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Updated: April 30, 2025
The watchman detached himself from the shadow, moving out into plain sight, and the boss turned back. The two men below were now working on the sluices which lay close under the bank and were thus hidden from the tent. McNamara's description of Anvil Creek's riches had fired Helen Chester with the desire to witness a clean-up, so they had ridden out from town in time for supper at the claim.
Plainly it was intended to accommodate a whole party, and Sinclair smiled at the vanity of the man who had insisted on taking "the best you have." No wonder Sour Creek knew the room he had rented. In the corner was a great fireplace capable of taking a six-foot log, at least. He admired the massive andirons, palpably of home manufacture in Sour Creek's blacksmith shop.
Meanwhile, Boarface and his strong band had decided upon their plan of attack and would soon rush up the bed of the shallow stream with all the bravery and ferocity of those who were accustomed to face death lightly and to seize that which they wanted. The invaders came clambering up the creek's course, openly and with menacing and defiant shouts, for any concealment was now out of the question.
But this mattered the less since he had no leisure to listen to my answers. I felt, as I said just now, ready to be surprised at nothing. But in this I was mistaken, as I found when we rounded the corner by the creek's head, and my eyes fell on a boat waiting, a stone's throw from the landing-place, and on the crew that manned her. "Good Lord!" I cried, and stood at a halt.
"Well, Seattle Charley told me they was plum petered out. Most of 'em's died, I believe. But two or three's alive. That Indian musher across the creek's got 'em, doctoring of 'em up, Charley says. He reckons to pull some round, an' make a bit on 'em, I suppose. But this feller here, he's too far gone, Jim. You can see he's done." "Ah! Well, good night, Jock." "S'long!"
A sheitpoke, with flaring crest, went stalking across a bare space close to the creek's mouth. A stately brown bittern waded into the clear-flowing water, lifting his feet high at every step, and setting them down carefully, as if he dreaded wetting them, and with slightly parted beak, stood eagerly watching around him for worms.
From the moment the storm struck, both boys had bent every energy to point the herd into the valley, but when neither slope nor creek was encountered, the fact asserted itself that they were adrift and at the mercy of the elements. "We've missed the corral," shouted Dell. "We're lost!" "Not yet," answered Joel, amid the din of the howling storm. "The creek's to our right.
It reminded him, with a curious pang of mingled pity and disgust, of the way Gaspar had faced the masked men of Sour Creek's posse the day before. There was the same unmanly abnegation of the courage to meet danger and look it in the eye. Here, again, the schoolteacher was wincing from the very memory of a crisis. "Look here!" exclaimed Sinclair. His contempt rang in his voice.
"It's not likely even now," sly and twinkling Lander of the hotel told Dickie, "that you can make it to Miss Blake's place. No, sir, nor to Hilliard's neither. Hidden Creek's up. She's sure some flood this time of the year. It's as much as your life's good for, stranger." But Dickie merely smiled and got for himself a horse that was "good in deep water."
An up-country horse knows perfectly well the only sound spots in a swamp; or the only sound part of a creek's banks.
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