But MacAfee had deftly secured his prize, and the weighted spear which he had thrown stuck quivering in the bottom of the light craft. He drew in his line cautiously, and then Lincoln helped him take the canoe aboard.
“Here’s news,” drawled Lincoln. He held up an unfolded sheet of paper. MacAfee snatched it from him.
“It was in the bottom of the canoe, weighted with a stone,” Lincoln explained. “That Indian that knifed Lewis’s Indian seems to be friendly to all of us, sending us messages on a letter stolen from a murdered courier, apparently.”
“Hush up, Linc. Someone get a light.”
In the lee of the rail they pored over the paper, which might not, after all, be meant for them.
“It’s written in blood!” cried Moses.
It held only one word, traced with the writer’s forefinger, and that word was—DANGER.
“Wait!” said Mose. “Isn’t that an initial, straggled there?”
“I was wonderin’ if you’d any of you see that,” said Lincoln. “I saw it the first thing.”
“There are two of them,” said Marion, controlling his excitement with a great effort. “Look, Lincoln, do you make out what I do?”