ss its
slippery surface. It happened one day early in April that Fisher was
at the river's edge, with a number of men, collecting certain tools
and lumber which had been used in the cutting and hauling of the ice,
when Roosevelt, riding Manitou, drew up, with the evident intention of
making his way over the river on the dam. The dam, however, had
disappeared. The ice had broken up, far up the river, and large cakes
were floating past, accumulating at the bend below the town and
raising the water level well above the top of the Marquis's dam. The
river was what Joe Ferris had a way of calling "swimmin' deep for a
giraffe."

"Where does the dam start?" asked Roosevelt.

"You surely won't try to cross on the dam," exclaimed Fisher, "when
you can go and cross on the trestle the way the others do?"

"If Manitou gets his feet on that dam," Roosevelt replied, "he'll keep
them there and we can make it finely."

"Well, it's more than likely," said Fisher, "that there's not much of
the dam left."

"It doesn't matter, anyway. Manitou's a good swimmer and we're going
across."

Fisher, with grave misgivings, indicated where the dam began.
Roosevelt turned his horse into the river; Manitou did not hesitate.

Fisher shouted, hoping to attract the attention of some cowboy on the
farther bank who might stand ready with a rope to rescue the
venturesome rider. There was no response.

On the steps of the store, however, which he had inherited from the
unstable Johnny Nelson, Joe Ferris was watching the amazing
performance. He saw a rider coming from the direction of the Maltese
Cross, and it seemed to him that the rider looked like Roosevelt.
Anxiously he watched him pick his way out on the submerged dam.

Manitou, meanwhile, was living up to his reputation. Fearlessly, yet
with infinite caution, he kept his course along the unseen path.
Suddenly the watchers on the east bank and the west saw horse and
rider disappear, swallowed up by the brown waters. An instant later
they came in sight again. Roosevelt flung himself from his horse "on
the downstream side," and with one hand on the horn of the saddle
fended off the larger blocks of ice from before his faithful horse.

Fisher said to himself that if Manitou drifted even a little with the
stream, Roosevelt would never get ashore. The next landing was a mile
down the river, and that might be blocked by the ice.

The horse struck bottom at the extreme lower edge of the ford and