Raymond S. Spears

“ The size of the flood, the vastness of the surface, made the fugitive boy feel trivial and insignificant, and hidden from every one’s sight—as indeed he was. When Driftwood had had his supper, and was sound asleep in warm night-clothes which the shanty-boat women had given him, Jep turned the light in the brass lamp low, and, putting on a heavy woolen shirt, stepped outside to keep vigilant watch and guard.
There was no shore in sight that night—just the faintly glimmering, drift-shadowed gloom of wide surfaces and dark-softened, half-submerged woods. ”

“ One touch had awakened his soul, one kiss had elevated him to heights of which he had dreamed, toward which he had struggled in vain through jungle fastnesses—now he breathed deep with satisfaction. His mind dwelt upon the sheer beauty of mighty torrent, and a skyline that did not imprison the soul struggling against the bars of limitation and crowds and haste and efficiency.
Just so Murdong found himself a part of the atmosphere of Old Mississip'. He felt as much a river man as any old-timer ever felt. ”

“ Owls hooted at intervals; wild geese, flying overhead on their way north, showered the flood with the music of their hoarse voices; a wild turkey called from a tree at some distance from the house-boat; a tree swaying on loose roots in the current that flowed out of the foot of Reelfoot Lake through the Shakes, as this part of the bottoms was called, sawed a branch against another tree with a screaming, fiddling sound; a low undertone, part noise, part shuddering of the wilderness in the current of the inundation, filled the night with sensation which was thrilling to the brave youth. ”

“ Beneath him he looked into distances of descending slopes gorgeous with the bright desert hues. In no direction could he see any house, any sign of habitation, any suggestion of human neighbors.
He loved the loneliness that fell upon his soul. He cringed before the enormous crags that reminded him of the tiny height of rock on Lexington Avenue. He seemed to see everywhere the sharp features and great, dreamy eyes of the girl who, in his mind, was indelibly associated with the earth's eternal granite.
To please his parents, he need do but one thing—find health and strength. ”

“ Fear gripped him—terror that grew within till the very beating of his heart was thunder in the silence of the cabin in the river quiet.
Jerald Toskin had trifled a little with stances and mediumistic phenomena, and sometimes he had seen a Ouiji board spell out things which were startling and inexplicable. The flutter of a curtain, moved by invisible powers, the lifting of a table under the gentle urge of a circle of hands, whose finger tips were on it, messages across the border land of ultimate adventure were all well enough with one’s own people around, but here in this boat! ”

“ His breath began to come in short gasps, thinking of what was unplayed—what no man had ever yet played. He listened, and amid the uproar of the storm, while the loose planks rattled and the wind drew screaming through the whistling places, he caught the rhythm of the old mill, and he knew that after a time he would play it on the fiddle and make it into music that would cheer him on his way. ”

“ They were floating down the long Red Town Bend when the current swung them whirling into the caving bank, and there a huge sawyer, jumping with all the power of a log in a white-water cascade, came up beneath the big house boat, struck the bottom with the force of an explosion and smashed it up, tore up through the stringers and the cabin floor and a long, jagged root pierced the very roof itself.
Just that way things happen down the Mississippi; a little day dreaming, a bit of neglect, a moment of delicious peace and lovely floating is changed into one of tragedy, or dire peril. ”

“ That wolf-trail, driving straight through all the careless, wandering, snuffling pack, was as plain as day to French Louie. He saw the other wolves for what they were—young pups, old rompers, a growling, snarling, hungry pack, leaving everything big to the wolf that traveled straight.
"No, by gar! Dat's too bad!" French Louie grumbled. "Dat feller raise one combamba wit' my trap-lines! Dey raise trouble wit' me, too, if dey catch me in the dark of the moon! By gar, I bet I climb a tree like porcupine—no, by gar! I run up like I wass a marten or a squirrel, in one mighty beeg hurry!" ”

“ His wife was dead; all the children were grown up, except two or three who were dead; but Jean survived, and old Jeadreau was proud of him, for he was big and strong and impatient, like his father—tearing with ambition, but like his mother, loving little children and loving his father and loving his own wife, whose tongue was sometimes impatient, but what wife ever lived who would not grow impatient with the stolid thick-headedness of men? ”

“ While two or three of the men rode around the edge of the tall prickly-pear and pointed their sharp noses out over the spines, blinking as they saw the reflection of the setting sun down the masses of spines and thorns, like the pathway of moonbeams on the ripples of water or across an alkali flat, the other humans in quick and hasty alarm fell from their horses, who sighed and blew with relief and wished they had a drink. ”

“ The night of the big wind was followed by a day and a night of gusts of wind and sleety rain; then followed a day and a night of rising clouds, then a day when the clouds were scattered and the sun was cold. That day the sunset was grim, white, and freezing cold.
In the morning there was a bright, warm sunrise, a breath of sweet, soft air, and unimaginable brightness and buoyancy, birds singing, squirrels barking, and all the dismal pangs banished. ”

“ From within the huge craft there sounded human music that seemed far away, and the deck beneath the feet of the two began to throb and spring to the dancing in the great cabin. A whiff of pungent wood smoke caught their nostrils as a current of air came swirling over the roof and around them. The long, heavy stern line which led out to the bank, against which the bow of the hull pressed, strained as a water wave heaved through the dead eddy and raised them. ”

“ History is woven with science, romance with psychology, in the story of the huge flood made up of the beautiful green waters of the Tennessee and the Cumberland, of the muddy yellows of the Missouri, of the clay-stained tide of the Red River, of underground flows from arid lands tainted with alkali and oil, of the wash from iron and coal, of humic acid from vast forest wildernesses, of the icy meltings of snowcapped peaks, and of bubbling springs in the valley sands. ”

“ Snow followed snow. What had been convenient tracking, showing whither the pekans ran, where the mink crossed from stream to stream, was now a deep, fluffy mass against which the broad chest of the bull moose plowed, and in which French Louey lifted high his long raquettes, complaining bitterly that he was too old for such nonsense; pausing, however, to bandy words with a flock of blue jays, or talk soothingly to some still-living victim in his pretty cubby, ere it had jerked the well-sweep clear to lift it by a caught paw to swing hopeless and helpless—a bit of living fur in its doom. ”

“ There men—stalwarts!—had found the springs, claimed them, and established ranches, where in winter sheep were pastured on the tooele marshes, or fed on the sparse vegetation which sprang up when the autumn rain—a mere shower—had brought quick blossoming to soil which aridity seemed to have made utterly sterile—and yet in which a drop of water gave life to seeds long dormant.
Hall rolled along a mile or two behind the other car. The flour-like dust from the tourist's wheels fluffed out at chuck holes, and rolled away like the smoke from explosions. ”

“ He made the struggle of his life—for life against that wicked, stone-climber from the high pastures. He fought Waltzing Jupiter up and down—but every wrench twisted the rider’s back, and every turn made his muscles stretch and crack, so that the sun in the sky lost its individuality, becoming a widening, multitudinous glare, that grew to him darker and darker. The shade began to fall slowly on the scene. The uproar of the standing mob, yelling their heads off, grew fainter and fainter. Cheers and jeers alike subsided into low murmurings—and still Tierail rode. ”

“ Miles to the right, miles to the left, miles away in any direction he might look, he could see, beyond whole sections of open water and flat acres of drift, the submerged woodlands of bottoms, the river banks two or three or four hundred feet high—so they looked—and great expanses of open water in which lone trees stood to mark places that on a hot summer day must offer grateful shade to cattle, or to grain reapers, or whoever came there when those bottoms were not covered with ten feet or so of water. ”

“ Her smile had illuminated the whole Bell Brand outfit. In all the region none was quite like her, quite the same in repute, in interest, in wonder and in charm. When she had taken her departure to this way back place it was as though the chandelier of a great room had been extinguished leaving only the invisible reflector lights around the walls to cast a pale glow. It had been a relief to leave the loneliness of the ranch buildings to look for wolves in their dens after she had taken her departure.
Men who dwell much alone are keenly appreciative of the feminine presence. ”

“ Some men may dwell content in that open land, bare and silent as it is, because it satisfies some hope in their souls, but not Henry Howard—not the man who had gone desperately into that most dangerous of places, hating his own life, despising all that he was, struggling as with a burden, with an invisible, intangible antagonist, with a spirit that was unrest. And yet he loved the desert, and he endured hunger, thirst, and silence. ”

“ The dark had come. The reach was as lonesome as any from Cairo to Mendova. The last Delia saw of him in the fading twilight that followed sunset was his side-long glances in the direction of her boat.
She lighted her lamp and after a little thinking she left the doors unlocked. She felt that the attack would come either from the bow or stern, and she thought that she would be able to escape if the opposite door was not fastened.
She waited, growing calm the while. The actual presence of the great danger for a river woman, especially for such a pretty girl as she was, seemed to calm her. ”

“ Things are never twice alike down that river. The anchor on her deck—that was kind of human and mischievous, but the voices and whisperings in the dark—the passing of strange sounds among human voices.
The wonder, more than the ominousness, appealed to her. She heard some one say something plain at last. Some one hailed:
“Say, Jack! There’s an awful fog on the river!”
“Tha’ so?” some one asked sleepily.
“Yeh! Say, Jack—Jack—Jack—Jack! Say—we’re adrift, Jack! Say——”
Columbiana heard some one tumbling out of a squeaky bunk or bed and heard a pattering of feet. ”

“ Recently a jewel of a cat had wandered aboard the yacht. Mr. Eaton had recognized it as a rare animal, in spite of soft-coal smudge. It was a Manx, and such a Manx! No soft and downy, purring kitten was this, but a creature broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, wide-faced, and heavy-clawed. Mr. Eaton could appreciate a purring, velvety kitten, but his love was for cats that could fight and parrots that swore. Hence his joy in the Manx that swaggered up the middle of the deck one day, scaring less obtrusive cats into a state of slit-eyed fear. ”

“ Suddenly, right under his nose, there was the scent of a human—that Otter Cove human!
Two Toes rose seven feet in the air and returned to the earth struggling as he fell, fearful that he would land in a steel trap of some kind. The rabbit cut a corner and escaped.
All the joy of the chase, all lust for rabbit food, went out of the wolf's mind in an instant. He couldn't smell anything but that human for days, every time he thought about it. His followers were vastly annoyed, too—except two of them who licked their chops when they passed the trail of the man. ”

“ Treefall glanced down the narrow ravine, whose sides seemed to rise into an overhanging wilderness of evergreen trees. The little hollow was a mere split in the eternal granite, and it looked as if at any moment the overarching forest and rock might give way and fill up the crack.
Treefall had never been there before, and he knew that it was the inmost of the wilderness places. He sat down, overcome with the unhappy sense of weakness that strong men feel when they find themselves utterly in the power of another.
"You can yell, if you want to," Corte said. "Listen!" ”

“ It is a magic term. Of ten thousand absconding bank cashiers, only one had ever dreamed of shanty boats—and that one now gazed fondly at the consummation of his dreams. There they were, some reddish brown, some blackish white, some bluish gray, and some just plain tar-paper shacks on driftwood scows. At the borderland of the dream world it is worth while to pause and look ahead with joyous anticipation. Colphete did this, for he was not only humorous but poetic. With fond gaze he viewed the Pittsburgh shanty boat town, which no humorous, poetic absconding bank cashier had ever seen before. ”

“ Long before he had fed down all his poison the savage blood-howls of the wolves had a steady accompaniment of cries of another kind—squeals of terror and agony. The eyes of the old trapper could see, in the gray mass below him, wild struggles and commotions as the poisoned brutes turned to fly away, a greater agony afflicting them than that of any hunger they had ever known. ”

“ In mid-afternoon, weary and worn by sleeplessness and expectancy, he pulled his boat into the deadwater at the foot of an eddy and having thrown over his stone anchor, sadly entered his cabin and, without prayer, subsided into sleep.
If he dreamed he was not awakened to consciousness by his visions. He slept on in the deep weariness which followed the wakefulness that had continued through a night of undiminished anxiety into a day of doubt and increasing despair. It had not occurred to him, in his simplicity, that the young woman would escape from him. ”

“ Down the center of the way led the shanty-boat. Now the roar became furious and tumultuous. The light had been passed. The girl in the canoe made no motion and uttered no sound.
Suddenly, a light flashed-in the shanty-boat—it flickered a moment, and then burned steadily. The front door opened and a beam of light—yellow lamp light—shot out into the night. It struck against the gray fog-bank above the leaping water. Then the shadow of a human form was thrown against the gray mist, with the arms raised in astonishment. ”

“ Until New Years, French Louey was all enwrapped in the best of the year's trapping. After the sleety thaw of January he took the leavings of the fag end of the season. Working harder, he caught less; bitter cold, meaner snows to combat, desperate storms to weather—he grew weary with his sustained endurance; he saw his quarry growing gaunt as food grew scarce.
When he met the old moose Hang-Nose he saw in the shaggy coat a certain leanness, and in the lowering eyes a certain heaviness of experience. The huge antlers had disappeared, having fallen from the bull's brow, leaving odd scars. ”

“ MR. ROLAND HAWTHORN, alias Tierail, despised sheep, tolerated cattle and worked, when he was inspired, on some horse-ranch or other. Like some poets and artists, he needed real inspiration if he was moved to toil. But with the mood in its full glory, no man ever had much edge on Tierail. He rode horses the way a canoe rides white water rapids. He sat a saddle the way a rogue cougar sits a tree-trunk over a deer runway. By his touch and his low, competing voice he soothed the maddest sunfisher, and had even quieted a nervous wreck of horse-flesh down wind from a big cinnamon bear. ”

“ What good am I now? If I could only tell Jean—how it would please Marie, who has been so patient with me. Never a word to me! I know that trick of the black fox, which only old men learn, because they know that the black fox is inbred and stupid, but cunning! I know his walk, his track! My eyes are not so very dim!"
Jean had described his trap-line down the east coast; how well old Jeadreau recalled the ridges of stone, the bleak coast of red rock, the slim, green timber, and the old, old runways beaten down by ten thousand years of hoofs and paws, rarely by moccasins. ”