Pea Eye was half a mind not to go. He had never disobeyed an order in his life, but this time he was sorely tempted, and it was not just the cold swim or the chancy trek that made him hesitate. It was leaving Gus. Gus was close to being out of his head. If he went on out of his head the Indians would have a good chance to get him. He sat for a while, trying to think of some argument that would make Gus let him stay with him.

"Maybe we could both swim out," he said. "I know you're crippled, but you could lean on me once we started walking."

"Pea, go," Augustus said. "I ain't getting well, I'm getting sicker. If you want to help, go get Captain Call. Have him lope up here with an extra horse and tote me over to Miles City."

Pea Eye got ready with a heavy heart. It all seemed wrong, and none of it would have happened if they'd just stayed in Texas.

"Just take your rifle," Augustus said. "A pistol won't do you no good if you have to stop one of them bears. Besides, I'll need both pistols-any fighting that happens here will be close-range work."

"I can't swim and hold a dern rifle, Gus," Pea Eye said.

"Stick it through your belt and down your pants leg," Augustus said. "You can float downstream, you won't actually have to swim much."

Pea Eye took off his boots and his shirt and made a bundle of them. Then he did as Gus ordered and stuck his rifle through his belt. He stuffed some jerky in one boot for provisions. All he needed to do was leave, but it was hard.

"Now go on, Pea," Augustus said. "Go get the Captain, and don't worry about me. Don't let the Indians catch you, whatever you do."

Gus reached out a hand and Pea Eye realized he was offering a handshake. Pea Eye shook his hand, feeling terribly sad.

"Gus, I never thought I'd be leaving you," he said.

"Well, you are, though," Augustus said. "Trod carefully."

It was then that the conviction struck Pea Eye that he would never see Gus alive again. Mainly what they were into was just another Indian fight, and all of those had inconveniences. But Gus had never sustained a wound before that Pea could remember. The arrows and bullets that had missed him so many times had finally found him.

After the handshake, Gus treated him as if he were already gone. He didn't offer any messages or say another word. Pea Eye wanted to say something else, but couldn't think what. Feeling very disconsolate, he waded into the cold water. It was far colder than he had supposed. His legs at once felt numb. He looked back once and could dimly see the cave, but not Gus.

As soon as he reached swimming depth, he forgot Gus and everything else, due to a fear of drownding. The icy water pushed him under at once. Floating wasn't as easy as Gus had made it seem. The rifle was a big problem. Stuck in his pants leg, it seemed to weigh like lead. Also, he had no experience in such fast water. Several times he got swept over to the side of the creek and almost got tangled in the underbrush that the rushing water covered.

Worse than that, he almost immediately lost the little bundle of boots and pants, shirt, all his provisions and part of his ammunition. He had reached down with one hand to try and move the rifle a little higher up on his leg, and the water sucked the bundle away and swept it far ahead of him. Pea Eye began to realize he was going to drown unless he did better than he was doing. The water pushed him under several times. He wanted badly to climb up the bank but was by no means sure he was past the Indians. Gus said to go down at least a mile, and he wasn't sure he had gone that far. The water had a suck to it that he had constantly to fight against; to his horror he felt it sucking his pants off. He had been so disconsolate when he walked into the river that he had not buckled his belt tightly. He had nothing much in the way of hips, and the water sucked his pants down past them. The rifle sight was gouging him in the leg. He grabbed the rifle, but then went under. The dragging pants, with the rifle in one leg, were drownding him. He began to try frantically to get them off, so as to have the free use of his legs. He wanted to cuss Gus for having Suggested sticking the rifle in his pants leg. He could never get it out in time to shoot an Indian, if one appeared, and it was causing him terrible aggravation. He fought to the surface again, went under, and when he came up wanted to yell for help, and then remembered there Would be no one around to hear him but Indians. Then his leg was almost jerked off-he had been swept close to the bank and the dragging gun had caught in some underbrush. The bank was only a few feet away and he tried to claw over to it, but that didn't work. While he was struggling, the pants came off and he was swept down the river backwards. One minute he could see the south bank of the river, and the next minute all he could see was water. Twice he opened his mouth to suck in air and sucked in water instead, some of which came back out his nose. His legs and feet were so numb from the cold water that he couldn't feel them.

He never remembered getting out of the water, but somehow he did, for when he next took note of things he was laying in the mud, his feet still in the water. He was stark naked and the mud was cold, so he pulled himself up and laboriously climbed the bank. It was only eight or ten feet high, but it was slippery.

When he got up, he wanted to lay in the grass and go to sleep, but he was awake enough to think about his situation, and thinking soon made him wakeful. He hadn't drownded, but he was naked, unarmed, without food, and something like a hundred miles from the Hat Creek wagon. He didn't know the country and was up against some tough Indians who did. Gus was sick and maybe dying somewhere upriver. It would be daylight in a few hours and the danger from Indians would increase.

Pea Eye at once started walking as fast as he could. Though it had stopped raining, it was still cloudy, and he could not see one star or the moon or, for that matter, anything either on heaven or earth. The awful thought struck him that, rolling around and around in the water, he might even have confused north and south and crawled up the wrong bank. He might be walking north, in which case he was as good as dead, but he couldn't stop to worry about it. He had to move. He had lost his pack and his gun in the river, and as soon as the river sank to being a normal stream again, they would all be lying in the creek bed, in plain sight. If the Indians found them they would know he was gone, and that Gus was alone, which would make things hot for Gus. If they were in a tracking mood it would also make things hot for him. They had horses and could run him down in a matter of hours. The faster he traveled, the better chance he had.

After he had thought about it for a while, Pea was profoundly glad the night was so dark. He wished it could stay dark forever, or at least until he pulled in sight of the herd. When he thought of all the perils he was exposed to, it was all he could do to keep from running. He remembered vividly all the things Indians did to white men. In his rangering days he had helped bury several men who had had such things done to them, and memories of those charred and gouged corpses was with him in the darkness. With him too, and just as terrifying, was the memory of the great orange bear who had nearly ripped the Texas bull wide open. He remembered how fast the bear had gone when they tried to chase it on horseback. If such a bear spotted him he felt he would probably just lie down and give up.

The darkness didn't last. The only blessing the light brought was that Pea Eye caught a glimpse of the north star as the clouds were breaking. He knew, at least, that he was going in the right direction. The sun soon came up, and he remembered Gus's warning not to travel in the daytime. Pea Eye decided to ignore it. For one thing, he was on an absolutely open plain, where there was no good place to hide. He might as well be moving as sitting.