"They don't want you to be a widow and—break a—lot of hearts," he said. "If they—hit me now you—won't be—dangerous as a—widow."
"Oh, you heartless thing! How can you jest about it? I'd—I'd go into mourning, anyway, Jack," she concluded, on second thought. "We are just as good as married, you see."
"It's nice—of you to say it, dear—but we're a long—way from—Bracken's. Gee! That was close!"
A bullet splashed in the water not ten feet from the boat. "The cowards! They're actually trying to kill us!" For the first time his face took on a look of alarm and his eyes grew desperate. "I can't let them shoot at you, Marjory, dear! What the dickens they want I don't know, but I'm going to surrender." He had stopped rowing and was making ready to wave his white handkerchief on high.
"Never!" she cried with blazing eyes. "Give me the oars!" She slid into the other rowing seat and tried to snatch the oars from the rowlocks.
"Bravo! I could kiss you a thousand times for that. Come on, you Indians! You're a darling, Marjory." Again the oars caught the water, and Jack Barnes's white handkerchief lay in the bottom of the boat. He was rowing for dear life, and there was a smile on his face.
The raft was left far behind and the marksmen were put out of range with surprising ease. Fifteen minutes later the skiff shot across the river and up to the landing of Bracken's boathouse, while a mile back in the brush Anderson Crow and his men were wrathfully scrambling in pursuit.
"Hey, Bracken! Jimmy!" shouted Jack Barnes, jumping out upon the little wharf. Marjory gave him her hands and was whisked ashore and into his arms. "Run into the boathouse, dear. I'll yank this stuff ashore. Where the dickens is Bracken?"
The boathouse door opened slowly and a sleepy young man looked forth.
"I thought you'd never come," he yawned.