Silver Tassel's shoulder scarcely showed, his
strength was gone. In a flash Billy Rufus saw there was but one thing to
do. He must run the rapids with Silver Tassel-there was no other way.
It would be a fight through the jaws of death; but no Indian's eyes had
a better sense for river-life than William Rufus Holly's.
How he reached Silver Tassel, and drew the Indian's arm over his own
shoulder; how they drove down into the boiling flood; how Billy Rufus's
fat body was battered and torn and ran red with blood from twenty flesh
wounds; but how by luck beyond the telling he brought Silver Tassel
through safely into the quiet water a quarter of a mile below the rapids,
and was hauled out, both more dead than alive, is a tale still told by
the Athabascas around their camp-fire. The rapids are known to-day as
the Mikonaree Rapids.
The end of this beginning of the young man's career was that Silver
Tassel gave him the word of eternal friendship, Knife-in-the-Wind took
him into the tribe, and the boy Wingo became his very own, to share his
home, and his travels, no longer a waif among the Athabascas.
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