of cottonwoods and willows that marked the home of the Creeches. Lucy could
not see the shore nearest her, as it was almost directly under her. Besides,
in this narrow road, on a spirited horse, she was not inclined to watch the
scenery. She hurried Sarchedon down and down, under the overhanging brows of
rock, to where the rim sloped out and failed. Here was a half-acre of sand,
with a few scant willows, set down seemingly in a dent at the base of the
giant, beetling cliffs. The place was light, though the light seemed a kind of
veiled red, and to Lucy always ghastly. She could not have been joyous with
that river moaning before her, even if it had been up on a level, in the clear
and open day. As a little girl eight years old she had conceived a terror and
hatred of this huge, jagged rent so full of red haze and purple smoke and the
thunder of rushing waters. And she had never wholly outgrown it. The joy of
the sun and wind, the rapture in the boundless open, the sweetness in the
sage--these were not possible here. Something mighty and ponderous, heavy as
those colossal cliffs, weighted down her spirit. The voice of the river drove
out any dream. Here was the incessant frowning presence of destructive forces
of nature. And the ford was associated with catastrophe--to sheep, to horses
and to men.

Lucy rode across the bar to the shore where the Indians were loading the sheep
into an immense rude flatboat. As the sheep were frightened, the loading was
no easy task. Their bleating could be heard above the roar of the river.
Bostil's boatmen, Shugrue and Somers, stood knee-deep in the quicksand of the
bar, and their efforts to keep free-footed were as strenuous as their handling
of the sheep. Presently the flock was all crowded on board, the Indians
followed, and then the boatmen slid the unwieldy craft off the sand-bar. Then,
each manning a clumsy oar, they pulled up-stream. Along shore were whirling,
slow eddies, and there rowing was possible. Out in that swift current it would
have been folly to try to contend with it, let alone make progress. The method
of crossing was to row up along the shore as far as a great cape of rock