Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/210

 she let the boat drift up to a snag, to which she made fast.

Very tired, she turned in to make up for her lost sleep. At her hand, ready for instant service, rested her automatic pistol. Personally, she was content. Nothing mattered much—but her conscience had rebuked her for sending the friendly young man down the river unwarned of his jeopardy. She dreamed, in her sleep, as she remembered, while awake, that he was in trouble, perhaps without knowing it.

"I must find him!" she murmured in her dreams. "I must find him!"

So she ran on down the river, and stopped at Mendova because she was not sure that she had not passed him without seeing the boat in some of the huge horse-shoe bends through which she followed the mid-channel. All things seemed small in those terrific windings of the unimaginable torrent. Again and again she discovered boats in little bays and eddies, just by accident. She was sure she must have passed dozens of boats which she had not seen.

In Mendova she endeavoured to learn from other shantyboaters if they had seen such a craft as Murdong travelled in. Although Murdong had gone on by, she did not learn it for a day. Thus she was sitting reading newspapers which she had purchased when there swung into the eddy a motorboat which