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Her bow shot high into the air and settled at the stern. As she slid off, tilted, filled and sunk, Smaltz and Porcupine Jim both jumped. Then the river made a bend which shut it all from Bruce's sight. It was half a mile before he found a landing. He tied up and walked back, unexcited, not hurrying, with a curious quietness inside. Smaltz and Jim were fighting when he got there.
He had little doubt but that Smaltz was dead electrocuted roasted. He expected the sickening odor of burning flesh. He had been so long in getting there but he had done his best the power must be shut off first he must get to the lever if only he could run. His thoughts were incoherent disconnected, but all of Smaltz.
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.
Eh, Smaltz? Ain't I right?" Smaltz, who was stooping over, did not immediately look up. Bruce saw an odd expression cross his face an expression that was something like derision. When he felt Bruce looking at him it vanished instantly and he straightened up. "Why, yes," with his customary grin, "looks like we orter make a start."
Toy never had liked Smaltz from the day he came. Those who knew the Chinaman could tell it by the scrupulous politeness with which he treated him. He was elaborately exact and fair but he never spoke to him unless it was necessary. Toy yelled at and bullied those he liked but a mandarin could not have surpassed him in dignity when he addressed Smaltz.
It was not until he reached the slab which served as a bridge over the water from the spillway that he recovered anything of his impudent nonchalance. He was in the centre of it when he heard Banule say: "If it ud be me I'd a put a lash rope round his neck and drug him up that hill to jail." Smaltz wheeled and came back a step. "Oh, you would, would you? Say, you fakir, I'm glad you spoke.
Bruce raised himself a little and looked down at Smaltz. As he stared at the smudged, bleeding face and into the yellow-brown eyes with their dilated pupils, the rage in his own gave place to a kind of intense curiosity, the scrutiny one gives to a repulsive and venomous insect or reptile he has captured.
Even Smaltz shrank involuntarily when she came toward him with her mouth on the bias and a look in her deep-set eyes which said that she would as soon, or sooner, pour the steaming contents of the coffee-pot down the back of his neck than in his cup, while Woods averred that "Doc" Tanner who fasted forty days didn't have anything on him.
He was the only man of the crew that he disliked thoroughly. His boastful speech, his swaggering walk, a veiled insolence in his eyes and manner made Bruce itch to send him up the hill for good, but since Smaltz was unquestionably the best all-round man he had, he would not allow himself to be influenced by his personal prejudices.
Not since he had raged at "Slim" had Bruce been so furious, but there was little time to indulge his temper for there was now an extra boat to build upon which he must trust Smaltz as front sweepman.
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