Here they drew their canoe from the water and carefully concealed it.  Then they took positions one on each side of the stream; and, hidden behind screens of tangled vines, with arrows held ready to be fitted to their bowstrings, they patiently awaited the coming of their unknown pursuers.

Towards this well-planned trap, that seemed to insure their destruction, Rene and Has-se advanced, cautiously, to be sure, but without a warning of what awaited them.  At length they had approached within a quarter of a mile of the ambush, and one would have said that nothing could prevent their falling into it.

At this point Has-se whispered, “Keep wide open thy ears as well as thy eyes, Ta-lah-lo-ko”; and Rene answered also in a whisper,

“They are already so wide open that not the faintest hum of a gnat escapes them.  What’s that?”

The sudden snapping of a twig by some bird or small animal caused them to start, and listen for a moment with uplifted paddles.  The canoe thus left to itself, unguided, drifted aside, and hung for an instant upon the upraised end of a sunken log.  Rene reached his hand down into the water to push it clear of the obstruction, but suddenly withdrew it with a suppressed cry of pain and fright.  At the same moment a large water-snake, of the kind known as a moccasin, glided away, and disappeared beneath the slimy bank.

CHAPTER IX

A TRAP AVOIDED AND FRIENDS DISCOVERED

At Rene’s cry, suppressed though it was Has-se turned quickly, and in time to see the moccasin glide away through the water.  He also noted the spot of blood on his companion’s finger, at which the latter was gazing with a look of horror.

Without a word the young Indian sprang to Rene’s side, drew the little sharp-pointed dagger from its sheath, and firmly but deliberately enlarged with it the minute wound made by the fangs of the snake, until the blood flowed freely from it; then raising the hand to his own mouth, he sucked all that was possible of the poisoned blood from the wound, stopping several times during the operation to rinse his mouth with water.

When this was done he took a handful of slimy river mud and placed it over the wounded place, bidding his friend hold it there.  Then, seizing his paddle, he turned the bow of the canoe up-stream in the direction from which they had come.  He paddled back to a small lagoon that emptied into the stream, and in which he had noticed a peculiar species of water-lily growing as they passed it on their way down.  Pulling a handful of these up by the roots, he selected one of the bulbs attached to them, pounded it until it was a mass of fibre, and washing the river mud from the wounded hand, he replaced it with this.

The hand had already swollen and become very painful, but the application of the bruised lily-root acted so like a charm that Rene’s face showed an instant sense of relief, and he expressed his gratitude to Has-se.