“Tell you what I’ll do,” said Conacher. “Cache your flour here, and carry us down to the mouth of the river and it shall be yours.”
“Don’t mind ef I do,” said Bill Mitchell.
After the labors of the past days that last ten miles was like riding in a taxi. They whisked the light canoe around the rapid with no trouble at all. Below, the Mud River widened out and found its way into the Sinclair through a miniature delta amongst low, grassy islands covered with gigantic cottonwood trees that created a dim green twilight below. Mitchell landed them on a pine-clad point that looked down a reach of the greater river, several miles long. The old man did not get out.
“Won’t you spell with us?” asked Conacher politely.
The pioneer rubbed his hairy chin, and squinted down river as if he had perceived something important down there. “I guess not,” he drawled. “Got to be gettin’ along.” With a casual good-by, he pushed off and resumed his solitary journey up-stream.
“What a strange creature!” murmured Loseis.
“It was the presence of a lady which embarrassed him,” said Conacher. “He confided to me that he had not seen a white girl in seven years.”
Twenty-four hours later it was Conacher who perceived, down at the end of the long reach, the flash of wet paddles in the sun.
“Here they come!” he cried.