"The sun don't shine, but it's pretty light right now at one o'clock," he went on to say, meaningly; "and I'm dead sure I could pick up some dandy pictures of the river, and also of poor old Carson, flood-bound. Bandy-legs, how about you; won't you come along with Toby and me out on the bridge?"
The appeal proved to be the finishing stroke, since Bandy-legs had been balancing on the fence.
"All right, Steve, count on me; and, Max, say you'll go along too, if all the rest of us do," he hastened to say.
Max laughed.
"Do you know what you make me think of, you fellows?" he told them; "well, of the time Steve here went in swimming, when there was even a suspicion of ice along the edge of the pond. I can see him now, up to his neck, nearly frozen stiff with the chill, and his teeth rattling in his head as he tried to grin, and called out to the rest of us: 'Come on in, fellows; the water's fine!' But if my three chums are bent on taking risks with that old bridge, I reckon I'll have to join the procession, and go out there along with you. Besides, I've been thinking that we might have a chance to do some rescue work, because any old time somebody is apt to come down the swollen river hanging to a floating log or a frame house. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened before now."
"Well, come on, and don't let's stand around here talking so long," Steve urged, for he was nearly always in a great hurry, which fact had been the main cause for his school mates dubbing him "Touch-and-Go-Steve."
As the four boys approached the bridge they must have felt more or less qualms of nervous apprehension, because the prospect was appalling, with the river up only a comparatively few feet below the centre of the span. But each hesitated to let his companions see that he felt timid in the least; and assuming a carelessness that he was far from feeling, Steve was the first to set foot on the approach to the bridge that spanned the Evergreen River.
Several men called out to warn them that it was dangerous, but no one really attempted to stop them from walking out. As the water was already commencing to lap the roadway at the end, they had to pick their steps; but once out toward the middle it seemed as though confidence began to return.
Pride kept all of the boys from allowing anything like a tremor to appear in their voices when they exchanged remarks. At the same time all of them felt the quivering of the structure, and could understand what a mighty force was commencing to pluck at its supports. When these were undermined, if such a thing should happen, the whole affair would go with a rush, and they realized what that would mean.
Steve immediately busied himself in snapping off several pictures, posing his chums so that they would enter into his views of the flood as seen from the river bridge. In this interesting work he forgot the peril he was running; while Max and Toby and Bandy-legs found plenty to do in looking all around, and watching the strange spectacle of floating trees or logs wedge up against the bridge at various places until they began to form quite a barricade.