"The cattle were all good to handle, an' didn't give us no trouble to hold nights, barrin' one or two little stampedes, an' we drifted on down toward Lee's Ferry without any mishaps, 'ceptin' one night it were a-rainin' like all possessed, an' I wakes up a feller named Peck to go on guard. Peck got up an' put on his slicker, walked over to where his pony was tied, an' mounted. We was camped on the banks of a wash called Cottonwood Creek, an' along there the wash had cut down into the 'dobe flat, some ten or fifteen feet deep. Peck he's 'bout half asleep, an' gets off wrong for the herd, an' rides straight up to the edge of the creek, thinkin' all the time he's a-goin' out on the prairie to the herd. His pony sort of balked on him an' give a snort, but Peck bein' a cross-grained sort of cuss, an' only half awake, just bathed him with his quirt, an' jabbed his spurs into him. The pony give a jump an' landed in the middle of the creek, with six or eight feet of muddy water runnin' in it. Lord, didn't Peck wake up suddenlike, an' squall for help? We all turned out in a hurry, but he swam across, an' the opposite side bein' sort of slopin'like, the pony scrambled out. Then Peck was afeered to cross back in the dark, an' stayed over thar all night, a-shiverin' an' a-shakin' an' a-cursin' like a crazy man. When we got up for breakfast that mornin' at four o'clock it was clear, an' cold, an' dark. The cook he goes down to the creek an' hollers to Peck sort of sarcastic-like, 'Come to breakfast, Peck!' an' Peck he gets mad an' swears at the _cocinero_ pretty plenty, an' said ef he didn't go back he'd turn loose on him with his six-shooter, an' the cook, bein' pretty rollicky hisself, he goes back to the wagon an' pulls his Winchester an' starts fer the creek agin, but Jackson stops him an' turns him back. When it comes daylight Peck went down the creek a mile and finds a place to cross whar it wa'n't so deep, an' so gits back to camp jist as we was pullin' out. "The Big Colorado were a powerful stream when we reached it, bein' all swollen by heavy rains up in the mountains an' we all kinder hated to tackle it. Before he left, the old man told the wagon-boss to ferry the outfit an' horses over in the boat, but to swim the steers. "You know how Lee's Ferry is; the river comes out of a box cañon above, an' the sides break away a little, an' then a mile below it goes into the box agin, where the walls is three thousand feet high an' the current runs like a mill-race.