehension of the struggle.  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.”