"What do you mean?" she asked breathlessly. "What—are you going to do?"
"He won't kill me," Ben went on. "I may kill him—and I will if I can—but he won't kill me. See—we're going faster all the time."
It was true. Strokes of the paddle were no longer necessary to propel the craft at the breakneck pace. It sped like an arrow—straight toward the perilous cataracts below.
The girl watched him with transcending horror, and slowly the truth went home. The supplies in the boat, her father's desperate attempt to rescue her, even at the risk of her own life and the cost of Ben's, this white, exultant face before her, more terrible than that of the wolf between, the cold reptile eyes so full of some unhallowed emotion,—at last she saw their meaning and relation. Was it death—was that what this mad man in the stern had for her? She remembered what she had told him the day before, her description of the cataracts that lay below. She struggled to shake off the trance that her terror had cast about her.
"Turn into the shore," she told him, half-whispering. There was no pleading in her tone: the hard eyes before her told her only too plainly how futile her pleas would be. "You still have time to steer into shore. I'll jump overboard if you don't."
He shook his head. "Don't jump overboard, Beatrice," he answered, some of the harshness gone from his tones. "It isn't my purpose to kill you—and to jump over into this stream only means to die—'for any one except the most powerful swimmer. You'd be carried down in an instant."
The girl knew he spoke the truth. Only death dwelt in those cold and rushing waters. "What do you mean to do?" she asked.
Her tone was more quiet now, and he waited an instant before he answered. The canoe glided faster—ever faster down the stream. Somewhat afraid, but still trusting in the imperial mind of his master, the wolf raised his head to watch the racing shore line.
"It's just a little debt I owe your father—and his gang," Ben explained. "I'll tell you some time, in the days to come. It was a debt of blood—"
The girl's dark eyes charged with red fire. "And you, a coward, take your payment on a woman. Turn the canoe into the bank."