"Oh, it is as good as that, is it?" she asked.
"Well, it has just as good a final situation," I answered. She seemed puzzled, for she saw I spoke with some undercurrent of meaning. "Mrs. Falchion," I said to her suddenly and earnestly, "I wish you to think between now and to-morrow of what I am just going to say to you."
"It sounds like the task set an undergraduate, but go on," she said.
"I wish you to think," said I, "of the fact that I helped to save your life."
She flushed; an indignant look shot into her face, and her voice vibrating, she said:
"What man would have done less?" Then, almost immediately after, as though repenting of what she had said, she continued in a lower tone and with a kind of impulsiveness uncommon to her: "But you had courage, and I appreciate that; still, do not ask too much. Good-night."
We parted at that, and did not meet again until the next afternoon, when I joined her and her party at the summer hotel. Together we journeyed down to Sunburst.
It was the height of the salmon-fishing season. Sunburst lay cloyed among the products of field and forest and stream. At Viking one got the impression of a strong pioneer life, vibrant, eager, and with a touch of Arcady. But viewed from a distance Sunburst seemed Arcady itself. It was built in green pastures, which stretched back on one side of the river, smooth, luscious, undulating to the foot-hills. This was on one side of the Whi-Whi River. On the other side was a narrow margin, and then a sheer wall of hills in exquisite verdure. The houses were of wood, and chiefly painted white, sweet and cool in the vast greenness. Cattle wandered shoulders deep in the rich grass, and fruit of all kinds was to be had for the picking. The population was strangely mixed. Men had drifted here from all parts of the world, sometimes with their families, sometimes without them. Many of them had settled here after mining at the Caribou field and other places on the Frazer River. Mexican, Portuguese, Canadian, Californian, Australian, Chinaman, and coolie lived here, side by side, at ease in the quiet land, following a primitive occupation with primitive methods.
One could pick out the Indian section of the village, because not far from it was the Indian graveyard, with its scaffolding of poles and brush and its offerings for the dead. There were almost interminable rows of scaffolding on the river's edge and upon the high bank where hung the salmon drying in the sun. The river, as it ambled along, here over shallows, there over rapids and tiny waterfalls, was the pathway for millions and millions of salmon upon a pilgrimage to the West and North— to the happy hunting grounds of spawn. They came in droves so thick at times that, crowding up the little creeks which ran into the river, they filled them so completely as to dam up the water and make the courses a solid mass of living and dead fish. In the river itself they climbed the rapids and leaped the little waterfalls with incredible certainty; except where man had prepared his traps for them. Sometimes these traps were weirs or by-washes, made of long lateral tanks of wicker-work. Down among the boulders near the shore, scaffoldings were raised, and from these the fishermen with nets and wicker-work baskets caught the fish as they came up.
We wandered about during the afternoon immensely interested in all that we saw. During that time the party was much together, and my conversation with Mrs. Falchion was general. We had supper at a quiet little tavern, idled away an hour in drinking in the pleasant scene; and when dusk came went out again to the banks of the river.