"Oh I know a shady spot, Where we'll build a little cot, 'Way down yonder in the southwest land. "And the mocking birds will sing, And the wedding bells will ring, 'Way down yonder on the Rio Grande," he sang loudly as his pony plowed through the muddy water. "Say Dick," shouted the man behind him, "ain't you going to ask us to all the doings when them wedding bells cut loose?" "I reckon so," was the answer, "and what's more, if I gets me onto the yonderly side of this streak of mud, I'm a going to stay there. I've seen all I want to of this 'mañana land.'" Just at the critical time, when everything seemed to be working out all right, a great wave of water swept down the stream and broke with a crash right in front of the leading steers. They hesitated for a moment, then another wave broke, and still another, and in an instant the leaders were swinging back on to each other in their senseless panic. In less than a minute a hundred of them were swimming round and round in the muddy waters, a whirling, struggling mass of horns and bodies. They jumped upon one another, bearing the under ones down into the water, until it was boiling with the fighting, maddened animals. The kid did not wait for orders. Well he knew that it was up to him to break up that milling mighty quick or the whole day's work was lost. Heading his pony toward the struggling mass of animals, he drove at them without an instant's hesitation. "Oh the mocking birds will sing, And the wedding bells will ring, 'Way down yonder on the Rio Grande." Singing at the top of his voice and swinging his slicker over his head, he swept down on the outside steers, being crowded on to them by the swift current against which his plucky pony struggled hard. Had he abandoned the effort and turned the animal up stream, facing the current, he might have breasted it and held his own, but the kid resolutely kept his place as well as he could. "'Way down yonder on the Rio Grande, 'Way down yonder in that southwest land," he sang valiantly as he thrashed the steers with his yellow slicker, trying to turn them from their course. He was rapidly accomplishing his purpose, and a few of the leaders were already turned and about to string out for the shore, when one broad-horned fellow right behind him raised in the water like some huge sea monster, and lunged upon his horse's hips with both front feet. The weight of the steer drove the horse down into the water, the swift current swept him on to his side, and in a second he was under the mass of steers, his rider hanging to him.