Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/380

372 and stopped and faced about. Goddard was running frantically away from her, looking over his shoulder, stumbling across the nursery, seeking the shelter of cover, of distance.

Again the hunting cry—and again, more distant, fading away.

"Oh, God help me!" the girl cried. "I can't let her—I can't—"

And then she knew that while her voice and reason had said farewell to John Taylor her heart expected his return. But now—death sped on his trail!

She looked about wildly. An unrooted tree, caught in the current, was floating past and her eyes followed it with strange fascination as it sped in the white foam. It was going that way—the way he had gone—

She did not cry out again but leaped down the hank to where her canoe lay, bottom up. She lifted it in her slender arms, made mighty by that danger. She dropped it into the current; she dipped the paddle deep. The bow shot out and swung downstream, and kneeling in the bottom, sending the gunwale to the water's edge with every stroke, she drove forward, speeding before the speeding flood.

The trail Taylor had taken kept close to the river for a distance, then swung sharply to the left, shirting a widening area of swamp; for half a mile it circled, edging back toward the stream, coming out at an old rollway and then holding straight through the timber toward the mill as the river swung away.

That was her one chance; to beat the wolf to the landing. If she should fail in that she would be behind them and helpless—and Taylor would be helpless before