“And the old party looked terribly fussy over it. In fact, I’ve about sifted out the reason. He imagines me a newspaper reporter on the alert for sensations. He’s afraid his stupidly respectable self may be mentioned in a newspaper article concerning this local tragedy they all talk about. Why, bless his pocket-book! if I ever use pen and ink on that girl’s story, it will not be for a newspaper article.”
“Then you intend to tell it?” asked his friend. “How will you learn it?” 18
“I do not know yet. The ’how’ does not matter; I’ll tell you on paper some day.”
“And write up that handsome Lyster as the hero?”
“Perhaps.”
Then a bend of the road brought them again in sight of the river of the Kootenais. Here and there the canoes of the Indians were speeding across at the ferry. But one canoe alone was moving north; not very swiftly, but almost as though drifting with the current.
Using his field-glass, Harvey found it was as he had thought. The occupant of the solitary canoe was the tall man whose dark face had impressed the theatrical lady so strongly. He was not using the paddle, and his chin was resting on one clenched hand, while in the other he held something to which he was giving earnest attention.
It was a spray of bright-colored leaves, and the watcher dropped his glass with a guilty feeling.
“He brings her flowers, and gets in return only dead leaves,” Harvey thought, grimly. “I didn’t hear a word he said to her; but his eyes spoke strongly enough, poor devil! I wonder if she sees him, too.”
And all through the evening, and for many a day, the picture remained in his mind. Even when he wrote the story that is told in these pages, he could never find words to express the utter loneliness of that life, as it seemed to drift away past the sun-touched ripples of water into that vast, shadowy wilderness to the north.