and I found that I had grasped the edge
of a rotted knot-hole.

Bracing my feet across beneath me like tie beams of raftered
scaffolding, I craned up till my eye was on a level with the knot-hole
and peered down through my lofty lookout. Either the shouting of the
Sioux warriors had ceased, which indicated they had found my tracks and
knew they were close upon me, or my shelter shut out the sound of
approaching foes. I broke more bark from the hole and gained full view
of the scene below.

A crested savage ran out from the tangled foliage of the river bank, saw
the turgid settlings of the rippling marsh, where I had been
floundering, and darted past my hiding-place with a shrill yell of
triumph. Instantaneously the woods were ringing, echoing and re-echoing
with the hoarse, wild war-cries of the Sioux. Band after band burst from
the leafy covert of forest and marsh willows, and dashed in full pursuit
after the leading Indian. Some of the braves still wore the buckskin
toggery of their visit to the Mandanes; but the swiftest runners had
cast off all clothing and tore forward unimpeded. The last coppery form
disappeared among the trees of the river bank and the shoutings were
growing fainter, when, suddenly, there was such an ominous calm, I knew
they were foiled.

Would they return to the last marks of my trail? That thought sent the
blood from my head with a rush that left me dizzy, weak and shivering. I
looked to the river. The floating branches turned lazily over and over
to the lapping of the sluggish current, and the green slime oozing from
the clustered beaver lodges of the far side might hide either a miry
bottom, or a treacherous hole.

A naked Indian came pattering back through the brush, looking into every
hollow log, under fallen trees, through clumps of shrub growth, where a
man might hide, and into the swampy river bed. It was only a matter of
time when he would reach my hiding-place. Should I wait to be smoked out
of my hole, like a badger, or a raccoon? Again I looked hopelessly to
the river. A choice of deaths seemed my only fate. Torture, burning, or
the cool wash of a black wave gurgling over one's head?

A broad-girthed log lay in the swamp and stretched out over mid-stream
in a way that would give a quick diver at least a good, clean, clear
leap. A score more savages had emerged from the woods and were eagerly
searching, from the limbs of trees above, where I might be perched, to
the black rive