Stonor then ordered all the people into their tepees, and such is the power of a single resolute voice that they meekly obeyed. Proceeding from tepee to tepee he called out likely-looking individuals to be questioned out of sight of the others. For a long time it was without result; men and women alike, having taken their cue from Myengeen, feigned not to understand. Such children as he tried to question were scared almost into insensibility. Stonor began to feel as if he were butting his head against a stone wall.
At last from a maiden he received a hint that was sufficient. She was a comely girl with a limpid brown eye. Either she had a soul above the Kakisas or else the bright-haired trooper touched her fancy. At any rate, when he looked in the tepee, where she sat demurely beyond her male relatives, she gave him a shy glance that did not lack humanity. Calling her outside, he put the invariable question to her, accompanied with appropriate signs: where was the white woman?
She merely glanced towards the mouth of the creek where the canoes lay, then looked up the lake. It was sufficient. Stonor gave her a grateful glance and let her go. He never knew her name. That the Kakisas might not suspect her of having betrayed them, he continued his questioning for awhile. Last of all he re-interrogated Myengeen. He did not care if suspicion fell on him.
Stonor coolly picked out the best-looking canoe in the creek, and loaded aboard what he required of his outfit. Myengeen and his men sullenly looked on. The trooper, seeing that a fair breeze was blowing up the lake, cut two poplar poles, and with a blanket quickly rigged mast and sail. When he was ready to start he delivered the rest of his outfit to Myengeen, and left his horses in his care.
“This is government property,” he said sternly. “If anything is lost full payment will be collected.”
He sailed down the creek followed by the wondering exclamations of the Kakisas. Sailing was an unknown art to them, and in their amazement at the sight, like the children they were, they completely forgot the grimness of the situation. Stonor thought: “How can you make such a scatter-brained lot realize what they’re doing!”
Stonor had supposed that Imbrie would take to the lake. On arriving at the brow of the last ridge his first thought had been to search its expanse, but he had seen nothing. Since then various indications suggested that they had between four and five hours’ start of him. He had been delayed on the trail by his pack-horses. The speed he was making under sail was not much better than he could have paddled, but it enabled him to take things easy for a while.
Swan Lake is about thirty miles long. Fully ten miles of it was visible from the start. It is shaped roughly like three uneven links of a chain, and in width it varies from half a mile to perhaps five miles. It seems vaster than it is on account of its low shores which stretch back, flat and reedy, for miles. Here dwelt the great flocks of wild geese or “wavies” that gave both lake and river their names.
As he got out into the lake the wind gradually strengthened behind him, and his canoe was blown hither and yon like an inflated skin on the water. She had no keel, she took no grip of the water, and much of the goodly aid of the wind was vainly measured against the strength of Stonor’s arms as he laboured to keep her before it. When he did get the wind full in his top-heavy sail it blew him almost bodily under. Stonor welcomed the struggle. He was now making much better time than he could have hoped for by his paddle. He grimly carried on.
In order to accommodate the two women and their necessary outfit, Stonor supposed that Imbrie must have taken one of the dug-outs. He did not believe that any of the Kakisas had accompanied the fugitive. The prospect of a long journey would appal them. And Stonor was pretty sure that Mary was not over-working herself at the paddle, so that it was not too much to hope that he was catching up on them at this rate. Thinking of their outfit, Stonor wondered how Imbrie would feed Clare; the ordinary fare of the Kakisas would be a cruel hardship on her. Such are the things one worries about in the face of much more dreadful dangers.