They seemed to work all right. He backed
cautiously until he lay outspread on the upstream slope of the boulder.
At just this moment he caught the sinister figure of Saleratus Bill
moving along the sunken ledge.
For the first time Bob remembered the tracks he must have left and the
man's skill at trailing. A rapid review of his most recent actions
reassured him at one point; in order to gain to the first of the minor
cliff projections by means of which he had spread-eagled along the face
of the rock, he had been forced to step into the very shallow water at
the stream's edge. Thus his last footprints led directly into the river.
The value of this impression, conjoined with the existence of a ledge
below over which he had already waded safely, was not lost on Bob's
preception. As has been stated, his earlier experience in river driving
had given him an intimate knowledge of the action of currents. Casting
his eye hastily down the moonlit river, he seized his hat from his head
and threw it low and skimming toward an eddy opposite him as he lay. The
river snatched it up, tossed it to one side or another, and finally
carried it, as Bob had calculated, within a few feet of the ledge along
which Saleratus Bill was still making his way.
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