"It's a frost," was Prime's decision after they had tugged and stumbled a little way with the clumsy burden knocking at their legs. "The mountain won't go to Mohammed—that much is perfectly plain. Are you game for a long portage with the camp outfit? It seems to be the only thing there is left for us to do."
The young woman was game, and since they were on the wrong side of the river they put the canoe into the water again and paddled to the other side, leaving the birch-bark drawn out upon the bank of the eddy-pool. From that they went on, hunger urging them and the water-softened moccasins holding them back and making them pick their way like children in the first few days of the barefoot season. The distance proved to be about three miles and they made it in something over an hour. The embers of their morning fire were still alive, and the belated midday meal was quickly cooked and despatched.
"Now for the hard part of it," Prime announced, as he began to pack the camp outfit. "You sit right still and rest, and I'll get things ready for the tote."
"Then you have determined to ride roughshod over the rights of the people who own the things?" the young woman asked.
Prime turned his back deliberately upon the pool of dread.
"Necessity knows no law, and we can't stay here forever waiting for something to turn up. Somebody has given us a strong-hand deal, for what reason God only knows, and we've got to fight out of it the best way we can. We'll take these things, and we are willing to pay for them if anybody should ask us to; but in any event we are going to take them, because it is a matter of life and death to us. I'll shoulder all the responsibility, moral and otherwise."
She laughed a little at this. "More of the protective instinct? I can't allow that—my conscience is my own. But I suppose you are right. There doesn't seem to be anything else to do. And you needn't fit all of those packs to your own back; I propose to carry my share."
He protested at that, and learned one more thing about Lucetta Millington: up to a certain point she was as docile and leadable as the woman of the Stone Age is supposed to have been, and beyond that she was adamant.
"You said a little while ago it was a pity I wasn't a man: it is the woman's part nowadays to ask no odds. Will you try to remember that?"
Here was a hint of a brand-new Lucetta, and Prime wondered how he had contrived to live twenty-eight years in a world of women only to be brought in contact for the first time with the real, simon-pure article in the heart of a Canadian wilderness. Nevertheless he took her at her word and made a small pack for her, with a carrying-strap cut from the remains of the deerskin. At the very best the portage promised to demand three trips, which was appalling.