"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, rushing 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!"
Big as the boat was, it had been buried from sight in the flying smother between crests. The next moment, in the thick of the Mane, the boat leaped up a crest and into view. To Kit"s amazement he saw the whole long bottom clearly outlined. The boat, for the fraction of an instant, was in the air, the men sitting idly in their places, all save one in the stern, who stood at the steering-sweep. Then came the downward plunge into the trough and a second disappearance. Three times the boat leaped and buried itself, then those on the bank saw its nose take the whirlpool as it slipped off the Mane. The steersman, vainly opposing with his full weight on the steering-gear, surrendered to the whirlpool and helped the boat to take the circle.
Three times it went around, each time so close to the rocks on which Kit and Shorty stood that either could have leaped on board. The steersman, a man with a reddish beard of recent growth, waved his hand to them. The only way out of the whirlpool was by the Mane, and on the third round the boat entered the Mane obliquely at its upper end. Possibly out of fear of the draw of the whirlpool, the steersman did not attempt to straighten out quickly enough. When he did, it was too late. Alternately in the air and buried, the boat angled the Mane and was sucked into and down through the stiff wall of the corkscrew on the opposite side of the river. A hundred feet below, boxes and bales began to float up. Then appeared the bottom of the boat and the scattered heads of six men. Two managed to make the bank in the eddy below. The others were drawn under, and the general flotsam was lost to view, borne on by the swift current around the bend.
There was a long minute of silence. Shorty was the first to speak.
"Come on," he said. "We might as well tackle it. My feet"ll get cold if I stay here any longer."
"We"ll smoke some," Kit grinned at him.
"And you"ll sure earn your name," was the rejoinder. Shorty turned to their employers. "Comin"?" he queried.
Perhaps the roar of the water prevented them from hearing the invitation.
Shorty and Kit tramped back through a foot of snow to the head of the rapids and cast off the boat. Kit was divided between two impressions: one, of the caliber of his comrade, which served as a spur to him; the other, likewise a spur, was the knowledge that old Isaac Bellew, and all the other Bellews, had done things like this in their westward march of empire. What they had done, he could do. It was the meat, the strong meat, and he knew, as never before, that it required strong men to eat such meat.
"You"ve sure got to keep the top of the ridge," Shorty shouted at him, the plug of tobacco lifting to his mouth, as the boat quickened in the quickening current and took the head of the rapids.
Kit nodded, swayed his strength and weight tentatively on the steering-gear, and headed the boat for the plunge.
Several minutes later, half-swamped and lying against the bank in the eddy below the White Horse, Shorty spat out a mouthful of tobacco juice and shook Kit"s hand.
"Meat! Meat!" Shorty chanted. "We eat it raw! We eat it alive!"
At the top of the bank they met Breck. His wife stood at a little distance. Kit shook his hand.
"I"m afraid your boat can"t make it," he said. "It is smaller than ours and a bit cranky."
The man pulled out a row of bills.
"I"ll give you each a hundred if you run it through."
Kit looked out and up the tossing Mane of the White Horse. A long, gray twilight was falling, it was turning colder, and the landscape seemed taking on a savage bleakness.
"It ain"t that," Shorty was saying. "We don"t want your money. Wouldn"t touch it nohow. But my pardner is the real meat with boats, and when he says yourn ain"t safe I reckon he knows what he"s talkin" about."
Kit nodded affirmation, and chanced to glance at Mrs Breck. Her eyes were fixed upon him, and he knew that if ever he had seen prayer in a woman"s eyes he was seeing it then. Shorty followed his gaze and saw what he saw. They looked at each other in confusion and did not speak.
Moved by the common impulse, they nodded to each other and turned to the trail that led to the head of the rapids. They had not gone a hundred yards when they met Stine and Sprague coming down.
"Where are you going?" the latter demanded.
"To fetch that other boat through," Shorty answered.
"No, you"re not. It"s getting dark. You two are going to pitch camp."
So huge was Kit"s disgust that he forebore to speak.