The Sealed Valley. Footner Hulbert

III

       ON THE LITTLE RIVER

       Table of Contents

      The next day passed as if the scene of the night had not taken place. The question of the girl passenger did not become acute again, because all the men were too busy to pay her any attention. When they arose to their breakfast Joe Mixer's bearing toward Ralph was as near as he could make it unaltered from the day before. In this a less open nature would have perceived something more dangerous than candid enmity, but it was characteristic of the easy-going Ralph to meet him halfway.

      From sun-up to dark they were engaged almost continuously in pulling the little Tewksbury up the Gisborne rapids, crew and passengers pitching in together. After his weeks of inaction at Fort Edward, Ralph welcomed hard work, and felt like a man again. The entire operation was novel and interesting to him. A hawser was sent ashore in a boat, one end remaining on the vessel; the other end was tied to a stout tree upstream, and with eight men at a time bending their backs to the capstan, the little vessel hauled herself up hand over hand on the rope. Meanwhile her paddle-wheel was not idle astern. When the rope was all in, another was sent ashore and the trick repeated. More than once the rope broke and they lost all they had gained. It was nine o'clock before they got in smooth water again, and night was falling when they finally tied up to the bank at Gisborne portage, below the new store of Mixer & Staley.

      Ralph himself had made no attempt to approach Nahnya during the day. It was enough for him to watch her covertly, and to picture to himself the delights of the coming journey when he would have her to himself. The fever in Ralph's veins, all unknown to him, was making a dangerously rapid headway. Already the mere thought of this journey was enough to set his heart beating fast.

      As they were making a landing in the dusk, every one else being occupied at the moment, Ralph suddenly found her at his elbow saying swiftly:

      "You sleep with the men in the bunk-house to-night; I make out I sleep here."

      "I won't leave you alone," Ralph began heatedly. "Last night——"

      She calmly interrupted him. "I not stay here truly," she said. "Soon as everybody go I walk to my camp at Hat Lake. It is six miles. You come over there early. Soon as it get light. The tote road show you the way."

      Some one turned in their direction, and she was gone.

      Ralph was, as a matter of course, invited to sup with Mixer and Staley, and to spend the night in their bunkhouse. After having turned in with Joe and the others, he was awakened in the middle of night by hearing the fat man come in and fling himself with muttered curses into a bunk across the room. Ralph swallowed a chuckle and took a fresh hold on sleep.

      He awoke automatically when daylight whitened the window-panes, which is to say at three o'clock in June at that latitude. The others were sleeping like vocal logs. Just over the threshold of the stuffy sleeping-place morning was waiting for him, a miracle of refreshment. He inhaled its chill sweetness as if his lungs were for the first time washed with fresh air, and looked about him with the curiosity of the traveller who arrived in the dark. Where he stood men's axes had made a hideous scar on the prospect, and he turned his back on the shacks and the stumps to gaze at the unalterable river. In the half-light the brown flood and the hills opposite had a secret look, a finger on the lips that hushed him from making any noise. It seemed like the earliest morning of earth. The water tempted him to a brief plunge.

      Dressing, and taking his bag and blankets, he started to climb with a light heart. Was he not going to her? "This is where the fun really begins," he told himself. The tote road rose in plain view behind the shack. Halfway up the incline Ralph was startled to come upon an Indian youth squatting beside the trail as still as an image—so still that Ralph was upon him before he realized the figure was not part of the landscape. It was a surprising object to find in a world that you thought was all your own.

      The boy was gayly attired in an embroidered velvet waistcoat, a clean gingham shirt, a red sash, buckskin trousers, and fancy moccasins. On his head was an expensive felt hat with flaring, stiff brim. He was a handsome, well-set-up youth of about nineteen, with a face as blank of expression as a cat's. A good-sized pack lay on the ground beside him.

      "Hello, there!" cried Ralph in his surprise.

      The Indian rose, and without altering a muscle of his brown mask, extended a hand. "How!" he said.

      "You're up early," said Ralph. "What are you doing here?"

      The boy pulled his ear and shook his head to convey to Ralph that his speech was wasted. In unmistakable signs he then let it be known that he was waiting for Ralph, and that Ralph was to follow him.

      "Waiting for me?" said Ralph. "Who the deuce are you?"

      The boy said something in his own tongue of which Ralph distinguished the word Nahnya. It filled Ralph with a certain disquiet.

      Without waiting for more, the Indian shouldered his pack and set off up the trail at a brisk pace. Ralph followed as best he could. The incident had dashed his delight in the morning. There was no room for a third identity in his dreams of the journey that was to be. Ralph made but heavy going. The bulk of his bundles discommoded him more than the weight. He had the roll of blankets under one arm and the dunnage bag under the other. The Indian never looked behind to see how he fared. Reaching the top of the hill he immediately fell into the rolling rack to which white men's hips accommodate themselves only after practice.

      The boy's complete indifference to his struggles did not improve Ralph's temper. After a mile of it, panting, perspiring, and with breaking arms, he flung his bundles on the ground and commanded the Indian to stop. The boy came back with a slightly contemptuous air, and putting off his own pack, waited indifferently, looking everywhere but at Ralph.

      Ralph swore at him out of his heartfelt exasperation, and the boy brightened a little. Evidently this was something he knew. Ralph with forcible gestures made him understand that he was to show him how to pack the stuff in the proper way on his back.

      It was the longest six miles Ralph ever travelled, nor had he any eye for the beauties by the way. To be obliged to exert himself so strenuously before breakfast caused him to feel as if the walls of his stomach had collapsed, and put him in a grinding temper.

      At the end of two hours the suspicion of a welcome tang on the air caused Ralph to throw up his head and sniff. "Bacon, by Gad!" he cried aloud.

      They turned the spur of a knoll and saw lying before them an exquisite little stretch of water, gleaming like an opal under the pale sky. Along its margin reached a narrow meadow of rich green, where a little fire burned, sending a column of thin smoke straight aloft, and beside the fire was Nahnya. She turned a quick face at the sound of their footsteps.

      At sight of her Ralph forgot his hungry ill-temper. The girl was transformed. The deplorable hat, the awkward trade clothes, the ill-fitting shoes were discarded. She was wearing a blue flannel shirt open at the throat, and with the sleeves turned up revealing a pair of poetic forearms; a buckskin skirt, and moccasins of white doeskin, silk embroidered. Thus garbed she was as suitable to her background of woods and water as one of the wild swans up the lake. Ralph, gazing at her, felt triumphantly justified. "I knew she looked like this!" he thought.