Part 7 (1/2)

”I wish I could get the courage to,” the other confessed. ”I've been here for hours. The longer I look, the more afraid I am. I am not a boatman, and I have with me only my nephew, who is a young boy, and my wife. If you get through safely, will you run my boat through?”

Kit looked at Shorty, who delayed to answer.

”He's got his wife with him,” Kit suggested. Nor had he mistaken his man.

”Sure,” Shorty affirmed. ”It was just what I was stopping to think about. I knew there was some reason I ought to do it.”

Again they turned to go, but Sprague and Stine made no movement.

”Good luck, Smoke,” Sprague called to him. ”I'll--er--” He hesitated.

”I'll just stay here and watch you.”

”We need three men in the boat, two at the oars and one at the steering-sweep,” Kit said quietly.

Sprague looked at Stine.

”I'm d.a.m.ned if I do,” said that gentleman. ”If you're not afraid to stand here and look on, I'm not.”

”Who's afraid?” Sprague demanded hotly.

Stine retorted in kind, and their two men left them in the thick of a squabble.

”We can do without them,” Kit said to Shorty. ”You take the bow with a paddle, and I'll handle the steering-sweep. All you'll have to do is just to help keep her straight. Once we're started, you won't be able to hear me, so just keep on keeping her straight.”

They cast off the boat and worked out to middle in the quickening current. From the Canyon came an ever-growing roar. The river sucked in to the entrance with the smoothness of molten gla.s.s, and here, as the darkening walls received them, Shorty took a chew of tobacco and dipped his paddle. The boat leaped on the first crests of the ridge, and they were deafened by the uproar of wild water that reverberated from the narrow walls and multiplied itself. They were half-smothered with flying spray. At times Kit could not see his comrade at the bow. It was only a matter of two minutes, in which time they rode the ridge three-quarters of a mile and emerged in safety and tied to the bank in the eddy below.

Shorty emptied his mouth of tobacco juice--he had forgotten to spit--and spoke.

”That was bear-meat,” he exulted, ”the real bear-meat. Say, we want a few, didn't we? Smoke, I don't mind tellin' you in confidence that before we started I was the gosh-dangdest scaredest man this side of the Rocky Mountains. Now I'm a bear-eater. Come on an' we'll run that other boat through.”

Midway back, on foot, they encountered their employers, who had watched the pa.s.sage from above.

”There comes the fish-eaters,” said Shorty. ”Keep to win'ward.”

After running the stranger's boat through, whose name proved to be Breck, Kit and Shorty met his wife, a slender, girlish woman whose blue eyes were moist with grat.i.tude. Breck himself tried to hand Kit fifty dollars, and then attempted it on Shorty.

”Stranger,” was the latter's rejection, ”I come into this country to make money outa the ground an' not outa my fellow critters.”

Breck rummaged in his boat and produced a demijohn of whiskey. Shorty's hand half went out to it and stopped abruptly. He shook his head.

”There's that blamed White Horse right below, an' they say it's worse than the Box. I reckon I don't dast tackle any lightning.”

Several miles below they ran in to the bank, and all four walked down to look at the bad water. The river, which was a succession of rapids, was here deflected toward the right bank by a rocky reef. The whole body of water, rus.h.i.+ng crookedly into the narrow pa.s.sage, accelerated its speed frightfully and was up-flung into huge waves, white and wrathful. This was the dread Mane of the White Horse, and here an even heavier toll of dead had been exacted. On one side of the Mane was a corkscrew curl-over and suck-under, and on the opposite side was the big whirlpool. To go through, the Mane itself must be ridden.

”This plum rips the strings outa the Box,” Shorty concluded.

As they watched, a boat took the head of the rapids above. It was a large boat, fully thirty feet long, laden with several tons of outfit, and handled by six men. Before it reached the Mane it was plunging and leaping, at times almost hidden by the foam and spray.

Shorty shot a slow, sidelong glance at Kit and said: ”She's fair smoking, and she hasn't hit the worst. They've hauled the oars in. There she takes it now. G.o.d! She's gone! No; there she is!”