The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 13

I was our doom, Bonin said.

I’ll not quarrel with it, I said.

The river picked up speed again, rose and fell and twice snaked us through rapids. We clung to our barge and watched behind us, both banks, as our pursuers dropped down to the river and were forced to ride up and circle back on the bluff again, as terrain and brush warranted. I waited for the saddle-aim to try us again, but he could not get a clear shot.

I was aware then of a sapping from my wound, as if I were leaking out of my own skin. I lay with my face on the cold, wet boards and drifted in and out, rising and falling on that river, and I don’t know how much time passed. We slowed once more but the current pulled us away before Bonin could get us to shore. A shoreline willow had reached out a hand for us and Bonin grabbed hold but he was left with nothing but a handful of leaves stripped from bough.

I feared I was becoming too weak to swim. The river was high and fast and freezing and the few calm stretches where we might have made shore were also reachable from the two river roads and the men chasing us—trappers on the south side, the boy and Plante on the north.

So we held tight. And rose and fell, slapped by water, scraped by rocks and limbs, my arm numb like the empty sleeve of a coat.

Shame you fell in with me, Kid, said Bonin.

I suspect my own character is at fault, I said.

We talked this way as we clung to that ferry, looking across the wet boards into each other’s eyes. I can tell you, at the end, you marvel at eyes. I thought of my mother’s easy blues and the bark browns of the boy who took us across the river. How many hundreds in between? And how many more I would never see, Bonin’s green demons to be my last.

He seemed to know my gloomy thinking.

Listen, he said, I need to tell you about this river. There is a great falls ahead, six or seven steps, the last a rocky drop of forty feet into a canyon. In summer the local Indians gather there to fish, but now, with the river so high with melt— He shook his head.

Maybe we’ll ride it, I said. Maybe we will be the first men to go over and tell about it. I smiled as I thought of the western adventures we had sought.

Bonin did not answer.

The current finally slowed a bit and the trail on the north shore dipped down to us. The boy and the ferryman descended and rode at a fast trot, the boy almost as close as when we were on the barge. Like we were traveling together, two by road and two by river. I wondered if the boy had a rope to throw.

Forgive me, Bonin said, and at first I thought he was talking to the boy, saying what I was thinking about stealing the barge. But when I turned back Bonin had slid off our punt into the river and was swimming for shore. He made that awful stroke of his, flailing, flapping, his heavy long coat spread like wet wings, the current pulling him alongside the barge. I could see his face until it went under and resurfaced ten feet away, him still trying to make shore. He glanced back my way and our eyes caught again.

Sure now of his folly, Bonin tried thrashing back to the barge and scrabbled his hands on the side. I tried to pull myself over to help but I was too weak. And the next time I saw Bonin he was just hair floating alongside our barge—and then gone.

I forgive you, I said. And even though I was the one who come up with that whole Kid nonsense, I wished Bonin had called me once more by my Christian name before he went over, just to hear it again.

I did not see the trappers on the south bank after that, but the Indian on the north shore was a fine rider, and he separated from the ferryman and rode along the bluff ahead, as if to cut me off. Water sloshed the side of the barge and I could taste my blood in it.

I thought again of my mother and wondered if my sisters had all married. I wished I could see them once more. Perhaps in another world.

Foolish thought. There is no other world. Ahead came a dip, the river carving into two channels, and I wondered if this was the first step of the great falls.

I thought again of the glory of being the first man to go over alive. And I thought about the ferry boy and the horse bones and his tribe living forever on these banks and what the boy would make of me claiming to be the first over the falls, like the first white man to see some lake or first to cross some mountain pass, naming streams the boy’s people had fished for centuries.

Maybe one of them had gone over the falls and lived to tell of it. Maybe they did it all the time, like swinging from a river rope. Maybe the boy had even done it. This thought gave me hope and I sat up to see where the adventure led. I felt dizzy and had the strangest thought—I need to stay awake for this.

An island split the river and I could hear the roar of white water ahead of me. The boy and his pony were on a basalt ridge thirty yards downstream, and as I approached, I raised my good arm. He still had that curious look on his face.

Watch! I called out. I cannot say why I yelled this except I imagined that if I were witnessed now, I might continue to exist, even if only as a tale