And then, as those stern-faced, watching, listening men, rifles in hand, almost side by side, waited there, out from behind this bend shot a canoe.
“My God, it’s Pete Bolduc! Look out!” almost yelled Levi, and “Halt! Surrender!” from Hersey, as two rifles were levelled at the oncomer. Then one instant’s sight of a red and scarred face, a quick reach for a rifle, a splash of water, an overturned canoe, and with a curse the astonished half-breed dived into the undergrowth.
Two rifles spoke almost at the same instant from the waiting canoes, one answered from out the thicket. A thrashing, struggling something in the filled canoe next caught all eyes, and Levi, leaping into the waist-deep stream, grasped and lifted a dripping form.
It was Chip!
A brief yet bloodless tragedy, all over in less time than the telling; yet a lifetime of horror had been endured by that waif, for as Levi bore her to the bank, cut the thongs that bound her, and freed her mouth from a pad of deerskin, she grasped his hand and kissed it.
And then came another surprise; for down a sloping, thick-grown hillside, something was heard thrashing, and soon Old Tomah, his clothing in shreds, his face bleeding, appeared to view.
Calculating to a nicety where he could best intercept and head off the escaping half-breed, he had crossed four miles of pathless undergrowth in less than an hour, and reached the stream at the nearest point after it left the lake.
How Chip, still sobbing from the awful agony of mind, and dripping water as well, greeted Old Tomah; how Hersey, chagrined at the escape of the half-breed, gave vent to muttered curses; how Martin joined them in thought; and how they all gathered around Chip and listened to her tale of horror, are but minor features of the episode, and not worth the telling.
When all was said and done, Old Tomah, grim and silent as ever, although he had done what no white man could do or would try to do, washed his bloody face in the stream, drank his fill of the cool water, and lifting Pete’s half-filled canoe as easily as if it were a shingle, tipped it, turned the water out, and set it on the sloping bank.
“Me take you back and watch you now,” he said to Chip. “You no get caught again.”