It gave forth fitful little swishes and musical tinkles and lapping
sounds. It was flowing water, yet the proof was there of tardiness. Now it was
almost still, and then again it moved on. It was a river of mystery telling a
lie with its low music. As Bostil listened all those soft, watery sounds
merged into what seemed a moaning, and that moaning held a roar so low as to
be only distinguishable to the ear trained by years.
No--the river was not the same. For the voice of its soft moaning showed to
Bostil its meaning. It called from the far north--the north of great ice-clad
peaks beginning to glisten under the nearing sun; of vast snow-filled canyons
dripping and melting; of the crystal brooks suddenly colored and roiled and
filled bank-full along the mountain meadows; of many brooks plunging down and
down, rolling the rocks, to pour their volume into the growing turbid streams
on the slopes. It was the voice of all that widely separated water spilled
suddenly with magical power into the desert river to make it a mighty,
thundering torrent, red and defiled, terrible in its increasing onslaught into
the canyon, deep, ponderous, but swift--the Colorado in flood.
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