Part 37 (1/2)

”Why, it can't be that you've come across the river?” cried the landlord in amazement.

”The devil it can't! We have, though, unless we've gone down it and got into h.e.l.l,” fiercely replied the other, with a contemptuous glance around; but the sulky rejoinder was received with a loud laugh by the boisterous but good-natured crew as a capital joke.

”Come through the river?” exclaimed a rough-looking fellow sitting close by. ”Here, Mister, you and your friend must have a drink with me.

What's it to be?”

”No fear,” called out the thrower of the bottle. ”The gentlemen are going to have one with me, Robins; they can have one with you after.

Here, Sims, look alive, trundle up those drinks.”

”Keep your temper, Hallett,” replied the imperturbable landlord. ”A man can't wait on a dozen fellows at once, you see; and there are a precious deal more than a dozen of you here.”

”And devilish glad you are of that same, you old humbug,” retorted the other, cheerily.

”Tell you what it is,” an oracle of ”the road” was saying in a loud voice, for the benefit of the a.s.semblage. ”That bridge'll go, I say, before night; but, anyhow, it's bound to go before morning.”

”Don't know about that, Bill,” said another. ”It's a good strong bit of iron, and my opinion is that it'll hold out.”

”It won't, though. It'll never stand the crush of drift-wood that's against it now. And, mind you, the river's coming down harder nor ever it was--I know. It's raining like blazes up the country, far more'n it is here, and what with the Tarka and the Little Fish and half-a-dozen other streams besides, emptying into this, the bridge is bound to go.

Mark my words.”

”Well, p'raps you're right, Bill. We haven't had such a flood as this in my time, and I've known this road, man and boy, for over fifty years.

Still I should have thought the bridge'd stand. It's a good bit of iron. But what do you say, Mister?” he added, appealing to Thorman.

”You've just come over it, I hear.”

”What do I say? Why, that the d.a.m.ned thing won't hold out till night,”

was the gruff reply. ”It jumped about like a twenty-foot swing while we were on it. And the fool that made it ought to be strapped upon it now, say I.”

”I've known one flood bigger than this, but that was before your time,”

observed a wiry-looking little man, with white hair and a weasel-like face, self-complacent in the consciousness of having the pull over the two last speakers, and, indeed, over most of those present. ”That was the time poor Owens was drowned. The river rose to within a foot of where we are sitting now before it went down again.”

”Who was Owens, and how was he drowned?” inquired Hicks, spotting an episode.

”Who was Owens?” repeated the old man, placidly filling his pipe. ”A fool; because he thought he was smarter than any of us, and thought he could cross the river when we couldn't. He went in on horseback. The river was running just as it was to-day, only not quite so deep. He went down, as a matter of course, before he was half-way through.”

”Couldn't any of you help him?” asked Hicks.

The old fellow glanced up with a look of silent contempt for any one capable of putting such a question. Then he calmly struck a match and lighted his pipe, and having done so he continued:

”The river was full of drift-wood, and we saw one big tree bearing down upon Owens full swing. We hollered out to warn him, but the water was kicking up such a row that he couldn't hear, nor would it have helped him much if he had. Well, the tree came bang against him, entangling him and the horse in the branches. They rolled over and over; and tree, and horse, and Owens disappeared. We never saw him again, but the next I heard of him was that his body had been found a week afterwards, when the water had run off, sticking in the bed of the river, among the drift-wood down Peddie way.”

”Poor devil,” exclaimed several of his auditors.

”No one but a fool would have gone into the river at all,” concluded the old man, sententiously, as he tossed off the remainder of his grog.

”I say, Thorman, we must be going,” said Hicks.

”All right,” replied that worthy, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and rising to his feet.

”Oh, but you needn't be off yet,” objected he addressed as Hallett.