Crack! A shot rang out from the canoe. It was the trapper's gun that spoke, and one fell under that unerring aim. Crash! went Dick's great fist on the countenance of the other, and the dazed Shawnese sat down in a heap. Hunter Tom could have laughed then and there at the repulse of the latter, but there was not much time for sentiments of any kind. Dick had leaped into the stream after the canoe and was pushing toward it through the swift current. There were a few yells of disappointment on shore, and then a perfect fusillade of bullets hissed spitefully on the waters and crashed through the underbrush on the farther shore and then--like the falling of a forest giant that had felt the biting steel in its vitals, Dick fell. He struggled for a moment to reach the hunter's outstretched hand and then sank, and the swift current, now a roaring turbulent, gyrating mass, swelled to foaming madness by the rain at the headwaters, whirled his great body under the bellying bow of the canoe--and he was gone from sight. With a quick sweep of the knife Hunter Tom cut the rope, and the canoe, freed, bounded away on the surface of the flood like a thing of life. Carefully pillowing Ande's head on his rolled up wamus in the rear, he lay down in the bow and with one hand over the gunwale, holding the paddle, he sought to guide the swiftly floating craft, while with his head slightly raised he kept a keen lookout for the bodies of Dick and the pilot. The Shawnese kept up a running fire on shore for the distance of a half a mile, when the fire slackened, and evidently the swiftness of the current and the gloom cast by the heavy foliage overhead had caused pursuit to be abandoned. The Still Water was reached and the aged hunter perceived with grim satisfaction that his prediction had come true. What was some hours before a still, softly flowing body was now a rollicking, turbulent mass that glowed with a yellow, dunnish hue in the moonlight. Onwards bounded the canoe, the hunter guiding it with unerring hand, now avoiding a towering rock, now bending with the full power of his muscles to guide the craft around a sharp bend in the stream. Fear of pursuit having long been left behind, he had arose to a sitting posture, and was lending to the onward force of the current the might of his own arms. No vessel ever scudded before a gale faster than the canoe on that eventful night. Once the sole, lone canoeist thought he saw the body of Dick floating before him on the surface of the tide and he redoubled his efforts to overtake him. The object was reached, but proved but a piece of driftwood, darkly dappling the yellow flood. With the first feeling of relief that he had experienced that night he saw the winding course of the Loop before him. Once more the paddle was brought into vigorous requisition, and then with a sigh of relief he turned the prow toward shore and the keel grated on the shelving beach.