I shrugged my shoulders. "We can try. Come, Monsieur Starling, the men are growling, for you should have made the fire. Remember, you strayed into the woods and lost your way. Come, come, you must do your part."
She looked at me, and a sudden dry sob shook her. "Forgive me, monsieur!" she cried. "Yes, I will come." She tried to square her shoulders. "I must get my spirit back before I can meet the men in camp. Why am I such a coward!"
I dropped the bundle that I might take both her hands. "Mademoiselle," I said, "look at me. We are puppets in this matter. You have been thrown into my hands against my will and your own, and I swear to you that I will deal with you as fairly as I have strength. But you must play your part. So long as I treat you as a woman you will be a coward. Therefore I must be harsh with you. You have great will and can endure loneliness of soul. I must thrust you back upon yourself. There must be no woman in the camp. Come, monsieur, let us not talk of this longer. Are you ready?" And not waiting for assent, I led the way back to camp without word or look; I even kept myself from putting out a helping hand when I heard the steps behind me falter and almost fall.
As we came to the fire and met the men, I found myself fingering my sword. But it was a useless motion. The oafs saw nothing amiss, though to me the very air was shouting the secret. We had a fat larder, broiled whitefish and bear-steak from the kill of the day before, and the men were thinking much of their stomachs and not at all of the Englishman, save when they turned their backs upon him to show that he was out of favor. So we sat down to meat. We sat a long time, while the twilight faded and the stars pricked out clear, and there was little talk between us. I was sitting at meat with a woman, a woman of my own class, and I dared not offer her even the courtesy that one may show a serving maid. Well, I would take what each day might bring and not look ahead. I would think nothing about this person, as man or woman, but would fill my thought with the purpose that had brought me to the beaver lands. I told the men to be early astir that we might make a longer day of travel on the morrow.
The morrow was gray. The wind was in the east, and the sunrise watery and streaked with slate-colored bands. The water was clammy and opaque, repellent to touch and sight. The way looked dreary, and the woman carried her head high, as if in challenge to her courage. She had risen early, and had gone through her trifling share in the preparations, and though she had avoided me, I could see that she was ready to play her part.
We paddled on our knees that morning, for the waves were choppy. By ten o'clock the bands of cloud had merged into a dun canopy, and by noon a slow, cold rain was drizzling. I dreaded a halt, but the necessity pressed. I selected a small cove, well tree-grown, and we turned our canoes inland.
Fortunately the rain, though persistent, had been gentle, and had not penetrated far under the heavy foliaged pines. We selected a clump of large trees, chopped the lower branches, and scraping away the surface layer of moss and needles found dry ground. Here we piled the cargo in two mounds, which we hooded with tarpaulins and with our overturned canoes. Our provisions were snug enough; it was ourselves who were in dreary estate.
It rained all the afternoon, stopped for a half hour at sunset, when the sky, for a few moments, showed streaks of red, then closed in for a night's drizzle. I had built what shelter I could for the woman out of boughs covered with sheets of paper birch and elm. I had made a similar shelter for myself that I might not seem to discriminate too much in favor of the Englishman, and had told the men to do the same. But they were indolent, and stopped at chopping a few hemlock boughs, which they laid across crotched aspens. In truth, our shelters accomplished little against the cold and wet. Do what we could, we had great discomfort, and morning found the rain still dripping and the sky still unbroken gray.
And so it went for three days. The north country has such storms in the spring, and they chill all beauty out of the woods. We could do nothing. We kept what fire we could, regummed the seams of the canoes, and for the rest ate, sulked, and tried to sleep. The men gambled among themselves, and I grew weary of the click, click of their balls and the sound of their stupid boasts and low jesting. Yet I had no ground for stopping them, for the woman understood almost nothing of their uncouth speech. Indeed, she was little in sight or hearing. She stayed in her bark shelter, and I could hear her moving about, trying to keep it neat and herself in order. In those three days I learned one secret of her spirit. She had a natural merriment that did not seem a matter of will power nor even of wish. It was an instinctive, inborn content, that was perhaps partly physical, in that it enabled her to sleep well, and so to wake with zest and courage. By night her eyes might be dark circled and her step slow, but each morning there was interest in her looks to see what the strange day was about to bring. I had seen this nature in men many times; I had not thought that it belonged to women who are framed to follow rather than to look ahead.
For twenty-four hours we held little more intercourse than dumb people, but the second day she came to me.