himself that the patched canoe and its partial lading had not been
disturbed, and then went back to the fire to roll himself in his
blankets. The incident, with its inquisitorial pryings, had been rather
disturbing, in a way, but it was apparently an incident closed.

Turning in so late after a laborious day on the river, Prime overslept
the next morning, and when he awoke he found Lucetta already up and
frying the bacon.

"Your man didn't stay all night?" she questioned, after Prime had
scolded her for not making him get up and do his part.

"No; he sat here until between ten and eleven o'clock and gave me two or
three bad minutes. He recognized our canoe and one of the guns, told me
the names of the dead men, and wanted to know what had become of them."

"You didn't tell him?" she gasped.

"In the cold light of the morning after, I am afraid I told him too much
or too little. I told him the men who owned the canoe and its outfit
were dead; that they'd had a fight and killed each other. Candidly, I
don't think he believed it. It scared him until I thought he was going
to have a fit. I had to jolly him up a bit before he would come back to
the fire and talk some more."

"What does he believe?" she inquired anxiously.

"He wouldn't tell me, and I couldn't decide by merely looking at him. I
hope I've hired him to pilot us to the nearest town. When he went away
he intimated that he might be back this morning."

"Shall we wait for him?"

"No; if he isn't here by the time we are ready to start, we'll go on and
take our chance of 'gettin' los',' as he put it. I think that was a
bluff, anyway."

They breakfasted leisurely, and Prime even took time to smoke a pipe
before beginning to break camp. But his first trip to the river-bank
with a load of the dunnage brought him back on a run.

"Our canoe's gone!" he announced breathlessly. "That little wretch came
back and stole it while we were asleep!"

Lucetta sat down and propped her chin in her hands.

"This is the beginning of the end, Donald," she said quite calmly and
with a touch of resignation in her voice. "Do you know why he took the
canoe?"

"Because he's an infernal thief!" Prime raged hotly.

"No," she contradicted. "It is because he thinks we have murdered the
two owners of the canoe, and he wanted to make sure that we wouldn't run
away while he went after help to arrest us."

XVI