Part 12 (2/2)

To think the better, the better to collect his tired and scattered wits, he had stood his Winchester carefully upright between two spruce saplings, filled his pipe, lighted it with relish, and seated hiht down upon the wheeling logs in Blackwater Pot

It hile he was looking down into the terrible eddy that his efforts to think failed him and his pipe went out, and his interest in the fortunes of the captive logs gradually took the hold of a nightination One after one he would mark, snatched in by the capricious eddy and held back a little while froain, by inexplicable whi horror of the falls

He fell to personifying this captive log or that, endowing it with sentience, and i past the cleft in the rim, once more precariously reprieved

At last, either because he was more deeply exhausted than he knew, or because he had fairly dropped asleep with his eyes open and his fantastic is had slipped into a veritable dream, he felt his It was one which was just drawing around to the fateful cleft Would it win past once rasp of the outward suction, soft and insidious at first, then resistless as the falling of aheart Henderson strove to hold it back by sheer will and the wrestling of his eyes

But it was no use Slowly the head of the log turned outward fro fellows, quivered for a moment in the cleft, then shot sroan Henderson ca instinctively at the butt of the heavy Colt in his belt At the same instant the coil of a rope settled over his shoulders, pinioning his arms to his sides, and he was jerked backwards with a violence that fairly lifted hi root of the birch As he fell his head struck a stu more

When Henderson ca position He was lying face doards along a log, his s were in the water, on either side of the log Other logs ht hiled to wake hile revealed to hi At this his wits cleared up, with a pang that washe had ever known Then his nerve steadied itself back into its wonted control

He realized what had befallen hiuard He was just where, in his awful drea He was bound to one of the logs down in the great stone pot of Blackwater Eddy

For a second or two the blood in his veins ran ice, as he braced hie into the tras were overtaking and passing hi at all

Evidently, then, it was being held by some one He tried to look around, but found himself so fettered that he could only lift his face a few inches fro This enabled him to see the whole surface of the eddy and the fateful cleft, and out across the raving torrents into the white curtain that swayed above the cauldron But he could not, with the ut of his neck, see more than a couple of feet up the smooth stone sides of the pot

As he strained on his bonds he heard a harsh chuckle behind hi, suddenly loosed with a jerk which showed hian to move A moment later the sharp, steel-armed end of the pike-pole ca, within a dozen inches of Henderson's head, biting a secure hold The log again came to a stop Slowly, under pressure froing Henderson's right shoulder, and turning his face till he could see all the way up the sides of the pot

What he saw, on a ledge about three feet above the water, was Red Pichot, holding the pike-pole and s Mitchell, scowling, and gripping his knife as if he thirsted to settle up all scores on the instant I in Mitchell's make-up; and he was impatient--so far as he dared to be--of Pichot's fantastic procrastinatings

When Henderson's eyes lance of his enemy they were steady and cold as steel To Henderson, who had always, in every situation, felt himself master, there remained now no mastery but that of his oill, his own spirit In his estimation there could be no death so dreadful but that to let his spirit cower before his adversary would be tenfold worse Helpless though he was, in a position that was ignorotesquely horrible, and with the i doom close before his eyes, his nerve never failed him With cool contempt and defiance he met Red Pichot's smile

”I've always had an idee,” said the half-breed, presently, in a shty vibrations of the falls, ”ez how a chap on a log could paddle roun' this yere eddy fer a deuce of a while afore he'd hev to git sucked out into the sluice!”

As a theory this was undoubtedly interesting But Henderson made no answer

”I've held that idee,” continued Pichot, after a civil pause, ”though I hain't never yet found a ive it a fair trial But I feel sure ye're the e me I've left yer ars also, more or less, so's ye'll be able to paddle easy-like The walls of the pot's all worn so sh-water mark, there's nothin' to ketch on to, so there'll be nothin' to take off yer attention I'its tired an' feels like givin' up, why, don't consider oin' to bear no grudge ef ye don't quite come up to my expectations of ye”

As Pichot ceased his ue he jerked his pike-pole loose

Instantly the log began to forge forward, joining the reluctant procession For a fewhis eyes and his teeth and letting hio on with all speed to the inevitable dooed his asp he would ive fortune a chance to save hier resist, then it would be Fate's responsibility, not his The better to fight the awful fight that was before him, he put clear out of his mind the picture of Red Pichot and Mitchell perched on the brink above, ss of their victiotten them There was room now in all his faculties for but one i to which he was bound was on the extree of the procession, and Henderson realized that there was every probability of its being at once crowded out the moment it came to the exit With a desperate effort he succeeded in catching the log nearest to hi it ahead, and at last, just as they ca into its place The next second it shot quivering forth into the sluice, and Henderson, with a sudden cold sweat ju out all over him, circled slowly past the awful cleft A shout of ironical congratulation came to him from the watchers on the brink above But he hardly heard it, and heeded it not at all He was striving frantically, paddling forith one hand and backith the other, to steer his sluggish, deep-floating log from the outer to the inner circle He had already observed that to be on the outer edge would mean instant dooer underneath than on the surface, and his weighted log caught its force before the others did His arms were so bound that only from the elbon could he le which left hi--just in ti, too, sucked out into the abyss, and hi procession

This time Henderson did not knohether the watchers on the brink laughed or not as he won past the cleft He was sche tactics Steadily and rhythmically, but with his utmost force, he back-paddled with both hands and feet, till the progress of his log was al as it passed andin behind it By this tiain, by his desperate back-paddling, he checked his progress, and presently, by e in behind yet another log, so that when he again cas between hied instantly forth into the fury of the sluice, thrust forward, as it was, by the grip of the suction upon Henderson's own deep log Feeling himself on the point of utter exhaustion, he nevertheless continued back-paddling, and steering and working inward, till he had succeeded in getting three files of logs between hie

Then, al so loud in his ears that he could hardly hear the trath ht flow back speedily into his veins and nerves

Not till he had twicesucked out from his very elbow to leap into the white horror of the abyss, did Henderson stir The brief stillness, controlled by his will, had rested hi to husband his forces Up to the very last second that he could he wouldalways on the chance of the unexpected

With now just one log reo past the cleft, and saw that one log go out Then, being close to the wall of the pot, he tried to delay his progress by clutching at the stone with his left hand and by dragging upon it with his foot But the stone surface orn so s of the eddy that these efforts availed hiain, and only by thehi near by this time for him to seize and thrust forward in his place It was si, with hands and feet, against the outward draught of the current For nearly a , the current sucking at its head to turn it outward, and Henderson paddling against it not only with hands and feet, but with every ounce of will and nerve that his body contained At last, inch by inch, he conquered His log ain, that ironical voice ca the roar

Once past, Henderson fell to back-paddling again--not so violently now--till other logs came by within his reach and he could work himself into temporary safety behind them He was soon forced to the conviction that if he strove at just a shade under his ut always between hi But as now his utmost, he realized, would very soon be far beyond his powers Well, there was nothing to do but to keep on trying Around and around, and again and again around the terrible, s hi his eyes as the log beside hied out into the sluice Gradually, then, he felt hi horror, with the prolonged suspense between Hehimself back to the full possession of his faculties by another burst of fierce effort

Fiercely he caught at log after log, without a let-up, till, luck having favoured him for once, he found hie of the procession Then an idea flashed into his fast-clouding brain, and he cursed hiht of it before At the very centre of the eddy, of course, there le he attained it and avoided crossing it Working gently and warily he kept the log right across the axis of the eddy, where huddled a crowd of chips and sticks Here the log turned slowly, very slowly, on its own centre; and for a few seconds of exquisite relief Henderson let hiy He was roused by a sudden shot, and the spat of a heavy bullet into the log about three inches before his head

Even through the shaking thunder of the cataract he thought he recognized the voice of his own heavy Colt; and the idea of that tried weapon being turned against hi his head he lay and cursed, grinding his teeth impotently A few seconds later ca just before his right arm Then he understood, and woke up Pichot was a dead shot This was his intiain At the centre of the eddy he was not sufficiently entertaining to his executioners The idea of being shot in the head had not greatly disturbed him--he had felt as if it would be rather restful, on the whole But the thought of getting a bullet in his arm, which would merely disable hiht, shook hi with all his re once more into the horrible circuit The coreeted this move went past his ears unheard