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!"
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!"