Bailey Millard

“ Swiftly the raft glided down the flume, whizzing past great rocks and trees that almost grazed her shoulder. Often she could have reached out and touched the trunk of a pine, and sometimes soft branches scraped her side, though she ducked her head to avoid violent contact. Sometimes she caught glimpses of the road, but she saw nothing of Serena. She held her breath in awe when she flew along in the places where the flume was bracketed upon the side of a steep, high cliff, and she dared not look down to where the river lay like a mere ribbon below her. ”

“ It was a swift and easy means 'of reaching Red Cañon, and was safe enough as long as the voyager kept his place on the raft and there were no limbs or timbers projecting low over the flume ahead.
Sometimes a whole party of men would fly the flume, one behind the other, each on his own little raft, and once, when a mill-man had been crushed by a log in the yard and killed, a coffin had been made and his body had been floated down on a raft, with a grim Charon in the form of the grizzled foreman sitting up behind. ”

“ But when that important individual reached Red Cañon he did not go to the telephone. He merely sent word by a messenger to the telephone office to ring up the Sierra Springs agent and tell him to say to Mr. Capp and Mr. Hazlitt that he would keep the horse there ready for them until the next morning. If either gentleman wished the animal all he had to do was to bring or send the money. He could not give them any further time, for he was in a hurry. The one who placed the money in his hands first should have the horse. When the agent told Serena and Martha this they stared at each other. ”