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.