"It'ull keep y' in the shadows."
With a prod of his pole, Wayland shoved off, and the frontiersman lengthened out the leading lines for the horses. The Ranger smiled whimsically to find the reverse side of Holy Cross peak, up-side down in the water, and he set to figuring out what sort of triangular lines thought-waves must follow to connect his thought of that peak etched in the bottom of the lake with her thought on the other side of a peak up in the sky.
"Steady, man! Slow up! There's a fallen tree with its rump stuck ashore! A' don't want to warp ye in by snaggin' round; an' that mule brute is thinkin' o' sittin' down."
The bronchos had plunged to the cold dip with deep grunts, but the mule braced his legs and brayed at the morning. The frontiersman said things between set teeth that might have been objurgations to the soul of Satan or the race of mules. Wayland shoved on the pole. The mule pulled. The logs of the raft began to creak. "Look out, sir, we're splitting! Let that doggon brute go—"
And the raft swerved out, the horses swimming, the freed mule plunging along the wooded shore, Wayland thrusting his long pole deep, almost to his hand-grip, to find bottom.
"There's a nasty under current from the upper river," he said.
"Let her go, there—! let her go t' th' current—tack her an' the current wull swerve ye int' the other side! More men lose their lives by poling too hard than lettin' go! Catch the current and let her go."
The old man had twisted the halter ropes under his feet. He seized a pole and swerved the raft to the current, pointing in to the other side. They could hear the roar of the wild mountain stream pouring a maelstrom down from the glare ice and snow of the upper meadows. The next plunge of the pole missed bottom. There was a yielding creak of logs. The raft poised, and spun round.
"Let her go, man! We'll wriggle her in below!"
"Then loose your halter ropes, they're pulling us round."