st, 'cos she's heavy an' they ain't
none too much water in front; but after a while we comes to the Devil's
Slide,--you remember the place,--an' we scoots down there like the
mill-tails o' hell.

"'Gee-whiz!' says Jud. 'She's a-rockin' like a teeter. I hope she'll
stay on all right.' He was settin' back with me, behind the pianner, an'
we both tries to holt on to her an' keep her stiddy, but we cain't do
much more'n set down an' cuss haff the time, we're so afeard we'll git
throwed out. Wal, after we come to the foot of the slide, we breathes
easy-like, an' Jud he says it's all right, for that there was the wust
place. For about three miles the pianner set on that boat as stiddy as a
church, an' from there on down to Four it was pretty good sailin'. Of
course we went a good deal faster in the steep places than any other
boat ever sent down the flume, because the heft o' the thing, when she
got started, was bound to make her fly, water or no water. In a good
many places we run ahead o' the stream, an' then in the quiet spots the
water would catch up to us an' back up behind us an' shove us along.

"Between Four an' Five there's a place we used ter call Cape Horn. The
flume is bracketed onto a cliff, yeh know, fer about a mile, an' it's a
skeery place any way yeh shoot it; yeh scoot aroun' them there sharp
curves so lively, an' yeh look down there four or five hundred feet
inter the bottom o' the canon. That's where yeh shut yer eyes. Yeh
remember? Wal, when I sees Cape Horn ahead I gits a little skeer'd when
I thinks how she might rock. We run onto a place where I could look away
ahead, an' there, wavin' her apron or somethin', is a gal, an' I knows
it's Jess, out from Five to see the pianner come down. Jud he knows,
too, an' waves back.

"We runs out onto the brackets, turns a sharp curve, an' she begins to
wabble an' stagger like a drunken man, floppin' back an' forth, an' the
strings an' things inside is a-hummin' an' a-drummin'.

"'Slow her down!' yells Jud. 'Slow her down, or we'll never git past the
Horn!'

"I claps on the brake, but she's so heavy she don't pay no 'tention to
it, though I makes smoke 'long them planks, I tell yer. She scoots ahead
faster'n ever, an' bows to the scenery, this way an' that, like she was
crazy, an' a-hummin' harder than ever.

"'Slow her down! Ease her down!' hollers Jud, grittin' his teeth an'
holdin' onto her with all his hundred an' eighty pounds weight. But 't
ain't no goo