The Man from the Bitter Roots

by Caroline Lockhart

  XIX

  AT THE BIG MALLARD

  The sun rose the next morning upon an eventful day in Bruce's life. Hewas backing his judgment--or was it only his mulish obstinacy?--againstthe conviction of the community. He knew that if it had not been fortheir personal friendship for himself the married men among his boatmenwould have backed out. There was excitement and tension in the air.

  The wide, yellow river was running like a mill-race, bending thewillows, lapping hungrily at the crumbling shore. The bank was blackwith groups of people, tearful wives and whimpering children, lugubriousneighbors, pessimistic citizens. Bruce called the men together andassigned each boat its place in line. Beyond explicit orders that noboatman should attempt to pass another and the barges must be kept asafe distance apart, he gave few instructions, for they had only tofollow his lead.

  "But if you see I'm in trouble, follow Saunders, who's second. And, Jim,do exactly as Smaltz tells you--you'll be on the hind sweep in the thirdboat with him."

  In addition to a head and hind sweepman each barge carried a bailer, forthere were rapids where at any stage of the water a boat partiallyfilled. The men now silently took their places and Bruce on his platformgripped the sweep-handle and nodded--

  "Cast off."

  The barge drifted a little distance slowly, then faster; the currentcaught it and it started on its journey like some great swift-swimmingbird. As he glided into the shadow of the bridge Saunders started;before he turned the bend Smaltz was waving his farewells, and asMeadows vanished from his sight the fourth boat, the heaviest loaded,was on its way. Bruce drew a deep breath, rest was behind him, the nextthree days would be hours of almost continual anxiety and strain.

  The forenoon of the first day was comparatively easy going, though therewere places enough for an amateur to wreck; but the real battle with theriver began at the Pine Creek Rapids--the battle that no experiencedboatman ever was rash enough to prophesy the result. The sinisterstream, with its rapids and whirlpools, its waterfalls and dangerouschannel-rocks, had claimed countless victims in the old days of the goldrush and there were years together since the white people had settledat Meadows that no boat had gone even a third of its length. Whereverthe name of the river was known its ill-fame went with it, and thosefeared it most who knew it best. Only the inexperienced, those toounfamiliar with water to recognize its perils so long as nothinghappened, spoke lightly of its dangers.

  Above the Pine Creek Rapids, Bruce swung into an eddy to tie up forlunch; besides, he wanted to see how Smaltz handled his sweep. Smaltzcame on, grinning, and Porcupine Jim, bare-headed, his yellow pompadourshining in the sun like corn-silk, responded instantly to every orderwith a stroke. They were working together perfectly, Bruce noted withrelief, and the landing Smaltz made in the eddy was quite as good as theone he had made himself.

  Once more Bruce had to admit that if Smaltz boasted he always made goodhis boast. He believed there was little doubt but that he was equal tothe work.

  An ominous roar was coming from the rapids, a continuous rumble likethunder far back in the hills. It was not the most cheerful sound bywhich to eat and the meal was brief. The gravity of the boatmen who knewthe river was contagious and the grin faded gradually from Smaltz'sface.

  Life preservers were dragged out within easy reach, the sweepmenreplaced their boots with rubber-soled canvas ties and cleared theirplatform of every nail and splinter. When all were ready, Bruce swungoff his hat and laid both hands upon his sweep.

  "Throw off the lines," he said quietly and his black eyes took on asteady shine.

  There was something creepy, portentous, in the seemingly deliberatequietness with which the boat crept from the still water of the eddytoward the channel.

  The bailer in the stern changed color and no one spoke. There was anoccasional ripple against the side of the boat but save for that distantroar no other sound broke the strained stillness. Bruce crouched overhis sweep like some huge cat, a cougar waiting to grapple with an enemyas wily and as formidable as himself. The boat slipped forward with akind of stealth and then the current caught it.

  Faster it moved, then faster and faster. The rocks and bushes at thewater's edge flew by. The sound was now a steady boom! boom! growinglouder with every heart-beat, until it was like the indescribable roarof a cloudburst in a canyon--an avalanche of water dropping from a greatheight.

  The boat was racing now with a speed which made the flying rocks andfoliage along the shore a blur--racing toward a white stretch ofchurning spray and foam that reached as far down the river as it waspossible to see. From the water which dashed itself to whiteness againstthe rocks there still came the mighty boom! boom! which had put fearinto many a heart.

  The barge was leaping toward it as though drawn by the invisible forceof some great suction pump. The hind sweepman gripped the handle of thesweep until his knuckles went white and Bruce over his shoulder watchedthe wild water with a jaw set and rigid.

  The heavy barge seemed to pause for an instant on the edge of aprecipice with half her length in mid-air before her bow dropped heavilyinto a curve of water that was like the hollow of a great green shell.The roar that followed was deafening. The sheet of water that broke overthe boat for an instant shut out the sun. Then she came up like a clumsyNewfoundland, with the water streaming from the platform and swishingthrough the machinery, and all on board drenched to the skin.

  Bruce stood at his post unshaken, throwing his great strength on thesweep this way and that--endeavoring to keep it in the centre of thecurrent--in the middle of the tortuous channel through which the boatwas racing like mad. And the hind-sweepman, doing his part, responded,with all the weight of body and strength he possessed, to Bruce'slow-voiced orders almost before they had left his lips.

  Quick and tremendous action was imperative for there were places where asingle instant's tardiness meant destruction. There was no time in thatmad rush to rectify mistakes. A miscalculation, a stroke of the sweeptoo little or too much, would send the heavily loaded boat with thattremendous, terrifying force behind it, crashing and splintering on arock like a flimsy-bottomed strawberry box.

  For all of seven miles Bruce never lifted his eyes, straining them as hewielded his sweep for the deceptive, submerged granite boulders overwhich the water slid in a thin sheet. Immovable, tense, he steered withthe sureness of knowledge and grim determination until the boat ceasedto leap and ahead lay a little stretch of peace.

  Then he turned and looked at the lolling tongues behind him that seemedstill reaching for the boat and straightening up he shook his fist:

  "You didn't get me that time, dog-gone you, and what's more you won't!"

  All three boats were coming, rearing and plunging, disappearing andreappearing. Anxiously he watched Smaltz work until a bend of the rivershut them all from sight. It was many miles before the riverstraightened out again but when it did he saw them all riding safely,with Smaltz holding his place in line.

  Stretches of white water came at frequent intervals all day but Bruceslept on the platform of his barge that night more soundly than he everhad dared hope. Each hour that passed, each rapid that they put behindthem, was so much done; he was so much nearer his goal.

  On the second night when they tied up, with the Devil's Teeth, the BlackCanyon and the Whiplash passed in safety, Bruce felt almost secure,although the rapid that he dreaded most remained for the third and lastday.

  The boatmen stood, a silent group, at The Big Mallard. "She's a bad one,boys--and looking wicked as I've ever seen her." There was a furrow ofanxiety between Bruce's heavy brows.

  Every grave face was a shade paler and Porcupine Jim's eyes looked liketwo blue buttons sewed on white paper as he stared.

  "I wish I was back in Meennyso-ta." The unimaginative Swede's voice wasplaintive.

  "We dare not risk the other channel, Saunders," said Bruce briefly, "thewater's hardly up enough for that."

  "I don't believe we could make it," Saunders answered; "it's too long achance."<
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  Smaltz was studying the rocks and current intently, as though to impressupon his mind every twist and turn. His face was serious but he made nocomment and walked back in silence to the eddy above where the boatswere tied.

  It was the only rapid where they had stopped to "look out the trailahead," but a peculiarity of the Big Mallard was that the channelchanged with the varying stages of the water and it was too dangerous atany stage to trust to luck.

  It was a stretch of water not easy to describe. Words seemcolorless--inadequate to convey the picture it presented or the sense ofawe it inspired. Looking at it from among the boulders on the shore itseemed the last degree of madness for human beings to pit theirLilliputian strength against that racing, thundering flood. Certain itwas that The Big Mallard was the supreme test of courage andboatmanship.

  The river, running like a mill-race, shot straight and smooth down gradeuntil it reached a high, sharp, jutting ledge of granite, where it madea sharp turn. The main current made a close swirl and then fairlyleaping took a sudden rush for a narrow passageway between two greatboulders, one of which rose close to shore and the other nearer thecentre of the river. The latter being covered thinly with a sheet ofwater which shot over it to drop into a dark hole like a well, risingagain to strike another rock immediately below and curve back. For threehundred yards or more the river seethed and boiled, a stretch of roaringwhiteness, as though its growing fury had culminated in this foaming fitof rage, and from it came uncanny sounds like children crying, womenscreaming.

  Bruce's eyes were shining brilliantly with the excitement of thedesperate game ahead when he put into the river, but nothing couldexceed the carefulness, the caution with which he worked his boat out ofthe eddy so that when the current caught it it should catch it right.Watching the landmarks on either shore, measuring distances, calculatingthe consequences of each stroke, he placed the clumsy barge where hewould have it, with all the accurate skill of a good billiard playermaking a shot.

  The boat reached the edge of the current; then it caught it full. With ajump like a race-horse at the signal it was shooting down the tobogganslide of water toward the jutting granite ledge. The blanched bailer inthe stern could have touched it with his hand as the boat whipped aroundthe corner, clearing it by so small a margin that it seemed to him hisheart stood still.

  Bruce's muscles turned to steel as he gripped the sweep handle for thelast mad rush. He looked the personification of human daring. The windblew his hair straight back. The joy of battle blazed in his eyes. Hisface was alight with a reckless exultation. But powerful, fearless as hewas, it did not seem as though it were within the range of human skillor possibilities to place a boat in that toboggan slide of water so thatit would cut the current diagonally, miss the rock nearest shore andshoot across to miss the channel boulder and that yawning hole beneath.But he did, though he skimmed the wide-mouthed well so close that thebailer stared into its dark depths with bulging eyes.

  The boat leaped in the spray below, but the worst was passed and Bruceand his hind sweepman exchanged the swift smile of satisfaction whichmen have for each other at such a time.

  "Keep her steady--straight away." He had not dared yet to lift his eyesto look behind save for that one glance.

  "My God! they're comin' right together!"

  The sharp cry from the hind sweepman made him turn. They had rounded theledge abreast and Smaltz's boat inside was crowding Saunders hard.Saunders and his helper were working with superhuman strength to throwthe boat into the outer channel in the fraction of time before itstarted on the final shoot. Could they do it! could they! Bruce felt hislungs--his heart--something inside him hurt with his sharp intake ofbreath as he watched that desperate battle whose loss meant not onlysunk machinery but very likely death.

  Bruce's hands were still full getting his own boat to safety. He darednot look too long behind.

  "They're goin' to make it! They're almost through! They're safe!"Then--shrilly--"They're gone! they've lost a sweep."

  Bruce turned quickly at his helper's cry of consternation, turned to seethe hind-sweep wildly threshing the air while the boat spun around andaround in the boiling water, disappearing, reappearing, sinking a littlelower with each plunge. Then, at the risk of having every rib crushedin, they saw the bailer throw his body across the sweep and hold it downbefore it quite leaped from its pin. The hind-sweepman was scramblingwildly to reach and hold the handle as it beat the air. He got it--heldit for a second--then it was wrenched out of his hand. He tried againand again before he held it, but finally Bruce said huskily----

  "They'll make it--they'll make it sure if Saunders can hold her a littlelonger off the rocks."

  His own boat had reached quieter water. Simultaneously, it seemed, bothhe and his helper thought of Smaltz. They took their eyes from the boatin trouble and the hind-sweepman's jaw dropped. He saidunemotionally--dully--as he might have said--"I'm sick; I'mhungry"--"They've struck."

  Yes--they had struck. If Bruce had not been so absorbed he might haveheard the bottom splintering when she hit the rock.

  Her bow shot high into the air and settled at the stern. As she slidoff, tilted, filled and sunk, Smaltz and Porcupine Jim both jumped. Thenthe river made a bend which shut it all from Bruce's sight. It was halfa mile before he found a landing. He tied up and walked back, unexcited,not hurrying, with a curious quietness inside.

  Smaltz and Jim were fighting when he got there. Smaltz was sittingastride the latter's chest. There were epithets and recriminations,accusations, counter-charges, oaths. The Swede was crying and a littlestream of red was trickling toward his ear. Bruce eyed him calmly,contemplatively, thinking what a face he made, and how ludicrous helooked with the sand matted in his corn-silk hair and covering him likea tamale casing of corn-meal as it stuck to his wet clothes.

  He left them and walked up the river where the rock rose like a monumentto his hopes. With his hands on his hips he watched the water ripplingaround it, slipping over the spot where the boat lay buried with someportion of every machine upon the works while like a bolt from the bluethe knowledge came to him that since the old Edison type was obsoletethe factories no longer made duplicates of the parts.