She vanished into the house, a diminutive figure of righteous indignation, and the Kid was left to the eager, laughing explanations of the unimpressed culprits.
The kyak darted down the river on a stream that made its progress something like the flight of an arrow. Its great length and narrow width left it a crazy enough vessel to handle, but the Kid had been born and bred to its manipulation, and she played with it as she chose without concern for its crankiness. Her gun lay in the bottom of the hide-built craft, for she was speeding down towards the marshes in quest of water-fowl.
With the rapid passing of the shortening northern day she knew she would find the marsh alive with duck. Game was plentiful just now. In another few weeks the approach of winter would drive the migratory fowl south, where the waters remained open and winter feed was to be had in abundance. The girl was pot-hunting, and the full stocking of the farm larder was an important duty in her routine of life.
Silently, almost ghostlike, the dip of her paddle giving out no sound, she sped on over the shining waters between high, lichen-grown banks, that were mostly rock-bound and almost completely sterile. It was a wild, broken stretch of country, without any of the vegetation which was the inspiration of the setting of the farm. It was without any graciousness, from the southern hills to the northern limits containing the shallow valley. But even so, to this girl, who had known the Caribou Valley all her young life, there was intense attraction in every detail of its familiar uncouthness.
Quite abruptly she passed beyond the undulating, rock-bound stretch, and shot into the jaws of a short but narrow canyon. For no apparent reason the country about her suddenly reared itself into a tumbled sea of low, broken hills that darkly overshadowed the passage which the river had eaten through them. The gleaming waters had lost their vivid, dancing light and assumed an almost inky blackness. Their speed had increased, and they frothed and churned as they beat against the facets of the encompassing walls, as though in anger at a resistance they had never been able to overcome.
The girl was gazing ahead at the far opening, where the hills gave way to the wide muskeg which was her goal. It was at the sort of giant gateway which was formed by two sheer sentry rocks standing guard on either side of the river, overshadowing, frowning, lofty, windswept and bare.
A girlish impulse urged her. These two barren crests were old-time friends of her childhood. The leaning summit of the hill on the left bank was the dream place of childish fancy. It was always windswept, even on the calmest day. It was beyond the reach of the mosquitoes and flies abounding on the river. It was free and open to the sunlight, which was getting shorter now with every passing day. And, somehow, an hour passed on its chilly summit never failed to inspire her heart with feelings freed from the oppressive weight of the cares of her life below.
Yes. She would leave the feeding fowl to their evening meal. For the present there was no shortage in the farm larder. The marshes could wait till to-morrow. For the moment she felt deeply in need of that consolation she never failed to find in this old friend of her earlier years. She would pass an hour with it. She would confide to it the story of those feelings and desires, which, with every passing month, were absorbing her more and more deeply. For she was restless, disturbed. As Hesther had suggested, the dawning womanhood in her was crying out.
Oh, yes. She understood now. The life of the farm was no longer the satisfying thing it had always been. Something was amiss with her. A great, unrecognised longing had been urgent in her for months past. And a glimmer of its meaning had come to her while listening to Hesther’s endeavour to show her the thing which her own love for her dead husband had been.