the potagan rises from the
river. Let her wait there. The men of the South will come," said the
spokesman.

Manikawan turned away, down the river bank, by the route she had
ascended. Her progress was dignified and unhurried so long as she
might still be seen by the Indians, but was quickly changed to a run
the moment she was beyond their view.

Glibly she had lied to them and her conscience was not troubled. She
was not a Christian. The savage teaching upheld subterfuge in dealing
with the enemy, and she deemed these Indians her enemies, for had they
not destroyed White Brother of the Snow? And was he not of her people
by adoption.

Immediately Manikawan arrived at the portage trail she looked sharply
about to make certain she was not observed. Then she examined the
rifle behind the bowlder, and, quite satisfied with her inspection,
returned it to its resting place and waited.

She knew that the two Indians, with due attention to their dignity,
would make no haste in their coming, and would doubtless keep her
waiting until the noonday hour which she had designated, but
nevertheless her lookout up the river was never for a moment
relinquished. She watched as a cat watches a hole--from which it
expects the mouse to emerge--ready to pounce upon the unwary prey.

At last she was rewarded. A birch-bark canoe containing the two
Indians came leisurely gliding down the river some hundred yards from
shore. Manikawan, like a beautiful statue, stood tall and straight at
the end of the portage trail. Two paces from her the rifle lay behind
the bowlder.

The Indians, unsuspecting, turned the prow of the canoe toward the
shore where she stood. Still she did not move. The cat waits for its
victim until the victim beyond peradventure is within reach of its
spring. Nearer and nearer drew the canoe. Still Manikawan stood, a
graven image. She was looking out and beyond her intended victims. The
roar of the distant rapids, and the monotonous, thunderous undertone
of the falls were in her ears, and they came to her as beautiful
music. The canoe was now but a hundred feet from shore.

Suddenly, Manikawan sprang, and the astonished Indians beheld the
statue with a menacing rifle at its shoulder. Then came a flash and a
report. The Indians ducked, and the blade of the steersman's paddle,
poised in mid-air, was shattered by a bullet.

Manikawan spoke, her voice ringing out in clear, even tones:

"The men of the South sent White Bro