MacRae soon joined us with the three horses; out into the stream, wading
till the water gurgled around our waists, we led the bunch. Then we
were compelled to take our hats and slosh water over packs and saddles
till they were soaked--for the fire was ravaging the flat we had just
left, and showers of tiny sparks descended upon and around us. Thus
proof against the fiery baptism, though still half-strangled by the
smoke, our breathing a succession of coughs, we mounted and pushed
across.
The high water had abated and the river was now flowing at its normal
stage, some three hundred yards in width and nowhere swimming-deep on
the ford. We passed beyond spark-range and splashed out on a sand-bar
that jutted from the southern bank. Midway between the lapping water and
the brush that lined the edge of the flat, a dark object became
visualized in the shifting gray vapor. We rode to it and pulled up in
amaze. Patiently awaiting the pleasure of his master, as a good cavalry
horse should, was the bay gelding Hicks had ridden; and Hicks himself
sprawled in the sand at the end of the bridle-reins. I got down and
looked him over. He was not dead; far from it. But a bullet had scored
the side of his head above one ear, and he was down and out for the
time.
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