Roger's first thought, after a sense of gratitude and relief, was for the burro, but for whose providential capture in the snag and whose most convenient tail, he would probably have been dashed upon the rapids below. He got nimbly to his feet, though considerably bruised and sore, and hurried up stream the thirty or forty feet to where he had left the animal. As he reached there, he saw that the burro had found shoal water under his feet and was pawing away for a foothold, thus loosening the hold of the snag upon the bottom, and the boy saw the tree begin to shift. "Don't, Jack," he called, as though he believed the burro could understand, "keep still till I help you out!" But the companion of the boy's perilous trip took the shouting for encouragement and kicked all the harder, till a few seconds later, amid a swirl of mud and sand, the huge wreck of a tree rolled over and whirled down in the river in a confusion of branches amid which the poor burro seemed to have no chance. The very size of the tree evinced to Roger how furious must be the torrent of the Colorado in the spring floods, for the snag showed that it must have come from a pine not less than thirty inches at the base. The forking, broken and splintered limbs, however, projecting on all sides, caught in the bed of the river now that the stream was low, and this prevented the burro from being swept into the middle of the current, and suddenly, to the surprise and delight of the boy, a swift back eddy caught the animal and threw him up upon the shore. Roger ran to him, but there was no sign of motion, the poor burro lay quiet as though dead. Heaving a sigh, for their twin peril had made Roger quite fond of the little animal, he turned to go, half-thinking that, if there were any future state for the four-footed part of the world, he would have a candidate to present. Then, sitting on a fallen rock, he put on his boots, his feeling of pride at the great achievement of having crossed the Colorado River only dimmed by his sorrow for his faithful comrade. Before leaving, however, he went back to where the burro lay. "It's a shame to leave you lying there, Jack," he said, "but there's nothing I can do for you. Of course, I know you're only just a burro, but I do hate to say 'Good-by.'" There was a great big lump in the boy's throat. "I'd like to dig a grave, or--or--something," he added, "but I can't. It seems playing it low down on you, Jack, when I couldn't have got across but for you, but there's no help for it. It's got to be good-by!"