I fired the shot; it boomed loudly across the water and echoed sharply against the other shore. "Ahoy, there! We want to come aboard!" I shouted, waited for an answer, and got none. Again I shouted, with the same result. "Now you fire your rifle!" I told Pitamakan. He fired it, and then we did get an answer. The flash of a dozen guns for an instant illuminated the white paint of the boat, and with the dull booming of them we heard several bullets strike in the trees behind us! CHAPTER V TWO CROWS RAISE THEIR RIGHT HANDS We got back into the timber in no time. "The crazy ones! They think that we are enemies!" "Well," I said in answer to this dismayed exclamation of Pitamakan's, "you know what we have to do now; swim across with our letter." "And be shot as soon as we are seen!" "Not a shot will be fired at us. I'll see to that. Come, let us picket the horses outside the timber and hunt for a couple of dry logs for a raft," I told him. Let me tell you that it was no fun blundering along that shore in the darkness, testing the logs we stumbled against for their dryness and trying to roll them into the water, always with the fear of feeling rattlesnake fangs burn into our hands. At last we got two logs of fair size into the water side by side and lashed them firmly together with willow withes. Lashing our clothing and weapons on top of a pile of brush in the center, we pushed out into the current--but not until Pitamakan had called upon his gods to protect us from the dread Under-Water People. He clung to the front end of the unwieldy logs with one hand, pawed the water with the other, and kicked rapidly. I did likewise at the rear of the raft, but for all our efforts we could make the raft go toward the other shore little faster than the current would take it. It was absolutely certain that the raft would not waterlog and sink during the time that we had use for it, yet it was with feelings of dread and suspense that we worked our way well out into the center of the stream. Then Pitamakan suddenly yelled to me: "The Under-Water People! They are after us! Kick hard! Hard!" "Oh, no! You are mistaken!" I told him. "I am sure that they are after us!" he cried. "I touched one of them with my hand, and he hit me in my side. O sun, pity us! Help us to survive this danger!" "Take courage! So long as we cling to the logs they can't drag us down," I told him. "Oh, you don't understand about these Under-Water People! They can do terrible things. They are medicine." He said no more, nor did I. It was useless for me to tell him that he had encountered a big catfish or sturgeon swimming lazily near the surface.