Bridger turned and moved a wide arm.  The foremost wagons came on to the edge.

The men now mounted the wagon seats, two to each wagon.  Flankers drove up the loose cattle, ready for their turn later.  Men rode on each side the lead yoke of oxen to hold them steady on their footing, Wingate, Price, Kelsey and Hall, bold men and well mounted, taking this work on themselves.

The plunge once made, they got to the first island, all of them, without trouble.  But a dizzying flood lay on ahead to the second wheel-marked island in the river.  To look at the rapid surface was to lose all sense of direction.  But again the gaunt horse of the scout fell out, the riders waded in, their devoted saddle animals trembling beneath them.  Bridger, student of fast fords, followed the bar upstream, angling with it, till a deep channel offered between him and the island.  Unable to evade this, he drove into it, and his gallant mount breasted up and held its feet all the way across.

The thing could be done!  Jim Bridger calmly turned and waved to the wagons to come on from the first island.

“Keep them jest whar we was!” he called back to Hall and Kelsey, who had not passed the last stiff water.  “Put the heavy cattle in fust!  Hit maybe won’t swim them.  If the stuff gets wet we kain’t help that.  Tell the wimern hit’s all right.”

He saw his friends turn back, their horses, deep in the flood, plunging through water broken by their knees; saw the first wagons lead off and crawl out upstream, slowly and safely, till within reach of his voice.  Molly now was in the main wagon, and her brother Jed was driving.

Between the lines of wading horsemen the draft oxen advanced, following the wagons, strung out, but all holding their footing in the green water that broke white on the upper side of the wagons.  A vast murmuring roar came up from the water thus retarded.

They made their way to the edge of the deep channel, where the cattle stood, breasts submerged.

Bridger rose in his stirrups and shouted, “Git in thar!  Come on through!”

They plunged, wallowed, staggered; but the lead yokes saw where the ford climbed the bank, made for it, caught footing, dragged the others through!

Wagon after wagon made it safe.  It was desperate, but, being done, these matter-of-fact folk wasted no time in imaginings of what might have happened.  They were safe, and the ford thus far was established so that the others need not fear.

But on ahead lay what they all knew was the real danger—­the last channel, three hundred yards of racing, heavy water which apparently no sane man ever would have faced.  But there were wheel marks on the farther shore.  Here ran the road to Oregon.

The dauntless old scout rode in again, alone, bending to study the water and the footing.  A gravel bar led off for a couple of rods, flanked by deep potholes.  Ten rods out the bar turned.  He followed it up, foot by foot, for twenty rods, quartering.  Then he struck out for the shore.