“No, I cannot say that I did,” came the reply, in a perplexed tone. “But there is something lying in the bottom of that boat. It is not a bundle, either, for I plainly saw it move.”
Sandy waited for no more.
“Then I’m going out and see for myself!” he declared, as though some half-formed fear had commenced to assail him.
Stepping into the water, he hurried to reach a point where it arose to his waist. Then he threw himself forward, and began to strike out with overhand strokes that had many times carried him ahead of all competitors in the water races the boys of the settlement used to have, away back in Virginia, before the Armstrongs had even thought of emigrating across the mountains to the new country along the Ohio.
Bob picked up Sandy’s gun, and such parts of his clothing as he had discarded. Then he started to walk down the shore, because he saw that the boat had finally succeeded in extricating itself from the clutch of the cross eddies, and was once more moving southward with the steady current of the river.
And meanwhile Sandy was breasting the stream with powerful strokes, headed so as to intercept the floating boat when it came along; and with a new and terrible fear clutching at his heart.