The Waters of Kronos Read Online Free Page A

above him run futilely into the steel fence. At places, the woodcutters had said, it was bulldozed out. But here for a short distance in the shelter of the hollow it lay untouched and utterly unchanged, the same yellow shale where butterfly weed grew, the same thick velvety leaves of the moth mullein and the bright patches of goldenrod. It even smelled like it used to, like Union Valley had always smelled. He had lived over much of the country and seen more of the world, but he had found no odor like that of the mixed woods and fields where he had been born, the wild scent of native grasses mingled with that of hardwood leaves, hemlock and pine. Old cherry and ash trees stood along the road. After climbing the fence he was glad to lean against one of them to combat the faintness in his head.
    He must have stayed there a long time. The longer he stood in the growing dusk, the less it seemed that he had ever gone away. Nothing here had changed. He could almost believe that he was still a youth and that the beloved town and valley lay intact and untouched below. Why, this had been the most familiar road to him around Unionville! As a boy he had coasted down it in winter. Summers he had gone withhis father, who twice a week delivered a three-horse covered spring wagon of grocery orders to the mining patches on Broad Mountain. So often had his father passed this spot, he thought there must still remain in the road some faint tread of his wagon’s tires and impress of his horses’ shoes. Standing here now peering through the dim light, he could almost feel himself a boy coming down from the mountain, sitting beside his father on the spring seat, the wooden brake screeching, the horses “rutching” and ahead of him home and supper waiting in the evening lamplight.
    His nerves tautened. Did he only imagine it or was something moving up there on the Long Stretch? Yes, he could see it now through the trees and dusk. It was coming toward him on the road, a wagon with a white top like his father’s, three horses, and a gray like old Bob hitched in the lead. The strangest feeling ran over him. He must be really ill, he told himself, for there was no open road above for the wagon to have come from and no place but water below for it to go. Besides, there were no wagons like that on the road any more. Men drove trucks. Even the old woodcutters had a car. Yet he could plainly hear the rumble of the oaken running gear and the sharp sound of iron horseshoes striking stones in theroad. An inexplicable fear possessed him. Then as the wagon came abreast he saw that the driver was not his father but an old man, older still than he, with long gray mustaches.
    If the driver saw him, he gave no heed, driving on grave and preoccupied, the reins in his hand. In another moment or two he would be past.
    “Speak to him. Speak to him before he’s gone!” John Donner cried to himself.

CHAPTER THREE
    The Chasm
    And still he stood rooted with a kind of paralysis as in a dream, watching the wagon go on, carrying with it a mysterious brightness about its canvas top, leaving him behind in the gloom of the hollow.
    “Wait!” he cried.
    The driver looked back, his eyes sad and deep above drooping mustaches, like a face from another world, but he did not stop. John Donner hurried after the wagon.
    “Please. May I speak to you?” he begged.
    And still the wagon bumped on, lurching, the driver silent. John Donner had the impression the man was incapable of speech. Then, farther down the steep grade, he drew his reins and halted the horses with the front wheels of his wagon resting in a cross gutter. The visitor ran after. Careful, careful what you say, he urged himself. But speak! The man is waiting!
    “Can you tell me where this road goes?” he asked.
    “Goes? Why, it goes to the mines,” the driver said, becoming suddenly real enough, exploding the myth of dumbness.
    “I mean the other way.” John Donner pointed into the chasm.
    “That way goes