CHAPTER XV
THE FORD
In an hour the banks about the place where the country road forded the Rocky Fork in low water, were studded with what seemed from a distance large, unblinking fireflies. And on the stream itself two or three other fireflies in a cluster moved back and forth, here and there. Bad news need not be telegraphed in the country. It flies faster than the wind. The whole neighborhood on each side the Rocky Fork knew that Doctor Garde had been carried down in the Rocky Fork, and men of all ages turned out in the search.
The Furnace-men brought dried pine sticks for torches. Three people paddled Ridenour’s canoe about, trailing light on the muddy water. The trees took on a weird appearance as these torches lit up the inner mystery of their branches, and some sleepy birds that had just comfortably settled for the night, chirped inquiringly. Overhead the stars appeared by ones and groups through a clear sky, from which the trailing mists were blown away.
The men in the canoe had a log-chain and hook which they trailed along the bottom. Others followed the banks down stream, being obliged to go around deep bogs and back-waters which nearly covered what had been grape-vine thickets. Doctor Garde’s felt hat had been found in a thicket by one of the boys, and Abram had ridden off home with it: but when he got there he had not had the heart to carry the soaked and dreadful token in, but had laid it in a corner of the porch while he entered to tell about it and state his convictions.
Mr. Runnels remained by the ford, walking his borrowed steed here and there, and stretching fearfully toward every object which attracted notice.
“They say Pancost come nigh losin’ his old gray,” said Mr. Willey grimly, laying his hand on the neck of this steed.
“I barely got out,” replied Mr. Runnels. “It seemed as if we were both to go.”
“What possessed ye to try the Rocky Fork when it’s so high?”
“I wanted to carry around word to all my pupils on this side that the lessons would be stopped till the water went down. I was about to turn back, but Doctor Garde was just venturing in, and I thought a man might follow where he went.”
“Oh, but Doctor Garde wouldn’t turn back from anything! And he had the prettiest piece o’ horse-flesh in the whole country. She could swim like a duck, and take a straight up-and-down bank, and in the darkest night he could give her the bridle and go to sleep. The trouble with Doctor Garde, sir, was that he didn’t know danger when he saw it. This is a rough piece o’ country, but he’d cut right across the hills, and once he got his eyelid cut open riding against a branch, and it hung down to his cheek. But he goes home and sews it up himself, and keeps on ridin’ as if nothing had happened. Ain’t many men could stand what he could.”
“I should think not.”
“No, sir. I couldn’t. And he was the best doctor, sir, I ever had in my family. There’s Hall over yonder. His mill went with these high waters, but I believe he feels a sight worse about the doctor.”
The men with the grapple-chain hooked something. It was no easy matter to keep out of the current and the course of limbs and various flotsam from wood-cutters’ piles. They got into a still place scummed over with powdered rotten-wood, and here they carefully drew in the laden hook.
Men on the opposite bank called to each other and came running to the verge, while those by the scummy bay knotted together and held their lights down.
“Have you got anything?” they called.
Those around the hook fell back and looked up:
“No, nothing but a little stump.”