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it was a giant stream, nevertheless, and a swimming head upon its surface would be exposed for a long way to rifle shots. Shif'less Sol wheeled and fired at the group that was now emerging from the woods, causing it to hesitate and then stop for a few minutes, although several shots were fired in return. The shiftless one felt a sharp, stinging pain in his side as a bullet glanced off his ribs, but he did not wince. "Jump, Henry," he cried, "jump ez fur out into the river ez you kin!" The bank at the very edge of the water was about a dozen feet high, and Henry leaped as far as he could. He heard a splash behind him as Sol, too, sprang into the water of the Ohio, but the shiftless one remained in the shadow of the bank. "What is it, Sol?" cried Henry in alarm. "I've been touched a leetle by a mite o' lead. It don't amount to much, but to-night I don't believe I kin swim the Ohio. I'll drift down river under the bank an' they'll never see me." Sol was already floating away with the stream in the deepest shadow, and Henry, swimming as before with only one arm, struck out strongly for the Kentucky shore. CHAPTER XII THE ONE WHO ARRIVED Henry Ware, when his last comrade, hurt and spent, drifted away in the darkness, felt that he was alone in every sense of the word. But the feeling of failure was only momentary. He was unhurt, and the good God had not given him great strength for nothing. He still held the rifle in his left hand above his head and swam with the wide circular sweep of his right arm. The yellow waves of the Ohio surged about him and soon he heard the nasty little spit, spit of bullets upon the water near his head and shoulders. The warriors were firing at him as he swam, but the kindly dusk was still his friend, protecting him from their aim. He would have dived, swimming under water as long as his lungs would hold air. But he did not dare to wet his precious rifle and ammunition, which he might need the very moment he reached the other shore--if he reached it. He heard the warriors shooting, and then came the faint sound of splashes as a half dozen leaped into the water to pursue him. Henry changed the rifle alternately from hand to hand in order to rest himself, and continued in a slanting course across the river, drifting a little with the current. He did not greatly fear the swimmers behind him. One could not attack well in the water, and they were likely, moreover, to lose
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