deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone, unchallenged,
unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in spirit, as he had
so often done in his dreams.

His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no interruption;
to him their speech was almost foreign in its allusions to things he did
not understand, or, worse, seemed inconsistent with their eagerness and
excitement. How different from all this were his old recollections of
slowly oncoming teams, uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in
his former wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man
to man, and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian
tracks; the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with
the lazy, restful hospitality of the night! And how fierce here this
continual struggle for dominance and existence, even in this lull of
passage. For above all and through all he was conscious of the feverish
haste of speed and exertion.

The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the
ponderous piston. The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of gossip and
news, the banquet at the long table, the newspapers and books in the
reading-room, even the luxurious couches in the staterooms, were all
dominated, thrilled, and pulsating with the perpetual throb of the demon
of hurry and unrest. And when at last a horrible fascination dragged him
into the engine room, and he saw the cruel relentless machinery at work,
he seemed to recognize and understand some intelligent but pitiless
Moloch, who was dragging this feverish world at its heels.

Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he could
view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by certain signs
unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching his own locality.
He knew that his cabin and clearing would be undiscernible behind the
fringe of willows on the bank, but he already distinguished the points
where a few cottonwoods struggled into a promontory of lighter foliage
beyond them. Here voices fell upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware
that two men had lazily crossed over from the other side of the boat,
and were standing before him looking upon the bank.

"It was about here, I reckon," said one, listlessly, as if continuing a
previous lagging conversation, "that it must have happened. For it was
after we were making for the bend we've just passed that the deputy,
goin' to the stateroom below