Half concealed by the naked tangle of underbrush on the verge of a low bluff where the rock-ribbed rapid broke suddenly into smooth water, an old Indian woman and a beautiful half-breed girl of twenty crouched close, watching the logs plunge through the seething white-water.
The dark eyes of the girl shone with excitement, but this was no new sight to the eyes of the older woman who in times past had watched other drives on other rivers. As she looked her frown deepened and the hundred little weather wrinkles in the tight-drawn smoke-darkened skin showed thin and plain, like the crisscross cracks in old leather.
The shriveled lips pressed tight against the hard, snag-studded gums, and in the narrow, lashless black eyes glowed the spark of undying hate.
The sight of the rushing logs brought bitter memories. These were things of the white man—and, among white men, only Lacombie was good—and Lacombie was dead.
Young Lacombie, who came into the North with a song on his lips to work for the great company whose word is law, and whose long arm is destiny. Lacombie, who, in the long ago had won her, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, the daughter of Kas-ka-tan, the chief, who was called the most beautiful maiden among all the tribes of the rivers.
The old crone drew her blanket about her and shuddered slightly as she glanced from her own withered, clawlike hands, upon which dark veins stood out like the cords of a freight bale, to the fresh beauty of the young girl at her side who gazed in awed fascination upon the rush of the pounding logs.
Lacombie was dead, and Pierre, his son, who was her first-born, was dead also; and his blood was upon the head of the men of the logs. For he had left the post and gone among white men, and she, the mother who bore him, and Lacombie, his father, had seen him no more.
Years slipped by, bringing other children; Jacques, in whom the white blood of Lacombie was lost in the blending, and the girl who crouched at her side.
Long after, from the lips of a passing Bois brûlé, she heard the story of Pierre's death—how, crazed by whisky and the taunts of a drunken companion, he had leaped upon a passing log and plunged into the foaming white chute of the dreaded Saw Tooth rapid through which no man had passed and lived.
Sacré. He was brave! For he came nearly to the end of the rapid, standing upon his log—but, only nearly to the end—for there he was dashed and broken upon the rocks in the swirl of the leaping white-water, and here was she, his mother, gazing at other logs in the rush of other rapids.