Loseis and her horse appeared simultaneously. This was the first time that Gault had beheld the girl’s riding costume. It comprised Strathcona boots; breeches; a blue flannel shirt; and a flat-brimmed man’s hat set crookedly on one side of her head. The shirt was open at the neck, and under the collar she had knotted a gay red and yellow kerchief. She turned up her face to the sky, all open, drinking in the light with joy; and Gault, observing her hair, softer and blacker than anything else in Nature, the tender brilliance of her eyes, and her flower-petal lips, felt a pain like a needle go through his breast, and lost his sense of mastery.
He thought: The devil is in it, that she is able to hurt me so! She must never be allowed to suspect her power.
Loseis vaulted on her horse. They trotted down the rise, and passing between the tepees, splashed through the small stream. Clawing their way up the further bank, their horses broke into a gallop in the clean grass. Summer had pronounced her benediction on the North, and the world was like a freshly painted picture. Loseis, who was ahead, sang out:
“Oh, what a day for a ride!” To herself she added: “If that was Conacher pounding along behind, I should be the happiest girl alive!”
Their way led more or less close to the river. There were but two horse trails leaving Blackburn’s Post; that to Fort Good Hope, and this one which, after circling the easterly shore of Blackburn’s Lake, struck south to the distant rendezvous near the Crossing. Rich bottom lands alternated with occasional gravelly ridges to be crossed. Conversation was impossible; for horses trained to the trail will not travel abreast; however Gault, knowing that they would be out all day, was content to bide his time.
Descending into a lush meadow, already fetlock deep in grass, Loseis clapped heels to her horse, and set off, yelling like an Indian. Her sorrel mare laid her ears back and went like the wind. She would have yelled too if she could. The sight brought that needle-pain back to Gault’s breast, by reminding him that his day for yelling and running was forever past.
In another meadow they came upon a herd of horses quietly feeding, and Loseis paused to look them over. These were the broken horses kept on this side, while the wild horses ranged across the river. Blackburn on the day he was killed, had been engaged in rounding up these horses to take out the fur.
When they rode up on top of the ridge which formed the cut-bank known as Swallow Bend, all Loseis’ gayety was quenched. She slipped out of her saddle, and without speaking, handed her rein to Gault to hold. Creeping to the edge of the bank, she looked over. In the gravelly stuff below she could easily follow the marks where the horses had first struck, and then rolled down into the water. A wild regret filled her heart, and her tears ran fast.
They were still falling when she returned to Gault, and silently received her rein. Her grief was as natural and spontaneous as her gayety had been an hour before. The ageing man bit his lip and cursed her in his heart for being so beautiful.
Just below the lake they forded the main stream through a brawling shallow rapid, the Slavi village being on the other side. Scores of tepees rose here, as well as several log shacks built in imitation of the white man for winter use. Their coming was beheld from afar, and a tremendous commotion arose in the village; the news was shrieked from tepee to tepee. Upon their entrance a dead silence fell; and the Slavis, like school children all adopted a look of vacant stupidity as a cover for their embarrassment. Loseis did not dismount; but rode up and down, speaking to this one and that.