I
Viewed from the deck of a great lakes steamer travelling the commercial lane that runs less than two miles south of it, Amethyst Island is but a black speck among a hundred other foam-rimmed islets that dot Superior’s rugged north shore, an infinitesimal bit of rock and dry land before a frowning background of deep-riven hills, where range upon range breasts out from Nannabijou Point and disappears into the purple of the northern horizon. Time and evolution work few changes on those hills of desolation which rear their black, fantastic peaks above hostile, spruce-bearded flanks like age-chained monsters scorning in lofty nudity the might of man to efface or reclaim their barrenness. Everywhere they whisper of dark potentialities; of secret places where awful stillness reigns, of skulking grey wolves and gleaming white bones.
To the right of the clifflike point and seemingly rising just back of the skirting woods opposite Amethyst Island is the Cup of Nannabijou, a castlelike circle of black cliffs, whose base is really a stiff walk from the shoreline. It is territory to this day shunned by wandering Indian tribes, believed to be the prison in which Nannabijou, the Indian demi-god, attempted to wall up Animikee, the Thunder Devil; and this belief is strengthened in poor Lo’s mind by the magnetic flashes which play up from the hills on nights preceding electrical storms. Along a depression at the base of the cliffs flows Solomon Creek on its way to join the mighty, amber-coloured Nannabijou River before the latter empties into the bay. Solomon Creek tumbles out in a foaming white cascade from a great fissure in the cliffs, being the outlet for a limpid mountain lake confined by the walls of the Cup, a gleaming pool of gold by day and a mystic black mirror of the stars by night. In the rocks the Indians see the images of the men and beasts of their pagan worship; from a distance out on the lake the whole resembles the form of a recumbent giant lying on his back on the face of the waters.
But Amethyst Island itself, on closer inspection, proves of happier mien than its forbidding surroundings and of dimensions somewhat more significant than one would guess from the steamboat routes. Its area would equal half a city block and its shoreline is groved by patches of picturesque birch gleaming white among the mountain ash and spruce, while here and there a lofty, isolated white pine rears its whispering crest above the lower foliage with an air of patriarchal guardianship. A half dozen log cabins of substantial size and dove-tailed construction stand in the cleared centre, relics of a bygone silver mining boom, later renovated by wealthy city families into summer resort cottages.
In the most easterly of these cottages, Josephine Stone, of Calgary, had taken up her temporary residence. On this particular morning, which had broken in crisp autumnal loveliness, she had been astir from an early hour, and with her Indian maid and her companion, Mrs. Johnson, had set in order the appointments of the little front room with exacting care. No detail had been overlooked to make the best of such furnishings as the building boasted; even the blinds Miss Stone had herself accurately adjusted so that the softest light illumined the room. In the broad fireplace, built of native amethyst-encrusted boulders, a birch fire crackled in subdued cheeriness. On the table which centred the room stood a vase of fresh-gathered ferns, a bit of dull green colour that toned with the dignified quiet all about.
But Josephine Stone needed no artificial setting. A dream of fresh young womanly loveliness she was; a gentle presence that would brighten and glorify the most monotonous surroundings. Men wherever she had appeared had been swayed by this girl’s rare beauty, by the charm of her voice and her every gesture.
She had long since learned her power over men; this morning she was minded to test it impelled as she was by that resistless motive that has been called a woman’s curiosity—the motive that first brought mortal man to grief.
She moved about the room as one who is suppressing by will the tensest inward anxiety. Her Indian woman dismissed, she had tried to interest herself in a book, but her gaze most of the time was centred through the eastern window on a jutting point of the lake’s shoreline.
Josephine Stone dropped the book and caught at her breath. Round the point there suddenly flashed the slender red hull of a racing motor boat, bow reared in air above a creamy wavelet that widened V-like in its wake. The boat swept down the shoreline and the muffled staccato of its engines ceased abruptly as it dived from view under the shrubbery that fringed the island.