“The fact is,” catching Luke by the arm, “you’re just going to stay on dry land.”
Luke pushed gently and it slid from the firm beach into the water, continued its downward slope ready, with one more foot, to swamp, then righted itself and sat low in the moonlight.
“Get in,” said Luke.
Camper had no chance to settle in the stern but, hunched and muttering, began immediately and with short bruised strokes to bail, to keep himself afloat.
“I promised him,” Luke said to Bohn. He held the floundering rowboat by its limp rope.
“Cast it off,” whispering, “let him go plumb to the bottom.”
“I’ll call Wade,” the Sheriff tried to lean between the old man and the cowboy, “it’ll cost you fifteen dollars for a personal fine.”
“Sheriff,” with a quick glance, “you ain’t spoke well of my brother tonight. You ain’t got no say in the matter.”
Ten years before, the skiff had been dragged and carried overland, pulled by running men from where it was stuck and abandoned in the river gone dry, upwards on the slippery south face of the dam and faster down the northern slope. They had struggled with it a few hundred yards into the basin, panted, wiped their foreheads, climbed in, and waited for the water. The boat finally rose with the lake. For two days, until a shivering in the current brought them again to shore, the men, who had forgotten to provide oars and who had no sail, waved to the crowds gathered to witness the covering of ranch houses and the land.
Camper scraped its insides with a tin can. In its best days on the river the chubby boat had been splattered with fish oil and moored at night to a barnacle covered pile; now it loosed its seams and sank slowly under Camper’s hand.