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 damned
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, snatched 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 ashore 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 in