Jewel looks at him, then at me, then his face turns in in that quiet; constant, questing about the scene, the horse trembling quietly and steadily between his knees.
"He could go on ahead slow and sort of feel it out," I say.
"Yes," Cash says, not looking at me.
His face is in profile as he looks forward where Jewel has moved on ahead.
"He cant miss the river," I say.
"He couldn't miss seeing it fifty yards ahead."
Cash does not look at me, his face in profile,
"If I'd just suspicioned it, I could a come down last week and taken a sight on it."
"The bridge was up then," I say.
He does not look at me.
"Whitfield crossed it a-horseback."
Jewel looks at us again, his expression sober and alert and subdued.
His voice is quiet.
"What you want me to do?"
"I ought to come down last week and taken a sight on it," Cash says.
"We couldn't have known," I say.
"There wasn't any way for us to know."
"I’ll ride on ahead," Jewel says.
"You can follow where I am."
He lifts the horse.
It shrinks, bowed; he leans to it, speaking to it, lifting it forward almost bodily, it setting its feet down with gingerly splashings, trembling, breathing harshly.
He speaks to it, murmurs to it.
"Go on," he says.
"I aint going to let nothing hurt you.
Go on, now."
"Jewel," Cash says.
Jewel does not look back.
He lifts the horse on.
"He can swim," I say.
"If he'll just give the horse time, anyhow . . ."
When he was born, he had a bad time of it Ma would sit in the lamp-light, holding him on a pillow on her lap.
We would wake and find her so.
There would be no sound from them.
"That pillow was longer than him," Cash says.
He is leaning a little forward,
"I ought to come down last week and sighted.
I ought to done it."
"That's right," I say.
"Neither his feet nor his head would reach the end of it.
You couldn't have known." I say.
"I ought to done it," he says.
He lifts the reins.
The mules move, into the traces; the wheels murmur alive in the water.
He looks back and down at Addie.
"It aint on a balance," he says.
At last the trees open; against the open river Jewel sits the horse, half turned, it belly deep now.
Across the river we can see Vernon and pa and Vardaman and Dewey Dell Vernon is waving at us, waving us further down stream.
"We are too high up," Cash says.
Vernon is shouting too, but we cannot make out what he says for tie noise of the water.
It runs steady and deep now, tin-broken, without sense of motion until a log comes along, turning slowly.