ift
this cursed river! Was there any way in which Bostil could recover his
boat? The river answered him with hollow, deep mockery. Despair seized
upon him. And the vague shape of the boat, spectral and instinct with
meaning, passed from Bostil's strained gaze.

"So help me God, I've done it!" he groaned, hoarsely. And he staggered
back and sat down. Mind and heart and soul were suddenly and
exquisitely acute to the shame of his act. Remorse seized upon his
vitals. He suffered physical agony, as if a wolf gnawed him internally.

"To hell with Creech an' his hosses, but where do I come in as a man?"
he whispered. And he sat there, arms tight around his knees, locked
both mentally and physically into inaction.

The rising water broke the spell and drove him back. The river was
creeping no longer. It swelled. And the roar likewise swelled. Bostil
hurried across the flat to get to the rocky trail before he was cut
off, and the last few rods he waded in water up to his knees.

"I'll leave no trail there," he muttered, with a hard laugh. It sounded
ghastly to him, like the laugh of the river.

And there at the foot of the rocky trail he halted to watch and listen.
The old memorable boom came to his ears. The flood was coming. For
twenty-three years he had heard the vanguard boom of the Colorado in
flood. But never like this, for in the sound he heard the strife and
passion of his blood, and realized himself a human counterpart of that
remorseless river. The moments passed and each one saw a swelling of
the volume of sound. The sullen roar just below him was gradually lost
in a distant roar. A steady wind now blew through the canyon. The great
walls seemed to gape wider to prepare for the torrent. Bostil backed
slowly up the trail as foot by foot the water rose. The floor of the
amphitheater was now a lake of choppy, angry waves. The willows bent
and seethed in the edge of the current. Beyond ran an uneven, bulging
mass that resembled some gray, heavy moving monster. In the gloom
Bostil could see how the river turned a corner of wall and slanted away
from it toward the center, where it rose higher. Black objects that
must have been driftwood appeared on this crest. They showed an
instant, then flashed out of sight. The boom grew steadier, closer,
louder, and the reverberations, like low detonations of thunder, were
less noticeable because all sounds were being swallowed up.

A harder breeze puffed into Bostil's face. It b