The Huntress Part 32

They succeeded in making the point before the rowboat appeared from around the other side of the island. Finally the white blanket, with its wide black bars, caught the wind, and Bela ceased paddling.

To Sam it seemed as if they stopped moving upon the stilling of that vigorous arm. He looked anxiously over his shoulder. She was watching their progress through the water with an experienced eye.

"Never catch us if the wind hold," she said calmly. "Johnny Gagnon's boat ver' heavy boat."

They had a start of upward of a quarter of a mile when their perplexed pursuers, having almost completed a circuit of the island, finally caught sight of them sailing blithely down the lake. A great roar of anger came down the wind to them.

"Let them curse," said Bela. "Cursin' won't catch us. Already they rowin' half an hour. Get tire' soon."

"They've got a spare man to change to," Sam reminded her. He was now as keen to give them the slip as Bela. The mainland ahead promised freedom; not only freedom from his late masters, but freedom from her, too.

Looking over their shoulders, they saw the steersman change to one of the oars. Thereafter the rowboat came on with renewed speed, but the dugout seemed to draw steadily ahead.

Sam's heart rose. Bela, however, searching the wide sky and the water for weather signs, began to look anxious.

"What is it?" asked Sam.

"Wind goin' down," she replied grimly.

Sure enough, presently the heavy sail began to sag, and they could feel the dugout lose way under them. They groaned involuntarily. At the same moment their pursuers perceived the slackening of the wind and shouted in a different key.

The wind freshened again, and once more died away. Now the dugout forged ahead; now the rowboat began to overhaul them. It was nip and tuck down the lake between sail and oars.

The sh.o.r.e they were making for began to loom nearer, but the puffs of wind were coming at longer and longer intervals, and finally they ran into a gla.s.sy calm, though they could see slants of wind all about them, a situation to drive pursued sailors frantic.

Bela paddled manfully, but her single blade was no match for two long oars. The sail was a handicap now. Bela had staked everything on it, and they could not take it down without capsizing the dugout. The oarsmen came rapidly, with derisive shouts in antic.i.p.ation of a speedy triumph.

"You've got your gun," muttered Sam. "You're a better shot than any of them. Use it while you have the advantage."

She shook her head. "No shoot. Too moch trouble mak' already."

"Plug their boat, then," said Sam.

She still refused. "They die in cold water if boat sink."

"We might as well jump overboard, then," he said bitterly.

"Look!" she cried suddenly. "Wind comin', too!"

Behind the rowboat a dark-blue streak was creeping over the surface of the lake.

"Ah, wind, come quick! Come quick!" Bela murmured involuntarily. "A candle for the altar! My rabbit-skin robe to Pere Lacombe!"

At the same time she did not cease paddling.

The rowers saw the breeze coming, too, and, bending their backs, sent the water flying from their oars. They managed to keep ahead of it.

Both boats were now within a furlong of the river-head. The race seemed over. The rowboat drew even with the dugout, and they looked into their pursuers' faces, red with exertion and distorted in cruel triumph.

The steersman was Joe. "Don't stop," he yelled to the heaving oarsmen, "or she'll give us the slip yet! Get ahead and cut her off! You d.a.m.ned dish-washer, we've got you now!" he added for Sam's benefit.

With a sharp crack, Big Jack's oar broke off short. He capsized backward into Shand, knocking him off his seat as well. At the same instant the whispering breeze came up and the blanket bellied out.

Shand and Jack were for the moment inextricably entangled in the bottom of the boat. Emotional Joe cursed and stamped and tore at his hair like a lunatic. Loud laughter broke from Sam and Bela as they sailed away.

Joe beside himself, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his gun and opened fire. A bullet went through the blanket. Bela and Sam instinctively ducked. Perhaps they prayed; more likely they did not realize their danger until it was over. Other shots followed, but Joe was shooting wild. He could not aim directly at Sam, because Bela was between. He emptied his magazine without doing any damage.

In the reaction that followed Bela and Sam laughed. In that moment they were one.

"Feels funny to have a fellow slinging lead at you, eh?" said Sam.

"Musq'oosis say after a man hear bullet whistle he is grown," answered Bela.

A few minutes later the river received them. There was a straight reach of a third of a mile, followed by innumerable, bewildering corkscrew bends all the way to the head of the rapids, thirty miles or more. Out in the lake behind them their pursuers were struggling forward, sculling with the remaining oar.

Bela watched anxiously to see what they would do when they got in the river. If they knew enough to go ash.o.r.e and take to the land trail, it was possible that even on foot they might cut her off at a point below where the trail touched the river.

Apparently, however, they meant to follow by water. At the last sight she had of them before rounding the first bend they were still sculling.

The river pursued its incredibly circuitous course between cut banks fringed with willows. All the country above, invisible to them in the dugout, was a vast meadow. A steady, smooth current carried them on.

On the outside of each bend the bank was steep to the point of overhanging; on the inside there was invariably a mud flat made gay with water flowers. So crooked was the river that Jack-Knife Mountain, the only object they could see above the willows, was now on their right hand, now on their left.

On the turns they sometimes got a current of wind in their faces and came to a dead stop. Now that they no longer required it, the wind was momentarily strengthening.

"Wouldn't it be better to take the sail down?" Sam suggested.

"Can't tak' it down wi'out land on sh.o.r.e," Bela answered sullenly.

Sam comprehending what was the matter, chuckled inwardly. On the next bend, seeing her struggles with the baffling air-currents, he asked teasingly:

"Well, why don't you go ash.o.r.e and take it down?"

"If I land, you promise not run away?" she said.

Sam laughed from a light heart. "Not on your life!" he said. "I'm my own master now."

Bela had no more to say.

"Where are you bound for?" Sam presently asked.

"Down river," she answered.

"I'll have to be leaving you," said Sam mockingly. "I'm going the other way. To the head of the lake."

"If you go back they catch you."

"I'll lie low till they're thrown off the scent. I'll walk around the north sh.o.r.e."

"If you stay with me little while, pretty soon we meet police comin'