The old Del Sol foreman was a good cowman, as good as the next, and there were few phenomena in the trade of cows with which he was not familiar. One might have seen him all that day looking up anxiously at the sky. The heavens were dull and overcast; a bad day to put cattle at a ford. Rain portended; for long there was no glimpse of the sun. But had there been any glimpse of the sun the veteran foreman would never have pushed his herd into the river late in the afternoon, for a reason which any trail man would have understood. At that point the river ran almost north and south, so that the course of the cattle was almost westward. In the evening any rays of the sun would lie like a path across the water. But cattle will not swim into the sun. No good trail boss ever undertook to cross a herd into a sunset. The one hope of Nabours was in a continuous cloudiness of the evening sky. He did not want the sun to shine. But now, as he turned his own anxious face toward the west, he saw a greater definition of the piling clouds. The lower edge of yonder heavy bank was tinged with silver. By and by the sun would drop through. Then its light would lie across the water, straight into the eyes of the swimming cattle. The sudden oath of old Jim Nabours had many factors in it—pity for what he knew might happen, regret for his own hastiness, apprehension for the property which was not his, resentment at what seemed to him an unjust fate and a poor reward for the courage which his men had shown. Nature, always merciless, now seemed mockingly vindictive. No act of man could affect that which was now to happen. The almost level rays of the sun did fling their burnished path across the yellow waters. It was cast straight into the eyes of the drag, some three or four hundred animals which had not yet crossed the swimming channel. It half blinded for a moment even the eyes of the men. A floating log came down among them, caught the upper cattle, swung crosswise. The line broke. There was a great uptossing of horns, a jumbling of shoulders as some animals attempted to find floatage on the backs of others. The spaces were lost, the bodies were packed together in a mass, struggling, moaning—and steadily passing downstream. The dreaded swimming mill was on! Little enough could the bravest or most skilled men do now. What men could do, the two riders now caught in the mill attempted. They did not try to swim free of the mass, but drove into it, attempting to break and point out the mill so that the cattle would find footing somewhere below. At times the head and shoulders of their ponies showed, climbing upon the shoulders of the swimming cattle, the men beating with their quirts, kicking, urging, shouting. But the cattle would not swim into the sun.