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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Ernest Haycox's novel 'The Earthbreakers' is a sweeping epic set in the American West during the tumultuous period of westward expansion. Known for his vivid descriptions and attention to detail, Haycox brings to life a cast of characters who are caught in the crosshairs of progress and the clash between civilization and frontier life. The novel is written in a gritty and realistic style, reflecting the hardships and challenges faced by those who tamed the wild lands of the West. Haycox expertly weaves themes of ambition, greed, and sacrifice into the narrative, creating a rich tapestry of the American experience. 'The Earthbreakers' is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the price of pursuing dreams in the face of adversity. Ernest Haycox, a prolific writer of Western fiction, drew inspiration from his own experiences in the Pacific Northwest to craft this compelling story of courage and determination. His deep understanding of the Western landscape and its people shines through in every page of the novel, making it a must-read for fans of historical fiction and adventure tales.
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The Earthbreakers
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
A SLANTED, slashing rain saturated his wool coat while he rigged the pack animals, and coldness searched his bones. He scrubbed the wet saddle with a sleeve before he rose into it. Breakers of sand rolled from the nearby bluff to sting his face and when he lowered his head water poured from the crease of his hat into his crotch. Wind went scuffing and squealing along the earth and roared in his ears and was a cry across the world.
"Hup-hup."
The pack horses moved into single file, the two cows followed and the four dun oxen came after, swinging their heads at the ground in fruitless foraging. He used both hands to jam down his hat and made his way through a camp whose hundred wagons—their canvas tops casting a pale glow against the gray flicker of sand and rain—lay on a lava beach hard pressed between bluff and river. Weather-whipped fires burned a violent yellow, darkly dotted by crouched or moving shapes, and all through camp was the constant traffic of loose stock herds moving westward into a farther wall of mist.
At the river's edge log rafts pitched in the smashing rollers, some half built, some fully freighted with lashed-down wagons and ready to go; for after two thousand miles and five months of land travel, this wagon train of four hundred people was readying itself to make the last ninety miles into western Oregon by water through the gorge of the Cascades.
Rice Burnett stopped his pack outfit before a large raft on which two wagons—Lattimore's and Collingwood's—were lashed fore and aft. Lattimore stood on the lava shore with the raft's mooring rope wrapped around him, thin body swayed back and forth by the raft's sluggish heaving. A sagged hat rim made eaves around his ears, down which water steadily ran, and on his face was the habitual fatigue of a malarial man.
"God-damn' country," he said, voice only a murmur against the shout of the wind. "If I'd known it was like this I'd not come. I'm ready to go but Collingwood's off shakin' hands somewhere."
Edna came from the near wagon and came ashore to stand beside Burnett's horse. She said, "I'll walk a ways with you," and took his arm when he dismounted. A man's overcoat gave her upper body an extra heaviness; a shawl covered her head but rain blackened the exposed part of her front hair and wetted her cheeks and lodged its glittering droplets on her lashes. Her face was round and her mouth broad—an erect and rather taut upper lip lying against the lower lip's pronounced roll—and her lids partially closed on brown eyes as she watched Burnett to create an air of speculation.
Lattimore said "Now don't rove off where I got to go find you."
"Oh," she said, "Collingwood won't be here for an hour." She moved away with Burnett. "You'll reach the portage ahead of us."
He nodded toward the river. "I expect so. You've got a rough ride ahead, on the raft."
Waves rolled high and close-following on the Columbia's wind-beaten breadth. Earlier departing rafts stood out to midstream, rising in sluggish motion to ragged crests and falling into watery valleys and vanishing behind long horizontal streamers of spray. Through the day's dullness Burnett watched the little-figured shapes of men strain at the rudder sweeps.
"I don't mind," said Edna. "Things don't bother me much. Where'll I see you next?"
"At the portage."
"We might be late—and you'll have gone on."
"Then at Oregon City. We'll all gather there."
They skirted wagons and avoided ox teams dragging logs riverward from the pine hill where the Methodist Mission lay; they watched a woman crouched and crying before a fire's dense smoke. Groups of men, heaving together with their concerted "Now—now—now," moved wagons onto the rafts and other men stood waist-deep in the November water and flinched when the breaking surf slapped them. They passed Rinearson's fire. Edna's glance went to the young men gathered there and stayed with them until Moss Rinearson saw her, and then she looked quickly to Burnett and went on with him.
At the far edge of camp he stopped. "No use for you to get any wetter."
Her voice held half a teasing note, half a sweet tone. "At Oregon City, for sure?"
"For sure."
"Sleep warm," she said and looked steadily at him.
"Lone man never sleeps warm."
The answer delighted her and her lids again framed a glance meant to provoke him. "It could be better, couldn't it?"
He rose to the saddle and lifted his coat collar against the slashing rain, and he looked down upon her with his smile. Wind colored him and stiffened his face until it assumed a lank length between temples and jaw point. His eyes were gray, made brisk at this moment by his humor; the edges of his hair showed a dark copper cast rough hair, heavy hair. He had an English nose, high-bridged and prominent, and a long mouth.
"You're slow," she said.
"There'll be a time to answer that."
She shrugged her shoulders and watched him ride into the stormy morning's twilight, body bent and head bent, and when he looked back she saw his weather face—everything pulled inside. She waved and returned through camp.
Abreast the Rinearson fire she paused at the circle of young men and stood across the blaze from Moss. He was the middle brother of the three Rinearson boys and, at twenty, a year older than she. She spread her hands before the fire, slowly revolving them; she gave each man around the circle a moment of personal interest before settling her attention on Moss.
"Where's Whit?"
"Went down the trail with the stock."
She moved around the fire. "You ought to wear a heavy coat."
"Wet heavy coat's just as cold as a wet thin one."
"Ah," she said, and touched his chest with a passing hand; then she looked beyond the group and noticed Rice turned on the saddle, watching her, and she left the fire and went on through camp with her head lowered in thought. When she came to the raft she found George Collingwood ready to go. Her father's futile irritation fell upon her.
"We been waitin' twenty minutes."
George Collingwood shook his head, laughing at her. "No, I just got here." He was forty, more than twice her age, but his light blue eyes paid her a strong interest. He wore heavy buckskin gloves, a fine plaid coat, and beneath his hat the rim of curled yellow hair showed. She delayed a moment to let him have his look, then moved to the raft and entered the near wagon's half darkness, catching the voices of her brother and her mother in the far wagon where Mrs. Collingwood was. Rain drummed loud on the canvas and the smell of wet wool clothes and oiled harness and bacon rose around her. She heard Collingwood say:
"You got any tobacco before we push away, Ben?"
"There's a twist in a can beside my toolbox."
She moved to the toolbox and reached for the can, but a thought drew her back and she waited while Collingwood came over the raft and crawled through the wagon's front opening. He said: "You know where his tobacco can is?"
She settled to her knees on a straw tick and lifted the can. He crouched beside her and the edge of his body came against her and stayed there while she opened the can and got the chunk of tobacco. He reached for it, hand brushing her shoulder, and his pressure grew against her; she turned her head to observe the tense line across his mouth and the bright shine of his eyes. She didn't stir, but as she watched him a speculative smile came about her mouth and her curiosity was plain. His head came tentatively forward, and withdrew; he laid a hand on her knee and pushed himself to his feet. She raised her glance to hold his attention.
Outside her father impatiently called: "For the love of God, let's start."
Collingwood murmured "Edna," in a smooth, stroking voice and turned from the wagon. She remained kneeling; she stared at the dark canvas before her, eyes half closed and her face returning to its smooth calm. The log chains began to groan, the raft increased its pitching and the wagon swayed from side to side. She drew a deep breath and smiled into the darkness.
Chapter 2
THE camp and its echoes faded, the whirling rain mists closed in. Along this well-worn Indian runway loose stock bands moved ahead of Burnett toward the throat of the gorge forty miles away, but he saw nothing of them in the blind day. The river was beside him, bearing its freight of scattered rafts, and though some of these were forty feet long and sixteen wide the wind-trenched water shook them as though they were small boats. The trail, too rough for wagons, crossed an ancient field of lava and moved through a succession of sand dunes until, about two hours from camp, it rose in stairstep creases along the face of a hill. Around noon of an already dying day he found himself following the rim of a bluff loosely covered by pine. The river was a thousand feet below him, unseen in the fog, and he was smothered by the twilight of a cloud's breaking center, and wind shook him on the saddle and the tumultuous rain came upon him in hard-breaking drops. He was thoroughly wet, his shoes were water-filled; coldness passed from a burning to an ache and finally to a lack of sensation in legs and knuckles and ears.
There was a way to handle weather and the way—lying in a man's thoughts—was to retreat from the surface misery and build a wall and when the weather broke through that wall, to retreat to a deeper layer of flesh and build another wall. There was never any danger until the last wall was breached and the weather reached that small center cell which housed the will to exist. At that point a man sat as a spectator and listened to the battle between his will and the thing which came to kill him.
Loose soil and pine stems whipped by; overhead the steady hiss of the wind kept on. The horses footed steadily forward from one rocky ridge to another, down a long slope and across the insecure ford of a swollen little river near its junction with the big river; and somewhere in the noisy day he heard a man's weak voice cry out. Fifty feet distant a horse stood on a rocky flat with its rump to the wind. A few cows stood under the shelter of a tree and a small tent, ripped from its pegs, slapped back and forth beneath a branch to which its peak had been tied. Riding in that direction he discovered Alpheus Stricklin's head stuck out from a cocoon of soaked blankets.
Burnett got down and squatted before that hollow face with its fringe of curly red whiskers. Stricklin's eyes were so deep and round that they seemed to have no pupils. A rank odor came from blankets and from man. Too sick to light a fire or to recapture the tent which had blown off its pegs, Stricklin lay in the day's full blast and could not muster energy enough to shiver.
"How long you been here?"
"Two days."
Burnett walked to a pack horse, hauled off its pack and got an ax. He chopped a set of pegs and tacked the tent cloth around Stricklin; he cut the rope which held the tent's peak to the pine bough and let the canvas lie collapsed over Stricklin. He rustled through the trees and collected a stack of wood and from the pack he got a handful of pitch kindling and crouched close to the ground to build a fire under the shelter of his coat. He stood by until the fire caught on well; and he made a frame of wood chunks around it and found his coffee-pot and filled it from the river and laid it over the fire.
"When did you eat?"
"Yesterday morning," said Stricklin. "Nothing stays down."
"Any fresh blankets?"
"No."
Burnett dragged his pack near the fire. He poured half the water from the coffee-pot into a small bucket, dropped a chunk of jerked beef into the bucket and a hand scoop of coffee into the pot; and put both utensils over the fire. Stricklin made a feeble scratching on the tent cloth and pulled it back until his head was in the weather. "Jesus, what a smell."
"Crawl out of there and sit up to the fire."
"Can't make it."
Burnett squatted over the man. He shoved back his hat to keep its drip from Stricklin and short, sharp critical lines of attention sprang around his eye corners. "You're a down horse and you've decided to die. Crawl out of there."
Stricklin said nothing but Burnett thought he saw the slight shining of resentment, and he reached down and ripped the protecting canvas from Stricklin's body. Stricklin brought an arm from the blankets, doubled his fist and struck at Burnett's face. Burnett laughed at him and pulled the blankets back, rolling Stricklin half over toward the fire. Stricklin kicked out with a leg. Burnett seized the man at the shoulders and dragged him to the edge of the fire.
"Sit up to it," he said and took his ax into the nearby trees to make more wood from the broken deadfall limbs. Stricklin curled himself at the fire and steam rose from his clothes and fresh rain sparkled in his whiskers. His deep-set eyeballs rolled from side to side as he kept his attention on Burnett. Burnett got a cup from the pack and filled it from the simmering bucket.
"Sit up, Alpheus."
"Can't make it."
Burnett circled the fire and took Stricklin by one shoulder and hauled him to a sitting position; he steadied the man with gentle cuffs with his palm until Stricklin made a gesture of protest. Burnett dropped his hand but stood by to be sure Stricklin didn't capsize again.
"All right," said Stricklin irritably. "All right."
Burnett handed over the cup and went into the trees to continue his wood gathering. When he came back the cup lay empty on the ground.
Stricklin had both hands across his belly and showed his misery. "It's started again." He lifted his glance to Burnett and dropped it. Sick as he was, he was embarrassed. "I can't get up."
Burnett lifted Stricklin by the armpits and walked ten feet from the fire; he slipped down the man's galluses and trousers and he spraddled his legs and lowered Stricklin to a squatting position. Stricklin wrapped his arms around Burnett and butted his head against the latter's stomach for support; he swayed like a half-filled sack of flour and body cramps shuddered him and the coldness of the day made fine tremors through him. "What a hell of a thing," he groaned. "Jesus, I'm ashamed."
"It's all right, Alpheus. Let 'er go."
"No use. Nothing in me."
Burnett pulled up the man's trousers and guided him back to the fire. He filled the cup from the bucket and passed the cup to Stricklin. "Keep at it." He built the woodpile until it was big enough to last a night; he fried himself a chunk of bacon and warmed himself with the coffee. Three boys crossed the little river with a band of stock and disappeared in the rain-downed twilight; wind ripped through the timber and smashed down branches and felled a tree, and rain walked across the earth wave after wave. Burnett took Stricklin's blankets from the collapsed tent and laid them flat in the rain, weighted by rocks, for washing. He pulled up the tent pegs and dragged the canvas around Stricklin. After he had restored the loose pack to its proper horse he stood a short time at the fire, attempting to read Stricklin's face.
"Keep the fire going. I'll leave the bucket with the meat in it. Just work away at it. You be all right?"
Stricklin dropped his head. He said something which was lost in the wind; he raised his voice. "Sure."
"That diarrhea lasts about three days. You've had two. Lay over tomorrow." He got in the saddle but delayed his departure; for Stricklin's eyes, fixed on him, were like the entrances to the emptiest of tunnels, and around his mouth an expression had settled. It wasn't sickness, Burnett thought, as he turned away to collect his pack outfit. He found the trail and worked his way about a rocky point and up another ridge. The image of the expression, with its unremembered familiarity, haunted him. A good mile down the trail he stopped his horses and sat still a full minute, and at last he shook his head and turned back to Stricklin's camp.
Stricklin had dropped flat before the fire and was entirely covered by the tent. He pushed the canvas back when he heard Burnett and sat up, and the stiffness dissolved from his face and left it weak; his eyes glinted in the firelight. Burnett said: "It'll be dark in half an hour so I might as well camp here." He unloaded the packs and covered them with the canvas and let the animals drift. He dragged his bedroll to the fire and crawled into it and lighted his pipe.
"What's your age, Alpheus?"
"Fifty-three." Stricklin sat up and filled his cup from the bucket; he curled both hands around the cup and sucked at the beef water. "If I'd known it was like this, I'd never come West. It's too late for men old as me. I had a good farm in Missouri."
"You'll feel different—couple nights' sleep and a few good meals."
"I'll put ten years' sweat into a new farm, but it won't please me no more than the last. It's not the constitution of a man to be happy with what he's got...This stuff ain't cramping me as much. I think I'll sleep." He fell back and pulled the tent over him.
Burnett left his bedroll and squatted beside Stricklin. He straightened the folds of the tent beneath the man, and wrapped the upper part over him. He laid a hand momentarily on Stricklin's shoulder. "You were at the forks of the creek for a couple of minutes," he said, and returned to his bedroll. He was hungry, but he had a short stock of food which had to last him until he got to Oregon City or Fort Vancouver and so he lighted another pipe, stored his boots in the bedroll and fed the fire.
Stricklin said: "Been married?"
"No."
"How about that Edna girl?"
Burnett made no answer. Presently Stricklin said: "What'd you do back East?"
"A little clerkin', a little farming. I was in the Rockies trapping a couple years. Soldiered in the dragoons."
"If you'd not come back I'd been dead by morning."
"You're not that sick."
"Sick is one thing. This is another. It's like hanging to a rope forty feet off ground. Pretty soon you can't hold on and you don't give a damn anyhow."
Burnett settled into his bedroll and scrubbed hip and shoulder along the ground to make comfortable trenches for them. Night moved in full of sound; the little river roared over its stones, the racing clouds broke above camp and rain rattled like buckshot and blackness closed on him as the jaws of a vise. It was aloneness which had broken through Stricklin's last wall. Nature, hating the solitary thing—for the solitary thing has no function—had placed in man a sense of incompleteness which made him drift toward others; denied this closeness, he shrank and died. Not that she cared; for man was a vessel she created by the millions, and it didn't matter how many of these claypots were cracked along the way so long as a few survived to transmit the liquid she had poured into them; it was the liquid that mattered to her, not the pot. Man's dream of dignity was his own creation, not hers, and his suffering came of trying to make the dream real against the indifference of earth and sky to his individual fate.
Chapter 3
MORNING came to him as a feeling he had slept long enough; there was no other sign of day. Wind rushed along the river's trench and burst into violent eddies; throughout the night he had heard trees, unpinned by the rain-softened soil, go down. The air had a biting chill and now and then the screen of rain thickened with the half-solid shape of snow; the little river, when he went to it, had risen two feet. He built the fire, he put on the coffee-pot and fried breakfast. Alpheus Stricklin sat up with the tent around him and relished his meal.
"I'm over the hump but I'll lay by today. Tomorrow mornin' I'll be fine."
Burnett spent an hour dragging wood to the fire pile; he was another hour bringing in his strayed animals. He packed, he crouched at the fire to smoke a pipe and to soak in a store of heat against a day he knew would be bad. He rose and looked at Stricklin a moment. "Anything else?"
"No. Good luck."
The trail through the timber was a tunnel of furious sound. Wind knocked him around the saddle when he rose to the crest of a small ridge, and wet snow spatted more frequently against him. He followed a narrow strip of open land two or three miles toward a shadowy barrier, and in the first dismal daylight this barrier became a rocky point pressing hard upon a river whose half-mile surface was corrugated by spray-frosted waves closely following each other. Little by little he was crowded toward the water, the trail twisting out to the beach, climbing over the shale slopes which set up minor avalanches under the feet of his horses, threading gloomy aisles between moss-green rock pillars. Near noon he paused in the shelter of a cottonwood thicket to smoke a pipe, glad to escape the wind's beating for a short time; the farther he rode during the afternoon, the tighter was the river caught between the mountain's jaws, the more relentlessly blew the wind and harsher became the weather. From time to time he saw rafts wallowing in the water, made sluggish by the extra weight of solid ice around wheels and wagon beds.
It was growing dark at four o'clock when he came upon a meadow cramped at the base of the lava palisades and found Whitley Rinearson and the two Lockyears before a fire. With them was Watt Irish, a boy of fourteen shivering within his shabby coat; in the background the hundred Rinearson cattle stood dumb against the blast.
The boy was obviously miserable clear into his bones. He turned to Burnett with plain relief. "I got two cows mixed in with their stock and I got to get 'em out."
Whit Rinearson gave a short laugh. "You can wait till we get to the portage."
"They'll all be mixed up in the dark by then and I'll not see 'em. I got to get 'em now."
Whit Rinearson said, "Walk in and get your cows," and again let go with his brief laugh.
"I can't walk through all those horns," said Watt.
Burnett dismounted and came to the fire. He said to Whit Rinearson: "You're slow—you started three hours ahead of me."
"Cattle strayed last night and we had a hell of a time."
"It's just two cows," said Watt Irish to Burnett. "I got to get 'em out." The weather wizened his face and in the firelight he seemed to Burnett not so much a boy as a stunted man; he had his feet braced apart, he doggedly nourished his hope, but the strain of facing these three unsympathetic men had been hard with him.
It was now half snow and half rain, white flakes streaking across the firelight; wind boomed along the gorge and the river surf crashed on the rocks of this ragged shore. Burnett crouched at the flames.
"What's the harm of snaking out the boy's two cows?"
"We got trouble enough," said Whit Rinearson, shortly. "He can wait, or do what he damned pleases."
"There's your permission," said Burnett to Watt Irish. "Go get 'em."
"On foot?"
"Take my horse," said Burnett.
Watt Irish turned immediately to the horse and pulled himself to the saddle. Cal Lockyear spoke to him. "I've got some stock in that bunch. You stampede anything and I'll break your God-damned head."
"Not in this weather—they won't," said Burnett. He turned his hands at the fire; presently he lifted his chin to catch the weight of all three sets of eyes on him.
Whit Rinearson said: "Not right for a kid to have his way against men."
"The boy's dead-beat."
"If he's goin' to play man," said Whit, "let him stand it like a man."
"You play it well as he does and you'll be doing fine," answered Burnett.
He looked beyond the group to see young Irish cut through the cattle; he brought his glance back to Cal Lockyear. The man wore buckskins, a big blanket capote around his shoulders, and a trapper's round fur hat; his neck came up as a stout column through the capote's collar to flat ears, a round heavy chin and black eyes. Chest and shoulders stretched the capote; he stood motionless against the weather and seemed not to feel it.
"If this herd belonged to me," he said in a touchy tone, "I'd not permit the kid to fool around it."
"Squirrel's pretty small game for a buffalo hunter," said Burnett.
Cal Lockyear retorted, "You can go to hell."
"Right now that would be a comfort," said Burnett.
Watt Irish came from the herd with his two cows and left the horse beside Burnett. He spread his hands at the fire, he crept closer to the heat and he watched the growing night, its anticipated misery forming around his mouth.
"It will get no better looking at it," said Burnett. "Get on before your cows stray again." He watched the small shape bend against the wind and fade with the two cows into the snow-streaked darkness; he rose to catch the fire on another quarter of his body.
Whit Rinearson had baited Watt Irish for no better reason than to cause somebody trouble. Whit was the senseless one of the Rinearson tribe, and needed to feel a lot of pain before he'd ever know anything about pity; or maybe he had been making a display of toughness for the benefit of Cal Lockyear, who was another breed of cat entirely.
Having put in his time trapping through the Rockies, Burnett understood Lockyear better than the people of the train did, for Lockyear had been in the mountains too and such a life reduced a man to the lean meat of his character. Lockyear would do as he pleased, let others take care, and that part of him Burnett respected since he had some of it himself.
But there was about this muscular man a mixture of the unsure and of the threatening. He was thirty, Burnett's age, and thus old enough to have achieved some consistency of view, yet he was more frequently unpredictable than reasonable. He was by turns boastful, rudely humorous and overbearing; he could swing from a civil manner to surly silence in the space of a breath; he had spells of affable familiarity which, when not properly received, turned at once to insolence; he had great extremes in him and seemed to care nothing for the effect he made on anybody; and though he usually accorded Burnett a better manner than he gave to others—he showed little liking for the farmers and shopkeepers and mechanics composing this train—he was nevertheless offended by Burnett's defense of Watt and couldn't quite restrain his ill-humor.
"You want the kid's mother to keep you warm nights? Hell, that's not hard to do. Go ask her. Won't have to ask twice. She's lookin' around. She'd take anything that came—even a cripple like Veen."
In the background Veen stirred, gave Burnett a short glance and dropped his eyes to the fire. Whit Rinearson let go with a flat laugh. Burnett looked from one man to another, ignoring the remark; he turned again to soak in the heat.
"This ain't our country," said Lockyear. "It's Siwash country. Up in Jackson Hole we'd be fixed for winter: good cabin, plenty of meat, plenty of tobacco, no trouble."
"Plenty of cold," added Burnett.
"Dry cold. This air's too wet. What'd we come for?"
"I got to thinking like an Indian," said Burnett.
"That's all right. That's fine."
"Fine for an Indian."
"Well, by God, there's times when I like Indians better than whites. These people—I don't know. They ain't our style. Let's go back and eat buffalo hump."
"Nothing there any more, Cal. Beaver's trapped out. No market for furs. Ever meet Bill Cash?"
"On the Green once. Bigger liar than Beckworth."
"Fifty years old, looked eighty. Ate his meat raw because he was too damned lazy to cook it. Crippled up by rheumatism. Lived past his prime. Good old days gone and no good ones left. He'll drift around the mountains looking for men not there any more. Then he'll start talkin' to those fellows. Then he'll crawl off in the brush and die."
"You been sleepin' cold," said Lockyear. "What you want—"
Burnett said, "Now give that a thought before it comes out," and leveled his glance across the fire; he was cool, he was smiling. Insolence gleamed in Lockyear's eyes, the prompting of temper was there, the reckless moment was there; then he let go with a rough laugh and passed the challenge by. Burnett turned to his horse, used his sleeve to scrub snow slush from the saddle and rose into it. Riding over the clearing, he reached the rocky trail and once more followed its crooked course.
Two hours later, in the trembling blackness of a hard snowstorm, he heard the rising roar of the river rapids. Fires burned ahead of him and rafts landed from their down-river run, crowded the rocky beach. Even at this hour men worked their wagons ashore from these rafts, to remount the wheels in preparation for tomorrow's land journey to the foot of the rapids. Neither cargo nor passengers could live through that particular six miles of water; when the portage had been made, the rafts would be let go to run the cascades empty, would be retrieved in the calmer current below, and would again be loaded for the last thirty-odd miles to the mouth of the Sandy. From there on the final two days' journey into Oregon City would be by land.
He drifted forward in search of a camp spot. Traffic had churned the ground into foot-deep slush, and livestock milled about in search of forage, and wagons and fires and rough shelters lay close-crowded along a narrow strip of land between river and gorge wall. He passed and hailed the Kitchens and the Millards and he swung his horse to avoid Lorenzo Buck, who crouched close to the earth in search of some lost object. Directly beyond, Burnett came into the glow of the Gay fire. Katherine Gay saw him.
"Put up here, Rice."
A ridgepole ran between Gay's landed wagon and a nearby fir; over the ridgepole hung a large sheet of canvas beneath which several people were gathered. Six of them were Gays, Katherine, her fourteen-year-old brother Joe, her parents—John and Martha Gay—and her grandparents, Sophia and the Old Man. The Howards and the Mclvers had joined the group to save the work of making their own fires. Dr. Ralph Whitcomb, who as a single man had shared one fire or another all across the plains, stood beside Harris Eby; and though the doctor was neither short nor thin, he seemed to be so against Eby, who was by far the largest man in the train, six feet six of bone and hard tissue, great feet, thick legs, maul-shaped fists, and an upper body which had a kind of treelike sweep to it; all of this topped by a blond head and a round and quiet face. On Eby's other side was Lot White, though Lot's vanity always made him step far enough back from Eby to make the comparison less pronounced; and Lot, as usual with him, was involved in rather loud and positive talk. He broke off long enough to cast a short glance at Burnett, to say "Hello, Rice," and to wait for his audience's attention to return.
Though canvas and wagon afforded some protection there was no escape from the freezing whip of the wind, or the inslanted snow, or the mud underfoot, or the reverberations of the river in its cataract. Burnett picked an empty spot not far from the fire for his pack pile and unloaded his horses with a slowness he could do nothing about; he had no feeling in feet, hands or knees, and he watched his animals drift into the night and pitied them. He stood well away from the fire to scrub some kind of sensation back into ears and nose.
Katherine brought him a cup of coffee and tested his overcoat with her hand. "Have you got anything dry?"
The heat of the cup scarcely registered in his palms though it scorched his tongue. "Buried somewhere in that pile."
She pushed him toward the fire. She looked around the circle and said to Lot White: "You've got the warmest spot. Move over."
Lot White said: "Rafts still in the river, comin'?"
"A lot of 'em," Burnett said.
"Lot," said Katherine Gay, "move over."
Lot White gave her a glance and reluctantly moved. He was a short, turkey-cock man with an upper body shaped by his blacksmithing trade; his hat, thrust back, showed a half-bald head; his eyes were a shade of blue too light for his complexion, thereby lending an unusual insistence to his glance; his mouth, though forceful, was thin enough to be without color, and his jaw was stubborn and his words came out with a kind of tumbling effect, as though sped by the pressure of other impatient words behind.
"They should have sense enough to not creep down this river by night. Out there the weather's too much to bear, and if they overshoot this place they'll be in the rapids and that's the end."
John Gay said: "We ought to keep these fires bright so they can see the way in." He looked to his son Joe. "If you're fairly warm go rummage up a few more big branches."
Half beyond the reach of the fire, Joe Gay was overtaken by Dr. Whitcomb's advice. "Be careful you don't get hit. The wind's knocking dead branches down like rain."
"He won't get hit," said Lot White; and said it with such certainty that Dr. Whitcomb's glance moved to him with its small amusement.
"You trying to throw a mantle of mercy over him, Lot?"
"He won't get hit."
"If he's standing in the right place at the right time, he certainly will," said the doctor.
Lot White slapped both hands briskly together and meant to carry on the talk. Katherine Gay stopped it. "Let each other alone. You're both old enough to know you can't change anything by talk."
"Lot feels he's got a call to change me," said the doctor. He settled himself at the foot of the wagon wheel, his face reddened and made cheerful by the firelight. "What reason brought you to Oregon, Lot?"
Lot White searched the doctor's face for guile. Then he said: "I couldn't abide slavery. I won't live where it is." He stared steadily at Whitcomb. "You meanin' to make fun of that?"
"No," said the doctor, "that's a good reason."
"You got a way of lookin' and just listenin' without believin'," said Lot White. "It's a way that disturbs people, for they think you're smart because you're a doctor, and if you don't believe in things, they get to wonderin' if they're right. You can't do that."
"That's right, Lot," said Ralph Whitcomb, and smiled at Lot White's renewed rise of suspicion. "So, why don't you let my beliefs alone?"
"Because you believe wrong and it's my bounden duty to make you see it."
Whitcomb was too weary to laugh outright. "You ought to be a Jesuit.
"And you ought not use education against a man that's got none," said Lot.
The doctor's smile disappeared. "You're right about that, too. Well, a Jesuit's a man who'll use any argument to gain his end."
Lot White meant to carry on with the talk but Whitcomb turned from him to John Gay. "Why'd you come here?"
Gay had been only half attentive; his thoughts were with the fire, which he pushed together with his boots. He looked back toward the raft pitching in the water, to the ropes which held it to the shore trees. He stepped to the edge of the covering canvas and shook away its load of snow, and returned to the fire. The first sloping of middle age was visible in his shoulders and the first settling had begun around his mouth, to give it an extra pinch of resolution. His arms were the long arms of the outdoor worker, wristbones heavy, fingers enlarged and slightly bowed from the year of grasping and twisting and squeezing. His face was composed rather than sensitive; without formal schooling, he was one of those natively intelligent men who move slowly from point to point in their thinking.
"Why," he said, "I suppose it was the land I wanted." He looked toward his wife. "Anyhow, that's what I told Martha." He stopped to replace a rolled-away chunk of firewood. "Most of the men of this train lie a little about their reasons. We've all got some sort of itch in our feet to try a fresh place, and that's almost the main reason in some of these fellows."
"That's what I think about," said Martha Gay, "when I remember all the nice furniture I couldn't bring and the new apple orchard just ready to bear." She looked steadily at her husband. "Sometimes I just hate the people who bought our place."
John Gay turned to the doctor. "You're such a hand to ask questions. What for yourself—what brought you?"
"My maternal grandfather was a young man in the Lewis and Clark expedition. I listened to those stories for years."
Voices roughly shouted down the trail and the Rinearson cattle broke through the fire's light toward the shelter. John Gay seized a limb chunk and waved it before them, driving them back around the wagon into the farther darkness; the steady stream of beasts moved past, and Whit Rinearson and the Lockyears appeared in the light and vanished.
"They'll knock over half the shelters in camp," said John Gay.
The doctor got up and put his hands to the fire for a last warming. "I should look at Provost's baby again."
Burnett said: "If you've got any whisky, give Mrs. Irish enough to mix Watt a toddy."
Whitcomb's departure broke the group, for the Howards and Mclvers and Lot White soon left. John Gay said, "I hear somebody on the river," and moved beyond the firelight's reach as Grandmother Sophia and the Old Man, after soaking in a last warmth from the fire, entered the wagon.
Katherine walked to the food box and in a moment came back with a plate of beans and molasses for Burnett. She tipped fresh coffee into his cup from the big pot on the fire and settled between Burnett and Harris Eby, the latter balanced on his heels. Wind fanned hot tobacco ashes from Eby's pipe into his face; he batted the ashes away, idly laughing. Behind these three, Martha Gay looked on with a clouded interest and seemed to study her daughter as a stranger.
Through wind's blast and river's roar a man's lonely voice cried across the water from a raft; a lantern glinted on the raft and was lost as the raft sank deep into furious rollers. Shore voices called outward and the man shouted back. Somewhere behind this raft were others searching their way down-river, for far away a faint calling survived the night's rattle and rush and thunder. John Gay, lost in the snow flurry not more than twenty feet from the fire, flung out the hardest shout he could produce.
"Turn in here—be quick—turn in—bad water below!"
Katherine said: "This will be a terrible place tomorrow with all the wagons landing."
"Terrible place now," said Burnett.
"Turn around and let the other side get dry."
He reversed himself before the fire. She adjusted herself toward him, thereby placing her back to Harris Eby; and suddenly Martha Gay said, "I think I'll go to bed"—and caught her daughter's eyes and held them a long moment, and went to the wagon.
Rice said: "There'll be some weak stock dying tonight."
She said: "Be some people dying, too, if they didn't believe the trip was almost over." She took a small branch and crouched to worry the red-white coals about on their bed. The fire soothed her, her face lost its weariness and her mouth alternately loosened and grew firm as her thoughts swung. John Gay's shouted warning rode the windy night again and woke an answering halloo from somewhere on the river. The girl drew her shoulders in; a look of pity crossed her face. Upstream a short distance many men were taking a raft shoreward through the blackness, and a woman cried, and in the farther distance a gun went off as a signal.
Burnett's square pack pile slowly changed to a round lump as snow built drifts around it, and the campfire was a single bright cell of warmth in a smothered world. Wind cried shrill at the sharp wagon corners and filled the upper air with tumult as it slashed through the fir tops; a loose bucket went banging over the shore rocks, a lone horse thrust its head through the snow screen and stood with its crusted mane and its eyes shining agate green against the light. Burnett went to the pack pile to pull his blanket roll from the protecting canvas. Bitterness began one step beyond the fire's reach; he was cold again when he dragged the roll beside the fire.
"Get your feet dry first," Katherine said.
He twisted his boots between his hands and found them soaked solid to his feet. Harris Eby rose and moved over; he planted a knee against Burnett's chest, clasped his hands around one boot at a time and pulled them off with such force that Burnett fell back into the snow. He laughed, as much at himself as at Burnett. "Something had to give, boots or feet." He set the boots against the fire, smile turning his face peaceful; the shrewd blue eyes flashed in the light, fell upon Burnett and turned to Katherine. The girl's glance rose along this immense column of a man and she patted the huge hand hanging near her.
"If you ever got mad," said Burnett, "you'd do considerable damage."
Eby found pleasure in the thought. "Pull the trees down one at a time, push the cabins flat, kick holes in the earth...But I never get mad. It was left out of my system."
"No, I saw you put out once," she said. "You remember the Bonesteele brothers?"
"Long time back," said Eby.
"Not so long. About ten years. It was just after my fourteenth birthday."
"Thirteenth," said Eby. "Because when you were fourteen you'd moved to the house by the creek."
"He never forgets anything," said Katherine to Burnett. "He even remembers when I was born."
"I do," said Eby. "I was three and my mother came home and told about it, and same day she got some flowers and I carried the flowers over to your mother and I saw you. They were lilacs. We had a big bush in the yard."
"What about the Bonesteeles?" said Burnett.
"I wasn't exactly mad," said Eby. "More like aggravated."
"It was about me," said Katherine. "He was jealous. The oldest one was Fred Bonesteele and he liked me. He had four brothers and I guess he thought he'd run Harris off."
"Me," said Eby gently. "Run me off. Fred never had any sense."
"Well," said Katherine, "Fred got his brothers and three or four other boys to help him. You tell it, Harris."
Eby said, "It wasn't a great deal. I just pushed that bunch around till the extra ones got tired and quit. Then I gathered up the Bonesteele boys." He looked to Katherine, smiling, shaking his head, and turned his attention to Burnett. "It was the backhouse. It sat on the edge of a ravine. I shoved those five boys into the backhouse and shut the door. It was pretty crowded with all five inside and I had some trouble with the door. Then I gave the backhouse a push and sent it down the ravine. But I really wasn't mad." A note of regret came into his voice. "I wish I could get mad. It would be better." He drew Burnett's boots, now steaming, away from the fire. "How you going to get that pack string down this river?"
"There's a trail on the north shore that goes into Fort Vancouver. I'll ford over at the foot of the rapids."
"Bad thing," said Eby. He shifted from foot to foot. "Lord, I'm tired." The fire made him lazy. He wanted to turn in but he didn't want to leave the fire. Presently he gave out a sigh and mustered his resolution and disappeared into the dense screen of snow.
"Good thing to know somebody a long time," said Burnett.
"Didn't you?"
"I ran away from home when I was about twelve. Mother had died and I didn't like my stepmother."
"Never went back?"
"When I came out of the Rockies last year I went back. Old man was dead and my stepmother didn't know me. Well, she did, but pretended she didn't. She was afraid I might want some of the property. I hunted up a couple of brothers and a sister, but it wasn't much good. We were strangers." The sound of voices came on in short, wind-disconnected bursts from upstream, lively and imperative. "Raft in," he said. "I ought to go lend a hand."
"Sit still. There's men aplenty to help."
She knelt before the flames, heavy coat collar raised as a frame around her neck, shawl drawn over her head to shield the heavy piles of corn-yellow hair. Her skin was light and her eyes were of that shade of blue sometimes seen at early twilight when shadows lay powdery against brush thickets. The lowered position of head and shoulders gave her a false air of submission; she watched the fire with a fascinated steadiness and its light sharpened the angles of jaw and throat.
He built the fire and opened his bedroll; he put boots and socks at the foot of the roll and worked himself into the blankets. She watched him, half seeing him and half thinking of him while some other thought gave her expression an instant's austerity. It presently disappeared before her smile and she rose and bent over him and worked the bedroll's canvas around him. "You'll be a big mound of snow by morning." She had a thought which amused her and she reached back for a thin fir limb scorched bare by the fire and jammed it upright into the ground at the head of the blanket roll. "Here lies Rice. In the morning we'll know where to dig." She drew the canvas on until it covered all but his eyes and head. "You warm?"
"By patches."
"There's a glitter on your whiskers. You'd have a red beard if you'd let it grow."
"That's sand shining. Didn't wash my face today. Why don't you go to bed? Bad day tomorrow."
"I hate to go to bed."
"You're too old to be afraid of the dark."
"I'm not afraid of anything. I just hate to go to bed. Might miss something." She folded the canvas around his face. "You look like a wolf." She pulled it over his head and tucked it around him and laid her hand on his shoulder and bent nearer. "Good night." Rising, she watched the snow drift against his covered shape, and she loitered a short time longer at the fire, and at last turned into the wagon.
Flat against the ground, Burnett felt the trembling of the earth; the sounds of the storm—of trees and river and wind and snow—merged into an enormous roaring as night closed down and the world went crazy.
Chapter 4
DAY was still somewhere far above this storm-choked mountain trench, but in the small hours a sense of uneasiness came upon the camp, and the fear of a weather trap worked from family to family until they rose in common reaction as a herd would rise. Wagons groaned unseen around Burnett, animals moved in dumb file past him, and men shouted above the steady cry of the wind. He packed his horses by the flagging light of the Gay fire, they having earlier departed, and set his outfit along a trail which was already crowded. The steady slantwise drive of the snow got at his sense of balance until it seemed to him the world was tilted; waves of snow broke against him like spray and lodged on his coat and slowly hardened to scales of ice.
The traveling column moved sluggishly, halted, moved again. Behind him a voice—it sounded like Old Daniel Rinearson's—beat forward. "Get on up there—get on!" He passed Harper Howard's wagon, the oxen yoked and waiting. Mrs. Howard crouched before a fire with her arms thrust out as if to pull heat into her. Her husband had a hand on her shoulder, prompting her to rise, but even through the mealy blur Burnett saw the misery on her face.
Blackness was solid beyond the camp site and beyond the string of fires and there was no guide save the heaving shadow of the wagon directly ahead of Burnett. He passed the trees and crawled up a field of loose rock which ran tilted between bluff and river. At the summit of this place a man waited to warn the passing outfits. "Take the downgrade easy. You can break your wheels. Watch beyond—it's narrow." The wagon's shadow ahead of Burnett swayed and he heard the small avalanche which its wheels started among the rocks.
Daniel Rinearson's voice cried forward once again and afterwards fell still, and the column went on at its groping gait. Presently the trail moved so close upon the river that Burnett saw the exploding waters of that rough six-mile stretch which they were now detouring, the cascades leaping as white fire across the black, and the sound—like the tearing of cloth, like the rumble of smothered explosions, like the escape of live steam—trembling against him and disturbing the earth beneath his feet. He had been more than an hour on the way and had made perhaps two miles of the portage when a first daylight crept in and the scattered house-high rocks began to stand forth along the trail and the gorge wall took on substance close at hand, rising and vanishing in the upper layers of the storm. The column worked its way between narrow pillars and crossed a short lowland piece overgrown with willows. Beyond the willows, as the daylight wanly grew, Burnett had a sight of the column for perhaps three hundred feet: the straggling stock, the great wagons slowly careening, men and women trudging in the deep-churned muck with their bodies bent against the weather. Leaving the willow flats the trail entered timber, newly fallen trees indicating where the first riders had cut a way through yard-high drifts. The column halted and he sat on the saddle and felt numbness creep along his legs while the wind laid open his face with its knife slashes; later the column lurched forward and he passed Henry Provost's wagon off the trail, Provost and two other men standing beside a dead ox. A good two hours onward from this point brought Burnett to a pinched beach at the foot of the rapids where the first arrivals were already scattered through the loose trees; the cattle had begun to drift for shelter and fires showed their first feeble eyes in the grayness.
John Gay's wagon stood hard by the river, the oxen unyoked and gone, the canvas shelter stretched again from wagon to tree. Gay crouched on his hands and knees—Katherine holding a blanket around him—and blew his fire into life. When Burnett crawled from the saddle thin ice rattled along his coat and his feet felt no contact with the earth and his fingers, working at the pack ropes, were iron rods which wouldn't bend. He struck them against the packs until sensation came, and struck so hard that blood began to break through the skin. From one of the packs he got a bundle of thin pitchwood and went to the fire. Katherine's face was stone-solid and in her eyes was a withdrawn expression as though, beaten until sensation had left her, she waited dumbly to be beaten again. He rubbed a finger along her cheek, he touched her ears.
"Feel that?"
"Yes."
He got down beside Gay and drew the blanket around him. The fire, scarcely larger than the size of Gay's cupped hands, burned feebly on its dry shavings. Burnett slid the pitch splinters across the flame, one by one, and Gay crowded the pile between his palms, flame licking against his skin. He strangled on the smoke and turned his head from side to side. Burnett built a wigwam of pitch and sticks and the two nursed the fire until the blanket started to scorch and the growing smoke drove them back. Gay scrubbed his crying eyes and returned to the job. Young Joe came in with a load of wood and Burnett got his ax to trim a short log nearby and to drag it to the fire for a backstop. He wanted to stay here to soak in a little heat but the weather warned him and he cruised the trees until he found a skinny fir and dropped it and began to cut the twelve-foot sections which, bound together, would make the small raft he needed to freight his pack stuff across the river. The wagon column moved steadily forward from the portage trail, wagon after wagon swinging beside the river to find camp space, and Rinearson's cattle drifted through the timber hollow-flanked, long horns tossing, turned into wild game. Burnett kept his eyes on them while he worked.
Watt Irish crawled from his wagon and ran toward the Gay fire, calling to Katherine. "Mother wants you—her feet are frozen."
Katherine still held the blanket to shield her father at the fire. She dropped it, caught a bucket and went to the river; she scooped up water and hurried on past Burnett and into the Irish wagon. Young Watt came slowly back toward Burnett. He shook, and braced his shoulders, and shook again.
"What have you got left for food?" asked Burnett.
"A piece of bacon and some onions."
"Go back to the fire and stay there," said Burnett.
Wind struck its sledgehammer blows on the camp and bent the stunted firs and ripped the snow into shredded streamers. Coldness was an acid burning holes through Burnett's body, and out of these holes his energy ran in waste. The swinging of the ax brought feeling back to feet and legs but his cracked hands continued to bleed and his motions were awkward. He dragged the raft sections to the beach and laid them together and he dropped another thin tree and trimmed out crosspieces to bind the logs. He returned to his pack for spikes, walking with his feet spread apart; coldness got at his mind as well as his muscles and he had to push himself. He spiked the crosspieces to the logs, tied a rope rowlock at each side of the raft and cut two lengths from the tree to make his oars. These he carried to the fire and went to his packs for his jerked meat and his skillet. He pushed Lot White and Daniel Rinearson aside and squatted at the fire to make his meal. The crowd had grown larger.
Mrs. Irish sat at the fire, wrapped around in a patchwork quilt. She let her head fall back against Katherine behind her; pain flickered around her mouth, put there by the revived sensation in her feet.
"I thought Oregon was gentle," said Lot White.
"We're in the neck of the funnel—it all collects here."
More people came off the trail with the telltale walk of exhaustion; it was a drunken walk, a swaying, drag-footed, loose walk; their heads bounced on their shoulders, they were mudcaked from ankle to knee and a thin sheeting of ice glittered on their clothes. Ralph Whitcomb moved among them, touching ears and noses and hands. Mrs. Howard came in and sank beside Mrs. Irish. She laid both hands over her face and softly groaned.
"Well," said Lot, "it's worse by the hour. We might get frozen in here. We had better move on fast."
John Gay said: "It's time to send a man back to cut loose the rafts and let 'em run the cascades."
"I'll be surprised," said Lorenzo Buck, "if they come through and not be torn apart."
"The risk's to be taken," said Gay.
"How'll we catch 'em when they get here?"
"Row out with my little raft," said Burnett, "and pick 'em up."
"The man that goes back can't cut 'em all loose in one batch," said Lorenzo Buck. "Let's get this timed right."
The men in the circle looked toward the water, visualizing the little raft going out, the pickup of the big raft, the towing of the big raft ashore, the return of the little raft.
"Half an hour," said Ben Provost.
"Ever try to tow something heavy?" asked Ryal McIver.
"Forty-five minutes," said John Gay. "That's about right."
Daniel Rinearson said, "Who goes back?" He was, at sixty, a hale man of moderate size, well-wrapped inside a buffalo coat; he had a chunk of cloth wound around his head like a turban and this, covering his ears, made him bend forward to catch what others said; the exposed part of his face—a face with frosty brows hanging above the horse-trading eyes, bold sharp nose, and a chin built forward—was whipped to a barn-red by the wind. His scanning glance stopped on young Watt Irish. "You go back and cut the rafts loose."
"No," said Rice Burnett and went on eating.
Old Daniel's arguing countenance settled on Burnett. "It's fair enough for the boy to lend us a hand."
Mrs. Irish had been listening with her eyes closed. She opened them and looked from man to man, and then to her son standing at the fire. "If it's thought he should, then he will. But I wish—"
"No," said Burnett. "He's beat-out."
"Well, then?" said Old Daniel and stood with his lower lip rolled out.
"You've got more men in your family than anybody else," said Burnett.
"Hell of a lot of free advice around here," said Old Daniel. He took his silent poll of the crowd and drew his conclusions. "All right, I'll send one of the boys."
John Gay gently said: "Which one, Daniel?"
"Does it make a difference between my sons?" said Old Daniel.
"It's a responsible thing," said John Gay. "If they're cut loose too close together we'll miss some, and then there's trouble. Don't send Whit."
Daniel Rinearson tossed his head and let go with a loud laugh, but his eyes lay resentfully on John Gay. He looked about once more, sensing the will of the crowd. "All right, I'll send Ared." Then he said, "Think he's got sense enough?"
Harper Howard said: "Send him soon. We got to get out of here. We're short of food and it's still two-three days to Oregon City. It wouldn't hurt if we had a solid meal of beef in us before we started."
Daniel lowered his eyes to the fire, rubbed his hands together, and ignored the quiet watching of the others. He said, "Well, I'll get Ared on the way," and left the circle.
"Tell him to cut 'em loose forty-five minutes apart," called John Gay. He looked to Harper Howard with a short break of humor. "He didn't rise to it."
"Rich men don't rise," said Howard. "He wouldn't miss a couple cows from that hundred. But, no, he don't give anything free."
Burnett finished his meal and shaped out the oars beside the fire. The group around him constantly changed, other settlers coming in from the trail to thaw the misery in them before they went on to make camp. The day worsened and when he carried the oars to the raft a dense snowfall blotted out the far shore. He carried a third of his packs to the beach, slid the raft into the water and loaded it. He put the oars through the rope-holes and shoved away; twenty feet from shore the current seized him and the rollers, quartering against the raft, threw it sidewise into the air; then the rollers ran away from the raft and it dropped into the troughs with a jar that snapped his head. Halfway over the river he saw a small crowd watching him from the shore but when he reached the far beach they were lost in the driving mist.
He recrossed and stood at the fire a moment, and reloaded and crossed again; on the third trip, with the last of the packs, the rollers caught him and rushed over him and only the support of the oars held him aboard; he came wet to the fire and crouched there to dissolve the iron ache in his bones.
"It's about time for the first raft," said John Gay.
Burnett got a coil of rope from his camp stuff; he cut it into two sections, making a towrope for each end of the small raft. Squatted low against the beach to scan the river, Lot White suddenly said, "Think I see it comin'," and John Gay and Ben Provost got aboard the little raft and flattened themselves on it as Burnett rowed away. He saw the big raft come through the boiling cascades, swinging end to end, sinking below the surface, rising with all the force of the current behind it to leap from the water like a clumsy fish.
Burnett maneuvered the small raft into midstream and dug the oars deep to hold it; a wave rushed under him, seized an edge of the raft and sucked it down, and buckshot pellets of spray drew a sharp shout from Ben Provost. When they rose from the trough they discovered the big raft dead ahead, slowly revolving in the current. Burnett brought the small raft directly against it and waited for the collision. Provost and Gay, half risen, clung to the small raft's logs.
"Watch now," said Burnett.
