The Valley of Silent Men

by James Oliver Curwood

  CHAPTER XXII

  For a brief space after the breaking of the scow-sweep Kent did notmove. He felt Marette's arms closing tighter and tighter around hisneck. He caught a flash of her upturned face, the flush of a fewmoments before replaced by a deathly pallor, and he knew that withoutexplanation on his part she understood the almost hopeless situationthey were in. He was glad of that. It gave him a sense of relief toknow that she would not go into a panic, no matter what happened. Hebowed his face to hers, so that he felt the velvety smoothness of hercheek. She turned her mouth to him, and they kissed. His embrace wascrushing for a moment, fierce with his love for her, desperate with hisdetermination to keep her from harm.

  His brain was working swiftly. There was possibly one chance in tenthat the scow--rudderless and without human guidance--would sweepsafely between the black walls and jagged teeth of the Chute. Even ifthe scow made this passage, they would be in the power of the Police,unless some splendid whimsicality of Fate sent it ashore before thelaunch came through.

  On the other hand, if it was carried far enough through the lowerrapids, they might swim. And--there was the rifle laying across thepack. That, after all, was his greatest hope--if the scow made thepassage of the Chute. The bulwarks of the scow would give them greaterprotection than the thinner walls of the launch would give to theirpursuers. In his heart there raged suddenly a hatred for that Law ofwhich he had been a part. It was running them to destruction, and hewould fight. There would not be more than three men in the launch, andhe would kill them, if killing became a necessity.

  They were speeding like an unbridled race-horse through the boilingrapids now. The clumsy craft under their feet twisted and turned. Thedripping tops of great rocks shot past a little out of their channel.And Marette, with one arm still about his neck, was facing the perilahead with him. They could see the Dragon's Tooth, black and grim,waiting squarely in their path. In another hundred and twenty secondsthey would be upon it--or past it. There was no time for Kent toexplain. He sprang to his pack, whipped a knife from his pocket, andcut the stout babiche rope that reenforced its straps. In anotherinstant he was back at Marette's side, fastening the babiche about herwaist. The other end he gave to her, and she tied it about his wrist.She smiled as she finished the knot. It was a strange, tense littlesmile, but it told him that she was not afraid, that she had greatfaith in him, and knew what the babiche meant.

  "I can swim, Jeems," she cried. "If we strike the rock."

  She did not finish because of the sudden cry that came to his lips. Hehad almost forgotten the most vital of all things. There was not timeto unlace his boots. With his knife he cut the laces in a singledownward thrust. Swiftly he freed his own feet, and Marette's. Even inthis hour of their peril it thrilled him to see how quickly Maretteresponded to the thoughts that moved him. She tore at her outergarments and slipped them off as he wriggled out of his heavy shirt. Aslim, white-underskirted little thing, her glorious hair flying in thewind that came through the Chute, her throat and arms bare, her eyesshining at Kent, she came again close within his arms, and her lipsframed softly his name. And a moment later she turned her face up, andcried quickly,

  "Kiss me, Jeems--kiss me--"

  Her warm lips clung to his, and her bare arms encircled his neck withthe choking grip of a child's. He looked ahead and braced himself onhis feet, and after that he buried one of his hands in the soft mass ofher hair and pressed her face against his naked breast.

  Ten seconds later the crash came. Squarely amidships the scow struckthe Dragon's Tooth. Kent was prepared for the shock, but his attempt tohold his feet, with Marette in his arms, was futile. The bulwark savedthem from crashing against the slippery face of the rock itself. Amidthe roar of water that filled his ears he was conscious of the rendingof timbers. The scow bulged up with the mighty force beneath, and for asecond or two it seemed as though that force was going to overturn andsubmerge it. Then slowly it began to slip off the nose of the rock.

  Holding to the rail with one hand and clinging to Marette with hisother arm, Kent was gripped in the horror of what was happening. Thescow was slipping _into the right hand channel_! In that channel thereas no hope--only death.

  Marette was squarely facing the thing ahead. In this hour when eachsecond held a lifetime of suspense Kent saw that she understood. Yetshe did not cry out. Her face was dead white. Her hair and arms andshoulders were dripping with the splash of water. But she was notterrified as he had seen terror. When she turned her eyes to him, hewas amazed by the quiet, calm look that was in them. Her lips trembled.

  His soul expressed itself in a wordless cry that was drowned in anothercrash of timber as a jutting snag of the Tooth crumpled up the littlecabin as if it had been pasteboard. He felt overwhelming him the surgeof a thing mightier than the menace of the Chute. He could not lose! Itwas inconceivable. Impossible! With _her_ to fight for--this slim,wonderful creature who smiled at him even as she saw death.

  And then, as his arm closed still more tightly about her, the monstersof power and death gave him their answer. The scow swung free of theDragon's Tooth, half-filled with water. Its cracked and broken carcasswas caught in the rock jaws of the eastern channel. It ceased to be afloating thing. It was inundation, dissolution, utter obliterationalmost without shock. And Kent found himself in the thundering rush ofwaters, holding to Marette.

  For a space they were under. Black water and white froth fumed andexploded over them. It seemed an age before fresh air filled Kent'snostrils. He thrust Marette upward and cried out to her. He heard heranswer.

  "I'm all right--Jeems!"

  His swimming prowess was of little avail now. He was like a chip. Allhis effort was to make of himself a barrier between Marette's soft bodyand the rocks. It was not the water itself that he feared, but therocks.

  There were scores and hundreds of them, like the teeth of a mightygrinding machine. And the jaw was a quarter of a mile in length. Hefelt the first shock, the second, the third. He was not thinking oftime or distance, but was fighting solely to keep himself betweenMarette and death. The first time he failed, a blind sort of rageburned in his brain.

  He saw her white body strained over a slippery, deluge-worn rock. Herhead was flung back, and he saw the long masses of her hair streamingout in the white froth, and he thought for an instant that her fragilebody had been broken. He fought still more fiercely after that. And sheknew for what he was fighting. Only in an unreal sort of way was heconscious of shock and hurt. It gave him no physical pain. Yet hesensed the growing dizziness in his head, an increasing lack ofstrength in his arms and body.

  They were halfway through the Chute when he shot against a rock withterrific force. The contact tore Marette from him. He plunged for her,missed his grip, and then saw her opposite him, clinging to the samerock. The babiche rope had saved her. Fastened about her waist and tiedto his wrist, it still held them together--with the five feet of rockbetween them.

  Panting, their life half beaten out of them, their eyes met over thatrock. Now that he was out of the water, the blood began streaming fromKent's arms and shoulders and face, but he smiled at her as a fewmoments before she had smiled at him. Her eyes were filled with thepain of his hurts. He nodded back in the direction from which they hadcome.

  "We're out of the worst of it," he tried to shout. "As soon as we'vegot our wind, I will climb over the rock to you. It won't take uslonger than a couple of minutes, perhaps less, to make the quiet waterat the end of the channel."

  She heard him and nodded her reply. He wanted to give her confidence.And he had no intention of resting, for her position filled him with aterror which he fought to hide. The babiche rope, not half as largearound as his little finger, had swung her to the downstream side ofthe rock. It was the slender thread of buckskin and his own weight thatwere holding her. If the buckskin should break--

  He thanked God that it was the tough babiche that had been around hispack. An inch at a time he began to draw himself up on the rock. Theundertow behind t
he rock had flung a mass of Marette's long hair towardhim, so that it was a foot or two nearer to him than her clinginghands. He worked himself toward that, for he saw that he could reach itmore quickly than he could reach her. At the same time he had to keephis end of the babiche taut. It was, from the beginning, an almostsuperhuman task. The rock was slippery as oil. Twice his eyes shotdown-stream, with the thought that it might be better to cast himselfbodily into the water, and after that draw Marette to him by means ofthe babiche. What he saw convinced him that such action would be fatal.He must have Marette in his arms. If he lost her--even for a fewseconds--the life would be beaten from her body in that rock-strewnmaelstrom below.

  And then, suddenly, the babiche cord about his wrist grew loose. Thereaction almost threw him back. With the loosening of it a cry camefrom Marette. It all happened in an instant, in almost less time thanhis brain could seize upon the significance of it--the slipping of herhands from the rock, the shooting of her white body away from him inthe still whiter spume of the rapids, The rock had cut the babiche, andshe was gone! With a cry that was like the cry of a madman he plungedafter her. The water engulfed him. He twisted himself up, freeinghimself from the undertow. Twenty feet ahead of him--thirty--he caughta glimpse of a white arm and then of Marette's face, before shedisappeared in a wall of froth.

  Into that froth he shot after her. He came out of it blinded, gropingwildly for her, crying out her name. His fingers caught the end of thebabiche that was fastened about his own wrist, and he clutched itsavagely, believing for a moment that he had found her. Thicker andmore deadly the rocks of the lower passage rose in his way. They seemedlike living things, like devils filled with the desire to torture anddestroy. They struck and beat at him. Their laughter was the roar of aNiagara. He no longer cried out. His brain grew heavy, and clubs werebeating him--beating and breaking him into a formless thing. Therock-drifts of spume, lather-white, like the frosting of a monstercake, turned gray and then black.

  He did not know when he ceased fighting. The day went out. Night came.The world was oblivion. And for a space he ceased to live.