26

In an instant darkness was upon them. A sudden flash of steely blue rent the sky; almost with it a quick roll of thunder was all about them and a bellowing rush of water came tearing along the arroyo.

The bay colt squealed with terror, plunging sidewise, heedless of whip and voice. The deputy tried to turn him back to where the bank sloped, but already they were sweeping along with the torrent.

“A cloudburst,” Arnold shrieked, and with the words he was wrested from his seat.

The shafts of the light vehicle snapped short at the gear. The colt, plunging, open-mouthed, was hurled forward in a fearful somersault, and went under, just as the wagon and its remaining occupant rolled over and over, as a boulder might roll, in the churn of maddened water.

It was far into the night when, amid a matted drift, half-way up one bank of the arroyo, something stirred, faintly. Caught in a web of debris, and a tangle of mesquite roots that thrust far out from the soil, a man strove feebly to disentangle his head from a smother of something that enwrapped 27it. When at last he partly succeeded he looked up at the calm stars, lamping the sky in solemn splendor. Below him he could still hear the rush of water, but above all was peaceful.

27

Long he lay, more dead than alive, trying to remember what had happened. By the bright starlight he managed to make out that the body of the light wagon had caught upon an out-thrust web of mesquite roots. He was lying on his side in the wagon box, one arm thrust, to the shoulder, through something that he could not see. About his neck and head was a tangle of cloth which he made out to be the deputy’s coat, and a long thong of leather, probably one of the harness reins. This was wound, as well, about what remained of one of the seat braces.

Slowly, by agonizing degrees, the man began to work himself loose from the tangle. Then he discovered that the thing binding his shoulder was the strap of a horse’s nose-bag, and the bag itself. It was caught over a long, splintered fragment of the reach, which had broken through the bottom of the wagon box. The bag seemed to be about half full of oats.

Inch by inch he cleared himself, and laying hold upon the mesquite roots, rose slowly, until he stood up. Every movement was pain, but he persisted doggedly, climbing little by little up the bank, 28clinging now 

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