uld order her to steam
night and day when he read my letter! Even suppose they didn't get away
until the morning of the eighteenth: that would bring them to the
Crossing by the twenty-second.

"Lambert, I know, would not lose an hour in setting out over the
prairie--just long enough to get horses together and swim them across. I
can depend on him. Nobody knows how far it is overland from the Crossing
to the Swan River. Nobody's been that way. But the chances are it's
prairie land, and easy going. Say the rivers are about the same distance
apart up there, Lambert ought to reach the Swan on the twenty-fifth, or
at the latest the twenty-sixth. That's only yesterday. But we must have
made two hundred or two hundred and fifty miles up-stream. The Swan
certainly makes a straighter course than the Spirit. It must be less
than a hundred miles from here to the spot where Lambert would hit this
stream. He could make seventy-five miles or more a day down-stream. He
would work. If everything has gone well I might meet him to-day.

"But things never go just the way you want them to. I must not count on
it. Gaviller may have delayed. He's so careful of his precious
steamboat. Or she may have run on a bar. Or Lambert may have met
unexpected difficulties. I must know what I'm going to do. Once my hands
are tied to-night my goose is cooked. Shall I resist the woman when she
tries to tie my hands? But Imbrie always stands beside her with the gun;
that would simply mean being shot down before Clare's eyes. Shall I let
them bind me and take what comes?--No! I must put up a fight somehow!
Suppose I make a break for it as soon as we land? If there happens to be
cover I may get away with it. Better be shot on the wing than sitting
down with my hands tied. And if I got clean away, Clare would know there
was still a chance. I'll make a break for it!"

He looked at the sky, the shining river and the shapely trees. "This may
be my last day on the old ball! Good old world too! You don't think what
it means until the time comes to say ta-ta to it all; sunny mornings,
and starry nights, with the double trail of the Milky Way moseying
across the sky. I've scarcely tasted life yet--mustn't think of that!
Twenty-seven years old, and nothing done! If I could feel that I had
left something solid behind me it would be easier to go."

Pictures of his boyhood in the old Canadian city presented themselves
unasked; the maple-foliage, incredibly dense and v