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country. Right up to St. Louis and Santy Fe. You'll see."
"Where is he now?" I demanded.
Suddenly a rush of water rocked the boat, and we heard the low chug-chug of
an engine.
"That's him now," the man said, "an' he's got you, dead to rights!"
CHAPTER 19
With a gun barrel against the man's back, I blew out the light. There was
moonlight outside, and we lay close under the bank, with branches hanging
around us. Unless we had already been seen, there was a chance we might be
passed by.
Peering out, I saw it. Huge, black, and glistening, the great eyes of the
serpent staring ahead, the smoke puffing from the flared nostrils, the huge
fins obscuring any sight of the stern wheel that churned the water behind it.
It was, I had to admit, a fearsome object. It gave off a sense of enormous
power, of evil, of mystery.
"I seen her before," LeBrun said. "She mounts twelve guns."
Our prisoner snorted. "Twelve? She's gottwenty now!"
"What are they doing?" Yvette asked.
"Passing by," I said.
An idea was already working itself around in my head, and we had no time to
watch over a prisoner. I wanted him away from us, not knowing what we were
doing but frightened enough to be too cautious to signal the serpent ship.
"Remember those Sioux?" I asked LeBrun, who just looked at me.
"Gives me an idea," I said. "Let's just turn this man loose."
The prisoner looked at me sharply. "Let's leave him ashore," I said. "He'll
get back to his friends if he's lucky, but if the Sioux need a scalp, they can
get his."
"Now see here!" the man protested.
"Get him ashore," I told LeBrun.
Despite the man's protests, we put him ashore. "If I were you," I said low
voiced, "I'd be almighty quiet. They're all around us. You be quiet and you
might get upstream to where your outfit is. We've got no time to watch over
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you, and the girl doesn't want you killed. Lucky for you she's soft-hearted,
or we'd just let you drown."
He was gone into the brush. We got back aboard. "Cut loose," I said, "and
let's get out of here."
"There's a breeze coming up," LeBrun said. "We might make some time upstream
before daylight."
"Try it then," I said.
To loosen the half-hitches and scramble aboard, hauling in the lines, took a
matter of a minute. With poles we pushed off. The keelboat got into the
current, and we slipped away to follow the steamboat.
There was a little wind, and we finally got out of the full sweep of the
current losing scarcely a half-mile in the process. We got our sail up, and
the keel-boat began edging upstream with painful slowness. The steamboat could
do a good ten miles an hour against the stream; we would be lucky to do one.
When I took the rudder and LeBrun went below for coffee, I was alone with
Yvette. "You said you were going to find Charles. Do you know where he is?"
"We think we do."
"You believe he is in trouble?"
"Yes. When they can use him no longer, they will kill him. I think he knows
this."
"He cannot escape?"
"How? There are many men with Torville. They would track him down and have
him at once, and then they would kill. We must find him."
"Macklem's steamboat may find him first. It can travel much faster than us."
"Maybe. Papa does not think their pilot is good, and the pilotmust be good.
There are snags, sandbars, and sawyers "
"What's a sawyer?"
"A tree whose roots or branches are buried in the mud at the bottom. It bobs
up and down, swings back and forth with the current. They can take the bottom
right out of a boat, especially a steamboat, because they hit so much harder.
Papa knows this river. He has been on it many times in keelboats and canoes.
He says there is no river like it, and he has worked on the Ohio, the St.
Lawrence, and the Mississippi."
The wind held strong, and we moved along, gaining a little speed.
The banks were low, thick with trees and brush. In the moonlight through the
clouds, the channel was clear, but the current was strong.
Suddenly, I caught sight of something on the water, just ahead. "Yvette?" I
whispered, for sound carries far over water. "What is it?"
She looked out. "It's a canoe. There are three men in it."
With our sail, we were gaining, but not very much.
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LeBrun came out and stood by the rail, rifle in hand. My gun was behind my
belt, the butt easily reached.
"They're waiting for us," Yvette said suddenly.
"They're paddling just enough to keep going."
It was true, and suddenly a low voice called out, "Ahoy, there! Stand by!"
The voice was one not easy to forget. It was Jambe-de-Bois.
"It's all right, LeBrun," I said. "I know one of them."
His face turned toward me. "I do not," he said bluntly. "Yvette, take the
rudder. Come over here, Talon."
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