without due warrant. "I didn't know, or I wouldn't have asked it," he
said in a low voice. "Lord, but you are a wonder--to take that hurdle
for no one that belonged to you, and to do it as you've done it. This
country will rise to you." He looked back on the raging rapids far
behind, and he shuddered. "It was a close call, and no mistake. We must
have been within a foot of down-you-go fifty times. But it's all right
now, if we can last it out and git there." Again he glanced back, then
turned to the girl. "It makes me pretty sick to look at it," he
continued. "I bin through a lot, but that's as sharp practice as I
want."

"Come here and let me bind up your arm," she answered. "They hit you--
the sneaks! Are you bleeding much?"

He came near her carefully, as she got the big canoe out of the current
into quieter water. She whipped the scarf from about her neck, and with
his knife ripped up the seam of his sleeve. Her face was alive with the
joy of conflict and elated with triumph. Her eyes were shining. She
bathed the wound--the bullet had passed clean through the fleshy part of
the arm--and then carefully tied the scarf round it over her
handkerchief.

"I guess it's as good as a man could do it," she said at last.

"As good as any doctor," he rejoined.

"I wasn't talking of your arm," she said.

"'Course not. Excuse me. You was talkin' of them rapids, and I've got
to say there ain't a man that could have done it and come through like