The next day found Garth and Natalie afloat on Musquasepi, headed alone
into the North. To be exact, only Natalie was afloat; she sat in the
stern of a tiny boat, keeping her off shore with a paddle devised
from the cover of a grub-box. Their outfit was piled amidships. Garth
harnessed to the end of a towing-line, plodded through the mud and over
the stones of the bank; climbing over fallen trees, and wading bodily
into the river, when necessary to drag his tow around a reef.
Indecision had attacked Garth the night before--his responsibility was
so great! But Natalie had said, pressing the soft curve out of her lips:
"_Any_ means to get ahead! If we have to crawl on hands and knees!"
"Any _safe_ means," Garth amended.
"Nick Grylls without doubt is counting on our being held up or driven
back," she said. "I have an idea he is not far behind us."
It was Garth's own idea.
"So we _must_ keep ahead!"
"We must do whatever will best ensure your safety," Garth said doggedly.
That bright red spot had appeared in either of Natalie's cheeks. "Bother
my safety!" she cried. "You will not allow me a shred of pluck! My
honour is engaged on this journey, just the same as if I were a man! I
said I'd do it; and I will! And if I hear another word about my comfort
or my safety, upon my word, I'll go on alone!"
Garth had smiled at the threat, and given in; because on the whole it
seemed safer to press ahead, than to attempt to return. Secretly, he was
delighted with the spirit she showed.
They had bought the boat from Pierre Toma, a breed of the more
self-respecting elder generation, in whose aged eyes still twinkled
the spirit of the voyageurs. Pake's magnanimous offer of the wagon and
team at only twice their real value was declined; inasmuch as the trail
was impassible for wagons beyond Toma's place, and ceased altogether at
Caribou Lake. They counted on the boat to carry them as far as the lake;
there, Pierre Toma had assured them, they might very likely overtake the
Bishop, if he were delayed by contrary winds, or christenings. In any
case Wall-eye Macgregor, said Pierre, had a strong boat at the lake that
could take them the eighty miles across. According to the haphazard
measurements of the breeds, Caribou Lake was twenty-five miles from
Pierre Toma's.
Their own boat was but crazily hung together. Natalie had christened
it the _Flat-iron_ from its shape. It was of extremely simple
construction--two planks laid V-shape, with a shorter plank to close the
end, and boards nailed on for a bottom. Pierre Toma had said with pride,
there was no other boat in the country like it; and after using it a day
they were prepared to agree. It was designed to be propelled with a pole;
and they had started in that manner; but the _Flat-iron_ showed a perverse
disposition to travel in any direction save the desired one; and her
favourite manoeuvre under the impetus of the pole was to swing on her
centre without moving ahead at all. So Garth, after some study, had
constructed the tracking apparatus.
It was a simple, park-like, little river with brown, foam-flecked water
flowing moderately through a country of small timber; and occasionally
there were natural meadows starred with flowers, where children in their
white dresses should have been picnicking, so intimate and peaceful it
seemed. None the less, it was the strange and lonely North into which
they were thrust, on their own unaided resources--like the babes in
the woods, Natalie said. They were abruptly cast back on the great and
simple verities of existence, where a man, be his wits never so sharp,
must be strong, to survive. Natalie looked at Garth's broad back, as he
slowly put the miles behind him one after another; and considering the
impatient vigour, with which he attacked the multitude of obstacles
strewn along the river, thanked God for sending such a one to her aid.
The wonder of the unknown was in them both; and their breasts throbbed
a little, as they looked to see what each bend in the stream would have
to show. Only once in the course of the afternoon was there any reminder
of human life; a breed boy suddenly appeared on the bank, only to duck
behind a bush like a little animal, at the startling sight of white
strangers on the river. Tempted forth at last, in response to Garth's
question, he said they were twenty-five miles from the lake. Garth, who
had been doing his best for seven hours to reduce that distance, felt
distinctly aggrieved.
Natalie insisted on camping early; for it had been a gruelling afternoon
on Garth. They chose a little promontory running into the water; and once
he had started a fire, and put up her tent, she made him lie at length
in the grass, where he stretched his limbs in delicious weariness, and
watched her settling the camp for the night and cooking the supper. She
was proud in the acquisition of a new accomplishment, that of baking
bannock before a fire in the open, learned that morning from Mrs. Toma.
The sight of her, bustling and cheerful, working for him, had a strange
and painful pleasure for him. They two, alone together in the wilderness,
cut off from all their kind!--the thought squeezed his heartstrings; she
was so much his own there--and so little!
With the sinking of the sun, the awful stillness came stealing to
envelope them; and with insistent fingers seemed to press upon the very
drums of their ears. The little river flowed as stilly and darkly as the
water of Lethe at their feet; and the gaunt pines over the way stood
transfixed like souls that had drunk of it. Under the spell of the silence
they instinctively lowered their voices; and they broke sticks for the
fire with reluctance; so painful was the crash and reverberation up and
down. But there is always one sound that accompanies this stillness;
hardly breaks it, so smoothly it comes stealing on the suspended evening
air--the quavering howl of the coyote. They heard it throb miles off;
and it was answered from immeasurable distances side to side. Little by
little, attracted by the smell of cooking food, the animals drew closer,
and at last stationed themselves in a kind of wide-drawn circle about
their camp on both sides of the river, wailing back and forth like
souls inconceivably tormented. Natalie shuddered.
"They are cowardly beasts," Garth said reassuringly. "They won't come
any closer."
They spoke but little to each other. Night, solitude and that spirit of
woe abroad, filled them with a mighty longing for each other's arms. At
last she crept away to her tent.
As the darkness deepened; and the clear-eyed Northern constellations
looked out, one by one, there were other sounds; a peevish growling and
whining at the top of the bank above them; a frantic scurry when Garth
heaved a stone. The better to ensure Natalie's peace of mind, he
weighted the tent all around with rocks; and heaped wood on the fire.
Natalie stuck her head out of her cosy refuge. "I can't bear to have
you sleeping unprotected outside," she said anxiously.
Garth's heart paused breathlessly at the thought of the alternative. He
sprang up and thrust the thought aside. "Nonsense! I'll be all right!"
he cried. "To please you I'll keep the fire going all night."
Later, he rolled himself in his blankets across the door of her tent,
as before; and lay there smoking, gazing at the fire, picturing Natalie
asleep within; and assuaging his hungry heart as best he might with the
sound of her child-like breathing.
The day broke gloriously; and shortly after sunrise they were on
their way again, under a sky as tenderly blue as palest turquoise, over
which were flung bright, silken, cloudy scarves. As they ascended, the
character of the river changed; the trees disappeared, giving place to
wide, flat meadows of blue grass as high as a man's waist; the current
slackened, and its course became more circuitous. Along the shores,
steep cut-banks alternated with muddy shoals; and a new set of
problems faced Garth.
These chiefly took the form of stout willow bushes overhanging the
cut-banks--diabolically malicious, sentient beings, they became to
Garth. He tried crawling underneath with his tow-line, whereupon the
earth gave way, precipitating him in water up to his middle; he tried
crashing bodily through, and the line would invariably knot itself
around the most inaccessible twig. The _Flat-iron_, too, seemed to
rejoice in his discomfiture; and at every interruption of her progress
took the occasion, in spite of Natalie's paddle, to turn about and stick
her nose stupidly into the mud of the bank. Every bush in turn offered
a different and more complicated obstacle than the last; in three hours
they made perhaps twice three hundred yards. Natalie, alarmed by the
spectacle of Garth's set lips, and the swollen veins of his temples,
besought him for goodness' sake to swear and not mind her.
He finally decided to change his mode of going; and contriving a
second little paddle, he embarked with Natalie. They progressed but
slowly against the current; for the short paddles had about the same
effectiveness as two of those little instruments for making butter pats,
which they strongly resembled. Garth figured they would be making a
mile an hour--but this way was easier on his temper.
To-day, the little river, placidly flowing between its grassy banks,
had an oddly pastoral look. With the familiar shapes of the overhanging
willows, and the brilliant marsh marigolds on the shallows, all drenched
in the opulent sunshine, they found themselves looking for cows on the
bank; and it seemed incredible that no church spire rose above any
of the distant clumps of trees. They could not rid themselves of the
feeling that this was no more than a day's picnic, with a house awaiting
them just ahead, and company and good cheer. But instead of that,
silently rounding a bend, they were unexpectedly introduced to the true
genius of the country. In the mud of one of the flats at the edge of the
water, sat a large brown bear on his haunches, soberly licking his paws.
He was no more than twenty feet from them--a room's length. At Natalie's
slight gasp of astonishment, he turned his head; and stared at them
agape, with hanging paws, like a great baby. He looked so homely and
comical Natalie burst out laughing. At the sound, Bruin promptly fell
to all fours; and with a great "woof!" of astonishment and indignation,
bundled over the bank out of sight.
To-day, the delicate, heady air of the Northern summer inspired their
veins like wine. As Olympians, they lunched on the greensward carpeting
the bank of a little inlet; while their shallop floated among tiny white
lilies at their feet. All afternoon their spirits soared into the realms
of incoherent enthusiasm; they filled the air with their full-throated
laughter and foolish, glancing speech. Garth's old friends would have
been astonished then to see how he could "let himself go"; but no one
in the world ever really saw that besides Natalie.
They loved; their happy eyes confessed it freely, though their tongues
were tied. Nothing needed to be explained, for they were perfectly
attuned to each other; and everything was clear in an exchange of eyes.
The tough old world, with all its tiresome, grimy businesses was thrust
out of sight and out of mind, and they seemed to tread a brand-new sphere,
created as they would have it, empty of all save their two selfish selves.
On such a day, in such surroundings, crosses, hindrances, dangers, what
were they? Life was a great joke: Nick Grylls and his minions were
blithely whistled down the wind. Ascending between the flowery banks of
the little river, _their_ river, nothing mattered so they were not parted.
In the more or less tarnished circlet of life it was their perfect golden
day; and whenever afterward either remembered it, it was as if a delicate
fragrance arose in his soul. All day they saw no sign of human habitation.
As long as the sun shone they maintained their light-hearted gaiety,
neither remembering nor desiring anything more----
"I say, Nat!" it would be, "toss me over the hatchet like a good chap.
Hey, there! not at my head!"
"What's for supper, Nat? I'm hungry as an ogre!"
"Bacon _aux tomates a la Bland_ and bannock _Musquasepi avec_ ashes!"
"Bully! If you taste it so much there won't be any left to go on the
table!"
"Where's the bag of hard-tack, Garth?"
"Grub-box number two; port side by the rail."
"Idiot! You put them on the bottom of the box! The water's leaked
through, and they're all mush underneath!"
"What's the diff? Stick the soft ones in the lobscouse!"
But after supper, when the sun had gone down, and the great stillness
crept over them again, Natalie's arms dropped at her sides, Garth's
pipe went out, and an unaccountable sadness fell on both. Then, their
sporadic attempts to keep up the old, friendly rattle rang so false
that both fell silent. Their camp of itself had a gloomy aspect. It was
pitched in an elbow of the river, where a section of the cut-bank had
sunk down, making a little terrace of grass a few feet above the water.
Above, there had been a small grove of trees, through which a fire had
some time swept, leaving only a few slender, charred trunks pointing
askew against the slow, dusky crimson of the west. On the nearest and
tallest of these wrecked monuments, immediately above their camp, as on
a slender pedestal, sat a great owl, the only visible living thing in
all the wide expanse, besides themselves. As long as there was light
enough to see him, he crouched there, motionless.
Natalie sat huddled on a box, with Garth's coat thrown about her
shoulders. Her chin was in her palm, and her lashes veiled rebellious,
miserable eyes. There are moments when the most aerial spirits sink to
earth; and just now Natalie could make no pretense at a flight. It was
clear he loved her, as she loved him; what then were a few words five
years old, to keep them apart? She tried honestly to arm her breast by
thinking of the laws that separated them; but the insidious part of it
was, they were worldly laws; and here the world was thrust out of sight.
Why did he not take her in his arms, and let her heavy head fall on his
shoulder? her heart reiterated; and that was the only voice she could
hear then. Yet if Garth had betrayed any weakness on his part, Natalie
would have been on the _qui vive_ to repel him. The forces of her soul
were thrown in a sad confusion; while her woman's instinct raged against
him, that he could resist her, she loved him tenfold more for that very
resistance.
And Garth--seeing her sitting there so small under his coat, and all
relaxed and appealing, her mouth like an unhappy child's, and her eyes
big with unshed tears--his arms ached to enfold her; his brain reeled
with the intensity of his desire to take her as she trembled to be
taken. But her helplessness, which tortured him, nerved him to endure
the torture. In the turmoil of his blood he could not think coherently;
but he could repeat to himself, dully, over and over: "I must take
care of her! I must take care of her!" He busied himself with small
unnecessary tasks; splicing the tracking line, chopping tent-pegs,
cleaning the frying pan with sand.
Natalie disappeared within her tent--and cried herself to sleep. Garth,
lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her
pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast.
Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of
tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing told him she was asleep
at last, and undressing, waded into the river, and swam back and forth
until the cold water chilled him through. Brisk, silent exercise
restored his circulation, and a pipe and communion with the stars
quieted his nerves. In the end he toppled over all standing, and
slept on the grass until daylight.
* * * * *
Natalie reappeared with the sun, brave and rosy again, and with little
sign of the night's tumult, save in an added sense of gratitude toward
Garth, which appeared in the pleasure she took in doing little things
for him. His grayish pallor, and kind, tired eyes rebuked her sorely
for having cast the whole burden on him. She vowed to herself it
should not occur again.
To-day the character of the river changed little; only that the
bends multiplied and sharpened; and where they were horseshoe curves
yesterday, to-day they were hair-pin curves. Sometimes, just over the
bank, they would catch sight again of a particularly marked tree they
had passed a whole laborious hour before. Endless and futile were the
calculations they made as to how far they had gone, and had yet to go.
They cut across from point to point, keeping under the bank out of the
strength of the current as far as possible, and rounding the inside
of each bend. In this manner they were ascending close under a willow
bush, when suddenly and silently a huge, brown wing, like the wing of
Sinbad's auk, sailed athwart the sky. They caught their breaths in
astonishment. A great gray galley swept around the bend, no more than
two oars' length from them. With her swarthy crew standing about the
deck, their brows bound with bright silk handkerchiefs, and at the
tiller, a great, bearded figure, she was the very picture of a pirate
craft. It would be impossible to state which crew was the more surprised
at the unexpected encounter; the seeming pirates likewise stared
open-mouthed at the _Flat-iron_. Just as the galley was disappearing,
Garth collected presence of mind sufficient to hail, and inquire the
distance to the lake.