“Who was Owens?” repeated the old man, placidly filling his pipe. “A fool; because he thought he was smarter than any of us, and thought he could cross the river when we couldn’t. He went in on horseback. The river was running just as it was to-day, only not quite so deep. He went down, as a matter of course, before he was half-way through.”
“Couldn’t any of you help him?” asked Hicks.
The old fellow glanced up with a look of silent contempt for any one capable of putting such a question. Then he calmly struck a match and lighted his pipe, and having done so he continued:
“The river was full of drift-wood, and we saw one big tree bearing down upon Owens full swing. We hollered out to warn him, but the water was kicking up such a row that he couldn’t hear, nor would it have helped him much if he had. Well, the tree came bang against him, entangling him and the horse in the branches. They rolled over and over; and tree, and horse, and Owens disappeared. We never saw him again, but the next I heard of him was that his body had been found a week afterwards, when the water had run off, sticking in the bed of the river, among the drift-wood down Peddie way.”
“Poor devil,” exclaimed several of his auditors.
“No one but a fool would have gone into the river at all,” concluded the old man, sententiously, as he tossed off the remainder of his grog.
“I say, Thorman, we must be going,” said Hicks.
“All right,” replied that worthy, knocking the ashes out of his pipe and rising to his feet.
“Oh, but you needn’t be off yet,” objected he addressed as Hallett. “Stay here with us and make a night of it; you can go on in the morning.”
But Hicks was firm. It was not for this he had risked his life.