It was over in a moment. He stopped, mid-channel, listening, and turned his clouding eyes up-stream. The hemlock drove through the crunching drift and ploughed on through the bridge. He plunged forward, face down, with a sharp cry, and, impaled by a broken, submerged root, was swept out with the wreckage.
Mose, coming from his father's cabin, heard that cry, and quickened his pace to a run. He reached the place where the footbridge had been, and stood crossing himself as he had been taught by the priest. "Jesus—Mary," he whispered, and then, "Oh, Sahgalee, Tyee Sahgalee."
But the hemlock had grounded at a bend below. Its palisade of green boughs fringed the rampart of a fixed jam. He turned and ran, wading, down between the alders and cottonwoods, and Laramie's dogs came splashing after him, taking advantage of logs or any slight rise, but swimming where they must. He came out on a low bluff above the drift, and when he saw what silent shape it carried, he crossed himself once more. Then he grasped two stout trailing boughs and swung himself down on the jam.
Two sections of the footbridge held the body wedgelike, but the face and breast were awash. Mose fell to his knees and tried to turn and lift the face from the water. "Mo'sieur," he said, in an agony of entreaty and fear, "Mo'sieur, you can' be hurt mooch."
But there was no answer.
"Mo'sieur," he repeated, and shifted his arm lower to raise the submerged breast; "Monjee, mo'sieur, you mus' help yourself, some."
Still no response; and the boy made no further attempt to rouse him, for he had felt, suddenly, the grip of the hemlock. He withdrew his arm, and, cuffing aside one of the snuffing hounds, laid his hand on the neck of the other and rose. Then he took breath and lifted his voice in a great shout. The dogs swelled it, belling a prolonged note. He listened and repeated the call with his palm to his mouth. This time it brought a faint reply from Laramie, and the hounds sounded a louder clarion.
And the storming Des Chutes swept away the deep, full-throated cry, and the speaking hills caught it and sent it back like a lament from far promontories.
CHAPTER XXX
THE LOST PROSPECT