ttling, rolling, lunging, each for the mastery. Then something
caused the rope to give, the knot slipped, and with a mighty effort Jack
wrenched one arm loose, felt for his revolver, drew it, and fired, once,
twice, not at his enemy, but straight into the air.

"No, you don't!" snarled the man, reaching for Jack's gun with one hand,
and his throat with the other. But with the agility of a cat the boy had
thrown the gun directly behind him, where it fell clear of the bank and
splashed into the river. The sound fell on Jack's ears like a death
knell. He had not thought they were so near the brink. One more struggle
and they would both be over. Then his breath left him, squeezed out by
the demon hand clutching at his throat.

But those two shots had told their story. With almost stunning horror
Larry and Fox-Foot heard them.

"He's got him! He's got Jack!" gasped the Indian, dropping the canoe,
and turning with the fleetness of a deer, he disappeared up the portage.
Spitting out the strange foreign word he only used in extreme moments,
Larry followed hard on his heels.

"He's got him down! He's choking him!" drifted back the Indian's voice,
shaking with dismay and rage. Then both would-be rescuers stood stock
still, awed by the sight before them. Jack had once again clutched his
sturdy legs about the man's knees, twisting him so that the iron fingers
relaxed from their grip at the boy's throat. The man was now clutching
the gold sack, but with a springy, rapid turn Jack wrenched it free. The
two rolled over and over, for a short, sharp struggle, and Larry and the
Indian appeared only in time to see the two shoot over the bank. Nothing
remained in sight but a single hand clinging to a cedar root that
projected from the rocks. It was the work of an instant to reach the
hand--Jack's hand, fortunately--to lift him from his perilous position,
while all but breathless he gasped, "Save him! save him! He's in the
river! He'll go over the falls!"

Then their horrified eyes discovered the man, by this time far out in
midstream, drifting more surely, more rapidly every second, towards the
rapids.

"Here, take this rope! Save him!" cried the boy, wrenching from his poor
bruised sides the very rope his enemy had secured him with.

Larry snatched it, crashing down the shore in the vain hope of reaching
the drifting body. The canoe was up in the woods where they had dropped
it at the sound of Jack's gunshots. He could not begin to