The shiftless one only nodded in reply, but both as they ran tied their ammunition again around their necks, seeing at the same time that their powder horns were stopped up tightly. The trees thinned fast, open muddy ground appeared, and before them stretched a broad yellow current, the Ohio. They called up the last reserve of their strength and ran as swiftly as they could over the moist, sinking earth. But they were now visible to their pursuers, who had not yet emerged from the forest, and more bullets were fired.
"Are you hit, Sol?" asked Henry, anxiously of his comrade.
"No," replied the shiftless one. "Too dark fur 'em to take good aim."
The river seemed to widen as they approached it. It might be narrow enough somewhere near here for cannon to command it, but it was a giant stream, nevertheless, and a swimming head upon its surface would be exposed for a long way to rifle shots. Shif'less Sol wheeled and fired at the group that was now emerging from the woods, causing it to hesitate and then stop for a few minutes, although several shots were fired in return. The shiftless one felt a sharp, stinging pain in his side as a bullet glanced off his ribs, but he did not wince.
"Jump, Henry," he cried, "jump ez fur out into the river ez you kin!"
The bank at the very edge of the water was about a dozen feet high, and Henry leaped as far as he could. He heard a splash behind him as Sol, too, sprang into the water of the Ohio, but the shiftless one remained in the shadow of the bank.
"What is it, Sol?" cried Henry in alarm.
"I've been touched a leetle by a mite o' lead. It don't amount to much, but to-night I don't believe I kin swim the Ohio. I'll drift down river under the bank an' they'll never see me."
Sol was already floating away with the stream in the deepest shadow, and Henry, swimming as before with only one arm, struck out strongly for the Kentucky shore.