The autumn sun shone through an arch of branches overhead on the red-brown of her hair, on her eyes so nearly the same color, on her healthy, lightly freckled skin, and her full, irregular lips.
“I am glad the turn in the trail concealed the latter part of my prowess as a mountaineer, Bettina. I certainly came down swiftly enough toward the end. In fact, I had hard work holding on to my rifle,” Gill announced, shaking her head a second time so that a bronze leaf slid on to the earth. “But if I lost my dignity I did not lose my gun or game.”
“You are not hurt, are you, Gill?” Bettina asked, looking with admiration and amusement at her companion.
Then as she shook her head:
“Do you know, Gill, it has been a curious fact in our Camp Fire life together, living as we have for the past few years in different places and under such a variety of conditions, to find here and there one of us discover the environment for which she must have been intended. Vera Lagerloff and Alice Ashton, for instance, were at their best when doing reconstruction work in France. You, Gill, were very busy and useful over there, and yet no one has known the real you until these past few weeks in the mountains. Yet why should this be true when you lived all your past life in the western prairie country until your desire to drive a motor in France led you to join our Camp Fire and help with the relief work?”
“I sometimes feel that I have not yet found my true environment. Do you remember the wonderful new play Tante read aloud the other evening, ‘Beyond the Horizon’, whose theme is that each human being must live in harmony with his own nature, else he will never find happiness or success?”
Mary Gilchrist smiled.
“I remember it after a fashion, but, Bettina dear, please don’t ask me to understand literary subtleties. You know there is no one in the world who cares less than I for books, although to my shame I confess it, but I don’t believe I ever read or studied voluntarily save when I thought it my duty. Every interest with me is an outdoor interest and I confess I have never loved any place so well as these Adirondack forests. Somewhere in my past I must have had an Indian ancestor, not a squaw, but a great chief who roamed these hills, hunting and fishing, sleeping and living outdoors when it was possible, because I feel at present as if I never wished to do anything else, except perhaps see my friends and family now and then. But enough of conversation, Bettina, woodsmen or woodswomen we have been told were a silent race and we must learn the law of the woods. What I really would like to know is in what direction we should travel to reach camp in the shortest length of time. We have been following a deer trail I believe that has led us nowhere. However, we cannot be many miles out of the way. We must move now toward the west, and, Bettina, let’s not separate again, you know you have no sense of direction once you are more than a mile away from camp.”
Unable to dispute this assertion, Bettina Graham, who was beginning to grow tired while her companion appeared as fresh as when they set out, followed obediently beside her.
A half hour longer they walked, Gill rarely hesitating, although keeping her compass in her hand and glancing at it occasionally, when suddenly both girls stopped short.