Dick Kent at Half-Way House

by M. M. Oblinger

It was not their canoe at all. It was the one in which only the day before, he had seen Wolf Brennan and Toby McCallum pass by the island of the dinosaur. The realization had come so unexpectedly that, for a time, Dick was almost too dazed and bewildered to collect his scattered wits.

So Brennan and his partner had lost their canoe, too? How had that happened? Had they left it partly in the water and partly on shore, and had the current succeeded in tugging it away? It seemed probable. The river played no favorites.

And then Dick saw something that caused his pulses to leap with excitement. In the white sand, twenty feet from where the craft was bobbing idly, were the marks made by the canoe when it had been beached, and around these marks were the unmistakable imprints of moccasined feet.

Dick could not suppress a grin of appreciation. Well-trained canoe that! A very obliging current! Caught in a net-work of in-shore eddies, moving round and round in a circle, the canoe was nearly as safe as if it had been dragged clear of the water and deposited in the white sand along the beach.

Coincident with this discovery, there came the realization that he was treading on dangerous ground. Having left their canoe here, very naturally the partners would return. Perhaps they already had. For all Dick knew to the contrary, right at this moment from behind some leafy ambuscade they might be watching his approach. The thought frightened him. He paused dead in his tracks, undecided what to do. After the reception Wolf had received back there at the boys’ camp, it was only reasonable to suppose that neither of the partners would hesitate about using their own weapons. On the other hand, if they were still lingering in the vicinity of the other camp or had paused to rest somewhere, he would be missing a golden opportunity if caution or the fear of a bullet kept him from making a closer approach.

Come to think of it, he was in as much danger here, a mere fifty yards from his goal, as he would be if he were actually at the side of the canoe. Already he was within rifle range. But they hadn’t fired. Were they waiting for him to come just a wee mite closer, or was it really true that they hadn’t yet arrived upon the scene?

For a full minute Dick stood there, unable to decide. His heart pounded like a trip-hammer. Three times he took a step forward and thrice he stopped short, in panic at the thought of what might happen to him if he could command the courage to go on.

And then, almost beside himself from the inactivity and suspense, he gathered together the fluttering, loose ends of a waning decision, gritted his teeth, and darted forward. Bounding along at top speed, in a few seconds he came abreast of the canoe, checked himself, then splashed out waist-deep into the water and clambered aboard.

He dropped his rifle, frantically seized one of the paddles and was half way out into the river before he was sufficiently recovered from his fright to realize that he had actually made good his escape. Yet he continued to paddle furiously. Never before had he bucked a current with such fierce and desperate ardor. He swept round the bend in the river, perspiration pouring from every pore, working with a dogged, automatic, machine-like regularity. Seemingly he could not, dare not ease up for even as much as a split-second.

On and on he raced. A thin, white line of foam trailed off in his wake. Now and again in his eager haste, his paddle scooped the water in the air behind him, where the freshening breeze caught it and whirled it away.