“Those ranges could hardly be beaten,” said Weston.
He paddled a little more strenuously after this, and Ida abandoned the attempt to extract any expression of opinion from him. She had made sufficient advances, and she would go no further.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t care to fish any longer. Can’t we shoot that rapid?”
Weston’s answer was given without hesitation. It requires nerve and judgment to shoot a frothing rapid. Just then, however, the task promised to be a relief to him. His companion was very alluring, and very gracious now and then, and that afternoon he found it remarkably difficult to remember that she was the daughter of his employer, and that there were a good many barriers between her and himself.
“Yes,” he said, “I think it would be safe enough if you’ll sit quite still.”
Three or four strokes of the paddle drove the canoe out into the stream, and after that, all he had to do was to hold her straight. This was, however, not particularly easy, for the mad rush of water deflected by the boulders swung her here and there, and the channel was studded with foam-lapped masses of stone. Gazing forward, intent and strung-up, he checked her now and then with a feathering backstroke of the paddle, while the boulders flashed up toward her out of the spray, and the pines ashore reeled by. The foam stood high about the hollowed, upswept bow, and at times boiled a handbreadth above the depressed waist, but, while the canoe swept on like a toboggan, none came in. There was more than a spice of risk in it, and Ida, who knew what the result would be if her companion’s nerve momentarily deserted him, now and then glanced over her shoulder. When she did so, he smiled reassuringly, leaning forward with wet hands clenched hard on the flashing paddle. She felt that he was to be relied on.
Then she abandoned herself to the exhilaration of the furious descent, watching boulder and eddy stream by, while the spray that whirled about her brought the crimson to her face. At length the pace grew a little slacker, and Weston drove the canoe into an eddy where a short rapid divided them from the smooth green strip of water that poured over what could almost be called a fall. Then she turned toward him with glowing face.
“That was splendid!” she exclaimed. “Can’t we go right on down the fall?”
Weston ran the canoe in upon the shingle before he answered her.
“No,” he said, though it cost him an effort not to do as she wished, “I’m sorry I can’t take you down.”