The girl turned, waving, but Ben's voice drowned out hers. "We'll see you later," he called in a gay voice. "We can't come back now."
"Come back!" Neilson called again. "I order you—"
He stared intently, hoping that the man would turn. Already they were practically out of hearing; and not even Beatrice was dipping her paddle in obedience to his command. Looking more closely, he saw that the man only was paddling.
Then his eye fell to the landing on which he stood, instinctively trying to locate the second paddle. It lay at his feet. A foolhardy thing to do, he thought, a broken paddle, out there above the rapids, would mean death and no other thing. Helpless in the current, the canoe could not be guided through those fearful gates of peril below. If by a thousandth chance it escaped the rocks, it would be carried for unnumbered miles into a land unknown, a territory that could be entered only by the greatest difficulty—packing day after day over range and through thicket with a great train of pack horses—and from which the egress, except by the same perilous water route, would be almost impossible. But the thought passed as he discerned the white paper that had been fastened in the paddle blade.
He bent for it with eager hand. He knew instinctively that it contained an all-important and sinister message for him. His eyes leaped over the bold writing on the exterior.
"To Ezra Melville's murderers," Ben had written. And with that reading Jeffery Neilson knew a terror beyond any experienced in the darkest nightmare of his iniquitous life.
It did not occur to him to bring the note, unopened, to Ray Brent. As yet he did not fully understand; yet he knew that the issue was one of seconds. Seconds must decide everything; his whole world hung in the balance. His hand ripped apart the sealed fold, and he held the sheet before his eyes.
Possessing only an elementary education Jeffery Neilson was not, ordinarily, a fast reader. Usually he sounded out his words only with the greatest difficulty. But to-day, one glance at the page conveyed to him the truth: from half a dozen words he got a general idea of the letter's full, dread meaning. Ben had written:
TO NEILSON AND HIS GANG:—
When you get this, Beatrice will be on her way to Back There—either there or on her way to hell.