wenty-foot bank, and his racing legs did not stop
until the swirling waters of the Columbia had closed heavily over them.

Running Bear, who had followed as swiftly as his civilized muscles
would permit, gazed anxiously at the swimming Wildcat for a moment, to
reassure himself of his victim's safety.

"Go to it," he commented. "You'll make the mile in nothing flat with
that panic crawl." He watched the Wildcat until the current swept him
around the bend downstream.

"He's safe," Running Bear commented. "On with the dance."

He resumed the redskin role of a distant yesterday.

"Waugh!"

4.

In the gathering dusk the Wildcat swam and floated for a mile
downstream in the currents of the Columbia; then under the insistent
drag of a wide-swinging eddy he headed for the leading fences of a
great salmon wheel whose plunging buckets dived into the black currents
and lifted with their gamble of fifty-pound salmon. Now and then a
heavier fish would punctuate the monotony of the catch.

Flopping among their more substantial companions a fleet of leaping
steel heads added splashes of silver to the Chinook background.

The swimming Wildcat saw above him the descending framework of the fish
wheel. He tried vainly to escape from the cage of wire netting falling
from the sky upon him, but he was captured like a moth lost in a
butterfly net.

"Lady Luck, good-bye."

The Wildcat dragged in a deep lungful of air as he went under. Five
seconds later, preceded by three heavy-set salmon, he slithered down a
trough into the storage bin in the hull of the fish wheel. About him
were plunging fish. He looked at the square of evening light which
glimmered through the hatch.

"Whah at is I?"

A fifty-pound salmon, sliding down the trough, struck fairly against
the Wildcat's stomach.

"Fish, how come?"

Another leaping salmon slapped the Wildcat with his tail.

"Don't kick me wid yo' tail. I'll bust you in de haid."

The Wildcat struck wildly at the offending salmon. He slipped and fell
into a vast fighting mass of lively fish. He wrestled with fins and
tails.

He called loudly for Captain Jack and for Lady Luck. Once he thought
his call was answered, but for half an hour the Wildcat led an unstable
slippery life. He sought a bed of inert fish, only to awaken five or
six gasping demons who flopped upon him heavily. He reached in vain for
the hatch coaming five feet above him.

Half erect and with the deck timbers almost