LITMIR.BIZ

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never varying, never dying out. The farther they floated the deeper and more thunderous was the reverberation thrown across the towering walls. And somehow, for all the advancing light of day, the gorge was plunged in a more profound twilight. It began to narrow, and Chaffee discovered a point jutting out in front of them. The smoothness of the stream face was broken into warning ridges. White water beckoned. Around that approaching point began the Long Slide, terminating in the Devil's Boil. Of the four men who had started from Lee's in the past thirty years, three had lost their lives in the Boil; and to that mad, tortured area with its great vaults battered by dynamic hydraulic attacks and its tempestuous suction Mack Moran and Jim Chaffee were now rapidly approaching.

      "Yuh, I hear it," grumbled Mack. He looked longingly to the faint strip of shelving on the south side. "I bet a man could cut some sort of a stone ladder up there. Jim."

      "What with?"

      "There yuh go again. Well, call me for breakfast, Mister Chaffee. If I hear a trumpet or a harp I'll know it won't be beans and bacon. Go to it, kid."

      The rough water took them, the boat shot around the jutting point of the south wall. The incline of the river's bed seemed far greater than at any previous stage of the trip. As they straightened into the Long Slide a vast roar battered either precipice and they were actually dizzied by the impact of a vibrating, stuttering conflict of force against force just beyond sight. In another moment a charging white wall of water broke through the fog; spray covered them. Chaffee, dog tired, pulled in the oars.

      "What's the use of dippin' a toothpick in Niagara?" The torrent of sound tore the words out of his mouth. Mack looked backward. Chaffee leaned down. "One man made it! Hang on to your pants! Here we go!"

      Mack's face was blurred in the mist, but he winked and clamped both arms around the stern seat. Chaffee jammed his feet between boat bottom and the middle seat. The skiff swayed and lurched into a trough; at that moment Chaffee had a clear view of the Devil's Boil—nothing but cascading fury one side and a slick, uprearing wall of water that seemed to defy the law of gravity on the other. Seeing it, he pushed the oars under him, pulled himself as low as he could, and tightened all muscles.

      There is in water a power that nothing else under the blue canopy of heaven possesses. Man may dam it, yet the slowly impounding force laps away at the barrier, constantly making sallies and thrusts and forever threatening to break free; man may ride upon it, but never with a sure sense of safety, for it is a thing alive, ceaseless and destructive. It wears away all before it; it moves onward, nor can anything check its final victory. So, as Chaffee rode into the mists of fury, he resigned himself to death as others had done, even though in the dim recesses of his being the unquenchable flame of life desire still burned. One man had made it, and therefore some alley existed through the wild and charging torrent. Thus, with hope and despair alternating, he saw himself being drawn into the terrific maw of the Boil. The boat was past anyone's power to check, racing along the slide, with a speed that taxed his senses. He felt a suction pulling it lower in the water. Whether or not it was true, he did see that the surface of the stream sliced nearer the gunwales, accompanied by a sound that was something like the frying of bacon in a pan. The mists turned by degrees from a damp blanket to an actual downpour; moment by moment the canyon walls became dimmer and his ears were drummed with an intensity of attack he had never yet experienced. From the heights of the canyon he often had heard the drone of this cataclysmic force; down here, caught in its grip, the sound was more like a mingled screaming and exploding of the elements.

      The boat was filling with water. So far the speed or the suction had kept it from pitching much, but as the last sight of the walls obscured and died, and even the bulk of the craft itself was barely visible, the suction appeared to let go; instantly it began a crazy, side for side and end to end careening. The water, gushed around Chaffee's feet. Great cascades drenched him, strangled him; and all the while he was alone, one tiny cell of living life surrounded by destruction. In a moment of clearheadedness he wondered if Mack was still in the boat. He didn't know, couldn't hear his partner even if Mack shouted at the top of his lungs, and couldn't see him. More things were happening in those few seconds than he could grasp. But he did feel a slacking off of the punishment, and then the suction took hold again and the boat began to travel in a vast circle, impelled to a greater speed, thrown higher at each revolution until it seemed certain that in time it would reach some top-heavy angle and turn over. Nothing, he knew, kept the boat from being beaten into fragments but the steady rhythm of the whirlpool they were in. And he lost count entirely of the time.

      But it seemed forever. It seemed like days since he and Mack had embarked from Lee's ferry. So much for the illusion of time. The mighty reverberation played tricks with him; seemed first behind him, then in front of him. And actually appeared to sink below. Then—and it was like being released alive from a burial vault—he caught a faint sight of the sky, and, he saw one rim of the canyon perched at some crazy angle. They were traveling upward, no doubt of it. The sensation was too acute to be mistaken; and in another moment he had a small view of Mack, all in a knot. They were traveling again at great speed—and straight ahead. The sky became clearer, and for an interval the drenching sprays diminished; Chaffee even wondered if he might try the oars. It was an idle thought at the moment, for the boat was checked, smashed by some reverse current; and then they fell dizzily, the pit of Chaffee's stomach rising and his feet pushing haroer and harder against the floor boards to avert what must be the fatal crash.

      The crash never came. It was as if they were hooked to a great cradle, swinging from side to side. Then, in one more flashing interval of time, that was all changed. The boat leaped high, swung around, poised and turned over, with both of them struggling beneath it. Chaffee, trying to keep some order in his head, unlocked his body, pulled himself to the surface and looked around. Mack was perched on the upturned bow, and ahead of them lay the finest sight, the most beautiful stretch of nature Chaffee thought he had ever laid eyes upon—calm water.

      The Boil was behind, and somehow the sound of it was no longer sinister. Actually it looked like a pretty fine spectacle. So they went rocking precariously through the lee riffles and struck a sluggish eddy.

      "G-got a cigareet?" said Mack in a voice that was but a thin shadow of itself.

      "What makes you stutter?" questioned Chaffee, nor could he understand the reedy little noise in his throat.

      "Got a bit cold," explained Mack, and then began to swear. "Y'don't look so light hearted yoreself, by—"

      Chaffee studied the receding Boil. "Mack, have you got any mortal idea how we squeezed through that cataract? Hell, it's a mile high and forty feet thick."

      "No, and I ain't aimin' to go back to find out, either. Man, I died so many times in the last few minutes I got no fear of the grave left. I bet St. Peter is hangin' up a set of wings right now which he was aimin' to try on me."

      "Well, it's over. Oars gone, boat leakin', everything ready to fall apart, includin' the contents. Let's try to push this thing ashore and empty it out. Then proceed with due leisure to Linderman's."

      Hank Linderman at sunup of that morning was skinning hides on the north side of the river where Roaring Horse made a slack eddy. The bluffs here were sloping and not very tall. His house stood on top of the bluffs, and his ferry swayed against its cable, also on the north shore. The day was young and promised to be fresh and cold, but down in the eddy was a vast stench where the Stirrup S cattle had lodged after being driven over by Theodorik Perrine. And he was skinning hides when something attracted his attention up the river. Rising, he saw a boat floating toward him, oars gone, and two men sprawled against the seats in postures of infinite, mortal weariness. Knowing as much as he did about this river, Linderman was so completely astonished that he dropped his knife and walked three feet into the water.

      "Great jumpin' Judas—where yuh been?"

      Chaffee shunted the boat inward by sculling with his palms. Mack Moran was smoking a cigarette that had miraculously escaped the deluge, and he didn't seem to hear Linderman. Later, when they were nearer shore, he began talking to himself. "We made history. Yessir, we shore made a lot of history in damn' little time. Them pearly gates opened, and I heard distinct a gent callin' the roll. Got to my name and began lookin' around. 'What, not here?' thunders Peter.

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