"Did you tell him what they were?" asked Humpy, all agog.
"No," said Jack coolly. "He wouldn't have thanked me. He'll find it out himself in a couple of days."
"The nerve of it," said Humpy, tremendously impressed, "to play the governor himself for a sucker! There'll be the deuce to pay when it all comes out!"
It was impossible for Jack's spirits to remain permanently depressed. To-night, after a long silence, the banjo and the insinuating baritone were heard for a while by the fire. At the sound, Linda, in the big tent, changed colour. The ladies still dressed for dinner as far as they could, and Linda, with her elaborate hair arrangement, the pearls in her ears, and the rings on her fingers, made an odd urban figure to be here on the lonely plains.
Her attention wandered, and finally she committed the capital crime of bridge.
"You've revoked!" cried Sir Bryson aghast, "when the game and the rubber were ours!"
She was not much cast down by her parent's reproaches. "Kate, take my hand," she said cajolingly. "I've no head for the game to-night."
They changed places, and Linda carried her chair outside the door of the tent. The cook-fire was only some twenty paces distant, and she saw Jack in his favourite attitude, the small of his back supported against a log, and the banjo across his thighs. The admiring Humpy Jull sat on the other and of the log, whittling a stick.
Jack saw her come out, and he felt the call that she sent him. He drew in his upper lip a little, and stayed where he was. He would have been glad enough to go of his own volition, but the hint of coercion made him stubborn. Linda was finally obliged to retire beaten.
Next morning the pack-train climbed the steep hill that barred the way, traversed the ancient portage around the canyon, and finally camped beside the river again in a little clearing that has been a camping-place since before the white men found America. Looking across to the left, a smooth wall of rock seemed to bar the river's progress; an ominous hoarse roar issued from its foot. All around them rose moderate mountain heights green to their summits; farther upstream were the first-class peaks.