The Winds of Chance Part 21

In spite of a strong steady stroke the rowboat seemed to move sluggishly; foam and debris bobbed alongside and progress appeared to be slow, but when the oarsmen lifted their eyes they discovered that the sh.o.r.es were running past with amazing swiftness. Even as they looked, those sh.o.r.es rose abruptly and closed in, there came a mounting roar, then the skiff was sucked in between high, rugged walls. Unseen hands reached forth and seized it, unseen forces laid hold of it and impelled it forward; it began to plunge and to wallow; spray flew and wave-crests climbed over the gunwales.

Above the tumult 'Poleon was urging his crew to greater efforts.

"Pull hard!" he shouted. "Hi! Hi! Hi!" He swayed in unison to their straining bodies. "Mak' dose oar crack," he yelled. "By Gar, dat's goin' some!"

The fellow's teeth were gleaming, his face was alight with an exultant recklessness, he cast defiance at the approaching terrors. He was alert, watchful; under his hands the stout ash steering-oar bent like a bow; he flung his whole strength into the battle with the waters. Soon the roar increased until it drowned his shouts and forced him to pantomime his orders. The boat was galloping through a wild smother of ice-cold spray and the reverberating cliffs were streaming past like the unrolling scenery on a painted canvas panorama.

It was a h.e.l.lish place; it echoed to a demoniac din and it was a tremendous sensation to brave it, for the boat did not glide nor slip down the descent; it went in a succession of jarring leaps; it lurched and twisted; it rolled and plunged as if in a demented effort to unseat its pa.s.sengers and scatter its cargo. To the occupants it seemed as if its joints were opening, as if the boards themselves were being wrenched loose from the ribs to which they were nailed. The men were drenched, of course, for they traveled in a cloud of spume; their feet were ankle-deep in cold water, and every new deluge caused them to gasp.

How long it lasted Pierce Phillips never knew; the experience was too terrific to be long lived. It was a nightmare, a hideous phantasmagoria of frightful sensations, a dissolving stereopticon of bleak, scudding walls, of hydrophobic boulders frothing madly as the flood crashed over them, of treacherous whirlpools, and of pursuing breakers that reached forth licking tongues of destruction. Then the river opened, the cliffs fell away, and the torrent spewed itself out into an expanse of whirlpools--a lake of gyrating funnels that warred with one another and threatened to twist the keel from under the boat.

'Poleon swung close in to the right bank, where an eddy raced up against the flood; some one flung a rope from the sh.o.r.e and drew the boat in.

"Wal! I never had no better crew," cried the pilot. "Wat you t'ink of 'im, eh?" He smiled down at the white-lipped oarsmen, who leaned forward, panting and dripping.

"Is--that all of it?" Lucky Broad inquired, weakly.

"Mais non! Look! Dere's Wite 'Orse."

Doret indicated a wall of foam and spray farther down the river.

Directly across the expanse of whirlpools stood a village named after the rapids. "You get plenty more bimeby."

"You're wrong. I got plenty right now," Broad declared.

"I'm glad the Countess didn't come," said Phillips.

When the men had wrung out their clothes and put on their boots they set out along the back trail over the bluffs.

Danny Royal was not an imaginative person. He possessed, to be sure, the superst.i.tions of the average horseman and gambler, and he believed strongly in hunches, but he was not fanciful and he put no faith in dreams and portents. It bothered him exceedingly, therefore, to discover that he was weighed down by an unaccountable but extremely oppressive sense of apprehension. How or why it had come to obsess him he could not imagine, but for some reason Miles Canon and the stormy waters below it had a.s.sumed terrible potentialities and he could not shake off the conviction that they were destined to prove his undoing. This feeling he had allowed to grow until now a fatalistic apathy had settled upon him and his usual cheerfulness was replaced by a senseless irritability. He suffered explosions of temper quite as surprising to the Kirbys, father and daughter, as to himself. On the day of his arrival he was particularly ugly, wherefore Rouletta was impelled to remonstrate with him.

"What ails you, Danny?" she inquired. "You'll have our men quitting."

"I wish they would," he cried. "Boatmen! They don't know as much about boats as me and Sam."

"They do whatever they're told."

Royal acknowledged this fact ungraciously. "Trouble is we don't know what to tell 'em to do. All Sam knows is 'gee' and 'haw,' and I can't steer anything that don't wear a bridle. Why, if this river wasn't fenced in with trees we'd have taken the wrong road and been lost, long ago."

Rouletta nodded thoughtfully. "Father is just as afraid of water as you are. He won't admit it, but I can tell. It has gotten on his nerves and--I've had hard work to keep him from drinking."

"Say! Don't let him get started on THAT!" Danny exclaimed, earnestly. "That WOULD be the last touch."

"Trust me. I--"

But Kirby himself appeared at that moment, having returned from a voyage of exploration. Said he: "There's a good town below. I had a chance to sell the outfit."

"Going to do it?" Danny could not conceal his eagerness.

The elder man shook his gray head. "Hardly. I'm no piker."

"I wish you and Danny would take the portage and trust the pilot to run the rapids," Rouletta said.

Kirby turned his expressionless face upon first one then the other of his companions. "Nervous?" he inquired of Royal.

The latter silently admitted that he was.

"Go ahead. You and Letty cross afoot--"

"And you?"

"Oh, I'm going to stick!" "Father--" the girl began, but old Sam shook his head.

"No. This is my case bet, and I'm going to watch it."

Royal's weazened face puckered until it resembled more than ever a withered apple. "Then I'll stick, too," he declared. "I never laid down on you yet, Sam."

"How about you, Letty?"

The girl smiled. "Why, I wouldn't trust you boys out of my sight for a minute. Something would surely happen."

Kirby stooped and kissed his daughter's cheek. "You've always been our mascot, and you've always brought us luck. I'd go to h.e.l.l in a paper suit if you were along. You're a game kid, too, and I want you to be like that, always. Be a thoroughbred. Don't weaken, no matter how bad things break for you. This cargo of rum is worth the best claim in Dawson, and it'll put us on our feet again. All I want is one more chance. Double and quit--that's us."

This was an extraordinarily long speech for "One-armed" Kirby; it showed that he was deeply in earnest.

"Double and quit?" breathed the girl. "Do you mean it, dad?"

He nodded: "I'm going to leave you heeled. I don't aim to take my eyes off this barge again till she's in Dawson."

Rouletta's face was transformed; there was a great gladness in her eyes--a gladness half obscured by tears. "Double and quit. Oh-- I've dreamed of--quitting--so often! You've made me very happy, dad."

Royal, who knew this girl's dreams as well as he knew his own, felt a lump in his throat. He was a G.o.dless little man, but Rouletta Kirby's joys were holy things to him, her tears distressed him deeply, therefore he walked away to avoid the sight of them. Her slightest wish had been his law ever since she had mastered words enough to voice a request, and now he, too, was happy to learn that Sam Kirby was at last ready to mold his future in accordance with her desires. Letty had never liked their mode of life; she had accepted it under protest, and with the pa.s.sing years her unspoken disapproval had a.s.sumed the proportions of a great reproach. She had never put that disapproval into words--she was far too loyal for that--but Danny had known. He knew her ambitions and her possibilities, and he had sufficient vision to realize something of the injustice she suffered at her father's hands. Sam loved his daughter as few parents love a child, but he was a strange man and he showed his affection in characteristic ways. It pleased Royal greatly to learn that the old man had awakened to the wrong he did, and that this adventure would serve to close the story, as all good stories close, with a happy ending.

In spite of these cheering thoughts, Danny was unable wholly to shake off his oppressive forebodings, and as he paused on the river-bank to stare with gloomy fascination at the jaws of the gorge they returned to plague him. The sound that issued out of that place was terrifying, the knowledge that it frightened him enraged the little man.

It was an unpropitious moment for any one to address Royal; therefore, when he heard himself spoken to, he whirled with a scowl upon his face. A tall French-Canadian, just back from the portage, was saying:

"M'sieu', I ain't good hand at mix in 'noder feller's bizneses, but--dat pilot you got she's no good."

Royal looked the stranger over from head to foot. "How d'you know?" he inquired, sharply.

"Biccause--I'm pilot myse'f."

"Oh, I see! You're one of the GOOD ones." Danny's air was surly, his tone forbidding.

"Yes."

"Hate yourself, don't you? I s'pose you want his job. Is that it?

No wonder--five hundred seeds for fifteen minutes' work. Soft graft, I call it." The speaker laughed unpleasantly. "Well, what does a GOOD pilot charge?"

"Me?" The Canadian shrugged indifferently. "I charge you one t'ousan' dollar."