"She's lying," said Staley coolly. "I traded at McIlwraith Lake six years off and on. I ought to know. She never come of Sikannis stock; they're an undersized people and narrow-eyed."
"Well, she's half-white, maybe," said Joe.
"She never showed her face on McIlwraith Lake when I was there," said Staley. "I knew them all. There's no hunter in the tribe called Scarface Jack Black. She was stringing you."
"I don't care," said Joe. "It don't hurt her looks any."
During the afternoon each one of the other three men made an occasion to sidle up to the girl; Matthews the sardonic Scotchman, Staley with his pale, sharp, storekeeper's face, and the lubberly old Wes' with his wandering pale eye, and his tobacco-stained chin. The girl's manner was the same to each; demure, receptive, simple-minded. Ralph could make nothing of her. All this was hard on his temper. He was divided between anger at the ill-concealed grossness of the men, and anger at Nahnya for not resenting it. He no longer took any pleasure in the beauty of the river.
At dusk they tied up to a tree on the shore and ran out a plank. The boys built a rousing fire under the pines, and as the darkness increased it made a fantastic chiaroscuro in crimson and black; the fire leaping under the boughs, the silhouettes of the half-breeds moving about it preparing supper, and on the river side the quaint little steamboat sticking her nose into the red glow.
When supper was ready the five white men sat down beside the fire, but the girl, notwithstanding the hearty and jocular invitations of four of them, carried her portion back on the boat.
"Let her go," said Joe. "She's dainty about eating in company."
His air of proprietorship was almost more than Ralph could brook. Joe, sitting cross-legged, with his stomach on his knees, was not a beautiful sight. He had divested himself of all unnecessary clothing. He ate and drank with a noisy gusto that was all his own, and his cheeks and the bald spot on his crown became purple with the effort. A mat of dank black hair hung over his forehead, and the long ends of his moustache dripped tea.
Nahnya sat down on the deck to her supper in view of the men, for it was not yet perfectly dark. Ralph, watching her covertly, was filled with a heavy anxiety at the thought of her position alone on the boat during the night. If she felt apprehensive herself she showed nothing, and it did not affect her appetite.