A groan of horror went up. The awful grinding of the break-up was already under way. To every trained eye it was evident that there was no human possibility of reaching the child, much less of saving her. To attempt it would be such a madness as to jump into the hopper of a mill. The crowd surged to the edge––and sprang back as the nearest logs bounded up at them. Except Walley Johnson. He leaped wildly out upon the nearest logs, fell headforemost, and was dragged back, fighting furiously, by a dozen inexorable hands.
Just as Johnson went down, there arose a great bellowing cry of rage and anguish; then Red McWha’s big form shot past, leaping far out upon the logs. Over the sickening upheaval he bounded this way and that, with miraculous sure-footedness. He 137 reached the pitching log whereon Rosy-Lilly still clung. He clutched her by the frock. He tucked her under one arm like a rag-baby. Then he turned, balancing himself for an instant, and came leaping back towards shore.
A great shout of wonder and joy went up––to be hushed in a second as a log reared high in McWha’s path and hurled him backwards. Right down into the whirl of the dreadful grist he sank. But with a strength that seemed more than human he recovered himself, climbed forth dripping, and came on again with those great, unerring leaps. This time there was no shout. The men waited with dry throats. They saw that his ruddy face had gone white as chalk. Within two feet of shore a log toward which he had jumped was jerked aside just before he reached it, and, turning in the air as he fell, so as to save the child, he came down across it on his side with stunning violence. As he fell the Boss and Brackett and two of the others sprang out to meet him. They reached him somehow, and covered with bruises which they did not feel, succeeded in dragging him, with his precious burden, up from the grinding hell to safety. When his feet touched solid ground he sank unconscious, but with his arm so securely gripped about the child that they had difficulty in loosing his hold.
Rosy-Lilly, when they picked her up, was quivering with terror, but unharmed. When she saw 138 McWha stretched out upon the bank motionless, with his eyes shut and his white lips half open, she fought savagely to be put down. She ran and flung herself down beside her rescuer, caught his big white face between her tiny hands, and fell to kissing him. Presently McWha opened his eyes, and with a mighty effort rose upon one elbow. A look of embarrassment passed over his face as he glanced at the men standing about him. Then he looked down at Rosy-Lilly, grinned with a shamefaced tenderness, and pulled her gently towards him.
“I’m right––glad––ye––” he began with painful effort. But before he could complete the sentence his eyes changed, and he fell back with a clicking gasp.
Jimmy Brackett, heedless of her wailing protests, snatched up Rosy-Lilly, and carried her back to the camp.
Melindy and the Lynxes
The deep, slow-gathering snows of mid-February had buried away every stump in the pasture lot and muffled from sight all the zigzag fences of the little lonely clearing. The Settlement road was simply smoothed out of existence. The log cabin, with its low roof and one chimney, seemed half sunken in the snow which piled itself over the lower panes of its three tiny windows.