Jack stood up in the canoe. The blue eyes were steady, and the thin line of his lips was firm, but the rich colour slowly faded out of his sunburned face, leaving it like old ivory. All this had happened in a moment; the dugout was not yet fully under way, though it seemed to Jack as if it were flying down. The harbouring backwater still stretched between him and the shore. He had a minute or longer to make his choice. The roaring canyon that ground its great tree-trunks into shreds was vividly present before his eyes; on the other hand, he could jump overboard and make his bobbing head a mark like a bottle for a madman to shoot at. A minute to decide in, and there he was tinglingly alive, and life was very sweet.
A woman's frightened voice rang out: "Jack! what are you doing out there? Come ashore!"
He looked and saw Linda standing in the trail by the bank's edge. Garrod was hidden from her by the intervening bushes. She came flying down, regardless. Garrod heard the voice, and, turning toward it, stopped dead. His muscles relaxed, and the butt of the gun dropped on the stones.
Jack laughed, and jumped overboard. Half a dozen strokes carried him into the backwater; twenty landed him hands and knees on the stones. Rising face to face with Garrod, he snatched the gun from his nerveless hands and sent it spinning into the bushes. Without looking at the girl he ran and caught up the paddle, ran back along the stones, plunged in and, heading off the dugout, wriggled himself aboard. It became a question then of his strength against the sucking current. The dugout hung in the stream as if undecided. Finally it swung around inch by inch, swept inshore, and grounded with perhaps five yards to spare.
As he landed the second time Linda cast herself weeping and trembling on his dripping bosom. "What did you frighten me like that for?" she cried, beating him with her small fists.
Jack laughed, and held her off. "It's a good boat," he said; "besides, the hammer was in it, the only one we have."
"How did you get adrift?" she demanded.
Jack looked at Garrod with a hardening eye. Garrod still stood where he had stopped. His eyes were blank of sense or feeling. Linda flew toward him, her slight frame instinct and quivering with menace.
"You coward!" she hissed.
Jack held her off. "Let him alone," he said. "His wits are clean gone!"