A shrieking split, suddenly lifting itself above the general uproar on the river, drew everybody to the bank. The surface water had increased in depth, and the ice, assailed from above and below, was struggling to tear itself from the grip of the shores. Fissures reverberated into life before their eyes, and the air was filled with multitudinous crackling, crisp and sharp, like the sound that goes up on a clear day from the firing line.
From up the river two men were racing a dog team toward them on an uncovered stretch of ice. But even as they looked, the pair struck the water and began to flounder through. Behind, where their feet had sped the moment before, the ice broke up and turned turtle. Through this opening the river rushed out upon them to their waists, burying the sled and swinging the dogs off at right angles in a drowning tangle. But the men stopped their flight to give the animals a fighting chance, and they groped hurriedly in the cold confusion, slashing at the detaining traces with their sheath-knives. Then they fought their way to the bank through swirling water and grinding ice, where, foremost in leaping to the rescue among the jarring fragments, was the Kid.
“Why, blime me, if it ain’t Montana Kid!” exclaimed one of the men whom the Kid was just placing upon his feet at the top of the bank. He wore the scarlet tunic of the Mounted Police and jocularly raised his right hand in salute.
“Got a warrant for you, Kid,” he continued, drawing a bedraggled paper from his breast pocket, “an’ I ’ope as you’ll come along peaceable.”
Montana Kid looked at the chaotic river and shrugged his shoulders, and the policeman, following his glance, smiled.
“Where are the dogs?” his companion asked.
“Gentlemen,” interrupted the policeman, “this ’ere mate o’ mine is Jack Sutherland, owner of Twenty-Two Eldorado—”
“Not Sutherland of ’92?” broke in the snow-blinded Minook man, groping feebly toward him.
“The same.” Sutherland gripped his hand.
“And you?”