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Nesis said he was so angry that he started in talking without sending her out of the teepee. He had no idea, of course, that she could understand English. She made herself look stupid, she said. "Mr. Strange was angry because, if the Indians got their flour and went back to the Kakisa River satisfied, all his plans would be spoiled.
"I dig this side, too," she said. "We dig together. Mak' no noise!" Since the shack was innocent of foundation it was no great matter to dig under the wall. With knife and hands Ambrose worked on his side until he had got deep enough to dig under. Occasional little sounds assured him that Nesis was not idle.
Ambrose was aroused from a drowsy contemplation of the fire by an urgent bark from the dog. Looking up, he was frozen with astonishment to behold another bark canoe sweeping around the bend above. When motion returned to him, his hand instinctively shot out toward the gun. But there was only one figure. It was a woman it was Nesis!
Nesis put her hands on the sill and shrieked an unintelligible jibe into the room. The other girls hugged themselves with horrified delight. This was too much for the jailers. They sprang up and with threatening voice and gestures drove the girls away. They scampered down-hill, shrieking with affected terror.
Watusk and his crew, pursuing them in two dugouts, had seen the smoke of their fire from up the river. They had landed above the point and, making a short detour inland, had fallen on Ambrose and Nesis from behind. Nesis had been carried back in one dugout, Ambrose in the other.
Flinging herself off her horse and throwing up the flap, she saw a figure on the ground, held down by several old crones. "Hands off!" cried Colina in a voice so sudden and peremptory that the old women, though the words meant nothing to them, obeyed. Nesis, lithe and swift as a lynx, wriggled out of their grasp, sprang to her feet, and darted outside, all in a single movement, it seemed.
Nesis's last act was to heap fresh wood on the fire. Colina, approving all she did was glad to let her run things. She could not guess how she purposed evading the Indians in front. They mounted, and proceeded into the woods, walking their horses slowly. Colina could not make out the trail, but her horse could. Nesis led the way. They climbed a little hill and descended the other side.
"I set rabbit snare when we sleep," Nesis said quickly. "I catch fish. I shoot wild duck." "Shall we leave one of the canoes?" asked Ambrose. She shook her head vigorously. "Each tak' one. Maybe one bus' in rapids. You sleep in your canoe now. I pull you." Ambrose shook his head. "No sleep until to-night," he said.
They would instantly understand their own stratagem, of course, but they must lose still more time, searching the bed of the creek for tracks leaving it. If only the horses had been fresher! Finally Nesis left the bed of the creek, and urged her horse obliquely up the steep side of the coulée on the left.
"Nesis said that a couple of days after this Ambrose Doane came down the river, and after him his outfit on a raft. When Ambrose Doane heard that the Indians were hungry he took men and crossed the river and broke into the flour-mill and ground flour for them. "This took two nights and a day. On the second night Gordon Strange came across to see Watusk again.
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