Ice had choked the gorge and the river was climbing the sheer walls. But in the midst, leaping from cake to cake, were two figures. They seemed tiny, when compared with the vastness of the breakup. They moved with desperation; falling, fighting, each for himself, but working toward the jam.
One man looked up and saw the posse, but a greater danger confronted him. Ice cakes were being sucked into a vortex that poured through an opening in the jam. He judged his situation carefully, leaped at the right moment and was on the jam proper. He did not look back at his companion, but climbed upwards, knowing that if he gained the top and the smooth ice beyond, the posse had no chance; knowing too, that if he failed, the river would demand its toll.
No word passed among the posse as it watched. They knew the ice, these men; knew that the might of the river was exerting tremendous pressure to overturn the jam; knew that in the end the river would succeed.
One of the men gained the top; the other was halfway up. For an instant the leading man was outlined sharply. He waved his hand in defiance and far beneath a cake of ice weighing tons groaned in agony, then burst.
A man in the posse cried out at the drama, The river had won. The whole jam was moving. Cakes and blocks shifted and the tiny figure of a man was hurled into the stream an instant before the jam overturned. Another dot, a thing of arms and legs, fighting a river, remained on top of the shifting ice a moment, clawed for a niche on the bank and then fell back. The river, with its burden of ice moved on toward the sea.
The youngest member of the posse stood where the jam had once held the flood waters of an empire in check.
“Do you suppose...?” he ventured.
“No,” the marshal answered, pointing to a spruce log three feet through at the butt. It was a sound timber from heart to bark but it was now a pulpy mass being destroyed by the ice. “The only thing that’ll ever be found, son, is the gold nuggets. And maybe the river will keep even them. The rest will be destroyed. Well, boys, let’s go back and report. Somebody’s out twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Eagerness to learn who won the pool spurred them on, long after muscles cried for relief. Near camp, a supply party met them.
“Got the crooks?” one of them inquired, slipping a pack from his broad shoulders.