The Man from the Bitter Roots

by Caroline Lockhart

  XX

  "THE FORLORN HOPE"

  It was August. "Old Turtle-back" was showing up at the diggin's and theriver would reach low water-mark with less than half a foot.

  Pole in hand, big John Johnson of the crew stood on the rocking raftanchored below The Big Mallard and opposite the rock where the boat hadsunk and smiled his solemn smile at Bruce.

  "Don't know but what we ought to name her and break a bottle of ketchupover the bow of this here craft a'fore we la'nch her."

  "The Forlorn Hope, The Last Chance, or something appropriate like that,"Bruce suggested, although there was too much truth in the jest for himto smile. This attempt to recover the sunken boat was literally that. Ifit was gone, he was done. His work, all that he had been through, waswasted effort; the whole an expensive fiasco proving that the majorityare sometimes right.

  The suspense which Bruce had been under for more than two months wouldsoon be ended one way or the other. Day and night it seemed to him hehad thought of little else than the fate of the sunken boat. His brainwas tired with conjecturing as to what had happened to her when thewater had reached its flood. Had the force of it shoved her into deeperwater? Had the sand which the water carried at that period filled andcovered her? Had the current wrenched her to pieces and imbedded themachinery deep in the sediment and mud?

  Questioning his own judgment, doubtful as to whether he was right orwrong, he had gone on with the work as though the machinery was to berecovered, yet all the time he was filled with sickening doubts. But itseemed as though his inborn tenacity of purpose, his mulish obstinacy,would not let him quit, driving him on to finish the flume and trestle40 feet high with every green log and timber snaked in and put in placeby hand; to finish the pressure box and penstock and the 200 feet ofpipe-line riveted on the broiling hillside when the metal was almost toohot to touch with the bare hand. The foundation of the power house wasready for the machinery and the Pelton water-wheel had been installed.It had taken time and money and grimy sweat. Was it all in vain?

  Asking himself the question for which ten minutes at most would find theanswer Bruce sprang upon the tilting raft and nodded--

  "Shove off."

  As Bruce balanced himself on the raft while the Swede poled slowlytoward the rock that now arose from the water the size of a small house,he was thankful that the face can be made at times to serve as so good amask. Not for the world would he have had John Johnson guess how afraidhe was, how actually scared to death when the raft bumped against thehuge brown rock and he knew that he must look over the side.

  Holding the raft steady, Johnson kept his eyes on Bruce's face as hepeered into the river and searched the bottom. Not a muscle of Bruce'sface moved nor an eyelid flickered in the tense silence. Then he saidquietly--

  "John, she's gone."

  A look of sympathy softened the Swede's homely face.

  Bruce straightened up.

  "Gone!" he reiterated--"gone."

  Johnson might guess a little but he could never guess the whole of thedespair which seemed to crush Bruce like an overwhelming weight as hestood looking at the sun shining upon the back of the twisting greensnake of a river that he had thought he could beat; Johnson never hadrisked and lost anybody's money but his own, he never had allowed awoman he loved to build her hopes upon his judgment and success. To havefailed so quickly and so completely--oh, the mortification of it! thechagrin!

  Finally Johnson said gently:

  "Guess we might as well go back."

  Bruce winced. It reminded him what going back meant. To discharge thecrew and telegraph his failure to Helen Dunbar, Harrah and the rest,then to watch the lumber dry out and the cracks widen in the flume, therust take the machinery and the water-wheel go to ruin--_that's_ whatgoing back meant--taking up his lonely, pointless life where he had leftit off, growing morbid, eccentric, like the other failures sulking inthe hills.

  "There were parts of two dynamos, one 50 horse-power motor, a keeper, anda field, beside the fly-wheel in the boat." Bruce looked absently atJohnson but he was talking to himself. "I wonder, I wonder"--a gleam ofhope lit up his face--"John, go up to Fritz Yandell's and borrow thatcompass that he fished out of the river."

  Johnson looked puzzled but started in a hurry. In an hour or so he wasback, still puzzled; compasses he thought were for people who were lost.

  "It's only a chance, John, another forlorn hope, but there's magneticiron in those dynamos and the needle might show it if we can get abovethe boat."

  Johnson's friendly eye shone instantly with interest. Starting from thespot of the wreck, he poled slowly down the river, keeping in line withthe rock. Ten, twenty, thirty--fifty feet below the rock they poled andthe needle did not waver from the north.

  "She'd go to pieces before she ever travelled this far." The glimmer ofhope in Bruce's eyes had died. "Either the needle won't locate her orshe's drifted into the channel. If that's the case we'll never get herout."

  Then Johnson poled back and forth, zig-zagging from bank to bank,covering every foot of space, and still the needle hung steadfastly toits place.

  They were all of fifty feet from where the boat had sunk and some fortyfeet from shore when Bruce cried sharply:

  "Hold her steady! Wait!"

  The needle wavered--agitated unmistakably--then the parts of the dynamosand the motor in the boat dragged the reluctant point of steel slowly,flutteringly, but surely, from its affinity, the magnetic North.

  Bruce gulped at something in his throat before he spoke----

  "John, we've GOT her!"

  "I _see_ her!" Johnson executed a kind of dance on the rocking raft."Lookee," he pointed into the exasperatingly dense water, "see herthere--like a shadow--her bow is shoved up four--five feet above herstern. Got her?"

  Bruce nodded, then they looked at each other joyfully, and Bruceremembered afterward that they had giggled hysterically like two boys.

  "The water'll drop a foot yet," Bruce said excitedly. "Can you dive?"

  "First cousin to a musk-rat," the Swede declared.

  "We'll build a raft like a hollow square, use a tripod and bring up thechain blocks. What we can't raise with a grappling-hook, we'll go after.John, we're going to get it--every piece!"

  "Bet yer life we'll get her!" John cried responsively, "if I has to gitdrunk to do it and stand to my neck in water for a week."