"Reach shore?" With a sweep of his arm the man indicated the surface of the turgid flood. Following the gesture, Alice realized the utter futility of any attempt to influence the course of the clumsy craft. The wind had risen to a gale, but the full fury of the electrical storm had passed. Still continuous, the roar of the thunder had diminished to a low rumbling roll, and the lightning flashed pale, like ghost lightning, its wan luminescence foreshortening the range of vision to include only the nearer reaches of wild lashing water upon whose surface heaved and tossed the trunks and branches of trees over which the whitecapped waves broke with sodden hiss. The shore line with its fringe of timber had merged into the outer dark--an all-enveloping, heavy darkness that seemed in itself a _thing_--a thing of infinite horror whose evil touch was momentarily dispelled by the paling flashes of light. "Oh, where are we? Where are we going?" moaned the girl. "Down river, somewhere," answered the Texan, with an attempt at cheerfulness. The man was industriously bailing with a boot. He tossed its mate to the girl. "Bail," he urged, "it gives you somethin' to think about, an' it's good exercise. I was about froze till I got to heavin' out this water. We ain't so bad, now. We're bound to get shoved ashore at some bend, or the wind'll blow us ashore. Looks to me as if she was widenin' out. Must of overflowed some flat." Mechanically she took the boot and, following the example of the Texan, began to bail out. "Rain's quit, an' this wind'll dry us out when we get the boat emptied so we don't have to sit in the water. My shirt's most dry already." "The wind has changed!" cried the girl. "It's blowing crosswise of the river, now." "More likely we've rounded a bend," opined the Texan. "I don't know the river below Claggett." "If we're blown ashore, now, it will be the wrong shore." "Most any old shore'd look good to me. I ain't what you might call aquatic by nature--I ain't even amphibious." Alice laughed and the sound was music to the Texan's ears. "That's right, laugh," he hastened to say, and the girl noticed that the cheerfulness was not forced, "I've never heard you laugh much owin' to the fact that our acquaintance has been what you might call tribulations to an extent that has be'n plumb discouragin' to jocosity. But, what was so funny?" "Oh, nothing. Only one would hardly expect a cowboy, adrift in the middle of a swollen river to be drawing distinctions between words." "Bailin' water out of a boat with a boot don't overtax the mental capacity of even a cowboy to absolute paralysis." "You're certainly the most astonishing cowboy I've ever known." "You ain't known many----"