XI
THE DEPARTURE FROM THE VALLEY
Ralph wished to leave the valley by himself. After what had happened, to be with Nahnya night and day without ever meeting her eyes, or exchanging a word beyond what the business of camp made necessary, seemed like the very refinement of torture. But there was no help for it. It was too hard to go back upstream, Nahnya said; they must go out a different way, and she must show him.
She took Charley, which made it easier. They set off next morning. In his instinct to conceal pain, Ralph was as much an Indian as any of them. No one could have guessed from his composed face what had happened. Such natures consume themselves inwardly. He was scarcely conscious of what was taking place outside him.
Charley was nothing loath at the prospect of another journey. Little by little the Indian boy had come to be at his ease with Ralph. His stolidity, it appeared, was largely an affectation for the purpose of impressing white strangers. He now talked freely to Ralph in a queer jargon of English and Cree of what interested him, hunting and animals and making trips. St. Jean Bateese, too, who accompanied them to the mouth of the cave, stuck close to Ralph's side, and betrayed an unaffected regret at his going away.
"I can win them all but her," thought Ralph bitterly.
Before the cave swallowed him, Ralph looked for the last time at the lake with its sheen like a peacock's breast; at the kingly mountains drenched with sunshine, and at the mad, green meadows with their white-stemmed birches. "I leave myself here," he thought. He grimly clenched the stem of his pipe between his teeth.
During the long traverse under the mountain, Ralph spoke but once. Passing the scarecrow, he asked why it had been set up there. Charley explained that it was to keep the animals out. The man-smell which clung to his clothes was sufficient.
On the site of their last camp in the great forest they spelled for a meal. Afterward Nahnya brought the handkerchief to Ralph with a deprecating air.
"That's ridiculous now," cried Ralph, turning red. "I won't be carried down like a cripple!"