“I know.” She still lingered for a moment. “What’s your name?” she asked abruptly.
“Martin.”
“Good-night!”
Later, rolling on his hard bed, he thought: “She might have given me her hand when she said it.—No, you fool! She did right not to! You’ve got to get a grip on yourself. This is only the first day! If you begin like this——!”
CHAPTER VI THE KAKISAS
On the afternoon of the fourth day they suddenly issued out of big timber to find themselves at the edge of a plateau overlooking a shallow green valley, bare of trees in this place, and bisected by a smoothly-flowing brown river bordered with willows. The flat contained an Indian village.
“Here we are!” said Stonor, reining up.
“The unexplored river!” cried Clare. “How exciting! But how pretty and peaceful it looks, just like an ordinary river. I suppose it doesn’t realize it’s unexplored.”
On the other side there was a bold point with a picturesque clump of pines shading a number of the odd little gabled structures with which the Indians cover the graves of their dead. On the nearer side from off to left appeared a smaller stream which wound across the meadow and emptied into the Swan. At intervals during the day their trail had bordered this little river, which Clare had christened the Meander.