The marshal dropped his gun into its holster and eyed Endicott shrewdly: "Sorry I got you wrong," he mumbled, extending his hand. "Blake's my name. Glad to meet you. I run the store here. Carry the biggest stock between Lewiston an' the Mizoo. Where do you figger on doin' yer tradin'?"
Endicott made a gesture of impatience: "I haven't figured at all. But this woman—my wife? How long has she been gone? Which way did she go? And why——?"
"Be'n gone pretty clost to an' hour. Went down the trail to the Mizoo. You kin search me fer why, onless it was to keep us from shootin' after that hell-roarin' Texian. She said she know'd him. Who is he, an' what's she so anxious he don't git shot fer?"
Before Endicott could reply, hoof-beats sounded on the trail, and in the doorway a man yelled "They're comin' back!" Disregarding the rain which fell in torrents the crowd surged into the street and surrounded the horsemen who drew up before the door.
"They didn't git 'em!" "Where'd they go?" Eager questions were hurled in volleys.
As the men dismounted the light from the windows glistened on wet slickers. Ike Stork acted as spokesman, and with white face and tight-pressed lips, Endicott hung on every word. "Got to the river," he explained, as he shook the water from his hat, "an' piled onto Long Bill's ferry, an' cut 'er loose. We didn't dast to shoot on account of the woman. We couldn't see nothin' then till the storm broke, an' by the lightnin' flashes we seen the boat in the middle of the river—an' boys, she's some river! I've be'n a residenter in these parts fer it's goin' on twenty year, an' I never seen the like—bank-full an' trees an' bresh so thick you can't hardly see no water. Anyways, there they was an' all to onct there come a big flash, an' we seen a pine with its roots an' branches ra'red up high as a house right on top of 'em. Then, the cable went slack—an' when the next flash come, they wasn't no boat—only timber an' bresh a-tearin' down stream, it looked like a mile a minute."
"And they were both on the boat?" Endicott's words came haltingly, and in the lamplight his face looked grey and drawn.
Ike Stork nodded: "Yes, both of 'em—an' the two horses."
"Isn't there a chance? Isn't it possible that they're—that the boat is still afloat?"
"We-ell," considered Ike, "I wouldn't say it's plumb onpossible. But it would be like ketchin' a straight-flush in the middle in a pot that had be'n boosted to the limit—with a full deck, an' nothin' wild."