Part 4

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.

IV

THE DAY OF DAYS

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.

She shrugged. "Me?" she said. "That's nothing!"

"You said when you knew me better you'd tell me about yourself."

The needle paused. She looked disconcerted, and frowned. "I can't talk," she said slowly, "just to be talking. Talking is foolish. It makes trouble. You never can tell what will be said before you are through talking."

Ralph in his right mind would have laughed and commended her sound sense. Now he waved it aside. "You said you'd tell me about yourself," he repeated.

She pointed toward the dugout. "Your paddle is rough," she said. "Take a knife and make the end smooth to fit the hand. Working is good sense."

"I won't be put off like this!" cried Ralph hotly.

Temper was never an effective weapon to use with Nahnya.

She looked at him, scornful and disinterested as a child. "Put off? What's the matter with you?"

Passion could not withstand that look, open and cold as a deep spring. Ralph scowled and muttered, and dug up the stones with his toe.

After a while he returned to the charge with a more ingratiating manner. "I want to know something about you so that we can be friends," he said.

"What do you mean by friends?" she asked with another direct look.

Once more he had the feeling of the ground being cut from under him. "Oh, friends!" he said vaguely. "Friends like to be together, and tell each other everything, and help each other out."

"Can a white man be friends with a girl--like me?" she asked quietly. "I never saw that."

The unexpected implied truth flicked Ralph on the raw. He had no recourse but to lose his temper. "What have other men and girls got to do with you and me?" he cried hotly. "Am I the same to you as Joe Mixer and that lot?"

"Joe Mixer is always the same," she said. "He is easy to understand."

Ralph chose to see coquetry in this. "Is that the sort of man you like?" he cried.

"No," she said. "But I know what to expect from him."

Her admirable good sense and directness were lost on him. Passion found its voice. "Nahnya, do you want to drive me mad? You know what I'm feeling! I couldn't sleep a wink last night for listening to you breathing so softly inside your tent. I want you! I'm mad with wanting you!"

She sprang up, and warily put the rock between them. The quiet eyes fired up with surprising suddenness. "Stop it!" she cried. "You talk foolish! You gone crazy, I think!"

"You drove me crazy!" he cried. "You're so beautiful! What did you expect? Nahnya, it's summer time! You're no snow-woman with those carnations in your cheeks--those lips! Come to me, Nahnya. Don't fight me any more!"

Anger made lightnings in her eyes. "Stop it!" she cried, stamping her foot. Her voice rang like steel. "What do you know about me, what I am? What do you care? It is fine summer time and you want a woman!"

"It's not true!" he cried, moving toward her around the rock. "I want only you!"

She evaded him. "It is true!" she cried ringingly. "You not know me! I am not a coat to be worn by different men until I am old! I am no man's woman to work for him and crouch before him like his dog! I am myself--me! Nahnya Crossfox!"

He did not take in the sense of her words, but only saw that she was twice as beautiful when angry. "I don't care what you are," he muttered. "I want you!"

"Don't you touch me!" she cried warningly.

He had already sprung toward her. She gave back one step, and swung her flexed arm swift as a cat's-paw. There was a resounding smack and Ralph's cheek whitened and crimsoned.

He stopped in his tracks. In his eyes blank surprise was succeeded by red fury. For an instant they stood thus at gaze, with heaving breasts and stormy eyes.

"Keep away!" she said through her teeth.

"You devil!" he muttered. "I meant fair by you. I'll have you now anyway!"

She turned and sped up the hill. Ralph clutched at her, but her flying skirts only teased his finger-tips. He leaped after her, passion and an outrageous anger lending springs to his heels. A strange elation, too, formed part of the boiling mess in his brain. She chose to run; very well then, let her take the penalty of capture.

Darting and twisting among the birch trees, chin up and elbows pressed close to her sides, Nahnya ran as if upon a hundred feet. Ralph with the expenditure of three times the effort was no match for her. He could not twist his bulk among the trees so featly, nor leap so nimbly up from stone to stone. To be beaten by a girl was unthinkable. Grinding his teeth, putting his head down, he strained every nerve to overtake her. But she distanced him still. At the top of the hill he lost sight of her, nor could he any longer hear her flying moccasined feet among the leaves and sticks.

What with the race uphill, and the unconscionable commotion inside him, the burden was almost too much for a mortal heart. Ralph dropped on a stone, and pressed his head between his hands. There was a pretty mess inside it; to be scorned by a savage maiden, to have his face slapped--hideous insult--and to have her get away scot free! Something inside him seemed to writhe and turn over with rage.

He got up presently, and took his way downhill again with a black brow. "She's got to go back to the boat," he reflected grimly. "I'll get her there!"

As he issued out from among the trees he saw her. She was awaiting him by the waterside, cool and wary. At the sight of her his heart leaped up with an irresponsible, mad desire. No faun of earth's youth was more cruel, ardent, untamed, and joyous than this young doctor of the universities who had forgotten his past.

"By God! she's beautiful! And she's going to be mine!" his eyes cried.

"Keep away!" she said warningly.

He laughed, and ran toward her.

He could never have described exactly what happened. He saw her stoop swiftly, and sensed the stick that she caught up, without being able to stop himself. He heard the crack on his head that he did not feel, and night spread her black pinions with a swoop over the summer noon.

Ralph came to his senses to find himself lying in the bottom of the dugout, propped against folded blankets. A little in front of him he could see Charley's indifferent back, and Charley's arms rhythmically driving the paddle. Craning his neck to see if Nahnya was behind him, a most convincing, grinding pain from the crown of his head down through his spinal column arrested the movement. He closed his eyes, and lay quiet while it spent itself.

He became conscious of a sickening weight on his breast. Little by little recollection returned, explaining it. Life seemed like an ugly task to take up. To be flouted and scorned and knocked down by the woman he desired--a red woman into the bargain! He reflected bitterly that she must have told Charley what had happened. Ralph had a mental picture of the red-skin's shrug, and of being thrown contemptuously into the dugout. A deep, slow rage burned in his breast like a charcoal fire, poisoning his whole being with its fumes.

"If he shows anything in his face when he turns around, I'll smash him!" thought Ralph. "It would do me good to smash his sulky brown face. They shan't laugh at me, damn them!"

To add to the confusion inside him a little voice would make itself heard saying: "Served you right, old man! She's a good girl. She did just the right thing. You acted like a beast!"

This was what really maddened Ralph more than the recollection of his injuries. While he lay there so quietly with his eyes closed, inside him, so to speak, he was trying to shout down that damnable, persistent small voice.

"Ignorant, dull savages! Scum of the earth! How dare they set themselves up against a white man? I'll show them! I've been too friendly with them. Their heads are swelled. I'll put them in their places!"

By and by Nahnya asked: "You feel better now?"

He made believe to be still unconscious.

Leaning forward, she laid two cool fingers on the pulse of his temple. At her touch a keen discomfort filled him; pleasure or disgust?--he could not have told.

By this time they had crossed the lake, and the swiftly passing banks of the river were pressing close on them again. They turned innumerable bends, shot little rapids, and loitered across still pools as before. But the lyrical beauty of the summer's afternoon had departed. Ralph hated it. By and by he lost the river banks, and raising his head he saw that they had come out upon another lake. After what seemed to him like an age consumed in crossing it, they entered the river once more, and finally landed.

Not until they went ashore did Ralph have a glimpse of Nahnya's face. He avoided looking at her as long as he could. In equal degrees he longed and dreaded to find out what she was thinking. When finally his angry, sullen eyes crept sidewise to her face--if she had looked sorry! but no, it was the same old, hard, indifferent mask that fronted him. His unreasonable anger welled up afresh.

"All right, my girl!" he thought. "I'll pay you out yet!"

It was one of the customary camping-places on the river. On each side the fireplace a post had been driven in the earth and a bar laid across, from which depended wooden hooks of various lengths to hang the pails from. Some altruistic traveller had even made a rustic table and a bench for those who were to follow him.

According to their customary routine, they first slung the three little mosquito tents in a row, and then, making a fire, set about preparing supper. There was little speech exchanged between them. It was widely different from the jolly scene of the night before. The matter-of-fact Charley accepted the silence as he had accepted the fun, without question. Ralph could not tell from his expressionless face how much he knew of what had happened. The struggle inside Ralph was keeping his raw susceptibilities agitated as by the application of sandpaper. He was spoiling for a quarrel.

Charley, climbing the bank with a load from the boat, spoke a word over his shoulder to Ralph, who was beside the dugout: "_Pakwishegan_."

Ralph violently exploded. "If flour is wanted, carry it up yourself!" he cried with an oath. "Who do you think you are, giving orders to a white man!"

The boy looked at him astonished. Putting down his load, he came back for the bag of flour. Ralph went up empty-handed. At the top of the bank he met Nahnya, drawn by the sound of his angry voice.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Matter!" cried Ralph. "I suppose you and your brother think you can put it all over me now, don't you? Well you've got another guess!"

It was no sooner out than he wondered what had made him say it. Her astonished eyes reproached him. After a moment's blank regard she seemed to understand, and her face changed.

"You foolish," she said swiftly. "I not tell Charley anything. He only a boy, not much sense yet. I tell him you fall down and hit your head on a stone."

It took him aback. He looked at her dumbly and miserably, but his evil genius applied the lash once more. "I don't care what you tell him!" he cried loudly. He strode to his tent, and lifting the netting, rolled himself in his blankets, and made believe to go to sleep.

The voice was more insistent than ever. "You fool!" it said. "She's generous! She's trying to spare you. You gave yourself away nicely. You're in the wrong. You're acting like a spoiled child, and every minute that passes without your owning up makes it worse!"

Whereat the other party was obliged to shout louder than ever: "I don't care! Ignorant, senseless redskins! What a fool I was to put myself in their hands! I'll make them smart for this!"