She sighed. Would he return? The hands about her knees broke apart. They fell from about her knees, and she stirred, and twisted her body round so that she sat with one hand on the bare rock supporting it. She was facing round to the west.
Why, why did she so long for his return? He had said he would return in two years. Two years? That would not be up till next opening. The winter ahead suddenly looked to be an interminable period of waiting. Winter. And anything might happen to him in—winter. Suddenly she became weakly anxious for his safety. She knew the dangers. She knew the conditions of the country into which he had gone. The Euralians. The desperate storms. The— But she dismissed her fears. She remembered the man’s equipment. But more than all she remembered his confident, commanding eyes. No. Nothing could harm him. Nothing. Nothing. But would he remember. Would he—?
She started. Suddenly she sprang to her feet with the easy agility of one of the young deer it was her work to handle. And she stood against the sweeping breeze, at the very edge of the ledge, silhouetted against the background of a dying sun.
The biting wind swept her hair across her eyes. She raised a brown hand and thrust it aside and held its mass firmly, while she stared out wide-eyed in amazement. Then she raised the other hand, pointing, a thrill of excitement, and gladness, and hope, surging through her heart. And as she stood, utterly unconscious of the thing she did, words sprang to her lips and she counted aloud.
“One! Two! Three! Yes. Five large and two small!”
And with each numeral she uttered, her pointing hand moved from one tiny distant object on the river to another.
For awhile she remained spellbound by the vision. She remembered. Oh, yes. There could be no mistake. Five large canoes and two smaller. That had been the extent of Bill Wilder’s outfit as she had first discovered it. It was he. He was coming up the river. He had returned. And—he had returned sooner than he promised.
A wild tumult of feeling consumed her as she stared at the distant procession of boats. Then, in a moment, a surge of colour swept up into her cheeks, and a fierce panic of shame robbed her of all her delight. She turned; tearing herself from the glad sight, and fled headlong to her kyak below.
CHAPTER VIII
BILL WILDER RE-APPEARS