For a breathless moment they watched while it seemed that the great log with its gruesome freight must be swept out into the main current of the stream. Sluggishly it revolved, as upon an axis, and then, in the grip of a random cross-current, swung heavily shoreward.
The form of the old woman bent forward and, as the log drifted slowly past, a talon-like hand shot out and fastened upon the bit of striped cloth, and the next moment the two were tugging and hauling in their efforts to drag the limp body clear of the brown waters.
Seizing upon the heavy calked boots they worked the body inch by inch up the steep slope, and the dry lips of the old squaw curled in a snaggy grin as she noted the shattered leg and the toe of the boot twisted backward—a grin that deepened into a grimace of sardonic cruelty at the feel of the grating rasp of the shattered bone ends.
After frequent pauses they returned to their task, and at each jerk water gushed from the man's wide-sprung jaws.
At last, panting with exertion, they gained the top of the bank. With glittering eyes the old squaw stooped swiftly and turned the body upon its back. The unseeing eyes stared upward, water ceased to gush from the open mouth, and the lolling tongue settled flabbily between the mud-smeared lips.
A cry of savage disappointment escaped her, for the face into which she looked was not the face of Moncrossen!
The curse of the Yaga Tah died upon her lips, for this curse may be breathed but once in a lifetime, and if, as Father Magnus said, "God is good," she might yet live to gaze into the dead face of the one worst white man, and chant the curse of the Yaga Tah.
So she stifled the curse and contented herself with gloating over the battered body of the man of logs which the churning white-water of the Blood River rapid had tossed at her feet, even as the seething white-water of the Saw Tooth had tossed the body of her Pierre at the feet of the white men.
At her side the girl gazed curiously at the exanimate form. In her heart was no bitterness against the people of her father—no damning of the breed for the sins of the individual.
Lacombie, she knew, was good—the one good white man—old Wa-ha-ta-na-ta called him. And Moncrossen was bad.