Chilcoot stood up as he spoke and leant over the hot stone parapet. He was searching the canoe which had suddenly appeared driving down the sluggish stream from the north.
Wilder, too, had risen to his feet. He was looking for the desired prisoner in the boat. He counted the occupants. There were four. Only four. And that was the number the Irishman had set out with. No. There was no prisoner. The men in the boat were all whitemen. There could be no doubt about it. Nor was there any sign of a wounded man lying in the bottom of the little craft.
“The same old story,” Wilder grumbled.
“Meaning?”
“They’re coming back empty—Gee!”
A shot rang out. It was followed by another and another. The men at the fort saw the water splash about the canoe where the bullets took effect. But the boat came on through the sudden hail, and the men at the paddles remained unscathed.
“That’s Indian shooting,” Chilcoot exclaimed contemptuously. Then in a tone of deep regret. “If those guys would only give our boys such a target.”
“That’s so.” Bill stood with his rifle ready, waiting for a sign of the lurking enemy. “That boat would never make the bank if it was full of Euralians. It makes you think they aren’t yearning to kill. Only to worry. Come on. Let’s go down and get Mike’s news.”
Wilder’s outfit was lying moored and camped at the mouth of Loon Creek where its waters debouched on the broad course of the Hekor. The barrens were left far behind, and these men had come again to a country where shade from the blistering sunlight was to be found in occasional bluffs of forest, and where there was complete rest from the curiously unnerving warfare they had so long endured.
The camp was pitched on a great spit of land supporting a dwarfed, windswept bluff of forest trees. The shade from the burning sun was more than welcome for all the haunting mosquitoes made it their camping ground too. Great smudge fires of dank vegetation and lichen had been lit, and, for the moment, even insect hostilities had ceased. The canoes had been safely stowed for the night, and the men sat around in the drifting smoke after their supper, while the trail dogs prowled in search of any refuse which the meal of their human masters provided.