The winding swift stream was no place for an amateur. Many a rock barely visible on a quiet morning will rip a canoe. If you stand on the headland where Ojeeg’s ancestors used to watch for bear, you see below you a flowing pavement, dark and uneven, warped and cracked, a street that only the gull can tread. Now it was Jean’s business to climb it in utter darkness, but she knew the way. She did not need the gleam of a lantern on a blossom of foam. She could tell by the pull of the current and the sound of the rapids.
She groped along the eastern shore of Seen-ze-bah-cud, and by ten o’clock her right oar, like a fingertip, discovered Ojeeg’s sailboat.
She lighted her lantern and tied her boat to a birch that leaned out over the water. Then she stepped ashore, hung her lantern on a hazel, and put on her blouse. The lantern shone in the bush and pinked out the tufted bunches of hazel-nuts, and shone on Jean herself as she lifted her rosy arms.
Warm in her new sweater, she seized the lantern and started up a path. Sometimes the light revealed a maple with scars, for the Indian tomahawks his sugar trees. Here it flashed on the yellow of a certain birch which draws on the same mysterious fountain as the wintergreen. Here it glowed on ancient elms. Far above in the blackness their mighty harps hung motionless, waiting like Memnon for the morning. A mile of it, all fragrant and dark and virginal, and the sound of rain on the leafy roof gave way. She was in Ojeeg’s clearing.
She moved softly past the house and came to the door of the birch-bark lodge. It was open, and from within came a sudden growl. “Ahne-moosh!” she whispered. A big Eskimo dog emerged and licked her hand in the dark.
Then she called softly, “Shinguakonse!”
No answer.
She threw the gleam of her lantern ahead. The lad was sound asleep on his bed of birch, the deerskin thongs of which were visible beside the blanket in which he was rolled.
She sat down on the silvery edge and touched him. He started, opened bewildered eyes, and sat up.
“Tyah! Is Mainutung sick?”