Prophets Of Evil

"No?"

"I mind the time Jake Hazlett and his crew was drowned at the 'Wild Goose.' It seems the coroner was already there a settin' on a corp' that had come up in the eddy. 'Go on through, boys!' he hollers to 'em, 'I'll wait for you down below. It'll save me another trip from Medders'."

Bruce worked on, apparently unperturbed by these discouraging reminiscences.

"They say they's a place down there where the river's so narrow it's bent over," volunteered a third pessimist, as he cut an artistic initial in a plank with the skill of long practice. "And you'll go through the Black Canyon like a bat out o' hell. But I has no notion whatsoever that you'll ever come up when you hits that waterfall on the other end. When her nose dips under, heavy-loaded like that, she'll sink and fill right thar. Why--"

"Do you rickolect," quavered a spry young cub of eighty-two who talked of the Civil War and the Nez Perce uprising as though they were the events of yesterday, "do you remember the time 'Death-on-the-Trail' lost his hull outfit tryin' to git through the 'Devil's Teeth'? The idee of an old feller like him startin' out alone! Why he was all of seventy."

"An' the time 'Starvation Bill' turned over at Proctors's Falls?" chortled another. "Fritz Yandell said the river was full of grub--cracker cans, prunes and the like o' that, for clost to a week. I never grieved much to hear of an accident to him for we'd had a railroad in here twenty years ago if it hadn't been for Bill. The survey outfit took him along for helper and he et up all the grub, so the Injin guide quit 'em cold and they couldn't go on. I allus hoped he'd starve to death somm'eres, but after a spell of sickness from swallerin' a ham-bone, he died tryin' to eat six dozen aigs on a bet."