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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57139 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Cover art]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Left half of Map of the North Cariboo Country]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Right half of Map of the North Cariboo Country]
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "_She turned a quick face at the sound of their
+footsteps_" (missing from source book)
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  SEALED VALLEY
+
+  BY
+
+  HULBERT FOOTNER
+
+  AUTHOR OF
+
+  "NEW RIVERS OF THE NORTH," "TWO ON THE
+  TRAIL," "JACK CHANTY," ETC.
+
+
+
+  _Illustrated by W. Sherman Potts_
+
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  GROSSET & DUNLAP
+  PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1914, by_
+  THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
+
+  _Copyright, 1914, by_
+  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+  _All rights reserved, including that of
+  translation into foreign languages,
+  including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+
+
+  To
+  M. R. W.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+  I.  Romance
+  II.  On Board the "_Tewksbury_"
+  III.  On the Little River
+  IV.  The Day of Days
+  V.  The Rice River
+  VI.  Blind Man's Buff
+  VII.  Bowl of the Mountains
+  VIII.  In the Valley
+  IX.  Nahnya's Story
+  X.  Moonlight
+  XI.  The Departure from the Valley
+  XII.  The Object Lesson
+  XIII.  Outside
+  XIV.  The Journey in Again
+  XV.  The Stanley Rapids
+  XVI.  The Two Girls
+  XVII.  The Granted Prayer
+  XVIII.  The Triangle
+  XIX.  New Actors on the Scene
+  XX.  The Secret Escapes
+  XXI.  The Return to the Valley
+  XXII.  Renunciation
+  XXIII.  The Last Scene
+  XXIV.  Epilogue
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"She turned a quick face at the sound of their footsteps" . . .
+Frontispiece (missing from source book)
+
+"Ralph never guessed he was being searched through and through by a
+woman's loving, jealous curiosity"
+
+"An instant later a long dugout swept into view, with four men in it"
+
+"She had raised and pointed the gun, but held her fire"
+
+
+
+
+THE SEALED VALLEY
+
+
+
+I
+
+ROMANCE
+
+One of the fairest paintings of Nature was at that point among the
+mountains of the Canadian province of Cariboo where the Campbell River
+takes the Boardman to its bosom and swings south on its pilgrimage to
+the Pacific.  Like all of Nature's more dramatic compositions, by
+reason of its very effectiveness, it was predestined to be smudged by a
+town, and the collection of shacks and tents known as Fort Edward was
+already begun.  It was conceded that Fort Edward was bound to be a
+great city when the new transcontinental passed through.  To be sure,
+railhead was still beyond the mountains, a matter of two or three
+years' construction, but the noise of the town's greatness-to-be had
+been industriously drummed up by real-estate operators outside, and
+many optimists had struggled up the three hundred miles of the Campbell
+Valley from the existing railway to be on hand in plenty of time.
+
+On a day in June of the year when the "rush" began, the settlement
+looked sodden and raw after much rain.  The two prevailing styles of
+dwellings were wet "A" tents with projecting, rusty stovepipes and new
+pine shacks of a crass yellow, having roofs of tar paper studded with
+tin-headed tacks as big as half dollars.  A single two-story building
+loomed up in the middle like a packing-case among soap-boxes.  This was
+the Fort Edward Hotel, better known as Maroney's.  The other
+habitations reached out on either hand in an irregular double row.
+
+The space within the double row was going to be "the main artery of
+traffic" some day, but where the optimists (and the real-estate
+operators) fondly foresaw automobiles and trolley cars rolling up and
+down, at present there was nothing but a parade of jagged stumps among
+which muddy paths threaded their devious ways.  Below the hotel a tiny
+stern-wheeler of quaint, lubberly design lay with her nose tucked in
+the mud of the river bank.  At eleven in the morning there were few
+humans in sight, because the black flies were in murderous fettle, and
+anyway, the principal industry of the place was--waiting for the
+railway.
+
+One had only to raise one's eyes to receive a quite different
+impression of the scene.  Where man's work looked sodden, Nature's was
+deliciously refreshed.  The world wore that honest look it shows after
+rain before the sun comes out, that calm openness under the pure light
+that casts no shadows.  The pine-clad mountains loomed near and clean
+and dark.  The cloud wrack pressed down close upon their heads, giving
+the valley the confined and intimate look of a room.  There were
+already rents in the ceiling, revealing a tender blue back-cloth.  The
+air was as sweet in the nostrils as spring water in a parched throat.
+
+Farthest from the hotel on the Campbell River side was a shack more of
+the dimensions of a chicken house than a residence for humans.  Beside
+the door was nailed a little sign obviously painted by an
+unprofessional hand, reading, "Ralph Cowdray, M.D."  Within, in the
+first of the two closets the shack comprised, sat the doctor and his
+friend Dan Reach, the telegraph operator, the first with his heels
+cocked on the packing-case that served him for a desk, the other with
+his lower extremities supported by the window-sill.  From each ascended
+a column of smoke.  The only other furniture of the room was a little
+stand of pine shelves in the corner bearing the doctor's slender
+library and pharmaceutical stock, books and bottles as new as the
+doctor's office and the doctor himself.
+
+The two men mustered forty-nine years between them, with the odd year
+on the telegrapher's side.  The doctor was a youth of middle height
+with a strong, well-knit frame, and a comely head broadest over the
+ears, with a luxuriant thatch of dark brown.  His face was strongly
+moulded, almost too heavy in its lines for his years, but oddly
+redeemed by a pair of dreamy brown eyes.  There was an interesting
+contradiction here: nose, mouth, chin, suggested a commendable
+hardihood, an honest obstinacy, while the eyes seemed to see through
+and beyond what they were turned on.  Like all resolute young men,
+Ralph regarded the softer side of his character as a weakness and hid
+it close.  Like other young men again, he paid his way through the
+world with the small change of a facetious manner, which reduces them
+all to a common, comfortable level.
+
+Ralph and Dan killed time with endless, jocular quarrelling.  Their
+dependence on each other's society in this dull little settlement had
+brought about an unusual degree of intimacy in a few weeks.  In other
+words, they were almost honest with each other.  At present Ralph's
+facetious manner only half concealed a very real grievance against life.
+
+"Romance is extinct, like the dodo," he announced.
+
+Dan was a tall, lean young man, inclining to the saturnine type.  "That
+requires examination," he said judicially.  "First, define Romance."
+
+"Romance," said Ralph, throwing back his head and puffing a tall column
+of smoke toward the ceiling--the dreaminess of his eyes had full sway
+at that moment--"Romance is every man's unrealized desire."
+
+"You contradict yourself," said Dan with provoking exactness.  "How can
+a thing be dead which was never realized?"
+
+The question was awkward, so Ralph serenely ignored it.  "Ever since I
+went into long trousers I've been looking for it," he went on lightly.
+"Nothing doing!"
+
+"Maybe that's the trouble," suggested Dan; "maybe Romance begins at
+home."
+
+"Did you ever find it?" challenged Ralph.
+
+"Never looked," returned Dan calmly.
+
+"Oh, you've no imagination!"
+
+Dan chuckled.  "According to that, Romance is only imaginary, then.
+Got you again, Doc!"
+
+Naturally these discussions never arrived anywhere.  When one was
+stumped for an answer he hit out on a new line.  The thing was to keep
+the ball in play by any device until the next meal created a diversion.
+
+"I thought college would be romantic," Ralph went on.  "I had fun of
+course, bully fun, but just the ordinary college fun.  There were
+girls, plenty of 'em, dear little things! transparent as window-glass.
+Gad! a man longs to meet a woman who can fascinate him, and stir him to
+the bottom, and keep him guessing!"
+
+"Well, let me see what we've got in Fort Edward," said Dan.  "To begin
+with, there's Biddy Maroney----"
+
+"Cut it out!" cried Ralph.  "Fatal to thoughts of Romance!  After
+college there was the medical school and the hospitals," he went on.
+"They knocked the spots out of Romance.  Say, a city doctor loses faith
+in his fellowmen.  I decided I'd hang out my shingle in the woods, and
+I came up here because it was the beyondest place I could hear of."
+
+"Thinking you'd surely find Romance somewhere back of beyond,"
+suggested Dan.
+
+"Sure!  The noble red man, you understand; the glittering-eyed
+prospector lusting for gold; the sturdy pioneer hewing a home for his
+brood in the wilderness--and all that!  Well, here I am, and what is
+it?--a village of poor suckers done up brown, like myself, by the
+real-estate sharks outside!"
+
+"Striking metaphor!" murmured Dan.
+
+"Everybody sitting on their tails expecting to be rich any day by the
+grace of God!" Ralph went on.  "And Indians! swillers of beer-dregs!
+Town scavengers!  Moreover, it's the healthiest place on earth, I
+believe.  I never get a case but a scalp wound or two after a big night
+at Maroney's.  As for Romance, she's as far away as ever!  And I'm
+getting on!"
+
+"True," said Dan, with a serious wag of the head, "you've no time to
+lose!"
+
+As a matter of fact, Ralph's youthfulness was a sore subject with him,
+as it is with all young doctors.
+
+He let the dig pass unnoticed.  "I've almost given up hope," he said.
+
+There was a knock at the door.
+
+"Here she is now," said Dan dryly.
+
+"Come in," said Ralph indifferently.
+
+It was a woman, but only an Indian woman dressed in a ridiculous
+travesty of white women's clothes.  The two young men lowered their
+feet, and exchanged a humorous glance.  After an idle look, Ralph's
+regard returned to his pipe.  To tell the truth, he had found the
+Indians around Fort Edward as patients neither profitable nor grateful,
+and he could not be expected to welcome a new one with any enthusiasm.
+Dan was the more impressed; he studied the girl with a kind of wonder,
+and from her looked curiously at his friend.
+
+"I want to see the doctor," she said, in a soft and agreeable voice.
+
+"What can I do for you?" asked Ralph, off-hand.
+
+She did not answer immediately, and he looked at her again.  Her eyes
+were bent on Dan, unmistakably conveying a polite hint.  Dan saw it and
+rose.
+
+"See you at Maroney's at dinner," he said, passing out with a backward
+glance at his friend; teasing, a little wondering still, and frankly
+envious.
+
+"Well?" said Ralph, looking his caller over with a professional eye.
+She seemed healthy.  For an Indian she was very good-looking, but this
+fact reached him only by degrees.  Her clothes were deplorable: a flat
+red hat with a pert frill balanced crazily on her glossy hair; a
+curiously tortured blue satin waist; a full woollen skirt hanging on
+her like an ill-made bag, and cheap, new, misshapen shoes.  The effect
+was as if some wag had draped a classic statue in a low comedy make-up.
+Naturally Ralph received his first impression from the make-up.
+
+In answer to his measuring glance she said: "I not sick.  I come to get
+you for my mot'er."
+
+Ralph reached for his hat.
+
+"Wait a minute," she said.  "We must talk before."
+
+"Sit down," said Ralph.
+
+She shook her head.  "I stand," she said coolly.
+
+There was a pause while she studied him with grave, troubled eyes.
+"You ver' yo'ng to be a doctor," she remarked at length.
+
+Ralph frowned in an elderly way, and bit his lip.
+
+"Are you a good doctor?" she asked.
+
+He laughed in his annoyance.  "What am I to say to that?"
+
+His laughter disconcerted her.  "I mean a college doctor," she said
+sulkily.
+
+"McGill, Bellevue," said Ralph.
+
+"I don't know those," she said.  "Have you any writings?"
+
+Ralph stared at her.  "What a question from an Indian!" he thought.  He
+began to be aware that he was dealing with a distinct individuality,
+and for the first he perceived the classic beauties obscured by the
+grotesque outer semblance.  The anatomist in him judged and approved
+the admirable flowing lines of her body, and the lover of beauty
+thrilled.  One of her greatest beauties was in the graceful poise of
+her head on her neck.  Indian women commonly have no necks to speak of.
+His gaze rose to her eyes and lost itself for a moment.  All the
+Indians he had seen hitherto had hard, flat, shallow eyes; hers had
+depth and purpose and feeling.  "Extraordinarily beautiful eyes!" he
+thought, with the start of a discoverer.
+
+His good humor restored, he showed her his diplomas, following the
+script with a forefinger, and reading aloud.
+
+"I can read," she said calmly.
+
+Ralph felt rebuked.
+
+"But that is fonny printing," she confessed.
+
+Her next question surprised him afresh.  "Can you cut?"
+
+"Cut?" echoed Ralph, gaping a little.  "You mean surgery?  Yes."
+
+"My mot'er, she break her arm," the girl explained.  "I set it myself.
+I know that.  After that I have to go away.  She take off the--what do
+you call the sticks--?"  She illustrated.
+
+"Splints," put in Ralph.
+
+"Yes, she take off the splints too soon, and try to work, and when I
+come home her arm is all crooked.  All the time it grows more
+crookeder.  She is so scare' she is sick.  Can you fix it?" she asked
+anxiously.
+
+"Surely!" said Ralph.  "The arm must be broken again and reset."
+
+"Broken again?" the girl said, with an alarmed look.  "That hurt her
+bad.  She not let you do that, I think.  Can you put her to sleep?"
+
+"Anæsthetic?  Certainly!" said Ralph.  "Where did you learn about
+anæsthetics?" he asked curiously.
+
+"I have work in Prince George and Winnipeg three years," she said.  "I
+know about a hospital."
+
+"I'll come and take a look at your mother," Ralph said.  In his manner
+there was still something of a doctor's condescension to an humble
+patient.  "Where do you live?"
+
+She paused before replying, and looked at him with a certain
+apprehensiveness.  "North," she said slowly.  "Seven days' journey from
+Gisborne portage."
+
+He was effectually startled out of his superior attitude.  "Seven
+days!" he cried.  "How on earth do you expect me to do that!"
+
+"I take you in my canoe," she said.  "You back here three weeks or one
+month."
+
+When he recovered from his first surprise the comic aspect of it struck
+him: to travel a month to see one sick Indian!  "Well, I'm----" he
+began, but the look in her eyes arrested the participle.  "A month!" he
+cried.
+
+She was sensitive to ridicule; a proud, sullen look came over her face.
+"I pay you," she said quickly.  "I pay what you want."
+
+Ralph laughed indulgently.  "I'm afraid you don't realize what it's
+worth," he said.  "A month of a doctor's time!  It would be cheap at
+three hundred dollars."
+
+"I don't want you cheap," she said, with the air of a princess.  "I pay
+more."
+
+Ralph looked at the absurd hat she wore, and struggled with his
+laughter.  She was beautiful, she was amazing, but she _was_ comic.
+"What am I up against?" he thought.  Aloud, he said in a friendly way:
+"It's a lot of money.  Tell me something about yourself and your
+people.  What is your name?  Where will you get so much money?"
+
+But his laughter had angered her; her face expressed only a sullen
+blank.  She did not answer.
+
+"What is your name?" Ralph repeated.  "You must answer my questions,
+you know."
+
+"I tell you what I like," she said scornfully.
+
+Ralph was irritated.  "Do you expect me to start on a wild-goose chase
+into the wilderness without knowing what I'm letting myself in for?" he
+said sharply.
+
+"I pay you before you go," she said, with her princess air.
+
+It did not help to soothe him.  "Hang the pay!" he cried.  "I'm not for
+sale.  I don't go in for a thing unless I'm satisfied it's straight!"
+
+She was not in the least intimidated by his raised voice.  "You only
+got to do doctor's work," she said coldly.
+
+Ralph stared at her, confused and nonplussed by the variety of emotions
+she excited in him.  Her beauty aroused him, her indifference piqued
+him, and her inscrutability provoked his curiosity to the highest
+degree.  Obstinacy in another always had the effect of awakening the
+same quality in Ralph.  He said coldly: "It sounds queer to me.  I'm
+not interested."
+
+Clearly she still clung to the idea that it was a question of payment
+with him.  His glances of scornful amusement at her clothes had not
+escaped her woman's perceptions.  "You think I poor," she said.  "You
+think I got nothing.  I got plenty."
+
+"I don't care what you've got," said Ralph.  "Deal with me openly, and
+I'll meet you halfway."
+
+Her hand went to the bosom of her dress and closed around something
+that was hidden there.  "If I show you something, you promise not to
+tell?" she said, with sudden earnestness.  "You shake hands and promise
+not to tell?"
+
+More mystery!  Curiosity waxed great in Ralph's breast and struggled
+with his irritation.  "Hang these people!" he thought.  "You never can
+tell what they're up to!"  To her he said unwillingly: "If it's
+straight I promise not to tell."
+
+"It is straight," she said proudly.
+
+They shook hands on it.  She drew a little bag of moosehide from her
+dress, and untied the thong that bound its mouth.  Attentively watching
+Ralph's face to observe the effect on him, she suddenly turned the bag
+upside down over his desk, and a little flood of coarse yellow sand
+poured out upon it with a soft swish.  There could be no mistaking the
+cleanness and the shine of it.
+
+Ralph sprang up.  "Gold!" he cried, amazed.
+
+"It is yours," she said, with a little smile.  "I give you more if you
+make my mot'er's arm straight."
+
+"Where did you get it?" Ralph asked sharply.
+
+"I dig it myself," she said.  "Do you think I steal it?"
+
+Ralph continued to stare at the yellow stuff as if it had hypnotized
+him.
+
+"Better put it away," suggested the girl.  "Somebody come, maybe.  To
+see gold make white men crazy."
+
+He swept it up handful by handful, and poured it back into the little
+bag.  There was a magic in the feel of the bright, sharp grains and in
+the extraordinary weight of it that caused a red flag to be run up in
+his cheeks, and his eyes to shine.  He judged from the weight of the
+little bag that he had in his hand already double the fee he had asked.
+
+By and by she said: "You come now?"
+
+Ralph frowned.  "What do you want to make such a mystery of the trip
+for?"
+
+"I could lie to you if I want," she said, "and you not know."
+
+Ralph's eyes were compelled to acknowledge the truth of this.
+
+She paused with a little frown as if she had matter to convey that was
+difficult to put into speech.  "I not tell you all my things," she went
+on slowly, "because I not know you ver' moch.  By and by I tell you
+what I can."
+
+He looked at her in silent astonishment.  What extraordinary delicacy
+to find in a common Indian girl!  As he gazed at her he abandoned that
+conception of her for good and all.  Whatever she might be it was not
+common.  The sullenness evoked by his laughter had passed, and her eyes
+now met his squarely.  Pride and wistfulness contended in their dark
+depths.  Whatever the colour of her skin they were the eyes of a woman
+with a soul.  What he read in them caused his heart to quicken its
+beats.  He made note of other beauties in passing: the lovely tempting
+curve of her cheek, and how the colour came and went in it; her lips
+fresh and crimson as rose-leaves.
+
+"You have white blood," he said suddenly.
+
+She shrugged.
+
+"At least you can tell me your name," he said.
+
+"Annie Crossfox," she said unhesitatingly.  "White people say Annie; my
+people, Nahnya."
+
+A slight constraint fell upon them.  They were silent.  Ralph's
+attitude toward the proposed journey was rapidly changing.  To give him
+credit, it was her eyes more than the gold that worked the change.  How
+could he have failed to be instantly struck by her beauty, he thought.
+
+"You will come?" she murmured at length.
+
+"When do you want to start?" he said.
+
+"The steamboat go up to Gisborne after dinner to-morrow," she said.
+"We walk across Gisborne portage six miles to Hat Lake.  There my boat
+is cached."
+
+"What can I tell these people here?" said Ralph.  "I can't just
+disappear."
+
+"Tell them you take the chance of the boat going up, to see a little of
+the country.  Everybody do that sometimes."
+
+To "see the country" beyond was Ralph's dearest desire; to float down
+its rivers, to climb its mountains, to camp under its stars.  And to
+travel seven days in a canoe with her!  The Spirit of Youth rose in its
+might and dealt old Prudence a finishing blow.
+
+"All right!" cried Ralph.  "I'll come!"
+
+"Thank you," she said quietly.
+
+Somewhat to his disappointment she showed no elation; indeed, no sooner
+had she won him to go than she looked at him with a new question in her
+eyes, with a painful and hesitating air.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Ralph.
+
+"You promise me you never tell where you been?" she said deprecatingly.
+"You promise me when you come back you never tell anybody what you see
+at my place?"
+
+All Ralph's doubts came thronging back.  "No!" he said frowning.  "I
+can't do that!  I've got to be free to use my own judgment!"
+
+There was a pause while their individualities contended in silence.
+Ralph pushed the moosehide bag impatiently toward her.  On this
+occasion he was the stronger.  She lowered her eyes.
+
+"You still think there is something crooked?" she murmured.
+
+"How do I know?" said Ralph harshly.  "I don't know anything about you!"
+
+She abruptly turned her back on him.  Her hands lifted and dropped in
+an odd, unconscious gesture.  "I don' know w'at to do!" she whispered,
+more to herself than to him.  The husky sound was charged with pain.
+"I come so far to get a doctor for my mot'er!  But I cannot tell you!"
+
+Ralph darted around the desk, and forced her to look at him.  The dark
+eyes were soft and large with unshed tears.  Beauty in distress is
+mighty to achieve.  Moreover, Youth and Adventure and Romance were all
+on her side.  Ralph melted like snow before a fire.
+
+"Here! it's all right!" he said gruffly.  "I'll come.  If it's straight
+I promise not to tell!"
+
+They shook hands on it, and Nahnya wiped her eyes apologetically.
+
+They fell to discussing their arrangements.
+
+"Get on the steamboat after dinner to-morrow," she said.  "When you see
+me make out you don' know me at all.  At Gisborne I will tell you what
+to do.  Bring only blankets.  I have a mosquito tent for you.  I have
+plenty grub and everything."
+
+Ralph passed the little moosehide bag to her.
+
+She quickly put her hands behind her.  "You must take it," she said.
+"I not want you work for nothing."
+
+"I have taken it, see?" said Ralph, with a smile.  "Now I pay it back
+to you for taking me on a trip.  I've only been waiting for the chance
+to make a trip."
+
+Once more their eyes met and contended, and again Ralph prevailed.  She
+took the bag of gold-dust and put it back within her dress.
+
+When she went, and Ralph was left alone in his tiny office, he sat down
+and endeavoured to put his thoughts in order.  Straightway the soberer
+half of him asserted its rights, and half persuaded him that what had
+happened during the last hour was no more than a dream.  It was too
+fantastic, too preposterous, for a matter-of-fact person to credit for
+a moment.  That such a thing should happen to him, Ralph Cowdray, the
+patientless medico!  But he looked down at his desk, and there in the
+cracks of the boards were lodged several shining yellow grains.  The
+matter-of-fact Ralph retired defeated, and the dreamy Ralph had full
+sway.
+
+"Gad! what eyes!" he thought.  "She can't be more than twenty-one or
+so, and she looks as if she had sounded all the depths of life!"
+
+The sight of his watch finally reminded Ralph of dinner.  Dinner
+brought Dan to mind, and the thought of Dan recalled the subject of
+their jocular argument which Nahnya had interrupted.  Ralph fell back
+in his chair amazed and dreamy.
+
+"Romance!" he thought.  "It did come in the door with her!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+ON BOARD THE "TEWKSBURY"
+
+Next day Ralph's preparations for the journey consisted in throwing a
+change of clothes and a few necessaries into a canvas dunnage bag,
+rolling the bag inside the blankets from his bed, hoisting the bundle
+on his shoulder, and locking the door of his shack behind him.  No one
+had been unduly surprised by his announcement that he was going up on
+the steamboat to have a look at the country.  In the unconventional
+North a man's time is his own, and taking a trip is the best way to
+while it, and one day is as good as another to start on.
+
+Even Dan Keach, knowing how bored Ralph had been, was unsuspicious of
+the sudden resolution.  Dan was envious.  "I wish to heaven I was
+going!" he said.
+
+Ralph, knowing that Dan was firmly tied to his telegraph key, felt safe
+in echoing his wish.  Ralph's breast was warmed by a delicious secret
+excitement.  "If they knew!" he thought.
+
+The captain of the steamboat, Wes' Trickett, a rakish, lubberly,
+fresh-water sailor, like his boat, likewise dined at Maroney's, and
+after dessert the company adjourned to the river bank, and sat about on
+piles of lumber to witness the departure.  There was no haste about
+that.  Agreeable gossip and humorous anecdote mingled with tobacco
+smoke.  When conversation flagged, Wes' would say regretfully: "Wal,
+time to pull out, boys!"  Whereupon some one would suggest a last touch
+at Maroney's bar, and the company would rise as a man with the same
+expression of deprecatory anticipation.  Wes', since he supplied the
+excuse for the gathering, did not feel that it was incumbent on him to
+pay for anything.
+
+The _Tewksbury L. Swett_ lay at their feet, with steam up.  Like the
+land buildings at Fort Edward, her architecture was of a casual and
+strictly utilitarian style.  To paraphrase the description of a more
+famous vessel, she looked like a shoe-box on a shingle, with the
+addition atop the shoe-box of a lean-to pilot-house with nothing to
+lean to, and an attenuated smokestack.  The stack was made of many
+lengths of kitchen stovepipe braced all round with a network of wires,
+which did not, however, quite smooth out the kinks in the joints.  The
+whole thing had a decided inclination to the nor'east, but Wes' opined
+that it would do all right till it fell down.
+
+Ralph had not seen his mysterious visitor since she had left his
+office.  Loitering among the others on the bank, he was reassured by a
+glimpse of her sitting in a dark corner within the deckhouse, her back
+turned to the shore.  To Ralph's secret relief, Dan did not remark her
+there.  Dan had an awkward faculty of putting two and two together, and
+a caustic sense of humour.
+
+Many of the old stories of the country were recounted for the benefit
+of the newcomers.  "Ever hear tell of Tom Sadler?" said Captain Wes'.
+"Tom was the first white man who ever come up the Campbell Valley.
+Campbell hisself, when he discovered it, he only went downstream.  It
+was mor'n fifty year ago, before the first Cariboo gold strike.  In
+them days the city of Kimowin was no bigger than Fort Edward here.  Tom
+Sadler was one of these here now rovin' fellers that can't rest easy
+among their own kind.  He roved off up the Campbell Valley and was gone
+a whole year.  The next summer he come back down the river, and
+capsized in the rapids just above Kimowin.  They saw him from the
+settlement and pulled him out of the water more dead than alive.  A
+living skellington he was at that.  His canoe and his stuff was
+nachelly seen no more.
+
+"Well, he hung on for a couple of days, and then he up and chivvied
+out.  But that ain't the end of the story.  The story is about what he
+told when he was out of his head.  Nobody believed what he said, but
+they tell it to this day for a good story.  He went on all about a
+purty little valley he found in the mountains.  All around it was high
+cliffs that you couldn't get up or down like the sides of a bowl-like.
+Bowl of the Mountains was what Tom called it.  He said the only way you
+could get in or out was through a long cave under the mountains.  A
+bear that he was after showed him the way in, or he never wouldn't have
+found it, being the mouth was all hid behind bushes and all.
+
+"Well, sirs, they say he said that little valley was as beautiful as
+Paradise; but that wa'n't all.  In the middle of it were a little lake,
+different-coloured water from any on earth, green as a bottle-like,
+good water, too.  Little streams come down from the mountains all
+around, and flowed through meadows of flowers into that lake, and Tom
+said the banks of all those little streams was yellow with gold, yellow
+with gold, sirs!  Tom said he stayed there six months and washed two
+hundred pound of it.  Them beside his bed laughed, him having nothing
+to show.  If he'd been content with a hundred pounds, now, 'twould have
+sounded more reasonable.  Well, they on'y laughed at Tom and buried
+him.  And it's got to be a saying-like 'round Kimowin when a feller
+gets a bee in his bonnet, 'Oh he's found Bowl of the Mountains!' they
+say.  But I ain't so sure there ain't something in it.  I seen Tom's
+grave in the cemetery at Kimowin: 'Thomas Sadler, who bit July 9th,
+1861.'  I seen it myself carved on the stone.  That ain't no hearsay."
+
+
+Finally about three o'clock, nobody else being disposed to "buy,"
+although Wes' provided several good openings, the captain and the
+passengers made their final farewells and went aboard.  The little
+_Tewksbury_ backed out of the mud, and turned her nose upstream, with a
+heave and a snort at every stroke of the piston, and a great kick-up
+astern.  The little group on the shore adjourned again to Maroney's for
+something to pick them up against the flat feeling that oppresses those
+who are left behind.
+
+On board the _Tewksbury_ the white men gathered on the forward deck
+around the capstan, and continued their talk.  There was Wes' Trickett,
+and Matthews, his engineer; Joe Mixer and Pete Staley, who were taking
+up an outfit to Gisborne portage to start a store, and Ralph.
+Meanwhile, the half-breed crew ran the boat.  The warmth of the sun,
+the peace of the river, and the late potations at Maroney's joined to
+produce a lulling effect on the group.  Conversation became fitful.
+Joe Mixer fell asleep with his back against the capstan.
+
+The _Tewksbury_ was not exactly a river greyhound; six miles an hour
+was her rate, and since the current ran four, her net progress upstream
+was about two.  On the bends of the river, where the deep water ran
+swiftly under the bank on the wide side of the arc, it was nip and tuck
+between the little _Tewksbury_ and the river.  No one on board
+expressed any impatience.
+
+"You got to go either forward or back," said Wes' philosophically, "and
+if you ain't goin' back you're bound to arrive some time."
+
+"Let her puff," said Pete Staley comfortably.  "'Tain't comin' out of
+our lungs."
+
+Ralph was happy.  The weight of weeks of boredom was lifted from his
+breast.  After all, life was a sporting affair.  He never tired of
+watching the moving brown flood spotted with foam, endlessly and
+serenely opposing their progress, ever yielding under the vessel's
+forefoot, without giving back.  From the water he lifted his eyes to
+the clean, pine-clad hills, insolently planting themselves in the path
+of the river, and forcing it to go around.  The afternoon sun was
+lavishly gilding the southerly slopes.  Overhead the sky was an
+inverted bowl of palest turquoise.  Ralph naturally kept these poetic
+comparisons to himself.  Wes' Trickett, Matthews, Mixer, and Staley
+were a hard-headed, scornful, tobacco-chewing quartet.
+
+The deckhouse was a rough shanty with a wide sliding door at each side,
+and one in front.  From where he sat near the capstan Ralph could see
+Nahnya within, sitting on a box by one of the side doors with her hands
+in her lap, and her eyes bent on the river.  Her quiet and
+self-contained air stimulated his curiosity.  He wondered what she was
+thinking about.  The fact that she had forbidden him to approach her on
+the boat kept his desire to do so ever fresh.  He cast around in his
+mind for some way to get around her prohibition.  She had removed the
+ridiculous hat to her lap, and her bare head bound round with a thick,
+black braid of hair was wholly beautiful and graceful against the light.
+
+"Where did she get that proud look from?" thought Ralph.  "All she
+needs is a diadem and an ermine cloak."
+
+Ralph was not the only man on board who had remarked the handsome
+passenger.  By and by Joe Mixer woke up, and blinked at her sidewise
+from between his thick lids.
+
+"Good-looking gal, Joe," said Pete Staley.
+
+Joe grunted by way of affirmation.
+
+Joe Mixer was a well-known character up and down the Campbell.  Outside
+he had been a butcher, they said, and had come North owing to an
+unpleasantness following upon his attempt to carve a piece of human
+meat.  He was a factor in the little community of the river by reason
+of his bulk and the noise he made, but privately he was not regarded
+with much affection.  In a rough, new society much is condoned through
+the fear of being thought self-righteous.  The first commandment of the
+frontier is: Thou shalt not appear any better than thy neighbour.
+Hence Joe was accepted for one of the crowd, while stories were
+circulated behind his back of lingering butchering tendencies, of a dog
+he had tortured, of a native woman who had sought safety from him
+through a priest.
+
+"Who is she?" asked Staley.
+
+"Darned if I know," said Wes'.  "She ain't any of the Cheval Noir
+crowd, that's sure, or from Campbell Lake neither.  Says she's goin' to
+your dump at Gisborne."
+
+"She come down the river on a little raft early yesterday morning,"
+said Matthews, the engineer.  "Five o'clock it was, I guess.  I come
+out on deck to take a look at the sky, and I seen her landing below
+Thomson's store there.  Thinking nobody saw her, she pushed the raft
+off in the current."
+
+"They're a sly lot," said Staley.  "A white man never can tell what
+they're up to."
+
+They continued to discuss Nahnya with a freedom that caused Ralph to
+grind his teeth.  To avoid arousing their suspicions he was obliged to
+keep a smooth face, and to enter into the discussion.  Up to this time
+Ralph had thought of these four as "good enough heads" and had drunk
+with them at Maroney's like everybody else.  Now they suddenly seemed
+like foul-mouthed satyrs that a man ought to knock down one by one for
+decency's sake.  They were not as bad as all that, of course; the
+change was in Ralph, not in them.
+
+Finally Joe said with what seemed to Ralph an egregious display of male
+vanity: "I can handle them.  I'll find out who she is."
+
+He went inside the deckhouse with a propitiatory leer on his fat red
+face that caused Ralph's gorge to rise.  Ralph sat on pins and needles
+watching out of the corners of his eyes, and straining his ears in vain
+to hear what was said.
+
+The conversation was like all such conversations.
+
+"Hello, dearie!" said Joe.
+
+The girl turned a bland, blank face toward him.  "Hello," she said.
+
+Joe pulled up another box and sat down.  "Thought you might be lonely
+all by yourself," he said agreeably.
+
+"I like be by myself me," she said, affecting a naïve simplicity of
+speech and manner.
+
+Joe glanced at her sharply.  Her eyes were modestly cast down.  He
+decided that she meant no offence, and went on:
+
+"What's your name, girly?"
+
+"Mary Black, please."
+
+"Where do you live when you're home?"
+
+"McIlwraith Lake.  My fat'er him Scarface Jack Black.  Him very good
+hunter."
+
+Her air of humble timidity encouraged Joe enormously.  This was plain
+sailing.  "What do you want to live in the woods for?" he said
+condescendingly.  "That's no place for a good-lookin' gal like
+you--among a pack of savages."
+
+She shrugged deprecatingly.
+
+"You ought to be down here on the river where there's something doing.
+White men know how to enjoy life."
+
+"Yes," she said demurely.
+
+"If you stayed down at the Fort you'd knock the spots off the other
+gals there.  There ain't one of them can touch you!"
+
+"I got no place," she said.
+
+"That's easy," said Joe.  "I'll build you a shack."
+
+"I think about it," she said.
+
+"Dominion Day there's going to be a whale of a time at the Fort," Joe
+went on.  "Racing and fireworks and dancing and free eats for
+everybody.  Like that?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, you come down to my place ahead of time, and we'll float down to
+the Fort on a raft."
+
+"Thank you," she said.
+
+Joe, overjoyed at the progress he was making, drew his box closer, and
+laid a ham of a hand on one of her slender brown ones.  Ralph,
+observing the move from outside, ground his teeth afresh.
+
+"You're all right!" said Joe unctuously.  "You and me'll be good
+friends.  I'm a liberal feller, I am.  A good-lookin' gal can get what
+she likes out of me."
+
+The girl drew away.  "They see you outside," she said warningly.
+
+Joe laughed thickly.  "You're shy, eh?  That's all right, sis.  I like
+'em a little bashful at first.  Me and you'll have a talk later on when
+there ain't nobody around."
+
+When Joe returned to the others it was with the air of a conqueror.
+Ralph's right fist instinctively doubled at the sight of his fat
+complacency, but for the present he had to content himself with picking
+out the spots where he would like to plant it.
+
+"She's all right," said Joe patronizingly.  "Nice little gal."
+
+"What's her name?  Where does she live?" asked Staley.
+
+Joe repeated what she had told him.  Ralph breathed more freely.
+
+"She's lying," said Staley coolly.  "I traded at McIlwraith Lake six
+years off and on.  I ought to know.  She never come of Sikannis stock;
+they're an undersized people and narrow-eyed."
+
+"Well, she's half-white, maybe," said Joe.
+
+"She never showed her face on McIlwraith Lake when I was there," said
+Staley.  "I knew them all.  There's no hunter in the tribe called
+Scarface Jack Black.  She was stringing you."
+
+"I don't care," said Joe.  "It don't hurt her looks any."
+
+During the afternoon each one of the other three men made an occasion
+to sidle up to the girl; Matthews the sardonic Scotchman, Staley with
+his pale, sharp, storekeeper's face, and the lubberly old Wes' with his
+wandering pale eye, and his tobacco-stained chin.  The girl's manner
+was the same to each; demure, receptive, simple-minded.  Ralph could
+make nothing of her.  All this was hard on his temper.  He was divided
+between anger at the ill-concealed grossness of the men, and anger at
+Nahnya for not resenting it.  He no longer took any pleasure in the
+beauty of the river.
+
+At dusk they tied up to a tree on the shore and ran out a plank.  The
+boys built a rousing fire under the pines, and as the darkness
+increased it made a fantastic chiaroscuro in crimson and black; the
+fire leaping under the boughs, the silhouettes of the half-breeds
+moving about it preparing supper, and on the river side the quaint
+little steamboat sticking her nose into the red glow.
+
+When supper was ready the five white men sat down beside the fire, but
+the girl, notwithstanding the hearty and jocular invitations of four of
+them, carried her portion back on the boat.
+
+"Let her go," said Joe.  "She's dainty about eating in company."
+
+His air of proprietorship was almost more than Ralph could brook.  Joe,
+sitting cross-legged, with his stomach on his knees, was not a
+beautiful sight.  He had divested himself of all unnecessary clothing.
+He ate and drank with a noisy gusto that was all his own, and his
+cheeks and the bald spot on his crown became purple with the effort.  A
+mat of dank black hair hung over his forehead, and the long ends of his
+moustache dripped tea.
+
+Nahnya sat down on the deck to her supper in view of the men, for it
+was not yet perfectly dark.  Ralph, watching her covertly, was filled
+with a heavy anxiety at the thought of her position alone on the boat
+during the night.  If she felt apprehensive herself she showed nothing,
+and it did not affect her appetite.
+
+Joe, observing Ralph's glances toward the steamboat, laughed in his
+uproarious way.  "The kid's askeered of a petticoat!" he cried.  "Go
+ahead, boy; it won't bite you!"
+
+Ralph could cheerfully have brained Joe where he sat.  He was obliged,
+however, to turn it off with the best smile he could muster.  At the
+same time Joe's jibe gave him an idea.  He took care to finish before
+the others, and went on the boat, muttering something about getting
+tobacco.
+
+"Be up and down with her, kid," cried Joe.  "Half measures won't get
+you nowhere!"
+
+"Fine night," said Ralph to Nahnya, loud enough for those on shore to
+hear.
+
+"Yes," she said, with exactly the same manner she had adopted toward
+them all.
+
+It dashed him a little.  He went on inside to get tobacco out of his
+dunnage bag.  When he came out again, she pointedly looked away across
+the river.
+
+Ralph came close to her, and lowered his voice; anxiety made him rough.
+"How are you going to manage to-night?" he asked.
+
+"What do you want to know for?" she said coolly, without looking at him.
+
+The blood rushed to Ralph's face; his temper had already been put to a
+strain one way and another.  "I was only thinking of your safety," he
+said hotly.
+
+"You don't have to," she said.  "I can take care of myself."
+
+"Do you know Joe Mixer lets on that he has won you?" Ralph went on
+harshly.  "That swine!  What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"I don't care what he says," she said indifferently.  "I know what to
+do."
+
+Ralph did not really suspect her, but it suited his sore and angry mood
+to make out that he did.  "I trusted you!" he said bitterly.
+
+This pierced her inscrutability.  Her eyes flashed a hurt and angry
+look at him.  "What you want?" she said swiftly and softly.  "If I slap
+Joe Mixer's ugly face he make Wes' Trickett stop the boat and put me on
+shore.  I don't want any trouble.  I fool them all the same."
+
+"Oh!" said Ralph, disconcerted and relieved.
+
+"Go ashore," she said.  "I tell you not to talk to me on the steamboat."
+
+"They all make up to you," Ralph explained in justification.  "It looks
+funny if I'm the only one that stays away.  They've started to jolly me
+about it.  You let them come around all they want.  Why can't you be
+the same to me?"
+
+"Go!" she said.  "You can't act the same like them to me.  They see the
+difference.  If I friendly with you right away there will be trouble.
+Go stay with them."
+
+This was unanswerable.  "But I'm anxious about you," Ralph persisted in
+more humble tones.  "What are you going to do?"
+
+She shrugged coolly.  "Do not worry," she said.  "I can take care of
+myself.  These are not the first foolish white men I have to manage."
+
+Ralph turned over the gangplank more puzzled than ever by her, but on
+the whole easier in his mind.  Her confidence in herself was infectious.
+
+As he resumed his place by the fire, Joe said with his fat laugh:
+"Nothing doing, eh, Kid?"
+
+"A man can't always cop the first prize," Ralph returned.
+
+"I was ahead of you on this," Joe said with another guffaw.
+
+Ralph still smiled.  "We'll see," he thought.
+
+The night was drawing on clear and still.  The black flies had ceased
+their malignant activity at sunset, and it was too cold for mosquitoes.
+Joe suggested that they sleep ashore, and it was voted a good idea.
+The pine needles offered a softer bed than the planks of the
+steamboat's deck.  Nevertheless Ralph divined an ulterior motive behind
+the suggestion, and Joe's transparent efforts to break up the talk
+around the fire heightened his suspicions.
+
+"They ain't no rush," said Wes' Trickett comfortably.  "They's all day
+to-morrow to make the rapids."
+
+"'Ain't no rush' is your motter, Wes'," remarked Pete Staley.
+
+"I do' want no better motter," returned the captain.  "That's why I
+come North, I guess.  Outside men fret theirselves to death tryin' to
+do each other.  What do they get for it?--a gold-plated casket, maybe,
+and a marble mouse-olium with a angel pointing to the skies.  Pretty
+cold comfort, if you ast me.  I'd a sight ruther take my ease sleepin'
+warm under a blanket, and wake up to good bacon and cawfee.  There was
+Tinker Beasley now, he was always in a sweat.  I mind how Tinker----"
+
+"Oh, for God's sake, Wes', I heard that story twenty times!" cried Joe
+Mixer.  "It's near twelve o'clock.  Get your blankets off the boat,
+men."
+
+Joe finally prevailed.  As soon as the men had taken their blankets
+ashore, Nahnya disappeared inside the deckhouse, closing the front door
+after her, and likewise closing the door on the side that faced the
+shore.  There were no locks on these doors for her protection.
+
+One by one each white man knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and
+crawling between his blankets, feet to the fire, added a trumpet to the
+chorus of snores.  The breed boys were already quiet beside their dying
+fire.  Ralph lay down with the others, privately resolving not to give
+way to sleep.  He filled his pipe afresh, and propping his head on his
+elbow, stared at the blushing embers, and assorted the impressions of
+the day in his mind.  Looking over his shoulder he could see through
+the chinks of the boards that Nahnya had made a light within her rude
+cabin.
+
+In spite of him, the still night began to have its way, and peace
+descended on his spirit.  The slow, ruby progress of the fire, the
+spicy scent of the pines, and the pleasant murmur of the current
+against the forefoot of the moored steamboat all combined to undermine
+wakefulness.  The very concert of snores irresistibly suggested sleep
+to his subconsciousness.  This was the camp-scene Ralph had desirously
+pictured to himself.  It was good.  His late agitation began to seem a
+little foolish to him.
+
+"One would think I was falling in love with the girl," he thought.
+"That's absurd!"
+
+He repeated "absurd!" to himself several times over for safety's sake.
+His head gradually slipped off the supporting palm, and pillowed itself
+on the thick of his arm.
+
+Before he was altogether lost to consciousness, Joe Mixer, two figures
+removed from him, came to a stop in the middle of a snore, stirred in
+his blankets, and sat up abruptly, snuffling and shaking his head to
+rid himself of the incubus of sleep.  His little eyes passed with a
+cautious glance from one to another of the recumbent forms.
+
+Ralph was instantly on the alert again.  "Hello!" he said.  "What's the
+matter?"
+
+Joe started and scowled.  Joe had but an imperfect command over his
+features; his frustrated design was clearly evident.  Muttering an
+unmistakable oath, he lay down again.
+
+Ralph's desire to sleep was effectually disposed of.  He lay still with
+his eyes closed.  Very soon Joe, who apparently could go to sleep and
+wake up at will, recommenced snoring with inimitable naturalness.
+Ralph looked over his shoulder.  The light was still burning within the
+deckhouse.  A spring of compassion started in his breast.
+
+"Poor girl!" he thought.  "She's afraid to turn in!"
+
+He was keenly distressed by the mental picture of Nahnya sitting alone,
+fighting sleep, and awaiting the approach of danger.  He got up without
+having a very clear idea of what he meant to do--except that she must
+be reassured.  He crossed the plank to the boat's deck.  He knew he
+could not open either of the two closed doors without causing a screech
+sufficient to awaken the entire party, but he found that the door on
+the river side was still open, for he could see the rays of light
+streaming out on the dusty surface of the water.  There was a narrow
+deck all the way around outside the house.  He made for the open
+doorway, but stopped before showing himself.  Ralph had conceived a
+respect for the resources of this inexplicable girl.  One could never
+be sure in advance of what she might do.
+
+"Hello!" he said softly.  "It's the doctor."
+
+There was no answer.
+
+With a fast-beating heart he looked in.  She was sleeping on the deck
+in the middle of an open space between the piles of freight forward and
+the boiler aft.  To a beam over her head she had fastened the
+engineer's lantern, and Ralph, instantly comprehending, had to approve
+both her courage and her good sense.  The light was her safeguard.
+
+She had spread a piece of canvas on the deck, and lay wrapped in a gray
+blanket, her head pillowed on her outflung arm.  Her face, slightly
+turned up, was revealed under the light, calm and partly smiling in
+sleep.  The hard, watchful look that had so often nonplussed him during
+the day had disappeared.  Once again he was compelled to rearrange all
+his impressions of her.
+
+"She's only a kid!" he thought tenderly.  He had not presumed to take
+the protective attitude toward her before.
+
+Her long, curved lashes swept her dusky cheeks; her lips were a little
+parted as if in expectation; the hand that was flung out toward him lay
+palm upward, the fingers bent, as if mutely asking for a comrade hand.
+Abandoned to sleep as she lay, there was something at once appealing
+and holy in her aspect: something that made his whole being yearn over
+her, and that caused him to draw back outside the door.
+
+He could not bear to look at her.  A feeling he could not have named
+made him return to the forward deck.  He turned up his face to the
+night sky, and let his heart quiet down.  The essence of the poetry of
+womanhood had been shown to him, and the starry night thrilled with the
+wonder of it.  In a flash there was revealed to him a new understanding
+of all the love-poems he had ever read, and perhaps secretly despised.
+
+"She sleeps like a lily on the water," he murmured to himself without
+the least shame.
+
+By and by, prose reasserting itself, he began to reflect upon what he
+should do next.  "If I go back to the fire I'll surely fall asleep," he
+thought. "But if I lie down here nobody can disturb her without waking
+me first."
+
+Procuring his blankets from beside the fire, he made his bed on the
+deck in such a position that any one seeking the open door must step
+over his body.  There he waited for sleep, dwelling with rapt
+tenderness on the sight he had seen, graving it lovingly on his
+subconsciousness for a shrine that he might revisit as long as
+consciousness endured.  He drifted away to the accompaniment of the
+distant drumming of a partridge in the woods.
+
+Suddenly he found himself wide awake without being able to tell what
+had aroused him.  The campfire was now black out, and nothing but a
+blacker shadow was visible toward the shore.  He waited a little
+breathlessly for confirmation of the alarm he had received.  Finally
+the plank to the shore creaked under a heavy weight, and Ralph became
+aware of a looming figure.  He sat up.
+
+The figure stopped at the edge of the deck.  "Who's there?" came in Joe
+Mixer's thick voice, quick with alarm.
+
+"Cowdray," said Ralph coolly.
+
+"What the hell are you doing here?"
+
+Ralph sprang up, kicking his legs free of the entangling blanket.
+"What the hell are you after?" he retorted.
+
+"I don't have to account to you," snarled Joe.
+
+There was a silence.  They stood with clenched fists, straining their
+eyes to take each other's measure in the dark.
+
+Evidently Joe thought better of his truculence, for when he spoke again
+it was in conciliatory tones.  "Gad!  You give me a start to see you
+rise up like that!  I thought I had 'em!  You shouldn't scare a man to
+death before you knock him down, Doc!"
+
+Joe's greasy obsequiousness was more offensive to Ralph than his anger.
+He remained silent.
+
+"When the fire went out I woke up cold," Joe went on plausibly.  "I
+come aboard to get me a sweater out of my bag."
+
+Ralph was not deceived.  The thought of Joe's evil, swimming little
+eyes profaning the picture of the sleeping girl inside, by so much as
+looking at her, filled him with a cold, unreasonable rage, and he was
+ready to go to any lengths to prevent it.  At the same time he
+reflected that it would serve her better to avoid a fight, if he could,
+and he put his wits to work.
+
+"Take one of my blankets," he said.  "I have more than I need!"
+
+Joe demurred.  They argued the matter with sarcastic politeness on both
+sides.  Each was aware that the other saw through his game.
+
+Ralph soon tired of it.  "Very well, if you want to go in there, you go
+by the front door, see?" he said shortly.
+
+Joe knew as well as Ralph that the screech of the door would awaken her
+before he got in.  "What's the matter with you?" snarled Joe.
+
+"What's the use of beating around the bush?" retorted Ralph.  "I tell
+you straight I won't allow that girl to be bothered."
+
+"_You_ won't let her be bothered!" sneered Joe.  "Holy mackerel, listen
+to what's talking!  Did she put you out here as a guard?"
+
+"She did not," said Ralph.
+
+"I know darn well she didn't," said Joe.  "And she wouldn't thank you
+for it neither.  She's got a date with me to-night."
+
+"You lie!" said Ralph.  Rage made him cold.
+
+Joe advanced until their bodies almost touched, Ralph held himself in
+readiness.  He meant to make Joe strike first.  But the blow was not
+delivered.
+
+"Damn you!" Joe whispered thickly.  "I'll make you swallow that some
+day.  I never forget a thing.  I make men pay."
+
+"Why postpone it?" said Ralph clearly.
+
+Joe's voice weakened.  "Well, I don't want to make a racket," he
+grumbled.
+
+"Sure, you don't want to make a racket!" cried Ralph with quick scorn.
+"A racket would spoil your game!  You like darkness and quiet, don't
+you?"  Suddenly the comic aspect of the situation presented itself to
+him, and he laughed.  "There's nothing doing to-night, Joe," he said.
+"I'm on the job.  You might as well go back and have your sleep out."
+
+It was an incontrovertible truth.  Joe turned abruptly, and went back
+over the gangplank, swearing under his breath.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+ON THE LITTLE RIVER
+
+The next day passed as if the scene of the night had not taken place.
+The question of the girl passenger did not become acute again, because
+all the men were too busy to pay her any attention.  When they arose to
+their breakfast Joe Mixer's bearing toward Ralph was as near as he
+could make it unaltered from the day before.  In this a less open
+nature would have perceived something more dangerous than candid
+enmity, but it was characteristic of the easy-going Ralph to meet him
+halfway.
+
+From sun-up to dark they were engaged almost continuously in pulling
+the little _Tewksbury_ up the Gisborne rapids, crew and passengers
+pitching in together.  After his weeks of inaction at Fort Edward,
+Ralph welcomed hard work, and felt like a man again.  The entire
+operation was novel and interesting to him.  A hawser was sent ashore
+in a boat, one end remaining on the vessel; the other end was tied to a
+stout tree upstream, and with eight men at a time bending their backs
+to the capstan, the little vessel hauled herself up hand over hand on
+the rope.  Meanwhile her paddle-wheel was not idle astern.  When the
+rope was all in, another was sent ashore and the trick repeated.  More
+than once the rope broke and they lost all they had gained.  It was
+nine o'clock before they got in smooth water again, and night was
+falling when they finally tied up to the bank at Gisborne portage,
+below the new store of Mixer & Staley.
+
+Ralph himself had made no attempt to approach Nahnya during the day.
+It was enough for him to watch her covertly, and to picture to himself
+the delights of the coming journey when he would have her to himself.
+The fever in Ralph's veins, all unknown to him, was making a
+dangerously rapid headway.  Already the mere thought of this journey
+was enough to set his heart beating fast.
+
+As they were making a landing in the dusk, every one else being
+occupied at the moment, Ralph suddenly found her at his elbow saying
+swiftly:
+
+"You sleep with the men in the bunk-house to-night; I make out I sleep
+here."
+
+"I won't leave you alone," Ralph began heatedly.  "Last night----"
+
+She calmly interrupted him.  "I not stay here truly," she said.  "Soon
+as everybody go I walk to my camp at Hat Lake.  It is six miles.  You
+come over there early.  Soon as it get light.  The tote road show you
+the way."
+
+Some one turned in their direction, and she was gone.
+
+Ralph was, as a matter of course, invited to sup with Mixer and Staley,
+and to spend the night in their bunkhouse.  After having turned in with
+Joe and the others, he was awakened in the middle of night by hearing
+the fat man come in and fling himself with muttered curses into a bunk
+across the room.  Ralph swallowed a chuckle and took a fresh hold on
+sleep.
+
+He awoke automatically when daylight whitened the window-panes, which
+is to say at three o'clock in June at that latitude.  The others were
+sleeping like vocal logs.  Just over the threshold of the stuffy
+sleeping-place morning was waiting for him, a miracle of refreshment.
+He inhaled its chill sweetness as if his lungs were for the first time
+washed with fresh air, and looked about him with the curiosity of the
+traveller who arrived in the dark.  Where he stood men's axes had made
+a hideous scar on the prospect, and he turned his back on the shacks
+and the stumps to gaze at the unalterable river.  In the half-light the
+brown flood and the hills opposite had a secret look, a finger on the
+lips that hushed him from making any noise.  It seemed like the
+earliest morning of earth.  The water tempted him to a brief plunge.
+
+Dressing, and taking his bag and blankets, he started to climb with a
+light heart.  Was he not going to her?  "This is where the fun really
+begins," he told himself.  The tote road rose in plain view behind the
+shack.  Halfway up the incline Ralph was startled to come upon an
+Indian youth squatting beside the trail as still as an image--so still
+that Ralph was upon him before he realized the figure was not part of
+the landscape.  It was a surprising object to find in a world that you
+thought was all your own.
+
+The boy was gayly attired in an embroidered velvet waistcoat, a clean
+gingham shirt, a red sash, buckskin trousers, and fancy moccasins.  On
+his head was an expensive felt hat with flaring, stiff brim.  He was a
+handsome, well-set-up youth of about nineteen, with a face as blank of
+expression as a cat's.  A good-sized pack lay on the ground beside him.
+
+"Hello, there!" cried Ralph in his surprise.
+
+The Indian rose, and without altering a muscle of his brown mask,
+extended a hand.  "How!" he said.
+
+"You're up early," said Ralph.  "What are you doing here?"
+
+The boy pulled his ear and shook his head to convey to Ralph that his
+speech was wasted.  In unmistakable signs he then let it be known that
+he was waiting for Ralph, and that Ralph was to follow him.
+
+"Waiting for me?" said Ralph.  "Who the deuce are you?"
+
+The boy said something in his own tongue of which Ralph distinguished
+the word Nahnya.  It filled Ralph with a certain disquiet.
+
+Without waiting for more, the Indian shouldered his pack and set off up
+the trail at a brisk pace.  Ralph followed as best he could.  The
+incident had dashed his delight in the morning.  There was no room for
+a third identity in his dreams of the journey that was to be.  Ralph
+made but heavy going.  The bulk of his bundles discommoded him more
+than the weight.  He had the roll of blankets under one arm and the
+dunnage bag under the other.  The Indian never looked behind to see how
+he fared.  Reaching the top of the hill he immediately fell into the
+rolling rack to which white men's hips accommodate themselves only
+after practice.
+
+The boy's complete indifference to his struggles did not improve
+Ralph's temper.  After a mile of it, panting, perspiring, and with
+breaking arms, he flung his bundles on the ground and commanded the
+Indian to stop.  The boy came back with a slightly contemptuous air,
+and putting off his own pack, waited indifferently, looking everywhere
+but at Ralph.
+
+Ralph swore at him out of his heartfelt exasperation, and the boy
+brightened a little.  Evidently this was something he knew.  Ralph with
+forcible gestures made him understand that he was to show him how to
+pack the stuff in the proper way on his back.
+
+It was the longest six miles Ralph ever travelled, nor had he any eye
+for the beauties by the way.  To be obliged to exert himself so
+strenuously before breakfast caused him to feel as if the walls of his
+stomach had collapsed, and put him in a grinding temper.
+
+At the end of two hours the suspicion of a welcome tang on the air
+caused Ralph to throw up his head and sniff.  "Bacon, by Gad!" he cried
+aloud.
+
+They turned the spur of a knoll and saw lying before them an exquisite
+little stretch of water, gleaming like an opal under the pale sky.
+Along its margin reached a narrow meadow of rich green, where a little
+fire burned, sending a column of thin smoke straight aloft, and beside
+the fire was Nahnya.  She turned a quick face at the sound of their
+footsteps.
+
+At sight of her Ralph forgot his hungry ill-temper.  The girl was
+transformed.  The deplorable hat, the awkward trade clothes, the
+ill-fitting shoes were discarded.  She was wearing a blue flannel shirt
+open at the throat, and with the sleeves turned up revealing a pair of
+poetic forearms; a buckskin skirt, and moccasins of white doeskin, silk
+embroidered.  Thus garbed she was as suitable to her background of
+woods and water as one of the wild swans up the lake.  Ralph, gazing at
+her, felt triumphantly justified.  "I knew she looked like this!" he
+thought.
+
+Her beauty was still self-contained.  She shook hands as a matter of
+ceremony, without giving Ralph her eyes.
+
+"What's the matter now?" he wondered with a sinking heart.
+
+The three of them breakfasted in the grass.  The food was good, but
+Ralph's spirits were flat.  He had supposed that, relieved of the
+presence of Joe Mixer and the others, she would unbend with him.
+Apparently she had no such intention.  Then there was the boy.  The
+horrid suspicion became fixed in Ralph's mind that the boy was going
+with them.  Alas! for his dreams!  The girl and the boy talked together
+in their own liquid tongue, and from the latter's sidelong, beady
+glances Ralph had no difficulty in guessing that he was the subject of
+it.  The fact did not help to put him at his ease.
+
+The boy's undeniable good looks offended Ralph.  Wholly savage he was,
+but clear-skinned, lithe as a cat, and beautifully made.  Ralph could
+not but wonder, biting his lips a little, what they were to each other.
+Whatever the relation, she was clearly the leading spirit; she ordered
+and the boy obeyed, albeit sometimes sullenly.  Under her imperious
+ways with the boy Ralph thought he perceived a certain affectionate air
+that lighted a pretty little fire in him.  His pride was up in arms
+then, that an Indian lad was able to make him jealous.
+
+After breakfast she sent the boy to cut spruce branches, and Ralph had
+a moment alone with her.  He lost no time in coming to the point.
+
+"What's the matter?" he demanded to know.
+
+"Nothing," she said.
+
+"Have I done anything to make you sore?" he persisted.
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Then why do you treat me like an enemy?"
+
+The girl shrugged impatiently, and scowled, and looked away across the
+water, exquisitely uncomfortable.  "I don't know you," she muttered.
+"You are strange to me."
+
+Ralph took a little hope from this.  At least she was not wholly
+indifferent.  "Who's that boy?" he asked, trying to say it casually.
+
+"That is Charley," she said, with a warm gleam in her eyes that stabbed
+Ralph.
+
+"Is he going with us?" he cried.  He could not pretend to be
+indifferent.
+
+"Sure!" she said, opening her eyes wide.
+
+Ralph turned on his heel.  He could not trust himself to pursue his
+inquiries.  All his delightful imaginings of the trip to come collapsed
+like card-houses.  Her husband or her lover, of course!  What a fool he
+had been!
+
+Their dugout floated at the edge of the grass, an unconscionably long
+and slender craft, hollowed out of the trunk of a cottonwood tree.  It
+required a nice calculation to bestow all their belongings in it to
+advantage.  During this operation Ralph observed that there were three
+little tents, and took heart of grace once more.  On such trifles his
+spirits seesawed up and down all day.  True, he could have ended the
+state of suspense at any time by a plain question, but he dared not for
+fear of hearing the worst.
+
+When the baggage was packed, Nahnya commanded Ralph to sit upon the
+spruce boughs which had been laid for him in the bottom near the stern.
+In getting in the cranky craft he narrowly escaped pitching out on the
+other side, to Nahnya's and Charley's undisguised amusement.  Charley
+took the bow paddle, Nahnya the stern, and they pushed off from the
+shore.
+
+Ralph had the feeling that he was cutting loose with one stroke from
+everything he had known in life up to that moment.  "We're off!" he
+thought grimly.  "I'm elected for something, I don't know what!  Where
+will I be this time to-morrow? this time next month?"
+
+The lake was like mother-of-pearl under the misty, early sunshine; all
+around the shore it was backed by an unbroken border of fantastic,
+serrated jack-pines.  Out in the middle floated the half-dozen little
+islands which had provided its name Hat Lake.  Each had a brim of
+yellow beach, a band of willows, and a pine plume or two sticking up in
+the middle, and the group instantly suggested a display of spring
+millinery.
+
+They had not gone above a quarter of a mile, when hearing the
+surprising sound of a shout behind them, the three of them turned as
+one to behold a horseman riding down to the water's edge at the late
+point of departure.  He flung himself off his horse; from his bulk it
+was not difficult to recognize Joe Mixer.  He shouted to them to
+return.  Nahnya and Charley waved their paddles once like semaphores,
+and coolly kept on.  Ralph, continuing to look, sensed the fat man
+dancing in the grass with rage, and brandishing his fists.  In his
+mind's ear he could hear his surprising oaths.  Joe Mixer was eloquent
+and fertile in profanity.
+
+"We not start too soon," Nahnya said calmly.
+
+"He'll be laying for me when I come back," said Ralph carelessly.
+
+"You not come back this way," was Nahnya's surprising answer.
+
+They did not traverse the main body of the lake, but turned into a bay
+in the right-hand shore.  It had no visible outlet, but they kept
+steadily on, threading their way through lily pads and reeds, while the
+shores came closer and closer.  The water narrowed until it was no more
+than a slack inlet, twisting interminably through the ooze.  At last a
+scarcely perceptible current began to bear them on, and Ralph saw that
+they had entered a river.
+
+"This water go far," Nahnya said.  "Far as the sea of ice; two months'
+journey, I guess."
+
+It was the first time in an hour that she had addressed him, and
+Ralph's heart looked up.  He twisted his head to look at her, and the
+dugout lurched alarmingly.
+
+"Sit quiet!" she ordered sharply.
+
+Rebuked, he kept his eyes front thereafter.  "What's the river's name?"
+he asked meekly enough.
+
+"Got no name here," she said.
+
+"Call it the Doll River, for its size."
+
+"In five days you see it half a mile wide," she said.
+
+As the current increased its flow the stream became narrower still, and
+the willow branches brushed their faces on one side and the other.
+With its dense, low willows, its endless sharp turns, and its brawling
+little rapids it was comically like the Campbell in miniature, only the
+dugout and themselves were out of scale.
+
+Ralph felt like Gulliver in Lilliput.  He could not but admire the
+skill with which Nahnya snaked their long craft around the bends
+without jamming it.
+
+The crookedness of the stream was incredible.  There was a little
+eminence shaped like a teapot visible above the willows, now on one
+side, now on the other, before and behind.  All day it was in sight
+without seeming to recede any.
+
+They made their first spell to eat in a tiny flowery meadow beside the
+stream.  Lunch was largely a repetition of breakfast.  Ralph was making
+an effort to carry things lightly.  Upon reëmbarking afterwards, he
+asked for a paddle.
+
+"It's great to view the scenery sitting down like a first-class
+passenger," he said, "but I feel like a loafer."
+
+Nahnya shook her head.  "You fall overboard," she said coolly.  "Wait
+till you grow in the boat."
+
+Ralph acknowledged the reasonableness of this.  In getting in the
+dugout, without consulting Nahnya, he faced around the other way so
+that at least he could have the satisfaction of looking at her while
+they moved along.  Nahnya made no comment.  He got no glances in return
+from her, for her eyes were fixed undeviatingly on her course.
+
+When the current, slyly increasing its flow, swept them around a bend
+and bore them headlong into a rapid, Nahnya was transfigured.  Poised
+at the helm, straight as a young pine tree, with her flashing,
+resolute, confident eyes fixed ahead--eyes with the fighting look,
+magnificent and intimidating--cheeks flushed, lips parted, round arms
+wielding the paddle with deft, strong strokes, she was a glorious sight
+for a man's eyes.
+
+Ralph, drinking it in, thrilled with that kind of terror of women's
+beauty that the bravest man may confess without shame.  "What man could
+ever presume to master a woman like that?" was the thought.
+
+When they fell into smooth water again, and the tension relaxed, the
+heroines of his boyhood presented themselves one by one for comparison;
+Diana, Boadicea, Joan of Arc.  He rejected them all.  "Nahnya is only
+like herself!" he thought.  Aloud he cried enthusiastically: "Nahnya,
+you're wonderful!"
+
+Suddenly recalled to herself, she started, blushed, looked a little
+foolish, and scowled at the trees on shore.  "Cut it out!" she muttered.
+
+It struck him as an exactly fitting thing for her to say.
+
+And then the thought that this superb woman-creature was likely the
+property of the insensible savage boy in the bow stabbed him afresh,
+and poisoned all his joy.  "It can't be!" he had told himself a hundred
+times during the morning.  "She could not stoop to that!"
+
+All morning the question had been flung back and forth in his mind like
+a shuttle.  He watched them unceasingly, building high castles of hope
+upon their apparent indifference to each other, only to have them cast
+flat when she spoke to the boy in their own tongue, words that he could
+not understand.  He continually cast around in his mind for some way to
+find out what he wanted without putting the question direct, but
+without success.  Ralph was painfully direct.  After beholding Nahnya
+in her glory in the rapids, he could bear the suspense no longer.
+Choosing a moment when the going was easy and her attention was free to
+stray from the river, he hazarded all on a single throw.
+
+"Nahnya, is Charley in your family?" he asked bluntly.
+
+"He is my brother," she readily answered.
+
+Relief unspeakable flooded Ralph's breast.  "Why didn't you tell me?"
+he cried naïvely.
+
+"Why should I?" said Nahnya coolly.
+
+The rebuke was lost on him.  Suddenly he found the sun smiling with an
+extraordinary graciousness on the river, and all the pine trees seemed
+to be full of little singing birds--as a matter of fact there are no
+warblers so far north.  This was a glorious adventure that he was
+launched upon; Romance was alive and Life was good!  He derided himself
+now for the timid folly that had prevented him putting the question
+before.  Meanwhile the poor fellow was struggling not to let all this
+show in his face.
+
+"What you think about Charley?" Nahnya asked idly.
+
+"I thought maybe he was your husband," Ralph said, with a great air of
+carelessness.
+
+She translated to the boy, and they both laughed.  Ralph joined with
+them.  "I got no husband," Nahnya said, with a scornful lift to her
+chin.  "I not want any.  I like better to work for myself!"
+
+She might be as independent of men as she chose, so she was not owned
+by any man.  "That's what every girl says," he remarked with a new
+audacity.  "Until she catches a man, and makes him work for her!"
+
+Nahnya declined to be drawn into the game.  She affected to be busy
+with her course ahead.
+
+"Charley does not look like you," Ralph said presently.
+
+"Charley what you call my half brother," she said.  "His father not the
+same as my father."
+
+"Your father was a white man?" hazarded Ralph.
+
+She calmly ignored the question.  Ralph felt a little flattened out.
+
+The rapids followed each other with short intervals between.  The river
+having taken in several little tributaries during the day was less
+diminutive now, but no less charming.  It was a jolly little stream
+that loved to surprise them with new tricks around every bend.  It was
+not without its element of danger, too, at least to their baggage.
+Rounding a bend, Nahnya suddenly shouted a command to her brother, and
+leaped overboard.  The water reached to her knees.  Bracing herself
+against the tearing current, she held on grimly.
+
+The startled Ralph looking around saw that Charley was likewise
+overboard.  The reason was plain.  A pine tree undermined by the
+current had toppled over to the opposite bank, and lay trailing its
+branches in the current, and completely blocking all passage.  Ralph,
+though Nahnya forbade it, joined them in the icy water, and between the
+three of them they edged the boat ashore.  Charley quickly chopped a
+way through.
+
+They camped for the night on top of a bluff, about fifteen feet above
+the river.  There was a little clearing and the remains of old
+campfires.  The view upstream in the lingering twilight was enchanting.
+As time went on Ralph noticed that all the regular camping-places along
+the river had been chosen with a discriminating eye for beauty of
+outlook.
+
+That evening Ralph's spirits blew a whole gale.  He could be friendly
+enough with Charley now.  By degrees he apprehended that the strange
+aloofness of both brother and sister was for the most part merely the
+aloofness of children; they required to be won.  Since Ralph had a good
+deal of the child left in him, his instinct taught him how to set about
+it.  To do his share of the work with a right good will; to put off the
+least suspicion of "side"; and to make fun--especially to make
+fun--such was his simple method.  Ralph played the fool with all his
+might.
+
+Charley soon succumbed.  Charley was Boy in the concrete--simple,
+undiscerning, and hard-headed; limited in outlook, therefore prone to
+scorn.  Nahnya was more complicated.  Ralph's overtures at first only
+made her more skittish and distant.  Ralph redoubled his efforts.
+"I'll make her laugh, or break a leg," he vowed.
+
+And obliged to laugh she was, finally, at the sight of Ralph flipping
+cakes in the pan to the accompaniment of a double shuffle.
+
+"You foolish!" she said scornfully; but her eyes were kind.
+
+After supper, the mosquitoes being in abeyance, they lay for awhile in
+a row beside the fire, before turning in under their respective
+mosquito bars.  By this time all constraint was melted.  Ralph was
+accepted as one of them.  It appeared that Charley knew more English
+than he had been prepared to confess to a stranger, so that he was not
+altogether shut out from their talk.
+
+Ralph lay in the middle, his shoulder warm against Nahnya's while the
+happy blood flew through his veins.  Meanwhile the old question asked
+itself, without any answer being forthcoming: was she feeling the same
+ecstasy as he, or was she unconscious of the delicious contact?  Surely
+she must be aware of the current that leaped from her body into his.
+His hand groped slyly on the ground between them for hers, but without
+reward.
+
+Nevertheless Nahnya really unbent, and proved for once that she could
+talk and laugh as easily as any girl.  Ralph often looked back on that
+hour.  The boy and girl gave him his first lesson in Cree;
+_tepiskow_--to-night; _mooniyas_--white man; _pahkwishegan_--bread; and
+so on, laughing endlessly at his efforts to pronounce the words.  In
+return Ralph offered to extend Charley's knowledge of the English
+tongue, and set forth as his first exercise the ancient limerick:
+
+  A tutor who tooted the flute
+  Tried to teach two young tooters to toot.
+      Said the two to the tutor
+      Is it easier to toot or
+  To tutor two tooters to toot?
+
+
+The woods rang with their laughter.  Never had brother and sister heard
+such mirth-provoking sounds on the human tongue.  Charley was obliged
+to roll on the ground and howl to relieve his breast of its weight of
+fun.  Nahnya's low, liquid laughter was like celestial music in Ralph's
+ears.  The desire was well-nigh insupportable in his breast to start
+Charley rolling down the bank with a thrust of the foot, and turning
+over to seize her in his arms and stop her laughing mouth with kisses.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE DAY OF DAYS
+
+They issued from under their mosquito bars to behold a scene as
+delicately bright as sunrise in fairyland.  The sun shone through the
+green-hung corridor of the stream full in their faces, and the silkily
+eddying water caught at its level rays as if strings of diamonds were
+stretched across from bank to bank and gently agitated.  To the dark
+trunks of the pine forest on either hand the fairies had pinned
+fantastic banners of fairy gold leaf.  Nahnya and Ralph looked at it,
+and looking at each other, shared their pleasure without the necessity
+of speaking.  To Ralph the sight of Nahnya was like the very Spirit of
+Morning making him over anew.
+
+As they sat after breakfast charmed by the beauty of it, a full-grown
+moose rounded the bend upstream and came splashing unconcernedly toward
+their camp, his noble, ugly head and his racer limbs outlined against
+the golden mist.  He carried his heavy head with a lowering pride, and
+stepped like a monarch.  His antlers, that amazing extravagance of
+nature, were just now half-grown, and gloved in bloomy velvet.
+
+Ralph, who like most men had always thought of himself as a hunter,
+felt a thrill at the sight of the kingly creature there in his fitting
+place, antipathetic to the thought of slaughter.  And when Charley,
+quick as a woods creature himself, turned and snaked himself
+soundlessly toward his gun, a little sound of compunction escaped the
+white man.
+
+Slight as it was, the moose heard, stopped, flung up his head, and like
+a released arrow leapt up the bank, and disappeared through the woods.
+Ralph was glad of his escape.  Charley scowled sidewise at the white
+man, and swore under his breath in good English.
+
+When they reëmbarked in the dugout, Ralph did not ask again for a
+paddle, but seated himself as before, facing Nahnya, where he could
+feast his eyes on her.  It was a day among days; the river flowed like
+a song of summer, like a day-long symphony of life at the flood;
+andante where they were borne smoothly under the brown-carpeted banks
+and athwart the golden open spaces; adagio crossing the still black
+pools hemmed around with sombre pines; and scherzo in the jolly rapids.
+All nature joined in the concert, swelling and trembling with the life
+flood until the human hearts in the orchestra vibrated like violins
+almost to the pitch of pain.  More especially one heart of the trio.
+It was too strong a dose for Ralph.  He was filled with a delicate
+intoxication that made his eyes as bright and irresponsible as a
+faun's.  He was not aware himself of the subtle changes working within
+him.  Borne away on the crest of the flood, he lost the sense of his
+own identity.  Nature had her way with him, undermining all his
+defences before he took the alarm.  Civilization, being out of sight,
+passed out of mind.  All his ideas of right and wrong were sloughed off
+like an old skin, revealing him no more than a young creature of the
+woods face to face with the woman he desired.  Both young men sang and
+shouted on the way, and talked loud, foolish talk.
+
+Nahnya gave no sign of being aware of Ralph's ardent glances, but when
+they started again, after the first spell on shore, she coolly
+commanded him to turn around, and handed him a paddle.  Thereafter
+Ralph worked his passage.
+
+There were times when the forest drew back, and the river flowed
+through shining meadows elevated a little above the travellers' heads.
+In one such place Charley suddenly turned, and holding up a warning
+hand, pointed to a spot ashore.  Nahnya immediately brought the canoe
+around in a graceful sweep, and they clung to a bush at the water's
+edge under the place the boy had pointed out.
+
+Ralph was at a loss to understand the move.  At first he could hear
+nothing; their senses were better trained than his.  Finally the sound
+of a long sigh came to him, and a soft rolling in the grass above.  A
+heavier sigh followed, a long-drawn complaining breath ending in a bass
+groan, and then the sound of a heavy body struggling to its feet, all
+very like a man of over fourteen stone reluctantly taking up the day's
+burdens.
+
+Nahnya touched Ralph's shoulder and pointed to his camera.  He trained
+it on the spot.
+
+Suddenly through the grass, no more than ten feet from Ralph, stuck a
+hairy head as big as a butter-tub.  It was an immense brown bear.  His
+breath was almost in their faces; they could have whacked him with
+their paddles.  For an appreciable instant he gazed at them, his ears
+pricked, his chops fallen, his little, short-sighted eyes agog with
+comic dismay.  Ralph snapped the shutter of his camera, and the three
+youngsters broke simultaneously into a roar of laughter.  With a
+terrified snort the bear disappeared.  For a long time they could hear
+him galloping desperately away through the grass.
+
+"Why didn't Charley want to shoot him?" asked Ralph.
+
+"Skin no good in the summer," said Nahnya.  "Bear meat much tough."
+
+The little river was not yet done with its surprises.  By and by
+without any warning it carried them around a point of the elevated
+meadow, and they found themselves out on the bosom of a lake, whose
+unexpected serene loveliness caught at the breast.  Woods and hills
+receded into the background, and the whole sky was revealed to them,
+with the expanse of water reflecting it.  The sky was of the colour of
+the first forget-me-nots of spring, with the exquisite limpid clarity
+that is the North's especial beauty.  Afterward a breeze came from
+across the lake darkening the pale surface of the water to corn-flower
+colour, bluer than blue.
+
+After some talk in Cree between Nahnya and Charley they landed on the
+point of a promontory halfway down the lake.  There was searching of
+tracks along the shore and more discussion mystifying to Ralph; it was
+not yet time to spell for another meal.  Charley snatched up his gun
+and set off into the woods.  Instantly Ralph's heart leaped into his
+throat, and the blood began to pound against his temples.  He was left
+alone with her!
+
+"Where has he gone?" he asked, affecting a careless air.
+
+"Moose tracks," she said, pointing.  "Moose come down here to drink.
+We want fresh meat."
+
+"Will he be long?" asked Ralph.
+
+She shrugged as at a foolish question.  "How can I tell what the moose
+will do?"
+
+Nahnya with provoking coolness procured a piece of moosehide from her
+stores in the dugout, and taking a pair of Charley's old moccasins, sat
+down on a boulder to resole them.  Ralph, struggling to hide the fire
+that was consuming him, watched her with side-long, burning eyes.  The
+lake with its strip of stony beach was at their feet; the forest
+climbed a stony hill behind them.
+
+Nahnya's attitude, bending over her work, was like all her
+attitudes--instinct with an unconscious wild grace.  She was all woman.
+Ralph felt like a desert traveller compelled to sit down outside the
+oasis.  He was parched and fainting for her.  She was in his blood:
+since yesterday he had lost himself.
+
+The quality of deep wistfulness in her face tugged at his breast.  It
+was there even when she laughed, and most there when she sat as now,
+occupied and still.  Her calm busyness raised a wall between them.  How
+to rouse her! how to make her feel what he felt!  Like every passionate
+lover, he could not but believe that she must be susceptible to his
+torments.
+
+"She's only acting, with her cool and indifferent airs," he thought,
+persuaded of the truth of it by his own feverish desires.  "Girls think
+they have to make out they don't care.  She's waiting for me to make a
+move.  Maybe she sent Charley away to give me a chance."
+
+But his tongue was still tied, and his arms paralyzed by the spectre of
+the deft needle.
+
+"Nahnya," he said shakily at last, "can't you talk to me?"
+
+She smiled without looking up.  "I not much for talking," she said.
+"What about?"
+
+"You," he said.
+
+She shrugged.  "Me?" she said.  "That's nothing!"
+
+"You said when you knew me better you'd tell me about yourself."
+
+The needle paused.  She looked disconcerted, and frowned.  "I can't
+talk," she said slowly, "just to be talking.  Talking is foolish.  It
+makes trouble.  You never can tell what will be said before you are
+through talking."
+
+Ralph in his right mind would have laughed and commended her sound
+sense.  Now he waved it aside.  "You said you'd tell me about
+yourself," he repeated.
+
+She pointed toward the dugout.  "Your paddle is rough," she said.
+"Take a knife and make the end smooth to fit the hand.  Working is good
+sense."
+
+"I won't be put off like this!" cried Ralph hotly.
+
+Temper was never an effective weapon to use with Nahnya.
+
+She looked at him, scornful and disinterested as a child.  "Put off?
+What's the matter with you?"
+
+Passion could not withstand that look, open and cold as a deep spring.
+Ralph scowled and muttered, and dug up the stones with his toe.
+
+After a while he returned to the charge with a more ingratiating
+manner.  "I want to know something about you so that we can be
+friends," he said.
+
+"What do you mean by friends?" she asked with another direct look.
+
+Once more he had the feeling of the ground being cut from under him.
+"Oh, friends!" he said vaguely.  "Friends like to be together, and tell
+each other everything, and help each other out."
+
+"Can a white man be friends with a girl--like me?" she asked quietly.
+"I never saw that."
+
+The unexpected implied truth flicked Ralph on the raw.  He had no
+recourse but to lose his temper.  "What have other men and girls got to
+do with you and me?" he cried hotly.  "Am I the same to you as Joe
+Mixer and that lot?"
+
+"Joe Mixer is always the same," she said.  "He is easy to understand."
+
+Ralph chose to see coquetry in this.  "Is that the sort of man you
+like?" he cried.
+
+"No," she said.  "But I know what to expect from him."
+
+Her admirable good sense and directness were lost on him.  Passion
+found its voice.  "Nahnya, do you want to drive me mad?  You know what
+I'm feeling!  I couldn't sleep a wink last night for listening to you
+breathing so softly inside your tent.  I want you!  I'm mad with
+wanting you!"
+
+She sprang up, and warily put the rock between them.  The quiet eyes
+fired up with surprising suddenness.  "Stop it!" she cried.  "You talk
+foolish!  You gone crazy, I think!"
+
+"You drove me crazy!" he cried.  "You're so beautiful!  What did you
+expect?  Nahnya, it's summer time!  You're no snow-woman with those
+carnations in your cheeks--those lips!  Come to me, Nahnya.  Don't
+fight me any more!"
+
+Anger made lightnings in her eyes.  "Stop it!" she cried, stamping her
+foot.  Her voice rang like steel.  "What do you know about me, what I
+am?  What do you care?  It is fine summer time and you want a woman!"
+
+"It's not true!" he cried, moving toward her around the rock.  "I want
+only you!"
+
+She evaded him.  "It is true!" she cried ringingly.  "You not know me!
+I am not a coat to be worn by different men until I am old!  I am no
+man's woman to work for him and crouch before him like his dog!  I am
+myself--me!  Nahnya Crossfox!"
+
+He did not take in the sense of her words, but only saw that she was
+twice as beautiful when angry.  "I don't care what you are," he
+muttered.  "I want you!"
+
+"Don't you touch me!" she cried warningly.
+
+He had already sprung toward her.  She gave back one step, and swung
+her flexed arm swift as a cat's-paw.  There was a resounding smack and
+Ralph's cheek whitened and crimsoned.
+
+He stopped in his tracks.  In his eyes blank surprise was succeeded by
+red fury.  For an instant they stood thus at gaze, with heaving breasts
+and stormy eyes.
+
+"Keep away!" she said through her teeth.
+
+"You devil!" he muttered.  "I meant fair by you.  I'll have you now
+anyway!"
+
+She turned and sped up the hill.  Ralph clutched at her, but her flying
+skirts only teased his finger-tips.  He leaped after her, passion and
+an outrageous anger lending springs to his heels.  A strange elation,
+too, formed part of the boiling mess in his brain.  She chose to run;
+very well then, let her take the penalty of capture.
+
+Darting and twisting among the birch trees, chin up and elbows pressed
+close to her sides, Nahnya ran as if upon a hundred feet.  Ralph with
+the expenditure of three times the effort was no match for her.  He
+could not twist his bulk among the trees so featly, nor leap so nimbly
+up from stone to stone.  To be beaten by a girl was unthinkable.
+Grinding his teeth, putting his head down, he strained every nerve to
+overtake her.  But she distanced him still.  At the top of the hill he
+lost sight of her, nor could he any longer hear her flying moccasined
+feet among the leaves and sticks.
+
+What with the race uphill, and the unconscionable commotion inside him,
+the burden was almost too much for a mortal heart.  Ralph dropped on a
+stone, and pressed his head between his hands.  There was a pretty mess
+inside it; to be scorned by a savage maiden, to have his face
+slapped--hideous insult--and to have her get away scot free!  Something
+inside him seemed to writhe and turn over with rage.
+
+He got up presently, and took his way downhill again with a black brow.
+"She's got to go back to the boat," he reflected grimly.  "I'll get her
+there!"
+
+As he issued out from among the trees he saw her.  She was awaiting him
+by the waterside, cool and wary.  At the sight of her his heart leaped
+up with an irresponsible, mad desire.  No faun of earth's youth was
+more cruel, ardent, untamed, and joyous than this young doctor of the
+universities who had forgotten his past.
+
+"By God! she's beautiful!  And she's going to be mine!" his eyes cried.
+
+"Keep away!" she said warningly.
+
+He laughed, and ran toward her.
+
+He could never have described exactly what happened.  He saw her stoop
+swiftly, and sensed the stick that she caught up, without being able to
+stop himself.  He heard the crack on his head that he did not feel, and
+night spread her black pinions with a swoop over the summer noon.
+
+
+Ralph came to his senses to find himself lying in the bottom of the
+dugout, propped against folded blankets.  A little in front of him he
+could see Charley's indifferent back, and Charley's arms rhythmically
+driving the paddle.  Craning his neck to see if Nahnya was behind him,
+a most convincing, grinding pain from the crown of his head down
+through his spinal column arrested the movement.  He closed his eyes,
+and lay quiet while it spent itself.
+
+He became conscious of a sickening weight on his breast.  Little by
+little recollection returned, explaining it.  Life seemed like an ugly
+task to take up.  To be flouted and scorned and knocked down by the
+woman he desired--a red woman into the bargain!  He reflected bitterly
+that she must have told Charley what had happened.  Ralph had a mental
+picture of the red-skin's shrug, and of being thrown contemptuously
+into the dugout.  A deep, slow rage burned in his breast like a
+charcoal fire, poisoning his whole being with its fumes.
+
+"If he shows anything in his face when he turns around, I'll smash
+him!" thought Ralph.  "It would do me good to smash his sulky brown
+face.  They shan't laugh at me, damn them!"
+
+To add to the confusion inside him a little voice would make itself
+heard saying: "Served you right, old man!  She's a good girl.  She did
+just the right thing.  You acted like a beast!"
+
+This was what really maddened Ralph more than the recollection of his
+injuries.  While he lay there so quietly with his eyes closed, inside
+him, so to speak, he was trying to shout down that damnable, persistent
+small voice.
+
+"Ignorant, dull savages!  Scum of the earth!  How dare they set
+themselves up against a white man?  I'll show them!  I've been too
+friendly with them.  Their heads are swelled.  I'll put them in their
+places!"
+
+By and by Nahnya asked: "You feel better now?"
+
+He made believe to be still unconscious.
+
+Leaning forward, she laid two cool fingers on the pulse of his temple.
+At her touch a keen discomfort filled him; pleasure or disgust?--he
+could not have told.
+
+By this time they had crossed the lake, and the swiftly passing banks
+of the river were pressing close on them again.  They turned
+innumerable bends, shot little rapids, and loitered across still pools
+as before.  But the lyrical beauty of the summer's afternoon had
+departed.  Ralph hated it.  By and by he lost the river banks, and
+raising his head he saw that they had come out upon another lake.
+After what seemed to him like an age consumed in crossing it, they
+entered the river once more, and finally landed.
+
+Not until they went ashore did Ralph have a glimpse of Nahnya's face.
+He avoided looking at her as long as he could.  In equal degrees he
+longed and dreaded to find out what she was thinking.  When finally his
+angry, sullen eyes crept sidewise to her face--if she had looked sorry!
+but no, it was the same old, hard, indifferent mask that fronted him.
+His unreasonable anger welled up afresh.
+
+"All right, my girl!" he thought.  "I'll pay you out yet!"
+
+It was one of the customary camping-places on the river.  On each side
+the fireplace a post had been driven in the earth and a bar laid
+across, from which depended wooden hooks of various lengths to hang the
+pails from.  Some altruistic traveller had even made a rustic table and
+a bench for those who were to follow him.
+
+According to their customary routine, they first slung the three little
+mosquito tents in a row, and then, making a fire, set about preparing
+supper.  There was little speech exchanged between them.  It was widely
+different from the jolly scene of the night before.  The matter-of-fact
+Charley accepted the silence as he had accepted the fun, without
+question.  Ralph could not tell from his expressionless face how much
+he knew of what had happened.  The struggle inside Ralph was keeping
+his raw susceptibilities agitated as by the application of sandpaper.
+He was spoiling for a quarrel.
+
+Charley, climbing the bank with a load from the boat, spoke a word over
+his shoulder to Ralph, who was beside the dugout: "_Pakwishegan_."
+
+Ralph violently exploded.  "If flour is wanted, carry it up yourself!"
+he cried with an oath.  "Who do you think you are, giving orders to a
+white man!"
+
+The boy looked at him astonished.  Putting down his load, he came back
+for the bag of flour.  Ralph went up empty-handed.  At the top of the
+bank he met Nahnya, drawn by the sound of his angry voice.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked.
+
+"Matter!" cried Ralph.  "I suppose you and your brother think you can
+put it all over me now, don't you?  Well you've got another guess!"
+
+It was no sooner out than he wondered what had made him say it.  Her
+astonished eyes reproached him.  After a moment's blank regard she
+seemed to understand, and her face changed.
+
+"You foolish," she said swiftly.  "I not tell Charley anything.  He
+only a boy, not much sense yet.  I tell him you fall down and hit your
+head on a stone."
+
+It took him aback.  He looked at her dumbly and miserably, but his evil
+genius applied the lash once more.  "I don't care what you tell him!"
+he cried loudly.  He strode to his tent, and lifting the netting,
+rolled himself in his blankets, and made believe to go to sleep.
+
+The voice was more insistent than ever.  "You fool!" it said.  "She's
+generous!  She's trying to spare you.  You gave yourself away nicely.
+You're in the wrong.  You're acting like a spoiled child, and every
+minute that passes without your owning up makes it worse!"
+
+Whereat the other party was obliged to shout louder than ever: "I don't
+care!  Ignorant, senseless redskins!  What a fool I was to put myself
+in their hands!  I'll make them smart for this!"
+
+He had no supper.  By and by he did fall asleep.  In the middle of the
+night he awoke sore and hungry.  Further sleep was out of the question.
+Getting up, he replenished the dying fire.  When the flames leaped up,
+making the little place bright, to save himself he could not help
+glancing in the direction of Nahnya's little shelter.  It was empty.
+
+A swift anxiety seized him.  Under the next shelter Charley was
+sleeping peacefully.  Where could she have gone alone at that time of
+night?  Everything about her was so mysterious!  Could any danger have
+overtaken her without awaking him?  Perhaps some of her people were
+camped in the neighbourhood--a man, maybe!  At this thought a
+surprising pain transfixed Ralph's breast.
+
+He thought of the boat, and went stumblingly down the bank to see if it
+was there.  At the bottom of the incline he almost fell over Nahnya.
+She was lying in the grass with her face hidden in her arms.
+
+Ralph was utterly confused by the discovery.  For a moment he stood
+staring down at her like a clown.  "What does it mean?" he thought
+dully.  Her stillness began to frighten him.
+
+"Nahnya!" he whispered sharply.
+
+"Go back to your tent," she muttered.
+
+The words came quick and breathless from her.  Ralph put a hand on her
+shoulder and felt it shake.  At that something tight and painful in his
+own breast snapped in two, and the warm feelings he had done his best
+to keep out had their way.  He dropped to his knees beside her.
+
+"Nahnya, what is it?" he whispered in a voice clumsy and faltering with
+feeling.  "It's not because of me, is it?  I'm not worth it.  I acted
+like a brute and a fool.  I'm sorry!  I've been sorry ever since, but I
+couldn't get it out!"
+
+She made no effort to control her weeping now.  The sound was like
+little knives hacking at his breast.  He longed to take her up in his
+arms, but a truer instinct warned him not to touch her now.
+
+"Nahnya, don't, don't!" he implored.  "You have nothing to feel badly
+for.  I forgot myself.  I am ashamed.  You make me feel like the lowest
+worm that crawls."
+
+Gradually her weeping stilled itself.  She sat up at last and pressed
+the back of her hand to her eyes.  "I am a fool," she said, "crying
+like a baby."
+
+There was a deprecating, small, friendly note in her voice that Ralph
+had never heard before.  He had much ado to keep his hands off her.
+"Why should you feel badly?" he persisted.  "You have done nothing but
+what was right."
+
+"Oh, I think everything goes wrong," she said wistfully.  "I think
+there is a curse upon me that turns men into devils when they look at
+me.  Always wherever I go men act bad to me.  What is the matter with
+me, I think, that makes them bad?  I do not know."
+
+"It's not your fault if you are beautiful," he muttered, "and if men
+have devils in them."
+
+"I do not know," she repeated.
+
+The storm of weeping had left her with a gentleness she had never shown
+before.  She was as friendly as a lonely child.  Ralph was terrified of
+breaking the spell.  His tongue stumbled along in incoherent
+self-reproaches.
+
+"When I come to you at Fort Edward," Nahnya went on, "I think much; are
+you the same as the other men.  I watch you close.  I think you have
+different feelings, and I am glad.  I want so much for you to be
+different.  And yesterday we have so much fun.  You look at me straight
+and laugh cleanly.  I am sure it is all right.  But to-day"--her voice
+drooped--"to-day you are like all the others!"
+
+"Nahnya, forgive me!  I'm ashamed!" he muttered.
+
+"To-night I am thinking what will I do," she continued.  "We can't go
+on together in the same canoe if the devil is roused in you.  I feel so
+bad.  I have come so far to get you to cure my mot'er.  I think it is
+no use!  Then I cry like a fool!"
+
+"Nahnya, I swear I'll never give you cause again," said Ralph.  "Try to
+believe me!  I swear I'll never lay a hand on you except in respect!"
+
+She let him take her hand.  He pressed it to his lips.  At the act she
+caught her breath oddly, and snatched the hand away.  Poor Ralph
+thought he had offended her again.  There was a silence between them.
+At length she said very low:
+
+"Ralph, do you think I am a bad woman?"
+
+Ralph almost grovelled at her feet.  It was very sweet to her.  She
+listened to his desperate protestations with a hand at her breast, and
+made no attempt to stay him.  When she spoke again her voice was as
+soft and as charged with feeling as a nightingale's.  All she said was:
+
+"It is getting light in the east.  We must go to our beds."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE RICE RIVER
+
+On the first day of the journey Ralph, according to the immemorial
+instinct of travellers, started a diary, and illustrated it with rough
+day to day maps.  He wrote it up by the campfire during the long
+twilights, or while they basked in the sun at the noon spell.  Charley
+never noticed it, but whenever the little black book was produced
+Nahnya looked curious and oddly annoyed.  But she could not very well
+order Ralph to give it up.
+
+On the afternoon of the day following Ralph's outbreak and their
+midnight reconciliation her curiosity finally found vent in speech.
+Passing down the largest of the lakes a strong head wind had blown up,
+and after struggling against it for a couple of hours, and thoroughly
+wetting themselves and their baggage without making much progress,
+Nahnya had ordered a landing.  They now lay in rustling grass on a
+point of land blown upon by the strong fresh wind, and deliciously
+warmed by the sun.  Charley had fallen asleep.  When Ralph brought out
+the diary Nahnya said:
+
+"What do you write in your little book?"
+
+"Just what we see every day," said Ralph.
+
+Nahnya frowned a little.  "You promise me you never tell what you see,"
+she said.
+
+"I never will," said Ralph quickly.  "No one but myself shall ever read
+this."
+
+"Maybe some one find it," said Nahnya.  "What good is your promise
+then?"
+
+"It is written in shorthand," he said, exhibiting it.  "No one can read
+it but me."
+
+She was mollified.  "It is like the Cree writing that the missionaries
+teach," she said.  "Read it to me," she added with a kind of shy
+boldness.
+
+Ralph was nothing loath.  It was his matter-of-fact self that guided
+the pencil.  "Estimate it seventy-five miles from Hat Lake to Beaver
+Lake," he began.  "Probably less than half that in a straight line,
+because the river is as crooked as a corkscrew.  Called the second lake
+Beaver Lake because of the hills to the west; a medium size hill for
+the head, a big hill for the body, and a long, low hill for the tail."
+
+"That is a good name," interrupted Nahnya.
+
+"Couldn't see the whole of Beaver Lake at once, but you head straight
+down the lake from point to point; then about twenty miles more of
+river to Breeches Lake.  It's shaped like a pair of breeches.  As you
+start down it a long, thin point faces you almost dividing it in two.
+Nothing doing in the left leg; the right leg goes through.  The water
+of all the lakes is amber coloured, but black as onyx when you look
+straight down.  It's great to see the shores without a tree chopped
+down, or a house anywhere to spoil the natural effect.
+
+"The river is full of mother wild ducks and their newly hatched
+families.  Comical little puff-balls.  Hell to pay when we come along.
+Old Mis' Duck she plays every trick she knows to lead us away from the
+family, and the babies they just keep on diving till they are too tired
+to wiggle their tails any more."
+
+Nahnya laughed.
+
+"Can't tell which way you're going in the river, but all the lakes
+stretch north and south, so I figure we're travelling due north.
+Charley bent a piece of tin like a trolling spoon and caught a thumping
+salmon trout.  They call it _sapi_.  Best fish I ever tasted.  I call
+the fourth lake Sword Lake; it's long and narrow and straight, with a
+bend at the top like a handle.  There are hills both sides all the
+way--bluest I ever saw.  We are camped on the point at the beginning of
+the bend and I can't see what's around it."
+
+"This McIlwraith Lake," said Nahnya.
+
+Ralph made the entry.
+
+"Is that all?" she asked.
+
+"That's all," he said.
+
+"Nothing about me?" she said, archly smiling and wistful, affecting a
+great surprise.
+
+Ralph, avoiding her eye, shook his head.  It was the truth.  He could
+not bare his heart concerning Nahnya, even to the discreet little book.
+
+"Why do you write it?" Nahnya asked.
+
+"Oh, when you take a bully trip you like to have a record of it--to
+read when you are old, I suppose."
+
+"When you are old I think you will laugh at this," Nahnya said, looking
+away.
+
+"Think so?" said Ralph.
+
+Half-measures were impossible to Nahnya.  When she was on her guard a
+wall was no stonier; when she gave her confidence she gave it all.
+To-day her eyes were as open and affectionate as a child's; there was
+gratitude in their wistful depths, a hint of humility.  This in the
+same girl who had beaten Ralph about the head only the day before!
+
+Ralph, without altogether understanding the change in her, was touched
+and thrilled by her look.  Alas! for his good resolutions.  It had been
+easy the night before under stress of emotion to swear he would never
+touch her, never alarm her by his passion.  He dimly understood that it
+was her reliance on his promise that made her so free with him to-day,
+and yet--his arms ached for her a hundred times more than before, and
+when in the business about camp they accidentally touched each other,
+the same old unregenerate madness made his brain reel.
+
+Tossed between two thoughts, he was happy and he was miserable.  "She
+_does_ care!  She couldn't look at me like that if she didn't!  No!
+She only looks like that because she feels safe from my love-making!"
+
+This was the undercurrent; on the surface all was serene.  The
+combination of strong, cool wind and hot sunshine was delicious.
+Nahnya was soling the same pair of moccasins, while Ralph, more
+tractable to-day, shaped and smoothed the handle of his paddle with a
+knife.  Nahnya developed a faculty for asking questions.
+
+"How long you live in Fort Edward, Ralph?"
+
+The initial "R" was difficult for her tongue to encompass.  She
+delicately aspirated his name thus, "Hoo-ralph."  He thought the sound
+of it enchanting.
+
+"Six weeks."
+
+"You like it there?"
+
+"Dull as ditch-water."
+
+"They tell me plenty fun at Fort Edward."
+
+"Not my kind of fun."
+
+"Plenty girls."
+
+"Girls?  Lord!  Frights!"
+
+"I suppose you like outside fun better, waltz-dancing and high-toned
+girls and all."
+
+"Society, you mean?  I never was much for that."
+
+"Where did you live before you came to Fort Edward?"
+
+"New York, last, working in a hospital."
+
+"I know hospitals.  They have good times.  The doctors go out with the
+nurses."
+
+"Not this doctor.  Nurses are too--too iodoformy."
+
+"What's that, Ralph?"
+
+"Oh, too professional."
+
+"Some nurses are sweet."
+
+"I never had any luck that way."
+
+"What you do when you go out in New York?"
+
+"Oh, hang round with the fellows, and go to shows.  I never had any
+money."
+
+Nahnya, very intent on her sewing: "Did you know any of the actresses?"
+
+"Lord!  No!  Not my style at all!"
+
+"Didn't you know any girls in New York?"
+
+"Nary a one!"
+
+"That is too bad!  But at your other college you have fun?"
+
+"McGill, yes, plenty doing there."
+
+"Nice girls?"
+
+"Rather!  Plenty of 'em.  Dear little things!"
+
+A pause here while Nahnya bit the thread with her  sharp teeth, and
+took up the other moccasin.  "What is plenty?" she said with a little
+air of scorn.  "There is always one."
+
+"Not for me," Ralph said.  "I rushed the bunch."
+
+"Where was your home, Ralph; where you were born?"
+
+"At Millersville in Ontario.  One of those sleepy little burgs with a
+brick Odd Fellows' Hall with blue shades, a Royal Hotel on the corner,
+and cracked cement sidewalks.  They're all alike."
+
+[Illustration: "_Ralph never guessed he was being searched through and
+through by a woman's loving, jealous curiosity_"]
+
+Nahnya had a score of questions to ask about his home and his family.
+Ralph, as his eyes softened with recollection, grew more outrageously
+facetious.  Nahnya, glancing at him through her lashes, understood.
+Finally, threading a needle with an elaborately careless air, she
+remarked:
+
+"I guess you liked the Millersville girls best."
+
+"Print dresses and rosy cheeks," said Ralph dreamily.  "Short on fine
+clothes and long on health and good nature!  Choir practice and school
+picnics and country dances!  That was good!  There was a girl there----"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Patty Lake her name was.  We called her Pattycake.  She was sweet.
+Always wore pink, and had two fat, brown braids hanging down her back."
+
+"Well?" a little breathlessly.
+
+"Married the butcher's boy, that's all."
+
+There were many breaks and pauses in this conversation.  So off-hand
+was Nahnya's manner, and such her preoccupation with the needle, that
+Ralph never guessed he was being searched through and through by a
+woman's loving, jealous curiosity.
+
+
+The little black book continued:
+
+"When we left our grassy point and paddled around the big curve in
+McIlwraith Lake, suddenly we hove in sight of half a dozen whitewashed
+huts on the shore.  And a flag-pole with a flag against the blue!  Gave
+me a regular thrill.  The Hudson's Bay Company uses the Union Jack with
+the letters H.B.C. in white.  The fellows up here say it stands for
+'Here Before Christ.'  As we paddled by, a white man came out of the
+store and hailed us.  Nahnya wouldn't stop.  'Ask too much questions,'
+she said.  This was Fort McIlwraith that I have heard of.
+
+"Immediately afterward we got in the river again.  It is deeper and
+swifter after every lake.  Here it is called the Pony River, Nahnya
+says.  There were some ugly snags.  Nahnya is a wonder with the paddle.
+We camped in the middle of a wide, burned-over stretch.  It was like a
+farm-field.  You kept looking around for fences and cattle, and a house
+somewhere.
+
+"Next morning the river slowed up and lost itself among a lot of low
+islands covered with gigantic cottonwood trees.  You could see there
+was a change coming.  As we paddled around the end of an island, me all
+unawares, we were snatched up--snatched is the word--by a violent green
+current that raced us down half a mile, and wet us in a rapid before I
+got my bearings.
+
+"Nahnya says this is the Rice River.  It is half a dozen times as big
+as the Pony.  It is a thick, yellowish-green colour like jade, and a
+funny hissing sound comes up from the surface.  Nahnya says it is made
+by the stones chasing along the stony bottom.  It is a gaunt, ragged,
+bad-tempered looking stream, always gnawing under its banks and
+bringing the trees down on the run, and then piling the debris in
+untidy heaps on naked pebble bars in the middle.  The cut-banks are
+astonishing--some of them a hundred feet high, the trees looking like
+toys along the top edge, waiting their turn to fall over.  Out of these
+smooth slopes, naked as railway embankments, harder strata of earth
+stick up like castles, with millions of swallows building in them.
+
+"We camped in another burned-out place.  This is the loneliest spot on
+earth almost, and even here man has left his dirty work.  The man, red
+or white, who is responsible for a fire ought to be drawn and
+quartered.  It's ghastly.  Nahnya has put the fear of God into Charley.
+Last thing before we move on she makes him haul water until every spark
+is quenched.  Mosquitoes bad to-night.
+
+"Couldn't sleep.  This violent, ugly river, and the ghastly burned-over
+country, and other things gave me the willies.  A brute of a bird flew
+in circles over the tent half the night, uttering a single croaking
+note like a cracked funeral bell.  Lord! we're a long way off from
+folks!  Fancy Charley and Nahnya taking these trips by themselves.  She
+sleeps like a baby, without ever moving or missing a breath.
+
+"Next day.  The old river doesn't look so bad with the sun shining on
+it.  Saw three bears as we went flying down.  How does anybody get up
+this current I wonder.  You can't always be going down-stream.  Nothing
+but cut-banks, bars, drift-piles, and vicious little rapids on the
+bends.  Eagles sailing like aeroplanes overhead, and screaming as if
+they had steel springs in their throats.
+
+"Third day on the Rice River.  We have come nearly two hundred miles on
+this stream, I guess, and not a soul, red or white, not a hut, nor the
+remains of a hut all the way.  The current seems to be slackening, and
+we lose ourselves in a mess of islands; so I suppose there is something
+saving for us ahead.  This is the sixth day from Gisborne, so we ought
+to arrive there to-morrow, wherever and whatever 'there' is."
+
+The entries in the little black book ended with these words.
+
+
+Ralph's diary confined itself discreetly to the visual aspects of the
+journey, avoiding the psychological.  All was not smooth sailing here
+of course.  Ralph was keeping a tight hold on himself that entailed no
+little nervous strain, and he was apt to break out unreasonably.
+Nahnya, while generally friendly, had an exasperating way of relapsing
+at any time into the mysterious inscrutability which maddened him.
+Only Charley was always the same.
+
+On the afternoon of the third day on the Rice River, after one of the
+colloquies in Cree with her brother that always irritated Ralph, Nahnya
+suddenly brought the dugout around in the current, and grounded it on a
+shelving, stony beach.  Charley got out and pulled it up.
+
+"What's this for?" said Ralph, surprised.  "It isn't but an hour since
+we ate."
+
+Nahnya affected not to hear him.
+
+Ralph instantly flew into a passion.  "Oh, very well!" he cried.  "If
+you want to be mysterious!"
+
+He strode off and sat down by himself on a drift-log, dignified and
+sore.  He filled his pipe with care, and lighted it.  It tasted bad,
+and he put it back in his pocket.
+
+Nahnya brought cold victuals ashore, and she and Charley sat down
+together.  Ralph, watching out of the corner of his eye, had at least
+the satisfaction of seeing that she could not eat.  She sat with her
+hands in her lap, unusual for her.  He could not see her face.
+Charley, who could always eat, stuffed himself with moose-meat and cold
+bannock.
+
+When Charley had eaten as much as he could hold, he carried the remains
+back to the dugout and put them away.  He returned to Nahnya with a
+coil of light, strong cord in his hands, a tracking-line.  Holding it
+out toward her, he said something in Cree.
+
+To Ralph's astonishment Nahnya sprang up in a rage, snatched the line
+out of Charley's hands, and soundly boxed his ears.  A pretty family
+quarrel resulted.  Charley, thunderstruck at first, answered back in
+tones of resentful injury.  More than once Ralph heard his own name,
+and wondered mightily what he had to do with it.
+
+Charley flung off, and sat down by himself, and there were the three of
+them up and down the beach, perfectly sore and unhappy; Ralph in
+addition mystified by it all.
+
+Ralph was the first to give in.  "Oh, I say, this is too ridiculous!"
+he cried.  "Nahnya, come here!"
+
+She went to him with a face like a mask of bronze.
+
+"What's the matter, Nahnya?" he demanded to know.  "We're all acting
+like children!"
+
+She shrugged slightly, and looked away.
+
+Seeing that he would get nothing out of her this way, he changed his
+tone.  "For my part I'm sorry I lost my temper," he said warmly.
+"Honest, I am."
+
+This told.  She frowned and looked uncomfortable; sure sign, as he knew
+by now, that her feelings were touched.
+
+"We were always going to be friends," he said, following up his
+advantage.  "Is this being friends?  What's the matter, Nahnya?"
+
+To his surprise he saw her eyes begin to fill.  She made to turn from
+him, but he caught her wrists and forced her to face him.  "Nahnya, I
+am your friend," he said.
+
+She angrily shook the tears from her eyes.  "I one fool!" she muttered.
+"Like a white woman, I cry when I need sense!"
+
+"What's the matter?" repeated Ralph.
+
+"Let me go!" she said.
+
+He released her.
+
+"I think you going to hate me by and by," she said.
+
+"Why should I hate you?" he demanded.
+
+She gave him an extraordinary look, at once determined and deprecating,
+and said a little breathlessly: "Ralph, I got to tie your eyes, now."
+
+"Blindfold me?" cried Ralph, amazed.  "What for?"
+
+"You must not see where we go now."
+
+"But I gave you my word!" cried Ralph.  "I promised I'd say nothing of
+where I had been or of what I had seen."
+
+"I know," she said, "you will keep your promise.  But you must not come
+back yourself."
+
+Ralph stared at her as if she were a witch.  Thus to hit upon his
+secret intention, scarcely confessed to himself!
+
+After a while she said: "Will you promise never to come back?"
+
+"No!" cried Ralph, very red in the face.  "I am a free agent!"
+
+"Then I got to tie your eyes," she said.
+
+"I won't submit to it!" cried Ralph hotly.
+
+She shrugged and turned away.  She gave an order to the sulky Charley,
+and between them they unloaded the dugout.  Though it was scarcely four
+in the afternoon, the three little tents were set up in a row on top of
+the bank, and every preparation made for spending the night.
+
+The mosquitoes soon drove them in, each under his own shelter, where
+they lay for the rest of the afternoon, sleeping, sulking, or sorrowing
+as the case was.  They issued out for a hasty, silent supper and turned
+in again.  There was a gorgeous, troubled sunset above the pines across
+the river, and afterward the evening star came out like a lighthouse in
+a canary sea with dark blue islands.  The hard, swift face of the river
+mellowed in the fading light, and gleamed with the soft lustre of old,
+blue stained glass.  None of those in the little tents gave any heed.
+
+In the middle of the night Ralph was rudely awakened by the descent of
+two heavy knees between his shoulders.  While he still struggled with
+the mists of sleep, his wrists were secured behind him.  He put up the
+best fight he could, but his ankles were soon tied, too.  Then it was
+easy to bandage his eyes.
+
+Harder to bear than the indignity of bondage was the pain of betrayal
+that stabbed him.
+
+"Is this your friendship?" he cried.
+
+There was no answer out of the dark.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+BLIND MAN'S BUFF
+
+Ralph's struggle only exhausted him, and bruised his wrists and ankles.
+He gave it up, and lay outwardly quiet, seething with resentment,
+within.  Deprived of his sight, his hearing became preternaturally
+acute, and he had no difficulty in following the various steps of their
+preparations for departure.  Before the bandage was clapped on his
+eyes, he had had a glimpse of daylight.  He guessed from the poignant
+freshness of the air in his nostrils that the dawn had just broken.
+
+After the tent had been taken down over his head and carried away,
+Nahnya and Charley came back to him together.  Charley lifted him under
+the arms, and Nahnya took his feet.  Charley's manner of carrying him
+suggested an insulting indifference that caused Ralph to grind his
+teeth.  They climbed cautiously down the steep bank, finishing with a
+sudden slide to the bottom, and almost dropping Ralph between them.
+Charley laughed, and Ralph swore savagely.
+
+They laid him in the dugout, and he heard Charley's steps retreating.
+Nahnya was arranging the blankets under him.
+
+"Ralph, I sorry," she said in a low voice, sharp with emotion.  "I not
+know anything else to do."
+
+It did not help matters any.  He was too full of resentment to give a
+thought to her side of the case.  "This is what I get for trying to do
+the square thing by you!" he cried.  "For holding myself in night and
+day to keep from distressing you!  You worked on my sympathies.  You
+made me think you were on the square.  You talked about friendship, and
+then you attacked me while I was asleep!  Oh!  I have been nicely taken
+in!"
+
+He heard no more from her.
+
+They slid the boat off the stones; Nahnya climbed over Ralph to take
+her place in the stern; and they set off in the current.  For hours
+after that Ralph had nothing to go on but the quiet dip of the paddles,
+the answering leap of the boat to the thrust of their strong arms, and
+the drip of the water as the blades were withdrawn.  Both brother and
+sister had a great capacity for silence.
+
+Ralph's frame of mind was anything but an enviable one.  It is not
+pleasant to a man to be confronted by a mystery in the woman he loves.
+As long as they had been in accord it had troubled him very little; he
+had looked in her clear eyes, thinking, "whatever may be in store,
+she's on the square."  But when she turned against him all this was
+changed.  Every look, word, act that he had not understood at the time
+recurred to him charged with a sinister significance.  Wounded pride
+hatefully suggested to him that she was using his love for her to
+further her own ends.
+
+Nevertheless he could not but admit that for such a hardy villainess
+some of her acts were strange.  He had plenty of time to think things
+out.  He remembered how she had boxed Charley's ears when the boy had
+first suggested tying him up; he remembered how her eyes had filled,
+and how sadly she whispered, "I think you going to hate me by and by."
+This suggested that she might be the victim of circumstances no less
+than himself.  "Why can't she trust me a little?" he thought.  "She
+knows I'd do anything for her!"
+
+Behind all this was the mystery of what lay ahead, hanging like a heavy
+black curtain athwart his gaze.  When a man has his eyes to see, and
+his arms to fight with, a mystery is pleasantly provocative and
+stimulating.  When he lies blindfolded, bound, and helpless, the
+darkest apprehensions seize upon him.  Thus the weary round continued
+in Ralph's mind.
+
+The long silence was broken by Nahnya.  She uttered in Cree what
+sounded like a quiet warning.  Immediately afterward the dugout lurched
+violently as under a side blow, spun around, and went on as smoothly as
+before.  For a long time Ralph lay vainly threshing his brain for an
+explanation of this odd shock.
+
+A new sound slowly stole on his ears, a dull, heavy growl from down the
+river.  He did not need to be told what this was; rapids--but no such
+rapids as they had shot in the Pony River, or hitherto in the Rice.
+Those compared with this sound were as the laughter of children to the
+voice of a giant.  The growl became a roar which grew louder with every
+moment.  Ralph's heart began to beat painfully.  It is probable that it
+never occurred to Nahnya, certainly not to Charley, what a refined
+species of torture they were inflicting on their prisoner.  There is no
+terror like terror of the unseen.  "If anything happens I'll drown like
+a cat in a bag!" thought Ralph.  He would not stoop to make any
+complaint aloud.
+
+Charley and Nahnya stopped paddling, and talked low-voiced; Nahnya gave
+unmistakable orders.  The slight, sharp note of excitement in their
+voices shook Ralph's breast.  From the sounds ahead he pictured a very
+cataclysm of the waters awaiting them, wilder indeed than any earthly
+rapids.  Little beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead.  Oh!
+for his sight! the use of his arms!  But he would not ask it.  They
+started paddling again.  The roaring seemed to be on every side of them
+now.  Ralph clenched his teeth and his hands.  "Now we're going to take
+the plunge!" he thought.  "Now!  Now!"  And still it held off, until he
+could have screamed with the suspense.
+
+And then the dugout seemed to drop from under him, and immediately
+afterward precipitated itself with a crash against a wall of water.  A
+wave leaped aboard, drenching Ralph to the waist.  He thought it was
+all over, and suddenly ceased to trouble.  Charley yelled with pure
+excitement; the dugout gave a series of mad leaps and plunges, flinging
+Ralph from side to side like a sack of meal, and suddenly they floated
+in smooth water again.  An uncanny stillness descended on them.  A long
+breath escaped between Ralph's teeth.
+
+
+There followed what seemed like the greater part of a day to Ralph,
+with scarcely anything to register the passing of the heavy time.  It
+was perhaps four hours.  The sunshine grew warm in his face, and he
+smelled the pines on shore.  High overhead he heard the eagles
+screaming.  Charley complained--of hunger, Ralph guessed, and Nahnya
+laconically silenced him.  At intervals a new sound gave Ralph food for
+thought.  This was the loud, brawling voice of a stream, now on one
+side, now on the other.
+
+"The whole character of the country must have changed," he thought.
+"We must be passing between steep hills or mountains for the streams to
+come tumbling down like that."
+
+The long wait for something to happen was ended by the voice of another
+great rapid ahead.  Ralph's heart began to beat.  "Must I go through
+with that again?" he thought.
+
+But while he was steeling himself for the ordeal, the nose of the
+dugout grounded, and Charley, springing out, pulled her up on shore.
+
+Ralph was lifted out and laid on a flat rock.  There was a long wait.
+A very real hunger began to assail him.  One of the brawling streams
+came down nearby.  From the sounds that reached his ears, Ralph
+pictured the dugout being dragged across the rock on rollers, and
+hidden under bushes.  Evidently their journey by water was at an end.
+Nahnya and Charley sat down near him, seemingly to make something.
+Finally Ralph was lifted up and laid down again, and then, much to his
+surprise, hoisted on a litter and borne away.
+
+A long journey over rough ground followed, and all uphill, Ralph
+judged.  They never passed out of hearing of the voice of the small
+stream.  They stopped often to rest.  Even so, it was wonderful to
+Ralph how easily they went.  He was no light-weight.  Once or twice
+Charley grumbled at taking up the load, and Nahnya angrily silenced
+him.  There was no faltering in her.  In spite of his resentment
+against her Ralph felt a kind of compunction at being carried by a
+woman.  Anyway, his resentment had cooled somewhat; cooled enough to
+allow him to glance at the oddity of his situation.
+
+"Lord! here's a queer go!" he thought.  "What next?"
+
+He was not under any apprehensions of danger to himself.
+
+They went on for an hour or more, and the question of food became of
+more vital moment to Ralph than of what was before him.  The air had
+the lack of motion and the cool smell of vegetable decay that suggested
+a deep forest.  Finally he was put down for a longer period, and he
+heard the welcome sound of Charley's axe, and shortly afterward the
+crackle of the growing fire.  In a little while the delicious emanation
+from baking bannock reached his nostrils, and at last he heard the
+hissing of the bacon in the pan, which signified the completion of the
+preparations.  A certain anxiety attacked him.
+
+"How the deuce are they going to manage about feeding me?" he thought.
+"By Gad! if they think they're going to make me go without my
+dinner----!"
+
+However, Charley presently untied his ankles and his wrists.  Ralph
+tore the bandage from his eyes, stretched himself luxuriously, and
+looked about him.
+
+They were in the magnificent gloom of a primeval forest.  Gigantic
+trunks of fir and spruce rose on every hand with lofty branches that
+darkened the heavens.  The little patches of sky that showed between
+seemed immeasurably far off.  The fallen monarchs of ages past lay here
+and there in confusion, rotting by infinitesimally slow degrees.  The
+ground was stony, but stones and fallen trunks alike were largely
+covered with moss, incredibly soft and thick and green.  The moss
+masked treacherous holes, as Ralph discovered when he attempted to move
+about.  There was no undergrowth except a few spindling berry-bushes,
+and a low plant with huge leaves called the "devil's club," both pale
+from lack of sunlight.
+
+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 back _tepiskow_," 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.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+BOWL OF THE MOUNTAINS
+
+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 the _Tewksbury_ outright, 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.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+IN THE VALLEY
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+NAHNYA'S STORY
+
+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 am _weh-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!"
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+MOONLIGHT
+
+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, _please_ let 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."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE DEPARTURE FROM THE VALLEY
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE OBJECT LESSON
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+OUTSIDE
+
+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 little _Tewksbury_ lay 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."
+
+"Sure he's going back to her!" said Joe, adding with drunken
+mysteriousness: "I'm just waiting for him to start!"
+
+Stack bethought himself how he could learn more.  "He makes me sick!"
+he said suddenly, genuine hatred making his pale eyes snap.  "He thinks
+himself such a wonder!  Treats me like dirt, he does.  I wish I could
+bring him down a peg!"
+
+Joe leaned over the table and extended his hand.  "Put it there,
+pardner," he said thickly.  "It does my heart good to hear you say it.
+Gad!  I hate him till it's like an indigestion in my stomach that won't
+give me no rest.  To think of a smooth-face kid like him getting the
+best of Joe Mixer drives me wild.  I won't never rest easy till I do
+for him!"
+
+One more drink and they were sworn allies.
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked Stack.
+
+"I got a couple of fellows hanging round my place," said Joe, "fellows
+as'll stop at nothing--a white man and a breed.  I'm going to take them
+and follow him back to the girl.  I don't know where he's left her.
+Then,"--Joe rubbed his greasy hands together--"the three of us'll
+manage to give young medico a shivaree, I guess!"
+
+Stack, pursing up his lips, thought quickly.  The situation was
+becoming complicated.  It was clear Joe knew nothing about any gold.
+Perhaps he, Stack, could keep that knowledge to himself, and still play
+off Joe against Ralph.  The size of Joe's party did not please Stack;
+still it offered him the only chance he was likely to get of following
+Ralph into the country.  That was all important.
+
+"Take me along with you," said Stack breathlessly.
+
+"Eh?" said Joe, partly sobered.  He looked the little man up and down
+and laughed brutally.  "What good would you be?"
+
+"I ain't much on fighting," said Stack, "but I can advise you good.  I
+got a head on me.  I got legal training."
+
+"To hell with legal training!" said Joe.  He looked at Stack cunningly.
+"You'll have to pay your way," he said.  "I don't carry no passengers
+gratis."
+
+"How much?" asked Stack anxiously.
+
+Joe fixed him with eyes like pin-heads "Oh, well, make it a round sum
+for the trip," he said.  "Make it two hundred and fifty."
+
+Stack swallowed hard.  "All right," he said.
+
+Joe looked disconcerted.  "Maybe it'll be more," he growled.
+
+"A bargain's a bargain!" began Stack excitedly.
+
+"Oh, all right!  Done!" said Joe.  They shook hands on it.
+
+"Do we have to take so many men?" suggested Stack cautiously.
+
+"We got to have the half-breed to steer," said Joe.  "The other
+fellow'll cook.  I don't travel without my cook!"
+
+"A large party makes so much talk," murmured Stack.
+
+"I want a lot of talk!" said Joe.  "Just so's the fellow ain't warned
+beforehand.  I want there should be talk.  I want everybody to know
+that no man can put one over on Joe Mixer and get away with it!"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE JOURNEY IN AGAIN
+
+Next afternoon the _Tewksbury_ left for Gisborne portage again, with
+Ralph, Joe Mixer, and Stack for passengers.  Stack had said to Ralph:
+"I'll just make the trip up and back on her.  It's a chance for a
+tenderfoot like me to see the country."  This seemed natural enough.
+Perfect amity prevailed during the trip.  Stack affected a great
+admiration for Ralph; Joe Mixer was friendly.  Ralph himself held to
+the role of reticent good nature that he had assumed.  Privately he was
+a good deal bothered, in the light of the story he had told at the
+Fort, as to how he was going to make a getaway at the portage.
+
+They arrived at the same time as on the previous trip, and Ralph as
+before was invited to spend the night in the bunkhouse.
+
+"Thanks," he said easily; "I think I'll put up a tent.  I've got the
+craze for sleeping out of doors."
+
+"I'll sleep out with you," said Stack.
+
+"The mosquitoes will eat you up," said Ralph coolly.  "I've got only a
+one man shelter."
+
+He pitched his tent on the edge of the river bank, across a little
+muskeg from Mixer and Staley's buildings.  He ostentatiously went to
+bed at an early hour.  As soon as everything was quiet he crept out,
+and hoisting the bundle which contained his boat to his back, started
+to climb the portage trail.
+
+At two o'clock he returned.  Making all the rest of his baggage into a
+pack, he got away again before the dawn began to break.  At five he was
+on the shore of the lake with all his belongings.  At six he had his
+boat set up and packed, and was setting off.  All these movements were
+reported to Joe Mixer later.
+
+Ralph, thrusting his paddle into the water which would eventually bear
+him back to Nahnya, felt like an exile coming into his own country
+again.  The world and its business, which obtruded irritatingly on his
+dreams, was all behind him, and when he stepped into his boat he left
+his matter-of-fact self on the shore.  This was Nahnya's land.  With
+the keenest satisfaction he gazed around him, letting the scene
+photograph itself on his brain.  Ralph never forgot anything that he
+had once looked at squarely.  Seeing the quaint islands, he smiled.
+"Nature's shop-window," he thought, "setting out her spring line."
+
+Entering the little river the reeds and the lily pads presented
+familiar faces, and every bend recalled the previous journey, evoking
+the presence of Nahnya so strongly that he had an actual physical
+consciousness of her sitting behind him, seeing all that he saw.  He
+played with the idea, forbearing to turn his head that he might not
+dispel the comforting illusion.
+
+He had intended stopping at each place where they had spelled on the
+first journey, but this he found was impracticable, no matter how hard
+he worked.  His tubby craft could never make the headway of the slender
+dugout, and his paddle lacked the skill of Nahnya's.  In the rapids he
+was soon in trouble, but here the elastic sides of his coracle proved
+an advantage.  She bounced off the rounded boulders without taking any
+harm.  When she ran high and dry it was no great matter to step out
+into the shallow stream and guide her back to the channel.
+
+Though he paddled until near dark he had to go ashore several miles
+short of their first camping-place.  It was on a grassy point in the
+middle of a quiet reach of the river that he chose to spend his first
+night alone in the silence.  Solitude, Silence, and Darkness, older
+than all created things, are terrific to us newest creatures with
+nervous systems.  Very few of us know them really.  In an inhabited
+land at any hour of any season there is no such thing as silence.
+Ralph sat beside his fire thrilling in the presence of the ancient
+sisters.  He was weighed down, overwhelmed, intimidated.  He felt as if
+he and his little fire existed like an island in an infinite void.
+
+All this was changed by the cheery sun.  He continued his journey
+downstream joyfully.  These two days that he spent entirely cut off
+from his kind ever afterward lingered in Ralph's mind with a flavour
+distinct from all the other days of his life.  Away from all the
+distracting business of life, nor tugged opposing ways by human
+associations, it was as if he had come face to face with his own self
+for the first time.  It seemed as if the fetters of the flesh were a
+little loosened, enabling him to feel more keenly, and to think with a
+greater lucidity.
+
+This increased sensibility was for evil as well as good.  While the
+river seemed even lovelier, if possible, than upon the previous
+journey, side by side with the pleasure he had in it, a premonition of
+evil entered Ralph's breast.  "Something is going to happen," a voice
+whispered to him.  He sought to laugh it away, but it stuck.  He could
+not but remember the stories that are told in the North of how men
+living alone in the woods become gifted with a prescience of what is to
+come.
+
+With a vague feeling that escape from the danger lay ahead, he paddled
+until ten o'clock that night.  Darkness was then falling, and his weary
+arms could scarcely lift the paddle.  He camped on the river in the
+spot where they had dined on the second day of the other journey.  He
+fell asleep with the premonition like a cold hand on his breast.
+
+[Illustration: "_An instant later a long dugout swept into view, with
+four men in it_"]
+
+In the morning it awakened him all of a piece.  He abruptly sat up to
+listen.  There was no sound.  "What is the matter with me?" he thought
+wonderingly.  "Something is upon you," that still voice seemed to
+whisper.  He looked to his gun.  His heart failed him a little, he was
+so terribly alone.  Inside him he offered up an unspoken prayer that
+whatever was coming might come quickly, before fear of the unknown
+should unman him.
+
+Hastily cooking his breakfast, he never ceased to listen; therefore he
+was scarcely surprised when he finally heard the most startling sound
+in the wilderness--human voices.  An instant later a long dugout swept
+into view upstream with four men in it.  Courage warmed Ralph's breast
+again; to be sure it was bad enough, but it was real.
+
+At sight of Ralph the men in the dugout set up a shout.  Arriving
+abreast of his camp they swung around and beached their craft below.
+In the bow was a white man strange to Ralph, Joe Mixer and Stack sat
+amidships, while the stern paddle was wielded by a handsome, muscular
+young half-breed.  They all got out.  Ralph awaited them on the top of
+the bank.  Burly Joe approached with an anticipatory, cynical grin;
+little Stack kept partly behind him.
+
+"Hello, pardner!" cried Joe.
+
+Ralph, seeing that he actually expected to keep up the fiction of
+friendliness, smiled grimly.  "What do you want?" he asked.
+
+Ralph's warning of danger had served him well.  Joe, seeing him cool
+and prepared, was completely disconcerted.  "What do I want?" he
+repeated, falling back with a scowl.  "That's a hell of a nice
+good-morning to hand out to a man!"
+
+"What were you looking for?" asked Ralph, "an address of welcome?"
+
+Joe turned purple, and shook his fist.  "I'll show you!" he cried.
+
+Little Stack stepped from behind Joe.  Physical terror gave his face a
+greenish cast, but his chagrin at seeing his careful plans about to be
+destroyed was stronger still.  It emboldened him to put himself in
+front of Joe.  "Wait!" he implored.  "You mustn't quarrel!  Let me
+explain!"
+
+Joe turned aside with a muttered oath.
+
+A fawning note crept into Stack's voice.  "We've taken the Doctor by
+surprise," he said.  "He thinks we're spying on him.  You can't hardly
+blame him."
+
+"You're a good guesser, Stack," said Ralph grimly.
+
+"It's nothing of the kind!" cried Stack virtuously.  "You must remember
+I told you long ago I wanted to take a trip through the wilds if I
+could get a chance.  Mr. Mixer was willing to go, so I engaged him and
+these men to guide me."
+
+"Why explain?" said Ralph.  "It's nothing to me.  The river is free to
+all."
+
+"I didn't expect this from you," said Stack, with an aggrieved air.  "I
+thought we were friends.  What have you got against me?"
+
+"Nothing," said Ralph; "but you're in bad company."
+
+Joe could no longer hold himself in.  His face was purple.  "Who the
+hell do you think you are?" he cried thickly.  "You stinking dude!  You
+smooth-face poisoner!  You rah-rah college boy.  It makes my stomach
+turn to hear you lisping!  What are you doing in a man's country?  Go
+home to your pink teas and your toe-dancing!"
+
+Ralph could not help but smile at the style of Joe's invective.  The
+smile maddened Joe.  The foulest dregs of English speech were fished up
+to express his feelings.  The other white man laughed obsequiously.  He
+was in Joe's pay.  The half-breed pitched pebbles into the stream,
+handsome and unconcerned.  Ralph took it all steely eyed and smiling
+still.
+
+"You stand there like a little Gorramighty!" cried Joe, with a string
+of oaths.  "What can you do against the four of us?  We've got you
+where we want you now, and you know it!  You'll be singing another tune
+before we're done with you!"
+
+"Now you're talking!" cried Ralph, bright-eyed.  "The truth is coming
+out at last!"
+
+Stack all but wrung his hands at the turn things were taking.
+"Gentlemen!  Gentlemen!" he implored.
+
+"Ahh! shut your head," snarled Joe.  "You hate him as much as me!"
+
+Stack turned paler still, and darted a furtive look at Ralph, and
+cringed and tried to smile indulgently.  "Don't listen to him," he said
+to Ralph.  "You've made him mad.  He don't mean what he says.  It
+wasn't half an hour ago he said to me, 'Won't it be sport to surprise
+the Doctor?'  There's no need for you to quarrel like this.  We don't
+want to intrude upon your privacy.  Come to our camp to supper
+to-night, and talk things over quiet, and shake hands on it."
+
+Ralph preferred Joe's honest obscenity to this.  He made no answer.
+
+"Ah! come on!" said Joe.  "I'm sick of your palaver!"
+
+He pulled the smaller man back to the dugout.  Stack got in, nodding
+and smiling over his shoulder in a comic and pitiable attempt to
+propitiate the grim Ralph.  They pushed off.  As the dugout disappeared
+around the first bend below, Stack actually had the effrontery to wave
+his hand to Ralph.
+
+Ralph sat down to do some hard thinking.  His charming dreams were
+rudely shattered, and like every man suddenly roused to action, he felt
+a little ashamed at having been caught dreaming.  He remembered
+precautions he might have taken had he been wide awake.  When his anger
+cooled--in spite of the smile he had been no less angry than Joe
+Mixer--he was a little appalled by his situation.  Four against one is
+heavy odds.  If he had had even so much as a dog to keep watch while he
+slept!  How could he venture to sleep and leave himself open to a night
+attack?  He resolutely put that unnerving thought out of his head.  "I
+shall travel exactly as if they had not come!" he decided.
+
+The more he thought, the greater loomed his difficulties.  In a manner
+of speaking he was trapped in the river just the same as if they had
+him on a road between high and unscalable walls.  He could not go back
+against the current, and he could not leave the river.  With his clumsy
+boat and one paddle, against their dugout and four, there was not the
+slightest possibility of his escaping them downstream.  They were free
+to follow him at their leisure, and play with him like cat and mouse.
+
+Ralph was amazed, as any open-hearted man might be, at the suddenness
+of the discovery that he had active and malignant enemies.  Joe Mixer's
+hatred he instinctively understood, and returned.  Those two had been
+formed to hate each other.  He likewise understood now that the evil
+fire Nahnya had lighted in Joe's breast was no mere ephemeral flame.
+It was clear that Joe hoped to reach Nahnya through him.  "I'll lead
+him a chase," Ralph thought grimly.  This brought up the thought that
+Joe might be the means of keeping him from returning to Nahnya.  Ralph
+ground his teeth at that, and understood the desire to murder that is
+born in men's breasts.
+
+In Stack Ralph realized he had a more dangerous enemy than Joe.  In
+vain he threshed his brain to discover a reason for Stack's being in
+Joe's galley.  He had never laid eyes on the little man until they took
+their places in the stage together.  It was true he had never thought
+much of the little Jackstraw, but there had never been anything but
+friendly exchanges between them.  There was a mystery here that
+tantalized him.
+
+The upshot of his cogitations was, Ralph decided to accept Stack's
+invitation to visit their camp that night--not to eat with them,
+Ralph's gorge rose at the idea, but to go after supper.  "It'll
+surprise 'em," he thought grimly.  "Nothing like bearding them in their
+own den.  I'm bound to find out something.  One man's strength isn't
+enough against four.  I've got to use all the wits I have, too.  I've
+got to meet them on their own ground, lie for lie.  Beastly crooks!
+I'll go further than lying if necessary to keep them out!"
+
+All day they remained ahead of him in the river, About nine o'clock,
+while it was still fully light, he came upon their camp in the
+accustomed camping-place where Nahnya had stopped on the second night
+of the previous journey; the spot where Nahnya and Ralph had effected
+their midnight reconciliation.  There was the little grassy shelf in
+the bank where she had lain!  The coarse voices of the men above
+profaned the scene horribly.
+
+Ralph's face as he climbed the bank was serene.  His greeting was as
+bland and off-hand as a schoolboy's.  The four men were sitting on the
+ground playing "jackpot."  As Ralph had pleasurably anticipated, their
+jaws dropped upon his appearance.  Only Stack answered his greeting.
+Cards in hand, the little man jumped up obsequiously, but Joe Mixer
+barked at him, and he sat down abruptly.  Joe scowled at his cards like
+a hangman.  The game proceeded as if Ralph were not there.
+
+Ralph's cheeks began to burn at the implied insult, but he clapped his
+anger under hatches.  He saw clearly enough that Joe was waiting for
+him to make an opening for a quarrel.  Drawing closer, he coolly
+overlooked the game.  They had a folded blanket between them to play
+the cards upon.  In lieu of chips they used matches.  The half-breed
+was winning.  He was a fine specimen of physical manhood a year or two
+younger than Ralph, with a bold, conceited face.  He scarcely took
+pains to hide his contempt for the three white men of his party, and
+Ralph observed that even Joe was inclined to truckle to him like a
+bully to one whose strength he has not measured.  Stack was obsequious
+all around.  In the third white man Ralph recognized Crusoe Campbell, a
+disreputable character well known up and down the river of that name.
+He had the reputation of being not quite right in his head, which he
+traded upon to his advantage.  His wits were good enough to play a
+crafty game of poker.
+
+So much for Ralph's observations.  "A rum outfit!" he thought grimly.
+
+When the cards were collected for a fresh deal Ralph asked coolly:
+"What are the stakes?"
+
+"Nickel a match," answered Crusoe Campbell.
+
+"Give me the worth of that," he said, throwing a five-dollar bill on
+the blanket.  "You," he said, indicating the half-breed, "what's your
+name?"
+
+"Philippe Boisvert," the breed announced swaggeringly.
+
+Crusoe Campbell and Philippe made room between them and Ralph sat down.
+All looked covertly at Joe to see how he would take it.  Joe, still
+scowling, kept his eyes down and said nothing.  The game went on.
+Ralph's bluff was as yet uncalled.
+
+Outwardly as cool as the ideal poker-player, Ralph was on the _qui
+vive_ for an explosion.  Under stress of excitement, his spirits soared
+like a bird taking wing.  The corners of his lips twitched provokingly,
+and the shine of a hidden fire glowed in his dark eyes.  He bet
+recklessly, winning and losing with equal good humour.  His good humour
+communicated itself to three of the other players.  All men love a good
+gambler.  The ill-assorted game became almost jolly.  Only Joe grew
+more and more morose.  His face turned an ugly brownish red, and a vein
+stood out ominously on his forehead.
+
+When the explosion took place it was not directed at Ralph.  Stack,
+carried away by the appearance of general good feeling, during a pause
+while the cards were being shuffled had the misfortune to say,
+addressing Joe and Ralph: "You two ought to shake hands and let bygones
+be bygones."
+
+Joe Mixer broke out on him so violently as to be almost comic.  "You
+sneaking little two-faced informer!" he shouted with a whole string of
+oaths.  "Keep your lip out of my affairs, will you?  I'll learn you to
+talk to your betters!  You make me sick with your lying palaver!  Get
+the hell out of this game anyway!  You ain't man enough to play poker!"
+
+Stack hastily retreated from the circle.  The breed laughed.  Crusoe
+Campbell quietly confiscated Stack's matches.
+
+"Give me another box of cigarettes out of your bag," the breed said
+curtly.
+
+"A half-breed issuing orders to a white man and being obeyed!" thought
+Ralph.
+
+"Bring up a pail of water from the river," commanded Crusoe.
+
+The little man had already become the camp drudge, it appeared.
+
+Stack sat down at a little distance from the game with a childish
+assumption of injured dignity.  During the deals Joe alternately
+chaffed and reviled him coarsely.  Ralph could not find it in his heart
+to feel very sorry for the little man.  "He _is_ a sneak," he thought.
+He kept his ears open for any word that might throw light on this
+obscure and curious situation.
+
+After a while Stack said humbly: "Doctor Cowdray, if you please I'd
+like to have a word with you before you go."
+
+"I'm damned if you do!" cried Joe.  "You'd like to play him off against
+me, wouldn't you; and me against him, and get your private pickings off
+the both of us!  Me and Cowdray we ain't got no use for each other.  We
+don't make no pretences.  But you!  You snide! you want to square
+yourself with him, don't you?  After telling me you trailed him all the
+way from the coast!"
+
+"I have nothing to say to you!" cried Stack, with a display of childish
+fury that caused all three of his mates to shout with laughter.
+
+A light broke on Ralph.  Trailed all the way from the coast!  To learn
+this was worth having come for!  But why anybody should want to trail
+him was more of a mystery than ever.  He determined to find out.
+
+Meanwhile the game went on with four players.  The fortune of the cards
+changed, and Joe Mixer began to win, principally from Ralph.  His good
+humour was restored.  This was as good a way to get square as any.  As
+Ralph's pile of matches melted away, Joe triumphed insolently.  He
+doubled and trebled the ante whenever it came to him.  Finally he said:
+
+"A dollar to draw and two to play.  Does that scare you off, Doc?"
+
+"Not at all," said Ralph coolly.  "This is mild beside the play in New
+York clubs."
+
+"Well, it ain't hard to win all you've got," snarled Joe.
+
+"Three cards," said Ralph to the dealer.  "This is my last hand."
+
+He had been dealt a pair of aces.  He drew another ace with a pair of
+sixes, and a comfortable little satisfaction warmed his breast.  His
+face was like the Sphinx's.  Joe Mixer drew two cards.  Ralph, watching
+him narrowly, saw a tiny spark of satisfaction light his eye when he
+looked at them, and guessed that he held three and had drawn a pair.
+Revenge was as sweet to Ralph as anybody.
+
+Joe bet in a small way, and Ralph raised him modestly.  The others had
+dropped out.  Joe raised again, and Ralph followed suit.  Joe, seeing
+that he was not to be shaken off, began to plunge.  Ralph's matches
+were exhausted long ago, and he threw the money on the blanket, raising
+Joe a dollar each time.  Joe began to breathe hard and his face became
+as pale as a butcher's face may, except his ears, which remained a
+furious crimson.  He raised Ralph five, and finally ten dollars at a
+time, hoping to bluff him out.  Ralph covered his bets with a smile,
+and each time raised him one.  A respectable little hill of greenbacks
+grew on the blanket.  Crusoe and the breed eyed it hungrily.  Finally,
+when it came to Joe's turn, he stopped.  Little beads of perspiration
+had sprung out on his forehead.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Ralph innocently.  "Are you scared off?"
+
+"No!" cried Joe with an oath.  "Ain't got no more money," he added
+sheepishly.  "Don't carry it on the trail.  Will you take my I.O.U.?"
+
+Ralph shook his head.  "A cash game, you said.  I'll take back my last
+raise and call you instead."
+
+Joe with a great air of bravado laid down three kings and two queens.
+
+Ralph made believe to be dumbfoundered.  Joe grinned and reached for
+the money with a trembling hand; whereupon Ralph counted out his three
+aces and his pair of little ones.
+
+"It's a shame to take all you've got," he said softly.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE STANLEY RAPIDS
+
+Joe ardently desired to continue the poker game on borrowed capital,
+but Ralph pointed out that he had announced in advance his intention of
+retiring from the game.  "I've got to sleep," he said.
+
+"Camp here if you like," growled Joe.
+
+Ralph shook his head.  "I'll drop down the river a little piece," he
+said.  "I want to get an early start."
+
+"You'll have to get up early to keep ahead of us in that contraption,"
+said Crusoe with a laugh.  "It's no more than a dunnage bag stretched
+on a couple of half hoops!"
+
+"You can't go down the Stanley rapids in her," said the breed.  "She
+all bus' up."
+
+"Don't expect to go down the Stanley rapids," said Ralph with a great
+air of carelessness.  "I'm going up the Stanley."
+
+He observed that Stack and Joe were listening attentively.
+
+"You can't track her," the breed said scornfully.
+
+"My partner is waiting for me at the Forks," lied Ralph.  "He's got a
+dugout."
+
+"Where the hell did you pick up a pardner?" Joe burst out, forgetting
+himself.
+
+Ralph opened his eyes wide in affected surprise.  "Well, say, give me
+time," he drawled, "and I'll tell you all my private business!"
+
+The laugh was fairly on Joe.  He flung away with a muttered curse.
+
+Ralph, embarking, paddled no farther than around the first bend.  Here
+he made his camp on the same side of the river as the others.  He
+thought it likely Stack would try to communicate with him during the
+night.  Ralph was highly satisfied with the results of the evening's
+entertainment.  Besides winning about fifty dollars, he had shown them
+he was not afraid, and he had put them, he hoped, on a false scent as
+to his destination.
+
+He made a little fire, and retired under his shelter, but not to sleep.
+He had plenty to occupy his mind.  After an hour or so he heard a
+rustle in the underbrush, and presently a scared voice whispering:
+
+"Doctor Cowdray!  Doctor Cowdray!"
+
+Ralph sprang up.
+
+"Don't shoot!  Don't shoot!" cried the voice in terror.  "It's only me,
+Stack."
+
+Ralph laughed.
+
+The little man drew near, cringing.  "Won't you put out the fire?" he
+whined.  "In case any of them should come."
+
+Ralph scattered the embers.
+
+Stack needed no encouragement to make him speak.  It came tumbling out;
+truth and lies, complaints and excuses all mixed.  "My God!  Doctor!
+What a terrible position I'm in!" he wailed.  "I don't know which way
+to turn.  I gave Mixer two hundred and fifty dollars to guide me
+through the country, and look at the way they treat me!  You saw it!  I
+have to wash the dishes, and wait on the half-breed!  Me! with a
+college education!  I'm in momentary terror of my life.  I hired Mixer,
+thinking no wrong, and now I find him pursuing some murderous vengeance
+against you!  If you could hear how he talks about you!  Look what a
+position that puts me in--travelling with a gang of murderers!  What
+must you think of me?"
+
+Ralph listened to all this, smoking impassively.  "What are you making
+this trip for?" he asked.
+
+"Just to see the country," whined Stack.  "Didn't I tell you that?  I
+wish to heaven I was well out of it!"
+
+"That's a lie," said Ralph coolly.
+
+"Oh, Doctor Cowdray, I wouldn't lie to you!  I wouldn't do such a
+thing!" he protested volubly.
+
+"Did you hire Joe Mixer to bring you after me?" Ralph demanded
+imperatively.
+
+"Yes," faltered Stack.  "But for a purely legitimate purpose.  I swear
+it!"
+
+"Have you, as Joe said, been trailing me all the way from the coast?"
+
+"Yes," he confessed.  "But meaning no harm at all--purely legitimate,
+Doctor, purely legitimate!"  His voice trailed away.
+
+"Well I'm damned!" said Ralph.  There was a silence while he smoked.
+"What was your purpose?" he finally demanded to know.
+
+"It's such an improbable story I didn't dare tell you," said Stack.
+"And I haven't any proof of it."
+
+"You tell me and I'll decide as to the proof," said Ralph.
+
+Stack took a breath and began with renewed glibness: "I'm a newspaper
+reporter--_Pacific Herald_.  The city editor was told you had made a
+big new strike up here, and he sent me to follow you in, and get the
+first story of it for the _Herald_.  I had to do what I was told," he
+whined, "or lose my job.  You can't blame me----!"
+
+"Who told him about me?" asked Ralph astonished.
+
+"Don't ask me," said Stack.  "I've heard they have the assay office
+watched.  I don't know."
+
+It was obvious to Ralph from the man's silky, fawning voice that he was
+lying still.  His gorge rose.  Evidently the truth had to be terrified
+out of such a creature.  They were sitting beside the last faint embers
+of the fire.  Ralph shot out his hand and gripped Stack by the collar.
+A faint, gasping cry escaped the little man, and he went limp in
+Ralph's grasp.
+
+"I have my revolver in the other hand," Ralph said in a rasping voice.
+"The truth now, or I'll crack your skull with it!  It was you who
+watched the assay office."
+
+"Yes," murmured Stack in accents of honest terror.
+
+"You followed me up here on your own responsibility, hoping to get in
+on my strike?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Ralph dropped him.  "Now we know where we stand!" he said.
+
+Stack, like all born liars, had an infinite capacity for swallowing his
+lies.  Ralph had no sooner dropped him than he unblushingly
+appropriated the credit for his confession.
+
+"I had to come and square myself with you," he whined.  "I couldn't
+rest until I had come and told you the truth!"
+
+"Well, I'm damned!" said Ralph again.  "Go on!"
+
+"You're the only friend I've got!"
+
+"Friend!" said Ralph with a snort of scornful amusement.  "This is
+good!  Give it to me straight," he went on curiously.  "What did you
+come here for to-night?"
+
+Stack's voice rose to a piteous wail.  "Any night I may be murdered in
+my blankets!"
+
+"Sure," said Ralph coolly.  "But what can I do for you?"
+
+"Take me with you in your boat," Stack blurted out.
+
+"Well, upon my word!" cried Ralph.
+
+"Don't refuse!  Don't refuse!" said Stack breathlessly.  "They wouldn't
+dare touch me if I was with you.  They're afraid of you.  That was
+magnificent of you to come to their camp and sit in the game as if
+nothing had happened.  It had its effect, I can tell you!  Oh! take me
+with you!" he went on, stuttering in his eagerness.  "I can help you
+escape from them.  Two heads are better than one.  I have a good head
+for planning when I'm not in mortal fear of my life!"
+
+"Fine!" said Ralph.  "And you get right in on my strike!"
+
+"I wouldn't ask much," said Stack.  "I'd be content with whatever you
+wanted to let me have.  Why can't we work together?  You need a
+representative outside.  You've got to file a lot of dummy claims to
+cover the whole field.  You've got to form a company.  I can attend to
+all that for you.  It's just my line!"
+
+"Thought you said newspaper reporter?" remarked Ralph.
+
+"That was just making out," said Stack hastily.  "I know the mining
+business from A to Z.  I've got legal training.  You need me!"
+
+"Thanks," said Ralph coolly.  "I prefer to pick my own company."
+
+"If anything happens to me it'll be on your head," whimpered Stack.
+"Aren't you going to take me with you?"
+
+"No!" said Ralph in a tone there was no mistaking.
+
+"What shall I do?  What shall I do?" moaned Stack.  "If you won't let
+me travel with you, tell me where you're going, and if I can escape
+from them, I'll try to reach you.  In common humanity you can't refuse
+that!"
+
+Ralph smiled into the darkness.  "Is it possible he still thinks I am
+fool enough to give away my secret!" he thought.  "If he does, all
+right!"  Aloud, he said carelessly: "I've no objection to telling you
+that.  But I won't guarantee you a welcome."
+
+"Anyway, you're not a murderer!" whined Stack.
+
+"It's about twenty-five miles up the Stanley River from the Grand
+Forks----"
+
+"Then you were telling the truth?" said Stack with naïve surprise.
+
+"Why not?" said Ralph coolly.  "I'm not afraid of them."  He bethought
+himself of adding a few convincing touches to his lie.  "You enter a
+tributary that comes in on the right-hand side of the Stanley, and
+ascend it as far as you can go into the foothills.  There you will find
+our camp."
+
+"How will I know the mouth of the right tributary?" asked Stack.
+
+"By two pine trees that lean across, one at each side, until their tops
+almost meet," said Ralph readily.  "My partner and I call it the A
+River."
+
+"Take me with you!" Stack began all over again.  "You need me!"
+
+"Cut it out!" said Ralph impatiently.
+
+"You ought to take me with you," Stack persisted.  An indescribable,
+sly, cringing threat crept into his whine.  "Now that I know where
+you're going, if they torture me I might let it out in spite of myself!"
+
+Disgust overmastered Ralph.  He sprang up.  "You little cur!" he cried.
+"Get out of here before I hurt you!"
+
+Stack waited to hear no more.
+
+
+During the next three days the two boats seesawed on the lakes and
+rivers, Ralph now ahead, and now Joe Mixer's party.  Ralph kept much
+longer working hours, but the others made it up in speed.  Whenever
+they passed each other it became the occasion for an exchange of
+half-serious abuse, which was only prevented from developing into a
+fight by Ralph's unshakable, steely smile.  Ralph insisted on making
+out that it was all a joke.  Joe was itching for a fight, but the smile
+cut the ground from under him.  Meanwhile Ralph gave as good as he got.
+Stack never took part in these contests of wit.  He sat in the dugout
+haggard and abstracted, gripping the gunwales under his skinny
+knuckles.  When he thought Ralph's gaze rested on him, he did his best
+to look meek and imploring, but succeeded very ill in disguising his
+hatred.  Joe Mixer carried a deal of liquor in his baggage as evinced
+by their frequent thickness of speech.
+
+At the end of the third day they had travelled far down the Rice River.
+By paddling until near dark Ralph succeeded in pitching his camp three
+miles in advance of the other party.  It was his intention to sleep for
+four hours only, and then go on.  According to his calculations he was
+within a few hours' journey of the Grand Forks, and it was essential to
+his plan that he get there first.  He meant to watch from some place of
+concealment on the shore, to make sure that they turned up the Stanley
+River instead of continuing downstream.  In case they were not deceived
+by his false lead, and did not leave the main stream, he had one more
+desperate card to play.  The moon was now nearly full again, and he
+could be sure of a certain light until dawn.
+
+Ralph pitched his little shelter in an opening among the willows that
+thickly lined this part of the bank.  His boat was drawn high up on the
+stones below, and tied to the willow trunks.  He ate a hasty supper and
+turned in.  As he lay waiting for sleep, once again he was warned by a
+vague disquiet in his breast of an impending danger.  He remembered
+this afterward.  At the time he was dog-tired, and the still voice was
+not insistent enough to cleave the gathering mists of sleep.  He soon
+became unconscious.
+
+He was awakened immediately, or so it seemed to him, by a sudden
+outburst of drunken shouting.  At the same moment his shelter collapsed
+on top of him.  When he succeeded in freeing himself of the entangling
+blankets, netting, and canvas, in the dim light he saw four figures
+reeling about where his fire had been, kicking his belongings into the
+bush, and wreaking what senseless damage they could.  A terrible rage
+nerved him in every fibre.
+
+"You damned cowards!" he cried.
+
+Hearing his voice, they made for him simultaneously, but Ralph
+retreated silently under the willows, and bided his time, peering
+through the branches.  They searched for him, stumbling over the roots
+and shouting inanely.
+
+During the next two or three minutes the scene was as confused and
+incredible as a nightmare.  Ralph made out a swollen body swaying on
+the edge of the bank, outlined against the moonlight.  Rushing him, he
+hauled off and struck him on the jaw with a savage satisfaction in the
+crack of it.  He made to follow up the blow, but Joe was not there.  He
+lay in a heap at the bottom of the bank.  Hearing a sound behind him,
+in the act of whirling around, a bludgeon aimed at Ralph's head
+descended on his shoulder.  Seizing him who had wielded it around the
+body, Ralph lifted him clear of the ground and flung him after Joe.
+This one was Crusoe Campbell.  A third figure scuttled down to the
+water's edge without waiting to be assisted.  Ralph stood in the ashes
+of his fire, breathing hard, and glaring around like a lion for another
+adversary.
+
+The half-breed stepped from out the shadows of the willows.  "Look out,
+white man!" he cried boastfully.  "I got it in for you!  I'll fix you
+good!"
+
+"Come on!" cried Ralph gladly.  At the same time the curious thought
+shot through his brain: what could the half-breed have against him?  It
+was not Joe Mixer's quarrel; there could be no mistaking the note of
+personal enmity.
+
+The moon shone down serenely indifferent.  A little prize-ring was
+illuminated within the encircling willows.  In it the two men advanced
+toward each other, fists up.  They crashed together.  This was an
+adversary worthy of Ralph; he fought like a white man, and he fought
+fair.  Shrewd blows were exchanged on either side.  Each quickly
+learned to respect the other, and thereafter fought more warily.
+Failing to reach Ralph's head, the breed punished him about the body.
+Every one of Ralph's blows was aimed in the centre of the pale ellipse
+that denoted the other man's face.
+
+Ralph had an advantage in that the breed's head was somewhat fuddled.
+His blows began to go wild.  Ralph beat him to his knees, and stood
+back to let him rise.  As they rushed each other again, Ralph's ankles
+were grasped from behind, and he was flung violently to the ground,
+striking his head.
+
+As from an immense distance he heard the half-breed say: "Dam' little
+sneak!  Wat for you do that?  I want lick 'im myself!"
+
+Then the voices receded.  Ralph heard them from the beach; heard a
+hoarse guffaw, and afterward the splashing of paddles.  He understood
+that they had gone.
+
+By this time he had got to his feet.  He stood, reeling from the
+effects of his fall, and half suffocated with a cold and deadly rage.
+He made his way down to the water's edge.  His boat was turned upside
+down on the stones, and the moonlight revealed several clean slashes in
+her canvas bottom.
+
+"Oh! the scum!" muttered Ralph in his rage.  "Unnatural beasts without
+decency or manliness!  Malignant, cowardly, sneaking rats!"
+
+In cutting his boat they had not done as serious damage as they
+doubtless aimed to do, for Ralph carried spare pieces of canvas in his
+baggage, and a can of waterproof gum against emergencies.  He instantly
+set about repairing the boat, working away in the partial darkness with
+the pertinacity inspired by a cold rage.  He had no doubt now of what
+he meant to do.
+
+"They'll be sleeping sound after the booze," he thought grimly.  "They
+think they've fixed me for a while.  They won't be looking for a visit
+to-night."
+
+When he had his patches affixed, he built a small fire on the stones,
+and held the boat over it to dry the gum.
+
+In less than two hours she was fit to float again.  He carried his fire
+up on the bank then, and making a blaze, hastily collected his
+scattered belongings.  This refreshed his rage.  In his impatience he
+flung everything into his boat higgledy-piggledy, and pushed off.  He
+did not paddle, for fear of being carried past, but allowed the current
+to take him, while he searched both shores with straining eyes.  No
+shadow was allowed to pass unexplained.
+
+He had not gone much above a mile when he saw what he so ardently
+desired: their dugout drawn up on the stones.  A great satisfaction
+diffused itself throughout his breast.  Softly paddling ashore, he
+beached his own boat alongside, and bent his head to listen.  A faint
+snoring from the bank overhead reassured him.  He smiled scornfully.
+In their drunken carelessness they had actually left most of their
+baggage in the dugout.  Ralph had no desire to starve them to death, or
+to deprive them of the means of ultimate escape.  With suitable
+precautions of silence he unloaded everything on the stones.  Then
+untying the rope by which the dugout was fastened to a tree, he heaved
+her adrift on the current.  He didn't care much whether they heard that
+or not.  But no alarm was raised.
+
+Embarking in his own boat, Ralph towed the larger craft into midstream.
+Picturing the scene that awaited their awakening next morning, he
+chuckled grimly, and found his breast eased of its weight of rage.  He
+felt not the slightest regret for what he had done; indeed he was
+blaming himself for the foolish compunctions that had prevented him
+from doing it earlier.  His enemies were in no pressing danger; they
+possessed a store of food, also guns and ammunition.  They would
+eventually build a raft.  In the meantime he would get a start that
+would put him out of their reach for good.  He was free of them.  A
+great serenity descended on his spirit.
+
+Before he cast off the dugout it occurred to him that it was better
+fitted to descend the rapids ahead than his own clumsy coracle.  He
+debated the matter.  An odd quirk of conscience finally prevented him
+from making the change.  "If I use the thing," he thought, "it's the
+same as stealing it."  On this fine distinction depended the whole
+subsequent course of his story.  He cast the dugout adrift.  There was
+no wind to blow it ashore and it was good for a long journey.
+
+During the rest of the night Ralph paddled and floated with the current
+without seeking any further rest.  Dawn found him among the islands
+that marked the approach of the end of the Rice River.  This was where
+he had first been blindfolded on the previous journey, and he awaited
+the subsequent sights of the river with a stimulated curiosity.
+
+At sun-up, rounding a bend, he beheld the wide expanse of the meeting
+of the waters, the Grand Forks of the Spirit River.  There could be no
+mistaking the place.  The two rivers occupied the same valley; one came
+down from the north, one from the south; meeting head on they swung
+away to the eastward.  The green current and the brownish struggled
+ceaselessly for possession of the channel.  At present the Stanley was
+in flood, backing up the waters of the Rice River for several miles.
+The division between sweeping brown water and motionless green water
+was as sharply defined as between water and land.  Poking the nose of
+his boat into the current, she swung around and almost rolled awash
+under the impact.  Ralph instantly remembered the sensation which had
+so puzzled him while he lay blindfolded.
+
+Soon after he began to move down on the majestic flood of the augmented
+river, the murmur of the great rapids crept on his ears, and his heart
+began to beat.  This would be the first real test of his paddle.  The
+murmur increased to a rumble, then to a roar.  Finally he could make
+out the white-caps leaping below, like the naked arms of a multitude
+ceaselessly tossed to the sky in wild excitement.  He appreciated the
+vast difference between a pretty stream brawling among the stones, and
+a mighty watercourse plunging over a barrier of rock.
+
+He landed a little way above the rapids and fortified himself with an
+excellent breakfast.  Afterward he made his way alongshore to the
+beginning of the turmoil to try to spy out the best place to enter it.
+A close view of its mightiness made him feel very small.  The
+immeasurable flood of water swept smoothly over the hidden ledge with
+an oily streaked surface, moving faster and faster until it suddenly
+boiled up madly at the bottom.  From shore to shore, nearly half a
+mile, the wild, white welter prevailed.  Ralph received a stunning
+impression of the tearing, resistless might of the down-rushing water.
+Its roar was deafening.  At the thought of tempting it with his flimsy
+coracle, his heart shrunk away to nothing in his breast.  But it had to
+be done.
+
+At first as far as he could tell one place was as bad as another to
+descend.  Gradually he made out that by great good fortune he had
+chosen the right side of the river.  Toward the other bank the white
+surface was everywhere pointed with ugly black rocks.  He saw that the
+greatest volume of water rushed down close to the shore on which he
+stood.  If he could keep his boat in the middle of it there was no
+danger of rocks.  There remained the danger of those strange, great
+billows which curled and rolled and roared without ever advancing an
+inch in their paths.
+
+He returned to his boat, fighting his terror of the place.  Refusing to
+think of it, he worked desperately to make all snug.  He got in and
+clung to a branch that trailed in the water, while the increasing
+current sucked at his little craft.  He had fallen out of the habit of
+articulate prayer; maybe he prayed in his own way.  He let go of the
+branch, and began to drift toward the place.  He moistened his lips,
+and drew a long breath, and drove his paddle into the water.  No
+turning back then.
+
+Then he took the plunge, and was filled with an amazing exhilaration.
+
+The struggle was brief.  His boat plunged her nose right under the
+first curling white billow and half a ton of water fell aboard.  She
+staggered drunkenly, and in spite of his desperate paddling swung
+broadside in the current.  The next billow raked him from stem to
+stern, rolled his boat completely under and washed him clear of it.
+The opposed currents of the water clutched at him and racked him like
+whirling machinery.  He came to the surface gasping, only to be flung
+violently against a rock, striking on his shoulder.  Stunned by the
+buffeting and the roar, he was carried on down like a rotten log, now
+underneath, now on top, the plaything of every wild eddy.
+
+Struggling instinctively, in the end he found himself somehow in still
+water.  He crawled out on the beach and lay inert, struggling for
+breath and for consciousness.  Very slowly the realization of his
+plight was forced on him.  He felt no great concern.  It was like
+something that might have happened to somebody else.  There lay a poor
+devil cast ashore in the wilderness hundreds of miles from any
+fellow-creature.  Everything he possessed, boat, food, matches, axe,
+blankets, gun and ammunition were at the bottom of the river.  Out of
+the wreck he had saved only Nahnya's necklace, which was sewed to his
+shirt, and his pocketbook with money, neither article being of the
+slightest service to keep life in his body.
+
+He sat up, roused by an imperious pain.  Looking sideways and down at
+himself he was mildly impressed by the extraordinary conformation of
+his right shoulder--like somebody else's shoulder.  It was dislocated.
+He could not lift his right arm.  It was a mercy, if but a small one,
+that his faculties began to work so slowly.  His first articulate
+thought was:
+
+"Well, thank God!  I got a skinful of breakfast before I lost it!"
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE TWO GIRLS
+
+A traveller might have descended through the Spirit River pass half a
+dozen times without suspecting the vicinity of any fellow-creatures in
+the hundred miles of mountains.  Nevertheless there was a white man's
+camp at the foot of Mount Milburn.  Milburn is the hoary-headed monarch
+that stands guard on the right-hand side of the gateway to the Rockies.
+It rises sheer from the river to a height of more than six thousand
+feet.  In the country it is otherwise called the Mountain of Gold
+because it has long been known that one of the buttresses of its base
+is entirely composed of a metal-bearing quartz.
+
+The few people of the country knew of course that Jim Sholto had
+established himself here with his three children for the purpose of
+smelting the ore in a small way, but Jim had built his shacks a quarter
+of a mile back from the river to avoid the inconvenient observation of
+the chance traveller.  Jim and his two sons excavated the ore and
+burned it in half a dozen little furnaces of porcelain and brick, the
+materials for which they had brought in with immense difficulty.  The
+venture was not highly regarded in the country.  The expense of
+bringing in supplies was too great.  They worked like beavers, it was
+said, for a net return no greater than day labourer's wages.  Such
+unremitting industry accused the easy-going ways of the North.
+
+On a brilliant afternoon in July Kitty Sholto was redding up the
+kitchen in the larger of the two shacks.  There was a cloud on her
+charming face.  She slapped the enamel-ware plates on the shelf with a
+malicious satisfaction in the clatter, and cast the dish-towels over
+the line, as if they had individually offended her.
+
+Kitty was twenty years old.  In her face were combined elements of
+gentleness and piquancy, a rare association and provoking to the other
+sex.  The piquancy was due to her long eyes, green-gray in colour, and
+placed a thought obliquely in her head.  Green in eyes is thought of in
+connection with feline qualities.  There was nothing of that sort about
+Kitty.  All the rest was gentleness.  She had a small, straight nose,
+and an adorable mouth that turned up at the corners.  Her hair, darkest
+brown in colour, was of the crinkly sort that reaches out tendrils.
+She had a soft voice, with an odd, hushed thrill in it that was all her
+own, and a soft and ready laugh.  She was not at all the kind of girl
+to be given to ill-humours.
+
+Sweeping the crumbs over the door-sill, she stood broom in hand leaning
+against the jamb.  In one swift cast around she took in the whole
+scene, the exquisite, limpid sky, the polished malachite of the
+deciduous foliage, the rich bottle-green of the pines, the brook
+whipping itself white on the stones.  She took it all in, and the line
+between her dark eyebrows deepened as if the loveliness of nature were
+an added affront.
+
+Down the trail from the excavations the four ponies came plodding, each
+laden with a double wooden bucket of ore.  Bill, the younger of Kitty's
+two brothers, walked behind, whistling vociferously, and tickling the
+rearmost beast with a switch.  Bill was a tall, strong youth of
+twenty-two, a black Scotchman with a gleaming smile.  Dumping the
+contents of the buckets on the little mountain of ore before the other
+shack, with a flick of his switch he sent the ponies trotting back one
+by one for another load.
+
+Bill, pausing to fill his pipe, grinned amiably at his sister.  Kitty's
+brothers adored her, and teased her remorselessly.  "Hello, sis!" he
+said.  "What's biting you?"
+
+"Nothing!" she said quickly.
+
+"You look as if the cat was dead and the milk turned," he said in the
+humorous style that brothers affect.
+
+"There is no cat and I haven't tasted milk in a year and a half," said
+Kitty sharply.
+
+"Take example from me!" sang Bill.  "Dog-tooth Bill, the sunshine of
+Milburn Gulch!"
+
+"That's all very well!" said Kitty bitterly.  "Who wouldn't be gay in
+your shoes.  You're going away to-morrow.  You're going to mix with
+people; to see something besides trees; to have some fun!  What have I
+got to look forward to?"
+
+"Cheer up, sis," said Bill with jocular solicitude.  "What can we do
+about it?  The little iron chest has to be carried out.  It's getting
+too heavy to be left lying around loose.  And there's next year's grub
+to be brought in."
+
+"Certainly, I know you're obliged to go," said Kitty.
+
+"If you could go in my place you'd be welcome," said Dick.  "But it's
+too hard a trip both out and in again.  You and Dick couldn't do it
+alone."
+
+"I know it," said Kitty stiffly.  "You don't have to explain."
+
+"And we can't take you with us, because the old man can't keep the
+plant going, and cook his own grub, too."
+
+"I wouldn't think of leaving him alone," said Kitty indignantly.
+
+Bill began to grin again.  "Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!" he
+cried.  "We'll be back in six weeks with a scow full of good things!
+What'll I bring her from town for a present?  A silk dress?"
+
+"A lot of good a silk dress would do me!" Kitty said scornfully.  "Who
+do I ever see from one month to another?"
+
+"Ah, there we have her trouble!" cried Bill.  He began to sing and to
+caper absurdly:
+
+  "Kitty is mad and I am glad,
+  For I know how to please her;
+  A bottle of wine to make her shine
+  And a nice young man to squeeze her!"
+
+
+"You're horrid!" cried Kitty, frowning and blushing.
+
+"Give me the specifications," Bill went on, with an air of serious
+gravity.  "Blond, brunette, or albino?  Heavy, welter, or light weight?
+Kind of disposition you prefer, and amount of purse to be put up before
+you enter the ring?  I'll bring the candidate back with me if I have to
+sandbag him!"
+
+Kitty retired into the house, slamming the door.  Bill, with a whoop,
+started up the trail after his horses.
+
+When the cabin was put to rights there was nothing more that Kitty was
+obliged to do until it was time to start the supper.  On such occasions
+she was accustomed to help her father in the "works," as they called
+the other shack, but the furnaces had been cold for a week now, while
+all hands joined to get out enough ore to keep them fed while the boys
+were away.  There was plenty of work that Kitty might have done, but
+she was in a mood to dream and to nourish her grievances.  She might
+have gone up to the excavation to help, but she dreaded male raillery.
+She finally turned in the other direction and followed the path down to
+the river.
+
+It ended in a little glade that had been a camping-place since time out
+of mind.  In the middle of the place was a fire-hole, centuries old,
+maybe.  Upright posts were driven on either side, with a bar across and
+wooden hooks of assorted sizes waiting for the bails of the next
+traveller's pots.  In front of Kitty as she stood beside the fireplace
+the river stretched its smooth jade-green flood across to the base of
+the mountain opposite, and at her left hand the limpid waters of the
+creek mingled with the thicker current.
+
+Below the camping-place stretched a bank of fine yellow sand
+precipitated by the eddies in times of high water.  Partly drawn up on
+the sand was a dugout.  The Sholtos kept their two boats cached in the
+creek, but this one had been got out in preparation for the journey
+next day.  It was the happy-go-lucky Bill who had left it where it was
+without tying it, forgetful of the sudden rises of the river in hot
+weather.
+
+Kitty got in the dugout, and sat down in the stern, where she might
+trail her hands in the water, while she thought things out and dreamed
+her dreams.  All unwittingly Bill had discovered to her the very source
+of her discontent, and she was disturbed and ashamed.  It was true that
+she wanted a young man!  Here she was twenty years old; it was
+jocularly granted by her brothers that she was not exactly a fright;
+yet she had never had a young man.  What was worse there was no young
+man, at least of her own colour, within hundreds of miles, and she was
+doomed to her present imprisonment for at least another year.
+Twenty-two loomed ahead like old age itself.  "What chance will I have
+then!" she thought dejectedly.  Behind this was the hot-cheeked,
+nagging thought: what business had a nice girl to be desiring a young
+man, anyway!
+
+But after a while the lovely afternoon began to have its way with her,
+and the disquieting thoughts melted by imperceptible degrees into
+deceitful, charming daydreams.  She was lying in the bottom of the boat
+with her arm on the gunwale, and her head on her arm.  Her eyes were
+bent upstream as far as she could see.  He will come down the river,
+she dreamed.  "Perhaps he is just around the bend at this moment.  I
+should not be surprised.  But what if he should come when I am not
+here, and be carried past!  That is not possible!  If he is the right
+one, some power will lead him directly to me!  What is he like?  Tall
+and slender, with round, strong arms, and a wonderful light in his
+eyes.  He will not be surprised to see me either.  He will say: 'I have
+found you!'  And I will say quite simply: 'I have been waiting for
+you,' and everything will be understood."
+
+Following the usual course of day-dreams, Kitty little by little lost
+the direction of this beautiful story, and picture began to succeed
+picture without any help from her.  She found herself climbing the
+higher slopes of Mount Milburn hand in hand with the youth whose face
+was hidden from her; up into the intoxicating air of the summits.  Then
+presto! without so much of an effort as the wink of an eyelid they were
+transported to the busy streets of town, and looked into the
+bewildering shop-windows without any surprise at all.  Then they walked
+between endless rows of silk dresses hung on hooks, and all the dresses
+were hers, but she couldn't decide which one she liked the best, and
+was much distressed.  And he said: "Don't worry; I have a paper boat to
+sail down Milburn Creek in."  And she answered: "We'll never get up
+again," without caring in the least.  And then they danced to delicious
+music that issued from a row of trees like the pipes of an organ.
+
+With a long sigh Kitty stretched herself luxuriously in the bottom of
+the dugout, and ceased to dream.  If any young man had come along then
+and had seen her thus, her head on her folded arm, her lashes on her
+cheeks, and a dream-smile tilting the corners of her mouth, it is safe
+to say he would never have been the same again afterward.
+
+She awakened as quietly as she had fallen asleep, and lay for a while
+gazing up between the sides of the dugout at the delicate clear sky,
+which had not changed while she slept.  Gradually she became aware of
+missing something; it was the turbulent voice of Milburn Creek, never
+stilled in her ears at home.  At the same time the dugout rocked gently
+with her, filling her with an unexplained fear.  She quickly sat up.
+
+The heart in her breast turned cold.  She was adrift in midstream.
+Mount Milburn had disappeared and the even more familiar limestone face
+of Stanhope, opposite their camp.  Strange mountain shapes surrounded
+her, and unfamiliar shores.  Her eyes darted up and down the dugout;
+there was no paddle; nothing!  The swirling green eddies smiled at her
+horribly, like things biding their time.  Blank, hideous terror
+descended on her, scattering her faculties.
+
+There was worse in store.  Sweeping around a bend, she saw far down the
+river the white horses leaping in the sunshine.  She knew the place,
+the Grumbler rapids; up and down river they bore a sinister reputation.
+She stared at the place, fascinated with horror.  The river was so
+smiling, sunny, and beautiful, she could not believe that there was the
+end of all; the very white-caps below seemed to be leaping in play.
+And she herself, twenty years old, and full of the zest of living--it
+was not possible!  But the ever-increasing voice of the place warned
+her, there waited Death, sure and dreadful.  And nothing might stop her
+deliberate progress between the green shores.  She must sit with her
+hands in her lap and watch it coming step by step.
+
+Kitty's very softness and gentleness shielded her.  She could not take
+in so much horror.  Her eyes widened; she struggled for her breath--and
+collapsed in the bottom of the dugout.
+
+
+When consciousness and sight returned, she found a strange, dark face
+bending over her.  She was lying on firm ground beside the river.  The
+roar of the rapids filled the air.  Seeing Kitty's eyes open, and the
+light of reason return, the face broke into a beautiful and kind smile.
+Kitty, without understanding clearly, was immensely reassured.  It was
+a girl not much older than herself.
+
+"You all right now," the girl said.
+
+"What happened?" asked Kitty faintly.
+
+"You near get in the rapids."
+
+The recollection of her terror rushed back over her almost drowning
+Kitty's senses again.
+
+"You all right," the girl repeated in a cheery, matter-of-fact tone
+that was just what Kitty needed.  "I was working on the shore," she
+went on, "and I see a canoe come floating down.  I think it is foolish
+to let a good boat get broke on the rocks, so I get my boat and paddle
+for it, but there isn't much time.  I come to it, and I look in.  Wah!
+there is you!"
+
+"Oh, it was horrible! horrible!" murmured Kitty, shaken by strong
+shudders.
+
+"Forget it," said the girl.  "You all right now."
+
+"How did you get me ashore?" Kitty asked.
+
+"It was not much," the girl said with a shrug.  "I was too near the
+rapids to save both boats, so I jump in yours and let mine go down.  It
+was pretty hard paddling," she went on, smiling; "we were on the wrong
+side for the deep water.  Long time we jus' stand still out there, and
+not go up or down.  Then we come in slow, slow.  There is a tree fallen
+down beside the water, and I catch hold just in time."
+
+"You have saved my life!" murmured Kitty.
+
+"Cut it out!" said the dark girl gruffly.  "It was worth it for the
+boat alone."
+
+"But you lost your boat," said Kitty.
+
+The other shook her head.  "It is stuck on the rocks down there," she
+said.  "I will get it after."
+
+Strength and self-command came back to Kitty, and she sat up.  The two
+girls measured each other with glances of shy, strong curiosity.  Each
+was a surprising discovery to the other.
+
+"You are Kitty Sholto," said the dark girl.
+
+"How did you know that?" exclaimed Kitty, opening her eyes.
+
+"There is no other white girl in the country."
+
+"I don't know you," said Kitty.
+
+The other shrugged and smiled a little.  "There are plenty red girls,"
+she said.  "I am Annie Crossfox."
+
+"Where do you live?"
+
+Nahnya pointed vaguely downstream.  "My people are the Sapi Indians,"
+she said.
+
+"But that is way down by the canyon," said Kitty.  "Do you travel so
+far by yourself?"
+
+"I like travel by myself," Nahnya said deprecatingly.  "I hunt and I
+fish.  People think I am crazy.  They say it is like a man!"
+
+Each thought the other a wonderful creature.  Nahnya marvelled at the
+colour of Kitty's eyes, green-gray like the Spirit River itself, and
+her cheeks like snow--snow with the light of the setting sun upon it.
+Her delicacy and gentleness seemed like the qualities of a superior
+creature.  Kitty for her part was no less admiring of Nahnya's strength
+and courage.  The gentle Kitty like most girls had often wished that
+she had been born in one of her brother's places.  To be able to go
+where one pleased like a man! this stirred her imagination.  Each of
+these lonely girls was hungry for a woman friend; therein lay the
+explanation of their kind and wistful looks upon each other.
+
+Kitty was soon quite herself again.  Only at intervals did the
+recollection of her terror cause her to catch her breath, and send the
+colour flying from her cheeks.  A lesser fear succeeded.
+
+"How will I get home?" she said.  "Dad and the boys!  They will be
+frantic, poor things!"
+
+"Have they another boat?" asked Nahnya.
+
+Kitty nodded.
+
+"Then they will come look for you soon," said Nahnya calmly.  "It is
+all right."
+
+Kitty was much reassured.
+
+By degrees the two girls felt their way toward intimate speech.  "I am
+so surprise I find a white girl in this country," Nahnya said in her
+quaint, soft Mission English.  "When I look in your boat I am thinking
+nothing at all.  And there you are!  I am so surprise almost we both go
+in the rapids!"
+
+Kitty explained how she had been carried off.
+
+"Yes, all day the water rise," said Nahnya.
+
+"If you hadn't been there!" said Kitty, and all her terrors returned.
+
+"We must eat," said Nahnya energetically.  "I have tea and bread and
+meat across the river.  We must track for half a mile before I can
+cross.  You have only a short line on your boat.  I will track, and you
+push out with a pole."
+
+Nahnya went ahead with the end of the line, while Kitty, according to
+instructions, walked abreast of the dugout, and kept it off shore, and
+steered it around obstructions with her pole.  Kitty had never worked
+harder.  Nahnya thought she was sparing her, but Kitty had to struggle
+desperately over the stones and the tree trunks and around the edge of
+cut-banks in order to keep up.  The dugout acted like a thing inspired
+by personal malice against them.  Kitty insisted that it went out of
+its way to find stones to stick on, and if she fell so much as a yard
+behind, it instantly drove its nose into the bank.  Whenever it was
+necessary Nahnya waded unconcernedly into the icy water, and Kitty, not
+to be outdone, followed suit, shivering.
+
+When they finally arrived opposite the spot whence Nahnya had first set
+out to Kitty's aid, Kitty distinguished a wide, flat rock and a little
+stream that emptied beside it.  Nahnya told off the white girl to make
+a fire while she went for the supplies.  Kitty enviously watched her
+assured handling of the canoe.  Heading upstream enough to equalize the
+pull of the current, Nahnya crossed the river as straight as a ruled
+line, and in twenty minutes was back with everything they needed.
+
+Hanging their stockings and moccasins to dry, they extended their pink
+and white and pink and brown toes side by side to the fire, and ate
+their supper.  Meanwhile they were progressing in friendship by long
+leaps.  With a girl and, moreover, a girl so gentle as Kitty, Nahnya
+did not feel obliged to wall up her breast, and the natural warmth of
+her nature had way.  Lengthy girl confidences were exchanged.
+
+"I never talk to a white girl like this," Nahnya said shyly.  "Though I
+have live among white people, and watch the girls, and think about them
+much."
+
+"What did you think about white girls?" Kitty asked with her charming
+smile.
+
+"Always I am thinking how are they different from me," said Nahnya.
+
+"Different?" echoed Kitty.  "You are not really different from me."
+
+"I am half white," said Nahnya.  "Inside I feel the same as white
+people.  But white people treat me different from them."
+
+"I don't understand," said Kitty.
+
+"When I go to the Mission school," said Nahnya, "the sisters teach us:
+'Think no evil, and evil will pass you by.'"
+
+"That is true," said Kitty.
+
+Nahnya sadly shook her head.  "It is true for you," she said; "not for
+me.  When I went among the white people I thought no evil, but evil
+wrap me so close as a blanket over my head."
+
+"I--I do not understand," faltered Kitty.
+
+"Why should you?" said Nahnya.  "Nobody is bad to you.  Only to me.  So
+always I am wondering what is different in me.  I do not understand it,
+but I know it."
+
+"Do you--do you mean men?" asked the startled Kitty.
+
+Nahnya was silent.
+
+"But all men are not bad," said Kitty, thinking of her honest, jolly
+brothers.
+
+"Not all men," admitted Nahnya.  "Once I know a white man--at first he
+was crazy.  But he change.  He look at me cleanly, and speak honest.
+But always I am thinking this different thing is in me, and I send him
+away.  And always I think what is this different thing in me?"
+
+Kitty, looking at her with troubled eyes, made no reply.
+
+"Now I have scare you!" said Nahnya remorsefully.  "You think I mus' be
+bad, because others think I am so!"
+
+"No," said Kitty, "it is my own ignorance that I am scared of.  I don't
+know anything.  I don't know what to say."
+
+"Say not'ing!" cried Nahnya, bending a quick look of contrite affection
+on her.  "Me, I talk too much!  Always I want talk to some one who is
+like me, and I am near crazy with talk that I cannot speak.  My people,
+they are good people, but they do not know me.  My mot'er not know me.
+I am strange to her.  She is scare of me.  Always I think if I could be
+friends with a white woman, we could talk.  And to-day the river bring
+you to me, so I think it is like magic.  And my tongue, she shoot the
+rapids of talk!  I am sorry I scare you!"
+
+"You don't scare me a bit!" protested Kitty.  "I like to have you talk
+to me.  I'm talking to you, too.  Tell me about the white man," she
+said shyly, "the one you liked."
+
+Nahnya was startled.  For an instant the old walled look darkened her
+face.  "I not say I like any white man," she said quickly.  "I not want
+any man."
+
+Kitty hung her head a little.  "That's what we say," she murmured with
+a burst of shy candour; "but how true is it?"
+
+The dark fled out of Nahnya's face.  She turned a pair of wondrously
+soft eyes on Kitty.  "You are lonely up here!" she said.  "I know what
+lonely is!"
+
+Kitty's eyes grew large and bright with tears.  She nodded.  "I wanted
+a friend, too," she said very low.  "Some one to talk to like you.  The
+boys are good to me, but they treat me like a baby.  I wanted a woman
+friend.  I haven't talked to a woman in a year and a half."
+
+Nahnya sprang to her knees, and unconsciously clasping her hands to her
+breast, leaned toward Kitty.  "I will be your friend--always!" she said
+with trembling eagerness.  "If you want me," she added with wistful
+humility.
+
+Kitty's answer was to fling her arms around Nahnya's neck.
+
+Nahnya recoiled in a kind of terror.  "You--you kissed me!" she
+faltered.  "Me!"
+
+"I'll do it again!" cried Kitty.  "And again!  And again!  I think you
+are just sweet!"
+
+With an odd little cry the dark girl hid her face on Kitty's shoulder
+and clung to her, and broke into a silent shaken weeping.  Broken
+whispers of confession reached the white woman's ear.
+
+"I never have a friend....  Always inside of me I am alone....  I think
+I am marked out to be alone....  My heart hurt me like any woman's
+heart ... but always I mus' make out I don't care about anything..."
+
+
+An hour later they heard a hail from far up the river.  Kitty leaped up
+in great excitement.  Nahnya answered the hail.  She had the riverman's
+trick of sending the voice to a distance.  By and by they came flying
+around the bend, father and sons paddling like men possessed, and
+momentarily raising hoarse, anxious cries.  Nahnya tore off a branch of
+leaves, and putting it into Kitty's hands, urged her down to the beach
+to wave it.  At the sight of her safe on dry land, the three men sent
+up tremendous shouts of joy and relief.  Nahnya retired up on the bank.
+
+They landed, and Kitty was instantly locked in her father's arms.  Dick
+collapsed in the boat, while Bill's legs caved under him on the beach.
+Both boys wept, unashamed.
+
+"We heard the rapids," Bill blubbered.  "We thought we were just too
+late!"
+
+They quickly recovered.  Kitty had presently to submit to their
+bear-hugs, and again to her father's embraces.  All four talked at
+once, and foolishly laughed.  Kitty was abashed by their transports.
+Never had she seen her men so stirred.  Afterward questions began to
+fly.
+
+"How did you drift off without knowing it?"
+
+"Why didn't you scramble ashore and let the boat go?"
+
+"How did you get ashore here without a paddle or anything?"
+
+"Who is with you?"
+
+"Why, she's gone!" cried Bill suddenly.
+
+It was true.  They looked around in vain.  During the excitement of the
+men's landing, the dark girl had stolen unobserved to the other dugout.
+It lay a little downstream, and partly screened by some bushes.
+Putting off, and keeping close to the shore, she was soon lost to their
+sight.
+
+Kitty's face fell like a child's.  "Without a word of good-bye!" she
+said.
+
+"She's taken our best boat," said Jim Sholto, frowning.
+
+"She lost her own in the rapids saving me," said Kitty, with quick
+indignation.
+
+Jim hastened to mollify her.  "That's all right," he said.  "But to
+steal away like this!"
+
+"It's just like them," said Dick, "always mysterious."
+
+"You're not very grateful," said Kitty, at the point of tears.  "I tell
+you she saved my life."
+
+"You haven't told us anything yet," said her father.  "Who is she?"
+
+"Annie Crossfox."
+
+"I had a look at her," said Bill.  "She's mighty good-looking!  Don't
+see why she couldn't wait to receive our thanks."
+
+Kitty, looking at him sharply, saw the untoward, eager light in his
+dark eyes, and became suddenly thoughtful.  A reason for Nahnya's
+abrupt departure occurred to her.
+
+"She will bring the boat back to our camp," she said quietly.  "Just as
+soon as she can get her own boat.  She promised me!"
+
+"But Dick and I will be gone then," grumbled Bill.  "If we've got such
+a good-looking neighbour I want----"
+
+Kitty interrupted him.  "She saved my life," she repeated with a direct
+look.  "She is my friend."
+
+"What of it?" said Bill, beginning a great parade of innocence.  He
+caught his little sister's eye and saw something new there--knowledge.
+He had the grace to drop his own gaze and blush a little.  Bill was an
+honest youth.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE GRANTED PRAYER
+
+Kitty was ironing clothes in the kitchen of the living shack.  She and
+her father had been alone in camp for four days.  It had rained in the
+interim and the greens of Milburn gulch were freshly polished and
+gilded.  Inside the shack the cherry-coloured embers glowed on the
+grate, and a blue gingham dress was falling into crisp and immaculate
+folds as it was turned on the ironing board.  The door stood open, and
+a single big fly buzzed in and out over the sill, as if he couldn't
+make up his mind whether he preferred sunshine or shadow.
+
+While Kitty propelled the iron she thought a girl's thoughts, which
+alight on a subject as delicately as butterflies, and as lightly sheer
+away.  Since she had beheld the eager light in Bill's eyes at the sight
+of the dark girl, a fluttering disquiet winged in Kitty's mind.  She
+was thinking of men and women now.
+
+"Annie knows much more"----thus it ran in her head.  "I wish she would
+tell me.  I ought to know.  But why do I want to know what is ugly?
+But it's neither ugly nor beautiful; it's mixed.  Men are not angels.
+That's only silly dreaming that leaves you flat.  I wouldn't want a man
+to be too good, really.  Just a spice of danger and uncertainty."
+
+Kitty blushed, and looked around her guiltily as if this dreadful
+thought might have been overheard.  She applied herself to her ironing
+with prim lips.
+
+"I am a fool!" she thought.  "Annie is wise.  I wish she would come."
+
+Kitty's thoughts were broken in upon by the sound of a footstep outside
+the shack.  Something heavy and unfamiliar in the fall of it caused her
+to call out sharply: "Is that you, dad?"
+
+There was no answer.  She started around the ironing-board to
+investigate.  At the same moment the doorway was darkened by the figure
+of a stranger, a piteous, ghastly, unkempt travesty of manhood.  For a
+moment he wavered there, then pitched headlong to Kitty's feet.  One
+arm reached toward her as in supplication; the other was grotesquely
+doubled under him.
+
+Kitty screamed, and stood rooted to the spot.  The man lay without
+moving.  He had uttered no sound.  Jim Sholto came running from the
+works with a blanched face.  He all but fell over the body, and stood
+like his daughter, turned into stone with astonishment, His admirable
+composure quickly asserted itself.  He dropped to his knees.
+
+"Help me to turn him over, lass," he said quietly.
+
+The face that was revealed with its sunken, bearded cheeks and
+painfully drawn lips seemed aged to Kitty.  The eyes were closed.  Jim
+lowered his head to listen at the man's breast.
+
+"He lives," he said succinctly.  "Dislocated shoulder--starvation.
+Give me your sharpest knife to cut away this sleeve.  Get a pillow for
+his head.  Put water on the stove."
+
+Kitty flew to obey the various orders.
+
+"I'll put his shoulder in before he comes to," Jim went on grimly.  "It
+is more merciful.  It's a nasty job--after a week or more untended.
+Can you stand it?"
+
+Kitty nodded.
+
+"Then hold him as I bid you."
+
+Jim Sholto at fifty was still more powerful than either of his sons.
+He needed all his strength for the cruel job in hand.  The swollen,
+feverish flesh was dreadful to see.  Kitty closed her eyes and gritted
+her teeth and held on.  Deep, soft groans broke from the unconscious
+man as Jim worked over him.  Finally, with a dull click as of colliding
+billiard balls, it was done.  Jim stood up and wiped his face.  Now
+that the most urgent service had been rendered, curiosity began to have
+way.
+
+"Did you see him come?" he asked.
+
+Kitty shook her head.
+
+"H'm!" said Jim.  "With all this vast empty land to choose from, he
+stumbles on us.  Look, his moccasins are worn clean through."
+
+"What happened to him?" said Kitty.
+
+"Who knows?" said Jim.  "Maybe just the folly of an ignorant man
+travelling alone.  Maybe there's something on him to give us a clue."
+
+Jim knelt again.  His searching fingers came in contact with a little
+cloth packet sewed to the inside of the man's shirt.  Cutting the
+stitches with the point of his knife, he unwrapped it, and revealed
+inside a final wrapping of soft cotton, a delicate platinum chain with
+a great gleaming emerald hanging from it.  Father and daughter looked
+at each other in strong amazement.
+
+"There's some strange tale behind this," said Jim.  "Put it in a safe
+place."
+
+The stranger's eyelids flickered, and a slight sound issued from his
+lips.
+
+"We must lay him on your bed," said Jim.  "This is your job from now.
+Is there any condensed milk left?"
+
+"I have saved a can," said Kitty.
+
+"Dilute it and warm it, and feed him bread soaked in it when he is able
+to swallow.  Keep hot cloths around his shoulder.  Like he will have
+fever.  Give him gelseminum and aconite.  You know the doses."
+
+"I know," said Kitty.
+
+A new era began for her from that moment.  In the presence of this
+urgent reality her vague discontents were dissipated like morning
+mists.  Kitty had a passion for mothering, which had never been
+satisfied, for they all treated her like a child, and none of them had
+ever been sick.  At first the stricken man--that strange visitant from
+nowhere--was no more than an object for her to wreak her passionate
+pity upon.  Only by degrees did he come to have an individuality for
+her.  It commenced at the moment when she made the surprising discovery
+that he was young.  She learned that from the fresh, vibrant quality of
+his voice.  He was delirious.
+
+All that night, and the next day, and the night that followed he tossed
+and murmured in his fever.  But it could be seen that he was growing
+better.  Kitty was sleepless and happy.  At first his speech was
+formless and incoherent.  Later he fixed Kitty with his big bright
+eyes, and spoke with an unnatural distinctness and appearance of
+sanity.  She listened as one listens to a romance, interested and
+thrilled, but unsuspicious of any real foundation to the tale.  It was
+too much like a phantasy of the imagination, all his talk of a
+beautiful valley hidden within the mountains, that you entered through
+a cave; and of a brave and lovely woman who ruled the place, that he
+called Nahnya.  The name suggested nothing to Kitty.
+
+"He is a poet," she thought with a touch of awe.  In her simplicity she
+wrote it all down during the hours of the night, that she might be able
+to tell him later.
+
+On the second morning, Kitty dozing on a chair beside the bed was
+startled into complete wakefulness by hearing him say in a weak,
+natural voice:
+
+"You are real!  I thought I had dreamed you!"
+
+"You're better!" cried Kitty overjoyed.
+
+"Is it still up North?" he said wonderingly.  "I never expected to see
+a white girl!"
+
+"There's none but me," said Kitty.
+
+"How did I come here?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know," said Kitty.  "You just tumbled in the door."
+
+He told her of his accident.
+
+"The Stanley rapids!" said Kitty.  "That is only ten miles up the
+river.  You must have been many days making it!"
+
+"Walking in circles I suppose," he said.  "I started all right, keeping
+to the shore.  But the pain was so bad, I suppose I got lightheaded.  I
+remember stumbling through the woods with all kinds of things going
+through my head----!"
+
+"You mustn't talk any more," said Kitty commandingly.
+
+"All right," he said smiling.  "Don't go away!"
+
+Nourishment and good care worked wonders with the patient.  He insisted
+on getting up next day.  Catching sight of his face in a mirror, he
+cried out in horror, and demanded a razor.  Kitty left him alone to
+make himself presentable, while she helped her father in the works.
+
+Returning at length, she found him sitting in the kitchen
+metamorphosed.  His thick dark hair was brushed and gleaming; he smiled
+at her with a face as smooth and bland as a boy's.  Wonderful are the
+changes wrought in men's faces by a razor!  Kitty, remembering how he
+had looked when her father turned him over, could scarcely believe her
+eyes.
+
+There was likewise a changed quality in his smile.  Kitty read in it
+that he found her good to look at.  She was much taken aback by the
+discovery.  In a twinkling, it seemed to her, their positions had been
+reversed.  He was no longer her sick child, but a man--a possible
+master.  Her heart began to beat fast.  To hide her confusion, she
+turned and rummaged on the kitchen shelves.  Even with her back turned
+she felt as if his careless, smiling eyes were laying bare her very
+soul.  She could not tell whether it was painful or sweet to have it
+exposed to him.
+
+Of course she was not as open as she fancied herself to be.  Ralph
+guessed nothing.  Presently she turned with a composed face, and
+without comment brought him the little packet they had discovered on
+his body.
+
+He saw the emerald lying on her outstretched hand without offering to
+take it.  An expression of pain crossed his face, and he averted his
+head.
+
+"Please keep it for me," he said.  "I don't want to be obliged to think
+of things yet."
+
+A little jealous stab of the unknown pricked Kitty's breast.  She put
+the bauble away in her room.
+
+Coming back she said, with a brisk attempt to reassert a nurse's
+authority: "You may go out and sit in the sun for an hour."
+
+It only made him smile now--covering her with confusion again.  "Yes,
+ma'am," he said with mock humility.  "If you'll come, too."
+
+"I have my work to do," said Kitty rebukingly.
+
+He was incorrigible.  "Please, I can't walk all that way without help,"
+he said plaintively.
+
+She laughed, and helped him outside; lingered beside the bench--and
+finally sat down on the other end of it.  Poor, inexperienced Kitty had
+no armour for her soft breast.  They chattered and laughed, and the
+hours flew on wings.  Ralph told her no more of his story than his name
+and profession.  She, seeing that it distressed him to rake up the
+past, was happy to avoid it.  For the same reason she forbore saying
+anything as yet about the wonderful story he had told in his delirium.
+She, likewise in private, made her father agree not to ask their
+visitor any questions until he was stronger.
+
+Ralph's frame of mind was natural to one recovering from a sudden,
+serious illness.  He instinctively felt the necessity of maintaining a
+quiet mind while the strength stole deliciously back through his veins.
+Away back he apprehended a burden waiting to be shouldered when he was
+strong enough, but at present he would have none of it.  He was no more
+than a bit of reanimated clay gratefully absorbing the sunshine.  At no
+time was vanity a great factor in his make-up, and in his present
+purgated state it was non-existent.  It honestly never occurred to him
+that their jolly talk and laughter, and the exchange of happy glances
+might be working irremediable damage in the breast of the dreamy girl
+beside him.
+
+Ralph, now sufficiently recovered, was banished to the men's bunks,
+outside, and Kitty repossessed herself of her own room.  That night in
+the secure and comfortable darkness her defences fell away from her.
+She pressed her lips to the pillow that had supported his dear head
+throughout his illness, and moistened it with her tears.  "Little did I
+guess when he came tumbling through the doorway," she thought--and left
+the thought unfinished on a swelling breast.  "It is like an answer to
+a prayer I didn't dare make," she whispered to herself.  When doubts
+and jealousies of the mystery that enshrouded him obtruded on her, she
+thrust them away.  "It must be all right!" she insisted.  "His feet
+were led to our door!"
+
+The next day passed in the same fashion.  Ralph insisted on helping
+Kitty with the housework, much to her amused scorn.  Ralph took an
+inexhaustible delight in her naïve simplicity.  She loved to have him
+chaff her.  He seemed to her the cleverest, kindest, most lovable of
+superior creatures.  Further than that the mystery of his manliness
+thrilled her.  In his eyes there lurked a strange, sly promise of
+rapture.  She called it "wickedness" in her innocence and was sweetly
+troubled.  "What shall I do if he tries to kiss me?" she thought in a
+delicious panic.  As the day passed and he made no move to do so a
+faint chagrin made itself felt, which she refused to recognize.
+
+As if moved by a common impulse they kept their conversational shallop
+floating in the safe shallows.  Reminiscences of childhood afforded
+them much humorous matter.  Ralph did most of the talking.
+
+"Once when I was a kid," he said, "they dug up the street in front of
+our house for a drain, and ran into an Indian burial ground.  My chum
+and I played ninepins on the sidewalk with the skulls, and the
+constable arrested us.  What a fuss there was!"
+
+"I should say so!" said Kitty, simulating a virtuous indignation.
+"Little savages!"
+
+"Why?" said Ralph teasingly.  "Old bones are all right.  Don't you like
+their nice earthy smell?"
+
+"Horrible!" said Kitty.
+
+"Did you ever see Hamlet?" asked Ralph.  He apostrophized, a teacup in
+his extended hand.  "Alas, poor Yorick!  I knew him well, Horatio.  He
+was a fellow of infinite jest!"
+
+Ralph acted out the speech for her with improvisations.  Kitty was
+obliged to sit down suddenly, and to hold her sides.  Kitty was one of
+those shy, admiring, easily shocked, and easily moved-to-laughter
+girls, that inspire a man to the highest flights of audacious wit.
+
+"Speaking of bones," Ralph went on; "when I was a student at McGill, my
+room-mate and I saved up enough to buy a whole skeleton all properly
+articulated.  It was a peach!  We kept it in the closet hanging from a
+clothes-hook."
+
+"Mercy!" said Kitty.
+
+"The landlady had a daughter who had a beau, and the two of them used
+to make us fellows tired with their goings-on.  They'd stand for half
+an hour at the foot of the stairs saying good-night.  Yes, it sounded
+like a cow drawing her foot out of a boggy place!"
+
+"Aren't you awful!" said Kitty, blushing.
+
+"We decided that something must be done," Ralph went on.  "I got some
+phosphorus paint, and we painted the skeleton all over and fastened a
+long line to the hook in his skull that was used to hang him up by.
+And that night when the pair of them came out in the hall downstairs,
+and turned down the light, we crept out on the upper landing, and
+leaned over the rail, and let Mr. Bones go walking slowly step by step
+down the stairs.  He was a lovely blue colour; every bone stood out!"
+
+"You might have killed them with fright," said Kitty.
+
+"No such luck!" said Ralph.  "They didn't hear him coming until he was
+halfway down.  Then I rattled him a little.  Jehosaphat!  You never
+heard such a screech in your life!  Both of them!  They made for the
+front door, and rattled it like mad, and couldn't get it open!  I
+laughed so hard the string slipped out of my hand.  And Mr. Bones went
+down the rest of the stairs sitting up just like a person--rattle,
+clatter, smash!  Oh, my!  Oh, my!"
+
+"I don't think it was funny at all!" said Kitty.  But she laughed, and
+her eyes confessed her admiration of his dreadful boldness.
+
+"Next day we moved," said Ralph.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE TRIANGLE
+
+On the following day, the fifth of Ralph's stay in Milburn gulch, he
+was strong enough to walk about more freely.  Jim Sholto took him up
+the trail to show him the excavations.  Jim was secretly hoping that in
+Ralph he would find a workman to take the place of one of the absent
+boys.  Being past the period of heart troubles himself, the danger of
+introducing a strange and not uncomely young man into his family Eden
+had not suggested itself to him.
+
+While they were away, Kitty worked about the cabin in a spasmodic way
+widely differing from her usual deft serenity.  She would come to a
+stand staring before her mistily, a little smile wreathing the corners
+of her lips; rousing herself with a start, she would fly about for a
+while as if her life depended on getting done, only to fall into
+another dream.  Absently picking things up, she dropped them in fresh
+places, and presently started hunting for them again.  Snatches of
+impromptu song welled up from her breast, higher and higher, until her
+voice trembled and broke.  She continually ran to the mirror, by turns
+anxious, critical, scornful, blushing, reassured by what she saw there.
+Every three minutes she went to the door and looked up the trail to see
+if he was coming back.
+
+On one of these journeys she heard her name softly called behind her.
+Whirling about she beheld approaching by the trail from the river a
+graceful figure clad in buckskin skirt and blue flannel, her beautiful
+dark face composed and smiling, her black hair braided and wound about
+her upheld head.  In short, it was her friend and preserver, holding
+out her hands, and smiling at Kitty wistfully and deprecatingly, just
+as she had seen her last.
+
+Kitty shrieked with pleasure, and flinging her arms about her friend,
+dragged her into the cabin, and forced her into a chair.
+
+"Annie!  Annie!  Annie!" she cried, dropping on her knees beside her.
+"How sweet of you to come!  I wanted to see you so badly!  You must
+stay a week!"
+
+Nahnya shook her head, smiling.  "I just brought the dugout back," she
+said in her soft full voice, that made a pleasant harmony with Kitty's
+excited accents.  "And I brought fresh meat, mountain goat."
+
+"Did you get your own boat all right?" Kitty demanded to know.
+
+"It was only a little broke," said Nahnya. "I fix it easy."
+
+"How could you bring two boats up against the current?" asked Kitty.
+
+"I only bring yours," Nahnya answered.  "Mine is down the river on this
+side where I can get it."
+
+"How will you get it?"
+
+"I will walk along the shore," said Nahnya.  "It is not hard walking."
+
+"Now I've got you, I'm not going to let you go in a hurry!" cried
+Kitty, clinging to her.
+
+"But you're all busy here," objected Nahnya.  "The men----"
+
+"My brothers have gone outside," said Kitty.  "There is only my father
+and--and a stranger."
+
+"A stranger?" said Nahnya.
+
+Kitty was not going to blurt out her secret.  Her friend's mind must be
+prepared by delicate stages for its reception.  "We have a white man
+stopping with us," she said very off-hand.
+
+Nahnya was not blind to the self-conscious air and the blush.  Her arm
+tightened affectionately about Kitty.
+
+"Why did you run away from us like you did?" asked Kitty hastily, to
+create a diversion.
+
+Nahnya shrugged.  "I was afraid they thank me, and make a fuss," she
+said uneasily.  "I feel like a fool then."
+
+"You silly dear!" cried Kitty embracing her afresh.
+
+There was a new demonstrativeness in Kitty, a breathless ardour that in
+itself was enough to tell the other woman something had happened since
+their parting.
+
+"So you have a visitor," she said teasingly.  "I think he is young,
+yes?"
+
+Kitty tucked in an end of Nahnya's braid that was escaping.  "Fairly
+young," she said.
+
+"You are not so much lonely now I think," murmured Nahnya.
+
+Kitty jumped up.  "You must be hungry!" she cried.  "I'm forgetting my
+duties!"
+
+"Not an hour ago I ate," said Nahnya.  "I am not hungry."
+
+Kitty developed a great flow of small talk, about the weather, about
+her brothers, about everything except what was in both their minds.
+Nahnya let her run on.  Under her friend's quiet, kind smile Kitty
+broke down at last, and running to her, dropped beside her again, and
+hid her hot face on the dark girl's shoulder.
+
+"Oh, Annie!" she breathed on a trembling, rising inflection.
+
+"Tell me," whispered Nahnya.
+
+"Oh, Annie!  It's so strange!  I can't!  I didn't want to tell you
+anything.  I wanted you to see him, and--and to guess!  I have lost
+myself completely!  I am turned inside out!  It came so suddenly.  I
+never guessed anything like this!  Oh, Annie!  He's so strong, so kind,
+so mysterious, so clever, so dangerous!  I am terrified of him.  I am
+wretched when he is out of my sight for a minute!"
+
+Nahnya's face became grave.  "Has he said anything?" she whispered.
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Oh, Kitty dear!" murmured Nahnya.  "Be careful!  Men----!"
+
+"He's true!" said Kitty hotly.  "That I can see in his eyes!"
+
+"You know who he is?" asked Nahnya anxiously.  "Where he come from?
+All about him?"
+
+"No," faltered Kitty.  "He's honest!" she cried.  "My instinct tells me
+so.  He's good to me.  He's careful of me.  He doesn't make love to me!
+Oh, Annie," she went on tremulously, "I've been living in a dream the
+last few days!  All the time he teases me, and I love it because I know
+he is kind!  All the time we laugh, and the hours go by like minutes!"
+
+Once the opening was found, Kitty was not to be stopped from pouring
+out the whole of her simple heart to her friend.  Nahnya held her
+close, and listened, and her dark head drooped.
+
+Kitty, raising her face at last, was arrested by Nahnya's brooding look
+upon her.  Kitty had never seen eyes so kind and so sad.  Their look
+was as deep as the sea.
+
+"Annie," she said sharply, "what's the matter?  Aren't you glad?"
+
+Nahnya pressed the girl convulsively.  "I am glad," she murmured,
+bestirring herself.  "I love you.  I am glad if you are happy!"
+
+"You were not looking glad," said Kitty.
+
+"It is foolishness," said Nahnya.  "Only--I think of me.  I am young.
+I want be happy, too!"
+
+"You will be!" cried Kitty.
+
+Nahnya smiled--with those eyes!  "It will never, never come to me!" she
+murmured.
+
+"Why not?" Kitty demanded to know.
+
+Nahnya laughed away the brooding look.  "Foolish!" she cried, "I am
+jus' jealous!  Tell me more!  How did he come here?"
+
+Kitty, like every lover, was a little selfish in her happiness.  She
+allowed herself to be reassured by Nahnya's laughter.  "He was
+travelling down the river all alone," she went on eagerly; "and he lost
+his boat and everything he had in the Stanley rapids, and dislocated
+his shoulder besides.  The pain of it drove him out of his wits.  For
+days he wandered in the bush.  Providence directed his footsteps to us,
+dad says.  He pitched headfirst through the doorway there, while I was
+working.  Never in my life was I so frightened!"
+
+Nahnya had succeeded in putting her own sadness out of mind.  "You have
+not tell me what he look like," she said, warm with sympathy.
+
+"He'll be here directly," said Kitty, blushing.  "You shall see for
+yourself."
+
+Springing up, Kitty ran to the door to look up the trail.  He was not
+yet in sight.  As she turned back into the room, Nahnya asked:
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"Ralph Cowdray," said Kitty shyly.
+
+There was silence in the cabin.  The brook outside seemed suddenly to
+increase its brawling.  Kitty, in her shyness, turned away her head
+when she spoke the name, therefore she did not see how Nahnya took it.
+Kitty waited for Nahnya to speak.  The silence became like a weight on
+them both.
+
+"Don't you think it's a pretty name?" murmured Kitty.
+
+There was no answer.  Kitty looked at her friend in surprise.  Nahnya
+had not moved.  She still sat quiet in the chair, her hands loose in
+her lap.  But her head had fallen forward on her breast.  The oblique
+glimpse that Kitty caught of her cheeks caused her to run to her
+friend, and fling an arm around her, and force her head up with the
+other hand, that she might see into her face.  Nahnya kept her eyes
+obstinately veiled, but she could not disguise the shocking grayness
+that had crept into her curved cheeks.
+
+"Annie!  What's the matter!" she cried in distress.  "You're sick!  Why
+didn't you tell me?  Come lie on my bed!  Oh, how selfish I have been!"
+
+Nahnya got up, steadying herself on the back of the chair.  Her eyes
+were blank and piteous.  "I am not sick," she said, measuring her words
+syllable by syllable.  "I am all right.  I will go now."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the kind!" cried Kitty indignantly.  "In such a
+state!  Come, lie down, and let me take care of you!"
+
+Nahnya stolidly resisted Kitty's effort to urge her toward the bedroom.
+Her measured voice began to shake in spite of her will.  "You must let
+me go," she said.
+
+"What nonsense!" cried Kitty, clinging to her.
+
+Nahnya's voice came sharp and urgent.  "You must let me go or it will
+be bad for all of us!"
+
+Kitty fell back a step.  "Bad for all of us!" she echoed in innocent
+perplexity.  "What do you mean?"
+
+Nahnya passed the limit of endurance.  Her hands went suddenly to her
+head.  A low, wild cry broke from her.  "I am a cursed woman!" she
+cried.  "Always I know it!  Where I go I bring sorrow and evil.  There
+is no place for me!  There is nothing!  All I ask for was a friend."
+
+Kitty thought she was out of her senses.  "There, it's all right!" she
+said, soothing her.  "You have me!  You will always have me!  I'm so
+glad you came here.  I will take care of you, and make you well again!"
+
+Nahnya made believe to submit to her caresses.  "I am cold," she
+murmured, with a sly glance.  "Get me a coat, a shawl."
+
+Kitty flew into the bedroom.  No sooner had she passed the doorway,
+than Nahnya softly glided toward the outer door.  She was too late.
+Before she reached it, it was filled with the bulk of a man.  She fell
+back into the darkest corner with a gasp.  Kitty returned out of the
+bedroom.
+
+"Ralph!" cried Kitty gladly.
+
+Ralph coming out of the sunlight did not immediately recognize Nahnya
+in her corner.  He distinguished two figures.
+
+"Hello!  Who's here?" he said.
+
+Kitty ran to Nahnya, and wrapped a shawl about her shoulders.  "It's
+Annie Crossfox," she said, full of concern.  "She's sick, and I--
+
+"Annie Crossfox!" cried Ralph in a great voice.
+
+He sprang toward her.  Kitty fell back in astonishment.  Nahnya shrank
+from him, and covered her face with her hands.  Seizing her wrists, he
+pulled her hands down.  She betrayed her white blood in her changing
+colour.  Her face crimsoned--and turned deathly pale.  Her hands in
+Ralph's hands trembled like aspen leaves.  There was a silence in the
+cabin.
+
+Ralph stood devouring her with his eyes.  It seemed to him as if that
+which was walled-up within him had suddenly burst.  He was flooded with
+the sense of the identity he had lost in his illness.  It was as if
+himself came back to him.  And all of it was his love for Nahnya.  It
+filled him.  It was like something new, and infinitely sweeter and
+stronger than before.
+
+He murmured her name over and again.  "Thank God!  I've found you!" he
+said.  "I'll never let you go now!"
+
+Even while he was looking at her, Nahnya contrived to conquer the
+surprise which had betrayed her weakness.  Her face turned hard, and
+her hands ceased to tremble.  Snatching her hands out of his, she
+darted to the door.  Ralph was nearer.  He reached it first, closed it,
+and put his back against it.
+
+"No, you don't!" he cried triumphantly.  "You won't escape me again!
+You love me, and I'll never let you go!"
+
+Nahnya darted an unfathomable look at Kitty.  "How dare you?" she said
+to Ralph in a suffocating voice.  "Before her!  After what happen
+between you!"
+
+Ralph recollected Kitty for the first, and looked at her in honest
+surprise.  "Between us?" he said.  "There's nothing between us!"
+
+There was another silence.  Ralph looked from one to another of the
+girls in frowning perplexity.  At last an explanation occurred to him.
+
+"Are you jealous?" he cried to Nahnya.
+
+She started angrily.
+
+"Kitty took me in," said Ralph eagerly.  "She nursed me like an angel.
+I'll be grateful to her all my life.  We're friends.  There's nothing
+else--I swear to you!  Oh, this is horrible!  Kitty, tell her there was
+nothing between us!"
+
+"I do not care!" said Nahnya quickly.
+
+"Tell her!" insisted Ralph.
+
+Kitty stood with a stiff back, and head held high.  Her soft, pretty
+face was distorted and ashen with pain, the tender lips everted from
+her clenched teeth, the green-gray eyes narrowed and glittering.  How
+could she help but feel betrayed on either hand?
+
+She laughed.  "So that is your white man?" she said to Nahnya; quite
+coolly she thought.  It had a sharp and hateful ring.  "And that is
+your Nahnya?" she said, turning to Ralph.  "I congratulate you both!"
+Her voice failed her.
+
+To see the gentle Kitty fighting to save her pride was infinitely more
+piteous than if she had broken down.  Nahnya turned away her head; at
+the sound of Kitty's voice she shuddered.  Ralph gazed at Kitty in
+incredulous amazement.  He possessed no key to her behaviour.
+
+Kitty got her breath, and went on to Nahnya clearly: "Of course there
+was nothing between us!  I only did what one would do for anybody."
+
+Once more the silence fell on them.  They stood each on his point of
+the triangle, each struggling with emotions that foundered speech.
+Once Nahnya looked imploringly at Kitty; out of the wreck she longed to
+save her friend.  Kitty's eyes merely glittered, and Nahnya's face
+turned into stone.  Ralph began to suspect the true state of affairs,
+and dismay widened his eyes.
+
+It was Kitty who broke the silence.  "I have something for you," she
+said to Nahnya, moving toward her own room.
+
+She was gone but a second.  Nahnya and Ralph did not look at each
+other.  Returning, Kitty extended her hand to Nahnya with the necklace
+lying upon the palm.
+
+"He brought it to you," said Kitty.
+
+She made to drop it into Nahnya's hand, but the dark girl quickly put
+her hands behind her.  The royal bauble dropped to the floor.  It
+glittered there, disregarded by all three.
+
+"Oh, Kitty!" murmured Ralph, confused, remorseful and still amazed; "I
+never dreamed of this--I never thought----"
+
+"Never thought of what?" asked Kitty quickly.
+
+"That you--that I!  You're so good and gentle!  Oh, it's horrible!"
+
+A spasm passed over Kitty's face.  Everything that was said made
+matters worse.  "You're talking nonsense," she said quickly.  "There's
+nothing the matter with me!"
+
+"What are we to do?" muttered Ralph helplessly.
+
+Nahnya's voice came harsh and hard.  "Do you think every woman is in
+love with you?" she cried.  "You are nothing to me!  I tell you that
+before.  I tell you that now!  Keep away from me!  I not want to see
+you again!"
+
+Ralph's eyes flamed up; he instantly forgot Kitty.  "We'll see about
+that!" he cried.  "You're mine!  I'll never give you up!"
+
+He moved toward Nahnya.  Turning, she darted into Kitty's room,
+slamming the door behind her.  By the time Ralph got it open she was
+out through the window, carrying the mosquito netting with her.  It
+seemed a miracle that the tiny sash could have passed her body.  It was
+out of the question for Ralph.  He dashed back to the front door, and
+flinging it open, ran around the house to intercept her.
+
+Left alone in the cabin, Kitty walked with a curious quietness to the
+table under the front window.  She dipped a cup into the pail of water
+that stood there, and conveyed it to her lips, spilling much of the
+water on the floor and on herself without noticing it.  She returned
+with the air of a sleep-walker, still carrying the cup, and picked up
+the emerald, and put it away in a corner of the shelves.  With the same
+uncanny self-possession she seated herself in a chair nearby.  She
+sighed, and fell a little forward and sideways against the wall.  Her
+hand fell limply to her side, and the cup slipping from it was broken
+on the floor.  Thus her father found her when he came in.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+NEW ACTORS ON THE SCENE
+
+When Ralph got around the house Nahnya was nowhere to be seen.  He was
+not enough of a woodsman to find her tracks in the dead leaves and the
+pine needles.  The river was her natural means of escape; cutting back
+to the trail, he ran to the point.  There was no sign of her.  Drawn up
+on the beach and tied to a branch he saw the dugout she had brought.
+There were no tracks in the sand to show she had returned, nor any
+impression of another boat having been pushed off.
+
+Ralph rushed up and down the shore looking for her, or for her tracks.
+"She must go by the river," he told himself; "the forest is
+impenetrable."  With every minute his heart sank; he knew he was no
+match for Nahnya in the wilderness.  Making a longer sally downstream,
+he finally found her tracks where she had leaped over the bank, and had
+set off down the beach.  He followed after with renewed hope.  After
+running a quarter of a mile he suddenly pulled himself up.  "I'll never
+catch her this way," he thought.  "She must have a boat down here to
+cross.  She'll only leave me stranded on the shore.  She's got to go
+home.  I must follow her there by water."
+
+He made his way back to the point, and thence to the work-shack, where
+he borrowed an axe and an auger, without meeting any one.  Returning to
+the mouth of the creek he searched until he found a great, dry trunk,
+that had been thrown high by a freshet.  He set to work to chop it into
+four lengths to make a raft.  His right arm was still far from fit to
+swing an axe, but an indomitable resolution kept him at work.  Progress
+was slow; the minutes escaped him maddeningly.  "Never mind," he told
+himself, "I'll go straight to the Bowl of the Mountains.  She does not
+know that I can find my way there."
+
+By and by Jim Sholto pushed his way through the bushes, and, descending
+the bank, sat down on a boulder.  Ralph, with a glance, went on with
+his work.  Jim made a great business of searching for a suitable twig
+at his feet.  He started to peel it, pursing up his lips in a noiseless
+whistle.  Downright Jim had no talent for dissimulation; perturbation,
+dismay, and anger were plainly visible, struggling with his elaborate
+unconcern.  He was keeping a tight hold on himself.
+
+"So you're going to leave us?" he said, very off-hand.
+
+"I must," muttered Ralph.
+
+"I should 'a' thought you'd had your lesson against travelling alone.
+You ain't in no shape to swing an axe or drive a paddle!"
+
+"Can't help it," said Ralph.
+
+"What'll you do for food, gun, blankets, to keep life in you?"
+
+"I suppose you will sell me what I need.  I have money."
+
+"Money's of no use to me here," said Jim grimly.
+
+"Then I won't trouble you," said Ralph quickly.
+
+Jim showed a certain compunction.  "It ain't a question of money when
+you're short of necessities yourself," he explained.
+
+"Then the sooner you are quit of me the better," said Ralph.
+
+"You could stay here a while and work out your keep," said Jim craftily.
+
+Ralph merely shook his head.  They were silent, Jim meanwhile
+transparently debating with himself how to open the subject again.
+
+"Look here!" he said testily.  "I can't talk to you while you're
+swinging the axe.  Are you in such a rush you can't stop for five
+minutes?"
+
+Ralph put down his axe with none too good a grace, and sat down on
+another stone beside the creek's bed.  His face showed a sullenness
+that promised badly for the results of their talk.  Ralph had conceived
+a great liking for the bluff and simple Jim, but the situation was
+hopeless, and since he could not mend it, he saw nothing but to brazen
+it out.  To protest his regrets he felt would be insincere, if not
+positively insulting to the Scotchman.
+
+Jim was humbling himself for Kitty's sake.  He knew that the situation
+was too much for him, but he was obliged to try to mend it because
+there was no one else to help her.
+
+"I took a fancy to you when you come," he said clumsily.  "I can't see
+you go to make a fool of yourself, and keep my mouth shut."
+
+Ralph's nostrils dilated ominously.  "I might as well be working," he
+said shortly.  "This does no good."
+
+"Wait!" said Jim, with what was in him rare patience.  "You're
+inexperienced.  Any man that knows this country knows the fatal results
+of any connection between red and white."
+
+Ralph rose abruptly.  "That's enough!" he said, tightlipped.  "You have
+no call to interfere in my private affairs!"
+
+Jim suddenly exploded.  "No call!" he shouted.  "You talk like a fool!
+You're insane!  I have a right to lock you up until you come to your
+senses."
+
+"Better not try it on," said Ralph.
+
+"Insanity's the kindest name to put to it!" stormed Jim.  "There are
+uglier words!--coming here like you did, and making up to my little
+daughter, and beguiling her with your city-bred tongue, and then to run
+off after----"
+
+"It's a lie!" cried Ralph.  "I was coming after the other girl when I
+had my accident.  And I never made love to Kitty, neither by word, nor
+look, nor touch!  Ask her!"
+
+"Ah, you'd hide behind her now," sneered Jim.  "She has her pride!"
+
+Roused to a blind fury by the unjust taunt, Ralph reached for his
+axe--but he could not fight Kitty's father.  His arms dropped to his
+sides.  "Oh, for God's sake, let me go, and forget me!" he cried
+brokenly.
+
+"Ye came to her sick and starving!" cried Jim accusingly; "she took ye
+in and fed ye, and nursed ye back to life again!  What does she get for
+it?  I found her----  Oh! it drives me mad to think on!  I could kill
+ye--but that would only break her heart!  Ye miserable Jack-a-dandy!
+What she can see in ye beats me!"
+
+"What can I do?" cried Ralph despairingly.  "It's not my fault!  Tell
+me what to do, and I'll do it!"
+
+"Stay here," said Jim.  "Give up this insane chase, and make good here."
+
+Ralph shrugged helplessly.  "It's impossible," he said sullenly.  "I'd
+be no good to Kitty if my heart was down the river."
+
+"Your heart!" echoed Jim disgustedly.  He raised his clenched fists.
+"Grant me patience!"
+
+He was interrupted by the sound of Kitty's voice calling him.  In the
+hollow where Ralph was building his raft they were invisible both from
+the trail, and from the camping-place on the point.  Jim answered the
+hail sulkily.  Presently Kitty, white-faced and wide-eyed, came pushing
+through the bushes.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she demanded of her father.
+
+Thus to be addressed by one of his children brought the skies tumbling
+about the old-fashioned father's head.  He gaped at her stupidly.
+"That's a nice way to speak to me!" he cried, puffing out his cheeks.
+
+It had no effect on her now.  The gentle Kitty was transformed.  "I
+believe you were trying to persuade him to stay here!" she cried, with
+flashing eyes.
+
+"Well--well," stammered Jim, thoroughly confounded.  "I was doing it
+for your sake!"
+
+A little cry of helpless anger escaped her.  "How can you shame me so?"
+she murmured.
+
+"Shame you?" said poor Jim.  "If you want a thing you've got to fight
+for it, ain't you?"
+
+"I don't want him!" she cried.  "Let him go!  The sooner he goes the
+better I'll be pleased!  Understand, both of you, he is repulsive to
+me!  I never want to see him again as long as I live!"
+
+It was the third time that day that Ralph had been denounced.  He was
+only human.  His self-love was wounded.  "What's the matter with you
+all?" he cried.  "I'm neither a leper nor a crook!  Why should I be
+blamed for what nobody could help?"
+
+"Come back to the house," said Kitty imperiously to her father.
+
+Jim followed her as if he had been whipped.  "God save the wumman!" he
+muttered.  "Blest if I know what she wants!"
+
+Ralph returned to his work with a savage zest, and wholly unmindful of
+the pain in his shoulder.  It was an impossible situation; there was
+nothing he could do, therefore no use thinking about it.  The only
+thing was to get away as soon as he could.  He bored holes in the ends
+of his four logs, and cutting two cross-pieces bored them and fastened
+the whole frame together with stout wooden pegs.  By the time it was
+done the afternoon was far advanced.  He floated his craft out into the
+river, and, pulling it up on the sand, took the auger and the axe back
+to the work-shack.
+
+Jim Sholto, busy with the furnaces, turned a grim, hard face at his
+entrance.
+
+"Will you sell me food and a gun and a blanket?" asked Ralph stiffly.
+
+"It's waiting for you in the kitchen," was the harsh answer.  "No dog
+shall starve through me."
+
+Ralph swallowed the affront.  The two men went to the kitchen.  The
+stuff was lying on the table: gun, ammunition belt, double blanket, and
+packet of food.  Kitty was not visible.
+
+"Pay me what you like," said Jim carelessly.
+
+"It's worth fifty dollars," Ralph said, counting out the money.
+
+"Here's something else that belongs to you," said Jim, holding out the
+necklace with a sneer.
+
+Ralph pocketed it without comment.  Gathering the slender outfit in his
+arms, he left the shack.  There were no good-byes.
+
+Everything was now clear for his departure, and as he set foot on the
+trail to the river he breathed more freely.  He bitterly regretted what
+had happened, but since he could not mend it there was relief in
+putting it behind him.  Down the river was Nahnya.
+
+Halfway to the camping-place he stopped and stood fast to listen with a
+horrible sinking of the heart.  He thought he heard men's voices ahead
+of him.  He thought he recognized the voices.  He heard them again, and
+could no longer doubt.  The worst had happened.  He paused, frantically
+debating what to do.  His way was cut off in front; they were already
+in possession of the raft that had caused him such pains to make.
+Behind him was the grim and angry father.  No help there!  While Ralph
+hung in agonized indecision Joe Mixer hove in sight in the trail ahead,
+and, seeing him, set up a loud shout.
+
+Ralph cast the blanket and the bag of food from him, and hanging on to
+the rifle and ammunition, darted into the woods.  Joe Mixer, shouting
+the news over his shoulder, came plunging after him.  The other three
+men caught up Joe's cries, and crashed into the underbrush.  The
+surprised forest rang like the halls of bedlam with shouts and crashes
+on every hand.
+
+Ralph pressed his elbows against his ribs, and ran, breathing deep for
+endurance.  He headed east into the thickest of the woods, meaning to
+strike back to the river if he could distance them a little.  He judged
+from the sounds that they had spread out fanwise behind him.  None of
+them caught sight of him again.  He ran with despair in his heart, for
+there was no escape ahead.  Suppose he did outdistance them, there was
+no place to run to, and nothing to do.  He could not build another raft
+with his bare hands.
+
+The sounds behind him finally fell away a little, and Ralph turned
+sharply to the left.  Breaking out of the woods, he scrambled down the
+bank almost in the same spot where he had found Nahnya's tracks
+earlier.  At the bottom he came face to face with Philippe Boisvert
+crouching in wait behind a boulder.  Ralph almost collided with him.
+Before he could lift his arms, he was locked in the half-breed's sinewy
+embrace.  He struggled with the strength of despair without being able
+to break it.  Meanwhile Philippe shouted vociferously.  Joe Mixer
+leaped down the bank and fell on Ralph from behind.  Crusoe Campbell
+and Stack appeared, each ready to lend a hand.  It was useless for
+Ralph to struggle further.
+
+"Tie his hands!" shouted Joe.
+
+It was done with the thongs from the half-breed's moccasins.  Ralph was
+half-led, half-dragged along the beach, back to the camping-place.
+Whenever he stumbled Joe with foul oaths struck him in the face with
+his fist.  Joe was not susceptible to any sentiments of generosity
+toward a helpless enemy.  Crusoe Campbell guffawed, and Stack
+snickered.  Ralph set his teeth, and held his tongue.  A cold hate
+distilled itself drop by drop in his heart.
+
+Jim Sholto attracted by the noise of the chase was at the camping-place
+when they got there.  Seeing Ralph's plight, he grimly smiled.  Ralph
+was stood, back against a tree, and a stout line wound about his body,
+and knotted behind the trunk.
+
+Meanwhile Joe Mixer blustered up to shake hands with Jim.  "You know
+me," he cried; "Mixer of Gisborne portage.  These three gentlemen are
+friends of mine.  From your smile I take it you've had a sample of this
+young crook's quality."
+
+Jim was not at all charmed by Joe's effusiveness, but he was more
+enraged against Ralph.  "I know nothing to his good," he said grimly.
+
+"Let me tell you what he did to us," said Joe.  "Landed below our camp
+in the night when we was all asleep, and set our boat adrift.  We might
+have starved in the woods for him!"
+
+Ralph disdained to answer this impudent charge.
+
+"Where was this?" asked Jim.
+
+"Thirty mile above the Grand Forks."
+
+"You've been a long time coming down."
+
+"We had a little business up the Stanley," said Joe.
+
+Ralph had at least the satisfaction of learning that he had made them
+sweat for ten days.
+
+"How did he come here?" asked Joe.
+
+"Sick and starving," said Jim bitterly.  "Said he lost his boat in the
+Stanley rapids."
+
+"If he did, it's God's justice!" said Joe piously.
+
+Ralph smiled peculiarly.
+
+"What funny business has he been up to around your camp?" asked Joe.
+
+"That's my affair," said Jim grimly.  "I will deal with him as I see
+fit."
+
+Joe looked at him with an ugly glitter, and decided to swallow the
+rebuke.  "Sure!" he said easily.  "He's got a pardner," he went on, "a
+good-looking Indian wench who calls herself Annie Crossfox.  Has she
+been around here?"
+
+Ralph roused himself sharply.  "Sholto, think how you answer!" he
+cried.  "You and I have our differences, but you're an honest man!
+You've got nothing to do with this vermin!  Look in their faces; it's
+written plain enough there.  They can't look in a man's eyes, the mean
+and cowardly----"
+
+Joe Mixer turned purple, and springing toward Ralph, struck him
+violently across the mouth with the back of his hand.  "Shut your
+head!" he cried with an oath.
+
+Ralph wiped the blood from his lips on his shoulder.  "Mean and
+cowardly blackguards without decency or manliness!" he cried defiantly.
+
+Joe made to strike him again, but big Jim held his arm.  "The man is
+bound," he said laconically.
+
+"Then let him keep a clean tongue in his head," muttered Joe, turning
+away.
+
+"For God's sake, think it over before you join in with them," Ralph
+begged of Jim.
+
+"I see no reason why I should not answer a civil question," said Jim
+judicially.  Jim thought he was being fair and disinterested, while he
+was being swayed by his feelings no less than an angry woman.  "If the
+girl is straight she has nothing to fear from anybody.  She was here
+this morning."
+
+"Aha!" cried Joe delightedly.
+
+Ralph groaned.  "You'll be sorry for this!" he muttered.
+
+"Where does she hang out?" Joe asked eagerly.
+
+"I don't know," said Jim.  "She went down the river."
+
+"We'll get her!" cried Joe.
+
+"What do you want with her?" asked Jim curiously, "and him there?"
+
+Joe looked disconcerted.  His thick wits had no answer ready.
+
+Stack spoke up.  "Robbery," he said smoothly.  "They broke into Mr.
+Mixer's store.  There are no police in the country, so we have to bring
+them to justice ourselves."
+
+"It's a lie!" cried Ralph scornfully.  "That little lick-spittle
+confessed to me that he had trailed me all the way from the coast,
+because he thought I'd made a strike here in the country!"
+
+Stack's eyes bolted; his little body writhed, and a curious, painful
+smile distorted his ashen face.
+
+Jim shrugged and turned away.  "It's nothing to me," he said.  "Fight
+it out among yourselves."
+
+As soon as Jim was safely out of hearing, Joe turned to Ralph with an
+evil smile.  "Now I've got you where I want you!" he said triumphantly.
+He drew a significant line across his throat.  "I can string you up to
+the tree over your head if I want, and go scot free for it!  Setting a
+traveller's boat adrift is worse than murder up here!  And I got three
+witnesses to swear to it.  No jury in this country would convict.
+They'd thank me for strangling a coyote!"
+
+Ralph proudly held his tongue.
+
+His air of unconcern infuriated the ex-butcher.  "Damn you!  I'll lower
+your proud stomach!" he cried.  "I'll give the night to it!  I've been
+saving up for this!  Before morning you'll be crawling and whining for
+mercy!"
+
+A blow accompanied this.  Ralph instinctively jerked away his head, and
+it fell on his sore shoulder.  As a result of his exertions with the
+axe it was now puffed up, throbbing, and exquisitely painful.  When Joe
+Mixer's fist descended on it, Ralph caught his breath with the pain.
+
+Joe chuckled.  "So that's the sore place, eh?"
+
+He struck him again.  Ralph took it with set teeth.
+
+"Are you going to tell me where the girl is hidden, and the gold?"
+asked Joe.
+
+Ralph kept silent.
+
+"Answer me!" shouted Joe.
+
+"That's a fool's question," said Ralph.
+
+Joe dug his knuckles into Ralph's shoulder, and leaning the weight of
+his body on his arm, kneaded the throbbing place.  Ralph had never
+conceived of pain like this.  It turned him sick; cold perspiration
+sprang out all over him.  He felt consciousness beginning to slip.  He
+bit his lip to keep from betraying any sound.
+
+The other men began to remonstrate.  "You'll do for him," said Stack,
+"and we won't learn anything."
+
+Joe left off with a shrug.  "I have all night," he said,
+
+They set about getting their supper.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE SECRET ESCAPES
+
+It was only in Ralph's presence that Kitty's pride sufficed to bear her
+up.  When she and Jim returned to the shacks she collapsed again, and
+Jim had no difficulty in reasserting his parental authority.  When the
+sudden hue and cry was raised after Ralph, Jim ordered her to remain
+behind locked doors while he went to investigate.  She dared not
+disobey him.  She awaited his return in a state bordering on
+distraction; her quick imagination running ahead to picture horrors
+overtaking the man she loved.  On his coming in she read in his face
+that the worst had not happened--but less than the worst was bad enough.
+
+Little by little she wormed out of him all that he had learned.  Jim
+affected to make light of the matter, insisting that Ralph was getting
+no more than his due.  Kitty's truer instinct warned her that the young
+man was in the hands of deadly and unscrupulous enemies, who would stop
+at nothing, so they thought themselves safe.  Supper in the shack was a
+ghastly pretence for her.  Her hands shook so that she could scarcely
+lift the dishes.  Her distracted eyes saw nothing they were turned on,
+all her faculties being concentrated on listening for sounds from the
+point.  Jim, exasperated beyond bearing by the sight of her distress,
+lost his temper and stormed at her, with inconsistency worse than that
+he accused her of.
+
+Fortunately for her it was Jim's habit to turn in almost immediately
+after eating.  Not even the extraordinary sequence of events this day
+could keep him up an hour longer than his time.  He refused to return
+to the point, from a secret fear perhaps of learning something that
+would shake the philosophic stand he had taken.  He retired to his bunk
+in the kitchen, and Kitty locked herself in her own room.
+
+Here she was at least free to listen without being sworn at.  She flung
+herself across her bed with her head on the window-sill.  The night was
+absolutely still except for the tireless voice of the brook.  Its
+senseless chatter and brawl drove her wild.  She could hear nothing
+above it.  To be obliged to wait and listen, practically a prisoner,
+with only her imagination free to create the worst--real madness lay
+that way.  If they were going to carry him off bound and helpless, she
+knew she must follow or die.  She rose and listened at the door.  Jim
+was snoring like an exhaust pipe.  "He can sleep!" she thought, amazed.
+Catching up a shawl, she slipped out of the window the way Nahnya had
+gone.
+
+Her flying moccasined feet fell noiselessly on the earth.  She ran
+around the house, and down the trail toward the river.  It was not yet
+dark.  Fearful of being seen, she struck off the trail and ran doubled
+up under the willow branches like a partridge in cover.  Every few
+seconds she stopped short, holding her breath in the effort to hear.
+The turmoil of the brook still drowned all other sounds.  A suggestion
+of men's voices and coarse laughter only tantalized her ears.
+Yesterday if anybody had told Kitty she would be spying on a camp of
+rough men and listening to their talk she would have covered her head
+in shame.  She never thought of shame now.
+
+She came closer and closer by little runs until no more than twenty
+yards separated her from their camp.  She could see the light of their
+fire reflected on the high branches overhead.  Here she crouched down
+behind a thick screen of leaves, prepared to spend the night if need
+be.  For a while she could hear nothing.  She began to fear that they
+must have gone after all, taking him.  Suddenly a disembodied voice
+fell upon her ears.
+
+"He's come to," it said.  "Try him again."
+
+Kitty's heart stood still at the picture this called up.  There was a
+pause; then another voice said brutally:
+
+"Will you tell?"
+
+She had no clue to the scene of her previous knowledge, but her
+intuition told her what was taking place.  Another pause, and a soft,
+torn groan reached Kitty's ears.  She sprang up, electrified.  Gone
+were all maidenly modesties and shrinkings.  Fiery-eyed and
+self-forgetful as a mother-animal whose young are threatened, she
+crashed through the branches, and stood among the men, crying:
+
+"Let him alone, you cowards!"
+
+Joe Mixer, Stack, and Crusoe Campbell fell back, dumfoundered.  The
+half-breed, who slept by the fire, woke up, and partly raised himself,
+blinking at her stupidly.  Kitty saw only Ralph.  He hung limply on the
+rope that bound him to the tree.  His face was ghastly, his breath came
+in gasps; and the sweat of pain had left wet channels in front of his
+ears and down his neck.  Kitty flew to him with a moan of
+commiseration, and fumbled helplessly with the knots of the rope.
+
+The men recovered from their surprise.  Knowing that Jim had a
+daughter, it was not hard for them to explain Kitty's presence.  As men
+must needs do everywhere in the presence of a genuinely angry woman,
+they looked silly and sheepish.
+
+"Stand away from there, young lady!" growled Joe.
+
+"You unspeakable coward!" cried Kitty, in her hushed and thrilling
+voice.
+
+Joe flushed darkly.  "Go back to your father," he said.  "This is no
+place for you!"
+
+Kitty paid no further attention to him.
+
+"If he finds you here and cuts up rough, mind I warned you," blustered
+Joe.  "These men will bear me out."
+
+Neither the thought of her father's anger, nor anything else, could
+deter Kitty now.  She worked desperately at the knots.
+
+"Go back, Kitty," whispered Ralph between his pale lips.  "You can't do
+any good!"
+
+"Oh, my dear!" murmured Kitty on the passionately solicitous note of a
+mother to her hurt child.
+
+"Campbell, take her away from there!" ordered Joe.
+
+The long-haired nondescript grinning witlessly pinned Kitty's elbows to
+her sides from behind, and drew her away from the tree.  She was
+helpless.  Her eyes flashed.
+
+"I'm not afraid of you--any of you!" she cried.
+
+"You get this matter wrong, Miss," said Joe, with an offensive
+servility.  "This fellow did us an injury.  He is our rightful
+prisoner.  But I don't want to be hard on him.  I offered him his
+release on fair terms.  If he don't take 'em, 'tain't my fault, is it?"
+
+"Tell this man to take his hands off me, and I'll speak to you," said
+Kitty indignantly.
+
+At a nod from Joe, Crusoe released her.
+
+"What terms?" Kitty demanded to know.
+
+"You tell him he's foolish," said Joe fawningly.  "Maybe he'll listen
+to you.  You tell him to tell me what I want to know, and I'll trouble
+him no further."
+
+"What do you want to know?"
+
+"Only where the girl Annie Crossfox lives."
+
+The suddenness and completeness of the surprise almost undid Kitty.
+She swayed a little as under a physical blow.  Her cheeks blanched.
+"Annie Crossfox?" she murmured.
+
+"I have business with her," Joe went on.  "I can find her anyway, but
+I'm in a hurry.  Let him tell me, and I'll set him loose."
+
+Kitty was torn into shreds by her conflicting emotions.  It nearly
+killed her to see Ralph suffering so--and it turned her into ice to
+think that it was for Nahnya's sake he was bearing it.  She was
+terrified, too, knowing that the secret was in her own keeping.
+Strange and dreadful consequences must depend upon it for Ralph to be
+willing to stake his life.  Kitty saw plainly enough that they would
+kill him before he told.
+
+Little Stack was watching Kitty with ferret-like sharpness.  Suddenly
+he cried out: "She knows herself!"
+
+Kitty felt as if a net had suddenly been cast over her head, entangling
+her inextricably.
+
+Stack sprang up, and looking from Ralph to Kitty with a timorous,
+malignant smile, whispered in Joe's ear.  Joe nodded in high
+satisfaction.
+
+"So you know where he got his gold, and where the girl is hidden?" said
+Joe, leering at Kitty.
+
+"No!  No!" she protested desperately.  "I know nothing!"
+
+Her terror-stricken face betrayed her.  Joe merely laughed.  "Very
+good," he said, "you can make him tell us then, or tell us yourself."
+
+Kitty's first impulse was to fly.  She saw, however, that they meant to
+work on her through Ralph, and then nothing could have dragged her from
+the spot.  Ralph's right arm had been freed, and it hung down outside
+the ropes that bound him.  Joe grasped the helpless wrist.  Kitty saw a
+quiver pass through Ralph; saw him try to stiffen his fainting body;
+saw the muscles stand out on his jaw as he clenched his teeth.
+
+"Don't!  Don't!" she cried wildly.  "That's his hurt arm!"  Crusoe
+Campbell's great hand pressed her back from rushing to Ralph's aid.
+
+"I just give him a little osteopathy," said Joe grinning.
+
+Kitty had dressed that shoulder every day; a vivid picture of the
+angry, throbbing flesh was before her.  She had hardly dared touch it
+with her delicate fingers, and now she saw the butcher about to wreak
+his strength on it.  An agonizing pain struck through her own frame.
+She nearly swooned.
+
+Joe, watching Kitty with a sidelong smile, gave the arm a little twist.
+Kitty saw Ralph's eyes roll up with the pain.  He made no sound.
+
+"For a starter," said Joe.  "Better tell before he gets worse!"
+
+He lifted the arm again.
+
+"Stop!  Stop!" screamed Kitty.  "I'll tell!"  She sank to the ground
+and covered her face.
+
+Ralph, half stupefied with pain and nausea, looked at Kitty with a dull
+wonder.  He did not suspect that she knew the secret.
+
+"Will you promise to let him go if I tell you?" murmured Kitty.
+
+"I promise to let him go if you tell the truth," said Joe.
+
+On the ground, with her hands clenched in her lap and her head bowed,
+Kitty began her tale breathlessly, as if she dared not pause to think
+of what she was doing.  "About half a mile this side of the Grumbler
+rapids there is a stream comes in on the north side.  You will know it
+by a large, flat rock beside the river.  That is where you land.  You
+will find a trail up the mountain beside the stream.  You follow it
+until you come out of the forest at the foot of a big peak that sticks
+up like a thumb."
+
+The men hung breathlessly on her words.  The painstaking details
+carried conviction.  Little Stack wrote it down in a notebook.  With
+her first words a new horror was born in Ralph's face.  He forgot his
+weakness.
+
+"Near the place where you come out of the forest," Kitty went on, "the
+trail crosses a ravine.  You leave the trail at that place, and follow
+the bed of the ravine up to the left--just a little way.  There is a
+little bend in the ravine, and a drift-pile at the bend, and above the
+drift-pile three stunted trees are growing on a little ledge, and some
+bushes----"
+
+"Kitty! for God's sake!" murmured Ralph.
+
+She would not look at him.  She went on faster than before.  "Behind
+the bushes there is a hole in the rock, you let yourself down into the
+hole, and you come out into a cave.  Turn to the left in the cave, and
+walk a long way--half an hour's walk.  You carry a torch to show you
+the way.  You cross the hole where the water goes down.  Half a mile
+farther you come out on the other side of the mountain.  It is a
+beautiful valley.  There is no other way to get in.  That is the place!"
+
+Kitty came to a stop and looked around her a little wildly.  Joe Mixer,
+Philippe, and Crusoe, were all staring at her as if thunderstruck.
+From her their eyes turned on each other furtively.  The same thought
+was in the mind of each, and each wondered if the others knew.  Joe saw
+that it could not be kept a secret.
+
+"By Gad!  It's Bowl of the Mountains!" he cried.  "And it's ours!"
+
+"Maybe she's lying," said Stack.
+
+"Who told you this?" Joe demanded to know.
+
+Kitty nodded toward Ralph.  She had not dared to look at him yet.  "Now
+let him go!" she murmured.
+
+Joe Mixer's little eyes glittered strangely; he was touched with a kind
+of awe.  More than once he repeated "Bowl of the Mountains!" under his
+breath, as if he could not fully grasp the idea.  Stack's ferret-like
+glance darted from the face of one man to another, trying to read the
+secret they shared; he was tortured by his exclusion.  A strange sound
+of laughter broke from Ralph's lips, and all the men looked at him.  At
+the call of his desperate need, he had partly overcome his weakness.
+He was playing his last card.
+
+"You're easily taken in," he said scornfully.  "It's likely I'd tell
+her!"
+
+Kitty timidly raised her eyes to Ralph's.  The scorn that blazed on her
+shrivelled up her very soul.  She wondered how she could go on living
+after it.
+
+"How do I know you ain't lying?" Joe asked her.  "How did he come to
+tell you about the other woman?"
+
+"I'll say no more," murmured Kitty.
+
+Joe made a move toward Ralph's arm, and she sprang to her knees with a
+cry.  "I'll tell you!  It is true!  I swear it!  He was out of his head
+when he came--for two days.  He told me in his fever.  Over and over,
+he told me.  I wrote it down.  I thought it was just fancies until
+Annie came to-day, and then I knew it was true.  Now let him go!"
+
+Hope died within Ralph's breast.  His head fell forward.  "Nahnya
+foresaw this," he thought.  "She is always right.  I have ruined
+everything.  What is there left for me?"
+
+Joe looked at Stack.  It was clear that he had come to lean on the
+little man's evil perspicacity.
+
+"It's true all right," said Stack.  "He'd have kept his mouth shut if
+it was a lie."
+
+"Now let him go," said Kitty again.
+
+"Hold your horses," said Joe; "I didn't say----"
+
+"You promised!" cried Kitty wildly.
+
+"I'll keep to my promise," said Joe--"in my own time.  I'd be a fool to
+let him loose now to make trouble for us.  We're going to push off at
+dawn.  I'll leave him tied to the tree, and as soon as we're gone you
+can come and cut him loose!"
+
+"He'll pot us from the shore!" Stack piped up excitedly.
+
+"He'll not raise a gun with that arm inside a month," said Joe,
+grinning.  "Run back to your bed," he said to Kitty.
+
+"I'll wait here until you go," she said.
+
+"No, you don't!" said Joe.  "And have your father down on us like a mad
+moose directly!  You run along, or I'll go up to the shack myself, and
+fetch him back to bring you."
+
+The threat was effective.  Kitty turned abruptly, and ran back over the
+trail.
+
+She ran until she was sure her footfalls had passed out of earshot.
+Then she stopped, and listened to make sure she was not followed.
+Satisfied of this, she crept into the underbrush, and began to make her
+way back, feeling her way with infinite patience over treacherous twigs
+and dry leaves, doubling and circling to find a way through the thickly
+springing stems, drawing her skirts close around her, and insinuating
+her body softly through the clustering leaves.  Kitty had never hunted
+nor practised woodcraft; it was pure instinct that enabled her to make
+her way through the undergrowth as noiselessly as a lynx.  These soft
+natures have a boldness of their own.  She proceeded until through the
+interstices of the leaves, she could watch every move of the four men
+around their fire, and watch Ralph that they did him no further injury.
+
+The half-breed had already laid himself down to sleep again.  After the
+manner of his race, he held himself aloof, affecting a stolid unconcern
+with white men's matters.  The three white men talked together
+low-voiced.  It was as if the very magnitude of their good fortune had
+sobered them.  Joe Mixer clapped his thigh and cried softly:
+
+"Bowl of the Mountains!  We're made for life!  Millionaires, big-bugs,
+second to none!  This means living like a lord, the real thing; steam
+yachts, private cars, horses, automobiles, jewelled women!  And eating
+and drinking of the best as much as a man can hold--if it's handled
+right!"  He licked his lips greedily, and shot a contemptuous and
+furtive glance at his two companions, the one weak-minded, the other a
+physical weakling.  The look boded them no good.
+
+Even in the prospect of such riches men must sleep, and one by one they
+wrapped themselves in their blankets, and lay down.  In time they lay
+all four in a row, feet to the fire, looking in their wrappings like
+four corpses ready for burial in the sea.
+
+Kitty drew even closer, the better to see how it was with Ralph.  He
+hung for support on the ropes that bound him, his head fallen forward
+on his breast.  A fresh terror attacked her at the sight of his
+limpness; she crept toward him until she could see his eyes wink in the
+firelight, and knew that he was at least conscious.  Her heart was
+wrung by the sight.  In reality Ralph had passed the extremity of pain,
+both physical and mental, and was sunk in a kind of lethargy.  The
+effect of what had happened was to fill him with the same hopeless
+fatalism that Nahnya had.  What would happen was bound to happen.  The
+powers were against them and it was useless to struggle.
+
+The brook made no noise where it emptied into the river; its distant
+brawling was reduced to a murmur here.  In the stillness of the forest
+the breathing of the four sleepers became audible to Kitty.  It gave
+her an idea that caused her heart to set up a beating like a frightened
+bird's.  She listened and found she could distinguish the sounds made
+by all four, the stertorous snoring of the full-blooded butcher, the
+quick, gasping breaths of the ferret-man, the wooden snores of the
+witling, even the deep, slow breathing of the half-breed youth, who did
+not snore.  It was unquestionable that they were all sleeping deeply.
+Kitty's tongue clave to her palate, and she nearly died with fright at
+what she was about to do, but she never hesitated.  With infinite
+caution she made her way around through the bush to Ralph's tree,
+approaching it from behind.  The beating of her heart was the most
+sound she made, and she could not control that.
+
+Arrived at the tree at last, she crouched behind it, not daring to
+speak to him.  Rising to her feet at last, she softly touched his
+elbow.  Ralph started violently, but betrayed no sound.  Kitty attacked
+the knots with shaking fingers.  Ordinarily she could never have
+loosened them, but there was no question of failing now; it had to be
+done.  In the end it was done.  Ralph steadied himself against the
+tree, while she lowered the loosened coil to his feet.
+
+Ralph sank to his knees.  Instantly, aided by one hand, he started to
+drag himself toward the edge of the bank.  The other hand trailed
+helplessly.  Kitty tried to steer him in the other direction, but he
+shouldered her aside.  She was obliged to follow him.  Once Joe Mixer's
+snore broke off short; he muttered in his sleep and changed position.
+Kitty's heart turned over in her breast.  Somehow they got down the
+bank to the sand below.  Ralph made straight for his raft, which lay as
+he had left it, the paddle sticking between the logs.
+
+Kitty put her lips to his ear.  "What are you going to do?" she
+whispered, apprehending the worst.
+
+"Warn Nahnya," he returned.  "In two hours it will be light."
+
+"You can't!" she began, with rising excitement.  "You're not fit to----"
+
+Ralph clapped his good hand over her mouth.
+
+"How he hates me!" thought Kitty.  Realizing the hopelessness of trying
+to dissuade him, she helped push the raft off the sand.  Ralph climbed
+on board, and Kitty followed.
+
+"Go back!" he whispered sharply.
+
+For answer she took the paddle out of his hand and shoved the raft into
+deeper water.  "You can't travel alone," she whispered.  "You can't use
+the paddle.  You'd only be carried down the rapids."
+
+He made no further objection.  Kitty propelled the raft into the main
+current, and laid the paddle down.
+
+Thereafter they travelled without speaking.  The raft was ceaselessly
+and slowly swung around and back in the eddies.  The shadowy mountain
+masses crouched and looked dumbly up at the stars like gross, earthy
+creatures under the spell of fairy wands.  There was no air stirring,
+and the river was like oil stirred with a spoon.  Occasionally the
+eddies burst beside them with a soft gush, immediately to reform again.
+
+Though there was but an arm's length between them, the two on the raft
+were separated by a wall more impenetrable than stones and mortar.  On
+one side of it sat the youth with his hooded despair; on the other side
+the girl nursed her unrequited love, and her torturing jealousy.  Her
+quick mind ran ahead to picture the meeting with the other woman that
+she must witness.  She knew that Nahnya loved Ralph, however she might
+repulse him.  It was she, Kitty, who was the scorned outsider.  Yet of
+the two the youth was the worse off, for under cover of the darkness
+she might weep and ease her heart.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE RETURN TO THE VALLEY
+
+The Indians of the valley were engaged at their morning tasks in front
+of the tepees, the women making and mending clothes, and St. Jean
+Bateese showing the boys how to wind the grip of a bow, when without
+warning the haggard white man and white woman rose over the edge of the
+green slope.  The Indians dropped their work, and broke into loud
+exclamations, which brought Nahnya quickly out of one of the tepees.
+She silenced them peremptorily.  Nahnya herself betrayed nothing.  She
+approached Ralph and Kitty with a hard and accusing face, and waited
+for their explanation.
+
+Despair made Ralph as callous-seeming and as laconic as Nahnya herself.
+"The white men know about this place," he said abruptly.  "Joe Mixer
+and his party.  They are on their way here.  I came to warn you."
+
+Nahnya's mask was unbroken.  "How many?" she asked.
+
+"Three white men and a native."
+
+"Who told them?" she asked accusingly.
+
+Ralph looked away.
+
+"It was I told them," cried Kitty quickly and tremulously.  She felt as
+if she were being ground to pieces between this stony pair.  "They
+tortured him to get it out of him!  Look at him!  He can scarcely
+stand.  You would have told them yourself."
+
+"He tell you?" asked Nahnya remorselessly.
+
+Kitty's voice began to escape from her control.  "He was out of his
+head!" she said.  "It was when he first came.  I told you that.  He
+told me in his fever.  He didn't know what he was saying!"
+
+Ralph turned on Kitty.  "I didn't bring you here to defend me!" he said
+harshly.
+
+This was the last straw.  Kitty turned from them and wept bitterly.
+Neither Nahnya nor Ralph regarded her.
+
+Nahnya said dully: "What matter who tell?  It come anyway.  Always I
+know that."
+
+There was a silence broken only by Kitty, struggling to master her
+sobs.  Nahnya studied the ground with a line between her brows, and
+Ralph looked at Nahnya.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he asked finally.
+
+Nahnya flung up her head.  "Fight!" she said.
+
+Ralph's dull eyes brightened.  "We pulled the bridge over to this side
+of the hole after we crossed it," he said eagerly.
+
+She nodded brief approval.  "It take them time to bring logs to make
+another.  I will think all to do.  You take some rest."
+
+Nahnya issued her orders, and Ahahweh took Kitty in charge.  St. Jean
+Bateese led Ralph to his tepee, and Marya came and dressed his
+shoulder, and made a sling for his arm.  They left him to sleep, but
+Ralph lay watching through the tepee opening, and when he saw Nahnya
+start off in the direction of the cave with a rifle under her arm, he
+followed.
+
+Nahnya ordered him to return.  "They not come long time yet, maybe not
+till to-morrow.  Anyway, you can't fire a gun.  Get your sleep!"
+
+"There's no use talking about it," Ralph said stubbornly.
+
+Nahnya shrugged and went on.  Kitty was likewise on the watch.  She
+followed a little way after Ralph.  Nahnya frowned, but said nothing.
+
+Nahnya took up her post on the rocks above the entrance to the cave.
+She told Ralph coldly that she had decided to make her stand here.  He
+approved it; her enemies must issue one by one into the daylight below.
+She had armed St. Jean Bateese and Charley with rifles, she said, and
+the two boys had their bows and arrows.  They were all coming directly
+with blankets, food, and ammunition sufficient for a siege if required.
+
+[Illustration: "_She had raised and pointed the gun, but held her
+fire_"]
+
+They prepared for a long wait.  Ralph sat down in the grass a little
+removed from Nahnya, and bowed his head on his knees.  By and by he
+fell over like an inanimate object and slept as he lay.  Farther away
+sat Kitty, like an humble dependent.  She nursed her knees and stared
+over the valley with tear-stained, lack-lustre eyes.
+
+Ralph was awakened by a sharp exclamation from Nahnya.  She had raised
+and pointed the gun, but held her fire.  Kitty knelt in the grass with
+her hands pressed over her ears, terrified in prospect by the expected
+shot.  Ralph ran to the edge of the rocks and looked over.  Philippe
+Boisvert had just issued out of the cave.  He held his empty hands over
+his head, and came climbing up the rocks in that attitude.
+
+Arrived within a dozen yards, the half-breed began to speak eagerly in
+Cree.  His eyes burned on Nahnya strangely.  At the sound of his voice
+surprise broke through the mask of her face.
+
+"Philippe!" she murmured.
+
+A flame of jealousy made Ralph's cold breast alive again.  He had
+thought he was past all feeling.  "What is he saying?" he demanded to
+know.
+
+Nahnya's eyes were troubled.  "I know him," she murmured.  "From a long
+time ago.  He is the boy I talk with at the Mission school."
+
+The half-breed continued his impassioned plea, and Nahnya was clearly
+not unmoved by it.  Philippe was a handsome young creature and the fire
+of his feelings was seemingly an honest fire.  Ralph ground his teeth.
+Kitty, creeping closer, and searching Ralph's face, betrayed a
+reflection of his jealousy in her own.
+
+Nahnya soon recovered from her surprise.  "Speak English," she
+commanded Philippe coldly.
+
+Ralph's heart was lightened.  The half-breed bent an offensive scowl on
+him, and his lips curved into a sneer.  Ralph's returning look was
+identical.  Philippe told his tale with a swagger.
+
+"Joe Mixer hire me at the portage to mak' a trip.  I don' know what
+for.  I don' care.  I go for fun, 'cause he got plenty w'iskey.  Bam-by
+he say he after Nahnya Crossfox.  I lak' to kill him then, but I say
+not'ing for 'cause I want to know where Nahnya Crossfox is.  Seven year
+I look for her.  She is promise to me!"
+
+"Promised!" cried Ralph, turning to Nahnya with stormy brows.
+
+"It was a child's promise," she said coolly.  "He soon forget it, and I
+soon forget it."
+
+Philippe launched into Cree again, protesting energetically.  Nahnya
+interrupted him in the same language.  Her eyes flashed; under the lash
+of her tongue the young man quailed.
+
+"Now speak English," she said imperiously.
+
+"I help Joe to chase the Doctor," Philippe went on sulkily, "because
+the Doctor know where Nahnya is.  Las' night I find out where she is
+and I am through with Joe, but I bring him down the river with me to
+sell him good.  I hate all white men.  When we come to the other side
+the mountain, I say to Joe, you wait here, and I go spy out the way.  I
+come back soon.  Joe say all right.  He think I am his friend.  He is a
+fat fool.  He want to kill us all to get the gold himself.  He think I
+not see it in his eye.  He is a fool!"
+
+"You say you fool him," said Nahnya.  "Maybe you fool me, too!"
+
+Philippe protested passionately in his native tongue.  More than once
+Ralph heard the word _moon-i-yas_, which he knew was Cree for white man.
+
+"How did you get across the hole?" asked Nahnya.
+
+"I leaped it," said Philippe with a swagger.
+
+"Are the others behind you?"
+
+"Could the fat man leap it?" said Philippe, "or the little scared one?
+or crazy Crusoe?"
+
+"No, but maybe you put the bridge back for them," said Nahnya.
+
+"Tie my hands!" cried Philippe passionately, "and if they come, kill
+me!"
+
+"Come here," said Nahnya coolly.  "Hold up your hands."
+
+The half-breed obeyed, his eyes fixed ardently on Nahnya.
+
+"See if he have a gun," Nahnya said to Ralph.
+
+Philippe scowled furiously at the indignity, but kept his hands up.
+Ralph quickly satisfied himself that the other was unarmed.
+
+"Good!" said Nahnya, with an inscrutable face.  She offered Philippe
+her hand.  "We will be friends.  Let us sit down and talk what to do."
+
+"Nahnya!" cried Ralph jealously.
+
+She bent the same towering look on him that had crushed the half-breed.
+"Must I ask you when I make a friend?" she said.
+
+Ralph, forced to remember that he had brought all this trouble upon
+her, hung his head.  They sat down to their council of war.  There
+could be no question of who was the leader.  The dark girl had the
+bearing of a queen who had risen above her human griefs and passions.
+
+"Where are they waiting?" she asked.
+
+"They camp at the edge of the big woods beside the gulch," said
+Philippe.  "Jim Sholto is with them."
+
+"So!" said Nahnya.
+
+Kitty, hearing her father's name, came closer.
+
+"Jim is crazy when he find his daughter go," Philippe continued.  "He
+come after us in the dugout, and catch the raft.  Jim say to me for say
+to him," pointing at Ralph, "if he bring Jim's daughter back safe
+before to-night, Jim not touch him.  Jim let him go in his boat if he
+want.  Joe Mixer say them two can go all right.  He don' care."
+
+Ralph expressed no great concern at this offer.  "We can send her out
+to her father," he said.  Nahnya said nothing.
+
+"Jim send a letter," continued Philippe.  He produced a twisted bit of
+cotton on which some words were scrawled, and handed it to Kitty.
+Reading it, she burst into tears again.
+
+"Let them two go," said Philippe, scowling at Ralph.  "I take them
+back."
+
+"Suppose I let them go," said Nahnya inscrutably.  "What we do after?"
+
+Philippe's eyes flashed, and his white teeth were bared.  He hissed a
+single sentence in Cree.
+
+"You say you kill Joe Mixer and his men?" said Nahnya coolly.
+
+Philippe, with a startled side-look at Ralph, remonstrated with her
+anxiously.
+
+"I tell you speak English," said Nahnya calmly.  "He is my friend as
+much as you."
+
+Ralph's sore and humbled heart took what comfort it might from this.
+
+"Well, it's easy," said Philippe, with a shrug of bravado.  "One is
+fat, and one is scare', and one is crazy.  There was no man in our boat
+but me!"
+
+"Suppose you kill them," said Nahnya, "what we do after?"
+
+He answered in Cree.
+
+"You will stay here with me after?" she repeated.
+
+Ralph's face flushed.  "Nahnya----" he began hotly.
+
+She ignored him.  "There is no place here for you," she said to
+Philippe, cold and accusatory as a high priestess.  "You are half
+white; you are bad like a white man and a red man together!  I hear
+them talk of you around the country.  You make yourself crazy with
+whiskey, and fight for nothing at all.  Because you are strong you do
+what you like!  You make trouble always where you go!  You say you hate
+white men, but you can't stay away from them, because they have
+whiskey!  You are not white, you are not red, you are nothing!  There
+is no place for you here!"
+
+All this was balm to Ralph's jealousy.  He looked on the ground to keep
+from showing any triumph over the discomfited young bravo.
+
+After debating with herself, Nahnya said to Philippe, pointing down the
+slope: "You go down there."  To Ralph: "You wait here.  I go by myself,
+and think what to do."
+
+While Ralph and the half-breed glowered at each other from twenty paces
+distance, and the heavy-eyed dispirited Kitty crouched at Ralph's elbow
+disregarded by all, Nahnya went away and sat on the edge of the rocks,
+doubling her back, and digging her knuckles into her cheeks, while she
+struggled with her problem.
+
+St. Jean Bateese, Charley Crossfox, Ahmek, and Myengeen approached over
+the meadow laden with the weapons, food, and blankets that Nahnya had
+ordered them to bring.  Arriving at the foot of the slope, where the
+stream entered its rocky gulch, they cast down their packs, and with a
+glance at the sun, instinctively set about building a fire and
+preparing a meal.  They looked with curious side-glances at the new
+stranger who had found his way into their domain.
+
+After a long time Nahnya arose.  Ralph read in her face that her mind
+was made up.  He hastened to meet her, and Philippe likewise came
+bounding up the slope.  However, Nahnya was not yet ready to divulge
+her plans.  All she said was:
+
+"Let us eat."
+
+Her look was unfathomable.  They were obliged to contain their
+impatience as best they could.
+
+All sat in the grass at the foot of the hill.  It was a strangely
+assorted company: Kitty, Ralph, Nahnya, and Philippe sat on one side of
+the fire, with the four Indians facing them from the other.  Nahnya's
+face was smooth and composed, Philippe looked sullen, Ralph reckless
+and despairing, while Kitty's lips trembled, and her eyes continually
+filled.  The Indian lads stared at the strangers with beady black eyes
+expressing a mixture of animal curiosity and human unconcern.  No one
+of the company had any disposition to talk except St. Jean Bateese,
+who, with his native politeness, felt that it was incumbent upon him to
+tide the meal over pleasantly.
+
+He meandered on in his soft and deprecating voice, illustrating his
+simple remarks with quaint gesticulation.  It disturbed him not at all
+when no one listened.  "There is a yellow ring around the sun to-day.
+To-morrow will be much rain at night.  It is good.  The berries will
+ripen good.  This is a year of plenty for the people.  When come the
+leaves fall the bear-folk will be fat and tender of the berries, with
+much thick, warm coats, I think.  The bear he is lak a man, him lak to
+mak' fun when him feel good.  One tam I see a bear play beside a
+stream.  He is alone.  He think nobody see him.  He feel ver' good.  He
+run and dance and fall down, and laugh, and turn over his head because
+he feel so good.  I laugh me, till my ribs are sore!"
+
+When Nahnya arose from the grass they all followed suit.  Without any
+preamble she said quietly: "Now I will tell you what I have thought."
+
+All hung on her words except the two younger boys, who knew no English.
+
+She darted an inexplicable look on Ralph, and said, with odd
+abruptness: "Ralph and Kitty will go out to Jim Sholto."
+
+Ralph flushed painfully.  "I will not go!" he cried.  "Send her!  I
+know I've no right to dictate to you; I brought all this on you!  But
+that gives me a right to stay here and help you out of it as much as I
+can!  Afterward I'll not trouble you.  You needn't fear that.  I'll go!"
+
+Nahnya lowered her head.  "I sorry," she murmured.  "You mus' go!"
+
+Ralph argued desperately against his own convictions.  He had had such
+proof of Nahnya's foresightedness that he could not but believe she was
+right now as she had been before.  "I know I can't hold a gun," he
+cried, "but I can advise you!  There are other things.  If there is any
+risk to be taken it is my right!  My life is worth nothing to me!"
+
+Nahnya turned from him sharply.  She issued a quick order in Cree, and
+Ralph was seized by the three Indian youths and Philippe.  He was
+helpless in their hands.  At the sight of his pain-distorted face Kitty
+screamed.  Nahnya spoke peremptorily, and thereafter they handled him
+more gently.  Nahnya herself kept her back turned to him.  They wound a
+rope loosely about Ralph's body, pinning both his arms.  Ralph drained
+the dregs of his bitter cup.  He did not speak again.
+
+"You take them out to Jim Sholto," Nahnya said in English to Philippe.
+"You tell Jim Sholto not to let him loose till he tak' him away from
+here, so he not make trouble."
+
+After a pause she went on.  "After, you go to Joe Mixer.  You tell him
+it is too late to come in to-night.  Tell him come to-morrow.  Tell him
+Annie Crossfox will not fight."
+
+Philippe started to protest.
+
+"It is my plan," said Nahnya coolly.  "I tell you all when it is time.
+You mus' stay in Joe Mixer's camp to-night.  Soon as light comes you
+mus' get up.  You mus' leave their camp without wake them up.  You mus'
+go up the gulch past the hole in the rock and around the bend.  I wait
+for you there.
+
+"Start now!" she went on.  "Take a blanket and plenty ammunition and
+dry moose meat.  Cache it by the hole in the rock when you go out.
+Bring it in the morning.  You are going on a long trip."
+
+Philippe muttered sullenly in Cree.
+
+"I tell you in the morning," said Nahnya coolly.  "You don' have to go
+unless you want."
+
+Philippe shrugged.  He turned to make ready.  "I have a blanket at Joe
+Mixer's camp," he said.
+
+"Take mine," said Nahnya.  "Leave your blanket lie there when you get
+up, so they not know right away that you gone away."
+
+The preparations were quickly made.  Nahnya sent one of the boys back
+to the stream for a handful of gold dust, that Philippe might have
+something to show for his journey.  All this while Ralph stood still
+and silent, looking straight before him.  There was something proud in
+his abasement.  His face was composed except for the eyes which glowed
+with a kind of exaltation of pain.  He was thinking with a sombre
+satisfaction of the bottomless black hole that sucked in the stream
+entire.  "A step off the bridge ends it!" he said to himself, and was
+impatient to get there.
+
+As they turned to start down beside the stream, Nahnya, alarmed by
+Ralph's silence, stole a look into his face.  To her foreseeing eyes
+his intention was written there as clearly as if he had proclaimed it.
+She became deathly pale.
+
+"Wait!" she said faintly.  "I--I will go with you through the cave.
+Wait for me inside."  To Ralph, she said, without looking at him: "I
+want speak with you."
+
+A spasm of reawakened hope, doubt, pain convulsed his face.  It was the
+pain that a man peacefully dead of asphyxiation feels when the reviving
+oxygen is forced into his lungs, dragging him back over the border.
+Nevertheless, Nahnya saw that he had given up his grim intention.
+
+Philippe, Ralph, and Kitty disappeared inside the cave.  Nahnya drew
+St. Jean Bateese a little way up the slope apart from the boys, and
+made him sit beside her at the edge of the rocks.  "St. Jean," she said
+quietly, "I go away now.  I not come back."
+
+The old man turned horrified eyes on her.  He began to protest
+breathlessly.  As he looked in her quiet, resolute face the uselessness
+of it was borne on him, and his quavering voice died away.
+
+"It is the best to do," Nahnya went on.  "I think it all out.  I am
+half white.  I not belong here.  In this place we want begin a new red
+race, strong and free.  I am half white.  Look what trouble and danger
+I bring on you.  I will go away.  All shall go on as we plan."
+
+"The white men will break in to-morrow!" wailed St. Jean.
+
+"The white men will never come in--this way," said Nahnya from between
+firm lips.  "I will fix that."
+
+The tears coursed down St. Jean's withered cheeks; he stroked Nahnya's
+hand imploringly.  "I am old!" he whimpered.
+
+"You are wise!" said Nahnya.  "Add your wisdom to Charley's strength,
+and make him a man.  He will be the head man when you are gone.  Make
+him know all the tales of our people, and all that they knew how to do,
+so nothing is forgotten.  Nobody mus' know but you that I not come
+back.  Let them look for me while the summer passes.  By and by you can
+say you have a feeling I am dead.  The young ones will forget!"
+
+The old man moaned, and letting his head fall on his breast, wound his
+gnarled fingers in his sparse locks.
+
+"The boys will see you," Nahnya said sharply.  "It is from you they
+learn how to bear pain!"
+
+After a brief struggle with himself he lifted his head.  The tears had
+ceased to flow, and the seamed face was composed into the ancient stoic
+mask of the race; the old hands still trembled piteously, and groped
+for Nahnya's hand.
+
+"So much we talk together," she went on, "you know all that is in my
+mind.  When the spring come again, and the sap run in the trees, it is
+time for the children to marry.  You shall marry them with a cross.  My
+mot'er mus' teach Ahahweh all there is to do when the time come for the
+girls to bear children.
+
+"No man will ever come in or go out this way," Nahnya continued.  "If
+ever there is a famine, or you have great need to go out, there is
+another way.  Go across the divide into the valley to the north, and at
+the top of that valley is a little stream going out between the
+mountains.  After many days' hard travel it will bring you to the
+Stanley River.  You mus' not tell Charley of this way until he is wise,
+or until you feel yourself about to die.  The knowledge of this way
+mus' be kept.  Many years from now more wives will be needed for the
+young men.  The children of brothers and sisters must not marry.  Their
+children will not be strong."
+
+"All shall be done as you say," murmured St. Jean Bateese.
+
+Nahnya dropped her hand over his.  Giving it a quick pressure, she
+sprang up, and climbed the hill until she was high enough to overlook
+the trees.  Here she turned.  There was no mask on her face now.  Her
+eyes brooded with an infinite wistful yearning over the lovely
+panorama--the lake shimmering like a peacock's breast; the verdant,
+white-stemmed shores; the kingly mountains basking smokily under the
+westering sun.  To the left were the tiny tepees with their delicate
+smoke spirals, and a suggestion of women's figures moving in front.
+Nahnya turned with agitated hands, and, scrambling down over the rocks,
+disappeared within the cave.
+
+The old man sat where she had left him, staring on the ground, a
+trembling hand outspread on either knee.
+
+Nahnya saw the yellow eye of Philippe's torch gleaming far within the
+cavern, and she did not pause to light one for herself.  She came upon
+the three waiting beside the hole that swallowed the stream.  Philippe
+sat on a jutting rock, smoking quietly; Kitty was huddled on the sandy
+floor, and Ralph was moving restlessly up and down.
+
+Hearing her coming, he sprang toward her, bound as he was, softly
+crying her name with a passionate relief and gladness in his voice.
+This was what Kitty had to listen to.  Even in the uncertain light of
+the torch Nahnya saw the yearning and the pain in his eyes.  Kitty had
+to see it, too.  Nahnya could not support the look.
+
+"Let us get on!" she said quickly.
+
+Philippe had already replaced the frail bridge over the hole.  He
+crossed first, followed by Kitty; then Ralph, with Nahnya watching him
+close.  At the other side Nahnya, stooping, affected to busy herself
+with the lacing of her moccasin.  Philippe and Kitty passed ahead a
+little; Ralph stuck close to Nahnya.  As the light went on he could not
+see what she was doing, but he heard the scrape of the logs as she
+pulled the little bridge toward her, and heard the structure knock
+against the rocky walls as it went down.
+
+"Nahnya!" he cried, amazed.  "Aren't you going back?"
+
+"No," she murmured.
+
+Kitty's voice came back sharp and peremptory: "Ralph!"
+
+"I tell you soon," Nahnya said swiftly.  She hastened to catch up with
+the others.
+
+Arriving at length at the cleft whence a little gray daylight filtered
+into the cave, Philippe quenched the torch in the loose sand of the
+floor.  They started through the narrow place in the same
+order--Philippe, then Kitty.  As Ralph was about to follow Nahnya laid
+a hand on his arm.
+
+"I stay here," she murmured.
+
+He flung about.  "Nahnya!  Is this--the end?" he faltered.
+
+"Listen!" she whispered swiftly.  "When Jim Sholto get his daughter
+back, he not want stay in Joe Mixer's camp no more.  He make a new
+camp, I think.  Maybe he go down by the river.  But it is too late to
+start on the river to-night.  He mus' camp.  When they are asleep, you
+lie down a little way from them.  Lie in the trail where I can find you
+easy----"
+
+"Nahnya!"
+
+"I will come, to-night," she whispered.  "Now, go; go quickly!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+RENUNCIATION
+
+Ralph followed Philippe and Kitty through the narrow cleft in the rock,
+and the three of them stood huddled together at the bottom of the hole.
+The opening was like an eye looking down on them.  Philippe sent Kitty
+aloft by means of the pine trunk.  Looking at Ralph, he scratched his
+head in perplexity.  How to get him out with his arms bound was the
+question.
+
+"Untie me," said Ralph mildly.  "I'll let you tie me again."
+
+This sudden tractibility aroused Philippe's suspicions.  He debated the
+matter scowlingly.  However, Ralph, deprived of the use of his right
+arm, was not a formidable antagonist, and the half-breed decided to
+chance it.  As Ralph climbed, he followed close at his heels, and
+quickly secured him again at the top.
+
+They made their way down the bed of the ravine.  No more than Philippe
+could Kitty understand the new light in Ralph's eyes.  She glanced at
+him covertly, wondering with a fresh pang of jealousy what had taken
+place behind her back.  Ralph was walking on air.  He had suffered so
+much that he snatched at the prospect of happiness, however fleeting.
+Both the immediate danger and the hopeless future were put out of his
+mind; it was enough for him that Nahnya had promised to come to him;
+she was one to keep her word!
+
+Jim Sholto saw them coming, and ran down the bank to embrace his
+daughter.  Kitty's answering welcome was not overwarm; she was too
+bitterly concerned with another matter.  Jim, hurt by her coldness and
+ascribing it to its cause, turned angrily on Ralph.
+
+"You young blackguard!" he cried.  "You'll stoop to use a helpless girl
+to further your evil ends, will you?"
+
+Poor Kitty, all day the helpless plaything of circumstances, asserted
+herself at last.  She forced herself between the two men.  "If you
+abuse him any more I shall hate you!" she cried to her father, with an
+outbreak of passion that surprised herself.  "It was not his fault at
+all!  I set him loose of my own free will, out of common humanity,
+which you lacked!  He sent me back, but I would not let him go alone in
+such a state!  I keep telling you it's Annie Crossfox he's in love
+with.  He has made no pretences to me!"
+
+"Where's your pride, lass?" cried Jim.
+
+"It's you who won't let me have any pride!" she flashed back at him.
+"Never speak of this again!"
+
+He took her arm.  "Come away!" he said grimly.
+
+At the top of the bank they met Joe Mixer.  "You've got him!" he cried
+gleefully to Philippe.  To Ralph: "You ----!  How do you feel about it
+now?"
+
+Kitty, apprehending blows to follow, wrenched her arm out of her
+father's grasp, and turned on Joe.  The flames still burned high in her
+cheeks.  "Let him alone!" she cried.  "He's not your prisoner!"  To her
+father she said passionately: "He was sent out in your care!  If you
+don't take him and keep him from this cowardly bully, you won't take
+me!"
+
+All men dread a roused woman.  "Softly with your epithets, girl!" said
+Jim scowling.  To Philippe he said sullenly: "Give him over to me."
+
+Philippe yielded his prisoner, nothing loath.  Joe Mixer, keen to learn
+what the half-breed had discovered, did not care what became of Ralph.
+Stack and Crusoe had joined the group, and the three of them volleyed
+questions at Philippe.  Jim Sholto lingered to listen; he was a
+gold-hunter, too.  Ralph, forgotten for the moment by all the men, sat
+down beside the trail and hugged his dream, deaf and blind to what was
+going on around him.  Kitty watched him sorely.
+
+"It was just like she told," Philippe said; "a long walk through the
+cave, and a pretty valley on the other side.  There is no other way to
+get in.  It is Bowl of the Mountains, all right."
+
+"Did you see any gold?" demanded Joe.
+
+"Plenty," said Philippe.  "The bottom of all the little streams are
+yellow with it.  I pick up a little.  See!"
+
+Digging his hand into his pocket, he brought it forth full of yellow
+grains, which he emptied carelessly into Joe's twitching palm.  The
+heads of the four white men came together, and the four pairs of eyes
+showed the same insane glitter.
+
+"This is the stuff!" cried Joe, pouring the grains with a voluptuous
+pleasure from palm to palm.  "Sweeter than booze! sweeter than women!
+It'll buy you plenty of both!  Gad!  I'll keep a great chest of it
+always by me, and come dig in it every day for the pleasure of the feel
+and the heft of it!"
+
+"Can we get it out through the cave?" asked Jim.
+
+"Sure!" said Philippe.  "It's easy going."
+
+"How about the girl?" demanded Joe.
+
+"She is there with her family."
+
+"How many?"
+
+"An old man, a young man, two boys, and four women."
+
+"H'm!  They could make it awkward for us," said Joe frowning.
+
+"They not care for gold," said Philippe, with an innocent, stolid air.
+"Wash a little, and let it lie.  When I tell Nahnya you all here, him
+feel bad.  Him say no use.  Him say not fight you."
+
+"Come on, then!" cried Joe excitedly.  "Let's lose no time!"
+
+"Come on!" echoed Stack and Crusoe Campbell.  The desire was no less
+strong in Jim Sholto's face.  He looked at Kitty uneasily.
+
+Philippe hung back.  "I paddle half the night!" he said, with an
+admirable assumption of the disgruntled servant.  "I walk all day.  Am
+I a steam-engine?  I got eat and sleep now."
+
+"Sleep?" cried Joe.  "Man, there's a fortune waiting for every one of
+us in there!"
+
+"I got sleep, me," Philippe repeated stubbornly.  "The gold is there
+to-morrow just the same, I guess."
+
+"Damn these redskins!" cried Joe.  "They're all alike!"
+
+"Go yourself," said Philippe.  "The way is free.  Don' blame me if you
+fall in the hole, or get lost."
+
+A heated argument resulted.  Philippe was inexorable.  He knew well
+enough that the white men would not venture into the bowels of the
+earth without him.  Philippe finally picked up his blanket, and
+carrying it apart lay down and affected to go to sleep.  The others
+were obliged to resign themselves to wait.
+
+Meanwhile Jim Sholto was in a quandary.  He could not bear to have
+Kitty camping with that rough crew, and he was jealous of leaving her a
+moment alone with Ralph, yet he could not tear himself away from the
+vicinity with such riches waiting to be gathered.  He could not but
+compare the ease of washing gold in a stream with the strenuous labour
+of smelting ore in little home-made furnaces.
+
+He compromised with himself by establishing his camp a few hundred
+yards away from Joe's.  It was the spot where the operation had been
+performed on old Marya's arm.  Ralph was secretly gladdened by the
+choice of the spot.  It was not far for Nahnya to come.  During the
+rest of the afternoon Ralph and Kitty slept.  Jim occupied himself in
+building a shelter of branches to house Kitty throughout the night.
+
+There was not much conversation around this campfire.  It irked Ralph
+to be obliged to accept Jim's grim hospitality, but there was no help
+for it.  Immediately after supper Kitty disappeared within her shelter,
+and Jim soon lay down in his blanket athwart the entrance.  He made no
+objection to Ralph's dragging his bed to a little distance.  If Ralph
+had escaped altogether, Jim would have been only too well pleased.
+
+When Jim's snores began to displace the heavy stillness of the forest,
+Ralph rose and dragged his blankets still farther away.  Jim had tied
+him in such a manner that his left arm was free from the elbow.  He
+arranged his bed after a fashion directly in the trail, and lay down to
+wait.  It was about nine o'clock.  It would not be dark until after
+ten.  He knew that Nahnya could not venture out of the cave until then,
+and that he must give her time to make a detour of the other camp.
+
+He lay in a kind of fever watching for evidences of darkness with avid
+eyes.  One cannot measure the subtle stages of the passing of day any
+better than its coming.  It goes and it comes and all is said.  Thus to
+Ralph counting the crawling minutes it seemed as if the bright sky
+clung obstinately to its brightness, and as if the dim spacious aisles
+of the forest refused to grow dimmer.  Losing patience at last, he
+closed his eyes and tossed restlessly.  When he opened them again,
+behold! it was nearly dark.
+
+His heart began to beat, and his mouth went dry.  In every whisper of
+the leaves he thought he heard the brush of her skirt.  The tiny, furry
+footfalls that began to stir among the pine needles suggested her
+creeping moccasins, now on this side, now on that.  A dozen times he
+started to a sitting position, sure he heard her, only to fall back
+disappointed.  The thought that something might finally prevent her
+from coming turned him sick with apprehension.
+
+
+She came as softly as a breath through the forest, and dropped on her
+knees beside him, without his having heard her coming.  His eyes were
+well-used to the darkness, and he could make her out faintly; her
+graceful head outlined against a patch of sky overhead; her two hands
+pressed hard to her breast in a way that he knew.  He heard, or fancied
+he heard, her heart's quick beating.  A great peace succeeded the
+torture of suspense.
+
+"You've come!" he breathed.
+
+"I am mad!  I am foolish!" she faltered.
+
+He apprehended that the slightest thing would send her flying back
+again.  By turning a little he managed to reach her hand and to pull it
+down to his lips.  Her fingers crept eagerly inside his, as she had
+never allowed them to do before.  She had confessed nothing with her
+voice yet, but her whole being breathed a passionate warmth over him
+that made him dizzy with happiness.
+
+"Nahnya, darling, untie my hands," he whispered.
+
+"No!" she said tremulously.
+
+He pleaded with her urgently.
+
+Her trembling hand stroked his cheek with a touch like flower petals.
+"Ah, do not make me fight you now," she begged.  "I so tire of fighting
+you, Ralph.  You know if I let you free, you not let me go back.  I
+must go back!  Do not make me sorry I come!"
+
+"This is harder to bear than Joe Mixer's tortures!" he bitterly
+complained.
+
+She tried to disengage the hand he clung to.  "If you say that, I must
+go now," she whispered sadly.
+
+It terrified him.  "No!  No!  Anything you want!" he said swiftly.
+
+"Let me stay quiet by you a little," she whispered.  "Let me love you
+quiet a little."
+
+"Tell me you love me, and I'm satisfied," he said.
+
+She sank down beside him and kissed him softly on the lips.  "I love
+you!  I love you!  I love you!" she murmured, with such passion as he
+had never dreamed of hearing on the lips of a woman.  "I love you the
+first time I see you!  Always it near kill me to make out I do not love
+you!  I love you till I die!"
+
+They were silent for a space, clinging to each other, cheek to cheek in
+the darkness, their breasts tossing on stormy sighs.
+
+He said brokenly at last: "Nahnya, this is the strongest thing in the
+world.  Nothing else matters.  You must not leave me!"
+
+She partly raised herself, and put a gentle hand over his mouth.  "In
+your heart you know I mus' go," she whispered.  "In your heart you know
+ver' well there mus' not be anything between you and me!  Do not spoil
+our little time together by speaking of it!"
+
+His head rolled impatiently on the ground.  "I cannot live without
+you," he muttered.  "I will not live without you!"
+
+She kissed him.  "Yes, you will," she said softly.  "You will promise
+me now to live the best life you can.  Because I am going to live, and
+always I want think of you living brave and happy and curing the sick!"
+
+"Happy!" he said bitterly.
+
+"It will come," she said, with quiet certainty.
+
+"Put your hand in my pocket," he said.  "There is something there for
+you."
+
+She found the necklace and kissed it.  "I will always wear it," she
+said.
+
+She lay down beside him again, on the edge of his blanket, but not
+touching him, except that she caught his free hand and pressed it hard
+to her cheek.  "Often I am think the same," she whispered.  "I think
+what is the use of living a life like mine!  But always something stop
+me from ending it.  Something make me to go on living, sad as life is.
+Death is for those who are shamed, I think.  I am not shamed.  You are
+not shamed."
+
+"You're braver than I," he murmured.
+
+"You're plenty brave," she whispered, kissing his hand.  "To-day I see
+you think you are shamed because you think you bring trouble on me.
+You think you will jus' step off the little bridge----"
+
+"How did you know that?" he cried, astonished.
+
+"I see it in your eyes," she said simply.  "I love you.  Often I know
+what you are thinking.  That is why I say I come to-night.  I want tell
+you I love you!  I want tell you I think you are strong and brave.  I
+glad you love me!  I glad you love me hard enough to come back when I
+tell you no.  I not sorry for anything.  It is not your fault that the
+other men come after you, or that you told the secret when you were
+sick.  That was going to happen.  Such things are not understood by us.
+You mus' not be shamed.  I not have you shamed, because you are my
+brave, good man!"
+
+"You're an angel of comfort," he murmured.  "I was ashamed!"
+
+"Promise me now that you will make the best life you can," she
+whispered.
+
+"I promise," he said.
+
+Her quiet voice broke.  "Oh, my darling love!" she cried.  "Always,
+always I will be thinking of you!  Wherever you are my spirit will go
+to you to love you and make you happy.  You are my husband and my baby,
+too!  Oh!  I cannot speak more!  How can I let you go!  How can I let
+you go!"
+
+She clung to him, her warm tears running down his face.  He could not
+speak.  He soothed her silently.  She fought down the sobs.  By and by
+she said quaintly:
+
+"That is over."
+
+When she got her breath back she partly raised herself, and said:
+"Another promise, Ralph."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Kitty."
+
+He moved restlessly.
+
+"Be good to her," she pleaded.  "She is jus' sweet!"
+
+"Impossible!" he said.  "She's too much mixed up in this.  I never want
+to see her again!"
+
+"By and by maybe you change," said Nahnya softly.  "If it was not for
+me you would marry Kitty.  She is the one for you."
+
+"Never!" cried Ralph.
+
+The soft hand was clapped over his mouth again.  "Do not swear it!" she
+said.  "Who can tell how you feel by and by?  Take what comes.  You
+will like her, I think.  Not like this----"  Her voice shook again.  "I
+not want it just like this.  But it will be good.  And if you feel kind
+to her you will remember that I wished it, and it will not be false to
+me.  Promise me, if you feel good and kind to Kitty you will marry her!"
+
+"It will never be!" he cried.
+
+"Then what harm to promise me?" she said quickly.  "It make me a little
+happy."
+
+"Very well, if I change I will marry her," he said sullenly.  "But I
+will never change!"
+
+"Kitty will be good to you," murmured Nahnya, "and watch you, and take
+care of you almost as good as me.  Kitty--will have babies!  I think of
+that--it is a pain and a gladness, too!"
+
+"Nahnya," he said, "you hurt me!"
+
+She clung to him again.  "No!" she breathed in a voice as tender and
+thrilling as starlight; "my love will not hurt you; it will make you
+strong!  It will be a more wonderful love because we cannot be
+together.  It will be more real than what you see!  It will shelter you
+like a house over your head, and comfort you like a fire in winter!
+Whenever you close your eyes I will be there, waiting for you!
+Good-bye, my brave man, my darling love!"
+
+She was gone before he realized she was going.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE LAST SCENE
+
+Joe Mixer and his men sat up late counting the golden harvest they
+expected to reap; consequently next morning the sun was high in the sky
+before the fat man woke.  The instant consciousness returned to him the
+thought of "Gold!" sprang up in his mind as if written in letters of
+the metal.  He sat up knuckling the sleep from his eyes.  Instead of
+the breakfast that usually awaited him, he saw Crusoe and Stack still
+slumbering beside him.  He awakened them with no gentle urgency.
+
+"What's the matter with you!" he bawled with his own picturesque
+expletives.  "It's past six o'clock, and we were going to start at
+five!"
+
+Crusoe, the cook, looked around him in a dazed way.  "The breed said
+he'd wake me," he said; "I left it to him."
+
+They saw Philippe's tumbled blanket on the ground beyond Stack.  "He's
+gone off, damn him!" cried Joe. "Hunting a puny rabbit most like!
+They're all alike!  Look sharp with the breakfast!"
+
+While Crusoe cooked, Joe and Stack collected and packed the camp
+impedimenta.  In his eagerness to get away, the fat man was as active
+as a stripling.  When breakfast was ready, and the half-breed had not
+yet returned, his anger was boundless.  The camp atmosphere was lurid.
+As yet he did not suspect any treachery, for as a result of his
+experience with the race he had withheld Philippe's pay, and even a
+breed does not run off with money owing him.  Besides, he had left his
+good blanket behind him.
+
+After breakfast they scattered to look for him, awaking the forest with
+their hails.  Crusoe found tracks made that morning in the ravine.  Joe
+and Stack joined him, and they followed the tracks toward the mouth of
+the cave.
+
+"Maybe he got up early to get in ahead of us," said Stack, paling at
+his own suggestion.
+
+"By Gad! if he has----" cried Joe.
+
+But the tracks led them beyond the drift-pile.
+
+"It's game he's after," said Joe, reassured.
+
+Crusoe, who was a pace in advance, had stopped, and was examining the
+creek bed attentively.  "There's another track here," he said suddenly;
+"a small foot--a woman's foot!  That's his game!"
+
+The three men looked at each other with growing suspicions.  "Get along
+after them!" cried Joe harshly.
+
+But none of them moved.  They had become aware simultaneously of a
+curious rumbling sound high above them.  It approached with terrific
+swiftness, ending with a mighty crash above, that caused each man
+instinctively to make himself small, and guard his head with his arms.
+A great boulder leaped across the ravine, high over their heads, and
+smashed into the forest on the other side.
+
+Of one accord the three turned and fled down the ravine, little Stack
+in advance, leaping from stone to stone like an antelope.  A shower of
+pebbles peppered their heads and shoulders harmlessly.  Outside the
+danger zone they halted.
+
+"By Gad! that was a close shave!" said Joe, wiping his face.  "They say
+those stones just naturally work themselves loose on the mountain, and
+no man can tell when they'll fall!"
+
+"Maybe somebody started it," suggested Stack.  His teeth were
+chattering.
+
+Panic seized them again.  They did not stop running until they had
+climbed the bank of the ravine, and stood in their own camp.  From this
+point nearly the whole of the mountain side was visible.  They searched
+it excitedly.
+
+"It's true!" cried Stack at last.  "I see him!  I see two of them up
+there!"
+
+"My binoculars!" shouted Joe.
+
+His hands shook, and it took him a long time to focus the glasses.
+Stack stood at his elbow instructing him shrilly where to look.  Crusoe
+stood with hanging jaw, looking up like a clown.
+
+Immediately above the entrance to the cave there was a precipitous
+cliff some seventy-five or a hundred feet high.  On top of that was a
+flat ledge or terrace reaching back.  The floor of this terrace was
+hidden from them, but behind it rose a long, steep bare slide of rubble
+fully two thousand feet in the air, ending in a ridge or hog-back of
+broken rock-masses, which extended up at right angles to the base of
+the final peak of naked rock, the thumb.  It was upon the ridge,
+working among the rock-masses with pine poles for levers, that Stack's
+sharp eyes had spotted the two tiny figures.
+
+Joe finally got them within the field of his glasses.  A frightful rage
+took possession of him.  His face turned purple.  He frothed at the
+mouth and stamped on the ground like a madman.  Stack slyly took the
+binoculars out of his hand or he would have dashed them to the ground.
+From his broken exclamations and curses the others gathered that he had
+recognized Philippe and Nahnya.  Stack satisfied himself as to the
+identity of the figures.
+
+Another great stone started to roll down the gigantic slide.  They saw
+it coming before they heard the noise of its passage.  They gazed
+fascinated.  As it gathered its terrific way it started to leap higher
+and higher in the air like a mad elf.  It struck the rock ledge with a
+deafening crash, and like its predecessor bounded high over the ravine
+and shattered the trees on the other side.  The force suggested by the
+soaring of these tons of matter lightly through the air struck awe into
+the souls of the beholders.  The silence following the final crash of
+the projectile was broken by a long, dull rumble of the smaller stones
+displaced in its course.  A long cloud of yellow dust arose behind it.
+
+Other rocks, small and large, followed.  Stack, through the binoculars,
+watched the two on the height working desperately with their levers.
+Joe Mixer had exhausted himself in his transports.  He now looked up
+dumb and suffering with rage, his thick lips snarling and his nails
+pressed into his palms.  Suddenly a light broke on his face, and he
+cried out:
+
+"There's no danger!  The cliff makes a screen.  Look, how all the rocks
+jump clear of the gulch.  Come on back!"
+
+Stack had seen this before, but had kept it to himself.  Both Stack and
+Crusoe turned white with terror at the thought of venturing up the
+ravine beneath that bombardment.
+
+"You white-livered cowards!" cried Joe; "you skulkers!  you shivering
+curs!  I'll go alone!  And I'll keep what I find!"
+
+No one denied Joe Mixer brute courage.  Paying no more attention to the
+descent of the rocks, he methodically separated a portion of their food
+for himself, and rolling it within his blanket, strapped the pack on
+his back.  Fastening a belt of ammunition around his waist, he picked
+up his rifle, and went doggedly down the bank and up the bed of the
+ravine.  All the gold in the world would not have tempted the others to
+follow.
+
+While he was in the ravine the two on the mountain succeeded in
+wresting loose a bigger mass of rock than any before.  It came down
+with a frightful impetus.  The noise of its coming leaped out of
+nothingness and stunned the ears.  When it struck the ledge of rock
+they felt the shock below.  Joe crouched under a boulder.  The mass
+made a gaping wound in the forest where it earthed itself.
+
+The succeeding rumble from above did not subside, but slowly deepened
+and increased in volume.  Stack, looking up, saw an incredible, an
+insupportable sight, as in some hideous nightmare.  The whole face of
+the mountain was in motion.  He screamed, and cast himself on his face,
+covering his head with his thin arms.  Crusoe followed his example.
+Joe, hearing the ominous sounds above his head, wavered.  The shrill
+sound of terror decided him.  He started to run back down the ravine,
+but too late.  A cataract of broken rocks came pouring over the lip of
+the cliff.
+
+
+When Jim Sholto found Ralph that morning he saw at a glance that he had
+a desperately sick man to deal with.  The exertion and the terrible
+excitement following too soon upon his fever had brought about a
+relapse.  Jim carried him into camp, and Kitty did what little she
+could for his comfort.  Humanity forbade Jim's leaving her alone with
+the patient, though he chafed to be away with the other men after the
+gold.  To this he owed his life.
+
+They were attending to Ralph when they heard the fall of the first
+stone.  It was a sound they were not unfamiliar with in their own camp,
+and caused them no perturbation.  When several others followed in close
+succession, Jim looked up.
+
+"That's funny!" he said.  "I never knew so many to fall together."
+
+A minute later they heard Stack's scream.  Jim jumped up.
+
+"Somebody's caught!" he said grimly.
+
+"Don't go!" cried Kitty sharply.
+
+She had no need to speak.  Jim was rooted to the spot.  "A whole
+landslide!" he murmured.
+
+During the next few seconds chaos succeeded.  There was a rushing sound
+as of millions of great wings beating the air, and a shock under which
+the earth rocked nauseatingly.  The uproar was such that human ear
+could not encompass it.  It was like mountainous seas breaking over
+their heads.  Kitty and her father clutched the earth.  It shook under
+their bodies like a jelly.  Ralph knew nothing of what was happening.
+A tremendous silence succeeded, broken only by the detached tapping of
+falling rocks here and there.  Then a brief, terrible wind swept
+screaming through the forest and was gone.  A strange, thick, yellow
+fog stole among the tree trunks; it left an acrid taste in the nostrils.
+
+As soon as the uproar subsided Jim was for going to see what had
+happened.  Kitty clung to him hysterically.  Not until half an hour had
+passed would she let him leave her, and then only upon his repeated
+assurances that no further disturbance was likely to occur for the
+present.  Anything that had not been shaken loose by that terrible
+shock would stick, he said.  Kitty herself refused to leave Ralph.
+
+Jim had not gone two hundred yards before he began to meet with
+evidences of the cataclysm in the scattered rocks and broken trees.  A
+little farther on he came to the edge of the flood of rocks that had
+poured down from the mountain, obliterating the forest up to this
+point.  He circled the base of the gigantic heap until he came to a
+point where he could overlook the entire height.  This was on the edge
+of the ravine behind Joe Mixer's camp.
+
+Jim stood, struck to the soul with amazement.  The genii had waved
+their wands and the face of the earth was changed.  There was no stream
+below him; above where he stood there was no longer any gulch or any
+cliff rising above it.  The mountain had stepped forward and stamped
+them out.  A great new spur of raw rubble reeking with yellow dust now
+reached across in front of him, blotting out the forest like grass as
+far as he could see on that side.  The entrance to the Bowl of the
+Mountains was somewhere under the middle of the mountain; no man could
+tell now where it had been, so complete was the change.  Joe Mixer's
+camp had not been in the direct line of the slide, but tons and tons of
+rock had overflowed at the sides like a liquid, and the place where the
+fire had been was drowned fathoms deep.
+
+Jim remembered the scream they had heard.  "Nothing to do here!" he
+thought grimly.  He returned to Kitty.
+
+
+Nahnya and Philippe reached a little plateau of rock after a long
+climb, and sat down to breathe themselves.  Their faces were calm.  For
+the moment they were concerned only with their journey.  On every side
+great snowy peaks looked down on them over each other's shoulders.  The
+white fields dipped almost to the level where they sat.  Behind them,
+and far below, the forest ended in the throat of a valley; before them
+lay a shallower valley of a bleak aspect.  It supported only a little
+scrub and a variegated carpet of moss, and the gorges on either hand
+were choked with ice.
+
+"This is a divide," Nahnya said.  She spoke in Cree.  "St. Jean Bateese
+tell me this trail.  The water out of that valley go to the Burning
+River, he say.  It is five days' journey from here."
+
+"I have heard of that river," said Philippe.  "It goes to the place of
+the rising sun, and joins with the Great River of the Ice."
+
+The sun had disappeared some time since behind the peaks on their left
+hand.  Philippe cast a look at the threatening sky.  "It will rain
+to-night," he said.  "Let us go down.  There is nothing here to make a
+shelter.  There is no wood for a fire."
+
+"Wait a little," Nahnya said.  "We must talk--what we do after."
+
+Her simple-sounding words had an electric effect.  Both faces changed
+subtly; hers became wary; his sullen.  They avoided each other's eyes.
+
+"We will do what comes," said Philippe, feigning unconcern.  "We will
+walk to the Burning River, and make a raft and float to the Great River
+of the Ice.  Then we can go where we want."
+
+"You know what I mean," said Nahnya quietly.  "Why waste talk?"
+
+Philippe's eyes suddenly blazed up.  "You are mine now!" he said.
+
+"Not yet," said Nahnya coolly.  "I say you can come with me if you
+want.  I make no promise."
+
+"You are mine!" repeated Philippe louder.  "There is nothing to say!"
+
+"There is much to say!" said Nahnya, with a direct look.  "If you lay
+hands on me without I give you leave, I will kill you!"
+
+There was a short, fierce struggle between the two pairs of eyes.  The
+man's eyes gave way.
+
+"I not want quarrel with you," said Nahnya presently, in a softened
+voice.  "You helped me very much.  I have a kindness for you."
+
+His eyes stole back to her face furtively and humbly.
+
+"I will marry you if you want," Nahnya went on.  "Because I have
+learned a girl cannot be alone.  And I have no people now.  I will make
+you a good wife if you want me.  I will always work hard.  I will try
+to make you a rich, big man.  But first the truth must be told."
+
+"What truth?" muttered Philippe.
+
+"I do not love you," she said.
+
+"This is white people's talk," said Philippe.  "What is love?  You
+marry me.  You keep my lodge."
+
+"I love the white man," Nahnya said firmly.
+
+He sprang up with a threatening gesture.  In his simplicity he thought
+she was baiting him.  His face was dark with wounded self-love.
+
+Nahnya's eyes held his unflinchingly.  "If you strike me I not stop
+loving him," she said.
+
+The youth was no match for her.  His eyes could not support the strong
+light behind hers.  He turned away muttering.
+
+"Do you want to marry me?" Nahnya asked after a while.
+
+He turned on her with the violent upbraiding of a man's jealousy, which
+is much the same, Cree or English.  Nahnya saw that he had
+misunderstood what she meant by "love."  Interrupting him, she made the
+point clear.
+
+"No man has had me!" she proudly concluded.
+
+He scowled, regarding her doubtfully.  The boastful male in him was
+loath to confess it, but he was like wax in her hands.
+
+"Red and white cannot mate together," Nahnya said, with her strange,
+fatalistic calmness.  "He is gone away.  I will never see him again."
+
+"Swear it!" demanded Philippe.
+
+She raised her hand.  "I swear it!" she said, without a tremor.
+
+He was much comforted.  He scowled still, not knowing what to say.
+
+"Do you want to marry me?" she asked again.
+
+It was a kind of stricken look that he turned on her.  "I want to marry
+you," he murmured.
+
+"There is my hand," said Nahnya.  "Deal straight with me, and I will do
+all that I say."
+
+He fondled her hand clumsily.
+
+Nahnya's eyes became kindly.  "You were a good boy at the school," she
+said.  "It was good talk that we talked together.  Why do you want to
+be called a bad man now, and not work, and drink, and make trouble
+everywhere?"
+
+"I will tell you why I change," said Philippe boastfully.  "I go among
+the white men, thinking to find my brothers.  My father was a white
+man, and married to my mother in church.  But they think little of me
+because my skin is dark.  They treat me like a slave, and give me hard
+work and little pay like a slave.  So I hate them.  I am bad!  I make
+all the trouble I can!"
+
+"White men only laugh at a bad man," said Nahnya, "and put him in jail.
+You are going to make yourself a wise, big man now."
+
+Philippe's self-love made its last stand.  "I am a man," he said
+scowling.  "It is not for a woman to tell me what to do."
+
+Nahnya made no answer.  She was playing with some bits of broken stone.
+
+"I will be the master in my own lodge!" Philippe said louder.  "You
+will work and keep quiet!"
+
+"If you want me to live with you, you must live straight," said Nahnya,
+with an ominous softness.  "You think it is fun to be a bad man.  It is
+not fun to be a bad man's wife!"
+
+"I will do what I want!" said Philippe boastfully.
+
+"Look!" said Nahnya, pointing to the stones she had been arranging.
+"Here I have made the sign of the cross.  Kneel, and put your right
+hand on it, and swear to live straight!"
+
+Philippe laughed.  Nahnya rose to her feet with the same dangerously
+quiet air.  She did not look at him.  Anxiety began to undermine his
+scornful smile.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he asked sullenly.
+
+"Swear!" she said.  "Or I will jump off this rock into the valley!"
+
+He sprang up.  She was quicker than he.  He saw her headed straight and
+determined for the edge.  He stopped dead.
+
+"Nahnya!" he cried hoarsely.
+
+She stopped on the very edge, looking down into the gulf with a kind of
+wistful desirousness.  One would almost have said that she was sorry he
+had cried out.
+
+"I will swear it!" he cried quickly.  He dropped to his knees beside
+the cross of stones.
+
+She came back from the edge with a sigh.  "I will do all that I said,"
+she murmured, as if to herself.
+
+The way down into the shallow valley on the other side was easy.  As
+they proceeded Nahnya laid out their plans for the future with a kind
+of ecstasy in her sad eyes.
+
+"All day I am thinking what we will do.  We will gather those like
+ourselves who are not red and not white, and make a new people of them.
+First we will go to Caribou Lake and talk with the people.  They have
+steamboats now on Caribou Lake and the little river and the big river;
+the York boats are rotting on the beach and the half-breeds have no
+work to do.  They are poor and sick and full of hate for the white men.
+I know a fine country where the Tamarack River rises in the hills.
+There are no white men near, and the Kakisa Indians who hunted there
+are all dead or gone away with other tribes.  It is the best fur
+country there is left.  We will tell the people about this country, and
+make a village there.  There is good hunting for all.  The company will
+make a post there, and you shall be the trader!"
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+At evening of a day early in August a raft landed on the beach below
+Fort Cheever.  It bore a middle-aged man, a girl, and a young man.  The
+last named ceaselessly tossed and muttered in a fever; he was strapped
+to the raft to keep him from rolling off.
+
+The older man carried him up the bank.  The girl followed, tottering a
+little with fatigue.  There were dark circles under her eyes and her
+lips were white.  At the top they met David Cranston the trader, in
+whose grim face surprise struggled with a welcoming courtesy.  Seeing
+into the sick man's face he started.
+
+"Is it Ralph Cowdray?" he asked.
+
+The other man nodded.
+
+"The poor lad!" exclaimed Cranston.  "He stopped here six weeks ago.
+He is much changed."
+
+"I am taking him to a doctor," the other said.  "I am Jim Sholto from
+Milburn Gulch.  This is my daughter."
+
+Cranston bade her welcome with clumsy, old-fashioned deference.  At
+Fort Cheever a white girl was like a creature from another world.
+Looking at her, his grim face softened with commiseration.
+
+To Jim he said: "There's no doctor nearer than the Crossing.  I expect
+the steamboat on her last trip within a week.  Will you wait here for
+her?"
+
+Jim shook his head.  "Too uncertain," he said.  "He might die on our
+hands.  We will raft it down."
+
+"Ye do well," said Cranston.  "It is two hundred miles, but you can do
+it easy in three days by travelling nights, too.  The river is smooth
+all the way.  There's a kind of hotel at the Crossing where you can
+make him comfortable, and the police doctor is there."
+
+"We will go on as soon as we eat," said Jim.
+
+"I will send the little boys to cut spruce boughs to make you
+comfortable beds on the raft," said Cranston.
+
+"Have you any remedies?" asked Jim.  "We came without medicines."
+
+"I will ask my wife," said Cranston.  "She knows the simples of the
+country."
+
+"Much obliged to ye," said Jim.
+
+"The poor lad!" said David, looking into the flushed face and the
+sightless eyes.  "I took a great liking to him.  He had an honest way
+with him."  Glancing sideways at Kitty, he said: "I wondered what
+brought him into the country.  How did this happen?"
+
+Jim looked at his daughter and bit his lip.  The quiet tears were
+rolling down Kitty's face.  "He capsized in the Stanley rapids and hit
+his shoulder on a rock," he said grimly.  "He came to our shack much
+the same as you see him now."
+
+"Was that the first you saw of him?" asked David, in surprise.
+
+"It was the first."
+
+"He was in the country before.  There is some strange tale behind
+this," said David, wagging his head.
+
+"I believe you," said Jim grimly.
+
+
+Two months later in time, and in distance five hundred miles from Fort
+Cheever, the little steamboat _Northern Belle_ was making her way
+blithely down on the current of the Miwasa River on her last trip of
+the season.  On the upper deck Ralph, a shadow of the blooming youth
+that had first set forth from Fort Edward, lay sleeping in an invalid
+chair that the "boys" at the Crossing had made him for the journey.
+Beside him sat Kitty, almost as pale and wasted as her patient, but
+with a soft triumph in her eyes; he was safely on the mend.
+
+He stirred and murmured her name.
+
+"Yes?" she answered, in her quick hushed voice.
+
+"Nothing.  I just wanted to make sure you were there."
+
+"Lazy!" she said.  "Why didn't you open your eyes and look?"
+
+"My eyelids weigh pounds!" he said.  "I can sleep twenty-three and a
+half hours a day!"
+
+He lay musing for a while.  "Kitty?" he said again.
+
+"Well?"  One could see "Dear!" on her lips, but it was not uttered.
+
+"I was thinking--I'm glad I didn't hop the twig after all!"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"It's just beginning to come back--the will to live, I mean."
+
+Made curious by her continued silence, he raised his lids at last, and
+saw that her eyes were big with tears.  "What's the matter?" he asked
+quickly.
+
+"Nothing!" she said.  "I can't help thinking--all the time you lay
+there, you wished to die.  In your delirium you prayed to die."
+
+"That's funny!" he said, with an air of calm interest.  "I remember
+that.  It was as if some force stronger than I kept me from passing
+peacefully out.  How it hurt!"
+
+"Don't think about it," she said.
+
+"It's over," he said.  "The sun feels good.  I feel like a new-born
+babe, with everything to learn and everything to experience all over
+again!"
+
+"You've talked enough."
+
+"Where are we?" he asked, defying her with a lazy smile.
+
+"We will get to Miwasa landing before supper.  We will stay there until
+you are a little stronger.  Then we'll drive the hundred miles to town
+in a democrat.  Father made the arrangements on his way out."
+
+"How good you've both been to me!" murmured Ralph.
+
+Kitty let this pass with a private smile.  "I got a letter from father
+at Silver landing this morning," she said.  "It was posted as they were
+leaving Fort Edward.  They are all back at Milburn Gulch by now."
+
+"What will they do without you?"
+
+"They have taken a man cook in with them."
+
+"Are you going in later?" he asked.
+
+She shook her head.  "Dad says after all it's no country for a woman."
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"I shall go to live with my aunt in Winnipeg, and study something, so
+that I can earn my own living.  A teacher, perhaps."
+
+"That's a lonely life!" said Ralph.
+
+She looked away.  "Better than being idle," she said.
+
+"I must begin to think what I am going to do," said Ralph.
+
+"Plenty of time."
+
+"I shall go home for a while, of course.  The mater will luxuriate in a
+convalescent son!  Then I must build up a practice in some growing
+city.  A doctor goes to seed in the wilds; there is not enough to do.
+I begin to feel a need of work!"
+
+"Work!" said Kitty, looking at his transparent hands with a smile of
+affectionate scorn.
+
+"Doctoring's a great job!" said Ralph.  "Where would you advise me to
+establish myself?"
+
+"How should I know?" murmured Kitty, head averted.
+
+"What kind of a place is Winnipeg?"
+
+A slow crimson tide crept up from her neck to her forehead.
+Fortunately Ralph's eyes were closed.  "A busy, ugly town," she said.
+"But it's growing very fast.  They say it has a great future."
+
+"As soon as I am on my feet I'll come up and look it over," he said.
+
+He soon fell asleep again.  Kitty leaned her arms on the rail, and
+gazed dreamily at the brown flood with its squadrons of foam vessels
+sailing demurely under the steamboat's counter; and at the shore with
+its endless procession of pine trees wrapped in the delicate veils of
+October.  She chid herself for the little spring of happiness that
+welled in her breast, and sought to choke it with common sense, but it
+continually found new ways out.
+
+Downstream she saw a canoe lying on a point, and behind it a thread of
+smoke ascending among the trees.  They had seen no sign of humanity
+since they had left Silver Landing sixty miles upstream, and she waited
+curiously to see what manner of people these were.  Presently she
+distinguished two figures, a man lying on the ground and a woman
+bending over the fire.  The steamboat was travelling fast with the
+current and she had no sooner made them out than she was upon them.  It
+was a point of rock, and they passed close enough to toss a biscuit
+ashore.
+
+The woman straightened, and Kitty instantly recognized the firm round
+figure and the graceful, proudly poised head.  As the steamboat swept
+by they looked directly into each other's faces.  A wild agitation
+shook Kitty; it was as if the terrible past had been fished up and
+suddenly placed before her.  The other woman's hands went to her breast
+in the old quick way.  She glanced quickly from Kitty to the sleeping
+form in the chair and back again.  Then she smiled--a wonderful smile
+irradiating her sad face from within.  Kitty experienced a quick
+revulsion.  The tears sprang to her eyes.  She stood up, and leaning
+over the rail, kissed her hand to the rapidly lessening figure on
+shore, A bend in the river intervened.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sealed Valley, by Hulbert Footner
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57139 ***