“That’s why I asked you to marry me,” he remarked, meekly.
And after a moment she said:
“Well, thinking of it from that point of view, I guess I will.”
Far up on the heights, a man lying there alone saw the canoe with the man and the woman in it, and it brought back to him keen rushes of memory from the summer time that had been. It was only a year ago that ’Tana had stepped into his canoe, and gone with him to the new life of the settlement. How brave she had been! how daring! He liked best to remember her as she had been then, with all the storms and sunshine of her face. He liked to remember that she had said she would be cook for him, but for no other man. Of course her words were a child’s words, soon forgotten by her. But all her words and looks and their journeys made him 341 love the land he had known her in. They were all the treasures he had with which to comfort his loneliness.
And when in the twilight he descended to the camp, Joe—or his own longings—had won.
“I will send the telegram for you, old fellow,” he said, and that was all.