Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/226

 for a full minute. He began to breath easier; and then it died down once more.

"Ain't that h—l?" he asked, fervently. "Ain't it? I lose a hundred thou' because I ain't a cup full of gasolene. I forgot to fill my tank."

He couldn't even pull ashore, for the boat had no oars—a curious omission for a river man to make. And he had to sit and wait while the wind and current swept him down the bend and at last drove him in at least ten miles below the entrance of the bayou. "Now I got to wait for the wind to lay, too," he grunted in disgust, adding, "but the son of a gun ain't got away yet."

He rigged him a pair of oars out of two poles and a section of board which he found in the drift along a sandbar just below him. With two loops of rope fastened in holes bored in the splash board he could swing his oars. Getting clear of the eddy, he worked out into the current, despite the wind, and floated down watching for a ferry, a gasolene boat, or a landing. Fifteen miles down stream he ran into a landing and two hours later he had a drayman hauling fifty gallons of gasolene in a barrel to the river bank, and the two of them emptied it into the boat's tank, filling it. Then they filled two five-gallon cans with the remainder.

"Now we'll see," Gost exclaimed, when he was clear