"I'm done!" shouted Audubon, scrambling to his feet. "On, Norton! Good luck!"
For a bare instant the Louisianian hesitated, then dug in his heels and sent his sobbing beast ahead, his face grim. Everything now depended on him alone.
It was Sunday morning, he knew, and he wondered if there were any church-bells in Henderson. His horse was staggering now, and he had to watch closely lest he be sent headlong into the trees.
The Regulators had arrived at Henderson yesterday, according to the trail. No doubt they had passed through town or avoided it, going on along the river-bank to Diamond Island, where there was a large plantation. Then, with the miles slipping behind, Norton caught a gleam of water ahead and greeted it with a hoarse shout. The Ohio!
His beast coughed, straddled out, and sagged down. Norton slipped to the ground, rifle in hand, and with stiffened, stumbling feet ran forward, pouring a fresh priming in the pan as he ran. Where were the Regulators? Where was Duval? Where was Red Hugh? Had the wilderness trail swallowed them all?
Gasping and sobbing for breath, he followed the faint track to the water's edge, broke out from the last trees, and found himself on the river's brink. Then he uttered a groan of dismay and sank down, panting. Far down the stream, with a single man paddling furiously, was a canoe; as he looked, it swept around the lower end of the island and vanished.
Duval had escaped.
Slowly Norton pulled himself together. Twenty feet away was a horse, gasping out its life beside the river; Duval must have known where a canoe lay cached. From where he was, Norton had an excellent view of Diamond Island and the river.
He was a mile below the ferry and the upper end of the island, which was diamond-shaped. Henderson lay twelve miles up-river. The island, partly timbered and partly under cultivation, was four miles in length, and the stream in front of Norton was a quarter of a mile in width.
Suddenly, staggering a little, he sprang to his feet. Up the river he had made out a shape impossible to mistake; Brookfield's horse-boat was floating down the swift current, keeping close to the Kentucky shore, and it was a scant half-mile above—he had come just in the nick of time, then!