The voices of Gault and the Crees were still receding. Simultaneously it occurred to Conacher and Loseis that they could now permit themselves to hope. Stopping, they flew into each other’s arms. It was a moist embrace, but none the less rapturous. After the frightful strain of the past days, the reaction was unnerving. In their joy and relief, they both partly broke down; but neither was ashamed of showing emotion.
“Oh, my Paul!” murmured Loseis. “Perhaps we are going to be happy after all!”
“Perhaps?” cried Conacher. “I should like to see anybody stop us now?”
He was not, however, quite so sure as all that.
The river flat gradually narrowed down to the typical coulee of the prairies, with the little stream running in the bottom. As the ground began to rise, the willows ceased, and the way became rough and stony. Conacher struck obliquely up the steep side of the coulee to find better going over the prairie. The moon rose as they gained the upper level, throwing a strange misty glamour over that vast, fixed, rolling sea. They pressed briskly ahead through the short buffalo grass which did not impede the feet, keeping the North Star over their right shoulders. Their clothes dried slowly; but the exercise of walking kept them warm.
Their hearts were light. The awful bare solitudes, rise behind rise in endless succession, and the deathlike silence had no power to oppress them now. How could they feel lonely walking hand in hand free under the sky? Day stole upon them with enchanting beauty. The prairie was sprinkled with wild roses and the rose madder flower that is called painter’s brush. Prairie chickens fluttered from bush to bush companionably; and little furry four-footed creatures scurried for the shelter of their holes. Loseis sang as she walked; and Conacher cracked his jokes.
The sun was rising behind them as they came to the edge of a wide, saucer-like depression in the prairie, holding in the bottom an oval pond of an astonishing blueness. It was dotted with snowy water fowl. All the surrounding country dimpled like a vast cheek in smooth rounds and hollows, was mantled with a tender green, grayish in the shadows. At the left hand side of the lake grew a wide patch of poplar scrub; that is to say, thousands of little saplings growing as thick as hair, and putting forth leaves of so intense a green it was like a shout in the morning. The whole picture was washed with rose color in the horizontal rays of the rising sun.
Loseis drew a long breath. “I never realized how beautiful the prairie was!” she murmured. “It never was so beautiful,” she amended, putting her hand on Conacher’s arm. “How marvelous to one who has been a prisoner! Even if they should catch us we shall have had this!”
“They’re not going to catch us,” said Conacher. “Not while I have a hundred shells in my belt.”
Loseis pointed to the poplar scrub. “That’s the meeting place with Mary-Lou to-night.”