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THE WOMAN
from “OUTSIDE”
[On Swan River]

By
HULBERT FOOTNER
Author of “The Fur Bringers” etc.

THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
Publishers New York

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

CHAPTER

The White Medicine Man
Hooliam
The Unexpected Visitor
More About Clare
The First Stage
The Kakisas
On the River
The Log Shack
The Foot
The Start Home
The Mystery
Imbrie
The Rescue
Pursuit
Ups and Downs
The Last Stage on Swan River
The Hearing
A Letter From Major Egerton to His Friend Arthur Doncourt, Esq.
Epilogue

THE WOMAN FROM OUTSIDE

CHAPTER I THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN

On a January afternoon, as darkness was beginning to gather, the “gang” sat around the stove in the Company store at Fort Enterprise discussing that inexhaustible question, the probable arrival of the mail. The big lofty store, with its glass front, its electric lights, its stock of expensive goods set forth on varnished shelves, suggested a city emporium rather than the Company’s most north-westerly post, nearly a thousand miles from civilization; but human energy accomplishes seeming miracles in the North as elsewhere, and John Gaviller the trader was above all an energetic man. Throughout the entire North they point with pride to Gaviller’s flour mill, his big steamboat, his great yellow clap-boarded house—two storeys and attic, and a fence of palings around it! Why, at Fort Enterprise they even have a sidewalk, the only one north of fifty-five!

“I don’t see why Hairy Ben can’t come down,” said Doc Giddings—Doc was the grouch of the post—“the ice on the river has been fit for travelling for a month now.”

“Ben can’t start from the Crossing until the mail comes through from the Landing,” said Gaviller. “It can’t start from the Landing until the ice is secure on the Big River, the Little River, and across Caribou Lake.” Gaviller was a handsome man of middle life, who took exceeding good care of himself, and ruled his principality with an amiable relentlessness. They called him the “Czar,” and it did not displease him.

“Everybody knows Caribou Lake freezes over first,” grumbled the doctor.

“But the rivers down there are swift, and it’s six hundred miles south of here. Give them time.”

“The trouble is, they wait until the horse-road is made over the ice before starting the mail in. If the Government had the enterprise of a ground-hog they’d send in dogs ahead.”

“Nobody uses dogs down there any more.”

“Well, I say ’tain’t right to ask human beings to wait three months for their mail. Who knows what may have happened since the freeze-up last October?”

“What’s happened has happened,” said Father Goussard mildly, “and knowing about it can’t change it.”

The doctor ignored the proffered consolation. “What we need is a new mail-man,” he went on bitterly. “I know Hairy Ben! I’ll bet he’s had the mail at the Crossing for a week, and puts off starting every day for fear of snow.”

“Well, ’tain’t a job as I’d envy any man,” put in Captain Stinson of the steamboat Spirit River, now hauled out on the shore. “Breaking a road for three hundred and fifty mile, and not a stopping-house the whole way till he gets to the Beaver Indians at Carcajou Point.”

The doctor addressed himself to the policeman, who was mending a snowshoe in the background. “Stonor, you’ve got the best dogs in the post; why don’t you go up after him?”

The young sergeant raised his head with a grin. He was a good-looking, long-limbed youth with a notable blue eye, and a glance of mirthful sobriety. “No, thanks,” he drawled. The others gathered from his tone that a joke was coming, and pricked up their ears accordingly. “No, thanks. You forget that Sarge Lambert up at the Crossing is my senior. When I drove up he’d say: ‘What the hell are you doing up here?’ And when I told him he’d come back with his well-known embellishments of language: ‘Has the R.N.W.M.P. nothing better to do than tote Doc Giddings’ love-letters?’”

A great laugh greeted this sally: they are so grateful for the smallest of jokes on winter afternoons up North.

Doc Giddings subsided, but the discussion went on without him.

“Well, he’ll have easy going in from Carcajou; the Indians coming in and out have beaten a good trail.”

“Oh, when he gets to Carcajou he’s here.”

“If it don’t snow. That bit over the prairie drifts badly.”

“The barometer’s falling.”

And so on. And so on. They made the small change of conversation go far.

In the midst of it they were electrified by a shout from the land trail and the sound of bells.

“Here he is!” they cried, jumping up to a man, and making for the door.

Ben Causton, conscious of his importance, made a dramatic entrance with the mail-bags over his shoulder, and cast them magnificently on the counter. Even up north, where every man cultivates his own peculiarities unhindered, Ben was considered a “character.” He was a short, thick man of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted sash about his ample middle.

“Hello, Ben! Gee! but you’re slow!”

“Hello, fellows! Keep your hair on! If you want to send out for catalogues in the middle of winter you’re lucky if I get here at all. Next month, if the second class bag’s as heavy as this, I’ll drop it through an air-hole—I swear I will! So now you’re warned! I got somepin better to do than tote catalogues. When I die and go to hell, I only hope I meet the man who invented mail-order catalogues there, that’s all.”

“You’re getting feeble, Ben!”

“I got strength enough left to put your head in chancery!”

“What’s the news of the world, Ben?”

“Sarge Lambert’s got a bone felon. Ally Stiff lost a sow and a whole litter through the ice up there. Mahooly of the French outfit at the Settlement’s gone out to get him a set of chiny teeth. Says he’s going to get blue ones to dazzle the Indians. Oh, and I almost forgot; down at Ottawa the Grits are out and the Tories in.”

“Bully!”

“God help Canada!”

While Gaviller unlocked the bags, Ben went out to tie up his dogs and feed them. The trader handed out letters to the eager, extended hands, that trembled a little. Brightening eyes pounced on the superscriptions. Gaviller himself had a daughter outside being “finished,” the apple of his eye: Captain Stinson had a wife, and Mathews the engineer, an elderly sweetheart. The dark-skinned Gordon Strange, Gaviller’s clerk, carried on an extensive correspondence, the purport of which was unknown to the others, and Father Goussard was happy in the receipt of many letters from his confrères. Even young Stonor was excited, who had no one in the world to write to him but a married sister who sent him long, dutiful chronicles of small beer. But it was from “home.”

The second-class bag with the papers was scarcely less exciting. To oblige Ben they only took one newspaper between them, and passed it around, but in this mail three months’ numbers had accumulated. As the contents of the bag cascaded out on the counter, Stonor picked up an unfamiliar-looking magazine.

“Hello, what’s this?” he cried, reading the label in surprise. “Doctor Ernest Imbrie. Who the deuce is he?”

“Must have come here by mistake,” said Gaviller.

“Not a bit of it! Here’s the whole story: Doctor Ernest Imbrie, Fort Enterprise, Spirit River, Athabasca.”

It passed around from hand to hand. A new name was something to catch the attention at Fort Enterprise.

“Why, here’s another!” cried Gaviller in excitement. “And another! Blest if half the bag isn’t for him! And all addressed just so!”

They looked at each other a little blankly. All this evidence had the effect of creating an apparition there in their midst. There was an appreciable silence.

“Must be somebody who started in last year and never got through,” said Mathews. He spoke with an air of relief at discovering so reasonable an explanation.

“But we hear about everybody who comes north of the Landing,” objected Gaviller. “I would have been advised if he had a credit here.”

“Another doctor!” said Doc Giddings bitterly. “If he expects to share my practice he’s welcome!”

At another time they would have laughed at this, but the mystery teased them. They resented the fact that some rank outsider claimed Fort Enterprise for his post-office, without first having made himself known.

“If he went back outside, he’d stop all this stuff coming in, you’d think.”

“Maybe somebody’s just putting up a joke on us.”

“Funny kind of joke! Subscriptions to these magazines cost money.”

Stonor read off the titles of the magazines: “The Medical Record; The American Medical Journal; The Physician’s and Surgeon’s Bulletin.”

“Quite a scientific guy,” said Doctor Giddings, with curling lip.

“Strange, he gets so many papers and not a single letter!” remarked Father Goussard. “A friendless man!”

Gaviller picked up a round tin, one of several packed and addressed alike. He read the business card of a well-known tobacconist. “Smoking tobacco!” he said indignantly. “If the Company’s Dominion Mixture isn’t good enough for any man I’d like to know it! He has a cheek, if you ask me, bringing in tobacco under my very nose!”

“Tobacco!” cried Stonor. “It’s all very well about papers, but no man would waste good tobacco! It must be somebody who started in before Ben!”

Their own mail matter, that they had looked forward to so impatiently, was forgotten now.

When Ben Causton came back they bombarded him with questions. But this bag had come through locked all the way from Miwasa Landing, and Ben, even Ben, the great purveyor of gossip in the North, had heard nothing of any Doctor Imbrie on his way in. Ben was more excited and more indignant than any of them. Somebody had got ahead of him in spreading a sensation!

“It’s a hoe-axe,” said Ben. “It’s them fellows down at the Landing trying to get a rise out of me. Or if it ain’t that, it’s some guy comin’ in next spring, and sendin’ in his outfit piecemeal ahead of him. And me powerless to protect myself! Ain’t that an outrage! But when I meet him on the trail I’ll put it to him!”

“There are newspapers here, too,” Stonor pointed out. “No man coming in next spring would send himself last year’s papers.”

“Where is he, then?” they asked.

The question was unanswerable.

“Well, I’d like to see any lily-handed doctor guy from the outside face the river trail in the winter,” said Ben bitterly. “If he’ll do that, I’ll carry his outfit for him. But he’ll need more than his diploma to fit him for it.”

At any rate they had a brand-new subject for conversation at the post.

About a week later, when Hairy Ben had started back up the river, the routine at the post was broken by the arrival of a small party of Kakisa Indians from the Kakisa or Swan River, a large unexplored stream off to the north-west. The Kakisas, an uncivilized and shy race, rarely appeared at Enterprise, and in order to get their trade Gaviller had formerly sent out a half-breed clerk to the Swan River every winter. But this man had lately died, and now the trade threatened to lapse for the lack of an interpreter. None of the Kakisas could speak English, and there was no company employee who could speak their uncouth tongue except Gordon Strange the bookkeeper, who could not be spared from the post.

Wherefore Gaviller welcomed these six, in the hope that they might prove to be the vanguard of the main body. They were a wild and ragged lot, under the leadership of a withered elder called Mahtsonza. They were discovered by accident camping under cover of a poplar bluff across the river. No one knew how long they had been there, and Gordon Strange had a time persuading them to come the rest of the way. It was dusk when they entered the store, and Gaviller, by pre-arrangement with Mathews, clapped his hands and the electric lights went on. The effect surpassed his expectations. The Kakisas, with a gasp of terror, fled, and could not be tempted to return until daylight.

They brought a good little bundle of fur, including two silver fox skins, the finest seen at Enterprise that season. They laid their fur on the counter, and sidled about the store silent and abashed, like children in a strange house. With perfectly wooden faces they took in all the wonders out of the corners of their eyes; the scales, the stove, the pictures on the canned goods, the show-cases of jewellery and candy. Candy they recognized, and, again like children, they discussed the respective merits of the different varieties in their own tongue. Gaviller, warned by his first mistake, affected to take no notice of them.

The Kakisas had been in the store above an hour when Mahtsonza, without warning, produced a note from the inner folds of his dingy capote, and, handling it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, silently offered it to Gaviller. The trader’s eyes almost started out of his head.

“A letter!” he cried stupidly. “Where the hell did you get that?—Boys! Look here! A note from Swan River! Who in thunder at Swan River can write a white man’s hand?”

Stonor, Doc Giddings, Strange, and Mathews, who were in the store, hastened to him.

“Who’s it addressed to?” asked the policeman.

“Just to the Company. Whoever wrote it didn’t have the politeness to put my name down.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know you.”

“How could that be?” asked Gaviller, with raised eyebrows.

“Open it! Open it!” said Doc Giddings irritably.

Gaviller did so, and his face expressed a still greater degree of astonishment. “Ha! Here’s our man!” he cried.

“Imbrie!” they exclaimed in unison.

“Listen!” He read from the note.

“Gentlemen—I am sending you two silver fox skins, for which please give me credit. I enclose an order for supplies, to be sent by bearer. Also be good enough to hand the bearer any mail matter which may be waiting for me.

“Yours truly,
“Ernest Imbrie.”

The silence of stupefaction descended on them. The only gateway to the Swan River lay through Enterprise. How could a man have got there without their knowing it? Stupefaction was succeeded by resentment.

“Will I be good enough to hand over his mail?” sneered Gaviller. “What kind of elegant language is this from Swan River?”

“Sounds like a regular Percy,” said Strange, who always echoed his chief.

“Funny place for a Percy to set up,” said Stonor drily.

“He orders flour, sugar, beans, rice, coffee, tea, baking-powder, salt, and dried fruit,” said Gaviller, as if that were a fresh cause of offence.

“He has an appetite, then,” said Stonor, “he’s no ghost.”

Suddenly they fell upon Mahtsonza with a bombardment of questions, forgetting that the Indian could speak no English. He shrank back affrighted.

“Wait a minute,” said Strange. “Let me talk to him.”

He conferred for awhile with Mahtsonza in the strange, clicking tongue of the Kakisas. Gaviller soon became impatient.

“Tell us as he goes along,” he said. “Never mind waiting for the end of the story.”

“They can’t tell you anything directly,” said Strange deprecatingly; “there’s nothing to do but let them tell a story in their own way. He’s telling me now that Etzooah, a man with much hair, who hunts down the Swan River near the beginning of the swift water, came up to the village at the end of the horse-track on snowshoes and dragging a little sled. Etzooah had the letter for Gaviller, but he was tired out, so he handed it to Mahtsonza, who had dogs, to bring it the rest of the way, and gave Mahtsonza a mink-skin for his trouble.”

“Never mind all that,” said Gaviller impatiently. “What about the white man?”

Strange conferred again with Mahtsonza, while Gaviller bit his nails.

“Mahtsonza says,” he reported, “that Imbrie is a great White Medicine Man who has done honour to the Kakisa people by coming among them to heal the sick and do good. Mahtsonza says he has not seen Imbrie himself, because when he came among the Indians last fall Mahtsonza was off hunting on the upper Swan, but all the people talk about him and what strong medicine he makes.”

“Conjure tricks!” muttered Doc Giddings.

“Where does he live?” demanded Gaviller.

Strange asked the question and reported the answer. “He has built himself a shack beside the Great Falls of the Swan River. Mahtsonza says that the people know his medicine is strong because he is not afraid to live with the voice of the Great Falls.”

Stonor asked the next question. “What sort of man is he?”

Strange, after putting the question, said: “Mahtsonza says he’s very good-looking, or, as he puts it, a pretty man. He says he looks young, but he may be as old as the world, because with such strong medicine he could make himself look like anything he wanted. He says that the White Medicine Man talks much with dried words in covers—I suppose he means books.”

“Ask him what proof he has given them that his medicine is strong,” suggested Stonor.

Strange translated Mahtsonza’s answer as follows: “Last year when the bush berries were ripe (that’s August) all the Indians down the river got sick. Water came out of their eyes and nose; their skin got as red as sumach and burned like fire.”

“Measles,” said Gaviller. “The Beavers had it, too. They take it hard.”

Strange continued: “Mahtsonza says many of them died. They just lay down and gave up hope. Etzooah was the only Kakisa who had seen the White Medicine Man up to that time, and he went to him and asked him to make medicine to cure the sick. So the White Medicine Man came back with Etzooah to the village down the river. He had good words and a soft hand to the sick. He made medicine, and, behold! the sick arose and were well!”

“Faith cure!” muttered Doc Giddings.

“How long has Imbrie been down there by the Falls?” asked Gaviller.

“Mahtsonza says he came last summer when the ground berries were ripe. That would be about July.”

“Did he come down the river from the mountains?”

“Mahtsonza says no. Nobody on the river saw him go down.”

“Where did he come from, then?”

“Mahtsonza says he doesn’t know. Nobody knows. Some say he came from under the falls where the white bones lie. Some say it is the voice of the falls that comes among men in the shape of a man.”

“Rubbish! A ghost doesn’t subscribe to medical journals!” said Doc Giddings.

“He orders flour, sugar, beans,” said Gaviller.

When this was explained to Mahtsonza the Indian shrugged. Strange said: “Mahtsonza says if he takes a man’s shape he’s got to feed it.”

“Pshaw!” said Gaviller impatiently. “He must have come up the river. It is known that the Swan River empties into Great Buffalo Lake. The Lake can’t be more than a hundred miles below the falls. No white man has ever been through that way, but somebody’s got to be the first.”

“But we know every white man who ever went down to Great Buffalo Lake,” said Doc Giddings. “Certainly there never was a doctor there except the police doctor who makes the round with the treaty outfit every summer.”

“Well, it’s got me beat!” said Gaviller, scratching his head.

“Maybe it’s someone wanted by the police outside,” suggested Gordon Strange, “who managed to sneak into the country without attracting notice.”

“He’s picked out a bad place to hide,” said Stonor grimly. “He’ll be well advertised up here.”

Stonor had a room in the “quarters,” a long, low barrack of logs on the side of the quadrangle facing the river. It had been the trader’s residence before the days of the big clap-boarded villa. Stonor, tiring of the conversation around the stove, frequently spent the evenings in front of his own fire, and here he sometimes had a visitor, to wit, Tole Grampierre, youngest son of Simon, the French half-breed farmer up the river. Tole came of good, self-respecting native stock, and was in his own person a comely, sensible youngster a few years younger than the trooper. Tole was the nearest thing to a young friend that Stonor possessed in the post. They were both young enough to have some illusions left. They talked of things they would have blushed to expose to the cynicism of the older men.

Stonor sat in his barrel chair that he had made himself, and Tole sat on the floor nursing his knees. Both were smoking Dominion mixture.

Said Tole: “Stonor, what you make of this Swan River mystery?”

“Oh, anything can be a mystery until you learn the answer. I don’t see why a man shouldn’t settle out on Swan River if he has a mind to.”

“Why do all the white men talk against him?”

“Don’t ask me. I doubt if they could tell you themselves. When men talk in a crowd they get started on a certain line and go on from bad to worse without thinking what they mean by it.”

“Our people just the same that way, I guess,” said Tole.

“I’m no better,” said Stonor. “I don’t know how it is, but fellows in a crowd seem to be obliged to talk more foolishly than they think in private.”

“You don’t talk against him, Stonor.”

The policeman laughed. “No, I stick up for him. It gets the others going. As a matter of fact, I’d like to know this Imbrie. For one thing, he’s young like ourselves, Tole. And he must be a decent sort, to cure the Indians, and all that. They’re a filthy lot, what we’ve seen of them.”

“Gaviller says he’s going to send an outfit next spring to rout him out of his hole. Gaviller says he’s a cash trader.”

Stonor chuckled. “Gaviller hates a cash trader worse than a devil with horns. It’s nonsense anyway. What would the Kakisas do with cash? This talk of sending in an expedition will all blow over before spring.”

“Stonor, what for do you think he lives like that by himself?”

“I don’t know. Some yarn behind it, I suppose. Very likely a woman at the bottom of it. He’s young. Young men do foolish things. Perhaps he’d be thankful for a friend now.”

“White men got funny ideas about women, I think.”

“I suppose it seems so. But where did you get that idea?”

“Not from the talk at the store. I have read books. Love-stories. Pringle the missionary lend me a book call Family Herald with many love-stories in it. From that I see that white men always go crazy about women.”

Stonor laughed aloud.

“Stonor, were you ever real crazy about a woman?”

The trooper shook his head—almost regretfully, one might have said. “The right one never came my way, Tole.”

“You don’t like the girls around here.”

“Yes, I do. Nice girls. Pretty, too. But well, you see, they’re not the same colour as me.”

“Just the same, they are crazy about you.”

“Nonsense!”

“Yes, they are. Call you ‘Gold-piece.’ Us fellows got no chance if you want them.”

“Tell me about the stories you read, Tole.”

Tole refused to be diverted from his subject. “Stonor, I think you would like to be real crazy about a woman.”

“Maybe,” said the other dreamily. “Perhaps life would seem less empty then.”

“Would you go bury yourself among the Indians for a woman?”

“I hardly think so,” said Stonor, smiling. “Though you never can tell what you might do. But if I got turned down, I suppose I’d want to be as busy as possible to help forget it.”

“Well, I think that Imbrie is crazy for sure.”

“It takes all kinds to make a world. If I can get permission I’m going out to see him next summer.”

CHAPTER II HOOLIAM

When the spring days came around, Stonor, whose business it was to keep watch on such things, began to perceive an undercurrent of waywardness among the Indians and breeds of the post. Teachers know how an epidemic of naughtiness will sweep a class; this was much the same thing. There was no actual outbreak; it was chiefly evinced in defiant looks and an impudent swagger. It was difficult to trace back, for the red people hang together solidly; a man with even a trace of red blood will rarely admit a white man into the secrets of the race. Under questioning they maintain a bland front that it is almost impossible to break down. Stonor had long ago learned the folly of trying to get at what he wanted by direct questioning.

He finally, as he thought, succeeded in locating the source of the infection at Carcajou Point. Parties from the post rode up there with suspicious frequency, and came back with a noticeably lowered moral tone, licking their lips, so to speak. All the signs pointed to whisky.

At dawn of a morning in May, Stonor, without having advertised his intention, set off for Carcajou on horseback. The land trail cut across a wide sweep of the river, and on horseback one could make it in a day, whereas it was a three days’ paddle up-stream. Unfortunately he couldn’t take them by surprise, for Carcajou was on the other side of the river from Enterprise, and Stonor must wait on the shore until they came over after him.

As soon as he left the buildings of the post behind him Stonor’s heart was greatly lifted up. It was his first long ride of the season. The trail led him through the poplar bush back to the bench, thence in a bee-line across the prairie. The sun rose as he climbed the bench. The prairie was not the “bald-headed” so dear to those who know it, but was diversified with poplar bluffs, clumps of willow, and wild-rose-scrub in the hollows. The crocuses were in bloom, the poplar trees hanging out millions of emerald pendants, and the sky showed that exquisite, tender luminousness that only the northern sky knows when the sun travels towards the north. Only singing-birds were lacking to complete the idyl of spring. Stonor, all alone in a beautiful world, lifted up his voice to supply the missing praise.

Towards sunset he approached the shore of the river opposite Carcajou Point, but as he didn’t wish to arrive at night, he camped within shelter of the woods. In the morning he signalled for a boat. They came after him in a dug-out, and he swam his horse across.

A preliminary survey of the place revealed nothing out of the way. The people who called themselves Beaver Indians were in reality the scourings of half the tribes in the country, and it is doubtful if there was an individual of pure red race among them. Physically they were a sad lot, for Nature revenges herself swiftly on the offspring of hybrids. Quaint ethnological differences were exhibited in the same family; one brother would have a French physiognomy, another a Scottish cast of feature, and a third the thick lips and flattened nose of a negro. Their village was no less nondescript than its inhabitants, merely a straggling row of shacks, thrown together anyhow, and roofed with sods, now putting forth a brave growth of weeds. These houses were intended for a winter residence only. In summer they “pitched around.” At present they were putting their dug-outs and canoes in order for a migration.

Stonor was received on the beach by Shose (Joseph) Cardinal, a fine, up-standing ancient of better physique than his sons and grandsons. In a community of hairless men he was further distinguished by a straggling grey beard. His wits were beginning to fail, but not yet his cunning. He was extremely anxious to learn the reason for the policeman’s coming. For Stonor to tell him would have been to defeat his object; to lie would have been to lower himself in their eyes; so Stonor took refuge in an inscrutability as polite as the old man’s own.

Stonor made a house-to-house canvass of the village, inquiring as to the health and well-being of each household, as is the custom of his service, and keeping his eyes open on his own account. He satisfied himself that if there had been whisky there, it was drunk up by now. Some of the men showed the sullen depressed air that follows on a prolonged spree, but all were sober at present.

He was in one of the last houses of the village, when, out of the tail of his eye, he saw a man quietly issue from the house next in order, and, covered by the crowd around the door, make his way back to a house already visited. Stonor, without saying anything, went back to that house and found himself face to face with a young white man, a stranger, who greeted him with an insolent grin.

“Who are you?” demanded the policeman.

“Hooliam.”

“You have a white man’s name. What is it?”

“Smith”—this with inimitable insolence, and a look around that bid for the applause of the natives.

Stonor’s lip curled at the spectacle of a white man’s thus lowering himself. “Come outside,” he said sternly. “I want to talk to you.”

He led the way to a place apart on the river bank, and the other, not daring to defy him openly, followed with a swagger. With a stern glance Stonor kept the tatterdemalion crowd at bay. Stonor coolly surveyed his man in the sunlight and saw that he was not white, as he had supposed, but a quarter or eighth breed. He was an uncommonly good-looking young fellow in the hey-day of his youth, say, twenty-six. With his clear olive skin, straight features and curly dark hair he looked not so much like a breed as a man of one of the darker peoples of the Caucasian race, an Italian or a Greek. There was a falcon-like quality in the poise of his head, in his gaze, but the effect was marred by the consciousness of evil, the irreconcilable look in the fine eyes.

“Bad clear through!” was Stonor’s instinctive verdict.

“Where did you come from?” he demanded.

“Up river,” was the casual reply. The man’s English was as good as Stonor’s own.

“Answer me fully.”

“From Sah-ko-da-tah prairie, if you know where that is. I came into that country by way of Grande Prairie. I came from Winnipeg.”

Stonor didn’t believe a word of this, but had no means of confuting the man on the spot. “How long have you been here?” he asked.

“A week or so. I didn’t keep track.”

“What is your business here?”

“I’m looking for a job.”

“Among the Beavers? Why didn’t you come to the trading-post?”

“I was coming, but they tell me John Gaviller’s a hard man to work fer. Thought I better keep clear of him.”

“Gaviller’s the only employer of labour hereabouts. If you don’t like him you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

“I can take up land, can’t I?”

“Not here. This is treaty land. Plenty of good surveyed homesteads around the post.”

“Thanks. I prefer to pick my own location.”

“I’ll give you your choice. You can either come down to the post where I can keep an eye on your doings, or go back up the river where you came from.”

“Do you call this a free country?”

“Never mind that. You’re getting off easy. If you’d rather, I’ll put you under arrest and carry you down to the post for trial.”

“On what charge?”

“Furnishing whisky to the Indians.”

“It’s a lie!” cried the man, hoping to provoke Stonor into revealing the extent of his information.

But the policeman shrugged, and remained mum.

The other suddenly changed his front. “All right, I’ll go if I have to,” he said, with a conciliatory air. “To-morrow.”

“You’ll leave within an hour,” said Stonor, consulting his watch. “I’ll see you off. Better get your things together.”

The man still lingered, and Stonor saw an unspoken question in his eye, a desire to ingratiate himself. Now Stonor, under his stern port as an officer of the law, was intensely curious about the fellow. With his good looks, his impudent assurance, his command of English, he was a notable figure in that remote district. The policeman permitted himself to unbend a little.

“What are you travelling in?” he asked.

“Dug-out.” Encouraged by the policeman’s altered manner, the self-styled Hooliam went on, with an air of taking Stonor into his confidence: “These niggers here are a funny lot, aren’t they? Still believe in magic.”

“In what way?”

“Why, they’re always talking about a White Medicine Man who lives beside a river off to the north-west. Ernest Imbrie they call him. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“He’s been to the post, hasn’t he?”

“No.”

“Well, how did he get into the country?”

“I don’t know.”

“These people say he works magic.”

“Well, if anyone wants to believe that—!”

“What do they say about him down at the post?”

“Plenty of foolishness.”

“But what?”

“You don’t expect me to repeat foolish gossip, do you?”

“No, but what do you think about him?”

“I don’t think.”

“They say that Gaviller’s lodged a complaint against him, and you’re going out there to arrest him as soon as it’s fit to travel.”

“That’s a lie. There’s no complaint against the man.”

“But you are going out there, aren’t you?”

“I can’t discuss my movements with you.”

“That means you are going. Is it true he sent in a whole bale of silver foxes to the post?”

“Say, what’s your interest in this man, anyway?” said Stonor, losing patience.

“Nothing at all,” said the breed carelessly. “These Indians are always talking about him. It roused my curiosity, that’s all.”

“Suppose you satisfy my curiosity about yourself,” suggested Stonor meaningly.

The old light of impudent mockery returned to the comely dark face. “Me? Oh, I’m only a no-account hobo,” he said. “I’ll have to be getting ready now.”

And so Stonor’s curiosity remained unsatisfied. To have questioned the man further would only have been to lower his dignity. True, he might have arrested him, and forced him to give an account of himself, but the processes of justice are difficult and expensive so far north, and the policemen are instructed not to make arrests except when unavoidable. At the moment it did not occur to Stonor but that the man’s questions about Imbrie were actuated by an idle curiosity.

When the hour was up, the entire population of Carcajou Point gathered on the shore to witness Hooliam’s departure. Stonor was there, too, of course, standing grimly apart from the rabble. Of what they thought of this summary deportation he could not be sure, but he suspected that if the whisky were all gone, they would not care much one way or the other. Hooliam was throwing his belongings in a dug-out of a different style from that used by the Beavers. It was ornamented with a curved prow and stern, such as Stonor had not before seen.

“Where did you get that boat?” he asked.

“I didn’t steal it,” answered Hooliam impudently. “Traded my horse for it and some grub at Fort Cardigan.”

Cardigan was a Company post on the Spirit a hundred miles or so above the Crossing. Stonor saw that Hooliam was well provided with blankets, grub, ammunition, etc., and that it was not Company goods.

When Hooliam was ready to embark, he addressed the crowd in an Indian tongue which strongly resembled Beaver, which Stonor spoke, but had different inflections. Freely translated, his words were:

“I go, men. The moose-berry (i. e., red-coat) wills it. I don’t like moose-berries. Little juice and much stone. To eat moose-berries draws a man’s mouth up like a tobacco-bag when the string is pulled.”

They laughed, with deprecatory side-glances at the policeman. They were not aware that he spoke their tongue. Stonor had no intention of letting them know it, and kept an inscrutable face. They pushed off the dug-out, and Hooliam, with a derisive wave of the hand, headed up river. All remained on the shore, and Stonor, seeing that they expected something more of Hooliam, remained also.

He had gone about a third of a mile when Stonor saw him bring the dug-out around and ground her on the beach. He made no move to get out, but a woman appeared from out of the shrubbery and got in. She was too far away for Stonor to distinguish anything of her features; her figure looked matronly.

“Who is that?” he asked sharply.

Several voices answered. “Hooliam’s woman. Hooliam got old woman for his woman”—with scornful laughter. Now that Hooliam was gone, they were prepared to curry favour with the policeman.

Stonor was careful not to show the uneasiness he felt. This was his first intimation that Hooliam had a companion. He considered following him in another dug-out, but finally decided against it. The fact that he had taken the woman aboard in plain sight smacked merely of bravado. A long experience of the red race had taught Stonor that they love to shroud their movements in mystery from the whites, and that in their most mysterious acts there is not necessarily any significance.

Hooliam, with a wave of his paddle, resumed his journey, and presently disappeared around a bend. Stonor turned on his heel and left the beach, followed by the people. They awaited his next move somewhat apprehensively, displaying an anxiety to please which suggested bad consciences. Stonor, however, contented himself with offering some private admonitions to Shose Cardinal, who seemed to take them in good part. He then prepared to return to the post. The people speeded his departure with relieved faces.

That night Stonor camped on the prairie half-way home. As he lay wooing sleep under the stars, his horse cropping companionably near by, a new thought caused him to sit up suddenly in his blankets.

“He mentioned the name Ernest Imbrie. The Indians never call him anything but the White Medicine Man. And even if they had picked up the name Imbrie at the post, they never speak of a man by his Christian name. If they had heard the name Ernest I doubt if they could pronounce it. Sounds as if he knew the name beforehand. Queer if there should be any connection there. I wish I hadn’t let him go so easily.—Oh, well, it’s too late to worry about it now. The steamboat will get to the Crossing before he does. I’ll drop a line to Lambert to keep an eye on him.”

CHAPTER III THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR

At Fort Enterprise a busy time followed. The big steamboat (“big” of course only for lack of anything bigger than a launch to compare with) had to be put in the water and outfitted, and the season’s catch of fur inventoried, baled and put aboard. By Victoria Day all was ready. They took the day off to celebrate with games and oratory (chiefly for the benefit of the helpless natives) followed by a big bonfire and dance at Simon Grampierre’s up the river.

Next morning the steamboat departed up-stream, taking Captain Stinson, Mathews, and most of the native employees of the post in her crew. Doc Giddings and Stonor watched her go, each with a little pain at the breast; she was bound towards the great busy world, world of infinite delight, of white women, lights, music, laughter and delicate feasting; in short, to them the world of romance. They envied the very bales of fur aboard that were bound for the world’s great market-places. On the other hand, John Gaviller watched the steamboat go with high satisfaction. To him she represented Profit. He never knew homesickness, because he was at home. For him the world revolved around Fort Enterprise. As for Gordon Strange, the remaining member of the quartette who watched her go, no one ever really knew what he thought.

The days that followed were the dullest in the whole year. The natives had departed for their summer camps, and there was no one left around the post but the few breed farmers. To Stonor, who was twenty-seven years old, these days were filled with a strange unrest; for the coming of summer with its universal blossoming was answered by a surge in his own youthful blood—and he had no safety-valve. A healthy instinct urged him to a ceaseless activity; he made a garden behind his quarters; he built a canoe (none of your clumsy dug-outs, but a well-turned Peterboro’ model sheathed with bass-wood); he broke the colts of the year. Each day he tired himself out and knew no satisfaction in his work, and each morning he faced the shining world with a kind of groan. Just now he had not even Tole Grampierre to talk to, for Tole, following the universal law, was sitting up with Berta Thomas.

The steamboat’s itinerary took her first to Spirit River Crossing, the point of departure for “outside” where she discharged her fur and took on supplies for the posts further up-stream. Proceeding up to Cardigan and Fort Cheever, she got their fur and brought it back to the Crossing. Then, putting on supplies for Fort Enterprise, she hustled down home with the current. It took her twelve days to mount the stream and six to return. Gaviller was immensely proud of the fact that she was the only thing in the North that ran on a pre-arranged schedule. He even sent out a timetable to the city for the benefit of intending tourists. She was due back at Enterprise on June 15th.

When the morning of that day broke a delightful excitement filled the breasts of those left at the post. As in most Company establishments, on the most prominent point of the river-bank stood a tall flagstaff, with a little brass cannon at its foot. The flag was run up and the cannon loaded, and every five minutes during the day some one would be running out to gaze up the river. Only Gaviller affected to be calm.

“You’re wasting your time,” he would say. “Stinson tied up at Tar Island last night. If he comes right down he’ll be here at three forty-five; and if he has to land at Carcajou for wood it will be near supper-time.”

The coming of the steamboat always held the potentialities of a dramatic surprise, for they had no telegraph to warn them of whom or what she was bringing. This year they expected quite a crowd. In addition to their regular visitors, Duncan Seton, the Company inspector, and Bishop Trudeau on his rounds, the government was sending in a party of surveyors to lay off homesteads across the river, and Mr. Pringle, the Episcopal missionary, was returning to resume his duties. An added spice of anticipation was lent by the fact that the latter was expected to bring his sister to keep house for him. There had been no white woman at Fort Enterprise since the death of Mrs. Gaviller many years before. But, as Miss Pringle was known to be forty years old, the excitement on her account was not undue. Her mark would be Gaviller, the younger men said, affecting not to notice the trader’s annoyance.

Gaviller had put a big boat’s whistle on his darling Spirit River, and the mellow boom of it brought them on a run out of the store before she hove in sight around the islands in front of Grampierre’s. Gaviller had his binoculars. He could no longer keep up his pretence of calmness.

“Three twenty-eight!” he cried, excitedly. “Didn’t I tell you! Who says we can’t keep time up here! She’ll run her plank ashore at three forty-five to the dot!”

“There she is!” they cried, as she poked her nose around the islands.

“Good old tub!”

“By God! she’s a pretty sight—white as a swan!”

“And floats like one!”

“Some class to that craft, sir!”

Meanwhile Gaviller was nervously focussing his binoculars. “By Golly! there’s a big crowd on deck!” he cried. “Must be ten or twelve beside the crew!”

“Can you see the petticoat?” asked Doc Giddings. “Gee! I hope she can cook!”

“Wait a minute! Yes—there she is!—Hello! By God, boys, there’s two of them!”

“Two!”

“Go on, you’re stringing us!”

“The other must be a breed.”

“No, sir, she’s got a white woman’s hat on, a stylish hat. And now I can see her white face!”

“John, for the lova Mike let me look!”

But the trader held him off obdurately. “I believe she’s young. She’s a little woman beside the other. I believe she’s good-looking! All the men are crowding around her.”

Stonor’s heart set up an unaccountable beating. “Ah, it’ll be the wife of one of the surveyors,” he said, with the instinct of guarding against a disappointment.

“No, sir! If her husband was aboard the other men wouldn’t be crowding around like that.”

“No single woman under forty would dare venture up here. She’d be mobbed.”

“Might be a pleasant sort of experience for her.”

Doc Giddings had at last secured possession of the glasses. “She is good-looking!” he cried. “Glory be, she’s a peach! I can see her smile!”

The boat was soon close enough for the binoculars to be dispensed with. To Stonor the whole picture was blurred, save for the one slender, fragile figure clad in the well-considered dress of a lady, perfect in detail. Of her features he was aware at first only of a beaming, wistful smile that plucked at his heartstrings with a strange sharpness. Even at that distance she gave out something that changed him for ever, and he knew it. He gazed, entirely self-forgetful, with rapt eyes and parted lips that would have caused the other men to shout with laughter—had they not been gazing, too. The man who dwells in a world full of charming women never knows what they may mean to a man. Let him be exiled, and he’ll find out. In that moment the smouldering uneasiness which had made Stonor a burden to himself of late burst into flame, and he knew what was the matter. He beheld his desire.

As the steamboat swept by below them, Stonor automatically dipped the flag, and Gaviller touched off the old muzzle-loader, which vented a magnificent roar for its size. The whistle replied. The Spirit River waltzed gracefully around in the stream, and, coming back against the current, pushed her nose softly into the mud of the strand. They ran down to meet her. Hawsers were passed ashore and made fast, and the plank run out.

Gaviller and the others went aboard, and first greetings were exchanged on the forward deck of the steamboat. Stonor, afflicted with a sudden diffidence, hung in the background. He wished to approach her by degrees. Meanwhile he was taking her in. He scarcely dared look at her directly, but his gaze thirstily drank in her outlying details, so to speak. Her small, well-shod feet were marvellous to him; likewise her exquisite silken ankles. He observed that she walked with stiff, short, delicate steps, like a high-bred filly. He was enchanted with the slight, graceful gesticulation of her gloved hand. When he finally brought himself to look at her eyes he was not disappointed; deep blue were they, steady, benignant, and of a heart-disquieting wistfulness. Other items, by the way, were a little straight nose, absurd and lovable, and lips fresh and bright as a child’s. All the men were standing about her with deferential bared heads, and the finest thing (in Stonor’s mind) was that she displayed no self-consciousness in this trying situation; none of the cooings, the gurglings, the flirtatious flutterings that bring the sex into disrepute. Her back was as straight as a plucky boy’s and her chin up like the same.

When Stonor saw that his turn was approaching to be introduced, he was seized outright with panic. He slipped inside the vessel and made his way back to where the engineer was wiping his rods. He greeted Mathews with a solicitude that surprised the dour Scotchman. He stood there making conversation until he heard everybody in the bow go ashore. Afterwards he was seized with fresh panic upon realizing that delaying the inevitable introduction could not but have the effect of singling him out and making him more conspicuous when it came about.

John Gaviller carried Miss Pringle and the charming unknown up to the clap-boarded villa until the humble shack attached to the English mission could be made fit to receive them. Stonor went for a long walk to cool his fevered blood. He was thoroughly disgusted with himself. By his timidity, not to use a stronger word, he had lost precious hours; indeed, now that he had missed his first opportunity, he might be overlooked altogether. The other men would not be likely to help him out at all. A cold chill struck to his breast at the thought. He resolved to march right up to the guns of her eyes on his return. But he made a score of conflicting resolutions in the course of his walk. Meanwhile he didn’t yet know whether she were Miss or Mrs., or what was her errand at Fort Enterprise. True, he could have gone back and asked any of the men who came on the boat, but nothing in the world could have induced him to speak of her to anyone just then.

When he got back, it was to find the post in a fever of preparation. John Gaviller had asked every white man to his house to dinner to meet the ladies. It was to be a real “outside” dinner party, and there was a sudden, frantic demand for collars, cravats and presentable foot-wear. Nobody at the post had a dress-suit but Gaviller himself.

Of them all only Stonor had no sartorial problems; his new uniform and his Strathcona boots polished according to regulations were all he had and all he needed. He surveyed the finished product in his little mirror with strong dissatisfaction. “Ornery-looking cuss,” he thought. But a man is no judge of his own looks. A disinterested observer might have given a different verdict. A young man less well favoured by nature would have gazed at Stonor’s long-limbed ease with helpless envy. He had that rare type of figure that never becomes encumbered with fat. The grace of youth and the strength of maturity met there. He would make a pattern colonel if he lived. Under the simple lines of his uniform one apprehended the ripple and play of unclogged muscles. If all men were like Stonor the tailor’s task would be a sinecure.

As to his face, mention has already been made of the sober gaze lightened by a suggestion of sly mirthfulness. In a company where sprightliness was the great desideratum, Stonor, no doubt, would have been considered slow. Men with strong reserves are necessarily a little slow in coming into action; they are apt, too, as a decent cover for their feelings, to affect more slowness than they feel. A woman can rarely look at that kind of man without feeling a secret desire to rouse him; there is so clearly something to rouse. It was Stonor’s hair which had given rise to the quaint name the native maidens had applied to him, the “Gold-piece.” It was not yellow hair, as we call it, but a shiny light brown, and under the savage attack of his brushes the shine was accentuated.

The guests were received in the drawing-room of Enterprise House, which was rarely opened nowadays. It had a charming air of slightly old-fashioned gentility, just as its dead mistress had left it, and the rough Northerners came in with an abashed air. John Gaviller, resplendent in the dress-suit, stood by the piano, with the little lady on one hand and the large lady on the other, and one after another the men marched up and made their obeisances. The actual introduction proved to be not so terrible an ordeal as Stonor had feared—or perhaps it is more proper to say, that it was so terrible he was numbed and felt nothing. It was all over in a minute. “Miss Starling!” the name rang through his consciousness like the sound of silver bells.

Face to face Stonor saw her but dimly through the mist of too much feeling. She treated him exactly the same as the others, that is to say, she was kind, smiling, interested, and personally inscrutable. Stonor was glad that there was another man pressing close at his heels, for he felt that he could stand no more just then. He was passed on to Miss Pringle. Of this lady it need only be said that she was a large-size clergyman’s sister, a good soul, pious and kindly. She has little to do with this tale.

In Stonor’s eyes she proved to have a great merit, for she was disposed to talk exclusively about Miss Starling. Stonor’s ears were long for that. From her talk he gathered three main facts: (a) that Miss Starling’s given name was Clare (enchanting syllable!); (b) that the two ladies had become acquainted for the first time on the way into the country; (c) that Miss Starling was going back with the steamboat. “Of course!” thought Stonor, with his heart sinking slowly like a water-logged branch.

“Isn’t she plucky!” said Miss Pringle enthusiastically.

“She looks it,” said Stonor, with a sidelong glance at the object of her encomium.

“To make this trip, I mean, all by herself.”

“Is it just to see the country?” asked Stonor diffidently.

“Oh, don’t you know? She’s on the staff of the Winnipeg News-Herald, and is writing up the trip for her paper.”

Stonor instantly made up his mind to spend his next leave in Winnipeg. His relief was due in October.

John Gaviller could do things in good style when he was moved to it. The table was gay with silver under candle-light. Down the centre were placed great bowls of painter’s brush, the rose of the prairies. And with the smiling ladies to grace the head of the board, it was like a glimpse of a fairer world to the men of the North. Miss Pringle was on Gaviller’s right, Miss Starling on his left. Stonor was about half-way down the table, and fortunately on the side opposite the younger lady, where he could gaze his fill.

She was wearing a pink evening dress trimmed with silver, that to Stonor’s unaccustomed eyes seemed like gossamer and moonshine. He was entranced by her throat and by the appealing loveliness of her thin arms. “How could I ever have thought a fat woman beautiful!” he asked himself. She talked with her arms and her delightfully restless shoulders. Stonor had heard somewhere that this was a sign of a warm heart. For the first time he had a view of her hair; it was dark and warm and plentiful, and most cunningly arranged.

Stonor was totally unaware of what he was eating. From others, later, he learned of the triumph of the kitchen—and all at three hours’ notice. Fortunately for him, everybody down the table was hanging on the talk at the head, so that no efforts in that direction were required of him. He was free to listen and dream.

“Somewhere in the world there is a man who will be privileged some day to sit across the table from her at every meal! Not in a crowd like this, but at their own table in their own house. Probably quite an ordinary fellow, too, certainly not worthy of his luck. With her eyes for him alone, and her lovely white arms!—While other men are batching it alone. Things are not evenly divided in this world, for sure! If that man went to hell afterwards it wouldn’t any more than square things.”

In answer to a question he heard her say: “Oh, don’t ask me about Winnipeg! All cities are so ordinary and usual! I want to hear about your country. Tell me stories about the fascinating silent places.”

“Well, as it happens,” said Gaviller, speaking slowly to give his words a proper effect, “we have a first-class mystery on hand just at present.”

“Oh, tell me all about it!” she said, as he meant her to.

“A fellow, a white man, has appeared from nowhere at all, and set himself up beside the Swan River, an unexplored stream away to the north-west of here. There he is, and no one knows how he got there. We’ve never laid eyes on him, but the Indians bring us marvellous tales of his ‘strong medicine,’ meaning magic, you know. They say he first appeared from under the great falls of the Swan River. They describe him as a sort of embodiment of the voice of the Falls, but we suspect there is a more natural explanation, because he sends into the post for the food of common humans, and gets a bundle of magazines and papers by every mail. They come addressed to Doctor Ernest Imbrie. Our poor Doc here is as jealous as a cat of his reputation as a healer!”

Gaviller was rewarded with a general laugh, in which her silvery tones were heard.

“Oh, tell me more about him!” she cried.

Of all the men who were watching her there was not one who observed any change in her face. Afterwards they remembered this with wonder. Yet there was something in her voice, her manner, the way she kept her chin up perhaps, that caused each man to think as her essential quality:

“She’s game!”

The whole story of Imbrie as they knew it was told, with all the embroidery that had been unconsciously added during the past months.

CHAPTER IV MORE ABOUT CLARE

Determined to make the most of their rare feminine visitation at Fort Enterprise, on the following day the fellows got up a chicken hunt on the river bottom east of the post, to be followed by an al fresco supper at which broiled chicken was to be the pièce de resistance. The ladies didn’t shoot any prairie chicken, but they stimulated the hunters with their presence, and afterwards condescended to partake of the delicate flesh.

Stonor, though he was largely instrumental in getting the thing up, and though he worked like a Trojan to make the affair go, still kept himself personally in the background. He consorted with Captain Stinson and Mathews, middle-aged individuals who were considered out of the running. It was not so much shyness now, as an instinct of self-preservation. “She’ll be gone in a week,” he told himself. “You mustn’t let this thing get too strong a hold on you, or life here after she has gone will be hellish. You’ve got to put her out of your mind, my son—or just keep her as a lovely dream not to be taken in earnest. Hardly likely, after seeing the world, that she’d look twice at a sergeant of police!”

In his innocence Stonor adopted the best possible way of attracting her attention to himself. More than once, when he was not looking, her eyes sought him out curiously. In answer to her questions of the other men it appeared that it was Stonor who had sent the natives out in advance to drive the game past them: it was Stonor who surprised them with a cloth already spread under a poplar tree: it was Stonor who cooked the birds so deliciously. She was neither vain nor silly, but at the same time in a company where every man lay down at her feet, so to speak, and begged her to tread on him, it could not but seem peculiar to her that the best-looking man of them all should so studiously avoid her.

Next day they all crossed the river and rode up to Simon Grampierre’s place, where the half-breeds repeated the Victoria Day games for the amusement of the visitors. (These days are still talked of at Fort Enterprise.) Stonor was finally induced to give an exhibition of high-school riding as taught to the police recruits, and thereby threw all the other events in the shade. But their plaudits overwhelmed him. He disappeared and was seen no more that day.

Sunday followed. Mr. Pringle and his sister had got the little church in order, and services were held there for the first time in many months. The mission was half a mile east of the Company buildings, and after church they walked home beside the fields of sprouting grain, in a comfortable Sabbath peace that was much the same at Enterprise as elsewhere in the world.

The procession travelled in the following order: First, four surveyors marching with their heads over their shoulders, at imminent risk of an undignified stumble in the trail; next, Clare Starling, flanked on one side by Gaviller, on the other by Doc Giddings, with two more surveyors on the outlying wings, peering forward to get a glimpse of her; then Captain Stinson, Mathews, and Sergeant Stonor in a line, talking about the state of the crops, and making believe to pay no attention to what was going on ahead; lastly, Mr. Pringle and his sister hurrying to catch up.

Half-way home Miss Starling, à propos of nothing, suddenly stopped and turned her head. “Sergeant Stonor,” she said. He stepped to her side. Since she clearly showed in her manner that she intended holding converse with the policeman, there was nothing for Gaviller et al. to do but proceed, which they did with none too good a grace. This left Stonor and the girl walking together in the middle of the procession. Stinson and Mathews, who were supposed to be out of it anyway, winked at each other portentously.

“I wanted to ask you about that horse you rode yesterday, a beautiful animal. What do you call him?”

“Miles Aroon,” said Stonor, like a wooden man. He dreaded that she meant to go on and enlarge on his riding tricks. In his modesty he now regarded that he had made an awful ass of himself the day before. But she stuck to horse-flesh.

“He’s a beauty! Would he let me ride him?”

“Oh, yes! He has no bad tricks. I broke him myself. But of course he knows nothing of side-saddles.”

“I ride astride.”

“I believe we’re all going for a twilight ride to-night. I’ll bring him for you.”

As a result of this Stonor’s praiseworthy resolutions to keep out of harm’s way were much weakened. Indeed, late that night in his little room in quarters he gave himself up to the most outrageous dreams of a possible future happiness. Stonor was quite unversed in the ways of modern ladies; all his information on the subject had been gleaned from romances, which, as everybody knows, are always behind the times in such matters, and it is possible that he banked too much on the simple fact of her singling him out on the walk home.

There was a great obstacle in his way; the force sets its face against matrimony during the term of service. Stonor in his single-mindedness never thought that there were other careers. “I shall have to get a commission,” he thought. “An inspectorship is little enough to offer her. But what an ornament she’d be to a post! And she’d love the life; she loves horses. But Lord! it’s difficult nowadays, with nothing going on. If an Indian war would only break out!”—He was quite ready to sacrifice the unfortunate red race.

On Monday night he was again bidden to dine at Enterprise House. As Gaviller since the day before had been no more than decently polite, Stonor ventured to hope that the invitation might have been instigated by her. At any rate he was placed by her side this time, where he sat a little dizzy with happiness, and totally oblivious to food. At the same time it should be understood that the young lady had no veiled glances or hidden meanings for him alone; she treated him, as she did all the others, to perfect candour.

After dinner they had music in the drawing-room. The piano was grotesquely out of tune, but what cared they for that? She touched it and their souls were drawn out of their bodies. Probably the performer suffered, but she played on with a smile. They listened entranced until darkness fell, and when it is dark at Enterprise in June it is high time to go to bed.

They all accompanied Stonor to the door. The long-drawn summer dusk of the North is an ever fresh wonder to newcomers. At sight of the exquisite half-light and the stars an exclamation of pleasure broke from Clare.

“Much too fine a night to go to bed!” she cried. “Sergeant Stonor, take me out to the bench beside the flagstaff for a few minutes.”

As they sat down she said: “Don’t you want to smoke?”

“Don’t feel the need of it,” he said. His voice was husky with feeling. Would a man want to smoke in Paradise?

By glancing down and sideways he could take her in as far up as her neck without appearing to stare rudely. She was sitting with her feet crossed and her hands in her lap like a well-bred little girl. When he dared glance at her eyes he saw that there was no consciousness of him there. They were regarding something very far away. In the dusk the wistfulness which hid behind a smile in daylight looked forth fully and broodingly.

Yet when she spoke the matter was ordinary enough. “All the men here tell me about the mysterious stranger who lives on the Swan River. They can’t keep away from the subject. And the funny part of it is, they all seem to be angry at him. Yet they know nothing of him. Why is that?”

“It means nothing,” said Stonor, smiling. “You see, all the men pride themselves on knowing every little thing that happens in the country. It’s all they have to talk about. In a way the whole country is like a village. Well, it’s only because this man has succeeded in defying their curiosity that they’re sore. It’s a joke!”

“They tell me that you stand up for him,” she said, with a peculiar warmth in her voice.

“Oh, just to make the argument interesting,” said Stonor lightly.

“Is that all?” she said, chilled.

“No, to tell the truth, I was attracted to the man from the first,” he said more honestly. “By what the Indians said about his healing the sick and so on. And they said he was young. I have no friend of my own age up here—I mean no real friend. So I thought—well, I would like to know him.”

“I like that,” she said simply.

There was a silence.

“Why don’t you—sometime—go to him?” she said, with what seemed almost like a breathless air.

“I am going,” said Stonor simply. “I received permission in the last mail. The government wants me to look over the Kakisa Indians to see if they are ready for a treaty. The policy is to leave the Indians alone as long as they are able to maintain themselves under natural conditions. But as soon as they need help the government takes charge; limits them to a reservation; pays an annuity, furnishes medical attention, and so on. This is called taking treaty. The Kakisas are one of the last wild tribes left.”

She seemed scarcely to hear him. “When are you going?” she asked with the same air of breathlessness.

“As soon as the steamboat goes back.”

“How far is it to Swan River?”

“Something under a hundred and fifty miles. Three days’ hard riding or four days’ easy.”

“And how far down to the great falls?”

“Accounts differ. From the known features of the map I should say about two hundred miles. They say the river’s as crooked as a ram’s horn.”

There was another silence. She was busy with her own thoughts, and Stonor was content not to talk if he might look at her.

With her next speech she seemed to strike off at a tangent. She spoke with a lightness that appeared to conceal a hint of pain. “They say the mounted police are the guides, philosophers and friends of the people up North. They say you have to do everything, from feeding babies to reading the burial service.”

“I’m afraid there’s a good bit of romancing about the police,” said Stonor modestly.

“But they do make good friends, don’t they?” she insisted.

“I hope so.”

She gave him the full of her deep, starry eyes. It was not an intoxicating glance, but one that moved him to the depths. “Will you be my friend?” she asked simply.

Poor Stonor! With too great a need for speech, speech itself was foundered. No words ever coined seemed strong enough to carry the weight of his desire to assure her. He could only look at her, imploring her to believe in him. In the end only two little words came; to him wretchedly inadequate; but it is doubtful if they could have been bettered.

“Try me!”

His look satisfied her. She lowered her eyes. The height of emotion was too great to be maintained. She cast round in her mind for something to let them down. “How far to the north the sunset glow is now.”

Stonor understood. He answered in the same tone: “At this season it doesn’t fade out all night. The sun is such a little way below the rim there, that the light just travels around the northern horizon, and becomes the dawn in a little while.”

For a while they talked of indifferent matters.

By and by she said casually: “When you go out to Swan River, take me with you.”

He thought she was joking. “I say, that would be a lark!”

She laughed a little nervously.

He tried to keep it up, though his heart set up a furious beating at the bare idea of such a trip. “Can you bake bannock?”

“I can make good biscuits.”

“What would we do for a chaperon?”

“Nobody has chaperons nowadays.”

“You don’t know what a moral community this is!”

“I meant it,” she said suddenly, in a tone there was no mistaking.

All his jokes deserted him, and left him trembling a little. Indeed he was scandalized, too, being less advanced, probably, in his ideas than she. “It’s—it’s impossible!” he stammered at last.

“Why?” she asked calmly.

He could not give the real reason, of course. “To take the trail, you! To ride all day and sleep on the hard ground! And the river trip, an unknown river with Heaven knows what rapids and other difficulties! A fragile little thing like you!”

Opposition stimulated her. “What you call my fragility is more apparent than real,” she said with spirit. “As a matter of fact I have more endurance than most big women. I have less to carry. I am accustomed to living and travelling in the open. I can ride all day—or walk if need be.”

“It’s impossible!” he repeated. It was the policeman who spoke. The man’s blood was leaping, and his imagination painting the most alluring pictures. How often on his lonely journeys had he not dreamed of the wild delights of such companionship!

“What is your real reason?” she asked.

“Well, how could you go—with me, you know?” he said, blushing into the dusk.

“I’m not afraid,” she answered instantly. “Anyway, that’s my look-out, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said, “I have to think of it. The responsibility would be mine.” Here the man broke through—“Oh, I talk like a prig!” he cried. “But don’t you see, I’m not up here on my own. I can’t do what I would like. A policeman has got to be proper, hasn’t he?”

She smiled at his naïveté. “But if I have business out there?”

This sounded heartless to Stonor. It was the first and last time that he ventured to criticize her. “Oh,” he objected, “I don’t know what reasons the poor fellow has for burying himself—they must be good reasons, for it’s no joke to live alone! It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it, to dig him out and write him up in the papers?”

“Oh, what must you think of me!” she murmured in a quick, hurt tone.

He saw that he had made a mistake. “I—I beg your pardon,” he stammered contritely. “I thought that was what you meant by business.”

“I’m not a reporter,” she said.

“But they told me——”

“Yes, I know, I lied. I’m not apologizing for that. It was necessary to lie to protect myself from vulgar curiosity.”

He looked his question.

She was not quite ready to answer it yet. “Suppose I had the best of reasons for going,” she said, hurriedly, “a reason that Mrs. Grundy would approve of; it would be your duty as a policeman, wouldn’t it, to help me?”

“Yes—but——?”

She turned imploring eyes on him, and unconsciously clasped her hands. “I’m sure you’re generous and steadfast,” she said quickly. “I can trust you, can’t I, not to give me away? The gossip, the curious stares—it would be more than I could bear! Promise me, whatever you may think of it all, to respect my secret.”

“I promise,” he said a little stiffly. It hurt him that he was required to protest his good faith. “The first thing we learn in the force is to keep our mouths shut.”

“Ah, now you’re offended with me because I made you promise!”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s over now. What is your reason for wanting to go out to Swan River?”

She answered low: “I am Ernest Imbrie’s wife.”

“Oh!” said Stonor in a flat tone. A sick disappointment filled him—yet in the back of his mind he had expected something of the kind. An inner voice whispered to him: “Not for you! It was too much to hope for!”

Presently she went on: “I injured him cruelly. That’s why he buried himself so far away.”

Stonor turned horror-stricken eyes on her.

“Oh, not that,” she said proudly and indifferently. “The injury I did him was to his spirit; that is worse.” Stonor turned hot for his momentary suspicion.

“I can repair it by going to him,” she went on. “I must go to him. I can never know peace until I have tried to make up to him a little of what I have made him suffer.”

She paused to give Stonor a chance to speak—but he was dumb.

Naturally she misunderstood. “Isn’t that enough?” she cried painfully. “I have told you the essential truth. Must I go into particulars? I can’t bear to speak of these things!”

“No! No!” he said, horrified. “It’s not that. I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Then you’ll help me?”

“I will take you to him.”

She began to cry in a pitiful shaken way.

“Ah, don’t!” murmured Stonor. “I can’t stand seeing you.”

“It’s—just from relief,” she whispered.… “I’ve been under a strain.… I think I should have gone out of my mind—if I had been prevented from expiating the wrong I did.… I wish I could tell you—he’s the bravest man in the world, I think—and the most unhappy!… And I heaped unhappiness on his head!”

This was hard for Stonor to listen to, but it was so obviously a relief to her to speak, that he made no attempt to stop her.

She soon quieted down. “I shan’t try to thank you,” she said. “I’ll show you.”

Stonor foresaw that the proposed journey would be attended with difficulties.

“Would it be possible,” she asked meekly, “for you to plan to leave a day in advance of the steamboat, and say nothing about taking me?”

“You mean for us to leave the post secretly?” he said, a little aghast.

“When the truth came out it would be all right,” she urged. “And it would save me from becoming the object of general talk and commiseration here. Why, if Mr. Gaviller knew in advance, he’d probably insist on sending a regular expedition.”

“Perhaps he would.”

“And they’d all try to dissuade me. I’d have to talk them over one by one—I haven’t the strength of mind left for that. They’d say I ought to wait here and send for him——”

“Well, wouldn’t that be better?”

“No! No! Not the same thing at all. I doubt if he’d come. And what would I be doing here—waiting—without news. I couldn’t endure it. I must go to him.”

Stonor thought hard. Youth was pulling him one way, and his sense of responsibility the other. Moreover, this kind of case was not provided for in regulations. Finally he said:

“Couldn’t you announce your intention of remaining over for one trip of the steamboat? Miss Pringle would be glad to have you, I’m sure.”

“I could do that. But you’re not going to delay the start?”

“We can leave the day after the boat goes, as planned. But if we were missed before the boat left she’d carry out some great scandalous tale that we might never be able to correct. For if scandal gets a big enough start you can never overtake it.”

“You are right, of course. I never thought of that.”

“Then I see no objection to leaving the post secretly, provided you are willing to tell one reliable person in advance—say Pringle or his sister, of our intention. You see we must leave someone behind us to still the storm of gossip that will be let loose.”

“You think of everything!”

CHAPTER V THE FIRST STAGE

For two days Stonor went about his preparations with an air of dogged determination. It seemed to him that all the light had gone out of his life, and hope was dead. He told himself that the proposed trip could not be otherwise than the stiffest kind of an ordeal to a man in his position, an ordeal calling for well-nigh superhuman self-control. How gladly would he have given it up, had he not given his word.

And then on the third day his spirits unaccountably began to rise. As a matter of fact youthful spirits must seek their natural level no less surely than water, but Stonor was angry with himself, accusing himself of lightheadedness, inconstancy and what not. His spirits continued to rise just the same. There was a delight in providing everything possible for her comfort. The mere thought of going away with her, under any circumstances whatsoever, made his heart sing.

John Gaviller was astonished by the size and variety of his requisition for supplies. Besides the customary rations Stonor included all the luxuries the store afforded: viz., tinned fish, vegetables and fruit; condensed milk, marmalade and cocoa. And in quantities double what he would ordinarily have taken.

“Getting luxurious in your old age, aren’t you?” said the trader.

“Oh, I’m tired of an unrelieved diet of bannock and beans,” said Stonor, with a carelessness so apparent, they ought to have been warned; but of course they never dreamed of anything so preposterous as the truth.

Stonor had two horses of his own. He engaged three more from Simon Grampierre, horses that he knew, and from Tole Grampierre purchased a fine rabbit-skin robe for Clare’s bed on the trail. Tole, who had secretly hoped to be taken on this expedition, was much disappointed when no invitation was forthcoming. Stonor arranged with Tole to ride to meet him with additional supplies on the date when he might expect to be returning. Tole was to leave Enterprise on July 12th.

From Father Goussard Stonor borrowed a mosquito tent on the plea that his own was torn. He smuggled a folding camp-cot into his outfit. Clare fortunately had brought suitable clothes for the most part. How well Stonor was to know that little suit cut like a boy’s with Norfolk jacket and divided skirt! What additional articles she needed Miss Pringle bought at the store for a mythical destitute Indian boy. They had soon found it necessary to take Miss Pringle into their confidence. She went about charged with the secret like a soda-water-bottle with the cork wired down.

Beside Gordon Strange, the only person around the post who could speak the Kakisa tongue was a woman, Mary Moosa, herself a Kakisa who had married a Cree. Her husband was a deck-hand on the steamboat. Stonor had already engaged Mary Moosa to take this trip with him as interpreter, and Mary, who had her own notions of propriety, had stipulated that her oldest boy be taken along. Mary herself promised to be a godsend on the trip; for she was just the comfortable dependable soul to look after Clare, but the boy now became a problem, for the dug-out that Stonor designed to use on the Swan River would only carry three persons comfortably, with the necessary outfit. Yet Stonor could not speak to Mary in advance about leaving the boy at home.

Such was Stonor’s assiduity that everything was ready for the start two days ahead of time—an unheard-of thing up North. Everybody at the post gave up a morning to seeing the steamboat off. She carried with her a report from Stonor to his inspector, telling of the proposed trip. Clare was among those who waved to her from the shore. No surprise had been occasioned by the announcement of her decision to remain over a trip. Gaviller was already planning further entertainments. She had by this time moved down to the Mission with the Pringles.

On the afternoon of that day Stonor transported his goods and swam his horses across the river, to be ready for the start from the other side. Mary Moosa and her son met him there, and camped beside the outfit for the night. Stonor returned to Enterprise House for dinner. He had tried to get out of it, knowing that the fact of this dinner would rankle in the trader’s breast afterwards, but Gaviller had insisted on giving him a send-off. It was not a happy affair, for three of the guests were wretchedly nervous. They could not help but see in their mind’s eye Gaviller’s expression of indignant astonishment when the news should be brought him next day.

Gaviller further insisted on taking everybody down to the shore to see Stonor off, thus obliging the trooper to make an extra trip across the river and back in order to maintain the fiction. Stonor slept in his own camp for an hour, and then rowed down-stream and across, to land in front of the Mission.

It is never perfectly dark at this season, and already day was beginning to break. Stonor climbed the bank, and showed himself at the top, knowing that they would be on the watch from within. The little grey log mission-house crouched in its neglected garden behind a fence of broken palings. But a touch of regeneration was already visible in Miss Pringle’s geranium slips in the windows, and her bits of white curtain.

The door was silently opened, and the two women kissed in the entry. Stonor was never to forget that picture in the still grey light. Clare, clad in the little Norfolk suit and the boy’s stout boots and hat, crossed the yard with the little mincing steps so characteristic of her, and therefore so charming to the man who waited. Her face was pale, her eyes bright. Miss Pringle stood in the doorway, massive and tearful, a hand pressed to her mouth.

Stonor’s breast received a surprising wrench. “It’s like an elopement!” he thought. “Ah, if she were coming to me!”

She smiled at him without speaking, and handed over her bag. Stonor closed the gate softly, and they made their way down the bank, and got in the boat.

It was a good, stiff pull back against the current. They spoke little. Clare studied his grim face with some concern.

“Regrets?” she asked.

He rested on his oars for a moment and his face softened. He smiled at her frankly—and ruefully. “No regrets,” he said, “but a certain amount of anxiety.”

His glance conveyed a good deal more than that—in spite of him. “I love you with all my heart. Of course I clearly understand that you have nothing for me. I am prepared to see this thing through, no matter what the end means to me.—But be merciful!” All this was in his look. Whether she got it or not, no man could have told. She looked away and dabbled her hand in the water.

Mary Moosa was a self-respecting squaw who lived in a house with tables and chairs and went to church and washed her children with soap. In her plain black cotton dress, the skirt cut very full to allow her to ride astride, her new moccasins and her black straw hat she made a figure of matronly tidiness if not of beauty. She was cooking when they arrived. Her inward astonishment, at beholding Stonor returning with the white girl who had created such a sensation at the post, can be guessed; but, true to her traditions, she betrayed nothing of it to the whites. After a single glance in their direction her gaze returned to the frying-pan.

It was Stonor who was put out of countenance, “Miss Starling is going with us,” he said, with a heavy scowl.

Mary made no comment on the situation, but continued gravely frying the flap-jacks to a delicate golden shade. Her son, aged about fourteen, who had less command over his countenance, stood in the background staring, with open eyes and mouth. It was a trying moment for Stonor and Clare. They discussed the prospects of a good day for the journey in rather strained voices.

However, it proved that Mary’s silence had neither an unfriendly nor a censorious intention. She merely required time to get her breath, so to speak. She transferred the flap-jacks from the pan to a plate, and, putting them in the ashes to keep hot, arose and came to Clare with extended hand.

“How,” she said, as she had been taught was manners to all.

Clare took her hand with a right good will.

It suddenly occurred to Mary that there was now no occasion for the boy to accompany them. Mary was a woman of few words. “You go home,” she said calmly.

The boy broke into a howl of grief, proving that the delights of the road are much the same to boys, red or white.

“Poor little fellow!” said Clare.

“Too young for travel,” said Mary, impassively. “More trouble than help.”

Clare wished to intercede for him with Stonor, but the trooper shook his head.

“No room in the dug-out,” he said.

Toma Moosa departed along the shore with his arm over his eyes.

Mary was as good as a man on a trip. While Stonor and Clare ate she packed the horses, and Stonor had only to throw the hitch and draw it taut. Clare watched this operation with interest.

“They swell up just like babies when you’re putting their bands on,” she remarked.

They were on the move shortly after sunrise, that is to say half-past three. As they rode away over the flat, each took a last look at the buildings of the post across the river, gilded by the horizontal rays, each wondering privately what fortune had in store for them before they should see the spot again.

They passed the last little shack and the last patch of grain before anybody was astir. When they rode out into the open country everybody’s spirits rose. There is nothing like taking the trail to lift up the heart—and on a June morning in the north! Troubles, heart-aches and anxieties were left behind with the houses. Even Mary Moosa beamed in her inscrutable way.

Stonor experienced a fresh access of confidence, and proceeded to deceive himself all over again. “I’m cured!” he thought. “There’s nothing to mope about. She’s my friend. Anything else is out of the question, and I will not think of it again. We’ll just be good pals like two fellows. You can be a pal with the right kind of girl, and she is that.—But better than any fellow, she’s so damn good to look at!”

It was a lovely park-like country with graceful, white-stemmed poplars standing about on the sward, and dark spruces in the hollows. The grass was starred with flowers. When Nature sets out to make a park her style has a charming abandon that no landscape-gardener can ever hope to capture. After they mounted the low bench the country rolled shallowly, flat in the prospect, with a single, long, low eminence, blue athwart the horizon ahead.

“That’s the divide between the Spirit and the Swan,” said Stonor. “We’ll cross it to-morrow. From here it looks like quite a mountain, but the ascent is so gradual we won’t know we’re over it until we see the water flowing the other way.”

Clare rode Miles Aroon, Stonor’s sorrel gelding, and Stonor rode the other police horse, a fine dark bay. These two animals fretted a good deal at the necessity of accommodating their pace to the humble pack animals. These latter had a stolid inscrutable look like their native masters. One in particular looked so respectable and matter-of-fact that Clare promptly christened her Lizzie.

Lizzie proved to be a horse of a strong, bourgeois character. If her pack was not adjusted exactly to her liking, she calmly sat on her haunches in the trail until it was fixed. Furthermore, she insisted on bringing up the rear of the cavalcade. If she was put in the middle, she simply fell out until the others had passed. In her chosen place she proceeded to fall asleep, with her head hanging ever lower and feet dragging, while the others went on. Stonor, who knew the horse, let her have her way. There was no danger of losing her. When she awoke and found herself alone, she would come tearing down the trail, screaming for her beloved companions.

Stonor rode at the head of his little company with a leg athwart his saddle, so he could hold converse with Clare behind.

Pointing to the trail stretching ahead of them like an endless brown ribbon over prairie and through bush, he said: “I suppose trails are the oldest things in America. Once thoroughly made they can never be effaced—except by the plough. You see, they never can run quite straight, though the country may be as flat as your hand, but the width never varies; three and a half hands.”

Travelling with horses is not all picnicking. Three times a day they have to be unpacked and turned out to graze, and three times caught and packed again; this in addition to the regular camp routine of pitching tents, rustling wood, cooking, etc. Clare announced her intention of taking over the cooking, but she found that baking biscuits over an open fire in a drizzle of rain, offered a new set of problems to the civilized cook, and Mary had to come to her rescue.

During this, their first spell by the trail, Stonor was highly amused to watch Clare’s way with Mary. She simply ignored Mary’s discouraging red-skin stolidity, and assumed that they were sisters under their skins. She pretended that it was necessary for them to take sides against Stonor in order to keep the man in his place. It was not long before Mary was grinning broadly. Finally at some low-voiced sally of Clare’s she laughed outright. Stonor had never heard her laugh before. Thereafter she was Clare’s. Realizing that the wonderful white girl really wished to make friends, Mary offered her a doglike devotion that never faltered throughout the difficult days that followed.

They slept throughout the middle part of the day, and later, the sky clearing, they rode until near sun-down in order to make a good water-hole that Mary knew of. When they had supped and made all snug for the night, Stonor let fall the piece of information that Mary was well known as a teller of tales at the Post. Clare gave her no peace then till she consented to tell a story. They sat in a row behind Stonor’s little mosquito-bar, for the insects were abroad, with the fire burning before them, and Mary began.

“I tell you now how the people got the first medicine-pipe. This story is about Thunder. Thunder is everywhere. He roar in the mountains, he shout far out on the prairie. He strike the high rocks and they fall. He hit a tree and split it like with a big axe. He strike people and they die. He is bad. He like to strike down the tall things that stand. He is ver’ powerful. He is the most strong one. Sometimes he steals women.

“Long tam ago, almost in the beginning, a man and his wife sit in their lodge when Thunder come and strike them. The man was not killed. At first he is lak dead, but bam-bye he rise up again and look around him. His wife not there. He say: ‘Oh well, she gone to get wood or water,’ and he sit awhile. But when the sun had gone under, he go out and ask the people where she go. Nobody see her. He look all over camp, but not find her. Then he know Thunder steal her, and he go out alone on the hills and mak’ sorrow.

“When morning come he get up and go far away, and he ask all the animals he meet where Thunder live. They laugh and not tell him. Wolf say: ‘W’at you think! We want go look for the one we fear? He is our danger. From others we can run away. From him there is no running. He strike and there we lie! Turn back! Go home! Do not look for the place of the feared one.’

“But the man travel on. Travel very far. Now he come to a lodge, a funny lodge, all made of stone. Here live the raven chief. The man go in.

“Raven chief say: ‘Welcome, friend. Sit down. Sit down.’ And food was put before him.

“When he finish eating, Raven say: ‘Why you come here?’

“Man say: ‘Thunder steal my wife away. I want find his place so I get her back.’

“Raven say: ‘I think you be too scare to go in the lodge of that feared one. It is close by here. His lodge is made of stone like this, and hanging up inside are eyes—all the eyes of those he kill or steal away. He take out their eyes and hang them in his lodge. Now, will you enter?’

“Man say: ‘No. I am afraid. What man could look on such things of fear and live?’

“Raven say: ‘No common man can. There is only one old Thunder fears. There is only one he cannot kill. It is I, the Raven. Now I will give you medicine and he can’t harm you. You go enter there, and look among those eyes for your wife’s eyes, and if you find them, tell that Thunder why you come, and make him give them to you. Here now is a raven’s wing. You point it to him, and he jomp back quick. But if that is not strong enough, take this. It is an arrow, and the stick is made of elk-horn. Take it, I say, and shoot it through his lodge.’

“Man say: ‘Why make a fool of me? My heart is sad. I am crying.’ And he cover up his head with his blanket and cry.

“Raven say: ‘Wah! You do not believe me! Come out, come out, and I make you believe!’ When they stand outside Raven ask: ‘Is the home of your people far?’

“Man say: ‘Very far!’

“‘How many days’ journey?’

“Man say: ‘My heart is sad. I not count the days. The berries grow and get ripe since I leave my lodge.’

“Raven say: ‘Can you see your camp from here?’

“Man think that is foolish question and say nothing.

“Then the Raven rub some medicine on his eyes and say: ‘Look!’ The man look and see his own camp. It was close. He see the people. He see the smoke rising from the lodges. And at that wonderful thing the man believe in the Raven’s medicine.

“Then Raven say: ‘Now take the wing and the arrow and go get your wife.’

“So the man take those things and go to Thunder’s lodge. He go in and sit down by the door. Thunder sit inside and look at him with eyes of lightning. But the man look up and see those many pairs of eyes hanging up. And the eyes of his wife look at him, and he know them among all those others.

“Thunder ask in a voice that shake the ground: ‘Why you come here?’

“Man say: ‘I looking for my wife that you steal from me. There hang her eyes!’

“Thunder say: ‘No man can enter my lodge and live!’ He get up to strike him. But the man point the raven’s wing at him, and Thunder fall back on his bed and shiver. But soon he is better, and get up again. Then the man put the elk-horn arrow to his bow, and shoot it through the lodge of rock. Right through that lodge of rock it make a crooked hole and let the sunlight in.

“Thunder cry out: ‘Stop! You are stronger! You have the great medicine. You can have your wife. Take down her eyes.’ So the man cut the string that held them, and right away his wife stand beside him.

“Thunder say: ‘Now you know me. I have great power. I live here in summer, but when winter come I go far south where there is no winter. Here is my pipe. It is medicine. Take it and keep it. When I come in spring you fill and light this pipe, and you pray to me, you and all the people. Because I bring the rain which make the berries big and ripe. I bring the rain which make all things grow. So you must pray to me, you and all the people.’

“That is how the people got the first medicine-pipe. It was long ago.”

Mary went to her own little tent, and presently they heard her peaceful snoring. The sound had the effect of giving body to the immensity of stillness that surrounded them and held them. Sitting beside Clare, looking out at the fire through the netting, Stonor felt his safeguards slipping fast. There they were, the two of them, to all intents alone in the world! How natural for them to draw close, and, while her head dropped on his shoulder, for his arm to slip around her slender form and hold her tight! He trembled a little, and his mouth went dry. If he had been visiting her he could have got out, but he couldn’t put her out. There was nothing to do but sit tight and fight the thing. Moistening his lips, he said:

“It’s been a good day on the whole.”

“Ah, splendid!” she said. “If one could only hit the trail for ever without being obliged to arrive at a destination, and take up the burdens of a stationary life!”

Stonor pondered on this answer. It sounded almost as if she dreaded coming to the end of her journey.

Out of the breathless dusk came a long-drawn and inexpressibly mournful ululation. Clare involuntarily drew a little closer to Stonor. Ah, but it was hard to keep from seizing her then!

“Wolves?” she asked in an awe-struck tone.

He shook his head. “Only the wolf’s little mongrel brother, coyote,” he said.

“All my travelling has been done in the mountains,” she explained. She shivered delicately. “The first night out is always a little terrible, isn’t it?”

“You’re not afraid?” he asked anxiously.

“Not exactly afraid. Just a little quivery.”

She got up, and he held up the mosquito-netting for her to pass. Outside they instinctively lifted up their faces to the pale stars.

“It’s safer and cleaner than a city,” said Stonor simply.

“I know.” She still lingered for a moment. “What’s your name?” she asked abruptly.

“Martin.”

“Good-night, Martin.”

“Good-night!”

Later, rolling on his hard bed, he thought: “She might have given me her hand when she said it.—No, you fool! She did right not to! You’ve got to get a grip on yourself. This is only the first day! If you begin like this——!”

CHAPTER VI THE KAKISAS

On the afternoon of the fourth day they suddenly issued out of big timber to find themselves at the edge of a plateau overlooking a shallow green valley, bare of trees in this place, and bisected by a smoothly-flowing brown river bordered with willows. The flat contained an Indian village.

“Here we are!” said Stonor, reining up.

“The unexplored river!” cried Clare. “How exciting! But how pretty and peaceful it looks, just like an ordinary river. I suppose it doesn’t realize it’s unexplored.”

On the other side there was a bold point with a picturesque clump of pines shading a number of the odd little gabled structures with which the Indians cover the graves of their dead. On the nearer side from off to left appeared a smaller stream which wound across the meadow and emptied into the Swan. At intervals during the day their trail had bordered this little river, which Clare had christened the Meander.

The tepees of the Indian village were strung along its banks, and the stream itself was filled with canoes. On a grassy mound to the right stood a little log shack which had a curiously impertinent look there in the midst of Nature untouched. On the other hand the tepees sprang from the ground as naturally as trees.

Their coming naturally had the effect of a thunderclap on the village. They had scarcely shown themselves from among the trees when their presence was discovered. A chorus of sharp cries was raised, and there was much aimless running about like ants when the hill is disturbed. The cries did not suggest a welcome, but excitement purely. Men, women, and children gathered in a dense little crowd beside the trail where they must pass. None wished to put themselves forward. Those who lived on the other side of the little stream paddled frantically across to be in time for a close view.

As they approached, absolute silence fell on the Indians, the silence of breathless excitement. The red-coat they had heard of, and in a general way they knew what he signified; but a white woman to them was as fabulous a creature as a mermaid or a hamadryad. Their eyes were saved for Clare. They fixed on her as hard, bright, and unwinking as jet buttons. They conveyed nothing but an animal curiosity. Clare nodded and smiled to them in her own way, but no muscle of any face relaxed.

“Their manners will bear improving,” muttered Stonor.

“Oh, give them a chance,” said Clare. “We’ve dropped on them out of a clear sky.”

Some of the tepees were still made of tanned skins decorated with rude pictures; they saw bows and arrows and bark-canoes, things which have almost passed from America. The dress of the inhabitants was less picturesque; some of the older men still wore their picturesque blanket capotes, but the younger were clad in machine-made shirts and pants from the store, and the women in cotton dresses. They were a pure race, and as such presented for the most part fine, characteristic faces; but in body they were undersized and weedy, showing that their stock was running out.

Stonor led the way across the flat and up a grassy rise to the little shack that has been mentioned. It had been built for the Company clerk who had formerly traded with the Kakisas, and Stonor designed it to accommodate Clare for the night. They dismounted at the door. The Indians followed them to within a distance of ten paces, where they squatted on their heels or stood still, staring immovably. Stonor resented their curiosity. Good manners are much the same the world over, and a self-respecting people would not have acted so, he told himself. None offered to stir hand or foot to assist them to unpack.

Stonor somewhat haughtily desired the head man to show himself. When one stepped forward, he received him sitting in magisterial state on a box at the door. Personally the most modest of men, he felt for the moment that Authority had to be upheld in him. So the Indian was required to stand.

His name was Ahchoogah (as near as a white man could get it) and he was about forty years old. Though small and slight like all the Kakisas, he had a comely face that somehow suggested race. He was better dressed than the majority, in expensive “moleskin” trousers from the store, a clean blue gingham shirt, a gaudy red sash, and an antique gold-embroidered waistcoat that had originated Heaven knows where. On his feet were fine white moccasins lavishly embroidered in coloured silks.

“How,” he said, the one universal English word. He added a more elaborate greeting in his own tongue.

Mary translated. “Ahchoogah say he glad to see the red-coat, like he glad to see the river run again after the winter. Where the red-coats come there is peace and good feeling among all. No man does bad to another man. Ahchoogah hope the red-coat come often to Swan River.”

Stonor watched the man’s face while he was speaking, and apprehended hostility behind the smooth words. He was at a loss to account for it, for the police are accustomed to being well received. “There’s been some bad influence at work here,” he thought.

He said grimly to Mary: “Tell him that I hear his good words, but I do not see from the faces of his people that we are welcome here.”

This was repeated to Ahchoogah, who turned and objurgated his people with every appearance of anger.

“What’s he saying to them?” Stonor quietly asked Mary.

“Call bad names,” said Mary. “Swear Kakisa swears. Tell them go back to the tepees and not look like they never saw nothing before.”

And sure enough the surrounding circle broke up and slunk away.

Ahchoogah turned a bland face back to the policeman, and through Mary politely enquired what had brought him to Swan River.

“I will tell you,” said Stonor. “I come bearing a message from the mighty White Father across the great water to his Kakisa children. The White Father sends a greeting and desires to know if it is the wish of the Kakisas to take treaty like the Crees, the Beavers, and other peoples to the East. If it is so, I will send word, and my officers and the doctor will come next summer with the papers to be signed.”

Ahchoogah replied in diplomatic language that so far as his particular Kakisas were concerned they thought themselves better off as they were. They had plenty to eat most years, and they didn’t want to give up the right to come and go as they chose. No bad white men coveted their lands as yet, and they needed no protection from them. However, he would send messengers to his brothers up and down the river, and all would be guided by the wishes of the greatest number.

At the beginning of this talk Clare had gone inside to escape the piercing stares. While he talked, Ahchoogah was continually trying to peer around Stonor to get a glimpse of her. When the diplomatic formalities were over, he said (according to Mary):

“I not know you got white wife. Nobody tell me that. She is very pretty.”

“Tell him she is not my wife,” said Stonor, with a portentous scowl to hide his blushes. “Tell him—Oh, the devil! he wouldn’t understand. Tell him her name is Miss Clare Starling.”

“What she come for?” Ahchoogah coolly asked.

“Tell him she travels to please herself,” said Stonor, letting him make what he would of that.

“Ahchoogah say he want shake her by the hand.”

Stonor was in a quandary. The thought of the grimy hand touching Clare’s was detestable yet, if the request had been made in innocence it seemed churlish to object. Clare, who overheard, settled the question for him, by coming out and offering her hand to the Indian with a smile.

To Mary she said: “Tell him to tell the women of his people that the white woman wishes to be their sister.”

Ahchoogah stared at her with a queer mixture of feelings. He was much taken aback by her outspoken, unafraid air. He had expected to despise her, as he had been taught to despise all women, but somehow she struck respect into his soul. He resented it: he had taken pleasure in the prospect of despising something white.

Clare went back into the shack. Ahchoogah, with a shrug, dismissed her from his mind. He spoke again with his courteous air; meanwhile (or at any rate so Stonor thought) his black eyes glittered with hostility.

Mary translated: “Ahchoogah say all very glad you come. He say to-morrow night he going to give big tea-dance. He send for the Swan Lake people to come. A man will ride all night to bring them in time. He say it will be a big time.”

“Say we thank him for the big time just as if we had had it,” said Stonor, not to be outdone in politeness. “But we must go on down the river to-morrow morning.”

When this was translated to Ahchoogah, he lost his self-possession for a moment, and scowled blackly at Stonor. Quickly recovering himself, he began suavely to protest.

“Ahchoogah say the messenger of the Great White Father mustn’t go up and down the river to the Kakisas and ask like a poor man for them to take treaty. Let him stay here, and let the poor Kakisas come to him and make respect.”

“My instructions are to visit the people where they live,” said Stonor curtly. “I shall want the dug-out that the Company man left here last Spring.”

Ahchoogah scowled again. Mary translated: “Ahchoogah say, why you want heavy dug-out when he got plenty nice light bark-canoes.”

“I can’t use bark-canoes in the rapids.”

A startled look shot out of the Indian’s eyes. Mary translated: “What for you want go down rapids? No Kakisas live below the rapids.”

“I’m going to visit the white man at the Great Falls.”

When Ahchoogah got this he bent the look of a pure savage on Stonor, walled and inscrutable. He sullenly muttered something that Mary repeated as: “No can go.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody ever go down there.”

“Well, somebody’s got to be the first to go.”

“Rapids down there no boat can pass.”

“The white man came up to the Indians when they were sick last fall. If he can come up I can go down.”

“He got plenty strong medicine.”

Stonor laughed. “Well, I venture to say that my medicine is as strong as his—in the rapids.”

Ahchoogah raised a whole cloud of objections. “Plenty white-face bear down there. Big as a horse. Kill man while he sleeps. Wolf down there. Run in packs as many as all the Kakisas. Him starving this year.”

“Women’s talk!” said Stonor contemptuously.

“You get carry over those falls. Behind those falls is a great pile of white bones. It is the bones of all the men and beasts that were carried over in the past. Those falls have no voice to warn you above. The water slip over so smooth and soft you not know there is any falls till you go over.”

“Tell Ahchoogah he cannot scare white men with such tales. Tell him to bring me the dug-out to the river-shore below here.”

Ahchoogah muttered sulkily. Mary translated: “Ahchoogah say got no dug-out. Man take it up to Swan Lake.”

“Very well, then; I’ll take two bark-canoes and carry around the rapids.”

He still objected. “If you take our canoes, how we going to hunt and fish for our families?”

“You offered me the canoes!” cried Stonor wrathfully.

“I forget then that every man got only one canoe.”

Stonor stood up in his majesty; Ahchoogah was like a pigmy before him. “Tell him to go!” cried the policeman. “His mouth is full of lies and bad talk. Tell him to have the dug-out or the two canoes here by to-morrow morning or I’ll come and take them!”

The Indian now changed his tone, and endeavoured to soften the policeman’s anger, but Stonor turned on his heel and entered the shack. Ahchoogah went away down-hill with a crestfallen air.

“What do you make of it all?” Clare asked anxiously.

Stonor spoke lightly. “Well, it’s clear they don’t want us to go down the river, but what their reasons are I couldn’t pretend to say. They may have some sort of idea that for us to explode the mystery of the river and the white medicine man whom they regard as their own would be to lower their prestige as a tribe. It’s hard to say. It’s almost impossible to get at their real reasons, and when you do, they generally seem childish to us. I don’t think it’s anything we need bother our heads about.”

“I was watching him,” said Clare. “He didn’t seem to me like a bad man so much as like a child who’s got some wrong idea in his head.”

“That’s my idea too,” said Stonor. “One feels somehow that there’s been a bad influence at work lately. But what influence could reach away out here? It beats me! Their White Medicine Man ought to have done them good.”

“He couldn’t do them otherwise than good—so far as they would listen to him,” she said quickly.

They hastily steered away from this uncomfortable subject.

“Maybe Mary can help us,” said Stonor. “Mary, go among your people and talk to them. Give them good talk. Let them understand that we have no object but to be their friends. If there is a good reason why we shouldn’t go down the river let them speak it plainly. But this talk of danger and magic simply makes white men laugh.”

Mary dutifully took her way down to the tepees. She returned in time to get supper—but threw no further light on the mystery.

“What about it, Mary?” asked Stonor.

“Don’t go down the river,” she said earnestly. “Plenty bad trip, I think. I ’fraid for her. She can’t paddle a canoe in the rapids nor track up-stream. What if we capsize and lose our grub? Don’t go!”

“Didn’t the Kakisas give you any better reasons than that?”

Mary was doggedly silent.

“Ah, have they won you away from us too?”

This touched the red woman. Her face worked painfully. She did her best to explain. “Kakisas my people,” she said. “Maybe you think they foolish people. All right. Maybe they are not a wise and strong people like the old days. But they my people just the same. I can’t tell white men their things.”

“She’s right,” put in Clare quickly. “Don’t ask her any more.”

“Well, what do you think?” he asked. “Do you not wish to go any further?”

“Yes! Yes!” she cried. “I must go on!”

“Very good,” he said grimly. “We’ll start to-morrow.”

“I not go,” said Mary stolidly. “My people mad at me if I go.”

Here was a difficulty! Stonor and Clare looked at each other blankly.

“What the devil——!” began the policeman.

“Hush! leave her to me,” said Clare, urging him out of the shack.

By and by she rejoined him outside. “She’ll come,” she said briefly.

“What magic did you use?”

“No magic. Just woman talk.”

CHAPTER VII ON THE RIVER

Next morning they saw the dug-out pulled up on the shore below their camp.

“The difference between a red man and a white man,” said Stonor grimly, “is that a red man doesn’t mind being caught in a lie after the occasion for it has passed, but a white man will spend half the rest of his life trying to justify himself.”

He regarded the craft dubiously. It was an antique affair, grey as an old badger, warped and seamed by the sun and rotten in the bottom. But it had a thin skin of sound wood on the outside, and on the whole it seemed better suited to their purpose than the bark-canoes used by the Kakisas.

As they carried their goods down and made ready to start the Indians gathered around and watched with glum faces. None offered to help. It must have been a trying situation for Mary Moosa. When Stonor was out of hearing they did not spare her. She bore it with her customary stoicism. Ahchoogah, less honest than the rank and file, sought to commend himself to the policeman by a pretence of friendliness. Stonor, beyond telling him that he would hold him responsible for the safety of the horses during his absence, ignored him.

Having stowed their outfit, they gingerly got in. Their boat, though over twenty feet long, was only about fifteen inches beam, and of the log out of which she had been fashioned she still retained the tendency to roll over. Mary took the bow paddle, and Stonor the stern; Clare sat amidships facing the policeman.

“If we can only keep on top until we get around the first bend we’ll save our dignity, anyhow,” said Stonor.

They pushed off without farewells. When they rounded the first point of willows and passed out of sight of the crowd of lowering, dark faces, they felt relieved. Stonor was able to drop the port of august policeman.

Said he: “I’m going to call this craft the Serpent. She’s got a fair twist on her. Her head is pointed to port and her tail to starboard. It takes a mathematical deduction to figure out which way she’s going.”

Clare was less ready than usual to answer his jokes. She was pale, and there was a hint of strain in her eyes.

“You’re not bothered about Ahchoogah’s imaginary terrors, are you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not that.”

He wondered what it was then, but did not like to ask directly. It suddenly struck him that she had been steadily losing tone since the first day on the trail.

Her next words showed the direction her thoughts were taking. “You said it was two hundred miles down the river. How long do you think it will take us to make it?”

“Three days and a bit, if my guess as to the distance is right. We have the current to help us, and now we don’t have to stop for the horses to graze.”

“They will be hard days to put in,” she said simply.

Stonor pondered for a long time on what she meant by this. Was she so consumed by impatience to arrive that the dragging hours were a torture to her? or was it simply the uncertainty of what awaited her, and a longing to have it over with? That she had been eager for the journey was clear, but it had not seemed like a joyful eagerness. He was aware that there was something here he did not understand. Women had unfathomable souls anyway.

As far as he was concerned he frankly dreaded the outcome of the journey. How was he to bear himself at the meeting of this divided couple? He could not avoid being a witness of it. He must hand her over with a smile, he supposed, and make a graceful get-away. But suppose he were prevented from leaving immediately. Or suppose, as was quite likely, that they wished to return with him! He ground his teeth at the thought of such an ordeal. Would he be able to carry it off? He must!

“What’s the matter?” Clare asked suddenly. She had been studying his face.

“Why did you ask?”

“You looked as if you had a sudden pain.”

“I had,” he said, with a rueful smile. “My knees. It’s so long since I paddled that they’re not limbered up yet.”

She appeared not altogether satisfied with this explanation.

This part of the river showed a succession of long smooth reaches with low banks of a uniform height bordered with picturesque ragged jack-pines, tall, thin, and sharply pointed. Here and there, where the composition seemed to require it, a perfect island was planted in the brown flood. At the foot of the pines along the edge of each bank grew rows of berry bushes as regularly as if set out by a gardener. Already the water was receding as a result of the summer drouth, but, as fast as it fell, the muddy beach left at the foot of each bank was mantled with the tender green of goose-grass, a diminutive cousin of the tropical bamboo. Mile after mile the character of the stream showed no variance. It was like a noble corridor through the pines.

At intervals during the day they met a few Kakisas, singly or in pairs, in their beautifully-made little birch-bark canoes. These individuals, when they came upon them suddenly, almost capsized in their astonishment at beholding pale-faces on their river. No doubt, in the tepees behind the willows, the coming of the whites had long been foretold as a portent of dreadful things.

They displayed their feelings according to their various natures. The first they met, a solitary youth, was frankly terrified. He hastened ashore, the water fairly cascading from his paddle, and, squatting behind the bushes, peered through at them like an animal. The next pair stood their ground, clinging to an overhanging willow—too startled to escape perhaps—where they stared with goggling eyes, and visibly trembled. It gave Stonor and Clare a queer sense of power thus to have their mere appearance create so great an excitement. Nothing could be got out of these two; they would not even answer questions from Mary in their own tongue.

The fourth Kakisa, however, an incredibly ragged and dirty old man with a dingy cotton fillet around his snaky locks, hailed them with wild shouts of laughter, paddled to meet them, and clung to the dug-out, fondly stroking Stonor’s sleeve. The sight of Clare caused him to go off into fresh shrieks of good-natured merriment. His name, he informed them, was Lookoovar, or so they understood it. He had a stomach-ache, he said, and wished for some of the white man’s wonderful stomach-warming medicine of which he had heard.

“It seems that our principal claim to fame up here is whisky,” said Stonor.

He gave the old man a pill. Lookoovar swallowed it eagerly, but looked disappointed at the absence of immediate results.

All these men were hunting their dinners. Close to the shore they paddled softly against the current, or drifted silently down, searching the bushes with their keen flat eyes for the least stir. Since everything had to come down to the river sooner or later to drink, they could have had no better point of vantage. Every man had a gun in his canoe, but ammunition is expensive on the Swan River, and for small fry, musk-rat, duck, fool-hen, or rabbit, they still used the prehistoric bow and arrow.

“The Swan River is like the Kakisas’ Main Street,” said Stonor. “All day they mosey up and down looking in the shop-windows for bargains in feathers and furs.”

They camped for the night on a cleared point occupied by the bare poles of several tepees. The Indians left these poles standing at all the best sites along the river, ready to use the next time they should spell that way. They frequently left their caches too, that is to say, spare gear, food and what-not, trustfully hanging from near-by branches in birch-bark containers. The Kakisas even tote water in bark pails.

Next day the character of the river changed. It now eddied around innumerable short bends right and left with an invariable regularity, each bend so like the last they lost all track of the distance they had come. Its course was as regularly crooked as a crimping-iron. On each bend it ate under the bank on the outside, and deposited a bar on the inside. On one side the pines toppled into the water as their footing was undermined, while poplars sprang up on the other side in the newly-made ground.

On the afternoon of this day they suddenly came upon the village of which they had been told. It fronted on a little lagoon behind one of the sand-bars. This was the village where Imbrie was said to have cured the Kakisas of measles. At present most of the inhabitants were pitching off up and down the river, and there were only half a dozen covered tepees in sight, but the bare poles of many others showed the normal extent of the village.

The usual furore of excitement was caused by their unheralded appearance around the bend. For a moment the Indians completely lost their heads, and there was a mad scurry for the tepees. Some mothers dragged their screaming offspring into the bush for better shelter. Only one or two of the bravest among the men dared show themselves. But with true savage volatility they recovered from their panic as suddenly as they had been seized. One by one they stole to the edge of the bank, where they stood staring down at the travellers, with their shoe-button eyes empty of all human expression.

Stonor had no intention of landing here. He waited with the nose of the Serpent resting in the mud until the excitement died down. Then, through Mary, he requested speech with the head man.

A bent old man tottered down the bank with the aid of a staff. He wore a dirty blanket capote—and a bicycle cap! He faced them, his head wagging with incipient palsy, and his dim eyes looking out bleared, indifferent, and jaded. Sparse grey hairs decorated his chin. It was a picture of age without reverence.

“How dreadful to grow old in a tepee!” murmured Clare.

The old man was accompanied by a comely youth with bold eyes, his grandson, according to Mary. The elder’s name was Ahcunazie, the boy’s Ahteeah.

Stonor, in the name of the Great White Father, harangued the chief in a style similar to that he had used with Ahchoogah. Ahcunazie appeared dazed and incapable of replying, so Stonor said:

“Talk with your people and find out what all desire. I will return in a week for your answer.”

When this was translated the young man spoke up sharply. Mary said: “Ahteeah say, What for you want go down the river?”

Stonor said: “To see the white man,” and watched close to see how they would take it.

The scene in the other village was almost exactly repeated. Ahteeah brought up all the reasons he could think of that would be likely to dissuade Stonor. Other men, hearing what was going forward, came down to support the boy. Stonor’s boat was rotten, they pointed out, and the waves in the rapids ran as high as a man. With vivid gestures they illustrated what would happen to the dug-out in the rapids. If he escaped the rapids he would surely be carried over the Falls; and if he wasn’t, how did he expect to get back up the rapids? And so on.

Old Ahcunazie stood through it all uncomprehending and indifferent. He was too old even to betray any interest in the phenomenon of the white woman.

One thing new the whites marked: “White Medicine Man don’ like white men. He say if white men come he goin’ away.” This suggested a possible reason for the Indian’s opposition.

Stonor still remaining unmoved, Ahteeah brought out as a clincher: “White Medicine Man not home now.”

Stonor and Clare looked at each other startled. This would be a calamity after having travelled all that way. “Where is he?” Stonor demanded.

The young Indian, delighted at his apparent success, answered glibly: “He say he goin’ down to Great Buffalo Lake this summer.”

An instant’s reflection satisfied Stonor that if this were true it would have been brought out first instead of last. “Oh, well, since we’ve come as far as this we’ll go the rest of the way to make sure,” he said calmly.

Ahteeah looked disappointed. They pushed off. The Indians watched them go in sullen silence.

“Certainly we are not popular in this neighbourhood,” said Stonor lightly. “One can’t get rid of the feeling that their minds have been poisoned against us. Mary, can’t you tell me why they give me such black looks?”

She shook her head. “I think there is something,” she said. “But they not tell me because I with you.”

“Maybe it has something to do with me?” said Clare.

“How could that be? They never heard of you.”

“I think it is Stonor,” said Mary.

Clare was harder to rouse out of herself to-day. Stonor did his best not to show that he perceived anything amiss, and strove to cheer her with chaff and foolishness—likewise to keep his own heart up, but not altogether with success.

On one occasion Clare sought to reassure him by saying, à propos of nothing that had gone before: “The worst of having an imagination is, that when you have anything to go through with, it keeps presenting the most horrible alternatives in advance until you are almost incapable of facing the thing. And after all it is never so bad as your imagination pictures.”

“I understand that,” said Stonor, “though I don’t suppose anybody would accuse me of being imaginative.”

“‘Something to go through with!’” he thought. “‘Horrible alternatives!’ ‘Never so bad as your imagination pictures!’ What strange phrases for a woman to use who is going to rejoin her husband!”

When they embarked after the second spell Clare asked if she might sit facing forward in the dug-out, so she could see better where they were going. But Stonor guessed this was merely an excuse to escape from having his solicitous eyes on her face.

Next morning they overtook the last Kakisa that they were to see on the way down. He was drifting along close to the shore, and behind him in his canoe sat his little boy as still as a mouse, receiving his education in hunter’s lore. This man was a more intelligent specimen than they had met hitherto. He was a comely little fellow with an extraordinary head of hair cut à la Buster Brown, and his name, he said, was Etzooah. Stonor remembered having heard of him and his hair as far away as Fort Enterprise. His manners were good. While naturally astonished at their appearance, he did not on that account lose his self-possession. They conversed politely while drifting down side by side.

Etzooah, in sharp contrast to all the other Kakisas, appeared to see nothing out of the way in their wish to visit the White Medicine Man, nor did he try to dissuade them.

“How far is it to the Great Falls?” asked Stonor.

“One sleep.”

“Are the rapids too bad for a boat?”

“Rapids bad, but not too bad. I go down in my bark-canoe, I guess you go all right in dug-out. Long tam ago my fat’er tell me all the Kakisa people go to the Big Falls ev’ry year at the time when the berries ripe. By the Big Falls they meet the people from Great Buffalo Lake and make big talk there and make dance to do honour to the Old Man under the falls. And this people trade leather for fur with the people from Great Buffalo Lake. But now this people is scare to go there. But I am not scare. I go there. Three times I go there. Each time I leave a little present of tobacco for the Old Man so he know my heart is good towards him. I guess Old Man like a brave man better than a woman. No harm come to me since I go. My wife, my children got plenty to eat; I catch good fur. Bam-bye I take my boy there too. Some men say I crazy for that, but I say no. It is a fine sight. It make a man’s heart big to see that sight.”

This was a man after Stonor’s own heart. “Tell him those are good words,” he said heartily.

When they asked him about the White Man who lived beside the falls, Etzooah’s eyes sparkled. “He say he my friend, and I proud. Since he say that I think more of myself. I walk straight. I am not afraid. He is good. He make the sick well. He give the people good talk. He tell how to live clean and all, so there is no more sickness. He moch like children. He good to my boy. Give him little face that say ‘Ticky-ticky’ and follow the sun.”

Etzooah issued a command to his small son, and the boy shyly exhibited a large cheap nickel watch.

“No other Kakisa man or boy got that,” said the parent proudly.

“Is it true that this white man hates other white men?” asked Stonor.

Etzooah made an emphatic negative. “He got no hate. He say red man white man all the same man.”

“Then he’ll be glad to see us?”

“I think he glad. Got good heart to all.”

“Is he at home now?”

“He is at home. I see him go down the river three sleeps ago.”

Those in the dug-out exchanged looks of astonishment. “Ask him if he is sure?” said Stonor.

Etzooah persisted in his statement. “I not speak him for cause I hiding in bush watchin’ bear. And he is across the river. But I see good. See white face. I know him because he not paddle like Kakisa one side other side; him paddle all time same side and turn the paddle so to make go straight.”

“Where had he been?”

“Up to Horse Track, I guess.”

Horse Track, of course, was the trail from the river to Fort Enterprise. The village at the end of the trail received the same designation. If the tale of this visit was true it might have something to do with the hostility they had met with above.

“But we have just come from the Horse Track,” said Stonor, to feel the man out. “Nobody told us he had been there.”

Etzooah shrugged. “Maybe they scare. Not know what to say to white man.”

But Stonor thought, if anything, they had known too well what to say. “How long had he been up there?” he asked.

“I not know. I not know him gone up river till see him come back.”

“Maybe he only went a little way up.”

Etzooah shook his head vigorously. “His canoe was loaded heavy.”

Etzooah accompanied them to the point where the current began to increase its pace preparatory to the first rapid.

“This the end my hunting-ground,” he said. “Too much work to come back up the rapids.” He saluted them courteously, and caused the little boy to do likewise. His parting remark was: “Tell the White Medicine Man Etzooah never forget he call him friend.”

“Well, we’ve found one gentleman among the Kakisas,” Stonor said to Clare, as they paddled on.

The first rapid was no great affair. There was plenty of water, and they were carried racing smoothly down between low rocky banks. Stonor named the place the Grumbler from the deep throaty sound it gave forth.

In quiet water below they discussed what they had heard.

“It gets thicker and thicker,” said Stonor. “It seems to me that Imbrie’s having been at the Horse Track lately must have had something to do with the chilly reception we received.”

“Why should it?” said Clare. “He has nothing to fear from the coming of anybody.”

“Then why did they say nothing about his visit?”

She shook her head. “You know I cannot fathom these people.”

“Neither can I, for that matter. But it does seem as if he must have told them not to tell anybody they had seen him.”

“It is not like him.”

“Ahteeah said Imbrie hated white men; Etzooah said his heart was kind to all men: which is the truer description?”

“Etzooah’s,” she said instantly. “He has a simple, kind heart. He lives up to the rule ‘Love thy neighbour’ better than any man I ever knew.”

“Well, we’ll know to-morrow,” said Stonor, making haste to drop the disconcerting subject. Privately he asked himself: “Why, if Imbrie is such a good man, does she seem to dread meeting him?” There was no answer forthcoming.

The rapids became progressively wilder and rougher as they went on down, and Stonor was not without anxiety as to the coming back. Sometimes they came on white water unexpectedly around a bend, but the river was not so crooked now, and more often far ahead they saw the white rabbits dancing in the sunshine, causing their breasts to constrict with a foretaste of fear. As the current bore them inexorably closer, and they picked out the rocks and the great white combers awaiting them, there was always a moment when they longed to turn aside from their fate. But once having plunged into the welter, fear vanished, and a great exhilaration took its place. They shouted madly to each other—even stolid Mary, and were sorry when they came to the bottom. Between rapids the smooth stretches seemed insufferably tedious to pass.

Stonor’s endeavour was to steer a middle course between the great billows in the middle of the channel, which he feared might swamp the Serpent or break her in half, and the rocks at each side which would have smashed her to pieces. Luckily he had had a couple of days in which to learn the vagaries of his craft. In descending a swift current one has to bear in mind that any boat begins to answer her helm some yards ahead of the spot where the impulse is applied.

As the day wore on he bethought himself that “one sleep” was an elastic term of distance, and in order to avoid the possibility of being carried over the falls he adopted the rule of landing at the head of each rapid, and walking down the shore to pick his channel, and to make sure that there was smooth water below. They had been told that there was no rapid immediately above the falls, that the water slipped over without giving warning, but Stonor dismissed this into the limbo of red-skin romancing. He did not believe it possible for a river to go over a fall without some preliminary disturbance.

As it happened, dusk descended on them in the middle of a smooth reach, and they made camp for the last time on the descent, pitching the three tents under the pines in the form of a little square open on the river side. Clare was very silent during the meal, and Stonor’s gaiety sounded hollow in his own ears. They turned in immediately after eating.

Stonor awoke in the middle of the night without being able to tell what had awakened him. He had a sense that something was wrong. It was a breathless cool night. Under the pines it was very dark, but outside of their shadow the river gleamed wanly. Such sounds as he heard, the murmur of a far-off rapid, and a whisper in the topmost boughs of the pines, conveyed a suggestion of empty immeasurable distances. The fire had burned down to its last embers.

Suddenly he became aware of what was the matter; Clare was weeping. It was the merest hint of a sound, softer than falling leaves, just a catch of the breath that escaped her now and then. Stonor lay listening with bated breath, as if terrified of losing that which tore his heartstrings to hear. He was afflicted with a ghastly sense of impotence. He had no right to intrude on her grief. Yet how could he lie supine when she was in trouble, and make believe not to hear? He could not lie still. He got up, taking no care to be quiet, and built up the fire. She could not know, of course, that he had heard that broken breath. Perhaps she would speak to him. Or, if she could not speak, perhaps she would take comfort from the mere fact of his waking presence outside.

He heard no further sound from her tent.

After a while, because it was impossible for him not to say it, he softly asked: “Are you asleep?”

There was no answer.

He sat down by the fire listening and brooding—humming a little tune meanwhile to assure her of the blitheness of his spirits.

By and by a small voice issued from under her tent: “Please go back to bed,”—and he knew at once that she saw through his poor shift to deceive her.

“Honest, I don’t feel like sleeping,” he said cheerfully.

“Did I wake you?”

“No,” he lied. “Were you up?”

“You were worrying about me,” she said.

“Nothing to speak of. I thought perhaps the silence and the solitude had got on your nerves a little. It’s that kind of a night.”

“I don’t mind it,” she said; “with you near—and Mary,” she quickly added. “Please go back to bed.”

He crept to her tent. It was purely an involuntary act. He was on his knees, but he did not think of that. “Ah, Clare, if I could only take your trouble from you!” he murmured.

“Hush!” she whispered. “Put me and my troubles out of your head. It is nothing. It is like the rapids; one loses one’s nerve when they loom up ahead. I shall be all right when I am in them.”

“Clare, let me sit here on the ground beside you—not touching you.”

“No—please! Go back to your tent. It will be easier for me.”

In the morning they arose heavily, and set about the business of breakfasting and breaking camp with little speech. Indeed, there was nothing to say. Neither Stonor nor Clare could make believe now to be otherwise than full of dread of what the day had in store. Embarking, Clare took a paddle too, and all three laboured doggedly, careless alike of rough water and smooth.

In the middle of the day they heard, for some minutes before the place itself hove in view, the roar of a rapid greater than any they had passed.

“This will be something!” said Stonor.

But as they swept around the bend above they never saw the rapid, for among the trees on the bank at the beginning of the swift water there stood a little new log shack. That sight struck them like a blow. There was no one visible outside the shack, but the door stood open.

CHAPTER VIII THE LOG SHACK

It struck them as odd that no one appeared out of the shack. For a man living beside a river generally has his eye unconsciously on the stream, just as a man who dwells by a lonely road lets few pass by unseen. Stonor sent him a hail, as is the custom of the country—but no surprised glad face showed itself.

“He is away,” said Stonor, merely to break the racking silence between him and Clare.

“Would he leave the door open?” she said.

They landed. On the beach lay two birch-bark canoes, Kakisa-made. One had freshly-cut willow-branches lying in the bottom. Stonor happened to notice that the bow-thwart of this canoe was notched in a peculiar way. He was to remember it later. Ordinarily the Kakisa canoes are as like as peas out of the same pod.

From the beach the shack was invisible by reason of the low bank between. Stonor accompanied Clare half-way up the bank. “Mary and I will wait here,” he said.

She looked at him deeply without speaking. It had the effect of a farewell. Stonor saw that she was breathing fast, and that her lips were continually closing and parting again. Leaving him, she walked slowly and stiffly to the door of the shack. Her little hands were clenched. He waited, suffering torments of anxiety for her.

She knocked on the door-frame, and waited. She pushed the door further open, and looked in. She went in, and was gone for a few seconds. Reappearing, she shook her head at Stonor. He went up and joined her. Mary, who, in spite of her stolidity, was as inquisitive as the next woman, followed him without being bid.

They all entered the shack. Stonor sniffed.

“What is that smell?” asked Clare. “I noticed it at once.”

“Kinni-kinnick.”

She looked at him enquiringly.

“Native substitute for tobacco. It’s made from the inner bark of the red willow. He must have run out of white man’s tobacco.”

She pointed to a can standing on the table. Stonor, lifting it, found it nearly full.

“Funny he should smoke kinni-kinnick when he has Kemble’s mixture. He must be saving that for a last resort.”

Stonor looked around him with a strong curiosity. The room had a grace that was astonishing to find in that far-removed spot; moreover, everything had been contrived out of the rough materials at hand. Two superb black bear-skins lay on the floor. The bed which stood against the back wall was hidden under a beautiful robe made out of scores of little skins cunningly sewed together, lynx-paws with a border of marten. There were two workmanlike chairs fashioned out of willow; one with a straight back at the desk, the other, comfortable and capacious, before the fire. The principal piece of furniture was a birch desk or table, put together with infinite patience with no other tools but an axe and a knife, and rubbed with oil to a satiny finish. On it stood a pair of carved wooden candlesticks holding candles of bears’ tallow, a wooden inkwell, and a carved frame displaying a little photograph—of Clare!

Seeing it, her eyes filled with tears. “I’m glad I came,” she murmured.

Stonor turned away.

A pen lay on the desk where it had been dropped, and beside it was a red leather note-book or diary, of which Clare possessed herself. More than anything else, what lent the room its air of amenity was a little shelf of books and magazines above the table. There was no glass in the window, of course, but a piece of gauze had been stretched over the opening to keep out the insects at night. For cold weather there was a heavy shutter swung on wooden hinges. The fireplace, built of stones and clay, was in the corner. The arch was cunningly contrived out of thin slabs of stone standing on edge. Stonor immediately noticed that the ashes were still giving out heat.

The room they were in comprised only half the shack. There was a door communicating with the other half. Opening it, they saw that this part evidently served the owner as a work-room and store-room. Cut wood was neatly piled against one wall. Snowshoes, roughly-fashioned fur garments, steel traps and other winter gear were hanging from pegs. There was a window facing the river, this one uncovered, and under it was a work-bench on which lay the remains of a meal and unwashed dishes—humble testimony to the near presence of another fellow-creature in the wilderness. On the floor at one side was a heap of supplies; that is to say, store-grub; evidently what Imbrie had lately brought down, and had not yet put away. There was a door in the back wall of this room, the side of the shack away from the river.

Stonor, looking around, said: “I suppose he used this as a sort of vestibule in the winter, to keep the wind and the snow out of his living-room.”

“Where can he be?” said Clare nervously.

They both spoke instinctively in subdued tones, like intruders fearful of being overheard.

“He can’t have been gone long. He was smoking here just now. The fireplace is still warm.”

“He can’t have intended to stay long, for he left everything open.”

“Well, he would hardly expect to be disturbed up here.”

“But animals?”

“No wild thing would venture close to the fresh man smell. Still, it’s natural to close up when you go away.”

“What do you think?” she asked tremulously.

The sight of her wide, strained eyes, and the little teeth pressed into her lower lip, were inexpressibly painful to him. Clearly it was too much to ask of the high-strung woman, after she had nerved herself up to the ordeal, to go on waiting indefinitely in suspense.

“There are dozens of natural explanations,” he said quickly. “Very likely he’s just gone into the bush to hunt for his dinner.”

Her hand involuntarily went to her breast. “I feel,” she whispered, “as if there were something dreadfully—dreadfully wrong.”

Stonor went outside and lustily holloaed. He received no answer.

It was impossible for them to sit still while they waited. Having seen everything in the house, they walked about outside. Off to the left Imbrie had painstakingly cleared a little garden. Strange it was to see the familiar potato, onion, turnip and cabbage sprouting in orderly rows beside the unexplored river.

Time passed. From a sense of duty they prepared a meal on the shore, and made a pretence of eating it, each for the other’s benefit. Stonor did his best to keep up Clare’s spirits, while at the same time his own mystification was growing. For in circling the shack he could find no fresh track anywhere into the bush. Tracks there were in plenty, where the man had gone for wood, or to hunt perhaps, but all more than twenty-four hours old. To be sure, there was the river, but it was not likely he had still a third canoe: and if he had gone up the river, how could they have missed him? As for going down, no canoe could live in that rapid, Stonor was sure; moreover, he supposed the falls were at the foot of it.

Another thing; both his shot-gun and his rifle were leaning against the fireplace. He might have another gun, but it was not likely. As the hours passed, and the man neither returned nor answered Stonor’s frequent shouts, the policeman began to wonder if an accident could have occurred to him. But he had certainly been alive and well within a half-hour of their arrival, and it seemed too fortuitous a circumstance that anything should have happened just at that juncture. A more probable explanation was that the man had seen them coming, and had reasons of his own for wishing to keep out of the way. After all, Stonor had no precise knowledge of the situation existing between Imbrie and Clare. But if he had hidden himself, where had he hidden himself?

While it was still full day Stonor persuaded Clare and Mary to remain in the shack for a time, while he made a more careful search for Imbrie’s tracks. This time he thoroughly satisfied himself that that day no one had struck into the bush surrounding the shack. He came upon the end of the old carry trail around the falls, and followed it away. But it would have been clear to even a tyro in the bush that no one had used it lately. There remained the beach. It was possible to walk along the stony beach without leaving a visible track. Stonor searched the beach for half a mile in either direction without being able to find a single track in any wet or muddy place, and without discovering any place where one had struck up the bank into the bush. On the down-river side he was halted by a low, sheer wall of rock washed by the current. He made sure that no one had tried to climb around this miniature precipice. From this point the rapids still swept on down out of sight.

He returned to the shack completely baffled, and hoping against hope to find Imbrie returned. But Clare still sat huddled in the chair where he had left her, and looked to him eagerly for news. He could only shake his head.

Finally the sun went down.

“If he is not here by dark,” said Clare with a kind of desperate calmness, “we will know something is the matter. His hat, his ammunition-belt, his hunting-knife are all here. He could not have intended to remain away.”

Darkness slowly gathered. Nothing happened. At intervals Stonor shouted—only to be mocked by the silence. Just to be doing something he built a great fire outside the shack. If Imbrie should be on the way back it would at least warn him of the presence of visitors.

Stonor was suddenly struck by the fact that Mary had not expressed herself as to the situation. It was impossible to tell from the smooth copper mask of her face of what she was thinking.

“Mary, what do you make of it?” he asked.

She shrugged, declining to commit herself. “All the people say Eembrie got ver’ strong medicine,” she said. “Say he make himself look like anything he want.”

Stonor and Clare exchanged a rueful smile. “I’m afraid that doesn’t help much,” said the former.

Mosquitoes drove them indoors. Stonor closed the door of the shack, and built up the fire in the fireplace. Stonor no longer expected the man to return, but Clare was still tremulously on the qui vive for the slightest sound. Mary went off to bed in the store-room. The others remained sitting before the fire in Imbrie’s two chairs. For them sleep was out of the question. Each had privately determined to sit up all night.

For a long time they remained there without speaking.

Stonor had said nothing to Clare about the conclusions he had arrived at concerning Imbrie, but she gathered from his attitude that he was passing judgment against the man they had come in search of, and she said at last:

“Did you notice that little book that I picked up off the desk?”

Stonor nodded.

“It was his diary. Shall I read you from it?”

“If you think it is right.”

“Yes. Just an extract or two. To show you the kind of man he is.”

The book was in the side pocket of her coat. Opening it, and leaning forward to get the light of the fire, she read:

“April 29th: The ice is preparing to go out. Great booming cracks have been issuing from the river all day at intervals. When the jam at the head of the rapids goes it will be a great sight. To-morrow I’ll take a bite to eat with me, and go down to the falls to watch what happens. Thank God for the coming of Spring! I’m pretty nearly at the end of my resources. I’ve read and re-read my few books and papers until I can almost repeat the contents by heart. I’ve finished my desk, and the candlesticks, and the frame for Clare’s picture. But now I’ll be able to make my garden. And I can sod a little lawn in front of the house with buffalo-grass.”

Clare looked at Stonor for an expression of opinion.

The policeman murmured diffidently: “A real good sort.”

“Wait!” she said. “Listen to this. One of the first entries.” She read in a moved voice:

“They say that a man who lives cut off from his kind is bound to degenerate swiftly, but, by God! I won’t have it so in my case. I’ll be on my guard against the first symptoms. I shave every day and will continue to do so. Shaving is a symbol. I will keep my person and my house as trim as if I expected her to visit me hourly. Half of each day I’ll spend in useful manual labour of some kind, and half in reading and contemplation. The power is mine to build or destroy myself with my thoughts. Well, I choose to build!”

Clare looked at Stonor again.

“That is fine!” he said simply.

“So you see—why I had to come,” she murmured.

He did not see why the one followed necessarily on the other, nor did he understand why she felt impelled to explain it just then. But it seemed better to hold his peace. This revealing of Imbrie’s worthy nature greatly perplexed Stonor. It had been so easy to believe that the two must have been parted as a result of something evil in Imbrie. He could not believe that it had been Clare’s fault, however she might accuse herself. He was not yet experienced enough to conceive of a situation where two honest souls might come to a parting of the ways without either being especially to blame.

For another long period they sat in silence. The influence of the night made itself felt even through the log walls of the shack. They were aware of solitude as of a physical presence. The fire had burned down to still embers, and down the chimney floated the inexpressibly mournful breath of the pines. The rapids made a hoarser note beyond. Clare shivered, and leaned closer over the fire. Stonor made a move to put on more wood, but she stopped him.

“Don’t!” she said, with queer inconsistency. “It makes too much noise.”

Suddenly the awful stillness was broken by a heavy thudding sound on the ground outside. A gasping cry was forced from Clare. Stonor sprang up, knocking over his chair, and made for the door. Getting it opened, he ran outside. Off to his right he saw, or thought he saw, a suspicious shadow, and he instantly made for it. Whereupon a sudden crashing into the underbrush persuaded him it was no apparition.

Clare’s voice, sharp with terror, arrested him. “Martin, don’t leave me!”

He went back to her, suddenly realizing that to chase an unknown thing bare-handed through the bush at night was scarcely the part of prudence. He got his gun, and flung himself down across the sill of the open door, looking out. Nothing further was to be seen or heard. Beyond the little clearing the river gleamed in the faint dusk. The canoes on the beach were invisible from the door, being under the bank.

“What do you think it was?” whispered Clare.

“Something fell or jumped out of that big spruce nearest the back of the house.” To himself he added: “A natural place to hide. What a fool I was not to think of that before!”

“But what?” said Clare.

Stonor said grimly: “There are only two tree-climbing animals in this country heavy enough to make the sound we heard—bears and men.”

“A bear?”

“Maybe. But I never heard of a bear climbing a tree beside a house, and at night, too. Don’t know what he went up for.”

“Oh, it couldn’t be——” Clare began. She never finished.

Stonor kept his vigil at the open door. He bade Clare throw ashes on the embers, that no light from behind might show him up. When she had done it she crept across the floor and sat close beside him. Mary, apparently, had not been awakened.

Minutes passed, and they heard no sounds except the rapids and the pines. Clare was perfectly quiet, and Stonor could not tell how she was bearing the strain. He bethought himself that he had perhaps spoken his mind too clearly. To reassure her he said:

“It must have been a bear.”

“You do not think so really,” she said. A despairing little wail escaped her. “I don’t understand! Oh, I don’t understand! Why should he hide from us?”

Stonor could find little of comfort to say. “Morning will make everything clear, I expect. We shall be laughing at our fears then.”

The minutes grew into hours, and they remained in the same positions. Nature is merciful to humans, and little by little the strain was eased. The sharpness of their anxiety was dulled. They were conscious only of a dogged longing for the dawn. At intervals Stonor suggested to Clare that she go lie down on the bed, but when she begged to remain beside him, he had not the heart to insist. In all that time they heard nothing beyond the natural sounds of the night; the stirrings of little furry footfalls among the leaves; the distant bark of a fox.

And then without the slightest warning the night was shattered by a blood-curdling shriek of terror from Mary Moosa in the room adjoining. Stonor’s first thought was for the effect on Clare’s nerves. He jumped up, savagely cursing the Indian woman. He ran to the communicating door. Clare was close at his heels.

Mary was lying on the floor, covering her head with her arms, moaning in an extremity of terror, and gibbering in her own tongue. For a while she could not tell them what was the matter. Stonor thought she was dreaming. Then she began to cry in English: “Door! Door!” and to point to it. Stonor made for the door, but Clare with a cry clung to him, and Mary herself, scrambling on all fours, clutched him around the knees. Stonor felt exquisitely foolish.

“Well, let me secure it,” he said gruffly.

This door was fitted with a bar, which he swung into place. At the window across the room, he swung the shutter in, and fastened that also.

“You see,” he said. “No one can get in here now.”

They took the shaking Mary into the next room. To give them a better sense of security, Stonor tore the cotton out of the window and fastened this shutter also. There was no bar on this door. He preferred to leave it open, and to mount guard in the doorway.

Gradually Mary calmed down sufficiently to tell them what had happened. “Little noise wake me. I not know what it is. I listen. Hear it again. Come from door. I watch. Bam-bye I see the door open so slow, so slow. I so scare can’t cry. My tongue is froze. I see a hand pushin’ the door. I see a head stick in and listen. Then I get my tongue again. I cry out. Door close. I hear somebody runnin’ outside.”

Stonor and Clare looked at each other. “Not much doubt about the kind of animal now,” said the former deprecatingly.

Clare spread out her hands. “He must be mad,” she whispered.

Mary and Clare clung to each other like sisters. Stonor remained at the door watching the clear space between the shack and the river. Nothing stirred there. Stonor heard no more untoward sounds.

Fortunately for the nerves of the women the nights were short. While they watched and prayed for the dawn, and told themselves it would never come, it was suddenly there. It came, and they could not see it come. The light stole between the trees; the leaves dressed themselves with colour. A little breeze came from the river, and seemed to blow the last of the murk away. By half-past three it was full day.

“I must go out and look around,” said Stonor.

Clare implored him not to leave them.

“It is necessary,” he said firmly.

“Your red coat is so conspicuous,” she faltered.

“It is my safeguard,” he said; “that is, against humans. As for animals, I can protect myself.” He showed them his service revolver.

He left them weeping. He went first to the big spruce-tree behind the house. He immediately saw, as he had expected, that a man had leaped out of the lower branches. There were the two deep prints of moccasined feet; two hand-prints also where he had fallen forward. He had no doubt come down faster than he had intended. It was child’s play after that to follow his headlong course through the bush. Soon Stonor saw that he had slackened his pace—no doubt at the moment when Stonor turned back to the shack. Still the track was written clear. It made a wide detour through the bush, and came back to the door of the room where Mary had been sleeping. The man had taken a couple of hours to make perhaps three hundred yards. He had evidently wormed himself along an inch at a time, to avoid giving an alarm.

When Mary cried out he had taken back to the bush on the other side of the shack. Stonor, following the tracks, circled through the bush on this side, and was finally led to the edge of the river-bank. The instant that he pushed through the bushes he saw that one of the bark-canoes was missing. Running to the place where they lay, he saw that it was the one with the willow-bushes that was gone. No need to look any further. There was nothing in view for the short distance that he could see up-river.

CHAPTER IX THE FOOT

Stonor, returning to the shack, was hailed with joy as one who might have come back from Hades unscathed. He told Clare just what he had found.

“What do you think?” she asked anxiously.

“Isn’t it clear? He saw us coming and took to the tree. There were so many tracks around the base of the tree that I was put off. He must have been hidden there all the time we were looking for him and shouting. As soon as it got dark he tried to make his get-away, but his calculations were somewhat upset by his falling. Even after we had taken warning, he had to risk getting into his store-room, because all his food was there. No doubt he thought we would all be in the other room, and he could sneak in and take what he could carry. When he was scared off by Mary’s scream he started his journey without it, that’s all.”

“But why should he run from us—from me?”

Stonor shrugged helplessly.

She produced the little red book again. “Read something here,” she said, turning the pages.

Under her directing finger, while she looked aside, he read: “The hardest thing I have to contend against is my hunger for her. Discipline is of little avail against that. I spend whole days wrestling with myself, trying to get the better of it, and think I have conquered, only to be awakened at night by wanting her worse than ever.”

“Does that sound as if he wished to escape me?” she murmured.

In her distress of mind it did not occur to her, of course, that this was rather a cruel situation for Stonor. He did not answer for a moment; then said in a low tone: “I am afraid his mind is unhinged. You suggested it.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “But I have been thinking it over. It can’t be. Listen to this.” She hastily turned the pages of the little book. “What day is this?”

“The third of July.”

“This was written June 30th, only four days ago. It is the last entry in the book. Listen!” She read, while the tears started to her eyes:

“I must try to get in some good books on natural history. If I could make better friends with the little wild things around me I need never be lonely. There is a young rabbit who seems disposed to hit it off with me. I toss him a bit of biscuit after breakfast every morning. He comes and waits for it now. He eats it daintily in my sight; then, with a flirt of his absurd tail for ‘thank you,’ scampers down to the river to wash it down.”

“Those are not the thoughts of a man out of his mind.”

“No,” he admitted, “but everything you have read shows him to be of a sensitive, high-strung nature. On such a man the sudden shock of our coming——”

“Oh, then I have waited too long!” she cried despairingly. “And now I can never repay!”

“Not necessarily,” said Stonor with a dogged patience. “Such cases are common in the North. But I never knew one to be incurable.”

She took this in, and it comforted her partly; but her thoughts were still busy with matters remote from Stonor. After a while she asked abruptly: “What do you think we ought to do?”

“Start up the river at once,” he said. “We’ll hear news of him on the way. We’ll overtake him in the end.”

She stared at him with troubled eyes, pondering this suggestion. At last she slowly shook her head. “I don’t think we ought to go,” she murmured.

“What!” he cried, astonished. “You wish to stay here—after last night! Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said helplessly.

“But if the man is really not right, he needs looking after. We ought to hurry after him.”

“It seems so,” she said, still with the air of those who speak what is strange to themselves; “but I have an intuition, a premonition—I don’t know what to call it! Something tells me that we do not yet know the truth.”

Stonor turned away helplessly. He could not argue against a woman’s reason like this.

“Ah, don’t be impatient with me,” she said appealingly. “Just wait to-day. If nothing happens during the day to throw any light on what puzzles us, I will make no more objections. I’ll be willing to start this afternoon, and camp up the river.”

“It will give him twelve hours’ start of us.”

Her surprising answer was: “I don’t think he’s gone.”

Stonor made his way over the old portage trail. He wished to have a look at the Great Falls before returning up-river. Clare, waiting for what she could not have told, had chosen to remain at the shack, and Mary Moosa was not afraid to stay with her by daylight. Like Stonor, Mary believed that the man had undoubtedly left the neighbourhood, and that no further danger was to be apprehended from that quarter.

Stonor went along abstractedly, climbing over the obstructions or cutting a way through, almost oblivious to his surroundings. His heart was jealous and sore. His instinct told him that the man who had prowled around the shack the night before was an evil-doer; yet Clare persisted in exalting him to the skies. In his present temper it seemed to Stonor as if Clare purposely made his task as hard as possible for him. In fact, the trooper had a grievance against the whole world.

Suddenly he realized that his brain was simply chasing itself in circles. Stopping short, he shook himself much like a dog on issuing from the water. His will was to shake off the horrors of the past night and his dread of the future. Better sense told him that only weakness lay in dwelling on these things. Let things fall as they would, he would meet them like a man, he hoped, and no more could be asked of him. In the meantime he would not worry himself into a stew. He went on with a lighter breast.

From the cutting in the trail Stonor saw that someone had travelled that way a while before, probably during the previous season, for the cuts on green wood were half-healed. It was clear, from the amount of cutting he had been obliged to do, that this traveller was the first that way in many years. Stonor further saw from the style of his axe-work that he was a white man; a white man chops a sapling with one stroke clean through: a red man makes two chops, half-way through on each side. This was pretty conclusive evidence that Imbrie had first come from down-river.

This trail had not been used since, and Stonor, remembering the suggestion in Imbrie’s diary that he frequently visited the falls, supposed that he had some other way of reaching there. He determined to see if it was practicable to make his way along the beach on the way back.

The trail did not take him directly to the falls, but in a certain place he saw signs of an old side-path striking off towards the river, and, following this, he was brought out on a plateau of rock immediately above the spot where the river stepped off into space. Here he stood for a moment to prepare himself for the sight before looking over. His eye was caught by some ends of string fluttering from the branches of a bush beside him. He was at a loss to account for their presence until he remembered Etzooah and his humble offerings to the Old Man. Here Etzooah had tied his tobacco-bags.

Approaching the brink, the river smoothed itself a little as if gathering its forces for the leap, and over the edge itself it slipped smoothly. It was true to a certain extent that the cataract muffled its own voice, but the earth trembled. The gorge below offered a superb prospect. After the invariable flatness and tameness of the shores above, the sudden cleft in the world impressed the beholder stunningly.

Then Stonor went to the extreme edge and looked over. A deep, dull roar smote upon his ears; he was bewildered and satisfied. Knowing the Indian propensity to exaggerate, he had half expected to find merely a cascade wilder than anything above; or perhaps a wide straggling series of falls. It was neither. The entire river gathered itself up, and plunged sheer into deep water below. The river narrowed down at the brink, and the volume of water was stupendous. The drop was over one hundred feet. The water was of the colour of strong tea, and as it fell it drew over its brown sheen a lovely, creamy fleece of foam. Tight little curls of spray puffed out of the falling water like jets of smoke, and, spreading and descending, merged into the white cloud that rolled about the foot of the falls. This cloud itself billowed up in successive undulations like full draperies, only to spread out and vanish in the sunshine.

Stonor had the solemn feeling that comes to the man who knows himself to be among the first of his race to gaze on a great natural wonder. He and Imbrie alone had seen this sight. What of the riddle of Imbrie? Doctor, magician, skulker in the night, madman perhaps—and Clare’s husband! Must he be haunted by him all his life? But the noble spectacle before Stonor’s eyes calmed his nerves. All will be clear in the end, he told himself. And nothing could destroy his thought of Clare.

He would liked to have remained for hours, but everything drew him back to the shack. He started back along the beach. On the whole it was easier going than by the encumbered trail. There were no obstacles except the low precipice that has been mentioned, and that proved to be no great matter to climb around. Meanwhile every foot of the rapid offered a fascinating study to the river-man. This rapid seemed to go against all the customary rules for rapids. Nowhere in all its torn expanse could Stonor pick a channel; the rocks stuck up everywhere. He noticed that one could have returned in a canoe in safety from the very brink of the falls by means of the back-waters that crept up the shore.

His attention was caught by a log-jam out in the rapid. He had scarcely noticed it the day before while searching for tracks. Two great rocks, that stuck out of the water close together where the current ran swiftest, had at some time caught an immense fallen tree squarely on their shoulders, and the pressure of the current held it there. Another tree had caught on the obstruction, and another, and now the fantastic pile reared itself high out of the water.

At the moment Stonor had no weightier matter on his mind than to puzzle how this had come about. Suddenly his blood ran cold to perceive what looked like a human foot sticking out of the water at the bottom of the pile. He violently rubbed his eyes, thinking that they deceived him. But there was no mistake. It was a foot, clad in a moccasin of the ordinary style of the country. While Stonor looked it was agitated back and forth as in a final struggle. With a sickened breast, he instinctively looked around for some means of rescue. But he immediately realized that the owner of the foot was long past aid. The movement was due simply to the action of the current.

His brain whirled dizzily. A foot? Whose foot? Imbrie’s? There was no other man anywhere near. But Imbrie knew the place so well he could not have been carried down, unless he had chosen to end his life that way. And his anxiety to obtain food the night before did not suggest that he had any intention of putting himself out of the way. Perhaps it was an Indian drowned up-river and carried down. But they would surely have heard of the accident on the way. More likely Imbrie. If his brain was unhinged, who could say what wild impulse might seize him? Was this the reason for Clare’s premonition? If it was Imbrie, how could he tell her?

Stonor forced down the mounting horror that constricted his throat, and soberly bethought himself of what he must do. Useless to speculate on whose the body might be; he had to find out. He examined the place up and down with fresh care. The log-jam was about half-a-mile above the falls, and a slightly lesser distance below Imbrie’s shack. It was nearer his side of the river than the other; say, fifty yards of torn white water lay between the drift-pile and the beach. To wade or swim out was out of the question. On the other hand, the strongest flow of water, the channel such as it was, set directly for the obstruction, and it might be possible to drop down on it from above—if one provided some means for getting back again. Stonor marked the position of every rock, every reef above, and little by little made his plan.

He returned to the shack. In her present state of nerves he dared not tell Clare of what he had found. In any case he might be mistaken in his supposition as to the identity of the body. In that case she need never be told. He was careful to present himself with a smooth face.

“Any news?” cried Clare eagerly. “You’ve been gone so long!”

He shook his head. “Anything here?”

“Nothing. I am ready to go now as soon as we have eaten.”

Stonor, faced with the necessity of suddenly discovering some reason for delaying their start, stroked his chin. “Have you slept?” he asked.

“How could I sleep?”

“I don’t think you ought to start until you’ve had some sleep.”

“I can sleep later.”

“I need sleep too. And Mary.”

“Of course! How selfish of me! We can start towards evening, then.”

While Clare was setting the biscuits to the fire in the shack, and Stonor was chopping wood outside, Mary came out for an armful of wood. The opportunity of speaking to her privately was too good to be missed.

“Mary,” said Stonor. “There’s a dead body caught in the rapids below here.”

“Wah!” she cried, letting the wood fall. “You teenk it is him?”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. I’ve got to find out.”

“Find out? In the rapids? How you goin’ find out? You get carry over the falls!”

“Not so loud! I’ve got it all doped out. I’m taking no unnecessary chances. But I’ll need you to help me.”

“I not help you,” said Mary rebelliously. “I not help you drown yourself—for a dead man. He’s dead anyhow. If you go over the falls what we do? What we do?”

“Easy! I told you I had a good plan. Wait and see what it is. Get her to sleep this afternoon, and we’ll try to pull it off before she wakes. Now run on in, or she’ll wonder what we’re talking about. Don’t show anything in your face.”

Mary’s prime accomplishment lay in hiding her feelings. She picked up her wood, and went stolidly into the shack.

Stonor, searching among Imbrie’s things, was much reassured to find a tracking-line. This, added to his own line, would give him six hundred feet of rope, which he judged ample for his purpose. He spliced the two while the meal was preparing.

“What’s that for?” Clare asked.

“To help us up-stream.”

As soon as he had eaten he went back to the beach. His movements here were invisible to those in the shack. He carried the remaining bark-canoe on his back down the beach to a point about a hundred and fifty yards above the log-jam. This was to be his point of departure. He took a fresh survey of the rapids, and went over and over in his mind the course he meant to take.

After cutting off several short lengths that he required for various purposes, Stonor fastened the end of the line to a tree on the edge of the bank; the other end he made fast to the stern of the canoe—not to the point of the stern, but to the stern-thwart where it joined the gunwale. This was designed to hold the canoe at an angle against the current that would keep her out in the stream. The slack of the line was coiled neatly on the beach.

With one of the short lengths Stonor then made an offset from this line near where it was fastened to the thwart, and passed it around his own body under the arms. Thus, if the canoe smashed on the rocks or swamped, by cutting the line at the thwart the strain would be transferred to Stonor’s body, and the canoe could be left to its fate. Another short length with a loop at the end was made fast at the other end of the thwart. This was for the purpose of making fast to the log-jam while Stonor worked to free the body. A third piece of line he carried around his neck. This was to secure the body.

During the course of these preparations Mary joined him. She reported that Clare was fast asleep. Stonor made a little prayer that she might not awaken till this business was over.

He explained to Mary what he was about, and showed her her part. She listened sullenly, but, seeing that his mind was made up, shrugged at the uselessness of opposing his will. Mary was to pay out the rope according to certain instructions, and afterwards to haul him in.

Finally, after reassuring himself of the security of all his knots, he divested himself of hat, tunic, and boots and stepped into the canoe. He shook hands with Mary, took his knife between his teeth, and pushed off. He made as much as he could out of the back-water alongshore, and then, heading diagonally up-stream, shot out into the turmoil, paddling like a man possessed in order to make sure of getting far enough out before the current swept him abreast of his destination. Mary, according to instructions, paid out the rope freely. Before starting he had marked every rock in his course, and he avoided them now by instinct. His thinking had been done beforehand. He worked like a machine.

He saw that he was going to make it, with something to spare. When he had the log-jam safely under his quarter, he stopped paddling, and, bringing the canoe around, drifted down on it. There was plenty of water out here. He held up a hand to Mary, and according to pre-arrangement she gradually took up the strain on the line. The canoe slowed up, and the current began to race past.

So far so good. The line held the canoe slightly broached to the current, thus the pressure of the current itself kept him from edging ashore. The log-pile loomed up squarely ahead of him. Mary let him down on it hand over hand. He manœuvred himself abreast an immense log pointing up and down river, alongside of which the current slipped silkily. Casting his loop over the stump of a branch, he was held fast and the strain was taken off Mary’s arms.

The moccasined foot protruded from the water at the bow of his canoe. He soon saw the impossibility of attempting to work from the frail canoe, so he untied the rope which bound him to it, and pulled himself out on the logs. The rope from the shore was still around his body in case of a slip. He was taking no unnecessary chances.

The body was caught in some way under the same great log that his canoe was fastened to. The current tore at the projecting foot with a snarl. The foot oscillated continually under the pull, and sometimes disappeared altogether, only to spring back into sight with a ghastly life-like motion. Stonor cautiously straddled the log, and groped beneath it. His principal anxiety was that log and all might come away from the jam and be carried down, but there was little danger that his insignificant weight would disturb so great a bulk.

The body was caught in the fork of a branch underneath. He succeeded in freeing the other foot. He guessed that a smart pull up-stream would liberate the whole, but in that case the current would almost surely snatch it from his grasp. He saw that it would be an impossible task from his insecure perch to drag the body out on the log, and in turn load it into the fragile canoe. His only chance lay in towing it ashore.

So, with the piece of line he had brought for the purpose, he lashed the feet together, and made the other end fast to the bow-thwart of the canoe. Then he got in and adjusted his stern-line as before—it became the bow-line for the return journey. In case it should become necessary to cut adrift from the canoe, he took the precaution of passing a line direct from his body to that which he meant to tow. When all was ready he signalled to Mary to haul in.

Now began the most difficult half of his journey. On the strength of Mary’s arms depended the freeing of the body. It came away slowly. Stonor had an instant’s glimpse of the ghastly tow bobbing astern, before settling down to the business in hand. For awhile all went well, though the added pull of the submerged body put a terrific strain on Mary. Fortunately she was as strong as a man. Stonor aided her all he could with his paddle, but that was little. He was kept busy fending his egg-shell craft off the rocks. He had instructed Mary, as the slack accumulated, to walk gradually up the beach. This was to avoid the danger of the canoe’s broaching too far to the current. But Mary could not do it under the increased load. The best she could manage was to brace her body against the stones, and pull in hand over hand.

As the line shortened Stonor saw that he was going to have trouble. Instead of working in-shore, the canoe was edging further into the stream, and ever presenting a more dangerous angle to the tearing current. Mary had pulled in about a third of the line, when suddenly the canoe, getting the current under her dead rise, darted out into mid-stream like a fish at the end of a line, and hung there canting dangerously. The current snarled along the gunwale like an animal preparing to crush its prey.

The strain on Mary was frightful. She was extended at full length with her legs braced against an outcrop of rock. Stonor could see her agonized expression. He shouted to her to slack off the line, but of course the roar of the water drowned his puny voice. In dumb-play he tried desperately to show her what to do, but Mary was possessed of but one idea, to hang on until her arms were pulled out.

The canoe tipped inch by inch, and the boiling water crept up its freeboard. Finally it swept in, and Stonor saw that all was over with the canoe. With a single stroke of his knife he severed the rope at the thwart behind him; with another stroke the rope in front. When the tug came on his body he was jerked clean out of the canoe. It passed out of his reckoning. By the drag behind him, he knew he still had the dead body safe.

He instinctively struck out, but the tearing water, mocking his feeble efforts, buffeted him this way and that as with the swing of giant arms. Sometimes he was spun helplessly on the end of his line like a trolling-spoon. He was flung sideways around a boulder and pressed there by the hands of the current until it seemed the breath was slowly leaving his body. Dazed, blinded, gasping, he somehow managed to struggle over it, and was cast further in-shore. The tendency of the current was to sweep him in now. If he could only keep alive! The stones were thicker in-shore. He was beaten first on one side, then the other. All his conscious efforts were reduced to protecting his head from the rocks with his arms.

The water may have been but a foot or two deep, but of course he could gain no footing. He still dragged his leaden burden. All the breath was knocked out of him under the continual blows, but he was conscious of no pain. The last few moments were a blank. He found himself in the back-water, and expended his last ounce of strength in crawling out on hands and knees on the beach. He cast himself flat, sobbing for breath.

Mary came running to his aid. He was able to nod to her reassuringly, and in the ecstasy of her relief, she sat down suddenly, and wept like a white woman. Stonor gathered himself together and sat up groaning. The onset of pain was well-nigh unendurable. He felt literally as if his flesh all over had been pounded to a jelly. But all his limbs, fortunately, responded to their functions.

“Lie still,” Mary begged of him.

He shook his head. “I must keep moving, or I’ll become as helpless as a log.”

The nameless thing was floating in the back-water. Together they dragged it out on the stones. It was Stonor’s first sight of that which had cost him such pains to secure. He nerved himself to bear it. Mary was no fine lady, but she turned her head away. The man’s face was totally unrecognizable by reason of the battering it had received on the rocks; his clothes were partly in ribbons; there was a gaping wound in the breast.

For the rest, as far as Stonor could judge, it was the body of a young man, and a comely one. His skin was dark like that of an Italian, or a white man with a quarter or eighth strain of Indian blood in his veins. Stonor was astonished by this fact; nothing that he had heard had suggested that Imbrie was not as white as himself. This put a new look on affairs. For an instant Stonor doubted. But the man’s hand was well-formed and well-kept; and in what remained of his clothes one could still see the good materials and the neatness. In fact, it could be none other than Imbrie.

He was roused from his contemplation of the gruesome object by a sharp exclamation from Mary. Looking up, he saw Clare a quarter of a mile away, hastening to them along the beach. His heart sank.

“Go to her,” he said quickly. “Keep her from coming here.”

Mary hastened away. Stonor followed more slowly, disguising his soreness as best he could. For him it was cruel going over the stones—yet all the way he was oddly conscious of the beauty of the wild cascade, sweeping down between its green shores.

As he had feared, Clare refused to be halted by Mary. Thrusting the Indian woman aside, she came on to Stonor.

“What’s the matter?” she cried stormily. “Why did you both leave me? Why does she try to stop me?—Why! you’re all wet! Where’s your tunic, your boots? You’re in pain!”

“Come to the house,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

She would not be put off. “What has happened? I insist on knowing now! What is there down there I mustn’t see?”

“Be guided by me,” he pleaded. “Come away, and I’ll tell you everything.”

“I will see!” she cried. “Do you wish to put me out of my mind with suspense?”

He saw that it was perhaps kinder not to oppose her. “I have found a body in the river,” he said. “Do not look at it. Let me tell you.”

She broke away from him. “I must know the worst,” she muttered.

He let her go. She ran on down the beach, and he hobbled after. She stopped beside the body, and looked down with wide, wild eyes. One dreadful low cry escaped her.

“Ernest!”

She collapsed. Stonor caught her sagging body. Her head fell limply back over his arm.

CHAPTER X THE START HOME

Stonor, refusing aid from Mary, painfully carried his burden all the way back to the shack. He laid her on the bed. There was no sign of returning animation. Mary loosened her clothing, chafed her hands, and did what other offices her experience suggested. After what seemed like an age to the watchers, she stirred and sighed. Stonor dreaded then what recollection would bring to her awakening. But there was neither grief nor terror in the quiet look she bent first on one then the other; only a kind of annoyed perplexity. She closed her eyes again without speaking, and presently her deepened breathing told them that she slept.

“Thank God!” whispered Stonor. “It’s the best thing for her.”

Mary followed him out of the shack. “Watch her close,” he charged her. “If you want me for anything come down to the beach and hail.”

Stonor procured another knife and returned to the body. In the light of Clare’s identification he could have no further doubt that this was indeed the remains of the unhappy Imbrie. She had her own means of identification, he supposed. The man, undoubtedly deranged, must have pushed off in his canoe and let the current carry him to his death. Stonor, however, thinking of the report he must make to his commanding officer, knew that his speculations were not sufficient. Much as he disliked the necessity, it was incumbent on him to perform an autopsy.

This developed three surprising facts in this order: (a) there was no water in the dead man’s lungs, proving that he was already dead when his body entered the water: (b) there was a bullet-hole through his heart: (c) the bullet itself was lodged in his spine.

For a moment Stonor thought of murder—but only for a moment. A glance showed him that the bullet was of thirty-eight calibre, a revolver-bullet. Revolvers are unknown to the Indians. Stonor knew that there were no revolvers in all the country round except his own, Gaviller’s forty-four, and one that the dead man himself might have possessed. Consequently he saw no reason to change his original theory of suicide. Imbrie, faced by that terrible drop, had merely hastened the end by putting a bullet through his heart.

Stonor kept the bullet as possible evidence. He then looked about for a suitable burial-place. His instinct was to provide the poor fellow with a fair spot for his last long rest. Up on top of the low precipice of rock that has been mentioned, there was a fine point of vantage visible up-river beyond the head of the rapids. At no small pains Stonor dragged the body up here, and with his knife dug him a shallow grave between the roots of a conspicuous pine. It was a long, hard task. He covered him with brush in lieu of a coffin, and, throwing the earth back, heaped a cairn of stones on top. Placing a flat stone in the centre, he scratched the man’s name on it and the date. He spoke no articulate prayer, but thought one perhaps.

“Sleep well, old fellow. It seems I was never to know you, though you haunted me—and may perhaps haunt me still.”

Dragging himself wearily back to the shack, Stonor found that Clare still slept.

“Fine!” he said with clearing face. “There’s no doctor like sleep!”

His secret dread was that she might become seriously ill. What would he do in that case, so far away from help?

He sat himself down to watch beside Clare while Mary prepared the evening meal. There were still some three hours more of daylight, and he decided to be guided as to their start up-river by Clare’s condition when she awoke. If she had a horror of the place they could start at once, provided she were able to travel, and sleep under canvas. Otherwise it would be well to wait until morning, for he was pretty nearly all in himself. Indeed, while he waited with the keenest anxiety for Clare’s eyes to open, his own closed. He slept with his head fallen forward on his breast.

He awoke to find Clare’s wide-open eyes wonderingly fixed on him.

“Who are you?” she asked.

It struck a chill to his breast. Was she mad? This was a more dreadful horror than he had foreseen. Yet there was nothing distraught in her gaze, merely that same look of perplexed annoyance. It was an appreciable moment before he could collect his wits sufficiently to answer.

“Your friend,” he said, forcing himself to smile.

“Yes, I think you are,” she said slowly. “But it’s funny I don’t quite know you.”

“You soon will.”

“What is your name?”

“Martin Stonor.”

“And that uniform you are wearing?”

“Mounted police.”

She raised herself a little, and looked around. The puzzled expression deepened. “What a strange-looking room! What am I doing in such a place?”

To Stonor it was like a conversation in a dream. It struck awe to his breast. Yet he forced himself to answer lightly and cheerfully. “This is a shack in the woods where we are camping temporarily. We’ll start for home as soon as you are able.”

“Home? Where is that?” she cried like a lost child.

A great hard lump rose in Stonor’s throat. He could not speak.

After a while she said: “I feel all right. I could eat.”

“That’s fine!” he cried from the heart. “That’s the main thing. Supper will soon be ready.”

The next question was asked with visible embarrassment. “You are not my brother, are you, or any relation?”

“No, only your friend,” he said, smiling.

She was troubled like a child, biting her lip, and turning her face from him to hide the threatening tears. There was evidently some question she could not bring herself to ask. He could not guess what it was. Certainly not the one she did ask.

“What time is it?”

“Past seven o’clock.”

“That means nothing to me,” she burst out bitterly. “It’s like the first hour to me. It’s so foolish to be asking such questions! I don’t know what’s the matter with me! I don’t even know my own name!”

That was it! “Your name is Clare Starling,” he said steadily.

“What am I doing in a shack in the woods?”

He hesitated before answering this. His first fright had passed. He had heard of people losing their memories, and knew that it was not necessarily a dangerous state. Indeed, now, this wiping-out of recollection seemed like a merciful dispensation, and he dreaded the word that would bring the agony back.

“Don’t ask any more questions now,” he begged her. “Just rest up for the moment, and take things as they come.”

“Something terrible has happened!” she said agitatedly. “That is why I am like this. You’re afraid to tell me what it is. But I must know. Nothing could be so bad as not knowing anything. It is unendurable not to have any identity. Don’t you understand? I am empty inside here. The me is gone!”

He arose and stood beside her bed. “I ask you to trust me,” he said gravely. “I am the only doctor available. If you excite yourself like this only harm can come of it. Everything is all right now. You have nothing to fear. People who lose their memories always get them back again. If you do not remember of yourself I promise to tell you everything that has happened.”

“I will try to be patient,” she said dutifully.

Presently she asked: “Is there no one here but us? I thought I remembered a woman—or did I dream it?”

Stonor called Mary in and introduced her. Clare’s eyes widened. “An Indian woman!” their expression said.

Stonor said, as if speaking of the most everyday matter: “Mary, Miss Starling’s memory is gone. It will soon return, of course, and in the meantime plenty of food and sleep are the best things for her. She has promised me not to ask any more questions for the present.”

Mary paled slightly. To her, loss of memory smacked of insanity of which she was terribly in awe—like all her race. However, under Stonor’s stern eye she kept her face pretty well.

Clare said: “I’d like to get up now,” and Stonor left the shack.

Nothing further happened that night. Clare ate a good supper, and a bit of colour returned to her cheeks. Stonor had no reason to be anxious concerning her physical condition. She asked no more questions. Immediately after eating he sent her and Mary to bed. Shortly afterwards Mary reported that Clare had fallen asleep again.

Stonor slept in the store-room. He was up at dawn, and by sunrise he had everything ready for the start up-river.

It was an entirely self-possessed Clare that issued from the shack after breakfast, yet there was something inaccessible about her. Though she was anxious to be friends with Stonor and Mary, she was cut off from them. They had to begin all over again with her. There was something piteous in the sight of the little figure so alone even among her friends; but she was bearing it pluckily.

She looked around her eagerly. The river was very lovely, with the sun drinking up the light mist from its surface.

“What river is this?” she asked.

Stonor told her.

“It is not altogether strange to me,” she said. “I feel as if I might have known it in a previous existence. There is a fall below, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“How do you suppose I knew that?”

He shrugged, smiling.

“And the—the catastrophe happened down there,” she said diffidently. He nodded.

“I feel it like a numb place inside me. But I don’t want to go down there. I feel differently from yesterday. Some day soon, of course, I must turn back the dreadful pages, but not quite yet. I want a little sunshine and laziness and sleep first; a little vacation from trouble.”

“That’s just as it should be,” said Stonor, much relieved.

“Isn’t it funny, I can’t remember anything that ever happened to me, yet I haven’t forgotten everything I knew. I know the meaning of things. I still seem to talk like a grown-up person. Words come to me when I need them. How do you explain that?”

“Well, I suppose it’s because just one little department of your brain has stopped working for a while.”

“Well, I’m not going to worry. The world is beautiful.”

The journey up-stream was a toilsome affair. Though the current between the rapids was not especially swift, it made a great difference when what had been added to their rate of paddling on the way down, was deducted on the way back. Stonor foresaw that it would take them close on ten days to make the Horse-Track. He and Mary took turns tracking the canoe from the bank, while the other rested. Clare steered. Ascending the rapids presented no new problems to a river-man, but it was downright hard work. All hands joined in pulling and pushing, careless of how they got wet.

The passing days brought no change in Clare’s mental state, and in Stonor the momentary dread of some thought or word that might bring recollection crashing back, was gradually lulled. Physically she showed an astonishing improvement, rejoicing in the hard work in the rapids, eating and sleeping like a growing boy. To Stonor it was enchanting to see the rosy blood mantle her pale cheeks and the sparkle of bodily well-being enhance her eyes. With this new tide of health came a stouter resistance to imaginative terrors. Away with doubts and questionings! For the moment the physical side of her was uppermost. It was Nature’s own way of effecting a cure. Towards Stonor, in this new character of hers, she displayed a hint of laughing boldness that enraptured him.

At first he would not let himself believe what he read in her new gaze; that the natural woman who had sloughed off the burdens of an unhappy past was disposed to love him. But of course he could not really resist so sweet a suggestion. Let him tell himself all he liked that he was living in a fool’s paradise; that when recollection returned, as it must in the end, she would think no more of him; nevertheless, when she looked at him like that, he could not help being happy. The journey took on a thousand new delights for him; such delights as his solitary youth had never known. At least, he told himself, there was no sin in it, for the only man who had a better claim on her was dead and buried.

One night they were camped beside some bare tepee poles on a point of the bank. Mary had gone off to set a night-line in an eddy; Stonor lay on his back in the grass smoking, and Clare sat near, nursing her knees.

“You’ve forbidden me to ask questions about myself,” said she; “but how about you?”

“Oh, there’s nothing to tell about me.”

She affected to study him with a disinterested air. “I don’t believe you have a wife,” she said wickedly. “You haven’t a married look.”

“What kind of a look is that?”

“Oh, a sort of apologetic look.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m not married,” he said, grinning.

“Have you a sweetheart?” she asked in her abrupt way, so like a boy’s.

Stonor regarded his pipe-bowl attentively, but did not thereby succeed in masking his blushes.

“Aha! You have!” she cried. “No need to answer.”

“That depends on what you mean,” he said, determined not to let her outface him. “If you mean a regular cut and dried affair, no.”

“But you’re in love.”

“Some might say so.”

THE WOMANfrom “OUTSIDE”[On Swan River]

CONTENTS