Cash turns back into the wagon.
He lays his hands flat on Addie, rocking her a little.
His face is calm, down-sloped, calculant, concerned. He lifts his box of tools and wedges it forward tinder the seat; together we shove Addie forward, wedging her between the tools and the wagon bed.
Then he looks at me.
"No," I say.
"I reckon I’ll stay.
Might take both of us."
From the tool box he takes his coiled rope and carries the end twice around the seat stanchion and passes the end to me without tying it.
The other end he pays out to Jewel, who takes a turn about his saddle horn.
He must force the horse down into the current.
It moves, highkneed, archnecked, boring and chafing.
Jewel sits lightly forward, his knees lifted a little; again his swift alert calm gaze sweeps upon us and on.
He lowers the horse into the stream, speaking to it in a soothing murmur.
The horse slips, goes under to the saddle, surges to its feet again, the current building up against Jewel's thighs.
"Watch yourself," Cash says.
"I'm on it now," Jewel says.
"You can come ahead now."
Cash takes the reins and lowers the team carefully and skillfully into the stream.
I felt the current take us and I knew we were on the ford by that reason, since it was only by means of that slipping contact that we could tell that we were in motion at all.
What had once been a -flat surface was now a succession of troughs and hillocks lifting and falling about us, shoving at us, teasing at us with light lazy touches in the vain instants of solidity underfoot.
Cash looked back at me, and then I knew that we were gone.
But I did not realise the reason for the rope until I saw the log.
It surged up out of the water and stood for an instant upright upon that surging and heaving desolation like Christ.
Get out and let the current take you down to the bend, Cash said.
You can make it all right.
No, I said, I'd get just as wet that way as this
The log appears suddenly between two hills, as if it had rocketed suddenly from the bottom of the river.
Upon the end of it a long gout of foam hangs like the beard of an old man or a goat.
When Cash speaks to me I know that he has been watching it all the time, watching it and watching Jewel ten feet ahead of us.
"Let the rope go," he says.
With his other hand he reaches down and reeves the two turns from the stanchion.
"Ride on, Jewel," he says; "see if you can pull us ahead of the log."
Jewel shouts at the horse; again he appears to lift it bodily between his knees.
He is just above the top of the ford and the horse has a purchase of some sort for it surges forward, shining wetly half out of water, crashing on in a succession of lunges.
It moves unbelievably fast; by that token Jewel realises at last that the rope is free, for I can see him sawing back on the reins, his head turned, as the log rears in a long sluggish lunge between us, bearing down upon the team.
They see it too; for a moment they also shine black out of water.
Then the downstream one vanishes, dragging the other with him; the wagon sheers crosswise, poised on the crest of the ford as the log strikes it, tilting it up and on.
Cash is half turned, the reins running taut from his hand and disappearing into the water, the other hand reached back upon Addie, holding her jammed over against the high side of the wagon.
"Jump clear," he says quietly.
"Stay away from the team and dont try to fight it.
It'll swing you into the bend all right."
"You come too," I say.
Vernon and Vardaman are running along the bank, pa and Dewey Dell stand watching us, Dewey Dell with the basket and the package in her arms.
Jewel is trying to fight the horse back.
The head of one mule appears, its eyes wide; it looks back at us for an instant, making a sound almost human.
The head vanishes again.
"Back, Jewel," Cash shouts.
"Back, Jewel."
For another instant I see him leaning to the tilting wagon, his arm braced back against Addie and his tools; I see the bearded head of the rearing log strike up again, and beyond it Jewel holding the horse upreared, its head wrenched around, hammering its head with his fist.
I jump from the wagon on the downstream side.