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.