“That load is far too heavy for you to climb over these boulders with when you have an injured foot. You can give me the valise, at least.”
“No,” said Weston, resolutely, “this is a good deal easier than shoveling gravel, as well as pleasanter; and the foot really doesn’t trouble me very much. Besides, if I hadn’t cut it, Cassidy wouldn’t have sent me here.”
He was, however, mistaken in supposing that the construction foreman had been influenced only by a desire to get rid of a man who was to some extent incapacitated. As a matter of fact, Miss Stirling, who had been rather pleased with the part he had played two days ago, had, when her father insisted on her taking a white man as well as the Indians, given Cassidy instructions that he should be sent. Still, she naturally did not mention this, and indeed said nothing of any account while they went on to the canoes.
It was slacker water above the rapid; and all afternoon they slid slowly up on deep, winding reaches of the still, green river. Sometimes it flashed under dazzling sunshine, but at least as often they moved through the dim shadow of towering pines that rolled, rank on rank, somber and stately, up the steep hillside, while high above them all rose tremendous ramparts of eternal snow. Then, as the sun dipped behind the great mountain wall, the clean, aromatic fragrance of pine and fir and cedar crept into the cooling air, and a stillness so deep that it became almost oppressive descended upon the lonely valley. The splash of pole or paddle broke through it with a startling distinctness, and the faint gurgle at the bows became curiously intensified. The pines grew slower, blacker and more solemn; filmy trails of mist crawled out from among the hollows of the hills; and the still air was charged with an elixir-like quality when Weston ran his canoe ashore.
While he and the Indians set about erecting a couple of tents, he saw Miss Kinnaird standing near him and gazing up across the misty pines toward the green transparency that still hung above the blue-white gleam of snow.
“This,” she said to Miss Stirling, “is really wonderful. One can’t get hold of it at once. It’s tremendous.”
The smallest of the pines rose two hundred feet above her; and they ran up until they dwindled to insignificance far aloft at the foot of a great scarp of rock that rose beyond them for a thousand feet or so and then gave place in turn to climbing fields of snow.
The girl, who was an artist, drew in her breath.
“Switzerland and Norway. It’s like them both—and yet it grips you harder than either,” she added. “I suppose it’s because there are no hotels, or steamers. Probably very few white people have ever been here before.”
“I really don’t think many have,” said Ida Stirling.