Then suddenly Sheldon thought that he saw his chance. Yonder, a few hundred yards ahead of her, was a wide clearing, and in it he saw that a long arm of the lake was flung far out to the right. She would have to turn there; he did not wait, but turned out now, hoping to cut her off before she could come around the head of the arm of the lake, which, no doubt, in her excitement, she had forgotten.
Straight on she ran. He saw her flash through a little clump of shrubs close to the water’s edge; saw that she was going straight on, and then guessed her purpose. She was not going to turn out. She had disappeared behind the trees. He thought that he had seen her leap far out, just a glint of sun on the bronze of her outflung arms.
Still he pounded on, turning to the right, certain that he could come to the far side before she could swim it. But the arm of the lake extended farther than he had anticipated; already she was far out, swimming as he had seen no man swim in all his life, and he knew that the race was hers. Panting, he stopped and watched; saw the flashing arms, the dark head with the hair floating behind her.
“It’s a wonder that bearskin doesn’t drown her!” was his thought.
And then, coming close to where she had disappeared behind the bushes, he saw the bearskin lying at the edge of the lake, the water lapping it. And John Sheldon, who seldom swore; never when the occasion did not demand it, said simply:
“Well, I’ll be damned. I most certainly will be damned.”
He picked the thing up and looked out across the lake. Just in time to catch the glint of the sun upon a pair of bronze arms thrown high up as though in triumph as his “quarry,” speeding through the screen of willows, disappeared again.
“The little devil!” he muttered, a little in rage, a great deal in admiration.
Carrying the trailing bearskin, still warm from the touch of her body, he turned again to the right, trudging on stubbornly along the arm of the lake. There was no particular reason why he should carry the bearskin. But on he went with it, a trophy of the chase. And in his heart was as stubborn a determination as had ever grown up in that stubborn stronghold. He’d find her, he’d get the explanation of this madness, if it was the last thing in the world he ever did.
And then suddenly, lacking neither imagination nor chivalric delicacy, he felt his face growing red with embarrassment. The situation seemed to him to be presenting its difficulties.