The Promise Part 27

To watch from the bank and see men whose boast it is that they "c'd ride a bubble if their calks wouldn't p.r.i.c.k it," leap lightly from log to rolling log; hesitate, run its length, and leap to another as it sinks under them, nothing looks simpler.

But the greener who confidently tries it for the first time instantly finds himself in a position uncomfortably precarious, if not actually dangerous.

Bill found, to his disgust, that the others had gained the opposite bank before he had reached the middle, where he paused, balancing uncertainly and hesitating whether to go ahead or return.

The log upon which he stood oscillated dizzily, and as he sprang for another, his foot slipped and he fell heavily, his peavey clattering downward among the promiscuously tangled logs, to come to rest some six feet beneath him, where the white-water curled foaming among the logs of the lower tier.

Bill glanced hastily about him, expecting the shouts of laughter and good-natured chaffing which is the inevitable aftermath of the clumsy misadventure of a riverman. The bateau men were just gaining the sh.o.r.e and the attention of the others was engaged elsewhere, so that none noticed the accident, and, with a grin of relief, Bill clambered down to recover his peavey.

And Moncrossen, peering over the top of the jam, took in the situation at a glance--the river apparently clear of men, and the greener, invisible to those on sh.o.r.e, crawling about among the logs in the center of the pile.

It was the moment for which he had waited. Even the most careful planning could not have created a situation more to his liking. At last the greener was "his."

"There she goes!" he roared, and turning, slid hastily from the top and leaped into the waiting bateau.

"Let 'er go!" he shouted.

Fallon and Stromberg leaped forward and simultaneously their peaveys bit into the smaller of the two key-logs.

Both big men heaved and strained, once, twice, thrice, and the log turned slowly, allowing the end of the other to pa.s.s.

The logs trembled for an instant, then, forced by the enormous weight behind them, shot sidewise, crossed each other, and pressed the tree-trunk deep under the boiling water.

A mighty quiver ran through the whole ma.s.s of the jam, it balanced for a shuddering instant, then with a mighty rush, let go.

Over the side of the bateau tumbled Fallon and Stromberg, sprawling on the bottom at the feet of the boss, while the man in the bow cast off the light line.

The next instant the heavy boat leaped clear of the water, overriding, climbing to the very summit of the pounding, plunging logs which threatened each moment to crush and batter through her sides and bottom.

The strong, new line was singing taut to the pull of the heavy bateau which was being gradually crowded sh.o.r.eward by the sweep of the down-rushing logs.

Suddenly a mighty shout went up from those on the bank. The men in the bateau looked, and there, almost in the middle of the stream, was the greener leaping from log to log of the wildly pitching jam.

They stared horror-stricken, with tense, blanched faces. Each instant seemed as if it must be his last, for they knew that no man alive could hope to keep his feet in the mad rush and sweep of the tumbling, tossing drive.

Yet the greener was keeping his feet. Time and again he recovered his balance when death seemed imminent, and amid wild shouts and yells of encouragement, climbing, leaping, running, stumbling, he worked his way sh.o.r.eward.

He was almost opposite the bateau now, and Stromberg, hastily coiling the light line, leaped into the bow. Then, just when it seemed possible the greener might make it, a huge log shot upward from the depths and fell with a crash squarely across the log upon which he was riding.

A cry of horror went up from half a hundred throats as the man was thrown high in the air and fell back into the foaming white-water that showed here and here through the thinning tangle of logs.

The next instant a hundred logs pa.s.sed over the spot, drawn down by the suck of the rapid.

CHAPTER XXV

"THE-MAN-WHO-CANNOT-DIE"

During the infinitesimal interim between the shock which hurled him into the air, and the closing of the waters of Blood River over his head, Bill Carmody's brain received a confusion of flashlike impressions: The futile shouting and waving of arms upon the man-crowded bank of the river; the sudden roar of the rapid; the tense face of Fallon; the set jaw of big Stromberg as he stood ready to shoot out the line; and, above all, the leering eyes and sneering lips of Moncrossen.

The accident happened a scant sixty feet from the side of the straining bateau, and the features of its occupants were brought out strongly in the clear morning light.

As he disappeared beneath the surface Bill drew a long breath and, opening his eyes, looked upward. A couple of swift strokes and his head emerged where a small patch of light showed an open s.p.a.ce.

Reaching out he grasped the rough bark of a log, shook the icy water from his eyes, and reviewed his situation. His first thought was of the bateau, but a sh.o.r.eward glance revealed only the swiftly gliding trunks of the forest wall with the bateau and the gesticulating crowd but a blur in the distance.

Near him floated smoothly a huge forked trunk from whose p.r.o.ngs protruded the stubs of lopped limbs. Releasing his hold, he swam toward the big log which floated b.u.t.t foremost among its lesser neighbors, and, diving, came up between the forks and gripped firmly a limb stub.

On every hand thousands of logs floated quietly, seemingly motionless as logs on the bosom of a mill-pond. Only the rushing walls of pine on either side of the narrow river-aisle spoke of the terrific speed of the drive.

Suddenly, as the great forked log swept around a bend, the peril of his situation dawned upon him in all its horror. The dull roar changed to a mighty bellow where the high-tossed white-water leaped high among the submerged rocks of the rapid, and above its thunder sounded the heavy rumble of the shock and grind of thousands of wildly pitching logs.

Only for a moment did he gaze out over the heaving forefront of the drive. His log shot forward with the speed of a bullet as it was seized in the grip of the current; the next moment it leaped clear of the water and plunged blindly into the whirling tossing pandemonium of the white-water gut.

Bill clung desperately to the stub, expecting each moment to be his last. Close in the fork he was protected on either side from the hammering blows of the caroming timber. All about him the air was filled with flying logs which ripped the bark from each other's sides, while the shock and batter of the wild stampede threatened momentarily to tear loose his grip.

It seemed to the desperate man that hours pa.s.sed as he clung doggedly to the huge trunk which trembled and shivered and plunged wildly at the pounding impact, when suddenly it brought up against a half-submerged rock, stopped dead, grated and jarred at the crash of following logs, poised for an instant, and then slanted into deeper water, while up the man's leg shot a twisting, wrenching pain, sickening--nerve-killing in its intensity.

His grasp relaxed and his whole body went limp and lifeless as the big log overrode the last rock barrier and was caught in the placid, slowly revolving water of a sh.o.r.e eddy.

Half concealed by the naked tangle of underbrush on the verge of a low bluff where the rock-ribbed rapid broke suddenly into smooth water, an old Indian woman and a beautiful half-breed girl of twenty crouched close, watching the logs plunge through the seething white-water.

The dark eyes of the girl shone with excitement, but this was no new sight to the eyes of the older woman who in times past had watched other drives on other rivers. As she looked her frown deepened and the hundred little weather wrinkles in the tight-drawn smoke-darkened skin showed thin and plain, like the crisscross cracks in old leather.

The shriveled lips pressed tight against the hard, snag-studded gums, and in the narrow, lashless black eyes glowed the spark of undying hate.

The sight of the rushing logs brought bitter memories. These were things of the white man--and, among white men, only Lacombie was good--and Lacombie was dead.

Young Lacombie, who came into the North with a song on his lips to work for the great company whose word is law, and whose long arm is destiny.

Lacombie, who, in the long ago had won her, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, the daughter of Kas-ka-tan, the chief, who was called the most beautiful maiden among all the tribes of the rivers.

The old crone drew her blanket about her and shuddered slightly as she glanced from her own withered, clawlike hands, upon which dark veins stood out like the cords of a freight bale, to the fresh beauty of the young girl at her side who gazed in awed fascination upon the rush of the pounding logs.

Lacombie was dead, and Pierre, his son, who was her first-born, was dead also; and his blood was upon the head of the men of the logs. For he had left the post and gone among white men, and she, the mother who bore him, and Lacombie, his father, had seen him no more.

Years slipped by, bringing other children; Jacques, in whom the white blood of Lacombie was lost in the blending, and the girl who crouched at her side.

Long after, from the lips of a pa.s.sing _Bois brule_, she heard the story of Pierre's death--how, crazed by whisky and the taunts of a drunken companion, he had leaped upon a pa.s.sing log and plunged into the foaming white chute of the dreaded Saw Tooth rapid through which no man had pa.s.sed and lived.

_Sacre._ He was brave! For he came nearly to the end of the rapid, standing upon his log--but, only nearly to the end--for there he was dashed and broken upon the rocks in the swirl of the leaping white-water, and here was she, his mother, gazing at other logs in the rush of other rapids.

She started at the sudden clutch at her blanket and glanced sharply at the girl who strained forward upon the very edge of the bluff and stared, not at the rapid, but straight downward where a few logs revolved lazily in the grip of the sh.o.r.e eddy.