There was no boy in yellow oil-skins in the store.
Doctor Sam picked up a lighted lantern.
“Come on,” he said; “I’m wet, but I want a look at those sluices,” and started for the river, followed immediately by the men, whom he led in single file out along the bank.
Swinging his lantern low, he pushed into the teeth of the gale at a pace that left the line of lights straggling far behind.
“What a night!” he growled. “If I had a boy of my own—” and he threw the light as far as he could over the seething river and then down over the flooded meadow.
Ahead he heard the roar of Five-Forks sluice, and swung his lantern high, as if to signal it, so like the rush of a coming train was the sound of the waters.
But the little engineer in yellow oil-skins could not see the signal. He had almost ceased to watch. With his arm cramped about his gun, he was still at his post; but the ice-cakes floated in and touched him; the water no longer felt cold.
On this side, then on that, out over the swollen river, down into the tossing meadow flared the lantern as the doctor worked his way along.
Above the great sluice he paused a moment, then bent his head to the wind and started on, when his foot touched something soft that yielded strangely, sending a shiver over him, and his light fell upon a bunch of four dead muskrats lying in the path.
Along the meadow side flashed the lantern, up and over the riverside, and Doctor Sam, reaching quickly down, drew a limp little form in yellow oil-skins out of the water, as the men behind him came up.