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Updated: June 10, 2025
"What you tryin' to do?" he panted. Bruce panted back: "I'm going to kill you! Do you hear?" His eyes were bloodshot, more than ever he looked like some battle-crazed grizzly seeing his victim through a blur or rage and pain. "If I can throw you across those commutators before the fireworks stop I'm goin' to give you fifteen hundred volts!" A wild fright came in Smaltz's eyes.
It was only a second that he hung with his wild beseeching eyes on Smaltz's scared face while his frail, old body acted as a wedge for the racing water and the rocks. Then he let go and turned over and over tumbling grotesquely in the wide sluice-box while the rocks pounded and ground him, beat him into insensibility.
There was a mocking look in Smaltz's yellow-brown eyes which Bruce, stooping over, did not see. He only heard the hopeful words. "Oh, Smaltz Smaltz if it only is! Success means so much to me!" Unaccountably, such a tide of feeling rose within him that Bruce bared his heart to the man he did not like. Smaltz looked at him with a curious soberness. "Does it?" he responded after a pause.
Smaltz shifted feet nervously. At last Bruce walked to the work-bench and took a carpenter's pencil from a box and sharpened it. He smoothed out some wrapping paper then motioned Smaltz to sit down. "I want you to write what you told me exactly word for word. Write it in duplicate and sign your name." Consternation overspread Smaltz's face.
Smaltz had taken it instead of the overhead tram in which he always crossed. There was no time to speculate as to Smaltz's reason. He kept on running along the river until he came to the steps of the platform where the heavy iron cage, suspended from a cable, was tied to a tree. Bruce bounded up the steps two at a time and loosened the rope.
A white man who was as loyal to Bruce as Toy would have told him immediately of Smaltz's mysterious midnight visit to the storehouse, but that was not the yellow man's way. Instead he watched Smaltz like a hawk, eying him furtively, appearing unexpectedly at his elbow while he worked. From that night on, instead of one shadow Smaltz found himself with two.
The words came with an effort; he seemed afraid of their effect upon Bruce, then, uncertainly: "I was paid." For the fraction of a second Bruce stared into Smaltz's scared face. "You were paid," he repeated slowly. "Who " and then the word came rapier-like as had the thought "Sprudell!" "He told me to see that you didn't start. He left the rest to me."
He believed there was little doubt but that he was equal to the work. An ominous roar was coming from the rapids, a continuous rumble like thunder far back in the hills. It was not the most cheerful sound by which to eat and the meal was brief. The gravity of the boatmen who knew the river was contagious and the grin faded gradually from Smaltz's face.
Therefore while Bruce took his place at the lever on the donkey-engine enclosed in a temporary shed to protect the motor from rain and dust, Smaltz went to the pump-house as he was bid. When Banule answered his ring he shouted: "Let her go in about two minutes two minutes d'ye hear?" The telephone receiver was shaking in Smaltz's hand and he was breathing hard.
Smaltz's face wore a look of keenest interest, as with one shoulder braced against the side of the building, his hands in his pockets, he watched the plant burn up. Down below, Banule had thrown out the switch and the machinery was running away. A rim of fire encircled the commutators.
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