Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/130

 the lines, pulled the sweeps, and they moved out into the Mississippi current.

Cost, weakened by his sufferings, went to sleep on one of the two folding cots. Urleigh, looking down the bend ahead, wondered what mess he had gone into now. The least he suspected was that Gost had done something, and that he was now a fugitive from justice, and this made Urleigh particeps criminis. At first the thought was disagreeable, but as he left the town behind a bend and the old river loomed larger than anything he had ever dreamed or suspected, Urleigh's mind changed,

"I've needed a rest," Urleigh admitted to himself as he sat down in a chair, and drew on a sweater because there was a tang of chill in the air.

Gost slept nearly two hours, and then, taking a look at the river, had Urleigh row them into the east bank of the river, at the foot of a long sandbar. Urleigh made the two bow lines fast to a snag and a stake. It lacked then but a few minutes of sunset.

The wounded man looked up and down the eddy and at the bank. When he had finished his inspection he looked at Urleigh, grinning:

"Right here's where she got me!" he shook his head. "If I hadn't been dipping, I'd known better, but you know what snow does to a man. It was that made me crazy. I'd been all right if it hadn't hurt