第16章

After running the strangers' boat through, whose name proved to be Breck, Kit and Shorty met his wife, a slender, girlish woman whose blue eyes were moist with gratitude.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 passage, accelerated its speed frightfully, and was upflung unto 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.God!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 thecircle.

Three times it went around, each time so close to the rocks on whichKit 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 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 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 coldif 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.