The girl rose and walked away, and the fog shut her from their sight immediately. She heard the old man cursing the incautious scout. “Why the blazes didn’t you smooth it? You’ve gone to work and hurt her feelings. She made her mistake, and she admits it. We all make our mistakes,” said the rebuker. “But she’s true blue! I ain’t laying up anything against Latisan because he doesn’t show up. It’s because the girl is here that we are making men of ourselves right now. She’s deserving of all we can give her. By gad! say I, she’s going to make good with our help.”
She was a considerable distance down the river path, but she heard that speech and the shout of the men indorsing the declaration.
Lida hastened as rapidly as she was able along the path that led to Skulltree; she had reconnoitered on the previous day—going as near the dam as she dared, trying to make the lay of the land suggest some method by which battle might be avoided.
While she ran down the path that morning she was arriving at some definite conclusions. The news about Director Craig had put desperate courage into her. The upper and the nether millstones of men and events in the north country had begun their grim revolutions; she resolved to cast herself between those stones in an effort to save faithful men who were innocent of fault.
When the dull rumble of the sluiceway waters informed her that she was near the camp of the enemy she went more cautiously, and when she heard the voices of men she called, announcing that she desired to speak with Director Craig.
Somebody replied, after a pause which indicated that considerable amazement had been roused by a woman’s voice.
“Come along, whoever you are! Mr. Craig is on the dam.”
A man who kept jerking his head around to stare frankly at her led her along the string piece of the great structure.
Their meeting—she and the Comas director—was like a rencontre in the void of space; on the water side of the dam the mists matched the hue of the glassy surface and the blending masked the water; on the other side, the fog filled the deep gorge where the torrent of the sluiceway thundered.
She was obliged to go close to him in order to emerge from the vapor into his range of vision and to make her voice heard above the roar of the water. His one visible eye surveyed her with blank astonishment; near as she was to him, he did not recognize her at first in her rough garb of the woods.