The party pulled up, facing the river. They had reached the lower edge of the basin, about where Rawley and Johnny Buffalo had camped. The bank here was high and rocky as the canyon opened slowly its mouth. The river had been forced to a narrower channel, and it held therefore a deeper bed.
Away down there in the middle of it, almost at the edge of the channel fighting still to hold its own, a bent figure was groping, bent almost double, eyes to the ground. Now and then it knelt and clawed in slimy pools. Then it went on, inch by inch, like a child picking pretty pebbles on a beach.
“Old Jess!” cried Rawley. “Peter, it’s Old Jess! Call to him! He’ll step into a hole—there’s quicksand—or if the dam breaks—”
“He’s crazy!” several of the party spoke the words at once, as sometimes happens, unconsciously forming an impromptu chorus. “Call him out of there!”
“He wouldn’t come!” Peter was starting toward the edge, seeking a trail down. Rawley, running ahead to the place where he used to bring up water, was down before him.
“Go back! I’ll get him,” shouted Peter, scrambling after, and those left at the top gesticulated and shouted.
“You go back,” Rawley cried over his shoulder. “One’s enough!” Then, having reached the bottom, he started out.
The vulture saw them, and flapped his arms and screamed vituperations in a reasonless rage, greed-mad, thinking they were come to rob him.
Slipping, sliding among the bowlders that piled the river bed in places, the two ran out, instinctively avoiding the treacherous bars of engulfing mud that lay upstream from some larger obstruction, the deep pools where fish were leaping. Neither would turn back. Both men realized that.
The vulture picked up a rock as big as his fist and threatened them with it. They went on, straight for him. Old Jess gave a maniacal scream, hurled the rock and fled. Rawley ducked. But Peter, coming just behind him, was caught in the chest. He lurched, slipped on a slimy spot and went down backward on a rock.