Hesther was perturbed, yet she was engaged on the task of all tasks which appealed to her in her life’s routine.
It was wash-day. She was standing over a boiler of steaming water, frothing with soap suds and full of a laundry made up of the rainbow hues of a Joseph’s coat. The kitchen was reeking with steam. It was also littered with piles of well-wrung garments awaiting the services of Mary Justicia for transfer to the drying ground outside. The swarming flies were more than usually sticky in the humid atmosphere, and the prevailing confusion in the rough living room was as splendid as the most ardent housewife could have desired on such an occasion.
Perturbation with Hesther could only have one source. Something must be amiss with one of the large family for which she held herself responsible. Nothing else could have disturbed her equanimity. She was completely single-minded and even in her emotions. Beyond the four walls of her house she had no concern. She was utterly abandoned to the six young lives entrusted to her efforts by her dead husband, and the girl who, from her earliest infancy, had been called “the Kid.”
It was of the Kid she was thinking now. Their talk of the day before had filled her with disquiet. The girl had denied so much, and yet, to the patient mother-woman, there had been signs that only afforded one interpretation.
And now she was asking herself all the many questions which her woman’s heart instinctively prompted. Who was the man? Where was the man? When had the Kid encountered the man? What was he like? How far had this thing gone that it had stirred the child to a fever of excited interest in another woman’s love for her man? She was mystified beyond words. None but trailmen and trappers had come near them throughout the years. They were mostly half-breeds and Eskimos, and one or two poor whites who thought of nothing but the mean living they were able to scratch out of this Euralian-ridden territory.
No. It was none of these. Of that she was convinced. And for all the girl’s denial her mind persistently turned to Placer. There had been a definite change in the Kid, she fancied, since her return from the gold city. A change which her keen anxiety of the moment forthwith exaggerated. She felt that she must take Usak into her confidence. Yes. When he returned from his summer trip with Clarence, trading the trail-broken deer, she would question him. She warned herself that it was imperative for all it seemed like disloyalty, and distrust of the Kid’s denial. Yes. That was the only course for her.
She glanced up from her steaming tub where her busy hands were rubbing and squeezing the highly coloured garments in the suds. Mary Justicia had appeared in the doorway and was standing outlined foggily in the steam.
“Those,” Hesther said, indicating the litter on the rough-boarded table. “It’s a big wash, child,” she observed contentedly, “but I guess we’ll get through in time for dinner. You see we got all Janey’s stuff, an’ it’s that stained with mud an’ the like it makes you wonder the sort o’ muck that comes down the river.”
Mary Justicia seized on the garments. Then she paused and turned with her arms full.
“The kids are comin’ right along up from the river, Mum,” she declared, dismissing her mother’s remarks under an interest much more to her liking. “Guess they’re coming along up on the run, an’ Alg’s with ’em. You wouldn’t say Perse had located something, or—or got hurt? I didn’t just see him comin’ along with the bunch.”