"Well," I said, "when I got to the end of the lake, and saw you were not coming, and the thunderstorm was coming on, and the flies were so bad, I thought I might as well be doing something nice while the storm was wetting me, and the flies were eating me."
"Yes, that is just what we said. 'Who would ever think of your going up there in that storm?'"
I laughed again, and George went on still trying to impress on me the evil of my ways.
"Job, too, he was coming running, and he was sure you were lost. When I came to meet you, and could not see you on the ridge, and then went to the rapid and could not see you there, we began to walk faster and faster, and then to run like crazy people. Poor Job, he could hardly speak, and neither could I, and out of breath, and half crying all the time. Oh, we can never trust you to go away alone agains."
I said: "Very well, George, I'll make a bargain with you. If I can have some one to go with me whenever I want to climb a mountain, or do anything else that I think it is necessary to do in my work, without any fuss about it, I promise not to go away alone again."
So the compact was made.
As we walked back to camp George talked. "And you did it so quick too. Why I was watching you up on that mountain where you went this afternoon, and you were so busy and running about up there, as busy as a Labrador fly. You looked just like a little girl that was playing at building something, and I thought how you were enjoying yourself. Then the first thing I knew I heard the shots on the other side of the lake. We did not see you at first. We just looked across the lake and could see nothing, and we wondered about those shots, and who could be there. Then Joe said: 'Look there, up on the mountain.'
"Then we saw you, but we never thought it was you. Then Joe said: 'Why, it's a woman.' Then we only knew it was you. Even then we could not believe it was you. Who ever would think to see you and the little short steps that you could go away there, and so quick too. Why, we couldn't believe it. The men got on to me too. They said they never saw anything like the way you do. They said they had been on lots of trips before, and where there were women too, and they, said to me they never were on a trip before where the women didn't do what they were told."
I laughed again, which George seemed to think was very hard- hearted. He looked quite as if he could not understand such callousness, and said: "Yes; you don't care a bit. Do you?" Whereupon I laughed harder, and this time he did too, a little.
Then he went on: "Oh, I just thought I was never going to see you again. I'm never going to forget about it. I was thinking about how you would feel when you knew you were lost. It is an awful thing to be lost. If I had never been lost myself I wouldn't know what it means to be lost. And what would we do if you got lost or fell in that rapid? Just think what could we do? Why, I could never go back again. How could any of us go back without you? We can't ever let you go any place alone after this."