I was up in an instant. He stood beside me panting, almost faint. He held a little slip in his hand. His face was white, his lips drawn, but a battle coolness that went like cold steel into my own soul was in his voice. "Elsie, Jack! Stone’s River bridge—you may save her yet! She is drowning herself! Your horse, quick! I’ll follow as best I can!" Instantly I understood. I glanced down. Eloise’s note was gone. Elsie’s hat lay on the grass instead. Satan had been saddled for my ride to town and stood at the rack. In two quick leaps I was by his side. The next minute I held the reins. "If you ever rode in your life," I heard her father saying behind me, "if you ever rode in your life, Jack! You may save her yet—straight down the pike to the bridge!" The horse seemed to know. He wheeled as the reins went over his head, pivoted, as I’d seen him so often do, on two legs, for quickness, up into the air, wheeling. I held a good clutch on the pommel and as I rose his own great bound jerked me like a bolt into the saddle. I saw the old butler, bare-headed, running to open the gate, and Colonel Goff panting, helpless, crossing the grass. But even Satan knew we’d lose if we waited. It was only a four-foot rock wall; it was play for him to clear it. He landed squarely and already in a full run. The bridge was a mile away. It was made of iron and its sides were protected by a railing. It was high where the pike reached it, spanning a gorge cut through the hills. A rock fence ran along the pike up to the bridge on each side. There the bluff was sheer twenty feet straight down to the river. Satan ran like a tube of quick-silver down the long white pathway of the pike. As we flashed up the slope leading to it, I caught just a glimpse of a white gown going over the bridge from the middle railing. I had to throw all my weight on his left rein to send him over the rock fence at the foot of the bridge and I knew when he felt my heel go into his flank and my pull that shot his great game head into the fence, that he thought I was crazy, was sending us both to death! But he never faltered. It all depended on how he cleared that four-foot fence and the twenty feet down to the river. I knew when he rose for the leap that he expected firm ground on the other side. Would he balk, falter and fail me when he saw? I drove my heel into him. I felt him quiver just a moment beneath me. Then I held my breath. A white figure floated midway of the river before me. Up went his head, the water only flashed beneath him twenty full feet below. I watched the play of his ears for his thoughts. If they fluttered, wavered, showed fright, I knew he would balk and quit. For an instant I saw them flutter back and forth, little tell-tales of surprise, then down they came angrily, glued to his neck as one grits one’s teeth in a crisis, and he shot over the wall, balanced squarely, holding himself superbly, down!