Ralph lay under a blanket roof staring at the fire. Sleep was banished to the other side of the world from his eyelids. His body was still, and his brain with inconceivable rapidity and completeness was flashing pictures before his inner eye. So vivid, so involuntary was this process, that he felt as if it were taking place independently of him. There he lay, the quiet self that he knew, with a mad, foreign sprite turning the wheels inside his skull, and he helpless to think or to act in his own person.
The pictures were all of Nahnya: Nahnya as he had first regarded her, a common Indian girl, blind fool that he was, Nahnya sleeping with a smile, on the deck under the lantern; Nahnya glorious at the helm in the rapids; Nahnya, flashing-eyed, defending herself from him—the beast that he had been! Nahnya weeping in the grass at midnight; Nahnya reproachful and despairing when she found the white man in her sanctuary; and finally Nahnya as she had unconsciously revealed herself in all the phases of her own story: modest, true, and brave as Ruth, and intolerably persecuted.
"Oh, heaven! what a shame!" he cried, with a heart wrung with rage and compassion. "And I can do nothing to square it! O God! how noble she is! And how beautiful!"
Beauty seemed of lesser moment to him now. His soul prostrated itself before the shining gold of the character she had revealed. Simple and strong and self-forgetful as a saint of the middle ages, he saw her. "If this is to be an Indian," he thought wildly, "I will be one! God knows, she makes me ashamed of my own race!"
He was tormented by the necessity of unburdening his breast to Nahnya. At the conclusion of her story with too much emotion he had been dumb. Before he was able to speak she had escaped him. Now the thought that she might doubt what he felt was dreadful to him. Nahnya, he knew, was too prone to blame herself. Her sad cry more than once repeated: "I think I have a curse upon me!" broke his heart. He was mad to reassure her. It was intolerable to be obliged to wait until morning.
By and by his little fire died down, and across the lake, above the superb peak in the centre of the eastern wall, he became aware of a delicate radiance in the sky. His heart rose, thinking it was dawn.
But this was a tenderer and more unearthly light than day. The great peak was silhouetted against it, the outline faintly luminous. Ralph was struck by its likeness to a titanic thumb; the thumb of the Earth Maker, as the red men say. It was the same peak that he had seen from the other side. Presently there appeared above it the blade of a silver scimitar. The wasted moon slowly mounted the ramp of heaven, like a lady wan with a sorrow bravely borne—like Nahnya.
Her light descended into the valley with ineffable tenderness. The trees on the nearer shore were painted with a brush of silver-dust, and the light of dreams was spread on the grass. The lake was no longer a lake of water, but of a fairy vapour that slowly crept across to the opposite shore as the shadow of the mountain retreated. The whole valley was like a bowl slowly filling with moonlight poured from the tilted silver chalice held aloft.
Only to those whose hearts have become prescient through suffering does the moon fully reveal herself. Ralph with a catch of the breath beheld her for the first. The soft potency of her beauty drew him out from under his blanket to stand upright in the purifying rays. His pain was at the same time soothed and deepened, like a tearing rapid received into still water below. The ugly, nagging thoughts that throng upon the agitation of wakefulness were exorcized, and the great matter stood out clear.
"I love her!" Ralph silently vowed to the moon. "Please God I'll make myself worthy of it! I'll make up to her if I can something of what she has suffered!"
He sat down at the edge of the bank where Nahnya had sat that day. A great wave of emotion made a clean sweep through him, drowning selfishness, and lifting his better self high on its crest. Everything in him was changed, he felt. All his life up to this moment had been a sordid affair; it should be different hereafter. For the first time Ralph was caught up to the heights of emotion, and the poor youth thought he could remain there.
On the deepest note of his heart he breathed: "Thank God for something noble to love!"
Across the lake the mountain under the moon was still black down to the water's edge, but about its summit certain planes of snow had caught the moonlight, making an effect of weird, pale loveliness up there. Behind him the mountains to the west were fully revealed. Withdrawn and misty in the moonlight they suggested not hard facts of rock and ice and snow, but lovely, suspended fantasies of the imagination.
The strip of beach with the canoes lying upon it was at Ralph's feet. Very slowly through the haze of his dreams he became aware that there were only two canoes below instead of the three that belonged there. When the fact fully penetrated his understanding, his heart bounded in his breast. Was it possible that Nahnya——! He knew that, like himself, she had no love for a sleepless bed. If he could only find her somewhere in the moonlight, and pour out the weight of emotion that overcharged his breast! Leaping down the bank, he lifted one of the remaining canoes into the water, and embarked.
He found her. Half a mile up the lake, out in the middle, she was resting on her paddle, woman and canoe making a graceful shadow-picture in the path of moonlight. Hearing him coming, she made no effort to escape, nor when their canoes gently collided, expressed any surprise at his coming. He could not see into her face, but from her still air he guessed that the moonlight had softened her, too. Seeing her so still and lovely, his heart swelled in his breast, throttling speech again. Clinging to the gunwale of her canoe, he could only look at her. They faced each other in the attitude of prayer.
Nahnya spoke first. "It is beautiful to-night," she said softly. The pain had gone out of her voice.
"Sunlight or moonlight," Ralph said simply, "this is the most beautiful place I have ever seen."
There was a light breeze from the direction of camp. It swung the two canoes gradually around, and propelled them slowly up the lake. The moon now shone in Nahnya's face. Like the brush of a master-painter it blotted out unessential detail in order to reveal in dim, suggestive lights and shadows the very spirit of beauty dwelling there. Ralph thought he had already encompassed her beauty and he was amazed. He leaned toward her, gazing like a despairing sinner at a vision of heaven. There was a long silence.
It terrified Nahnya. Obliged to say something, anything to break it, in her agitation she said the wrong thing. "It is late. We must go back."
"Late!" cried Ralph, suddenly finding speech. "What does it matter! What does anything matter! I must speak to you. There will never be another night, another time like this!"
Again the sweet and terrible silence that discharged lightnings from heart to heart. Nahnya, half-swooning, still resisted the current desperately.
"I must go," she murmured, and picked up her paddle.
Ralph clung to her canoe. She could not escape him.
"That was a wonderful story you told me," he murmured at last.
This provided her a loophole of escape from the tender influences that betrayed her. "Wonderful!" she said in a stronger voice, and bitterly. "It is an ugly story!"
"Ugly for the beasts of white men you were thrown among!" he cried with rising indignation that half suffocated him. "I always hated the life of cities. Now I am ashamed of my race into the bargain. Nahnya, if I could make it up to you in some way!"
"It is nothing to me now," she said quickly.
"Nahnya, I've got to tell you how it made me feel," he went on in a low, moved voice. "I couldn't sleep without telling you. It made me mad with rage that things like that could happen to a woman like you. You ought to be the happiest woman in the world! And—and there's something else. I wish I could say it right. You don't know how fine you are, Nahnya. It is you who are wonderful. I never knew anybody like you. When I think of myself, what I have been, I feel as if I should go down on my knees to you. I suppose every man is born with a dream in his heart of a woman like you, brave and good and true like you, but few men meet her!"
This was infinitely worse to her than the silence. "Don't talk! Don't talk!" she murmured in a voice sharp with apprehension. "It hurts me!"
Ralph's bursting heart having found an outlet was not to be stopped. "I love you!" he said.
A queer little cry escaped her. She instinctively drove her paddle into the water, but Ralph clung to her canoe. She dropped the paddle, and covered her face with her hands.
Ralph, misinterpreting the cry, was wounded to the quick. "It's not the same," he cried. "I am different from those others. I love you truly. With the best there is in me. This is for life, Nahnya."
"Me, a red girl," she murmured. "You are crazy!"
"I don't care about that," he said quickly. "You're the woman I have dreamed of all my life!"
Her hands came down from her face, and gripped the sides of the canoe. Ralph quickly covered one of them with his own. She snatched her hand away. "Stop! Stop!" she murmured. "This is madness! You and I! What good could come of it!"
"Come of it?" said Ralph. "I'm asking you to marry me."
"Marry!" she whispered, with a piteous catch in her breath. Her hands were twisted together in a way that he knew. "Let me go!" she said imploringly. "Please,pleaselet me go!"
"No!" he said grimly. "There's no use running away from it! You and I have got to have it out here and now!" His voice deepened into tenderness again. "I love you," he said. "I ask you to marry me. Why does that distress you so?"
"Wait!" she whispered shakily. "We must quiet down. We must think. There is much to be said. I must say it. Let me be quiet!"
"All right," he said, on his deepest note. "I'll wait. When it's the real thing a man can be patient!" He suddenly leaned toward her again. "Ah! if you knew how I loved you! With every bit of good there is in me! I want to do the best thing for you. I want to take care of you! I can't tell you how I feel. It will take years to show it!"
"Oh, don't!" she whispered painfully and low. "This hurt me more than—those things I told you. Nothing can come of it! I have a curse on me!"
"That's nonsense!" cried Ralph quickly. "I'll take care of the curse!"
"There is no place in all the world where we could go," she breathed.
"We will stay here!" said Ralph. "Don't you understand I am willing to give up everything I have known. It's no sacrifice, because I never set any store by it anyway. There's a good work to be done here, I'll help you."
"You are white," she murmured. "You cannot help here!"
"Nahnya!" he cried reproachfully.
"Wait!" she said. "Let me say it all! It must be said!" Her voice was gaining in strength and assurance. "I much wish I could say it just right! They are happy here now. I have sworn to St. Jean to keep them from the whites!"
"St. Jean Bateese likes me," put in Ralph.
"Why not?" she said. "We think you are a good man. But you are white. You have the white man's strong eye. Oh! if I could say it right! If you come here, you do not want it, but you are soon the master. You have many thoughts they cannot understand, white men's thoughts, and your eye is more strong than theirs. They try to be like you and they lose themselves. They cannot be the same as you, and so they are nothing!"
"But you," said Ralph, "you and I understand each other, and you get along here."
"Because I have the same blood in me," she answered. "I know them without speaking. You do not know them."
"I will make myself one of them!" cried Ralph.
"I have seen white men do that," Nahnya said relentlessly. "When they come live in a tepee, Indian way, the red people scorn them. The white men hang their heads and look sideways like beaten dogs. They never forget they white once. That is worse."
Ralph, in his eagerness to persuade her, scarcely listened to what she said. "If you don't want me here, let us go and live outside the valley," he said. "You have started them right; you could come and see them sometimes. I would not come."
She shook her head. "It is madness!" she murmured. "Always I am thinking that. If you marry me, other white men laugh and call you fool. If all white men think little of you, you never be big man among them. By and by, soon now, white women will be come in this country. White women hate me, and hate you for taking me. We always alone. You sicken of me then. Oh! I have seen it! If I have children they are cursed like me." She paused. Passion shook the quiet voice. "I would kill my children before that come to them!" Her voice rose, impatient at last with too much pain. "I can't say it right! What's the use! Somehow it is wrong. White must mate with white, and red with red. Me, I am nothing. I will go alone!"
Her last words stabbed at his breast like a knife. He leaned toward her. "I won't have it!" he cried passionately. "You make me mad when you talk that way! You're crazy on the subject! Oh, I don't blame you! The finest woman God ever made to be wasted! It's not possible! I love you with all my heart and soul! I think you love me back again—you hesitate. What do all these things matter? If you love me you've got to marry me!"
"I hesitate? Why not?" she said quickly. She had command of herself now. "I am a poor red girl. A white man, a doctor, ask me to marry him. It is a great thing for me. I hesitate. But I know now. I will not do it."
"Give me a straight answer!" cried Ralph. "Do you love me?"
There was silence for the space of time between the opening and the closing of a door. Ralph hung upon her answer with all his faculties suspended. He heard her draw a steadying breath.
"No!" she said.
The soft clearness with which she produced it was horribly convincing. So strong a spell had her honesty cast upon him, that he never questioned her denial. He fell back into his own canoe, and the two drifted a little apart. He remained motionless on his knees, his hands grasping the gunwales mechanically. His world was tumbling around his ears. The moonlight was flat and garish. As yet he felt no pain; only an immeasurable disgust of living.
Nahnya became alarmed by his silence. "What are you thinking?" she asked sharply.
With an immense effort Ralph pulled himself together. "It's all right," his lips said. The voice that issued from them was strange in his ears. "I have been a fool, that's all. You are not to blame in any way."
He picked up his paddle like an automaton. "Let us go back," he said, in the same quiet, stiff voice.
Later he said: "I will go away just as soon as I can leave your mother."
"I can dress her arm," Nahnya said, "or Ahahweh can. I have teach her."
"All right," Ralph said. "I'll start back to-morrow."
Ralph wished to leave the valley by himself. After what had happened, to be with Nahnya night and day without ever meeting her eyes, or exchanging a word beyond what the business of camp made necessary, seemed like the very refinement of torture. But there was no help for it. It was too hard to go back upstream, Nahnya said; they must go out a different way, and she must show him.
She took Charley, which made it easier. They set off next morning. In his instinct to conceal pain, Ralph was as much an Indian as any of them. No one could have guessed from his composed face what had happened. Such natures consume themselves inwardly. He was scarcely conscious of what was taking place outside him.
Charley was nothing loath at the prospect of another journey. Little by little the Indian boy had come to be at his ease with Ralph. His stolidity, it appeared, was largely an affectation for the purpose of impressing white strangers. He now talked freely to Ralph in a queer jargon of English and Cree of what interested him, hunting and animals and making trips. St. Jean Bateese, too, who accompanied them to the mouth of the cave, stuck close to Ralph's side, and betrayed an unaffected regret at his going away.
"I can win them all but her," thought Ralph bitterly.
Before the cave swallowed him, Ralph looked for the last time at the lake with its sheen like a peacock's breast; at the kingly mountains drenched with sunshine, and at the mad, green meadows with their white-stemmed birches. "I leave myself here," he thought. He grimly clenched the stem of his pipe between his teeth.
During the long traverse under the mountain, Ralph spoke but once. Passing the scarecrow, he asked why it had been set up there. Charley explained that it was to keep the animals out. The man-smell which clung to his clothes was sufficient.
On the site of their last camp in the great forest they spelled for a meal. Afterward Nahnya brought the handkerchief to Ralph with a deprecating air.
"That's ridiculous now," cried Ralph, turning red. "I won't be carried down like a cripple!"
Nahnya, not looking at him, asked quietly: "You promise never to come this way again?"
"No!" said Ralph instantly. He could not have told why the word sprang from his lips. Perhaps it was that hope cannot be killed dead in a lover's heart while it beats.
The bandage was put on. Upon Ralph's promise not to disturb it, they refrained from binding his arms. And so after all he was carried down, chafing all the way. An instinct of caution kept him from telling them he knew he could find his way back anyway if he chose.
Carrying him downhill was comparatively easy. When they halted at last and the bandage was removed, Ralph found they were still immured in the forest, but from a murmur of the rapids that reached his ears, he knew they had come almost to the river.
"We will travel all night," Nahnya said, "so you not have your eyes blinded. Better sleep now."
He did sleep. He had had none the night before.
They awoke him to eat. Once more the bandage was put on, and he was carried, but only for a little way. They came out beside the river, and he was laid on the flat rock. He heard them launch the boat, and stow their baggage. Then he was laid on the blankets and they pushed off.
Ralph had supposed they would go back at least part of the way they had come. His surprise was therefore great when he heard the roar of the rapids growing closer, and realized they were going on down. His hand instinctively shot to the bandage over his eyes. Remembering in time that he had given his word, he clenched it instead, and ground his teeth.
Nahnya, understanding something of what was passing through his mind, said: "This is an easy rapid. I know all the rocks in it."
There was the same breathless pause while the whole firmament was filled with the roaring of the waters; the startling plunge and mad leaping below; the same sudden subsidence into an unnatural calm. It was like dreaming of falling over a precipice. From the quickness with which the roar dulled to a murmur behind them Ralph realized they were carried down at an astonishing speed. He wondered grimly if ever before a blind man had been taken down great rapids in a crazy dugout.
Some time later Nahnya leaned over and took the bandage from around his head. It was dark, or nearly so. At first he saw only towering mountain masses on either hand, and overhead the stars beginning to come out. Sitting up, he was amazed at the metamorphosis of the river. It was the ragged, violent Rice River when he had seen it last. Here was a volume and majesty that stream had never suggested. In mere size it was trebled, and its banks were flung up to the stars. The overwhelming shadow mountains seemed to be drawing back courteously to allow the mighty stream to pass. To see such a place for the first at night, added to its majesty. Ralph was dimly conscious that he was beholding one of the great sights of earth.
His subconscious mind never ceased to register every detail by the way that might help him to learn where he was, and to find his way back if need be. Looking over his shoulder he could see a faint glow in the sky up-river. So it was true, as he had supposed, they were travelling east. What river this was, or what mountains, he did not know; though he guessed that in North America there was but one such mountain chain. He tried to calculate the speed at which they were travelling by current and paddle. The river made no sound except here and there where it snarled over an obstruction alongshore, but he knew from the way the points on shore marched past that their speed was considerable. Finally passing close beside an exposed bar he had something to measure by, and he was astonished. Ten miles an hour he would have said, did it not seem incredible.
By and by Charley with a word to Nahnya put his paddle aboard, and stretched himself in the bottom of the dugout. Soon his deepened breathing gave notice that he slept. Nahnya, too, took in her paddle, and sat still, letting the current carry them. The eddies waltzed them slowly around and back, and the stars circled over their heads.
This was the hardest part of Ralph's ordeal. To be alone with her under the stars, and not to be able to touch her, nor to speak of what was cracking his heart, seemed more than a man ought to be called upon to bear. His streak of stubborn manliness would not allow him to reopen the discussion of the night before. "I have my answer," he said to himself. "It is enough! I will not whine!"
And so he sat in silence thinking his painful thoughts, and she in silence thinking hers—but whether they were painful he could not guess. The question tormented him, and finally sprang from his lips:
"What are you thinking of, Nahnya?"
"Nothing," she said quickly, with a suggestion of sullenness in her voice.
It hurt him shrewdly. "Can't we be friends?" he burst out. "Can't I speak to you?"
She made no answer, and he sat fuming and nourishing his grievance. After a long time, when he had given up hope of hearing her speak, she said softly:
"I sorry, Ralph. You take me by surprise. I not know what to say. I want to be friends. I cannot tell my thoughts."
At the unexpected touch of gentleness, remorse and renewed tenderness melted him like wax. "Oh, Nahnya," he said brokenly, "I'm sorry! Why can't you tell me?"
"I not know how to give them words," she said simply. "Maybe they are not thoughts, but feelings."
"What are the feelings?" he asked.
"Please!" she said imploringly. "I cannot talk. I have say everything before."
"There's something I want to tell you," Ralph said haltingly, grateful for the darkness that covered him. "Words don't come any too easy to me, either. I want you to know that I'm not sore like a spoiled child that can't have what he wants. I don't seem to matter to myself as much as I did. It goes deeper. I want to tell you I'll never change, Nahnya, not in fifty years, if I live so long. No matter what may happen in between, if I could ever help you—— Oh! I talk like a fool! but I've got to say it! If I could ever help you, I'd come from across the world. Expecting nothing, you know, but just to help you! Oh, damn! If I could feel that you would let me help you it—it wouldn't hurt so much!"
"I would let you help me if you could," she murmured.
"Your hand on that!" he said.
She gave him her hand over his shoulder. Gripping it, he pressed it hard to his cheek, and a single cry was wrung from him:
"Oh, Nahnya, my dear love!"
Gritting his teeth, he forced the rest back. "I will not whine!" he muttered to himself.
Nahnya sat behind him like a ghost woman, giving no sign.
Dawn broke over the river ahead of them, and the sun rose and shone straight through the noble pass. Charley awoke, and the three of them took paddles. They left the principal mountain chain behind them, and thereafter the river pursued a circuitous course through wide flats and around the bases of lesser heights. They breakfasted on an exposed stony bar, obtaining fuel from a fantastic jam of drift-logs left at high water.
As the sun approached the meridian, Nahnya produced the bandage again. Her face expressed the old, wistful, inscrutable blank. Never was there such a woman for ignoring all that had passed.
"We going to land soon," she said. "I take it off then."
Ralph submitted.
They landed within sound of another rapid, a hollow, throaty roar. After a wait to unload the canoe and pack their slender baggage on their backs, Ralph was led up the bank, and as his moccasined feet told him, put upon a well-beaten trail.
"Put your hand on Charley's shoulder and follow," Nahnya said. "It is a good trail. You will not fall."
After a few minutes Nahnya took off the bandage, and Ralph found that they were swallowed in the bush once more. But this was only a forest of thickly springing aspen saplings, with straight white stems, and twinkling, trembling bright leaves. The trail wound ahead of them and behind like an endless brown ribbon. Centuries of moccasined travel, not to speak of the hoofs and paws that used it surreptitiously, had packed the earth too hard for anything to grow.
Always looking out for any evidences of his whereabouts, Ralph thought: "This must be a main route of travel."
Once climbing a hill, he had a glimpse of the river behind them. Thence uphill and down the trail led them over a rough and characterless country. The aspen trees were springing from the ashes of the original forest. There were raw open spaces filled with the charred remains of the monarchs, mantled with the purple-red bloom of the fire-weed. Through the openings Ralph saw lesser mountain heights, green to the summit. He called it an unbeautiful land. As far as he could judge the general trend of the trail was northeastward, but the trail twisted continually, and he often lost the sun.
They had covered, he guessed, between twelve and fifteen miles, when Nahnya called a halt. They were in a little stretch of grass fringing a still streamlet.
"We stop here till midnight," she said. "All will sleep."
Ralph awoke about sunset to find that he and Charley were alone in camp. His heart winced, remembering the other times she had stolen away from camp and he had followed her. This time he did not go. Soon he saw her coming back in the trail with an axe upon her shoulder. He thought that her footsteps dragged, and that her face betrayed an unutterable, sad weariness. Rising quickly, he found he was mistaken. It was the old, walled face that she showed him.
"We start in five hours," she said quietly. "Sleep some more." She lay down at a little distance.
It was very dark when they arose and made up their packs. Continuing on the trail they were obliged to keep close together. Presently they commenced to zigzag down a long hill where the trail was much broken and washed by rain. Ralph, putting his feet into holes, and catching his toes on exposed roots, made but rough going of it. They reached the bottom at last, and the trail became good again, but Nahnya, who was leading, presently struck off from it, and they crossed a wide meadow, their moccasins swishing through the grass.
The sky was heavily overclouded. Ralph could barely make out Nahnya close ahead; everything else was swallowed up in the thick darkness. Nevertheless Nahnya seemed to know exactly where they were. At a certain point in the grass, without any distinguishing features that Ralph could see, she stopped, saying:
"We wait here till it is light. You can sleep if you want."
Dawn brought another dramatic surprise: They were resting almost at the edge of a steep declivity of earth, and two hundred feet below moved another great, smooth, swift stream, its eddying surface gleaming in the gathering light like creased satin, or as if the water were flowing shallowly over a mirror. It stretched away far to the left, confined deep between its dim, bare heights, like a luminous ribbon. Downstream were several fairy-like islands half-revealed through the mist with their unreal foliage.
It was a kind of gigantic trough that confined the river. From the edge of the bank the land stretched back in gentle undulations. Behind them and off to the left as far as they could see rolled an unbroken sea of grass showing a strange, dark green in the half-light. To the right about half a mile away the wooded hills began, rising tier behind tier. The river first appeared foaming from behind a spur of these hills. Behind him in the grass Ralph was astonished to discover two ancient log shacks with boarded windows and padlocked doors. They reminded him with a faint shock of the existence of fellow white men.
Nahnya was busy wrapping a pack within blankets. After cording the bundle and tying it, she gave it to Charley, and with a laconic command, led the way down the precipitous slope. They scrambled and slid down to the water's edge, accompanied by miniature avalanches of gravel. At the bottom, drawn up on the stones, there was a little raft made of four lengths of dead timber lashed together with a strong light cord. A little paddle was stuck between the logs. The cord was the same that had been used to bind him; a length of it was now around the pack that Charley carried. Ralph recognized Nahnya's handiwork. This was what she had been doing with the axe during the previous afternoon while he and Charley slept.
Nahnya and Charley pushed the raft into the water until only its forefoot remained resting on the stones. Charley held it from floating away while Nahnya, kneeling on the logs, tied the pack firmly to a cross-piece. Having done this she came ashore, and an awkward silence descended on the trio. Ralph waited apathetically for her next order, but none was issued. The resourceful Nahnya for once was at a loss. Her back was turned to Ralph; Charley continued to kneel, holding the raft.
Ralph's mind, dulled with pain and from insufficient sleep, did not grasp the significance of these preparations. From the first he had been used to leaving all details of the journey to Nahnya, and he took little notice of what they carried. It was he who broke the silence.
"This little thing is never big enough to carry the three of us," he said listlessly.
"Sure!" said Charley with a grin.
Nahnya said nothing. She kept her head averted from Ralph. She twisted her hands until the knuckles were white. Ralph remembered this later.
He stepped on board the raft to test its buoyancy. As he did so, Charley with a heave of his back launched it out on the current. Then Ralph understood. He spun around, a dreadful pain transfixing his breast.
"Nahnya!" he cried, in a voice wild with reproach.
Her back was stubbornly turned to him, her head sunk between her shoulders, her hands pressed over her ears. Charley still knelt on the stones, his dark face working oddly.
"Good-bye, Hooralph!" he cried.
In the confusion of surprise, dismay, anger, and pain that, shattered him, Ralph's eyes conveyed only one idea to his brain—Nahnya's hands pressed to her ears. His essential stubbornness responded. "She'll hear no more cries!" he cried to himself, clenching his teeth.
To shut out the agonizing sight of her receding on the shore, he flung himself down full length to bury his head in his arms. He took no thought of the instability of his craft. Rolling off the centre, the logs sank under him, tipping him into the icy water.
Quickly as it happened, he heard Nahnya's cry before he went under. It was no ordinary sound of terror, but a cry of agony exactly attuned to the pain in his own breast. Even as the water closed over his head he heard and understood, and everything was changed.
He immediately rose to the surface again. The raft, relieved of its burden, had righted, and still floated beside him. Man and raft were being carried down together in the current. Grasping the logs, he turned his head. An unforgettable picture was etched on his brain; Nahnya, waist-deep in the water, straining toward him, and Charley desperately dragging her back. There could be no mistaking that act, nor the cry preceding it. Everything was changed.
Life blossomed again. He did not feel the paralyzing chill of the water. Pain winged out of his breast, giving place to a joy so keen it was still like pain. But he could gladly have died of this pain. He knew for sure that she loved him.
Ralph wriggled his body back upon the unstable raft, and snatched up the paddle. The clumsy float responded but sluggishly to his desperate strokes. The current was running five miles an hour, and its tendency is to draw all floating objects into the centre of the stream. Even as he worked, he was carried around a point out of sight of Nahnya and Charley. The water flew from his blade in a cascade, and still he appeared to be gaining nothing on the shore. The resisting logs and the unresisting water combined to defeat him. It was like fighting feathers. He could have wept with rage at the insensate indifference of matter to his desire.
He was carried down a third of a mile before he could land. Drawing up the raft, he ran back over the stones like a man distracted. Rounding the point, he saw that Nahnya and Charley had disappeared. Without giving himself a pause for breath he commenced to claw his way up the towering height of gravel, which continually gave way under him, dropping him back. He felt as if all Nature was in league against him.
When he finally rose over the top, in all the wide expanse of grass there was no sign of the two he sought. He flung himself down then, abandoned to despair. It was as if he had been given a glimpse of heaven, only to be thrust deeper than ever into the pit. Perspiration was streaming from him, and his heart was staggering. A heart has its limitations; he had forgotten that, making that fearful climb.
When the pain subsided, and his brain was able to work again, he thought it all out. It was useless for him to pursue the two if they did not wish to be caught. He had not the woodcraft to find their tracks in the grass. True, he was pretty sure they had gone back into the hills over the way they had come, but before he could find the beaten trail they would have several miles start. Long before he could overtake them they would recover their boat. He had no food, nor firearms by which to obtain any. Despondency seized upon him. He lay inert and indifferent.
By and by hope began to stir, as it has to do in a healthy young breast. After all, matters were not as bad as before. She loved him. That being so, what a poor thing he was to give up. He sat up again. What was to prevent him from getting a proper outfit at the nearest trading-post, and returning? How thankful he was that an instinct had kept him from promising not to return. The summer was young; June had not completed her course. If Nahnya loved him, she would not stop loving him in a week or a month.
He stood up, ashamed of his weakness. He made his way back to the raft.
By this time the sun was giving a grateful warmth. Taking off his outer clothes, he spread them to dry on the stones. His pack had likewise been partly wetted, and he opened that to dry. He was curious to see what Nahnya had included in it. It was unlike her to set him adrift on an unknown river without preparing him for what was in store below. As he had half expected, the first thing he saw upon opening the bundle was a note in Nahnya's nunlike hand. It was without salutation.
"There are no rapids in this river," it ran, "before you get to Fort Cheever. Always keep in the middle of the river. You will come to Fort Cheever before the sun goes down. You will see the houses a long way. Then you must keep close to the shore so you are not carried past. The steamboat come to Fort Cheever. Good-bye. Annie Crossfox."
Ralph read and reread this prosaic communication, searching wistfully between the lines for some intimation to reassure him of her love. There was nothing of the kind. "Under the circumstances what else could she write?" he asked himself, with fine reasonableness. But his heart sunk unreasonably. He carefully stowed the letter away.
Within the bundle was a small store of rice-cakes and cold roasted moose-meat, also a little copper pot with tea and sugar. The sight of the last items encouraged Ralph. Tea was worth more than gold to them; sugar they denied themselves altogether. Besides the food he saw his medicine case, and everything else that belonged to him; his eye passed over it carelessly. A fat little moosehide bag sharply arrested his attention. Lifting it, he had no need to look inside. It was gold, a respectable weight to lift, two thousand dollars, he guessed.
An angry pain contracted his breast. "She pays me, and turns me off," he thought bitterly. "Does she think I did it for this?"
His first impulse was to drop it in the river. A better thought restrained him. He tried to put himself in Nahnya's place. "She's conscientious," he thought. "Even though she might guess it would hurt my feelings, she would feel obliged to pay me. But she shouldn't have given me so much."
As he continued his reflections, with a hand upon the little, swollen bag, his eyes began to shine. "I know how to get square with her," he was thinking "I will buy her a magnificent present with it. She's a woman after all. She can't be indifferent to beautiful things!"
Throughout the day Ralph had all the time there was to reflect upon what had happened. Hour after hour he sat on the little raft nursing his knees, his eyes, generally observant enough, turned within. He never could have told of that part of the journey, except to describe in general terms the unchanging flow of the jade-coloured river, with its endless procession of steep, grassy hills on either hand. The burden of his thoughts was: "You fool! To let her send you away! You should have seized her and held her and forced her to confess!"
When Ralph climbed the bank at Fort Cheever, about eight o'clock that evening, he came face to face with a white man. Years seemed to have rolled between him and his own race. In time it was eleven days. This man was a fine specimen; up-standing, broad, and lean, with a bearded, grim, whimsical countenance.
"Make you welcome!" he cried, extending an enormous hand. "Saw you coming from upstream."
There was something instantly likable in his strength and directness. Ralph returned his greeting with a good will.
"Sit down," the man said, pointing to a bench at the foot of the flag-staff. "Soon as I saw you coming, I told the old woman to put on a bit of supper. She'll send one of the little lads down with it when 'tis ready." He looked at Ralph with a strong and friendly interest. "You're young!" he said. "Thought I knew everybody up and down the river. You must have come from across the mountains."
Ralph nodded. This was safe.
"Risky travelling alone," the man said, with a shake of the head. "It isn't done much." He offered Ralph his tobacco pouch.
Sitting side by side they filled their pipes. After the obvious commonplaces had been exchanged, a somewhat constrained silence fell between them. Ralph had instantly perceived that this man had the instincts of a gentleman, and would not stoop to catechize him. For that very reason Ralph felt obliged to give an account of himself. Here he was in a pretty quandary. He did not even know the name of the river that flowed before them.
"I'm David Cranston, the trader here," volunteered his host.
Ralph gave his name, adding: "I'm a doctor, if it's any use to you, or any of your people here."
"Sure!" said Cranston heartily. "You shall sound us all! It will be a treat to them. You must stop here a while. I don't get many white men to talk to."
Ralph beat his brains for an expedient whereby he might find out what he had to know, without making himself out a madman or an imbecile. Finally he said: "I suppose I can get an outfit from you?"
"Going back?" said Cranston in surprise. "Sure, you can get an outfit. I'm out of nearly everything at this moment, but I'm looking for the steamboat every day. She will bring me my year's stock."
Here was a clue. "How far down the river does the steamboat run?" asked Ralph carelessly.
"Fort Ochre," said Cranston. "She was built there."
Ralph was no wiser than before.
"How do you figure on going back?" asked Cranston.
"That's what I've got to find out," said Ralph.
"Well, I can give you horses to carry all you want to the other side of the portage, with a couple of natives to drive them back. The trail is good. Have you got a boat at the portage?"
Ralph felt himself floundering. He did not know where the portage was. "No," he said.
Cranston turned astonished eyes on him. "Then how in Sam Hill do you expect to go back up the river?" he demanded to know.
Ralph felt himself turning red. "Thought I could make a boat," he said at a venture.
Cranston shook his head strongly. "There isn't a grown cottonwood tree to make a dugout within twenty miles of the portage. It was all burned over eighteen years ago."
Ralph tried another line. "Have you got a map?" he asked.
Cranston shook his head. "Only in my head," he said. "I've been in this country thirty years. Do you mean to say you rafted it down the upper river?" Cranston asked presently. "How did you make the Grumbler rapids?"
Ralph turned red again. He did not know how to answer. At the same time he began to understand that the two rivers he had travelled upon were one and the same, and that the well-beaten trail must be the portage Cranston had referred to.
Cranston, observing his confusion, said quickly:
"There, it's none of my business. I don't want to pry into your affairs. An old-timer like me can't help but feel concerned seeing a youngster trying to make his way, without knowing what he is up against."
Ralph was naturally of a candid disposition, and his inability to respond to the other man's generous advances made him very uncomfortable. "Look here," he said impulsively, "you naturally wonder where I've come from, and what I'm doing up here. I can't tell you. It's not on my own account, you understand. There are others in it. Will you take me as you find me?"
"Fairly spoke!" cried Cranston in his great voice. He insisted on shaking hands again. "I never want a man's story, so he speaks from his chest and looks me in the eye!"
"That's decent of you," murmured Ralph, much relieved.
"Belike you and your pals have struck something rich up there," Cranston went on. "I know the stuff's there somewhere, but it doesn't keep me awake nights. I've seen too many disappointments. I'd liever raise horses."
Two dark-skinned little boys, whom their father addressed as Gavin and Hob, brought Ralph's supper from the house, and having bashfully delivered it, stood off regarding the stranger with a mighty curiosity. Cranston sat by smoking and watching Ralph satisfy his appetite. He radiated a hospitable pleasure.
"If you're wanting to go back from here," said Cranston, "I'll tell you straight, it can't be done. Of course it was a regular company route in the old days, but they thought nothing of taking a crew of thirty Iroquois to track them upstream. A man couldn't do it alone. Why, the current runs seven mile an hour."
"I've got to go back," said Ralph, with a sinking heart. "What can I do?"
"Make the big swing around, and go in from the other side," said Cranston. "It's a long trip, but shortest in the end. Take the steamboat from here down to the Crossing; then by freighter's wagon ninety miles to Caribou Lake; then by boat down the lake and down the little river and the big river to the Landing; then another hundred miles overland to town."
"What town?" asked Ralph desperately.
"Prince George, of course," said Cranston.
At last Ralph began to have a glimmering of his whereabouts. "Then this is the Spirit River!" he cried, off his guard.
Cranston glanced at him with a twinkle under his bushy brows. "What did you think it was?" he asked dryly, "the Rhine?"
Ralph blushed. "I didn't know there was any river that flowed right through the Rockies," he muttered.
"You don't want a guide," said Cranston, with grim good nature. "You want a nurse. Take my advice: as soon as you get to town buy a geography primer!"
Ralph, in his relief upon obtaining a bit of definite information, could afford to take Cranston's jibes in good part.
"From Prince George you take the branch railway down to Blackfoot," Cranston continued, "then by the main line westward over the mountains to Yewcroft, and north up the Campbell Valley to Fort Edward. From Fort Edward——"
"I'm at home there," Ralph interrupted.
"I'm glad of that," said Cranston ironically. "Else I might think you were a visitor from the skies!"
Cranston sent the little boys back to the house with the dishes. It was growing dark, and he built a fire on the edge of the bank "for sociability," he said.
"Sorry I cannot ask you into my house," Cranston said, with a kind of honest diffidence. "There are nine of us, and we are overcrowded."
Ralph suspected from his manner that he had other reasons. He hastened to reassure him.
The two men sat until late smoking and talking by the fire. The progress of intimacy beside a campfire cannot be gauged by civilized usages. Cranston was a lonely man, and for his part, Ralph, after the overwhelming emotional experiences of the past few days, needed a sane friend to lean upon. Ralph could not talk of his affairs, but it was good to him to have Cranston beside him.
The trader's talk was all of the country. "There's only one thing bad about it," he said. "That's the mixed marriages."
Ralph pricked up his ears.
"If you're coming back," Cranston went on, "if you're going to settle here, be on your guard against the pretty native girls. Take the word of an old-timer: it is always fatal!"
A hot colour crept into Ralph's cheeks, but the flickering firelight did not betray him. He was on fire to refute Cranston, to crush him with arguments, but he fought it down, fearful of betraying his secret.
Cranston went on all unconscious: "You can't blame either party. The young fellow is lonely of course, and he thinks he is cut off from the women of his own race. As for the girl, she thinks she is made if she gets a white husband. He forgets the long procession of the generations ending in him, and she doesn't know anything about it. You cannot reconcile the two strains. Generally the man gives in. He forgets his past and sinks to her level; becomes 'smoked,' as we say.
"Once in a way the man turns out to be of harder fibre and then it is worse. For she cannot rise to him, she is made conscious of her own deficiencies, and all the hateful, stubborn qualities of the red race come to the fore. When you look to a woman for more than she can give, and she knows it, it turns her into a devil. Suppose this couple has children, and the man tries to teach them of their white heritage. The children become strangers to their mother, and who can blame her for going mad with rage? What is this father going to do with his children who are neither red nor white when they begin to grow up? what with the girls? what with the boys? That question is unanswerable."
Ralph remembered the two engaging little dark-skinned boys with the Scotch names, and his heart warmed toward their father. "Poor devil!" he thought. "He's been unlucky!" The story came no nearer to Ralph himself, for to him Nahnya was an exception, and of different clay from every other woman in the world.
While the two men were talking a woman suddenly appeared within the firelight. They had not heard her come. She was a half-breed, still handsome in a savage way, though verging upon middle age. Her features were distorted with rage, and she opened a torrent of withering invective in her own tongue upon Cranston, with malignant side shafts in Ralph's direction.
Cranston coolly knocked the ashes out of his pipe and arose. "Go back to the house, my girl!" he said, with a curious compound of firmness and patience.
The woman clutched at her hair in hysterical fury. Her voice rose to a scream.
"Go to the house!" repeated Cranston, with a commanding gesture.
Their eyes struggled for the mastery. Hers fell, and her voice died away. She turned, and the darkness swallowed her again.
Cranston looked deprecatingly at Ralph. "I didn't want you to learn my story here," he said. "You'd hear it soon enough down the river. I suspect my case is notorious. Very like the good Lord intended me for an object lesson," he went on, with characteristic grim irony. "Take warning from me! Good night to you, my lad!"
As an object lesson it was a failure, for Ralph fell asleep gloating upon how different Nahnya was.
Fourteen days later found Ralph in the metropolis of the Pacific. During the interim he had made the fifteen hundred miles swing around the country as laid out by David Cranston, except that instead of leaving the transcontinental train at Yewcroft and heading north for Fort Edward, he had come through to the coast. Here he meant to indulge himself in buying the gift for Nahnya. He had likewise supplies to lay in for the journey back to her. All the days and nights of the way out he had little to do but plan the details of the return trip. By this time all the meagre details of the published maps of that country were transferred to his brain.
Ralph's first act in town was to visit the government assay office. His dust amounted to close on two thousand dollars. Thereafter in his peregrinations through the streets a pair of sharp eyes followed his every movement. When Ralph made purchases in a store the eyes affected to be examining goods at a nearby counter; when he ate a meal in a restaurant the eyes watched him over the top of a menu card from the table behind; when he returned to the railway station and bought a ticket for Yewcroft and a berth on next day's train, the eyes next in line bought the same kind of ticket and booked a berth in the same car.
Not until they had satisfied themselves that Ralph was safe in his hotel room for the night did the eyes relax their watch on him. Then they looked for a taxi-cab. These eyes were what is known as mouse colour, which is not the colour of any breed of mouse, but a kind of yellowish gray. They were fixed in the head of a little nervous man with a sickly complexion of a lighter yellowish gray; mouse-coloured hair that stuck out in different directions, and a moustache to match, with drooping ends, ragged from being gnawed.
He had himself carried in the taxicab to an imposing residence in the west end of town. The name that he sent in was John Stack. After a certain wait the owner of the residence received him in his library. This was a Captain of Industry, rosy with fat living and nonchalant with money.
"Well, Stack, what do you want at this time o' night?" he said with good-natured insolence.
Stack's obsequiousness supplied the complement to his insolence. His smile was painfully ingratiating. "I flushed a good lead to-day," he said, with a queer imitation of the other's off-hand air.
"Heard that before," said the financier, attending to his nails.
"But I never started anything like this."
"What is it?"
"I've been watching the assay office," Stack said eagerly. "It was my own idea. We all know there's plenty of gold waiting to be found up North. Well, I haven't got the money to spend staking prospectors, and in bribing and wheedling the miners. So I watch the assay office. Everything that comes out is bound to go there."
"Well, what then?" asked the financier.
"No one knows the game better than me," Stack continued, with a little red spot in either sickly cheek. "I'm acquainted with all the known mines and diggings. I know all the old-timers in the field, and all the agents here in town. To-day a new man came in with a sweet little bag of dust. A youngster of twenty-five with the tan of high altitudes still on his skin. He was green; didn't know where to go with his dust. It was in a mooseskin bag, Indian made—nearly two thousand. He hasn't a friend here. I haven't let him out of my sight!"
"Suppose he has something good up there, how do you expect to get in on it? What do you want me to do?"
"Stake me to five hundred so I can follow him back to his claim," said Stack breathlessly.
To his relief the other man did not flout him. "How do you know he's going back?" he asked.
"He bought a folding canvas boat," said Stack eagerly; "a rifle, a revolver, and a shelter tent. He took ticket and berth to Yewcroft on to-morrow's train."
"H'm! What did he do with the two thousand?"
"Spent the whole of it on a necklace, an emerald pendant, the finest stone in town."
"A woman in the case, eh? Ain't you afraid to risk your skin among these rough guys?"
"He's a nice, decent young fellow," said Stack. "I'll make up to him. We'll be good friends before we get to Fort Edward."
"What did you come to me for?" demanded the man of money with a steely look.
The little man cringed and fawned. "You and me has turned more than one trick together," he said in a scared and silky voice. "I've been useful to you in the past. Now I got a chance to help myself. I thought maybe——"
"What do you offer me?"
"Half. I take all the risk."
It never occurred to the guileless Ralph that any one in town had any interest in his affairs. It is doubtful if during the whole of the two days he spent there he ever looked behind him. Not until he took his place in the stage at Yewcroft and sized up his fellow-passengers did he observe the small, mouse-coloured man with the insinuating smile. Ralph was not particularly impressed in his favour, but he had to have some one to talk to on the four days' trip to Lecky's Creek. Of the other passengers—a promoter and his flamboyant lady, another splendidly attired lady travelling alone, a boastful tenderfoot, and an alcoholic miner—none was at all to his taste.
At the first stopping-house the two gravitated together. Stack made it easy to make friends. Ralph, overjoyed to be clear of the city and to have his face at last turned north where his heart was, was suffering for the lack of some one to unburden himself to. When the stage went on Stack secured the place next to him.
"Fine country," he said.
It opened the floodgates. "Fine!" cried Ralph. "It's God's own country! And the farther you get from the cities, the finer it becomes! The air is purer and the people are honester! Up in the woods a man faces facts. How any young fellow with blood in his veins can be content to mess around in cities beats me!"
Stack encouraged him to talk himself out. Ralph's enthusiasm was merely general. Stack, reflecting that he had plenty of time, made no attempt to draw him. During the first day he avoided all reference to what he desired to know.
On the second day Ralph began to squirm and fidget on his seat. "Lord! what a tedious trip!" he complained. "You sit here till you lose the use of your limbs! Give me a canoe!"
"You've made this trip before?" said Stack carelessly.
"I came in for the first at the beginning of May," Ralph said.
Stack thought: "Two thousand dollars in two months! What a strike!" Aloud he said: "I suppose you're going to Fort Edward, like the rest of us."
"That's my headquarters," said Ralph.
Stack talked wisely about the real-estate business in Fort Edward, in which he designed to interest himself.
"Better leave it alone," said Ralph indifferently. "It's rotten!"
Stack insisted on the advantages of the city that was to be.
Ralph listened with growing impatience. "What do you want to make another city for?" he demanded. "Aren't there enough cities fouling the streams?"
Stack shrugged deprecatingly, and murmured something about "progress."
"Progress be damned!" said Ralph rudely. "We're progressing in the wrong direction!"
"I should like to see a bit of the real thing myself," said Stack, "but I don't suppose an inexperienced man like me could get about. If I could get a good guide!"
Ralph did not rise to the cast. "Plenty of guides," he said carelessly.
"What is the best way to go beyond Fort Edward?" asked Stack.
"There are three main routes," said Ralph; "up the Boardman to the Stukely Valley; straight north over the hills to the Campbell Lake country; or east up the Campbell River."
"What's the lake country like?" asked Stack.
"Only know it by hearsay," said Ralph. "Principally fur."
"One hears in town about the diggings in the Stukely Valley. I suppose it's pretty well worked out by now."
"I don't know," said Ralph carelessly.
"How does a man get up the Campbell River?" asked Stack.
In spite of himself a thrilled tone crept into Ralph's voice. "There's a little steamboat runs up to Gisborne portage now and then," he said, "and beyond that if any one is willing to pay."
Slight as the change was in Ralph's voice, it did not escape Stack's attentive ear. "Gisborne portage?" he said carelessly. "What is it a portage to?"
"Over to Hat Lake," said Ralph, with shining eyes.
"Aha!" thought Stack. "I'm getting warm!" He immediately changed the subject, and avoided it during the rest of the day.
On the next day he led the subject by imperceptible degrees around to the subject of maps of the country. Ralph, who had procured every map he could lay his hands on, had plenty to say on this.
"I have a map of North Cariboo that Father Ambrose the missionary made," said Stack. "Do you know it?"
"I have a copy," Ralph said.
"I was looking at it last night," Stack went on. "I found Gisborne portage and Hat Lake. That little lake seems to be one of the sources of the great Spirit River. I wonder if it's possible to follow all those little lakes and rivers down to the main stream?"
"You'll have to ask somebody more experienced than I," said Ralph.
He was an indifferent dissembler. The note of evasion was not lost on the little man. He passed to something else.
Later they were talking about rapids. "A fellow in town told me that the worst rapids in the North were in the Rice River," said Stack. "He said it was white water all the way from the mouth of the Pony to the forks of the Spirit."
Ralph was caught off his guard. "A lot he knew about it!" he said. "It's smooth going all the way."
He had no sooner said it than he regretted the slip. Looking sideways at the little man he was reassured by the innocence of his expression. Stack started to talk about other things.
Thus during the four days of the stage trip, and the day and a half on the steamboat, Stack collected his tiny scraps of information and stored them away without arousing Ralph's suspicions. Thrown upon each other as they were during the whole time, Stack managed to create and to maintain a certain fiction of intimacy between them. But as they drew close to Fort Edward he was disappointed with the net results. Of real intimacy there was none.
It was clear to any one who watched him that Ralph had a secret. When he was off his guard he could not keep his eyes from turning north, nor keep the shine of his hidden fire from showing in them. Stack naturally thought it was gold that induced the shine. In his own way the little man was clever, but hardly clever enough to distinguish between the dazzle of gold and the dazzle of love in a young man's eyes. He laid himself out to win Ralph's confidence, seeking to tempt him with more or less apocryphal confidences of his own. Ralph was never moved to open his heart in return. A resentful look began to show in the mouse-coloured eyes, when Ralph's head was turned away.
Ralph was a little surprised to find Fort Edward unchanged. The raw packing-case still rose from among the little soap-boxes; the mud was still undried; the stumps undrawn; and the littleTewksburylay with her nose tucked in the bank. True, he had been gone only a month, but such changes had taken place in him that it seemed unreasonable to find everything going on as before.
The "boys" were all waiting on the bank of course. Ralph a little dreaded the ordeal that awaited him. It is difficult to guard a secret in the wide and empty North, where men have little to talk about. When he was seen from the shore shouts of surprise and welcome were raised. The mere fact that he was returning from the south when he had gone north betrayed the length of the journey he had taken. Stack, hearing the welcome, brightened somewhat. It would not be difficult to learn something about one who was so well known, he thought.
Ralph was carried off to Maroney's, little Stack clinging to him like a burr. There, all lined up before the pine shelf, the questions began.
"Well, Doc, give an account of yourself!"
"Gentlemen!" began Ralph with an air of portentous gravity. "An astonishing adventure happened to me! I woke up in Joe Mixer's shack that morning with a dark brown taste in my mouth along of Maroney's whiskey, and I went for a walk up the river to cool my head. As I was standing there admiring the view, I heard a buzzing like a sixty-horse-power bumblebee over my head, and I'm damned if one of those aeroplanes that you've all heard about didn't come down and light in the grass beside me like a crane. Surprised! You could have laid me out with a rabbit's foot! The fellow aboard it, he was nervous, too. Seems he had only a quart of gasoline left, and him far from home. He asked me where he could get some more. I told him there wasn't a drop in the country. Maroney buys it all up, said I, to put in his whiskey."
Ralph paused to let the laughter spend itself. "The fellow was in a great taking then," he went on. "Didn't know what to do. Suddenly I remembered about Tar Island up the river. I said: 'There's a place ten miles from here where they say that petroleum oozes right out on the ground. Couldn't we gather it up and refine some gasoline?' 'You're on, fellow,' said he; 'climb aboard!' Say, we made Tar Island in five minutes, but I was deaf the rest of the day with the wind in my ears. It was a slow job, you understand, because we hadn't anything but a tin pail and a whiskey bottle and a strip of birch bark to make a still out of. We were there three weeks, and then we had him tanked up, and he flew south and dropped me off at Kimowin. That's all."
This tale, which was in the style of humour most admired at Maroney's, made a decided hit. Maroney himself conceded that the next round was on him. In every gathering of men it is tacitly understood that a man has a right to keep his affairs to himself—provided he can also keep his temper. When they saw that Ralph did not mean to tell where he had been they let him alone. Little Stack bit his lip in his disappointment. Stack had not been in the bar five minutes before the batteries of wit were turned on him. The wiry tangle of his mouse-coloured hair procured him the names of "Haystack" and "Jackstraw."
Later Dan Keach carried Ralph away to his office. This was more difficult for Ralph, because Dan as his friend had a claim on his confidence. Ralph had a story ready to tell him, but first he had to find out how far it would coincide with the Fort gossip. Joe Mixer knew where he had gone; Joe had probably told the steamboat men, and they would bring the news back with them. Still, to his surprise and relief, no one in the bar had offered to chaff him about any half-breed girl.
"What do they say about me?" he asked Dan.
"Nothing," said Dan. "You simply disappeared from Gisborne portage. They say Joe Mixer knows where you went, but he won't tell."
Ralph's conscience reproached him for the story he was about to tell, but there was no help for it. "There's no secret about it," he said carelessly. "I met some Indians going up the Campbell, and they took me along with them. I staked out a point on the river, a beautiful place, and just off the proposed line of the railway. I went on up the river to Cheval Noir Pass, and out over the new line. While I was outside I filed my claim, and now I have to go back and clear a part of the land and build a shack to fulfil the conditions."
"Is that the story you want to have circulated?" Dan asked, with the suspicion of a whimsical twinkle.
"Just as you like," said Ralph stiffly.
They returned to Maroney's for supper. Entering the dining-room they saw that there were only two vacant places remaining at the general table. As Ralph put his hand on his chair to draw it out, the fat back on his left was turned, and he found himself looking into the leering, swollen face of Joe Mixer. He waited, stiffening.
Joe sprang up. "Hello, Doc!" he cried jovially. "Welcome home! Just dropped down on a raft myself. They tell me you been having grand adventures. Sit down and tell us!"
Ralph was obliged to shake the detestable hand or precipitate a conflict on the spot.
The meal proceeded without further incident. It was not an observant crowd, and only one pair of sharp eyes across the table marked Ralph's stiffness and perceived the painful glitter in Joe's little eyes when he thought himself unobserved.
Stack patiently bided his time. Later in the evening Ralph and Dan went away together to Ralph's shack. Stack manoeuvred until he succeeded in getting Joe a little way from the others.
"I got a bottle of outside whiskey up in my room," Stack whispered. "Come on up and have a touch."
"Outside whiskey" was worth five dollars a bottle at Fort Edward. "Sure!" said Joe brightening, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand in anticipation. "Keep it quiet," he said. "There ain't enough in one bottle for the crowd."
They sat with the bottle between them. Stack played the role of the humble seeker after information about the country until he thought Joe had had enough to render him incautious.
Finally he said carelessly: "Seems to be something more in this trip of the doctor's than he wants to let on."
It had an electrical effect on Joe. His breath hissed through his teeth. His face purpled. "You're right, there's something more!" he cried with an oath. "There's a woman behind it!"
"So!" said Stack, remembering the emerald pendant.
"He took her from me by a low trick," Joe went on. "By playing the snivelling preacher, blast him! They went away together a month ago. By gad! I'll pay him out if it takes the rest of my life!"
"He's got a boat in his baggage," said Stack softly. "Maybe he's on his way back to her now."