Across the river he saw the Indian lodges, and heard the distant hallo from rollicking comrades, swimming on the opposite side of the island. The troopers, the traders and the 'breeds were as dependent upon one another as if they were a colony upon an island in mid-ocean. He did not care to be with these men, but he desired comradeship. How could he overcome his natural reserve, make friends, yet not sacrifice his individuality and family traditions? He recalled his father's haughty: "Associate with your own kind, or walk the path alone." But he was too young to find joy in aloofness. The facility of speech, the adaptive moulding to another's mood was not in him!
"I'll have to be myself," he concluded. "I never cared before for men's good-will; but Arthur Latimer's camaraderie has made me see things differently."
O'Dwyer slept peacefully in the late afternoon, and Danvers envied him the contentment of his simple nature. He drew a package of letters from his red tunic and fingered them idly as he read the addresses. He selected the last from Arthur Latimer and read again the already familiar lines:
I am coming to the Whoop Up Country with Scar Faced Charlie. He leaves again for Fort Macleod in about a week. The doctor says that office work is bad for me and that I ought to get out in the open for a year or two. Really I am curious to see you in your giddy uniform, and shall enjoy a visit, though if I could get work I might stay permanently.
How is Burroughs progressing? Is he selling beads and tea to the Indians at a thousand per cent. profit, or selling them whisky on the Q. T. at fifty thousand per cent. profit? How are you and he hitting it off?
I saw Miss Thornhill last week, but, between you and me, poor devils of lawyers are not what my lady wants.
As Danvers folded the letter and replaced it, he felt a thrill of gladness at the thought of the meeting. There would be some one to share his joy in the sunsets and the prairie distances.
Then the future swept toward him; he wondered if this companionship with his friend would be all that he should ever know. The intangible, divine understanding that others knew—the possibility of an appreciation that would be sweet, came vaguely into his awakening heart. He took a newspaper clipping from his notebook and read:
There is an interesting old Chinese legend which relates how an angel sits with a long pole which he dips into the Sea of Love and lifts a drop of shining water. With an expert motion he turns one-half of this drop to the right, the other half to the left, where each is immediately transformed into a soul, a male and a female; and these souls go seeking each other forever.