AN INDIAN'S GRATITUDE.
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
balls 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 shore. 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
grass 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 hoarsely.
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 pass 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 hoarsely. "Is this your gratitude? 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.
For answer, Gray Moose turned to his braves, who were whooping like
fiends and firing an occasional shot, and shouted a few words to them in
the native tongue. In a moment more--almost before I could realize my
good fortune, every Indian had melted away into the forest. I heard
Mackenzie cry out with baffled rage and furiously curse his recreant
allies. Then a silence fell, broken only by the dull roar of the falls.
I waded to the shore, and placed Flora's trembling and half-unconscious
form against a tree. Baptiste quickly joined me; he had escaped from his
pursuers, and had seen the whole affair from his hiding-place in the
thick timber. Gummidge and his wife were clinging to the bowlders in
midstream, and with some difficulty they joined us. But Lavigne had
disappeared and poor Moralle lay motionless on the opposite bank,
apparently dead. Cuthbert Mackenzie's villainy had cost us dear.