“Same principle as a rolling snowball. Water flows together as it descends from a thousand different sources.” Cummins headed back along the ridge, but unhurriedly, aware that Tuttle was still afraid, savoring and prolonging Tuttle’s fear. Tuttle could not give up his dignity and run; he had to stick with this pace.
Therefore it was quite some time before the two men reached a view of what had happened out on the water.
Cummins saw it first, his suddenly rigid back bringing Tuttle to his side. Cummins’ immediate reaction was that of a surprised bystander, but then the implications grew clear and a sick feeling pushed into his middle. Why? he thought. Why right now?
“Looks like kids!” Tuttle was shouting in his ear. “Two boys.”
The figures stood a couple of hundred feet across the turbulent water on what had been a knoll, except that it was now about a foot under. The water raced and splashed over the boys’ knees as they hung on to some brush. They began waving and calling frantically at sight of the men.
“How soon’ll the water go down?” yelled Tuttle.
Cummins looked at him grimly, and pointed at the white streams still roaming over the lake, breaking into spray where they divided around the trees that rose from the flood. “Still going up.”
“The kids will drown. We’ve got to get help.”
Cummins grabbed Tuttle’s arm. The blind fool, he thought. Doesn’t he understand? “No time. It’s up to us. The surveyors keep some line in the shack. Let’s get it.” He turned and ran heavily, aware that after a pause Tuttle followed.
When the line was secured and fastened to a tree at a point opposite the marooned boys, Cummins rapidly stripped. Tuttle eyed him with a peculiar expression. “You really going in, Sheldon?”
“What the hell does it look like?”
“I take my hat off to you. I didn’t think you had it in you. I wouldn’t step into that torrent for anything.”
Cummins looped the line around his waist and ungracefully splashed into the flood. He gasped at the cold shock and struck into the turbulence. His muscles felt the strain at once and water surged into his nostrils. He was only a fair swimmer and he was too heavy but he forced his arms alternately ahead with savage persistence until it seemed that he had been swimming a very long time. Then he looked up and was stunned to discover that he had lost ground. The travelling water had moved him below the boys, although he was some distance from the ridge.
Cursing his stupidity in not allowing for the flow, he turned back, gained the ridge and flopped upon the ground, gasping, waiting until his breathing had slowed, paying no attention to Tuttle’s talk.
When he was ready he plunged in again a good distance above his first position. He noted that the boys were now submerged almost to their waists. He had to get them out on this try.
He swam powerfully, but tried to avoid haste, to conserve his strength. Soon his eyes lost all sight but that of the plunging water which struck at his face. There was no sound in his ears but the rushing and roaring of water.
While his body fought for its life, steadily losing power against the tireless water, his mind grew curiously calm and detached, as though this diminished world in which he struggled could make no demands upon it. Was he being a fool, he wondered? His mind deliberately weighed this, while he admired the clarity of his thinking. He had come to the fork in the road, his mind told him. He had rejected the easy path that led to — nothing. It was now all out, and nothing suffered to block him, even the risk of his own life. He was not being a fool.
Now it seemed impossible that he could lift each arm one more time. He was out past the edge of endurance, almost past the edge of consciousness, but the thought held fast: those kids must not drown.
He made it, of course, that single-minded purpose driving him to his object. After he dropped his feet onto the knoll, he fastened the line to the sturdiest and highest limbs he could find among the brush, praying that it would hold. He sized up the kids quickly and sent the larger and huskier of the two back along the line by himself.
He waited until he was sure the kid was making it, then started the other one off, staying right with him. Twice the force of the water began to tear the boy off the rope, but Cummins grabbed him and held him, bulling him along until he regained his grip.
“Why, you’re a hero, a blasted hero,” Tuttle told him when the boys were safe on the ridge, sitting huddled together, resting. “That was a fine thing to do, Sheldon.”
Cummins regarded him contemptuously, and swivelled his head to make sure the boys were out of hearing range. “Save your praise, Sam,” he said. “I did it for only one reason — a million dollars.”
“Clear that up, will you.”
“You slipping, Sam? You can’t be that dense. Suppose the two little punks drowned on my property. That’s news, isn’t it? Headline news a lot of places. The national papers would carry something on it. Florida Flash Flood Drowns Two Youngsters in Real Estate Development. I might as well fold up and steal away after that. Nobody would pay a dime for this property. You don’t think I want to spend my declining years selling insurance, do you?”
Tuttle bowed satirically. “Forgive me for misjudging you. Ever the promoter, eh Sheldon? As a public relations man the aspect you mention should have occurred to me, but I was too concerned about the boys’ danger. Foolish of me. I must he, as you say, slipping.”
“Now, this way,” went on Cummins, “it doesn’t matter too much if the boys chatter about what happened. A close shave is hardly news. Oh, it might make a local paper or two, but that’s about all. The kids are alive, that’s the main thing. Corpses we don’t need around here.”
“I admire your logic,” said Tuttle. He glanced at Cummins meditatively. “You’d do anything for money, wouldn’t you, Sheldon?”
“For enough money. Like anybody else. Don’t you go superior on me, Sam, we’re all the same, all of us humans. The only difference is the price. Everybody has their price, five hundred, five thousand or five million. For me a million does it. I’d do anything for a million. You didn’t jump in after those boys because there was only thirty-five thousand in it for you. Not enough.”
“Plus the fact that I can’t swim.”
The rain began to patter down more strongly again, and Cummins looked worriedly over at the boys. Couldn’t have them contracting pneumonia either; had to get them under shelter. They’d return to the shack.
When they were all inside the old building, Cummins regarded the youngsters keenly. They seemed to be about fifteen or sixteen years old, neither too well built although one was slightly taller. The taller one had a broad jaw, open blue eyes and freckles. The other was spindly looking with sharp features and a narrow head and a weak button of a chin. His eyes seemed perpetually half-closed and flat.
“We want to thank you again for pulling us out of there, Mister,” said the spindly one. He said it reluctantly, as though grudging the necessity.
“That’s all right, that’s all right,” returned Cummins genially. “As long as you kids are safe. Where you from?”
“New York.” The boy pulled up a leg of his worn jeans and scratched casually.
“New York. That’s a long way off. What are you doing all the way down here?”
“Seeing the country.”
“Where are your folks?”
The boy jerked a thumb at his companion. “Joe there, he doesn’t have any. Mine arc still in New York, I guess.”
“You guess? What did you do, run away?”
The boy shrugged. “Nothing to run away from. The old man’s a booze hound. My old lady, well let’s forget her. They ain’t missing me.”
“What’s your name?”
The boy’s grin was almost a snarl. “Elias. Elias Smith. That’s Joe Jones over there.”