The Little Red Foot

by Robert W. Chambers

I touched Yellow Leaf on the arm, and we wriggled backward out of sight. Then, rising, we turned and pulled foot for our canoe.

Now my chiefest anxiety was whether Penelope and Nick had got clean away and were already well on the road to the Mayfield Block House.

We found our canoe where we had hid it, and we made the still water boil with our two paddles, so that, although it seemed an age to me, we came very swiftly to our landing at Summer House Point.

Here we sprang out, seized the canoe, ran with it up the grassy slope, then continued over the uncut lawn and down the western slope, where again we launched it and let it swing on the water, held anchored by its nose on shore.

House, barn, orchard, all were deathly still there in the brilliant sunshine; I ran to the manger and found it empty of cattle. There were no fowls to be seen or heard, either. Then I hastened to the sheep-fold. That, also, was empty.

Perplexed, I ran down to the gates, found them open, and, in the mud of the Johnstown Road, discovered sheep and cattle tracks, the imprint of Kaya's sharp-shod hoofs, a waggon mark, and the plain imprint of Nick's moccasins.

So it was clear enough what he and Penelope had done. A terrible anxiety seized me, and I wondered how far they had got on the way to Mayfield, with cattle and sheep to drive ahead of a loaded waggon and one horse.

And now, more than ever, it was certain that my Indian and I must make a desperate stand here to hold back these marauders until our people were safe in Mayfield without a shadow of doubt.

The Saguenay had gone to the veranda roof with his rifle, where he could see any movement by land or water.

I called up to him that the destructives might come by both routes; then I went to my room, gathered all the lead bars and bags of bullets, seized our powder keg, and dragged all down to the water, where I stored everything in the canoe.