Shefford’s keen gaze sighted a moving something in the bend of the river.  It was long, low, dark, and flat, with a lighter object upright in the middle.  A boat and a man!

“Joe!  It’s Joe!” yelled Shefford, madly.  “There! . . .  Look!”

Jane and Fay were on their knees in the sand, clasping each other, pale faces toward that bend in the river.

Shefford ran up the shore toward the Indian.  He climbed the jutting slant of rock.  The boat was now full in the turn—­it moved faster—­ it was nearing the smooth incline above the rapid.  There! it glided down—­heaved darkly up—­settled back—­and disappeared in the frothy, muddy roughness of water.  Shefford held his breath and watched.  A dark, bobbing object showed, vanished, showed again to enlarge—­to take the shape of a big flatboat—­and then it rode the swift, choppy current out of the lower end of the rapid.

Nas Ta Bega began to make violent motions, and Shefford, taking his cue, frantically waved his red scarf.  There was a five-mile-an-hour current right before them, and Joe must needs see them so that he might sheer the huge and clumsy craft into the shore before it drifted too far down.

Presently Joe did see them.  He appeared to be half-naked; he raised aloft both arms, and bellowed down the canyon.  The echoes boomed from wall to wall, every one stronger with the deep, hoarse triumph in the Mormon’s voice, till they passed on, growing weaker, to die away in the roar of the river below.  Then Joe bent to a long oar that appeared to be fastened to the stern of the boat, and the craft drifted out of the swifter current toward the shore.  It reached a point opposite to where Shefford and the Indian waited, and, though Joe made prodigious efforts, it slid on.  Still, it also drifted shoreward, and half-way down to the mouth of Nonnezoshe Boco Joe threw the end of a rope to the Indian.

“Ho!  Ho!” yelled the Mormon, again setting into motion the fiendish echoes.  He was naked to the waist; he had lost flesh; he was haggard, worn, dirty, wet.  While he pulled on a shirt Nas Ta Bega made the rope fast to a snag of a log of driftwood embedded in the sand, and the boat swung to shore.  It was perhaps thirty feet long by half as many wide, crudely built of rough-hewn boards.  The steering-gear was a long pole with a plank nailed to the end.  The craft was empty save for another pole and plank, Joe’s coat, and a broken-handled shovel.  There were water and sand on the flooring.  Joe stepped ashore and he was gripped first by Shefford and then by the Indian.  He was an unkempt and gaunt giant, yet how steadfast and reliable, how grimly strong to inspire hope!

“Reckon most of me’s here,” he said in reply to greetings.  “I’ve had water aplenty.  My God!  I’ve had water!” He rolled out a grim laugh.  “But no grub for three days. . . .  Forgot to fetch some!”