“Yes,” she answered gravely, “I know I can.”

Their eyes met in a long look.  Lapierre gave the command to shove off, and when the scows were well in the grip of the current, he turned again to the girl at his side.  Their hands touched, and again Chloe was conscious of the strange, new thrill that quickened her heart-beats.  She did not withdraw her hand, and the fingers of Lapierre closed about her palm.  He leaned toward her.  “Only quarter Indian,” he said softly.  “My grandmother was the daughter of a great chief.”

The girl felt the hot blood mount to her face and gently withdrew her hand.  Somehow, she could not tell why, the words seemed good to hear.  She smiled, and Lapierre, who was watching her intently, smiled in return.

“We are approaching quick water; we will cover many miles today, and tonight beside the camp-fire we will talk further.”

Chloe’s eyes searched the scows.  “Where are the two who attacked Lena?  Your men captured them.”

Lapierre’s smile hardened.  “Those who deserted me for Vermilion?  Oh, I—­dismissed them from my service.”

Hour after hour, as the scows rushed northward, Chloe watched the shores glide past; watched the swirling, boiling water of the river; watched the solemn-faced scowmen, and the silent, vigilant pilot; but most of all she watched the pilot, whose quick eye picked out the devious channel, and whose clear, alert brain directed, with a movement of the lancelike pole, the labours of the men at the sweeps.

She contrasted his manner—­quiet, graceful, sure—­with that of Vermilion, the very swing of whose pole proclaimed the vaunting, arrogant braggart.  And she noted the difference in the attitude of the scowmen toward these two leaders.  Their obedience to Vermilion’s orders had been a surly, protesting obedience; while their obedience to Lapierre’s slightest motion was the quiet, alert obedience that proclaimed him master of men, as his own silent vigilance proclaimed him master of the roaring waters.

When the sun finally dipped behind the barren scrub-topped hills, the scows were beached at the mouth of a deep ravine, from whose depths sounded the trickle of a tiny cascade.  Lapierre assisted the women from the scow, issued a few short commands, and, as if by magic, a dozen fires flashed upon the beach, and in an incredibly short space of time Chloe found herself seated upon her blankets inside her mosquito-barred tent.

Supper over, Harriet Penny immediately sought her bed, and Lapierre led Chloe to a brightly burning camp-fire.

Nearby other fires burned, surrounded by dark, savage figures that showed indistinct in the half-light.  The girl’s eyes rested for a moment upon Lapierre, whose thin, handsome features, richly tanned by long exposure to the Northern winds and sun, presented a pleasing contrast to the swart flat faces of the rivermen, who sat in groups about their fires, or lay wrapped in their blankets upon the gravel.