Behind, the whole crowd rushed down to the water’s edge.  Jack tried to get away from old Joel and scramble after Chad on his broken leg, but old Joel held him, soothing him, and carried him back to the house, where the old “yarb doctor” put splints on the leg and bound it up tightly, just as though it had been the leg of a child.  Melissa was crying and the old man put his hand on her head.

“He’ll be all right, honey.  That leg’ll be as good as the other one in two or three weeks.  It’s all right, little gal.”

Melissa stopped weeping with a sudden gulp.  But when Jack was lying in the kitchen by the fire alone, she slipped in and put her arm around the dog’s head, and, when Jack began to lick her face, she bent her own head down and sobbed.

CHAPTER 5.  OUT OF THE WILDERNESS

On the way to God’s Country at last!  Already Chad had schooled himself for the parting with Jack, and but for this he must—­little man that he was—­have burst into tears.  As it was, the lump in his throat stayed there a long while, but it passed in the excitement of that mad race down the river.  The old Squire had never known such a tide.

“Boys,” he said, gleefully, “we’re goin’ to make a REcord on this trip—­you jus’ see if we don’t.  That is, if we ever git thar alive.”

All the time the old man stood in the middle of the raft yelling orders.  Ahead was the Dillon raft, and the twin brothers—­the giants, one mild, the other sour-faced—­were gesticulating angrily at each other from bow and stern.  As usual, they were quarrelling.  On the Turner raft, Dolph was at the bow, the school-master at the stern, while Rube—­who was cook—­and Chad, in spite of a stinging pain in one foot, built an oven of stones, where coffee could be boiled and bacon broiled, and started a fire, for the air was chill on the river, especially when they were running between the hills and no sun could strike them.

When the fire blazed up, Chad sat by it watching Tall Tom and the school-master at the stern oar and Rube at the bow.  When the turn was sharp, how they lashed the huge white blades through the yellow water—­with the handle across their broad chests, catching with their toes in the little notches that had been chipped along the logs and tossing the oars down and up with a mighty swing that made the blades quiver and bend like the tops of pliant saplings!  Then, on a run, they would rush back to start the stroke again, while the old Squire yelled: 

“Hit her up thar now—­easy—­easy!  Now!  Hit her up!  Hit her up—­now!”