At Medora it was customary, when the Little Missouri was high, to ride to the western side on the narrow footpath between the tracks on the trestle; and after the Marquis built a dam nearby for the purpose of securing ice of the necessary thickness for use in his refrigerating plant, a venturesome spirit now and then guided his horse across its slippery surface. It happened one day early in April that Fisher was at the river's edge, with a number of men, collecting certain tools and lumber which had been used in the cutting and hauling of the ice, when Roosevelt, riding Manitou, drew up, with the evident intention of making his way over the river on the dam. The dam, however, had disappeared. The ice had broken up, far up the river, and large cakes were floating past, accumulating at the bend below the town and raising the water level well above the top of the Marquis's dam. The river was what Joe Ferris had a way of calling "swimmin' deep for a giraffe."
"Where does the dam start?" asked Roosevelt.
"You surely won't try to cross on the dam," exclaimed Fisher, "when you can go and cross on the trestle the way the others do?"
"If Manitou gets his feet on that dam," Roosevelt replied, "he'll keep them there and we can make it finely."
"Well, it's more than likely," said Fisher, "that there's not much of the dam left."
"It doesn't matter, anyway. Manitou's a good swimmer and we're going across."
Fisher, with grave misgivings, indicated where the dam began. Roosevelt turned his horse into the river; Manitou did not hesitate.
Fisher shouted, hoping to attract the attention of some cowboy on the farther bank who might stand ready with a rope to rescue the venturesome rider. There was no response.
On the steps of the store, however, which he had inherited from the unstable Johnny Nelson, Joe Ferris was watching the amazing performance. He saw a rider coming from the direction of the Maltese Cross, and it seemed to him that the rider looked like Roosevelt. Anxiously he watched him pick his way out on the submerged dam.
Manitou, meanwhile, was living up to his reputation. Fearlessly, yet with infinite caution, he kept his course along the unseen path. Suddenly the watchers on the east bank and the west saw horse and rider disappear, swallowed up by the brown waters. An instant later they came in sight again. Roosevelt flung himself from his horse "on the downstream side," and with one hand on the horn of the saddle fended off the larger blocks of ice from before his faithful horse.