“It is scarcely habitable yet. But I think the men are getting on as well as could be expected.”
Her face was dappled with light and shadow as she sat there. An exquisite, happy radiance emanated from her. She looked inquiringly into my eyes and swept her paddle.
“You are surprised to see me, you sure are! But now that I am here I want to see the improvements. Give me your hand, David Dale.”
She beached her canoe, stood up, and placed her hand on my shoulder as I bent to her. Very lightly I passed my arm about her. She flashed a laughing side glance at me, and put one foot over the side of the craft. “I don’t need that much help,” she said, grimacing.
The canoe rocked, suddenly. She stumbled. I caught her. She was against my breast. “You see you needed that much help,” I laughed boyishly.
“Let me go, Mr. David Dale.”
She shook herself free and stood apart from me. The sunlight slanted on her face as she stood there, flushing wildly, gilded her white neck, flashed on her bare arms. She held her head down for a moment, and then she raised it and looked at me. Her eyes were soft and wet. “What a goose I was,” she cried softly. “Come on, I’ll race you to the cabin!”
I paddled home in the canoe with Wanza, after directing Lundquist to ride my horse back to Cedar Dale. The river purred to us all the way, the meadow larks and warblers chanted roundelays of joy and love from the thickets, and the birch trees shook their silver, tinkling leaves in elfish music above the sun-kissed water. We were very silent drifting down the river, and my thoughts were strange, strange thoughts. I had begun to wonder about Wanza—Wanza, who understood my rapture at the sight of the new day, who felt the same tightening of the throat at the song of the birds, the same breathlessness beneath the stars. I had begun to ask myself if, after all, she were not as fine as another, even though through long association her rareness for me was impaired.
CHAPTER XVI
WE HAVE AN ADVENTURE
ABOUT this time I began to hear strange stories in the village of a silver-tip bear that was committing grave depredations in the community. I recounted exploits of grizzlies to Haidee and Wanza as we sat in the Dingle now and then, smiling at Haidee’s delicate shiver of horror, and glorying in Wanza’s bravado which led her into all sorts of bombastic declarations as to what her line of conduct would be should she meet Mr. Silvertip face to face.