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My friend, the varlet Cal Davidson, half stood in the stern of the stubby craft and waved at us an excited hand. "Ahoy there, Peterson!" he cried. "Stop! Hold on there! Wait! Where are you going there!" Peterson turned toward me an inquiring gaze, but I only pointed a hand down-stream, and he obeyed me!
"The U.S. Army, en route for perdition, via Santa Fé, is camping in the big timbers down-stream now. Jondo and Esmond Clarenden will leave you boys and girls here till it's safe to take you out again. And I and Daniel Boone, vestal god and goddess of these hearth-fires, will keep you from harm till that time.
Then for a moment there was silence, then the sound of splashed and divided waters, and presently after, a great shout of ecstatic joy, as he swam up-stream with the foamed water standing in a frill round his neck. Then after some five minutes of limb-stretching struggle with the flood, he turned over on his back, and with arms thrown wide, floated down-stream, ripple-cradled and inert.
The Cheyennes now resorted to other tactics. Leaving but few warriors scurrying about on the open prairie, both north and south, they gathered in force in the timber up- and down-stream and began their stealthy approaches, keeping up all the time a sharp fire upon Wayne's position.
Although no deeper than he had feared, the river was stronger; and in this attitude he offered a less firm resistance. In an instant he was swept off his feet, and carried headlong down-stream, dropping his revolver and struggling to swim to the opposite bank.
According to one of these, the superstructure was suddenly wrenched from its bearings upon the pier, and was horizontally displaced by an impulse such that, when it touched the masonry, its up-stream girder struck the center of the pier, upon which it divided, while the down-stream one was already in space.
This is the man we have wished for since the days of our fathers, shouted the chief of the Assiniboines as he danced and tossed arrows of thanks to the gods. When the voyageurs glided back down-stream on the glassy current, other sounds than those of Indian chants greeted them. The Hayes river, as we have seen, is divided from the Nelson on the north by a swampy stretch of brushwood.
As he attempted to recover his foothold, facing the time down-stream, the current filled his shirt from behind and carried it over his head. Then he rolled helplessly down the rapid towards the deep reach. I floundered after, and succeeded in overtaking him.
Up it came, swift and silent, for twenty feet, till the huge cakes rubbed softly against the crest of the bank. The tail of the island, being lower, was overrun. Then, without effort, the white flood started down-stream. But the sound increased with the momentum, and soon the whole island was shaking and quivering with the shock of the grinding bergs.
As near as might be guessed, it wanted yet an hour or two of daybreak when we made a landing within the boundaries of Appleby Hundred, and beached and hid the pirogue in the bushes. Of the down-stream flitting through the small hours of the warm midsummer night there is no sharp-etched picture on the memory page.
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