"These mild men like Arenberg are terrible when they are stirred up, Phil. ’Still waters run deep,’ which sounds to me rather Irish, because if they are still they don’t run at all. But it’s good all the same, and, between you and me, Phil, I’d give a lot if we were on the other side of this river, which has no name in the geographies, which rises I don’t know where, which empties into I don’t know what, and which belongs to I don’t know whom. But, be that as it may, lay on, Macduff, and I won’t be the first to cry ’Hold, enough!’" The train took another curve to the northward, approaching the ford, of which the old scouts told. The swells dipped down, indicating a point at which the banks of the river were low, but they could still see the double line of trees lining either shore, and the masses of bushes and weeds that extended along the stream. But nothing stirred them. No wind blew. The boughs of the cottonwoods, live oaks, and willows hung lifeless under the somber sky. There was still no sign of human presence or of anything that lived. But the men of the train did not relax their caution. They were approaching now up a sort of shallow trough containing a dry sandy bed, down which water evidently flowed during the wet season into the river. It, also, for the last half mile before it reached the main stream, had trees and bushes on either shore. Middleton suggested that they beat up this narrow strip of forest, lest they walk straight into an ambush. Woodfall thought the idea good, and twenty men scouted the thickets. They found nothing, and many in the train began to feel incredulous. That Comanche had been a mere boaster. He was probably still galloping away over the prairie, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the Santa Fé train. But Middleton yet distrusted. He seemed now to be in every sense the leader of the train, and he did it so quietly and with such indirection that Woodfall took him to be an assistant, and felt no offense. At his prompting, strong bodies of skirmishers were thrown forward on either bank of the dry creek bed, and now, increasing their pace somewhat, they rapidly drew near the river. It still seemed to Phil that nothing could happen. It was true that the skies were gray and somber, but there was no suggestion of an active and hostile presence, and now the river was only a hundred yards away. From his horse’s back he could see the surface of the stream--narrow, muddy, and apparently deep. But on the hither shore there was a gradual slope to its waters, and another of the same kind on the farther bank seemed to lead up among the trees. "It ain’t so deep as it looks," said an old frontiersman. "’Bout four feet, I should say. It’ll just ’bout hit the bottoms o’ our wagon beds."