the coast, and the
joke's on her! You'd ought to hev heerd her cable snap! Whoosh, if that
wire didn't screech! Jest last week it was, and the river come round the
corner on us in a wave four feet high, same as a wall. I was up here
on business, and seen the whole thing. So the ferry she up and bid us
good-bye, and lit out for Astoria with her cargo. Beggin' pardon,
hev you tobacco, for mine's in my wet pants? Twenty-four hogs and the
driver, and two Sheeny drummers bound to the mines with brass jew'lry,
all gone to hell, for they didn't near git to Astoria. They sank in the
sight of all, as we run along the bank. I seen their arms wave, and them
hogs rolling over like 'taters bilin' round in the kettle." Wild-Goose
Jake's words came slow and went more slowly as he looked at the river
and spoke, but rather to himself. "It warn't long, though. I expect it
warn't three minutes till the water was all there was left there. My
stars, what a lot of it! And I might hev been part of that cargo, easy
as not. Freight behind time was all that come between me and them that
went. So, we'd hev gone bobbin' down that flood, me and my piah-chuck."

"Your piah-chuck?" Mart inquired.

The man faced the boy like a rat, but the alertness faded instantly from
his eye, and his lip slackened into a slipshod smile. "Why, yes, sonny,
me and my grub-stake. You've been to school, I'll bet, but they didn't
learn yu' Chinook, now, did they? Chinook's the lingo us white folks
trade in with the Siwashes, and we kinder falls into it, talking along.
I was thinkin' how but for delay me and my grubstake--provisions, ye
know--that was consigned to me clear away at Spokane, might hev been
drownded along with them hogs and Hebrews. That's what the good folks
calls a dispensation of the Sauklee Tyee!--Providence, ye know, in
Chinook. 'One shall be taken and the other left.' And that's what beats
me--they got left; and I'm a bigger sinner than them drummers, for I'm
ten years older than they was. And the poor hogs was better than any of
us. That can't be gainsaid. Oh no! oh no!"

Mart laughed.

"I mean it, son. Some day such thoughts will come to you." He stared at
the river unsteadily with his light gray eyes.

"Well, if the ferry's gone," said John Clallam, getting on his legs,
"we'll go on down to the next one."

"Hold on! hold on! Did you never hear tell of a raft? I'll put you folks
over this river. Wait till I git my pants on," said he, stalking n