Page:Toilers of the Trails.djvu/78

 the lob-stick ranges of spruce fixing the position of the buoy, he again looked up-stream. His heart drummed in his chest. The sun-glare on the water bothered his eyes, so once more he sought the lob-stick ranges. Again he swept the locality where the sapling should rise twenty feet above the water. He sucked a great breath into his lungs and expelled it, for he saw that the buoy had been cut.

A thrill of pride swept Gaspard Laroque. Loup, his Loup, had won through out of the wilderness of that black night to the shore and Albany. His shaggy courier had fought his way home. The post knew of the coming of the Germans.

The Cree turned coolly to the officer, who held an automatic pistol pressed against the small of the half-breed's back.

"I not see de buoy. One was dere." He pointed in the general direction of the channel.

"Never mind the buoys; you know the channel. She draws only four feet. Take her on up the river."

"Ver' weel. I can show de way, but I lak' to see de buoy." Truly, he swore to himself, he would show the way to these men; for with the buoys out of the way, his course would not be questioned, and the old buoy off Whitefish Point, six miles above, was not so close to the shore by a hundred yards as he would steer that launch.

The tide was high, and there was little chance of his grounding the small-draft boat even on the flats, but as the Cree with the pistol at his back directed the course of the man at the wheel, he was thinking harder