The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter Page B

fellow lodgers about him, grateful for a high open place to look on the dim world outside. A mist was rising from the river, obscuring all the familiar forms and landmarks, shrouding them in an impenetrable veil. Even the stars were hidden. Well, the old must steel themselves to the obscuring of familiar sights, become resigned to an existence in mist and veil. The pueblo Indians of New Mexico were wise to build their houses of earth, to become accustomed to dwelling in the clay of their final resting place.
    Lying there, he heard the sudden cry of terror from a bird in a nearby treetop, then all was still. Had it, he wondered, been picked up in the talons of a feathery flying beast, carried off God knows where as dark shapes rise at night from the abyss to do the same to men? John Donner keptthinking of the birds as he lay there, the peril of their common nightfall. Small wonder they sang in the morning but why did they also at approaching night?
    The river made mysterious occult gurgling noises beneath him. He remembered it shallow enough here. The older men said that a ford had preceded the bridge, and yet the sound was deep, black, stirring with nameless imaginings.
    “Never cross water,” a palmist had once told him.
    He would not cross it. He just intended to stay here suspended over it. If he did not sleep, keeping vigilant, waiting for daylight, he would be safe.

CHAPTER SIX
    The Confluence
    When the man awoke he did not know at first where he was. Troubled sleep had confused him, taken with dreams of a bridge that men had to pass through. It was a dark bridge, very late at night, and the men were nearly always alone, most of them on foot, reluctant, talking incoherently to themselves to brave them into the black unknown. Only one had been in a hurry, with a horse and buggy that rattled the plank and stirred the dry dust so the dreamer could taste it in his throat. Now the dreamer lay remembering, seeing again in his mind the shadowy figures, hearing their lonely voices, feeling the threat and sadness of that bridge, and the chill of the river it spanned. The chill was still in his flesh and his bones when he awoke.
    Gradually the dusty ax-scarred rafters and black-stained shingles overhead took shape and brought him back to reality.With stiff joints and muscles he came backward down the wooden arch. Once down, the tender town scene through the telescope of the bridge revived his spirit, the red tin roofs of the remembered streets, blue summer woodsmoke rising from the lazy chimneys, the familiar odd shapes of Unionville houses half hidden in the fog of leaves, the green hills lifting beyond and pink clouds hanging over them, all simmering and asleep as if in an early-morning spell. He stood drinking in the delicate perishable picture, then descended the path through rank-smelling weeds to wash his face in the river.
    All the way up Mill Street with no sidewalks and very few houses he noted the vagaries of the ambient envelope here in the eddy behind Shade Mountain, the unseen layers of cool and warmer air, the winding currents of some elusive scent now gained, now lost. Distillations of hearty old-time breakfasts, of frying ham and potatoes, pursued him. His fingers felt the thin change in his pocket. He must go hungry or unshaven today and the latter was unthinkable if he wanted to look presentable to his mother. God knows that his best would be lacking enough.
    Joe Heisler’s barber shop already at this early hour held faces and heads to be readied for the funeral. Sitting on thelong bench were Rob Felty, the miller, Charley Hartman, the station agent, and Sherm Rhine, the staunch friend of and moneylender to his Aunt Jess, but neither they nor Joe acknowledged his presence after the first glance. Only the eyes of the customer reclining under the razor watched him covertly through the mirror, secure in his turned back and lathery disguise.
    Sitting back at last in the leathern chair, John Donner saw the old mine