“No, no, nothing has happened to them. It was the Frenchmen who did it!” she explained, though with some difficulty, since the tight bandage had hurt her jaws.
Bob and his brother stared at each other.
“Do you mean Jacques Larue?” demanded Bob, furiously.
“And that other rascal, Henri Lacroix—the brother of the dead Armand?” Sandy added, equally enraged.
“Yes,” replied the girl, looking as though, now that rescue had come, she would not be sorry to see punished the men who had treated her so badly.
“This is a wonderful thing,” Bob went on; “tell us how it happened. Where were you when they caught you; and how is it you did not call out?”
So Kate explained how she had been taken by surprise, and, before she could say a single word, the hand of Henri Lacroix had stifled all speech.
“And they had your fine wampum belt with them, Sandy,” she went on, eagerly. “He was wearing it as proudly as if he had saved the life of Pontiac, himself,—Jacques Larue, I mean. And they said that they wanted to pay the Armstrongs back for much that they had suffered.”
“And, like the base cowards they are,” Bob grated between his teeth, “they set a poor helpless girl adrift on the river in a little dugout that might be upset in some cross current, where the fierce eddies swirl!”
“And wouldn’t I like a chance to draw a bead on either of them right now,” said Sandy, looking all around him, as he fondled his faithful old gun, with which he had done so much execution among the game of the forests.