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.