Wading up the stream, he climbed out on the bank and sat down to rest for a moment. It was second nature for him to get out his pipe and tobacco, and as he sat there the talk between himself and the singer around the herd the night before the crossing came to his mind. What could he do? The body was found on Mexican soil. About a hundred yards from the bank behind his was a little Mexican _jacal_, or hut, where he had noticed half a dozen children--even now he could hear their shouts as they played. To get it away from there was seemingly impossible. The twilight was nearly over and in the east the sky was glowing with the light of the moon, which almost at the full would soon rise. For half an hour he sat there thinking, the pipe smoked out and dead between his teeth. Then he rose, knocked the ashes out on his boot heel, slipped the pipe into his pocket, and worked his way carefully up to the top of the bank behind him. Peering through the fringe of trees, he saw in the moonlight the mud daubed _jacal_. A dog barked, in the distance a coyote answered with its shrill "yip, yip," and from the limbs of a mesquite--the family chicken coop--a rooster saluted the rising of the moon with a cheerful crow. In front of the _jacal_ a bright spark glowed where the fire of mesquite limbs over which the evening supper had been cooked, was dying away, and he could dimly make out the forms of the family asleep on the ground near the hut. Then, satisfied with the condition of things, he carefully worked his way back to the edge of the river, and, having looked to the rope, which he had fastened to a sharp piece of drift driven into the sand, lay down by it and in ten seconds was fast asleep. About three o'clock the next morning, just as the moon dropped behind the cottonwoods along the river, throwing deep shadows over its sullen tide, four steers, probably lost from the herd the day before, came down to the river to drink. As they reached the edge of the water one raised his head quickly and snuffed the air. The others also threw up their heads and tested the air with their keen noses, their great ears cocked forward to catch the slightest sound. High headed and suspicious, they all stood for an instant, and then as if with one impulse ran back a few steps and stopped to look again. Out there in the deep shadow something moved slowly and heavily. Now and then a splash came from the object as the water struck against it.