THE MYSTERIOUS RAFT
Tressa Torrance, inured as sensitive girl could be to the turmoil and
danger of their life on railway construction, experienced a new
sensation of fear. Never had she seen her father use a firearm; his
ready fists were more to his liking. With a breathless rush she stood
by his side, one hand gripping the wrist of the hand that held the
trigger guard.
That precaution first. Then she turned her eyes to where her father
was staring.
Far up the ribbon of river, only a few hundred yards below where it
emerged from its hidden course through the forest, a clumsy raft was
drifting clumsily down. In the gleam of the last sun rays it was but a
silhouette of black--a flat base with live creatures on it. In a
moment it drifted from the glare and in the clear evening air was
visible to the last line.
On it were a man and a woman, and a group of horses. Good cause for
excitement there in the shack up by the grade. Along the mile of the
Tepee that was known to man there was only one raft--at least only one
that had a right to exist--the make-shift affair employed on
construction duty down at the base of the trestle. Within sixty miles
there was not a living soul but the construction gang and the two
Policemen at Mile 127, not a horse but Torrance's and the Police pair.
At least that was the limit of Torrance's information, and none other
had such claim to know.
But this was not the construction raft--and there were the horses.
Torrance had already lost a dozen of his best in some mysterious way.
It was with that thought that he had seized his rifle.
Then the woman!
Suddenly he became aware that something was wrong with the raft--and a
few hundred yards ahead was a stretch of foaming rapids that would
smash it to kindling wood. The woman stood leaning on the shaft of a
broken sweep, watching the man. With unhurried but almost superhuman
strength he was working the other sweep from the rear, aiming for the
opposite bank.
The struggle seemed hopeless. Torrance read it at a glance,
unaccustomed as he was to water. The tug of the rapids was drawing
them swiftly downward in a course that was too slightly diagonal to its
current to promise more than the faintest hope. The man seemed
suddenly to grasp the extent of their peril, for his arms moved more
quickly, the bow of the raft swinging about and pointing upstream; but
still the current gripped them relentlessly.
The woman lifted her head and looked down along the whirling eddies to
the froth of broken water. For a moment she stood, rigid, then turned
to the horses, and from among them sprang a huge dog. Into its mouth
she pressed the end of a rope, and it leaped far into the water.
Torrance's left hand fumbled back within the door for his
field-glasses. Through them he saw the dog emerge lower down, still
holding the rope, and dash in long bounds up the bank. As the strain
of the rope came, it sank back on its haunches. The rope snapped up
out of the water for a moment, and the dog plunged forward with the
jerk, fighting every inch. Then it got a firmer hold and braced. Inch
by inch the raft yielded to the extra power. It continued to drift
toward the rapids, but also it was working to the bank now. At
intervals the eddying current pulled the dog along, but always it
braced against the tug, its feet digging into the loose gravel and sand.
The man was working hard, but so regularly that the dog felt but a
fraction of the weight of the loaded raft. But what it felt was
sufficient to turn the scales.
As the raft slithered in sideways to the bank, a small broncho dashed
ashore, followed by four other horses. At a fast lope it led away
toward the trees that grew down the distant slope to the river bottom.
Torrance awakened then. With livid face he swung the rifle up and
fired. Tressa struck at his arm too late.
It was a long range, and to such an indifferent marksman a matter of
luck. But to Tressa to try was sacrilege after the struggle they had
witnessed. The bullet fell far short, glancing from the water in a
swift slit in the reflecting surface.
At the report the broncho broke into a gallop. The man and the woman
swung swiftly toward the grade, and the next instant the woman had
disappeared--somewhere; neither Torrance nor Tressa knew where. The
man straightened and shaded his eyes toward them.
Tressa was struggling with her father. He must not shoot again. The
man watched. Presently he slowly raised his rifle.
The thud of the bullet in the shack not two feet from Torrance's
shoulder preceded the sound of the explosion. The rifle did not drop.
A second tiny fleck of smoke, and a bullet sank into the logs only two
feet on the other side of the doorway. Torrance heaved Tressa back
within the shack. And as he came about, a third bullet from the
mysterious stranger dug into the log not more than a foot above his
head.
Torrance did not move--he scarcely even thought at that moment. The
marksman above the rapids lowered his rifle and turned carelessly away.
The woman and the dog joined him. The horses were lost in the trees.
The big contractor twisted himself from bullet hole to bullet hole, and
one big hand pushed wonderingly through his heavy hair.
"It sure ain't me he wants," he muttered.