United States or Slovenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Also, a spit of gravel-bar, jutting far out into the water, had stranded a small boom of logs and drift-wood; the whole constituting a veritable breakwater that only a charge of dynamite could have shifted. In the shelter of this and the hollowed-out bank, a huge, slow eddy of water had formed, apparently of great depth.
Welborn laid the hose at a favorable place on a gravel-bar and scooped up a pan of dirt and sand that he held under the stream while he whirled it around in the pan. The contents took up the motion and spilled over the pan-brim until there was little left. The miner examined the remainder and then gave it more water and more swirling around in the pan. This process he repeated several times.
But Euonymus could barely hold him off from face and throat. "Turn him broadside to me!" I shouted, having come into water breast-deep. "Let me put a hole through him!" But the fugitive's only response was: "Run, Robelia! 'Ever mind me! Run! Run!" And here came Hardy across the gravel-bar, in the saddle. I aimed at him: "Stand, sir! Stand!" He hauled in and lifted the horn.
At the same time his fellows came about us, while on the farther bank Luke helped his wife writhe up through the waterside vines, and with her disappeared. Only Euonymus remained in the water, at the far edge of the gravel-bar. I was so happy that I laughed. "All right," I cried, "I'll pay for the revolver."
I had straightened up to get the kink out of my back and mop the sweat out of my eyes, when I saw something that made my stomach turn a double somersault. A good eight hundred yards down stream at the point of a gravel-bar, something that looked like and yet unlike a small cluster of drifting, leafless brush moved slowly into the water.
"If you hurt that dog," he yelled, "I'll shoot you dead!" Up-stream the other two runaways were out on the gravel-bar, Euonymus behind Robelia and Robelia splashing ludicrously across the shoal, tearing off and kicking off in preparation for deep water sunbonnet, skirt, waist, petticoat, and howling in the self-concern of abject cowardice.
My logbook speaks for that day as follows: "Left Benton at 2:30 P.M. Gypsied along under half gasoline for several hours, safely crossing the Shonkin and Grocondunez bars. Struck a rock in Fontenelle Rapids at 4:30, taking off rudder. Landed with difficulty on a gravel-bar and repaired damages. At 5:30 engine bucked. A heavy wind from the west beat us against a ragged shore for an hour and a half.
On the upper we saw only the clear waters crinkling in a wide shallow over a gravel-bar, but down-stream we instantly discovered Luke and his wife. Silhouetted against the level sunlight, heaving forward with arms upthrown, waist deep in the main current, they were more than half-way across.
Word Of The Day