The swift stroke reached its length. The Kid lifted the paddle from the water and laid it across the little vessel in front of her. Resting against the paddling strut she craned round and gazed back over the shining waters.
She had passed the wooded bend of the river, and the far-reaching shelter of Fox Bluff completely shut her off from observation at the Fort. The landing was hidden; so, too, were the three great canoes that were to carry the defeated factor and his outfit down the river to those who quite possibly would have no further use for his services.
Even the Fort itself, on the higher ground of the opposite bank, was no longer visible.
The girl was satisfied. She returned to her labours, for the drift of the stream had carried her canoe back some few yards.
It shot forward again, however, under the skilful strokes of her strong young arms, and the water rippled and sang as it smote the sharp cutwater that drove into it. Three miles farther on she had reached the limits of the great woods, and the turbulent rapids came into view.
They were the rapids at the junction of the two rivers. It was here that the Caribou River disgorged itself upon the flood of the greater river. A wide litter of frothing, churning popple disported itself over the shallows at the mouth of the invading stream. In the passage of time, the Caribou had battled its way up out of the south-east. It had broken into the sedate course of the Hekor diagonally, meeting its stream defiantly. Final overwhelming had been its lot, in the process of which a vast stretch of sheltering banks had been washed completely out and transformed into treacherous shoals. It was the girl’s immediate objective.
Again she ceased from her labours and gazed smilingly over the distant view. It was alight with a lavish wealth of colour, the vivid hues of Arctic blossoms with which the ripening sun of spring had set the whole country ablaze. Her smile was full of girlish enjoyment. For she was thinking of the wise, friendly, cynical old Ben Needham and his earnest warning.
She was thinking of him in no spirit of ridicule, but she knew she meant to disregard his warning utterly. It was the youth in her. It was the girlish curiosity and a spirit of independence that urged her. The world beyond was a sort of dream place of wonder to her; a book whose pages were sealed lest her eyes should seek the things that were there written. He had warned her that these folk coming up out of the south were the Cheechakos of the gold trail. He was probably right, but at least they were white folk who belonged to that world from which she was wholly cut off. It was an opportunity she had no intention of missing. She would transform herself into something resembling the creatures of the shy world to which she belonged. She would lie hidden, and gaze upon these strange and terrible people from another world, against whom she had been so gravely warned.
She turned her little vessel sharply towards the bank of the river where it rose high, and the last of Fox Bluff projected a dense mass of Arctic willow which hung down, a perfect screen, till the delicate foliage buried itself in the bosom of the stream. A few swift strokes of her paddle and she passed from view behind it.