or
river-driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize
as the lure. Why should she do it?

"Women folks are sick darn fools when they git goin'," gasped Osterhaut
as he ran. "They don't care a split pea what happens when they've got
the pip. Look at her--my hair's bleachin'."

"She's got the pip all right," stuttered Jowett as he plunged along;
"but she's foreign, and they've all got the pip, foreign men and women
both--but the women go crazy."

"She keeps pretty cool for a crazy loon, that girl. If I owned her,
I'd--"

Jowett interrupted impatiently. "You'd do what old man Druse does--you'd
let her be, Osterhaut. What's the good of havin' your own way with one
that's the apple of your eye, if it turns her agin you? You want her
to kiss you on the high cheek-bone, but if you go to play the
cat-o'-nine-tails round her, the high cheek-bone gets froze. Gol blast
it, look at her, son! What are the wild waves saying? They're sayin',
'This is a surprise, Miss Druse. Not quite ready for ye, Miss Druse.'
My, ain't she got the luck of the old devil!"

It seemed so. More than once the canoe half jammed between the rocks,
and the stern lifted up by the force of the wild current, but again the
paddle made swift play, and again the cockle-shell swung clear. But now
Fleda Druse was no longer on her feet. She knelt, her strong, slim
brown arms bared to the shoulder, her hair blown about her forehead,
her daring eyes flashing to left and right, memory of her course at work
under such a strain as few can endure without chaos of mind in the end.
A hundred times since the day she had run these Rapids with Tekewani,
she had gone over the course in her mind, asleep and awake, forcing her
brain to see again every yard of that watery way; because she knew that
the day must come when she would make the journey alone. Why she would
make it she did not know; she only knew that she would do it some day;
and the day had come. For long it had been an obsession with her--as
though some spirit whispered in her ear--"Do you hear the bells ringing
at Carillon? Do you hear the river singing towards Carillon? Do you
see the wild birds flying towards Carillon? Do you hear the Rapids
calling--the Rapids of Carillon?"

Night and day since she had braved death with Tekewani, giving him a
gun, a meerschaum pipe, and ten pounds of beautiful brown "plug" tobacco
as a token of her gratitude--night and day she had heard this spirit
mu