The girl laughed and looked around on the pushing crowd. “I guess we’d best stop right here on the viaduck; here’s just where they started last year an’ the year before. Oh, see, here’s the Alaskas camped pretty near under us!”
As she lifted her voice a little Diller saw a young man standing near start and turn toward her with a glad look of recognition; but at once his glance rested on Diller, and his expression changed to a kind of puzzled bewilderment. The girl was leaning over the railing and did not see him, but he never took his eyes away from her and Diller.
There was a long wait, but the crowd did not lose its patience or its good humor. There was considerable betting going on, and there was the same exciting uncertainty about the start. The sun went down and a bank of apricot-colored clouds piled low over the snow crest of Mount Baker in the East. The pier darkened and the path of gold faded, but splashes of scarlet still lingered on the blue water. A chill, sweet wind started up suddenly, and some of the girl’s bronze curls got loose about her white temples. Diller put her wrap around her carefully, and she smiled up at him deliciously. Then she cried out, “Oh, they’re gettin’ into the boat! They’re goin’ to start. Oh, I’m so glad!” and struck her two hands together gleefully, like a child.
The long, narrow, richly-painted and carven canoe slid down gracefully into the water. Eleven tall, supple Alaskan Indians, bare to the waist, leaped lightly to their places. They sat erect, close to the sides of the boat, holding their short paddles perpendicularly. At a signal the paddles shot straight down into the water, and, with a swift, magnificent straining and swelling of muscles in the powerful bronze arms and bodies, were pushed backward and withdrawn in lightning strokes. The canoe flashed under the viaduct and appeared on the other side, and a great shout belched from thousands of throats. From camping-places farther up the shore the other boats darted out into the water and headed for the viaduct.
“Oh, good! good!” cried Lavinia in a very ecstasy of excitement. “They’re goin’ to start right under us. We’re just in the place!”
“Twenty dollars on the Nooksacks!” yelled a blear-eyed man in a carriage. “Twenty! Twenty ag’inst ten on the Nooksacks!”
The band burst into “Hail, Columbia!” with beautiful irrelevancy. The crowd came surging back from the pier. Diller was excited, too. His face was flushed and he was breathing heavily. “Who’ll you bet on?” he asked, laughing, and thinking, even at that moment, how ravishingly lovely she was with that glow on her face and the loose curls blowing about her face and throat.
“Oh, the Alaskas!” cried the girl, striking little blows of impatience on the railing with her soft fists. “They’re so tall an’ fine-lookin’! They’re so strong an’ grand! Look at their muscles—just like ropes! Oh, I’ll bet on the Alaskas! I love tall men!”
“Do you?” said Diller. “I’m tall.”
They looked into each other’s eyes again and laughed. Then a voice spoke over their shoulders—a kind, patient voice. “Oh, Laviny,” it said; “I wouldn’t bet if I was you.”