As a little girl eight years old she had conceived a terror and
hatred of this huge, jagged rent so full of red haze and purple smoke and the
thunder of rushing waters. And she had never wholly outgrown it. The joy of
the sun and wind, the rapture in the boundless open, the sweetness in the
sage--these were not possible here. Something mighty and ponderous, heavy as
those colossal cliffs, weighted down her spirit. The voice of the river drove
out any dream. Here was the incessant frowning presence of destructive forces
of nature. And the ford was associated with catastrophe--to sheep, to horses
and to men.
Lucy rode across the bar to the shore where the Indians were loading the sheep
into an immense rude flatboat. As the sheep were frightened, the loading was
no easy task. Their bleating could be heard above the roar of the river.
Bostil's boatmen, Shugrue and Somers, stood knee-deep in the quicksand of the
bar, and their efforts to keep free-footed were as strenuous as their handling
of the sheep. Presently the flock was all crowded on board, the Indians
followed, and then the boatmen slid the unwieldy craft off the sand-bar.
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