"Save me!" she gasped. "I saw him! I saw him!"
"Saw who?" I cried.
"Cuthbert Mackenzie! I am sure it was he, Denzil!" And she pointed to the right.
I looked hard in that direction, scanning the woods right and left. By Heavens, the girl had not been mistaken. Through a rift in the foliage, nearly opposite the canoe, peered a swarthy, sinister countenance and I recognized the features of Cuthbert Mackenzie. I took aim at him, but before I could fire he was gone. My brain seemed in a whirl. I had found the clew--the fiendish clew--to the attack that threatened to cost us our lives. Bent on revenge, Mackenzie had traveled up country to intercept us on the way to the fort--to kill me, and to capture Flora.
He had bribed the savages to help him, and he and his ruthless allies had been in the vicinity of our camp on the previous night.
Swiftly these things coursed through my mind. I tried to speak to Flora, but my tongue seemed to be held fast. I heard a shot--another and another. The bullets sang close to my ear.
"Down--down!" warned Gummidge.
"Keep low!" shouted Moralle and Lavigne in one breath.
My brain grew suddenly clear, but I did not heed the friendly advice.
Three shots had missed me, and I knew that the canoe was jerking about too much with the current to admit of a sure aim the savages.
"Paddle on, Moralle!" I cried. "Faster--faster!"
Meanwhile I watched the right hank, hoping to get another chance at Cuthbert Mackenzie. Baptiste--brave fellow!--was on the alert with me but he was scanning the left sh.o.r.e, and a sudden exclamation from him drew my eyes in the same direction. Ten yards in front, on the edge of the timber, a redskin thrust his coppery face from the leaves. I fired as quickly and the savage vanished with a yell of pain.
We were almost upon the rapids, and half a minute more would see us plunged into the seething, foaming slide of angry waters. To right and left, where the jagged reef touched the forest, stood three or four painted redskins, with muskets to their shoulders. And some distance below the falls, where the water broadened and shallowed, I made out the feather-decked heads of more Indians. This was a dread and significant discovery, and I instantly perceived the trap that had been laid for us.
"Keep under cover!" I shouted at the top of my voice.
"Be ready to fight when we pa.s.s the rapids! The devils are waiting for us below, blocking the way! Don"t try to paddle, Moralle. The canoe is headed straight for the rift in the middle. It"s sure death if you show yourself."
CHAPTER XIV.
AN INDIAN"S GRAt.i.tUDE.
Above the thunder of the falls my warning was heard and understood.
Glancing back to make sure, I saw the startled faces of the two women, and the grimly-set countenance of Jim Gummidge. From the stern Moralle half-rose, looked this way and that, and made two daring strokes with the paddle. He dropped under cover again just as a volley of musket b.a.l.l.s swept close over the canoe.
"You fool!" I shouted at him.
"I had to do it," he yelled back. "We were swinging to the left. It"s all right now."
"Steady! Here we go!" cried Gummidge.
I gave Flora a brief look that brought a dash of hot color to her pale cheeks, and then I turned quickly to one of my loopholes--Baptiste was gazing from the other. There was scarcely time to see anything. Like a flash I made out the little knot of painted savages on the reef to the left, and caught a blur of scarlet and copper from the shallows beyond the rapids. The next instant the turbulent waters leaped up and hid the view, and we struck the verge of the falls.
The Indians to right and left of the channel had evidently been posted there to prevent us from landing, and they did not fire on us as we shot by, but they yelled and screeched like fiends, their comrades below joining in, and above the horrid din of voices I heard the roar of the great waves that now surrounded us.
For a few seconds--it could have been no more--we hugged the bottom tightly. Spray and foam dashed over us; the frail craft pitched and tossed, swung round and round; billows and rocks smote the toughened birch-bark. Then came a sudden crash, the canoe turned over in the twinkling of an eye, and out we went into the raging falls, studded thickly with sunken bowlders and jagged, protruding reefs.
I was whirled about by the angry waters as though I had been a mere chip, sucked deep down, hurled to the surface, and bruised against rocks. I fought hard for life and held my breath, and when a spar of moss-grown bowlder loomed suddenly in front of me, I caught it with both arms and held it fast.
At the first I was grateful to Heaven for this mercy, and thought of nothing else. I filled my lungs with air and took a tighter grip of the rock. Then a burst of shrill yells and a couple of musket shots, ringing above the clamor of the rapids, roused me from my semi-stupor. I remembered that the canoe had capsized, flinging us all to the flood or to the waiting savages. And Flora! What was her fate? The dread that she had perished sickened my heart.
I shook the water from my dripping hair and eyes, and looked about me.
There was little of cheer or hope in what I saw. I was stuck midway in the falls, with my face downstream. Many yards below, where the foaming slide of water broadened into choppy waves and swirling shallows, Baptiste was splashing hip-deep for sh.o.r.e. Three redskins were dashing after him with drawn tomahawks, and I gave the poor fellow up for lost.
Moralle had been carried through the cordon of savages, and had reached the farther bank. There, on the edge of the forest, he was locked limb to limb with a stalwart warrior. The two were down, rolling amid the gra.s.s and gravel, and three Indians were watching for a chance to shoot the voyageur without injuring their comrade. Off to my right, in a deep, whirling eddy formed by a big bowlder, Gummidge was struggling hard to save himself and his wife; he had the use of but one arm, for the other was fastened around the little woman"s waist. A short distance beyond them, Lavigne, in spite of his wounded shoulder, was clinging in the bushy limb of a tree that overhung and dipped to the surface of the stream.
All this I observed at a sweeping glance--scarcely a moment could have elapsed since the upsetting of the canoe--and in vain I sought further for trace of Flora. That my companions were in peril of their lives, that death by drowning or the tomahawk must be my own fate--these things seemed of slight importance to me at the time. The canoe I discovered readily enough. It was wedged broadside to the stream no more than four yards above me, creaking and bending with the fierce current, its bow and stern jammed against half-submerged pinnacles of rock.
"Flora--Flora!" I shouted, loud and hoa.r.s.ely.
Above the thunder of the waters, above the yelling of the bloodthirsty savages, I fancied I heard an answering cry. Again I called her name.
Just then I saw two white hands gripping the gunwale of the canoe, and Lavigne, who was still clinging to the tree, nodded his head in that direction, and shouted something I could not understand. The next instant the shattered canoe was torn loose by the rush of the current.
It shot toward me, turned over twice, and sank from sight. And close behind it--she had been clinging to it all the while--my darling rose out of the greenish water. Swiftly she drifted on, the folds of her dress inflated with air, her hands beating feebly, and her white, agonized face staring at mine.
I saw that she must pa.s.s beyond me, at least an arm"s length out of reach. I did not hesitate an instant. Letting go of my precious rock, I struck out across the current. I swam alongside of the helpless girl, and caught her slender waist tightly.
Escaping the network of bowlders and reefs as by a miracle, we were swept down the remainder of the tumbling rapids. At the bottom I found a footing, and with my burden I struggled on, now slipping and floundering, now breasting the furious current, half-blinded at every stride by the dashing spray that beat in my face. But I was alive to the danger that awaited below, and I felt that there was no hope for either of us.
"Save me, Denzil! Don"t let me die!" Flora murmured faintly in my ear.
"I will save you," I cried, "or I will perish with you."
I had hardly spoken when a voice--an English voice--rang loud and sharp from the forest:
"Don"t harm the girl! Take her alive!"
I knew that the command came from Cuthbert Mackenzie. He was hidden by the trees, and I vainly tried to catch a glimpse of him while I fought my way through the boiling current. A moment later the stream grew suddenly calmer and more shallow, and few feet below me, on a reef that jutted out into the water I saw an Indian standing. The sunlight shone on his feathered scalp-lock, on his breech-clout and fringed leggings, on his hideously painted face. With a whoop of triumph he leveled his musket and pointed it straight at my head.
I heard the click of the hammer as it was drawn back, and knew that I must die--shot down like a dog. Life was sweet, and I could have cursed my bitter fate as I stood there, breast-deep in the water, trying to shelter Flora with my body. She uttered a heart-rending cry, and clung to me tightly.
"Save the girl, but kill the Englishman!" Mackenzie yelled again from the shelter of the forest.
The savage seemed to hesitate, still keeping his finger on the trigger of his weapon and the muzzle pointed at my head and as I stared at him, and noted the purple scars on his breast, I suddenly recognized him beneath the war-paint that wrinkled his face. A wild hope flashed to my mind.
"Gray Moose!" I cried hoa.r.s.ely. "Is this your grat.i.tude? Don"t you know me?"
The merciless aspect of the savage"s countenance softened. With a guttural grunt he leaped forward and gazed at me hard. Then he lowered his musket and said quickly:
"Pantherfoot!"
"Ay, Pantherfoot," I replied. "Do I deserve death at your hands?"
"The white man is my brother," said the Indian. "I knew not that he would be here, else I would have refused to take the war-path. I have listened to words of evil."
"And you will save us all?" I cried.