'Twon't take you long to git over it,' added Hopkins, anxious to give
his grain of consolation; 'you look, now, like quite a healthy young
man.'

The current was quite rapid, and it was no light labor to tow the
helpless hunter ashore; but the two friends succeeded, and at length
drew him out upon the land and stretched him upon the sward.

The exertion of keeping their charge afloat, and breasting the current
at the same time, carried them a considerable distance downstream, and
they landed perhaps an eighth of a mile below where the main body of
shivering wretches were congregated.

'Do yees feel aisy?' inquired Mickey, when the hunter had been laid
upon the grass, beneath some overhanging bushes.

'Yes, I'll soon git over it but woofh! that thar war a whack of the
biggest kind I got. It has made me powerful weak.'

'What might it have been naow!' inquired Hopkins.

'Can't sayfust thing I know'd, I didn't know nothin'remember suthin'
took me back the head, and the next thing I kerwholloped in the
water.'

The three men had lost everything except what was on their bodies when
the catastrophe occurred. Their horses were gone, and they hadn't a
gun between them; nothing but two revolvers, and about a half dozen
charges for each.