"Well, sirs, they say he said that little valley was as beautiful as Paradise; but that wa'n't all. In the middle of it were a little lake, different-coloured water from any on earth, green as a bottle-like, good water, too. Little streams come down from the mountains all around, and flowed through meadows of flowers into that lake, and Tom said the banks of all those little streams was yellow with gold, yellow with gold, sirs! Tom said he stayed there six months and washed two hundred pound of it. Them beside his bed laughed, him having nothing to show. If he'd been content with a hundred pounds, now, 'twould have sounded more reasonable. Well, they on'y laughed at Tom and buried him. And it's got to be a saying-like 'round Kimowin when a feller gets a bee in his bonnet, 'Oh he's found Bowl of the Mountains!' they say. But I ain't so sure there ain't something in it. I seen Tom's grave in the cemetery at Kimowin: 'Thomas Sadler, who bit July 9th, 1861.' I seen it myself carved on the stone. That ain't no hearsay."
Finally about three o'clock, nobody else being disposed to "buy," although Wes' provided several good openings, the captain and the passengers made their final farewells and went aboard. The little Tewksbury backed out of the mud, and turned her nose upstream, with a heave and a snort at every stroke of the piston, and a great kick-up astern. The little group on the shore adjourned again to Maroney's for something to pick them up against the flat feeling that oppresses those who are left behind.
On board the Tewksbury the white men gathered on the forward deck around the capstan, and continued their talk. There was Wes' Trickett, and Matthews, his engineer; Joe Mixer and Pete Staley, who were taking up an outfit to Gisborne portage to start a store, and Ralph. Meanwhile, the half-breed crew ran the boat. The warmth of the sun, the peace of the river, and the late potations at Maroney's joined to produce a lulling effect on the group. Conversation became fitful. Joe Mixer fell asleep with his back against the capstan.
The Tewksbury was not exactly a river greyhound; six miles an hour was her rate, and since the current ran four, her net progress upstream was about two. On the bends of the river, where the deep water ran swiftly under the bank on the wide side of the arc, it was nip and tuck between the little Tewksbury and the river. No one on board expressed any impatience.
"You got to go either forward or back," said Wes' philosophically, "and if you ain't goin' back you're bound to arrive some time."
"Let her puff," said Pete Staley comfortably. "'Tain't comin' out of our lungs."
Ralph was happy. The weight of weeks of boredom was lifted from his breast. After all, life was a sporting affair. He never tired of watching the moving brown flood spotted with foam, endlessly and serenely opposing their progress, ever yielding under the vessel's forefoot, without giving back. From the water he lifted his eyes to the clean, pine-clad hills, insolently planting themselves in the path of the river, and forcing it to go around. The afternoon sun was lavishly gilding the southerly slopes. Overhead the sky was an inverted bowl of palest turquoise. Ralph naturally kept these poetic comparisons to himself. Wes' Trickett, Matthews, Mixer, and Staley were a hard-headed, scornful, tobacco-chewing quartet.
The deckhouse was a rough shanty with a wide sliding door at each side, and one in front. From where he sat near the capstan Ralph could see Nahnya within, sitting on a box by one of the side doors with her hands in her lap, and her eyes bent on the river. Her quiet and self-contained air stimulated his curiosity. He wondered what she was thinking about. The fact that she had forbidden him to approach her on the boat kept his desire to do so ever fresh. He cast around in his mind for some way to get around her prohibition. She had removed the ridiculous hat to her lap, and her bare head bound round with a thick, black braid of hair was wholly beautiful and graceful against the light.
"Where did she get that proud look from?" thought Ralph. "All she needs is a diadem and an ermine cloak."
Ralph was not the only man on board who had remarked the handsome passenger. By and by Joe Mixer woke up, and blinked at her sidewise from between his thick lids.