Part 10

His subconscious mind never ceased to register every detail by the way that might help him to learn where he was, and to find his way back if need be. Looking over his shoulder he could see a faint glow in the sky up-river. So it was true, as he had supposed, they were travelling east. What river this was, or what mountains, he did not know; though he guessed that in North America there was but one such mountain chain. He tried to calculate the speed at which they were travelling by current and paddle. The river made no sound except here and there where it snarled over an obstruction alongshore, but he knew from the way the points on shore marched past that their speed was considerable. Finally passing close beside an exposed bar he had something to measure by, and he was astonished. Ten miles an hour he would have said, did it not seem incredible.

By and by Charley with a word to Nahnya put his paddle aboard, and stretched himself in the bottom of the dugout. Soon his deepened breathing gave notice that he slept. Nahnya, too, took in her paddle, and sat still, letting the current carry them. The eddies waltzed them slowly around and back, and the stars circled over their heads.

This was the hardest part of Ralph's ordeal. To be alone with her under the stars, and not to be able to touch her, nor to speak of what was cracking his heart, seemed more than a man ought to be called upon to bear. His streak of stubborn manliness would not allow him to reopen the discussion of the night before. "I have my answer," he said to himself. "It is enough! I will not whine!"

And so he sat in silence thinking his painful thoughts, and she in silence thinking hers--but whether they were painful he could not guess. The question tormented him, and finally sprang from his lips:

"What are you thinking of, Nahnya?"

"Nothing," she said quickly, with a suggestion of sullenness in her voice.

It hurt him shrewdly. "Can't we be friends?" he burst out. "Can't I speak to you?"

She made no answer, and he sat fuming and nourishing his grievance. After a long time, when he had given up hope of hearing her speak, she said softly:

"I sorry, Ralph. You take me by surprise. I not know what to say. I want to be friends. I cannot tell my thoughts."

At the unexpected touch of gentleness, remorse and renewed tenderness melted him like wax. "Oh, Nahnya," he said brokenly, "I'm sorry! Why can't you tell me?"

"I not know how to give them words," she said simply. "Maybe they are not thoughts, but feelings."

"What are the feelings?" he asked.

"_Please!_" she said imploringly. "I cannot talk. I have say everything before."

"There's something I want to tell you," Ralph said haltingly, grateful for the darkness that covered him. "Words don't come any too easy to me, either. I want you to know that I'm not sore like a spoiled child that can't have what he wants. I don't seem to matter to myself as much as I did. It goes deeper. I want to tell you I'll never change, Nahnya, not in fifty years, if I live so long. No matter what may happen in between, if I could ever help you---- Oh! I talk like a fool! but I've got to say it! If I could ever help you, I'd come from across the world. Expecting nothing, you know, but just to help you! Oh, damn! If I could feel that you would let me help you it--it wouldn't hurt so much!"

"I would let you help me if you could," she murmured.

"Your hand on that!" he said.

She gave him her hand over his shoulder. Gripping it, he pressed it hard to his cheek, and a single cry was wrung from him:

"Oh, Nahnya, my dear love!"

Gritting his teeth, he forced the rest back. "I will not whine!" he muttered to himself.

Nahnya sat behind him like a ghost woman, giving no sign.

Dawn broke over the river ahead of them, and the sun rose and shone straight through the noble pass. Charley awoke, and the three of them took paddles. They left the principal mountain chain behind them, and thereafter the river pursued a circuitous course through wide flats and around the bases of lesser heights. They breakfasted on an exposed stony bar, obtaining fuel from a fantastic jam of drift-logs left at high water.

As the sun approached the meridian, Nahnya produced the bandage again. Her face expressed the old, wistful, inscrutable blank. Never was there such a woman for ignoring all that had passed.

"We going to land soon," she said. "I take it off then."

Ralph submitted.

They landed within sound of another rapid, a hollow, throaty roar. After a wait to unload the canoe and pack their slender baggage on their backs, Ralph was led up the bank, and as his moccasined feet told him, put upon a well-beaten trail.

"Put your hand on Charley's shoulder and follow," Nahnya said. "It is a good trail. You will not fall."

After a few minutes Nahnya took off the bandage, and Ralph found that they were swallowed in the bush once more. But this was only a forest of thickly springing aspen saplings, with straight white stems, and twinkling, trembling bright leaves. The trail wound ahead of them and behind like an endless brown ribbon. Centuries of moccasined travel, not to speak of the hoofs and paws that used it surreptitiously, had packed the earth too hard for anything to grow.

Always looking out for any evidences of his whereabouts, Ralph thought: "This must be a main route of travel."

Once climbing a hill, he had a glimpse of the river behind them. Thence uphill and down the trail led them over a rough and characterless country. The aspen trees were springing from the ashes of the original forest. There were raw open spaces filled with the charred remains of the monarchs, mantled with the purple-red bloom of the fire-weed. Through the openings Ralph saw lesser mountain heights, green to the summit. He called it an unbeautiful land. As far as he could judge the general trend of the trail was northeastward, but the trail twisted continually, and he often lost the sun.

They had covered, he guessed, between twelve and fifteen miles, when Nahnya called a halt. They were in a little stretch of grass fringing a still streamlet.

"We stop here till midnight," she said. "All will sleep."

Ralph awoke about sunset to find that he and Charley were alone in camp. His heart winced, remembering the other times she had stolen away from camp and he had followed her. This time he did not go. Soon he saw her coming back in the trail with an axe upon her shoulder. He thought that her footsteps dragged, and that her face betrayed an unutterable, sad weariness. Rising quickly, he found he was mistaken. It was the old, walled face that she showed him.

"We start in five hours," she said quietly. "Sleep some more." She lay down at a little distance.

It was very dark when they arose and made up their packs. Continuing on the trail they were obliged to keep close together. Presently they commenced to zigzag down a long hill where the trail was much broken and washed by rain. Ralph, putting his feet into holes, and catching his toes on exposed roots, made but rough going of it. They reached the bottom at last, and the trail became good again, but Nahnya, who was leading, presently struck off from it, and they crossed a wide meadow, their moccasins swishing through the grass.

The sky was heavily overclouded. Ralph could barely make out Nahnya close ahead; everything else was swallowed up in the thick darkness. Nevertheless Nahnya seemed to know exactly where they were. At a certain point in the grass, without any distinguishing features that Ralph could see, she stopped, saying:

"We wait here till it is light. You can sleep if you want."

Dawn brought another dramatic surprise: They were resting almost at the edge of a steep declivity of earth, and two hundred feet below moved another great, smooth, swift stream, its eddying surface gleaming in the gathering light like creased satin, or as if the water were flowing shallowly over a mirror. It stretched away far to the left, confined deep between its dim, bare heights, like a luminous ribbon. Downstream were several fairy-like islands half-revealed through the mist with their unreal foliage.

It was a kind of gigantic trough that confined the river. From the edge of the bank the land stretched back in gentle undulations. Behind them and off to the left as far as they could see rolled an unbroken sea of grass showing a strange, dark green in the half-light. To the right about half a mile away the wooded hills began, rising tier behind tier. The river first appeared foaming from behind a spur of these hills. Behind him in the grass Ralph was astonished to discover two ancient log shacks with boarded windows and padlocked doors. They reminded him with a faint shock of the existence of fellow white men.

Nahnya was busy wrapping a pack within blankets. After cording the bundle and tying it, she gave it to Charley, and with a laconic command, led the way down the precipitous slope. They scrambled and slid down to the water's edge, accompanied by miniature avalanches of gravel. At the bottom, drawn up on the stones, there was a little raft made of four lengths of dead timber lashed together with a strong light cord. A little paddle was stuck between the logs. The cord was the same that had been used to bind him; a length of it was now around the pack that Charley carried. Ralph recognized Nahnya's handiwork. This was what she had been doing with the axe during the previous afternoon while he and Charley slept.

Nahnya and Charley pushed the raft into the water until only its forefoot remained resting on the stones. Charley held it from floating away while Nahnya, kneeling on the logs, tied the pack firmly to a cross-piece. Having done this she came ashore, and an awkward silence descended on the trio. Ralph waited apathetically for her next order, but none was issued. The resourceful Nahnya for once was at a loss. Her back was turned to Ralph; Charley continued to kneel, holding the raft.

Ralph's mind, dulled with pain and from insufficient sleep, did not grasp the significance of these preparations. From the first he had been used to leaving all details of the journey to Nahnya, and he took little notice of what they carried. It was he who broke the silence.

"This little thing is never big enough to carry the three of us," he said listlessly.

"Sure!" said Charley with a grin.

Nahnya said nothing. She kept her head averted from Ralph. She twisted her hands until the knuckles were white. Ralph remembered this later.

He stepped on board the raft to test its buoyancy. As he did so, Charley with a heave of his back launched it out on the current. Then Ralph understood. He spun around, a dreadful pain transfixing his breast.

"Nahnya!" he cried, in a voice wild with reproach.

Her back was stubbornly turned to him, her head sunk between her shoulders, her hands pressed over her ears. Charley still knelt on the stones, his dark face working oddly.

"Good-bye, Hooralph!" he cried.

In the confusion of surprise, dismay, anger, and pain that, shattered him, Ralph's eyes conveyed only one idea to his brain--Nahnya's hands pressed to her ears. His essential stubbornness responded. "She'll hear no more cries!" he cried to himself, clenching his teeth.

To shut out the agonizing sight of her receding on the shore, he flung himself down full length to bury his head in his arms. He took no thought of the instability of his craft. Rolling off the centre, the logs sank under him, tipping him into the icy water.

Quickly as it happened, he heard Nahnya's cry before he went under. It was no ordinary sound of terror, but a cry of agony exactly attuned to the pain in his own breast. Even as the water closed over his head he heard and understood, and everything was changed.

He immediately rose to the surface again. The raft, relieved of its burden, had righted, and still floated beside him. Man and raft were being carried down together in the current. Grasping the logs, he turned his head. An unforgettable picture was etched on his brain; Nahnya, waist-deep in the water, straining toward him, and Charley desperately dragging her back. There could be no mistaking that act, nor the cry preceding it. Everything was changed.

Life blossomed again. He did not feel the paralyzing chill of the water. Pain winged out of his breast, giving place to a joy so keen it was still like pain. But he could gladly have died of this pain. He knew for sure that she loved him.

XII

THE OBJECT LESSON

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?"