The forest grew on a steepish slope. Ralph affirmed to himself that the way home lay straight downhill. He could still hear the voice of the little stream off to one side. He discovered a faintly marked trail that climbed straight from below, and continued on uphill. This explained how Nahnya and Charley had been able to avoid the fallen trunks and the holes. A trail once made never becomes totally effaced. The wildest, most deserted forest wilderness shows such forgotten paths.
So far Ralph's deductions carried him. Later he made a fresh discovery. Facing downhill and looking straight away through the tree trunks, he distinguished the outline of a noble, snow-capped peak a mile or two away. From the direction of the shadows upon it he saw that the sun was slightly to the left of it. As it was now half-past ten or eleven, that peak must therefore be directly south of where he stood. Walking up and down, he searched through the trees and gathered from the suggestions of the outlines of other mountains that the peak was part of a chain running right and left.
Little by little he pieced it all together in his mind. "We shot a big rapid, and paddled for three or four hours, or until we came within hearing of the next big rapid. The big river must flow parallel with that range yonder—that is to say, east and west. I knew it was flowing between mountains. We landed on a big flat rock at the mouth of a stream and struck straight up-hill, which is due north. Blindfolded or not," he said to himself triumphantly, "I guess I won't have much trouble finding my way back if I want to."
Nahnya with a sullen, troubled face, watched Ralph making his observations but offered no comment.
Breakfast or dinner, whichever it was, was eaten in silence. Nahnya and Ralph each wore a mask, and each avoided the other's eyes. Charley was solely concerned with his long-delayed food. Ralph, secretly elated by his own perspicacity, later made no objections to being bound and blindfolded again. It seemed to him rather a ridiculous precaution, because if he ever got as far as this, he would naturally continue by the trail. However, if they wished to give themselves the trouble of carrying him, so be it.
The journey of the morning was repeated, but for a longer period. Ralph marvelled at his bearers' endurance. For at least two hours they toiled with frequent pauses, always uphill. Finally upon laying him down they left him, and he guessed they had come to the next halting-place. A long time passed without his hearing them talk, or hearing any preparations to camp. The possibility of their abandoning him there in the woods occurred to him, causing a disagreeable prickling up and down his spine.
At last he heard Charley's footsteps, and the bandage was removed from his eyes. Still the virgin forest. No sign of Nahnya. More mystifications!
"Where's Nahnya?" demanded Ralph.
"Him come backtepiskow," Charley answered stolidly.
The boy held up a piece of paper with writing upon it for Ralph to read, but held it upside down. Since it did no good to yell at Charley, and Ralph's hands were tied, it was a little while before they came to an understanding. When the paper was finally righted Ralph saw that it was a letter from Nahnya, and once more he was astonished by her. It was written in a hand as fine and precise as a nun's. This strange girl could write as well as steer a canoe!
"To the doctor," it began. (She had made an attempt to spell Ralph, and had given it up.) "If you promise not to go away from here till I get back, Charley will untie the ropes and make you free. If you promise, make a holy cross on this paper for him to see. Annie Crossfox."
Ralph had not by any means forgiven Nahnya her high-handed proceedings, but an extraordinary curiosity modified his anger. He was determined to discover what lay behind all these mysteries. He decided to submit to the promise, and signed to Charley to put the pencil between his teeth. Charley holding up the paper, he made the sign as decreed. Pocketing the paper as a warrant for the proceedings, Charley liberated him.
Ralph walked to and fro to stretch his legs, and to see what he could see. Here there was nothing but endless vistas of the forest whichever way he looked. Because of the higher altitude to which they had climbed, the trees were not of such a staggering magnitude, and there was more undergrowth. He saw gigantic raspberry bushes with pale flowers as big as mallows. The silence was unearthly; not a bird cheeped, not a leaf fluttered.
Ralph was finally reduced to studying the impassive Charley. There was not much reward here. Charley sat with his back against a tree, smoking a pipe, and staring into vacancy. Charley had the faculty of being able to suspend animation when he chose. Ralph wondered why he did not fall asleep. By and by it came to him that the Indian boy was actually uneasy, not the uneasiness of alarm, but of impatience. His head would turn slightly in a given direction, and a desirous look appear in his hard, bright eyes. His head was cocked to listen.
"Nahnya has kept him out of something that he is keen for," Ralph deduced.
Charley prepared a meal, and they ate. Afterward, since there was nothing better to do, Ralph rolled himself in the blanket he had lain on, and slept. When he awoke the indefatigible Charley was cooking another meal. They had eaten it and were smoking; darkness was already creeping through the forest aisles, though far overhead the sky was bright, when without warning the Indian boy sprang up with a whoop, and seizing his hat and gun darted away. Ralph, gazing after him, wondered if he had gone mad. Presently from the same direction he saw Nahnya coming through the trees, followed by an old woman in a black cotton dress. At sight of the girl the recollection of the indignities she had put upon him flamed up in Ralph's breast, and his eyes hardened. He forgot about Charley.
Nahnya, after a quick glance in his face, lowered her eyes. "This my mot'er," she said in a low voice.
The old woman made a bob to the doctor. She was frankly terrified by the sight of him. She did not in any way suggest the mother of Nahnya, being without grace. She looked merely the middle-aged mother of many children. She had jetty hair neatly parted and braided, eyes as stoical as Charley's, and a skin like wrinkled, waxed brown paper. She had the strong, patient look of the aging worker. Ralph, looking from one to the other, could not find the least point of resemblance between mother and daughter. The fact caused him a certain grim satisfaction. His professional eye fixed on the old woman's pitiful, crooked arm.
So it was true after all that Nahnya had fetched him to cure her mother. He felt relieved, but only the more mystified. For why, if everything was plain and aboveboard, had she taken such desperate precautions to insure secrecy? Nahnya was no fool. He angrily gave it up, and turned his back on the old woman, who, as soon as his eye fell upon it, began to soothe the injured arm with deprecating glances toward him. Ralph had already observed with a hard smile that they had brought up his little satchel of instruments and medicaments on the litter. He had made up his mind that nothing should induce him to open it.
The two women had brought packs containing everything needful for a comfortable camp, and they set about making ready for the night. Nahnya said no more to Ralph, nor did she look at him again, but her actions were eloquent. Watching her with sidelong glances, a great uneasiness grew in him. She cut a heap of spruce boughs to make him a soft bed. She roasted a ptarmigan she had brought with her, and when it was done, took it to tempt his appetite before he turned in. She offered it to him silently, with an extraordinary upward look, soft, penitent, and imploring.
The look raised a storm in Ralph's breast. It confused and touched and angered him together. His heart leaped to answer it, and his indignant pride held him back. "Why can't she be open with me?" he thought. "Does she think she can truss me up like a piece of baggage, and then bring me to my knees again with a soft look?" He accepted the offering as his right, without relenting, and Nahnya went sadly back to her own bed beside her mother.
With a great air of unconcern, Ralph crawled between his blankets and resolutely closed his eyes. But the struggle within him went blithely forward. He would, and he would not. She had used him intolerably, and he hated her. She was sorry, and he loved her. The mystery she chose to wrap herself in exasperated him; her quiet resistance to his will maddened the male in him. There were times when he felt as if the only thing that would give him any peace would be to crush her utterly. Then he would remember the look in her eyes which promised a secret heaven for him to whom she chose to open it. Daylight was coming again before Ralph fell asleep.
When he awoke the struggle was over. Such a struggle in him could have but one outcome. His pride caved in. After all, he told himself, he was a doctor, and he could not turn his back on a grievous injury. He did not mean to forgive Nahnya—at least not in a hurry—but he knew he could not forgive himself if he went away leaving a doctor's work undone. Perhaps he was not quite frank with himself in this; perhaps it was only Pride trying to save something from the ruins; perhaps he never would have left Nahnya could he have helped it. Every imaginative heart that loves, loves the sentimental satisfaction of heaping coals of fire upon the head of the beloved one. She would feel sorry she had used him so, but he would be relentless. When she had suffered a great deal—perhaps——
So after breakfast, still scowling like a pirate, he opened his doctor's kit, and issued gruff orders to Nahnya. The sun came out in her face; she said not a word, but flew to do his bidding. Admirable was her capability and her deftness. In no time at all the frightened old woman was made comfortable on a deep bed of spruce boughs, with splints, bandages, and hot water waiting.
When it was all over, and the old woman began to come safely out of the ether, weeping copiously, but vastly relieved in mind, Ralph repacked his satchel viciously. When his purely professional absorption was no longer called for, he ran up the flag of resentment again. Nahnya had said nothing. Once when the danger point was past she had leaned across the patient and squeezed his hand, but he had quickly pulled it away. Her eyes followed him expressing a passion of humble gratitude. It infuriated him; why, he could scarcely have told; perhaps because it was so clear that it was only gratitude, and not the other kind of passion that he was hungry to see there. At any rate he could not support the look. Snapping the valise shut, and tossing it to one side, he strode away leaving the patient to Nahnya.
"It's done," he thought bitterly. "And she's done with me. A lot she cares what I'm suffering. She sacrificed me without a qualm to the old woman. Now she's cured, I can go back, and be hanged to me, I suppose. Well, I don't mean to be fobbed off so easily. I've done my part, and I'm a free agent. I won't leave here till I've unwound every thread of the silly mystery she entangles herself in!"
By and by the old woman fell into a natural sleep, and Ralph was free to leave her. He lit his pipe, and wandered off up the faintly marked trail.
In the perpetual twilight of their camp one got the feeling that this forest rolled on forever, but Ralph had not gone above three hundred yards before he unexpectedly came to one of its boundaries. To the left of the trail it ended at the base of a mighty precipice of naked gray rock. Standing at the edge of the trees and looking right and left the height of rock extended as far as he could see. Looking up, it was too beetling for him to see its summit.
Continuing upon the trail a little way farther, he came to the edge of a gulch, where he could obtain a wider prospect. Looking up now, he had dizzying, foreshortened glimpses of peaks and domes of rock, with a distant view over all of the supreme summit, shaped like a gigantic thumb of rock sticking up out of fields of snow, gilded and dazzling in the sunshine, and incredibly far-flung. It was a stirring experience thus to be brought without warning into the immediate presence of such a God. Ralph gazed, forgetting his private despite against Fortune.
At his feet the gulch came down from the left along the base of the unscalable heights. A trickle of water ran musically in the bottom of it, and was borne off to the right to join the larger stream, beside which they had ascended from the river. The trail crossed the gulch, and disappeared within the forest on the other side. The forest skirted the edge of the gulch, and swept on up concealing all on that side.
Ralph's only view was therefore up the gulch. The floor of it was heaped with broken masses of rock and fallen trees. As he looked, thinking of nothing but the wild beauty of the scene, suddenly his jaw dropped, and he dashed a hand across his eyes to make sure they were not tricking him. For out of a little tangle of living and dead trees at the base of the cliff, about a furlong from him, issued the figure of a man. It was Charley. One would have said that he had issued out of the cliff itself.
Ralph instinctively fell back among the trees. He had not been seen. Charley was unconcernedly picking his way down over the stones. Drawing back from the trail, Ralph concealed himself until he heard Charley pass on his way to camp. He then clambered down into the gulch, and made his way as fast as he could over the obstructions to the spot where the boy had so surprisingly come into view. Ralph suspected that an alarm would be raised for him as soon as Charley got back to camp.
The place he was making for was in a slight angle of the gulch, and the driftwood was piled in a wild tangle there. Climbing over the fallen trees as he had seen Charley climb down, Ralph came to a little niche of earth that provided a precarious living to three stunted pines and a few berry-bushes, the whole making a natural screen against the cliff. Pushing through it, he found himself looking into a hole in the rock at his feet.
Starting back, he gaped at it a little stupidly. He did not know what he had expected to find—not a hole in the rock! For a moment he doubted the evidence of his senses; it seemed too preposterous. Weird ideas took half shape in his brain and floated away while he stared in the hole. Was it possible they were of another race—creatures existing in the bowels of the earth without sunlight or the stir of air? Why, after travelling hundreds of miles from the world of men, was there need of burying one's self any deeper? Was it the possession of some ghastly secret that made Nahnya's face always wistful? What did it conceal, that hole, a hideous crime, disgrace unimagined—or a treasure?
The opening was about two feet across. Buttressed by the fallen trees below, and screened by the living ones, it was shrewdly hidden. Ralph wondered by what chance it had first been discovered. He lighted a match and dropped it in. It burned until it struck the bottom. It was about fifteen feet deep. There was the trunk of a young pine standing upright within it, reaching to within a foot of the top. Obviously this was used to climb in and out by.
It was like an invitation to enter, but Ralph hesitated. Notwithstanding the reassuring light of day and the solid earth of rocks and trees, the feeling of something uncanny, something more than natural, would not down. When he laughed this away, there remained very human fears. "Who knows what may be down there," he thought, "and what kind of a reception I will receive?" Finally there were compunctions of delicacy. "It's hardly square to break in on their secrets behind their backs," he thought. Recollection of his own injuries wiped this out. "They weren't so careful of my feelings," he told himself.
In the end, perhaps because he was afraid, Ralph was obliged to descend. As he would have put it, he could not take a dare from himself. Swinging his legs over the edge, he felt for the top branch of the pine tree.
At the bottom of the hole he struck another match. There were several pine-knot torches lying at his feet; picking up the longest, he lighted it.
He was in a narrow cleft in the rock, extending obliquely and downward into the mountain. It was necessary to recline partly on his back and inch himself along, holding the sputtering torch at arm's length before him. It was an awkward posture in which to meet danger. But if Charley could come through he could, he thought.
After only a few yards of this he issued suddenly into a much larger chamber, where he was able to stand firmly on his feet. It was a kind of spacious corridor running off to the right and left, and floored with pebbles and sand. Manifestly a stream had once flowed over it, but at present the floor was dry.
The thrilling impressions of a cave brought Ralph's boyhood winging back to him. Thinking of grizzly bears and mountain lions none too comfortably—he was unarmed—he sniffed the air delicately. There was no suggestion of animal effluvium. Anyway, Charley had just passed through. The torch made an extraordinary dancing light on the walls of rock, reminding him of a certain flaring gas-light in the cellar at home. The cave was not like a tunnel with arching roof, as he had always imagined caves, but was still a fissure in the rock, both sides leaning obliquely in the same direction. Overhead the split gradually narrowed; the light of his torch did not penetrate to the top of it.
Ralph was faced by the choice of turning right or left in the corridor. He lowered the torch to look for footsteps. In the patches of sand they were plainly discernible, many of them, almost a beaten path leading off to the right. Besides Charley's, Ralph readily distinguished the prints of Nahnya's small, straight feet, and another foot, evidently her mother's. The sight of all these footsteps had the effect of allaying Ralph's fears, and of strongly stimulating his excitement. Up to this moment he had kept in view the possibility that this cave might be a private affair of Charley's. Now he could no longer doubt that Nahnya's secret, whatever it was, lay at the end of this path. He followed it, feeling himself on the brink of an amazing discovery. Nothing could have turned him back now. "With all her pains to keep me in the dark I have been a little too clever for her!" he thought vaingloriously.
Sometimes the corridor was ten feet wide; sometimes it narrowed down to four. The air had that extraordinary dead quality only to be found in deep caves, but it was quite pure, because the torch burned clearly. The stillness pressed on his ear-drums. The quietest room, the quietest night out of doors, was vibrant and musical by comparison. His own breathing sounded hoarse and laboured in his ears.
Holding the torch high over his head, wrought up to the highest possible pitch, he made his way swiftly over the smooth floor. Rounding a corner of the rock, the flickering light fell on a human figure standing motionless before him. He stopped short with a horrid shock of fright. The torch dropped from his nerveless hand and was extinguished. He slowly screwed down the clamps of self-control, and schooling his voice, hailed the creature. The sound shattered the dark stillness with an incredible, unnatural ring. The sound of his own voice in that place terrified him. The silence that followed upon it was terrible. There was no answer.
Very slowly he forced himself to pick up the torch, to light a match, and to ignite it again. He held it aloft. The figure was still there, motionless. Ralph went forward very gingerly, and saw that it was not human after all, but merely a kind of scarecrow, a stick planted in the sand with a cross-piece on which was hung a coat and hat. Evidently some of Charley's work, placed there for what purpose Ralph could not conceive. He sat down, and wiping his face, allowed his shaking nerves to quiet down.
Proceeding, he heard a murmur which later resolved itself into the sound of running water. Ralph wondered uneasily if there were times when a torrent raced between these rocky walls; he pictured himself swept helplessly upon it, and his skin prickled. In such a place he would not have been surprised by anything. The scarecrow reassured him partly. Plainly it had been set up to stand more than an hour or two. Keeping on he satisfied himself that the water was not coming toward him. The sound increased only in the ratio of his progress toward it.
Soon it was close ahead, not a loud sound, but the musical voice of a rapid, smooth stream. Holding the torch high, its light was reflected in pale gleams up the corridor. The water was coming straight toward him, only to be suddenly and mysteriously diverted.
A few steps farther and he had the explanation. A yawning hole in the floor of the cave received the stream entire without a sound. It simply slipped over the lip of rock, and ceased to be. The absence of any sound of a fall below was uncanny. Ralph tossed a little stone in the hole—and heard nothing. Not until he lay at full length and stuck his head over the edge of the chasm could he hear, above the soft hiss of the descending water, the distant muffled crash of its fall. The height suggested by the sound staggered the senses. Ralph received a new and awful conception of the goodly old phrase: the bowels of the earth.
At one side two logs made a rough bridge over the gap. Ralph continued his way beside the stream, crossing from side to side, and upon occasions when it filled the whole floor, forced to wade. Here there was a faint stir to the air, a hint of freshness, and he instinctively began to look for daylight ahead.
Finally he saw it, far off, a crooked exclamation point of white. He hastened toward it, feeling an unbounded relief. He had been prepared to face—he did not know what—some shape of mystery or terror in the darkness. And here was honest daylight. An insupportable curiosity filled him, forcing him to run and to leap as if but a minute or two of daylight remained.
Arrived in the opening, he flung the remains of his torch in the water. The blessed bright sky was over his head once more. Until he saw it he did not realize how heavily he had been oppressed by underground terrors. At first nothing else was visible to him but the sky and terraces of rock on either side, between which the little stream came tumbling down into the hole. Ralph went up over the rocks like an ape. At the top there was lush green grass starred with flowers. Trees below still obstructed his view. He ran on up the slope of grass until the whole prospect opened to his eye. There he flung himself down to gaze his fill.
He was not disappointed. It surpassed his brightest imaginings. The first glimpse amply repaid him for the trip underground. It was lovelier than any sight he had every beheld, lovelier than any scene he had visited in his dreams. It was itself and it was new. The artist in him experienced the rich, rare satisfaction of beholding a perfect thing. He had to enlarge his conception of beauty to take it in.
It was a valley hemmed all round by craggy mountains, running up to towering, sharp peaks. The mountains held his eye for a while; it was almost his first unobstructed view of earth's mountains in their majesty. They rose, fantastic, overpowering shapes of gray rock with mantles of snow upon their shoulders and bared heads, each as distinct in individuality as an old king. The grandeur of the company set off in poignant contrast the tender loveliness they guarded below. It was well guarded; there was no break in the armed ranks to let in discord from the world.
Below the scene was drunk with strong colour. The middle of the valley was filled for half its length with an exquisite sheet of water, curving away as gracefully as a girl's waist. Its water was of an unreasonable richness of hue that held Ralph's eyes like a charm; neither sapphire nor emerald, but partaking of both. That part of the valley nearest him was like a park—like a dream park. The trees, aspens, and white-stemmed birches were set out in clumps in the riotous grass. Farther up the valley rolled a thick forest. Everywhere there were flowers. The bluebells growing under his hands were as big as thimbles and blue as lazulite. Everything growing, birch trees, flowers, and grass, flaunted itself with a particular vigour and richness, as if the valley were Nature's own nursery, where she perfected her specimens.
The scene was not all Nature's. Off to the left, about half a mile from where Ralph lay, he saw three tepees topping a little rise of grass beside the lake. A column of thin smoke rose above them. Three canoes lay on the shore below. It did not make a discordant note in the scene; the tepees rose from the grass as naturally as trees. Ralph gazed at them with strong curiosity. He saw, or imagined he saw, figures moving in front of them.
The whole scene touched a chord in Ralph's memory; where had he heard of such a hidden valley? such a blue-green lake? So this was Nahnya's secret! He was compelled to readjust his ideas of her again. His dark thoughts at the mouth of the cave seemed foolish to him now. This, her place, was characteristic of the best in her. But why was she so passionately bent on keeping him out of her paradise? This thought raised all his torturing doubts again. He determined to find out what the tepees concealed.
Descending the slope, and crossing the stream, he made his way around through the flowery grass. Never had he seen such wildflowers—bluebells, wild-roses, painter's brush, besides the thickly blossoming berry-bushes, and many a flower he could not name. The trees growing singly or in small groups reached the perfection of their kind. It was too beautiful to seem quite real; Ralph, passing among the snowy trunks in his sober habit, felt a little out of place, like a mortal who had strayed into a fairy-tale.
He crossed another little stream bringing its quota from the mountains to the lake. Where it emptied into the lake at his right it spread out into a miniature delta. Ralph, attracted by the sight of some implements lying in the grass beside the water, went to investigate. He found a shovel, a large shallow bowl, and a smaller bowl all roughly fashioned out of cottonwood.
As he looked into the last-named article, Ralph caught his breath in astonishment. It was half full of gold. No mistaking those clean yellow grains! Ralph had not fallen a victim to the gold-mania of the North; he held the bright metal as lightly as any man, nevertheless his breath quickened and his eyes grew big at the sight of so much in so little. He dug his hands into it and let the stuff run through his fingers. There was enough here to buy theTewksburyoutright, or to buy a string of the best ponies in the country, or to carry a man around the whole world spending royally.
Ralph wondered if ever before gold had been left like this, unguarded under the sky. He moved the bowl a little, and saw that the grass was white beneath. Evidently it had lain there many days. Gold must indeed be plentiful in this valley, or lightly regarded. Dimly in his mind rose the vision of a happier world, where gold was despised like this.
Leaving it where it lay, he went on. Descending into a wooded hollow, the tepees were hidden from him for a while. Climbing a little rise finally, he found himself unexpectedly almost on top of the camp.
Nearest him a ripe and comely Indian girl was stirring a pot over the fire. Beside her on a blanket in the sun sprawled a flourishing, naked infant. At sight of Ralph a piteous gasp hissed between the mother's teeth. Her eyes protruded with terror; she caught the baby tragically to her breast, and cowered over it. It uttered a piercing cry. Beyond the woman an old man squatted on the ground mending a bow. He looked up, and his face, too, froze into a mask of terror. Two half-grown boys came running from the beach, and stood transfixed. The frightened faces of two girls stuck out of a tepee opening.
Ralph was much embarrassed by the suddenness of the effect he created. Never having looked upon himself as an object of terror, their attitudes could not but seem far-fetched and ridiculous to him. He stood as much at a loss as they.
Finally the old man, after a visible struggle with himself, arose and approached Ralph. His features were stiff with anxiety, and his old eyes fixed in a kind of glare. It was evident from his manner that he considered himself bound to show an example to the boys. Not without dignity he held out a trembling hand to Ralph.
"How?" he said.
"You speak English?" said Ralph eagerly.
"Little bit," the old man said, shaping the words with difficulty. "I no see white man, two, three winter. I forget, me." Having said it, he waited with a courteous air for Ralph to speak again. Only deep in his eyes could be seen the working of his harrowing anxiety.
"I am friendly," Ralph said quickly. "I won't hurt anybody."
The old man shrugged deprecatingly. "Not afraid of hurt," he said. He paused, searching for English words to convey what he wished. "We alone here long time," he said. "Forget strangers. Stranger comes—Wah! It is lak sun fall down from the sky!"
Ralph began to understand the effect of his sudden appearance.
"For what you come here?" the old man asked.
Ralph was nonplussed. "Why—why just to see the place," he said.
The old man bowed. His manners were beautiful; the kind of manners, Ralph dimly apprehended, that come only from real goodness of heart. He had never been a big man, and now he was bent and shaky, yet he had dignity. The manifold fine wrinkles of kindliness were about his eyes. He was clad in an old capote made out of a blanket. Around his forehead he wore a black band to keep the straggling gray locks out of his face.
"How you come here?" he asked.
"Through the cave under the mountains," Ralph answered.
"You are the white doctor?" the old man suddenly exclaimed, with a look of extraordinary anxiety.
"I am," said Ralph.
The old man's head dropped on his breast, and a little sound of distress escaped him. He murmured in his own tongue.
"What's the matter?" cried Ralph irritably. "Why shouldn't I come here if I want to take a walk? Do you think I'll bring a plague with me?"
The old man raised an inscrutably sad face. He shrugged. "I not talk," he said. "Got no good words, me. Nahnya will talk. Nahnya is the chief here. She come soon, I think."
"What does it all mean, anyway?" cried Ralph.
"Will you eat?" inquired the old man with his courteous, reticent air. "I sorry I forget before. We have moose-meat."
Ralph was conscious of receiving a rebuke.
"I'm not hungry," he muttered, turning away.
His imperious curiosity soon brought him back. The old man stood as he had left him. "Has this place got a name?" asked Ralph.
"Call Mountain Bowl," was the answer.
A light broke on Ralph. He stared at the Indian with widening eyes. Wes' Trickett's story came rushing back to him. The cave under the mountain, the blue-green lake, the gold beside the little stream! Bowl of the Mountains, of course! So it was true, after all, and he had found it! He looked over the lake with shining eyes.
"Nahnya come," the old man said quietly.
Ralph whirled about in time to see her come flying up the slope, panting, dishevelled, wildly agitated, a flaming colour in her cheeks. At the sight of Ralph she stopped dead, and her hands fell to her sides. She paled. She did not speak, but only bent an unfathomable look on him. Indignation, reproach, and pain were all a part of it, and a kind of hopeless, sad fatalism. It accused him more eloquently than a torrent of invective. He became exquisitely uncomfortable.
"Well, here I am!" he said, trying to carry it off with a touch of bravado.
Still she did not speak. With her mournful, accusing eyes fixed on him, she flung up her arms, palms to the skies, and let them fall. "So be it!" the action said. Turning abruptly, she walked to the edge of the bank and sat down in the grass.
Ralph, without knowing exactly how it had been brought about, was sensible that he had produced a calamity. Penitence and shame overwhelmed him. He felt like one who has inadvertently killed something beautiful and defenceless. With too much feeling he was dumb. He could only stand off and watch her wretchedly, and reproach himself.
The spectacle of Nahnya's still despair became more than he could bear at last, and he went to her where she sat on the bank. "Nahnya, what is the matter?" he begged to know. "What have I done?"
"Nothing," she said dully. "You not mean bad."
"Then why are you sitting like this? Why did you look at me so when you came?"
"I feel bad," she said simply. "You are here. I not know what will happen now."
"What can happen?" he asked, mystified. "Why shouldn't I come here? Why can't you trust me a little?"
"Trust!" she said with an inexplicable look. "What is trust? You mean good, I think. You are a white man. You can't change that. How can you stop what will happen, anyway?"
"You talk in riddles!" cried the exasperated Ralph. "If you'd been plain and open with me from the first, wouldn't it have saved all this trouble? Why can't you tell me what it is?"
Nahnya twisted her hands painfully together. The quiet voice began to break. "I can't talk," she murmured. "I feel much bad. I have got no right words to tell you."
"Do you want me to go back?" he asked.
She shook her head. "You have found the place," she said. "What does it matter when you go? Stay here. By and by I try to tell you what is in my heart."
"But your mother," said Ralph. "I must go back and see to her."
"Charley and I carry her through the mountain," Nahnya answered. "They are waiting back there. I will send the boys to help Charley carry her here." She raised her voice: "Jean Bateese!"
The old man hastened to them. Nahnya gave him an order in Cree. Continuing in English, she said:
"The doctor will stay with us to-night. He is our friend. Make everything for his comfort."
Her unaffected magnanimity, after he had so grievously injured her, touched Ralph to the quick, and covered him afresh with shame. "Nahnya, I'm so sorry!" he burst out impulsively.
She got up without answering, and walked down to the lake shore. Lifting one of the birch-bark canoes into the water, she got in, and without looking back headed her craft up the lake, paddling with her own grace and assurance.
"Where is she going?" asked Ralph jealously.
The old man spread out his palms deprecatingly. "I do not ask," he said. "She moch lak to go alone. She is not the same as us." Whenever Jean Bateese referred to Nahnya it was with the unquestioning air that an ancient Egyptian might have said: "Cleopatra wills it."
He led Ralph back to the fire. The three tepees stood in a row parallel with the lake shore. Between them were summer shelters of leaves, so that the women could do their household tasks out of doors. Their winter gear, sledges, furs, and snowshoes, was slung up on poles out of harm's way. There were racks for smoking meat and fish, and frames for tanning hides, all carefully disposed to be out of the way. The view from the little esplanade of grass in front was superb.
The two boys were standing near, rigid with astonishment and curiosity. They were a comely pair, sixteen or seventeen years old, with bold, handsome faces that became sullen with shyness at Ralph's approach. Each was naked to the waist and lean as a panther, with a coppery skin that shone in the sun, and muscles that crawled subtly beneath as if endowed with separate life. They wore buckskin trousers, and moccasins embroidered with dyed porcupine quills; their inky hair grew to their shoulders, and each wore a thong about his forehead to confine it.
Here the resemblance ended. He who stood a foot in advance was the taller. He had thin features and an aquiline glance. In the band around his head, unconsciously true to his type, he had stuck an eagle's feather.
"This Ahmek, Marya's son, the brother of Nahnya," said St. Jean Bateese.
The other boy, while an inch or two shorter, was broader in the shoulders. His face was flat with high cheekbones and narrow eyes.
"This Myengeen, my son." The old man spoke a word in Cree, and each boy put forth a bashful hand to Ralph.
Ralph could not remember their uncouth names. The taller boy he thought of afterward as Cæsar; the other as Ching.
St. Jean transmitted Nahnya's order to them, and the two departed in the direction of the cave.
Ralph, notwithstanding his distress on Nahnya's account, could not but be keenly interested in the life of the strange little community that she ruled. Since she withheld the explanation of her unhappiness, he listened eagerly to St. Jean's gossip, and questioned him, hoping to discover a clue there. Though St. Jean had shared in Nahnya's dismay at the white man's coming, he had pride and pleasure in exhibiting their work. Moreover, Nahnya had commanded him to do the honours. Courtesy was this old savage gentleman's ruling force.
"Him good boys," St. Jean said, looking after them proudly. The old man's English gradually came back to him at his need. "I teach him all my fat'er teach me, long tam ago. I teach him to be pain and 'onger and cold, and say not'ing. I teach him mak' canoe. I teach him shoot with the bow."
"Have you no guns?" asked Ralph.
"Our fat'ers got no guns long ago," answered the old man. "Nahnya say bang-bang drive every beast out of our valley. Him not any scare of arrows. We kill sheep and goat on the mountains with arrows. We kill caribou with arrows. My boys good hunters."
"Are there caribou in this little valley?" Ralph asked with surprise.
"N'moya," said St. Jean, shaking his head. "Over the pass up there"—he pointed to the north—"there is another valley. When the first snow come we travel there to kill for winter. Nahnya say we kill only bulls, and him never get scarce."
The simple old man worshipped at two shrines. "Our fat'ers do that" was continually on his lips; or, "Nahnya say so."
If Ralph had been a long-desired guest instead of what he was, an intruder, St. Jean could scarcely have done more. He made Ralph sit on a blanket and brought him a new pair of moccasins. He commanded the young woman to bring food. This was Charley's woman, he explained; her name, Ahahweh. The baby was the first native of the valley; the first of the strong race they meant to establish.
"Don't the boys ever want to get out of the valley?" Ralph asked curiously.
St. Jean shook his head. "N'moya. Him not white men. Him not want what him not see. Him happy enough for good hunting and plenty meat. Pretty soon him take a woman and build lodge."
"Wives?" said Ralph. "Where will you get them?"
"They are here," said St. Jean. "Marya's son will take my girl. My son take Marya's girl. Marya teach the girls all woman's work, lak our people long tam ago. They are good workers."
Ralph remembered the two scared young faces he had seen looking from the tepee. "Suppose the boys are not pleased with the girls you have chosen for them?" he asked.
St. Jean looked at him surprised as by a foolish question. "There are no more girls," he said.
"How long have you been here?" Ralph asked.
"Two summers."
"How about you? Wouldn't you like to see the world again?"
Jean Bateese shook his head. "I am old," he said. "I have seen everything. I have travelled as far as the Landing. I have seen too much white man." Here, feeling that he had been impolite, he hastened to add deprecatingly: "White man good for white man. White man moch bad for red man. Nahnya say so. She is not lak other women. She is more wise than a man."
Ralph had the feeling that he was listening to wisdom from its source.
Jean Bateese waved his hand over the lovely scene before them, and his old eyes grew soft. "This our good hunting-ground," he said. "My boys good hunters. Him get good wife. Him have many good, fat babies. Him live same lak red man live long tam ago. Him forget white man. It is best."
As Ralph listened, the white man's world of artifice and oppression, the world of teeming, disease-ridden cities, the world of place-seeking and money-grubbing seemed like a nightmare to him. He felt as if he were being shown a glimpse of the essential truths of our being. As St. Jean had said in his own way, Nature was best.
Charley's wife, the blooming young Ahahweh, served him his dinner in an agony of bashfulness. The meal consisted of a stew of goat's flesh and rice. Ralph found it good.
"Rice?" he said questioningly.
"Wild rice," said Jean Bateese. "Him grow around the lake more than we can eat. We eat nothing from the white man's store only tea. The tea is near gone. I will miss it," he said with a sigh. "But our fat'ers not drink tea," he added stoutly.
Before Ralph was through eating, the two boys came into camp bearing his patient on the litter. Examining her, he found that she did not appear to have taken any hurt from her journey. Charley, St. Jean Bateese explained, had gone back through the cave to fetch the rest of their belongings from the camp in the woods.
An hour passed, and there was still no sign of Nahnya's return. Ralph became more and more uneasy. St. Jean assured him that it was Nahnya's custom frequently to paddle away by herself, and that they never sought to question her, nor to follow. Meanwhile the old man relaxed none of his efforts to entertain Ralph. He put his pupils through their paces. There was a foot-race in the grass, which Ching won to everybody's surprise, and the chagrined Cæsar was forced to yield up a brass clock-wheel that he wore around his neck. A race between the two canoes across the lake and back followed. This time Cæsar redeemed himself. The lithe young creatures were wholly beautiful in action. Afterward they were sent into the woods with their bows and arrows. By and by Cæsar returned with a brace of rabbits, and Ching brought in a fat porcupine. Ching was held to have won.
"Rabbit him no good meat," St. Jean said. "Man eat rabbit till him can't swallow no more and stay poor."
St. Jean was like a fountain of humble philosophy. Like all philosophers, he frankly rejoiced in a good listener. Ralph for his part was strongly drawn to the gentle, garrulous old man. St. Jean was a real individual. He had lived a real life, and stored a real wisdom from it. This natural life, as Ralph saw it lived before him, and as St. Jean interpreted it to him, satisfied a deep desire in him. This was what he had always been looking for. Nevertheless as he listened his heaviness increased. He could not deny the sad conviction that it was not for him. He was like an old man envying youth. He was an interloper here. He began to understand why Nahnya had been so distressed by his coming. He waited for her return anxiously, but without much hope.
She returned in time for the evening meal. He experienced an immense relief to see her safe. Her face was now composed and inscrutable. She made no overtures toward Ralph. Ralph's meal was served in state apart; baked porcupine and rice cakes. He would have much preferred to join the others, but this was their politeness. None would start eating until he had begun.
Afterward they all gathered in a circle about the campfire. Even old Marya was carried out of the tepee to take a place. Nahnya sat between her mother and Jean Bateese and kept her eyes in cover. Ralph sat on the other side of St. Jean Bateese. From across the fire the several pairs of beady black eyes stared at the white man with a savage, unwinking fixity.
St. Jean Bateese told a story. The words were lost on Ralph, but the quaint and speaking gestures were illuminative. Afterward, in his politeness, St. Jean insisted on repeating the whole tale in English.
"It is said once ver' long tam ago," he began, "when it was winter, when it was snow for the first tam, when the snow still lie on the ground, three men go out hunting early in the morning. Come to a place on the side of a hill where there is moch thick, low scrub. And a bear is gone in there. Them see his tracks, wah! One man go in after him and start bear running. Man call out: 'Him gone to the place where cold comes from!'—what you say north.
"Other man him already gone round to place where cold comes from. Him call: 'Bear gone back fast where comes the noon shadow!'—what you say south. Other man him already gone by side where noon shadow comes from. Him call: 'Bear going quick to the place where the sun fall down!' him call.
"So this way and that way long tam they keep the bear running from one to other. Bam-by the story says one man that come behind, him look down and see the world far, far down, wah! wah! and it was green! It is the truth, that bear him bring them right up into the sky, all tam in that place of thick scrub they think they chase him. And now it was spring!
"The man that come behind him, call to other man next before him: 'Oh, Joining-of-Rivers, we must turn back. Truly into the sky he lead us!' he say to Joining-of-Rivers. Him say not'ing back again.
"Joining-of-Rivers him run between the front man and the back man, and him have his little dog call 'Hold-Tight' run along behind him.
"Bam-by in the time of leaves falling they catch him bear. They kill him. After they kill him they cut many boughs of poplar and much sumach. They throw the bear on the boughs, and skin him and cut up meat. Always when the summer goes the poplars and the sumach redden in the leaf. Why is that? Because they put the bear on top the boughs, and all the leaves are stained with blood. That is why the poplar and the sumach turn red after summer.
"After those three men skin that bear and cut up meat, they throw what is left all around. To place where light first comes in the morning they throw the head. In the winter when the light is near coming there are stars there. They say it is the bear's head. His backbone they throw to the east also. In the winter ver' often you see stars there close together. It is that backbone!"
St. Jean paused, and cast a look around the circle to gather all eyes for the climax of his tale. Though they could not understand these words, they knew what was coming and hung upon the event attentively. Suddenly the old man pointed dramatically to the east. "See!" he cried. "They are coming now, the stars of that hunt! There are four stars in front. They say that is the bear! And the three that come behind is the three men that chase him. Now look hard with your young eyes. Between the middle star and the behind star you see a tiny little star hanging there?"
All the boys and girls looked hard at Ralph. "I see it," he said, perceiving that it was expected of him.
"That is little Hold-Tight the pet of Joining-of-Rivers!" said St. Jean Bateese triumphantly. "That is the end of the story."
Exclamations of high satisfaction were heard around the fire. Clearly these tales never palled. To work and to hunt all day, and to tell poetic tales around the fire! what a complete life! Ralph thought. He glanced at Nahnya, seeking to let her know that he was not alien to her life. Her expression dismayed him. Never had he seen such sadness in a woman's face.
Cæsar spoke up from his side of the fire. "Him say him tell story now," said St. Jean Bateese. As the boy went on with fire in his eye, and shrewd gesticulation imitated from his master, St. Jean translated sotto-voce, for Ralph.
"Little spider happened to be travelling along alone in a certain place, they say. He go alone through the forest eating. Him come to a river, and stand on the edge. Him want to go across ver' bad, but there is no way. They say Spider say: 'Here I stand all tam thinking, Oh! how I want sit on the other side!' Then something big come swimming up against the current. But only his long horns are showing. Spider say again: 'Here I sit all tam thinking, Oh! how I want sit on the other side!'
"Then the beast with long horns, him stop there and say to him: 'Ho! friend! I will take you across this water, but you mus' do something for me.'
"Spider say: 'Come, my young brother, I all tam do what you tell me.'
"So he say to him: 'I all tam swim in the water with my head not out. So you mus' sit and watch for me. Then spider say 'Yes! So Big-horn say, when one small cloud comes tell me. Then I will double up and go back to deep water.'
"Then Spider say: 'Wah! my young brother, what will I do when you double up and go back to deep water?"
"Big-horn say: 'When you tell me and I double up and swim away, you will fall beside the shore. When you say to me your grandfather is coming, that means the thunders roar.'
"So Spider was going along in the water sitting on the horn. When he was going along in the water near the other shore black clouds came. So Spider say: 'Wah! my young brother, your grandfather is coming!'
"Wah! Wah! Towasasuak!All around the water is jump and roar and go white! And where Spider goes he not remember at all. Long tam he not remember nothing. By and by when him get his sense back, he is lying half on the land and half in the water. Him look and all the water is muddy, and him not see this thing with long horns any more, and he hear thunders roaring.
"After that they say Spider travel like anybody else. Ahmek remembers only this far."
The group around the fire broke up without Ralph's having had a chance to get into communication with Nahnya. She baffled every attempt he made. When he saw her leading her mother into the tepee, his heart went down like a stone, thinking he would not see her again until morning.
"Nahnya!" he cried. "Aren't you going to speak to me? You promised!"
She turned with her inscrutable face. "I am coming back," she said. "Wait for me." She paused for an instant, and added: "St. Jean, you stay up, too. We three will talk."
Ralph angrily bit his lip. So it appeared she was still bent on keeping him at arm's length. He wanted no third at their talk.
St. Jean Bateese, Nahnya, and Ralph sat by the fire. The flames threw strong, changeable lights up into the three unlike faces; the first ashy brown, the second ruddy brown, and the third ruddy white. The fire held each pair of eyes steadily; it was too disconcerting to look at each other. Nahnya, in the middle, sat on her heels, with her head a little lowered, and her hands clasped loosely in her lap. Ralph was reminded with a little pain at his heart of a picture of Mary Magdalen that he had seen. Throughout the telling of her long story she scarcely ever changed her position.
There was a long silence before anybody spoke. When it became oppressive, St. Jean started to tell the story of the making of the world, but Nahnya silenced him.
"St. Jean," she said, "I have been thinking much what to do. Now I know. Often the doctor was angry against me because I did not tell him all about us. Now I will tell him. I think he is a good man. I think he is not so greedy for gold as other white men. I think when I tell him all he will go away and forget what he has seen."
It sounded like a death warrant to Ralph. "Nahnya——!" he began.
"Wait till I have told you," she said.
She was silent for a space, looking down at her hands, and searching it would seem for the right words to begin. She told her story in a low-pitched, toneless voice that, concealing all, suggested all. When in certain parts of the story her voice threatened to shake, she paused until she could control it. Nahnya had no fine English phrases; therein lay the power of her tale; its bare crudeness went deeper than pathos.
"When I was a little girl," she began, "I go to the mission school at Caribou Lake. The nuns' school. I am there four winters. They teach me to speak English and French; to read and write and number; to sew and cook and keep house like white people. I am the smartest girl in the school, they say. I like to learn in books; the other children hate books. When visitors come the nuns send me to say my lessons in the parlour. I not like the other girls. They stupid and foolish, I think. They not like me either. I different from them.
"At Caribou Lake are plenty white people. I like them. I like how white people live with nice things and nice ways. I like to sit in a chair to my meals, and have a white cloth on the table, and china dishes. All the time I think of the white people and their own country outside. I am crazy to go there and see all that is to be seen.
"There was a boy at that school two years more older than me. He is half-white like me. He does not like books, but I look at him and I know he feels the same like me inside. I would like to be friends with him. But the nuns do not let the boys and the girls speak together. But I look at him and he look at me, and at night when all are asleep I go out of the dormitory as soft as a lynx and he is wait for me in the vegetable garden. We talk together. He is like my brother. He tell me he is going to run away from that school and go outside. I feel bad. I want to go, too.
"When I come back in the house, a nun wake up and catch me. They make awful trouble. They say I bad girl. They lock me up and give me only bread and water. I am mad because they call me bad and look sour at me. Because I think before that they did love me. I know I am not bad, but I will not say anything. They say I am hardened. I am not hard; I am soft. All the time when I am alone I cry. But I will not let them see me cry.
"Long time I am locked up. It is near spring when I am let out. The boy is gone from the school. I am changed. I hate that school now. I want to run away. I act very good now, so I get a chance to run away. The nuns say I am reformed, and they smile again. They not know what is inside me. By and by they begin to let me go out by myself; because I am one of the biggest girls they send me to the store for tea and sugar.
"There is a white man in the French outfit store and he is kind to me. He give me things for myself out of the store, and I think he is a good man. I tell him I want to go outside so bad, and he say he will take me when he goes in the summer. I am so glad I near crazy. I not think any bad, because he is an old man with gray hair, and he say he will take me to see his daughters that he got outside. Me, I am not yet sixteen years old.
"So when the ice go out of the lake and they say the first York boat will leave Grier's Point soon as it is light next morning, he tell me, and in the night I get out of my bed. There is a nun sleeping beside the door, but I crawl under all the beds like a weasel, and I get out. All the way I run to Grier's Point. It is five miles. Soon it is day, and they push off the boat. I am so excite', I amweh-ti-go, crazy. But I am still.
"Soon I find I make a mistake. That white man is no good. He begin to act bad to me, and I am scare. There are many people going on the York boat, and with so many I am safe. I stay close by the English schoolmaster's wife, and mind her baby, and he cannot get me. He is mad. We are on the York boat five days. When we get to the Landing, when he is drinking in the hotel, I run away and hide in the woods.
"I walk to Prince George by myself. It is a hundred miles, they say. I beg a little food from the stopping-houses. I sleep in the deep woods, because I am afraid of men. When I come to the town I am wood with all I see. So much noise and moving; so many people I don't know what to do. I feel bad because there is not any place for me. And all the men look at me the same as that old white man on the York boat. Always I am hiding from them. I think there is something the matter with me. Maybe I am bad like the nuns say, and I not know it.
"I walk and walk in the streets. I am much hungry. By and by I get a job in a laundry. There are other red girls working there, and I think I am safe. They will tell me what to do. But they act bad to me because the boss talk and laugh to me, and only curse them. The boss is like the other men, and soon I have to go without my pay.
"I get another job soon because I am strong. I get many jobs. I cannot count them. Always some white man he will not let me be, and I have to go. It is near three years that I am working in Prince George. There is no use telling it, because it is always the same. By and by I am really hard inside like the nuns say. I do not care any more. I say to myself what is the use of a life like this. It makes a girl no friends. I am only a hunted beast. And I say I will not run any more, but take what comes. It cannot be worse. But always I have to run when the time comes. It is something inside me that makes me run.
"At last there was a man who was worse than any of the others. He followed me from place to place, and spoke bad against me, so that always I lost my job. He thought if he could starve me out I would go to him. I would sooner have jumped in the river. By and by I couldn't get any jobs in Prince George, and I go away.
"I am much sick of white men and white man's country. I think there is a curse on me that turns them into devils when they look at me. Often I see they do not act so bad to their own women as to me. So I think I go back to my mot'er's people. Maybe there is a place for me there. Maybe I am most red myself.
"So I make a long, long journey. I come to my mot'er's people at last. It is not good. There is nobody glad to see me. They are poor and sick and bad. They not like me because I am scold them because they are so dirty and lazy and foolish. They live beside a company post on the big river. When I was a little girl it was far off, and we never see a white man but the trader, but now the steamboat run on the river, and many white men are coming. There are surveyors measuring the land, and farmers ploughing it and growing wheat.
"It is moch bad for the red people. The young white men come around the tepees and flirt with the girls, and give whiskey to the boys. Our girls and our boys want to go with white men, and dress fine and not work at all. The boys learn to steal, and the girls are bad. The people live in houses with stoves to be warm, and they get the lung sickness. They try to be like white men, and they are nothing.
"My mot'er's husband is a bad man. He beat my mot'er and take a new wife. He hate me moch because he cannot look in my face. He speak bad of me to all the people. He is a chief man among those people, and all believe him and hate me.
"So they do not want me there. I feel bad. I think I doubly cursed because I cannot stay in any place nowhere. Only St. Jean Bateese, he is my friend. He remember the good time when the red men were free hunters. He feel bad like me to see the people dirty and lazy and sick. He feel much bad to see his children growing up and only badness waiting for them. When all are sleeping in the tepees we talk much together.
"By and by we make a plan. We say we take his children and my mot'er and my mot'er's children, and we travel far from the white men, and we teach the children how to live like our fathers lived without the white man and the white man's goods. My mot'er's husband, he not care if we go. He got a young wife now.
"All winter we are making ready, and when the ice go out in the spring we start up the river in three canoes. We travel many days on the big river. The weather is fine, and the children are happy to be travelling.
"One day Charley and I are hunting a bear on shore. He is wounded, and we follow him a long, long way up a mountain. He goes into a cave. We are much afraid to go after him, but we have followed far and there is no fresh meat, so we go in. We follow him under the mountain, and that is how we find this place. I am much glad when I see it. It is what we want. No white man will ever find us here, I say. Here is everything we need to live. We will live here and die here, and forget the white man. And me, I think then, I have found happiness."
Nahnya came to a conclusion, and there was a silence by the fire.
"So that is why you wanted to keep me out?" said Ralph, very low.
"You are a white man," murmured Nahnya. "St. Jean and I have sworn to keep the children from the white men."
Ralph was moved to the bottom of his soul. "Nahnya," he said in a low, shaken voice, "in all my life before I never made an oath. Hear me now. I swear to you by all I hold dear, by my honour, by my hope of heaven, that I will never do anything to bring unhappiness into this valley!"
"You mean good," she said. "I do not doubt you. But who can tell what will follow? I have a feeling of evil to come. Once I heard a wise man say: 'The white men are like a prairie fire and the red men are the grass. Who shall stop the fire from consuming the grass?'"
At a certain point in the telling of this tale Ralph's intuition had warned him that something was left out; this feeling pursued him to the end. "Nahnya," he said presently, "you told me you had been in Winnipeg."
Her eyes darted a startled, pained glance at him, and her head fell a little lower.
"Never mind if it's too painful," Ralph said quickly.
"Yes," she said, in the same dead, quiet voice, "I will tell you that, too. That part I have never told. Not to St. Jean Bateese."
After a while she went on: "When I couldn't get a job in Prince George any more it is not true that I come back to my mot'er's people right away. First I go see my father. When things get so bad I think maybe my father help me. My mother have tell me his name. I ask one and another and by and by I find out he live in Winnipeg. I have save a little money, and I go to Winnipeg on the railway. It is a big city.
"I have not been there at all before I learn my father is now a rich, great man, and the King has put a Sir before his name. Then I am scare to see him. I do nothing to see him. I get a job. I get many jobs. I can take care of myself better in such a big city.
"One day in the street I hear a man say my father's name. 'That is he,' he said, and I look and I see my father. He is riding in a fine motor-car with his white wife and his white children. My heart beat fast to see him. He is a handsome, proud man, not very old yet. He was just a boy when he was in our country; my mot'er tell me so. A boy with yellow hair who laugh all the time and play jokes, she say. Still he likes to laugh I see by the lines in his face.
"After I see him in his fine motor-car I am more scare. What does he want with a poor girl like me, I think, and I do nothing to see him. But all the time I read the newspapers to find out what he does. Then I see there is going to be a big, what you call, political meeting, and my father is going to speak. So I go to the skating-rink on that night, and all the people look at me because there is no other red girl go to that political meeting. But I not care. I am crazy to hear my father's voice. When he stand up to speak my heart knock in my breast like the stick-kettle when the people dance.
"He speaks. It is beautiful. I do not understand it all, but I am happy because my father is a good, kind man who wishes good to all the poor people. Always he is working for the people, he says. His voice was as sweet and strong as an organ in church. When I hear him speak I know for sure he is my father, because I feel the same inside as him, but I cannot speak it.
"After that I think much I go to see him. I am afraid and I am not afraid. I think why should I be afraid, he is kind, he feels for poor people. I think maybe I go as a poor girl, and not tell him I am his daughter. At last I go.
"When I see his house I am scare again. It is as big as a hill. It has a hundred windows. Long time I walk outside the yard. 'You are a fool,' I say to me. 'You have done nothing against him; he will not be angry.' At last I go to the door. A man comes. He say my father is out and close the door to me. As I am going down the steps my father comes in his motor-car. He asks me what I want. I say I want to see him. He laugh and take me inside with him, into a room. It is like a dream. My legs are shaking.
"It is a beautiful room with high windows. All around the walls there are books with different coloured covers. There is a big desk, and he sit behind it, and lean back and pull off his gloves. He smile. He has beautiful white teeth, like my mot'er tell me, and he ask me again what I want. I am so scare I say the first thing I think. I ask him for a job.
"He is very kind. He say: 'Certainly we will find you work. What can you do?'
"I say I am a good laundress, or a cook, or a nurse. We talk some more. He is still kind. He ask me how long I been in Winnipeg, and where I work and all. Always I am too scare to say in that fine room: 'I am your daughter.'
"At last he say: 'Well, come back to-morrow, and I'll see what I can do.' Then I start to go, and he say: 'Wait a minute.' He get up and come around the desk, his eyes go bad——"
She paused. Ralph's heart beat thickly with a horrible premonition.
"I run out of the house," Nahnya faltered. "I never tell him. I never see him again!"