Luck, however, was a
fickle thing.
"I was advisin' Dad to swim the hosses over," declared Joel, deliberately.
"A-huh! You was? . . . An' why?" rejoined Bostil.
Joel's simplicity and frankness vanished, and with them his rationality. He
looked queer. His contrasting eyes shot little malignant gleams. He muttered
incoherently, and moved back toward the skiff, making violent gestures, and
his muttering grew to shouting, though still incoherent. He got in the boat
and started to row back over the river.
"Sure he's got a screw loose," observed Somers. Shugrue tapped his grizzled
head significantly.
Bostil made no comment. He strode away from his men down to the river shore,
and, finding a seat on a stone, he studied the slow eddying red current of the
river and he listened. If any man knew the strange and remorseless Colorado,
that man was Bostil. He never made any mistakes in anticipating what the river
was going to do.
And now he listened, as if indeed the sullen, low roar, the murmuring hollow
gurgle, the sudden strange splash, were spoken words meant for his ears alone.
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