The girl had reached the angry, thrashing waters where the rocks rent and
tore into white ribbons the onrushing current, and her first trial had
come on the instant the spitting, raging panthers of foam struck the bow
of her canoe. The waters were so low that this course, which she had made
once before with her friend Tekewani the Blackfeet chief, had perils not
met on that desperate journey. Her canoe struck a rock slantwise,
shuddered and swung round, but by a dexterous stroke she freed the frail
craft. It righted and plunged forward again into fresh death-traps.
It was these new dangers which had made Tekewani try to warn her from the
shore--he and the dozen braves with him: but it was characteristic of his
race that, after the first warning, when she must play out the game to
the bitter end, he made no further attempt to stop her. The Indians ran
down the river-bank, however, with eyes intent on her headlong progress,
grunting approval as she plunged safely from danger to danger.
Osterhaut and Jowett became silent, too, and, like the Indians, ran as
fast as they could, over fences, through the trees, stumbling and
occasionally cursing, but watching with fascinated eyes this adventuress
of the North, taking chances which not one coureur-de-bois or
river-driver in a thousand would take, with a five thousand-dollar prize
as the lure.
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