Brent had wondered how the Parson and his exhausted companions would,
in the short time at their disposal, be able to call out a new force of
volunteers. If the dam gave way and the rafts were swept out the thing
would probably happen by noon and there were few telephones in this
sparsely peopled community. Yet the device was simple and one of
pioneer directness. In many of those households to which the tired
workers returned, there were brothers or sons who had heretofore stayed
at home. Those who had responded to the first call were all men who
were not afraid of toil, but those who might answer the second would be
men who courted the hazards of adventure. Sheer dare-deviltry would
arouse in them a responsiveness which had remained numb to the call of
industry. Down the yellow and turgid path of swollen waters each
spring went huge rafted masses of logs manned by brawny fellows who at
other times never saw the world that lay "down below." Hastily reared
shacks rose on the floating timber islands and bonfires glowed redly.
The crews sang wild songs and strummed ancient tunes on banjo and
"dulcimore." They fortified themselves against the bite of the chill
night air from the jugs which they never forgot. Sometimes they flared
into passion and fought to the death, but oftener they caroused
good-naturedly as they watched the world flatten and the rivers broaden
to the lowlands. After the "tide" took them there was no putting into
harbor, no turning back. They were as much at the mercy of the
onsweeping waters as is a man who clings to driftwood.
Rafting on the "spring-tide" called out the wilder and more venturesome
element; but even that differed vastly from the present situation. It
differed just as riding a spirited horse does from trusting oneself,
without stirrup leather or bridle rein, to the pell-mell vagaries of a
frenzied runaway.
"Ye says Alexander aims ter ride one of them rafts, ef hit gets carried
out o' thar?" inquired a tall young man, whose eyes were reckless and
dissipated, as a wearied kinsman stumbled into a cabin and threw
himself down limply in a chair.
The tall young man was accounted handsome in a crude, back-country way
and fancied himself the devil of a fellow with the ladies. "Wa'al," he
drawled, "I reckon ef a gal kin undertake hit, I hain't none more
timorous then what she air." And to that frankly spoken sentiment he
added an inward after-word. "Folks 'lows thet she hain't got no time
o' day fer men--but when we ends up this hyar trip, I'll know more
erbout thet fer myself." He turned and began making his rough
preparations for the voyage.
And as Jase Mallows rose to the bait of that unusual call, so others
like him rose and each of them was a man conspicuous for recklessness
and wildness among a people where these qualities do not elicit comment
until they become extreme.
An hour or two later Brent, eying the fresh arrivals, frowned a bit
dubiously as he compared them with the human beavers who had moiled
there through the night. It was, he reflected, as though the sheep had
gone and the goats had come in their stead.
Then as the newcomers fell to their task of throwing up rough shanties
for shelter upon the rafts it seemed to Will Brent as safe a
proposition to embark with them as to be shipwrecked with a crew of
pirates.
He had himself entertained no intention of boarding any of these three
rafts, but he was not craven, and if a girl was going to trust herself
to those chances of flood and human passion he told himself that he
could do no less than stand by.
The river was already creeping above the gnarled sycamore roots that
jutted out of the precipice, marking the highest stage of previous
flood tides.
The two neighbor women had come back into the room where Aaron McGivins
lay wounded. The man himself, reassured by the presence of his
daughter, had fallen at last into an undisturbed sleep and the doctor
delivered himself of the first encouragement that had crossed his
sternly honest lips. "I reckon now he's got a right even chanst ter
git well ef he kin contrive ter rest a-plenty."
The girl's head came back, with a spasmodic jerk. It was the sudden
relaxing of nerves that had been held taut to the snapping point. With
a step suddenly grown unsteady she made her way to a chair by the
hearth and sat gazing fixedly at the dying embers.
She had not let herself hope too much, and now a sudden rush of
repressed tears threatened a flood like the one which had come outdoors
from the broken tightness of the ice.
But she felt upon her the critical eyes of the neighbor women and
refused to surrender to emotion. After a little period of respite she
let herself out of the door into the rain that had begun falling with a
sobbing fitfulness, and went through the starkness of the woods.
Back of the house was the "spring-branch" of which she had spoken as a
gauge to the stage of the flood. By some freakish law of
co-ordination, which no one had ever been able to explain, that small
stream gave a reading of conditions across the ridge, as a pulse-beat
gives the tempo of the blood's current. One could look at it and
estimate with fair accuracy how fast and how high the river was rising.
When a rotting stump beside the basin of the spring had water around
its roots it meant that the arteries of the hills were booming into
torrential fury. When the basin overflowed, the previous maximum of
the river's rise had been equaled. It was overflowing now.
Alexander stood for a moment gazing with widened and terrified eyes.
She had now no time to lose. The lapping waters of a tiny brook were
calling her to prompt and hazardous action. She fell to her knees and
clasped her hands in a clutch of desperation. "God, give me strength
right now ter ack like a man," she prayed. "Hit seems like ther fust
time I'm called on, I'm turnin' plum woman-weak."
Then she rose and pressed her pounding temples. It was not the fear of
a runaway river that held her in a tormenting suspense of indecision,
but the hard choice between leaving her father or fulfilling a duty to
which he had assigned her in his stead.
When she opened the door of the house again she saw an agitated figure
kneeling beside the bed. For all its breadth of shoulder and six feet
of height; for all its inherited stoicism that had stood through
generations, it was shaking with sobs.
As Alexander came into the room her brother rose from his knees with
pallid cheeks and woebegone eyes.
"Who shot him?" he demanded in a tense voice. "These hyar folks won't
tell me nuthin'."
The girl repressed an impulse of satirical laughter. She knew that Joe
McGivins would storm and swear vengeance upon the hand that had been
raised to strike his father down and that beyond hysterical vehemence
his indignation would come to nothing. He would believe himself
sincere and in the end his resolution would waste away into
procrastination and specious excuses.
"Whoever shot him, Joe," she replied, maintaining the complimentary
fiction that she must temporize with his just wrath, "Paw he's done
exacted a pledge thet neither of us won't seek ter avenge ther deed.
Hit's a pledge thet binds us both."
Even while his temples were still hot with his first wave of passionate
indignation, Joe McGivins felt that a bitter cup had passed from him.
"Joe," said the girl in a low voice, "I wants thet ye heeds me clost.
Ef we fails ter save this timber hit'll jest erbout kill Paw. Ef ther
dam busts loose, somebody's got ter ride them rafts."
The boy's face paled abruptly. He was a handsome youth, outwardly cut
to as fine a pattern of physical fitness as his sister exemplified, but
in his eyes one found none of her dauntlessness of spirit. Hurriedly
Alexander swept on.
"I aims ter go back over thar right now. He's got ter be kept quiet
an' so I dastn't tell him what I seeks ter do. I hain't fearsome of
leavin' ye ter watch after him. I knows ye kin gentle him an' comfort
him even better'n I could do hit myself."
She thrust out her hand, boy fashion, and her brother clasped it. Five
minutes later she stood looking down on her father's closed eyes,
listening to the easy breathing of the man in the bed.
On the floor at her feet lay the pack which she meant to take with her,
a rifle leaned against a chair and a pistol was slung in a holster
under her left arm-pit--Alexander was accountred for her venture.
Brent watched her swinging down the slope with an easy, space-devouring
stride. He had begun to think she would be too late; more than half to
hope she would be too late. If she arrived on time there was, of
course, no turning back. It should be recorded to his credit that no
man had guessed at his inner trepidation. But the sullen swell of the
thundering waters had beaten not only on his ears but on his heart as
well--and dread had settled over him like a pall.
Immeasurable power was lashing itself into a merciless fury. Boundless
might was loosening into frenzy. He had seen the misshapen wreckage of
houses and barns ride by, bobbing like bits of cork. He had seen the
swirl of foam that was like the froth of a vast hydrophobia.
The men who had volunteered stood braced and ready at the long sweeps
with which, fore and aft, they would seek to hold the course.
Alexander leaped from the shore to the last of the three rafts, and
looked about her. Perhaps she had no eye just now for a thing that
Brent had noted as significant; the gleam in the eyes that bent upon
her arrival.
"Does ye aim ter ride with us, Mr. Brent?" she inquired and when he
nodded his assent she said deliberately: "Ye comes from ther city--an'
this hyar's liable ter be a rough trip. I reckon I ought ter warn ye
whilst thar's still time ter turn back. We've got ter go out on a
whirl-pool betwixt them walls of rock an' thar may not be nothin' left
but kindlin' wood."
"Thank you," was the somewhat curt response. "I'm taking no greater
chances than the rest of you."
No longer was it possible to hope that the dam would hold against the
rising crescendo of that battering from beyond and the insidious
tongues that licked at its foundations.
It was now only a matter of time, and the hour which followed was a
period of dire suspense. Through small breaks already gushed minor
cataracts--all growing. No man offered to turn aside but some had
recourse to the steadying influence of the pocket flask. Between the
gorge's sides they had swift glimpses of racing flotsam that had
yesterday been dwelling houses and they waited, nerve-stretched, for
the crash that would launch them into the same precarious channel.
Their out-going would be as violent and eruptive as that of lava from a
crater.
Then the dam broke.
It gave way with a rending such as must have been sounded in the days
when a molten globe was cooling. From the base of the dam sucking
tongues had licked out boulders that upheld the formation as a keystone
holds an arch. It went into collapse with an explosive splintering and
left fang-like reefs still standing. Through the breach fell the
ponderous weight of a river left unsupported.
First, the inrush flung the rafts backwards against the banks, and then
the churning whirlpool which was developed sent them spinning madly
outward. The rafts jammed together and trembled with a groaning
shudder. They wavered and undulated like cloth and that nearest the
gorge lunged outward, dashed against one wall of precipice, caromed off
and ground against the other. About the edges, it had gone to
splinters but the core still held. The second raft, by some miracle,
rode through without collision to ride tilting about the curve into the
channel proper. Brent saw, through dazed and uncertain eyes, figures
bending to long poles. He felt such a sickening sensation as a man in
a barrel may experience at the moment of going over the crest of
Niagra. Through it all he felt rather than saw the figure of a girl in
man's clothing standing at the center of the raft, poised with bent
knees against shock; and with a Valkyrie fire in her eyes.
A half hour later the man from town drew a freer breath. It was still
a wild enough ride, but after the lurching dash out of the cauldron, it
seemed a peaceful voyage. Now down the center of the river they swept
at tide-speed. At either end of each raft men bent to the sweeps in
the task of their crude piloting. Tree tops brushed under them as they
went and far out on either side were wide-reaching lagoons that had
been high ground three days ago.
Alexander herself was standing a little apart and Brent was of a mind
to draw her into conversation but as he approached her he decided that
this was not the time to improve acquaintanceship. Her air of
detachment amounted to aloofness and Brent remembered that she had,
weighing upon her, the anxiety of her father's condition.
Jase Mallows, however, just then relieved from duty at the steering
sweep, was less subtle of deduction. With his eye on Alexander, whose
back was turned to him, he jauntily straightened his shoulders and gave
his long mustache a twirl. Brent thought of the turkey-gobbler's strut
as, with amused eyes, he watched the backwoods lady-killer. Jase had
heard many of the old wives' tales of Alexander and thought of her as
one, ambitious of amorous conquest, may think of a famous and much
discussed beauty. Had she been another woman, Jase would before now
have gone over to the house on a "sparking" expedition, but Old Man
McGivins had discouraged such aspirations--and his daughter had been no
less definite of attitude. Here, however, he had the girl on neutral
ground and meant to seize his opportunity.
So he strolled over to her with an ingratiating smile.
"Aleck," he began in the drawling voice which he himself rather
fancied, "we hed a right norrer squeak of hit back thar didn't we?"
There should have been discouragement in the coolness of the glance
that she turned upon him, but Jase had the blessing of self-confidence.
"Ye war thar yerself--ye ought ter know," said Alexander curtly. Then
she added, "An' don't call me Aleck--my name's Alexander."
Jase Mallows reddened to his temples. There had been moments, even in
the straining activity of these hours, for him to boast to his fellows
that it would be interesting to watch the progress of his campaign for
the affections of Alexander. Now they were watching.
So Jase laughed awkwardly. "Wa'al, thet's reasonable enough," he
handsomely conceded. "A gal's got a rather es ter what name she's ter
be called by an' ef she's es purty es you be she kin afford ter be
high-headed too."
Alexander stood looking the man over from head to foot as though
studying a new species--possibly a species of insect-life. Under that
embarrassing scrutiny Jase fidgeted his hands. Eventually he drew out
a flask and having uncorked it he ceremoniously wiped the bottle's
mouth with the palm of his hand. "Let's take a leetle dram ter better
acquaintances," he suggested. "Thet thar's licker I wouldn't offer ter
nobody but a reg'lar man. Hit's got a kick like a bob-tailed mule."
With features that had not altered their expression, the girl reached
out her hand and accepted the bottle.
She held the thing before her, looking at it for a moment, then with a
swift gesture tossed it sidewise into the river.
Jase Mallows bent forward and his face flamed, but his anger seemed a
tame and little thing to the wrath that leaped from calm to blazing
eruption in the woman's eyes.
"Whilst we're aboard this hyar raft," Alexander announced with an
utterance that cut like a zero wind, "I'm boss an' I aims fer men ter
stay sober. Ef thet don't suit you--go ashore."
"How?" inquired Jase with a heavy irony and Alexander replied shortly,
"Thet's yore business."
She turned on her heel and walked away leaving the discomfited Lothario
staring after her with so malign an anger that the men within ear-shot
stifled their twitters of amusement and pretended to have overheard
nothing.