Suppose she did find the ore? The claim must be recorded and developed as the mining laws required, and she would need a man who understood such matters to help her; but it must be a man she could trust. She could trust Thirlwell and admitted that she had half-consciously allotted him the supposititious post; for one thing, if he were manager, they would not be separated by her success. But this was going too far, and she resolutely pulled herself up. She had not found the vein and was perhaps thinking about Thirlwell oftener than she ought. Feeling for the hooks, she fastened the tent door and soon afterwards went to sleep.
They launched the canoes in the cool of the morning, while the mist drifted among the pines and the sun came up behind the forest. The stream ran fast and as they toiled up river a brawny half-breed waded through the shallows with the tracking line. Thirlwell stood in the stern, using the pole, and Agatha noted the smooth precision of his movements. He wasted no effort and did not seem to be working hard, but he did what he meant and the hint of force was plainer than when he talked. Two Metis were occupied with the canoe behind and as they poled and tracked they sang old songs made by the early French voyageurs. Although the river had shrunk far down the bank, there was water enough for the canoes, and Agatha remarked how skilfully the men avoided the rocks in the channel and drove the craft up angry rapids.
When they nooned upon a gravel bank near the end of a wide lake it was fiercely hot. The calm water, flashed like polished steel, and Agatha could hardly see the flames of the snapping fire; the smoke went up in thin gray wreaths that were almost invisible. A clump of juniper grew among the stones and she sat down in the shade and looked about with dazzled eyes. A line of driftwood, hammered by the ice and bleached white by the sun, marked the subsidence of the water from its high, spring level. Small islands broke the shining surface, some covered with stunted trees and some quite bare. The rocks about the beach were curiously worn, but Agatha knew they had been ground smooth by drifting floes. Behind the beach, the forest rolled back in waves of somber green to a bold ridge that faded into leaden thunder-clouds.
The landscape was wild, and although it had nothing of the savage grandeur Agatha expected, she thought it forbidding. Its influence was insidious; one was not daunted by a glance, but realized by degrees its grimness and desolation. The North was not dramatic, except perhaps when the ice broke up; the forces that molded the rugged land worked with a stern quietness. It looked as if they also molded the character of the men who braved the rigors of the frozen waste. The Metis were not vivacious like the French habitants; they were marked by a certain grave melancholy and their paddling songs had a plaintive undertone. Yet their vigor and stubbornness were obvious, and Agatha thought Thirlwell was like his packers, in a way. He was not melancholy, and indeed, often laughed, but one got a hint of reserve and unobtrusive strength. He did not display his qualities, as some of the professors and business men she knew had done, but she imagined they would be seen if there was need.
"In a sense, the North is disappointing," she remarked. "I expected to feel rather overwhelmed, but I'm not."
"Wait," said Thirlwell, smiling. "After a few hundred miles of lonely trail you'll know the country better. I don't want you to get to love it; but in the wilderness love often goes with fear."
"Once I thought that impossible," Agatha replied. "Now I don't know. I'm beginning to recognize that I'm not as modern as I thought. But have you ever been frankly afraid of the wilds?"
"Often. When you meet the snow on the frozen trail, a hundred miles from shelter, mind and body shrink. Perhaps it's worse when all that stands for warmth and life is loaded on the hand-sledge you haul across the rotten ice. Then it's significant that the Metis are sometimes more afraid than white men. They know the country better."
"They haven't the civilized man's intellect. Ignorance breeds superstition that makes men cowards."
"That's so, to some extent," Thirlwell agreed. "I suppose superstition is man's fear of dangers he can't understand and his wish to propitiate the unknown powers that rule such things. You and I call these powers natural forces, for which we have our weights and measures; but I must own that the measures are often found defective when applied to mining. I've met rock-borers who would sooner trust a mascot than a scientific rule."