Buffalo Bill could not have released the rope from his saddle-bow in time to save the unfortunate outlaw, nor could he force Chief nearer the water. The noose was about the man’s neck, and with an awful jerk the rope literally snatched him out of the canoe!
Had the girl not been lying down at the moment his body would have carried her likewise into the river. It was by mere chance that the canoe did not overturn; but it righted and sailed on with its freight of two. The other outlaw was dead before Buffalo Bill could drag him ashore. His neck had been broken.
The scout’s interest lay, however, in the fate of the two remaining in the canoe. He cast the dead man loose and spurred hard down the path, trying to keep up with the frail canoe now shooting the rapids.
It was a perilous journey; yet Boyd Bennett, ruffian though he was, exercised the greatest ingenuity in managing the canoe. The scout could not but admire this in the fellow.
It seemed impossible, however, that the canoe and its living freight could get through the rapids intact. The water boiled madly about the craft. It was flung hither and yon, and at times it was so racked by the opposing forces of the current that Buffalo Bill, on the bank, could hear the wood crack.
Boyd Bennett’s glaring eyes did not turn toward his enemy throughout all this trial. He watched each black-ribbed rock or floating snag against which his craft might be hurled. Nor did he speak a word to the girl lying in the bottom of the canoe.
She knew as well as he that any movement on her part would add to their danger, and, although she might now leap overboard—she was free—it would mean certain death. So freedom tantalized her. She could only escape at the peril of her life!
She saw Boyd Bennett’s glowing eyes occasionally cast upon her a basilisklike glance. There was madness in them, she knew. The brave girl, used as she was to battle and the chase, shrank from this terrible foe. And she was helpless!
The canoe swung around rocks, which she thought surely they must hit; it just escaped collision with logs and drift-stuff in the most marvelous manner, and all the time Boyd Bennett sat holding the paddle as a steering-oar, his black eyes glaring out of his death’s-head face, impassive, yet all alive to the dangers of the run.
Spray broke over the side of the canoe and drenched the girl. The craft seemed to fairly throb and jump with the motion of the water.