Cold spray flying over his face aroused Walking Moose at last from his
drugged sleep. For a little while he lay still, too shocked and
bewildered by the quaking of the wet rock on which he lay and the roar
and thunder in his ears, to think or move. He saw something pale, wide,
and alive close in front and curving above him. He put out his right
hand and felt cold, dripping rock behind him. He put out his left hand.
Here was more wet rock—and there the sharp edge of it—and space—within a
few inches of his side. He sat upright, and as he gazed he remembered
the liquor he had taken from the hands of Never Sleep.
“This is the work of that old man!” he exclaimed. He stood up on the
narrow ledge and raised his hand to the dim-lit, flying arc. It was
struck down, and his face was dashed with bubbling water. Then horror
seized him, and he leaned weakly against the dripping rock—for he
realised that he was behind the Veil of Flying Water, hemmed in—in a
deathtrap.
Walking Moose soon regained his usual composure. He stood with his back
to the dripping rock, his feet firmly set on the quaking ledge, and
gazed calmly at the roof and wall of thin, hissing water. He thought of
the girl to whom he had given the name of Shining Star; but in a second
he put that hateful vision from him. The spray came up from the boiling
cauldron under the ledge and drenched him. He stared with dull interest
at the arching water, and at last decided that the pale radiance that
lit it was that of the moon. So the time must be early night. Suddenly
he was aware of something foreign on the luminous front of his prison.
It was a slender line of blackness, sharply curved, that struck the
veil, vanished, and struck again on a level with his eyes. Spray flew
when it touched. He leaned forward and put out his right hand. The thing
was of twisted leather.
He shot out his hand and gripped the line firmly. He pulled it towards
him. It came half-way, seeming to be slack only at one end; then it
began to straighten and draw strongly outward and upward. He advanced to
the very edge of the rocky shelf, still gripping the rope with his right
hand. He stood on tiptoe. Then he grasped the rope with both hands and
sprang through the roof of falling water.
When Walking Moose felt the solid rocks under his feet he loosed the
grip of his fingers and fell forward, exhausted. Then the girl whom he
had named Shining Star knelt beside him and raised his head against her
shoulder.
The Mohawk chief, recovered from his fall, looked out upon them from the
bushes. Then he turned and went back to his own country, cursing a magic
that had not been foretold by the medicine-men.
“Bill Bailey”
_By_ Ian Hay
_Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders_
I