“I’m ready.”
“We must hurry. The Indians won’t do much till the chief dies, I calculate; but we must move rapidly.”
For a moment the trapper disappeared in Tecumseh’s stable, and when he faced the youth again he held a light boat in his arms.
“I hev two boats, but, of course, the dirty dogs found the one at the western point of the island,” he said, standing the canoe on end against the logs and clambering to the eaves. “The renegade’s bullet has drawn the Indians from behind the cabin, and now is the accepted time.”
His strong hands tore the heated roof timbers aside, and almost in less time than I can record the fact, the couple had safely landed themselves with the boat on the island.
George Long breathed freer.
Frontier Shack picked up the canoe and bounded toward the eastern extremity of the cottonwood cone.
They reached it safely, and the boat was launched.
“Silence,” admonished the trapper, in the lowest of whispers, and the next minute a noiseless stroke sent the light craft with the speed of a rocket down the quick-sanded river toward Fort Kearney.
The oars were lifted from the clear waves for a second stroke, when a score of rifles sent their leaden contents after the daring fugitives. But the bullets whistled harmlessly past their heads, and George Long uttered an ejaculation of joy.