Unconscious profanity flowed from the rancher's lips in a stream; but meanwhile his brain worked swiftly, and, freeing himself, he crawled back hand over hand until a wave in the ground covered the river from view; then springing to his feet he ran toward the others, approaching now as fast as spurs would bring them, waving, shouting a warning as he went. Within a minute they were all together listening to his story. Within another, the rifles from off their saddles in their hands, the ponies left in charge of lank Bob Hoyt, the eight others now remaining moved back as Stetson had come: at first upright, then, crawling, hand over hand until, peeping over the intervening ridge, they saw lying before them the mingled ice patches and open running water of the low-lying Missouri. Beside them at their left, very near, was the body of Pete; but after a first glance and an added invective no man for the present gave attention. He was dead, dead in his tracks, and their affair was not with such, but with the quick. At first they could see nothing which explained the mystery of death, only the forbidding face of the great river; then gradually to one after another there appeared tell-tale marks which linked together into clues. "Ain't that a hoss-carcass?" It was cowboy Buck who spoke. "Look, a hundred yards out, down stream." Gilbert's swift glance caught the indicated object. "Yes, and another beyond--farther down--amongst that ice-pack! Do you see?" "Where?" Mick Kennedy trained his one eye like a fieldpiece upon the locality suggested. "Where? Yes! I see them now--both of them. Blair's own horse, if he had one, is probably in there too, somewhere." Meanwhile Stetson had been scrutinizing the spot on the river's face from which had come the puff of smoke. "Say, boys!" a ring as near excitement as was possible to one of his temperament was in his voice. "Ain't that an island, that brown patch out there, pretty well over to the other side? I believe it is." The others followed his glance. Near the farther bank was a long low-lying object, like a jam of broken ice-cakes, between which and them the open water was flowing. At first they thought it was ice; then under longer observation they knew better. They had seen too many other formations of the kind in this shifting treacherous stream to be long deceived. A flat sandy island it was, sure enough; and what they thought was ice was driftwood. Almost simultaneously from the eight there burst forth an exclamation, a rumbling curse of comprehension. They understood it all now as plainly as though their own eyes had seen the tragedy. Blair had reached the river and, despite its rotten ice, had tried to cross. One by one the horses had broken through, had been abandoned to their fate. He alone, somehow, had managed to reach this sandy island, and he was there now, intrenched behind the driftwood, waiting and watching.