initial commit of ebook 25159HEADmain

380 files changed, 29691 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/25159-8.txt b/25159-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d454ddc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9839 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Two on the Trail, by Hulbert Footner,
+Illustrated by W. Sherman Potts
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Two on the Trail
+       A Story of the Far Northwest
+
+
+Author: Hulbert Footner
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 24, 2008  [eBook #25159]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO ON THE TRAIL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Andrew Wainwright, Suzanne Shell, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 25159-h.htm or 25159-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/5/25159/25159-h/25159-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/5/25159/25159-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+TWO ON THE TRAIL
+
+A Story of the Far Northwest
+
+by
+
+HULBERT FOOTNER
+
+Illustrated by W. Sherman Potts
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
+into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian
+
+Copyright, 1910, by Outing Publishing Company
+Copyright, 1911, by Doubleday, Page & Company
+Published, February, 1911
+
+
+
+
+                                     To
+                                  H. L. D.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                               PAGE
+      I. IN PAPPS'S RESTAURANT             3
+     II. THE UNKNOWN LADY                 13
+    III. ON THE TRAIL                     29
+     IV. THE STOPPING-HOUSE YARD          44
+      V. AT MIWASA LANDING                57
+     VI. NATALIE TELLS ABOUT HERSELF      72
+    VII. MARY CO-QUE-WASA'S ERRAND        81
+   VIII. ON THE LITTLE RIVER             100
+     IX. THE HEART OF A BOY              116
+      X. ON CARIBOU LAKE                 130
+     XI. THE FIGHT IN THE STORM          142
+    XII. THE NINETY-MILE PORTAGE         157
+   XIII. THE NEWLY-MARRIED PAIR          175
+    XIV. THE LAST STAGE                  186
+     XV. THE MEETING                     199
+    XVI. NATALIE WOUNDED                 214
+   XVII. THE CLUE TO RINA                228
+  XVIII. MABYN MAROONED                  238
+    XIX. GRYLLS REDIVIVUS                253
+     XX. SUCCOUR                         266
+    XXI. THE BROKEN DOOR                 284
+   XXII. THE BLIZZARD                    295
+  XXIII. THE SOLITARY PURSUER            315
+   XXIV. IN DEATH CANYON                 326
+    XXV. EPILOGUE: SPOKEN BY CHARLEY     342
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  "Look!" she cried. "Isn't it like the frontispiece
+  to a book ofadventure!"                               _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+  At the same instant the boat lurched drunkenly;
+  and they pitched overboard together                              150
+
+  There, clinging to the corner of the cabin for support,
+  stood the figure of a woman                                      212
+
+  It was a grim figure that the first rays of light
+  revealed sitting on the big rock                                 336
+
+
+
+
+                             TWO ON THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+IN PAPPS'S RESTAURANT
+
+
+The interior of Papps's, like most Western restaurants, was divided into
+a double row of little cabins with a passage between, each cabin having
+a swing door. Garth Pevensey found the place very full; and he was
+ushered into a cubby-hole which already contained two diners, a man and
+a woman nearing the end of their meal. They appeared to be incoming
+settlers of the better class--a farmer and his wife from across the
+line. Far from resenting Garth's intrusion, they visibly welcomed it;
+after all, there was something uncomfortably suggestive of a cell in
+those narrow cabins to which the light of day never penetrated.
+
+Garth passed behind the farmer's chair, and seated himself next the
+wall. He had no sooner ordered his luncheon than the door was again
+opened, and the rotund Mr. Papps, with profuse apologies, introduced
+a fourth to their table. The vacant place, it appeared, was the very
+last remaining in his establishment.
+
+The newcomer was a girl; young, slender and decidedly pretty: such was
+Garth's first impression. She came in without hesitation, and took the
+place opposite Garth with that serenely oblivious air so characteristic
+of the highly civilized young lady. Very trimly and quietly dressed,
+sufficiently well-bred to accept the situation as a matter of course.
+Thus Garth's further impressions. "What a girl to be meeting up in this
+corner of the world, and how I should like to know her!" he added in
+his mind. The maiden's bland aloofness was discouraging to this hope;
+nevertheless, his heart worked in an extra beat or two, as he considered
+the added relish his luncheon would have, garnished by occasional
+glances at such a delightful _vis-à-vis_. Meanwhile, he was careful
+to take his cue from her; his face, likewise, expressed a blank.
+
+The farmer and his wife became very uncomfortable. Simple souls, they
+could not understand how a personable youth and a charming girl should
+sit opposite each other with such wooden faces. Their feeling was that
+at quarters so close extra sociability was demanded, and the utter lack
+of it caused them to move uneasily in their chairs, and gently perspire.
+They unconsciously hastened to finish, and having at length dutifully
+polished their plates, arose and left the cabin with audible sighs of
+relief.
+
+This was a contingency Garth had not foreseen, and his heart jumped. At
+the same time he felt a little sorry for the girl. He wondered if she
+would consider it an act of delicacy if he fastened the door open with
+a chair. On second thoughts, he decided such a move would be open to
+misconstruction. Had he only known it, she was dying to laugh and, at
+the slightest twinkle in his eyes, would have gone off into a peal. Only
+Garth's severe gravity restrained her--and that in turn made her want to
+laugh harder than ever. But how was Garth to learn all that? Girls, more
+especially girls like this, were to him insolvable mysteries--like the
+heavenly constellations. Of course, there are those who pretend to have
+discovered their orbits, and have written books on the subject; but for
+him, he preferred simply to wonder and to admire.
+
+Since her arrival the objective point of his desire shifted from his
+plate some three feet across the table; he now gazed covertly at her
+with more hunger than he evinced for his food. She had a good deal the
+aspect of a plucky boy, he thought; a direct, level gaze; a quick, sure
+turn to her head; and the fresh, bright lips of a boy. But that was no
+more than a pleasant fancy; in reality she was woman clear through. Eve
+lurked in the depths of her blue eyes, for all they hung out the colours
+of simple honesty; and Eve winked at him out of every fold of her rich
+chestnut hair. She was quick and impulsive in her motions; and although
+she showed such a blank front to the man opposite, her lips flickered
+with the desire to smile; and tiny frowns came and went between the
+twin crescents of her brows.
+
+As for her, she was sizing him up too, though with skilfully veiled
+glances. She saw a square-shouldered young man, who sat calmly eating
+his lunch, without betraying too much self-consciousness on the one
+hand, or any desire to make flirtatious advances on the other. Yet he
+was not stupid, either; he had eyes that saw what they were turned on,
+she noted. His admirable, detached attitude piqued her, though she would
+have been quick to resent any other. She was angry with him for forcing
+this repression on her; repression was not natural to this young lady.
+She longed to clear the air with a burst of laughter, but the thought
+of a quick, cool glance of surprise from the steady eyes opposite
+effectually checked her. As for his features, they were well enough, she
+thought. He had a shapely head, broadest over the ears, and thatched
+with thick, straight hair of the ashy-brown just the other side of
+blonde. His eyes were of the shade politely called gray, though
+yellow or green might be said with equal truth, had not those colours
+unpleasant associations. His nose was longish, and he had a comical
+trick of seeming to look down it, at which she greatly desired to laugh.
+His mouth was well cut, and decisively finished at the corners; and
+he had a chin to match. In spite of her irritation with him, she was
+reminded of a picture she had seen of Henry Fifth looking out from
+his helmet on the field of Agincourt.
+
+As the minutes passed, and Garth maintained his calm, she became quite
+unreasonably wroth. Her own luncheon was now before her. By and by she
+wanted salt, and the only cellar stood at Garth's elbow. Nothing could
+have induced her to ask for it; she merely stared fixedly. Garth,
+presently observing, politely offered the salt-cellar. She waited
+until he had put it down on the table, and removed his hand from
+the neighbourhood; then took it.
+
+"Thank you," she murmured indignantly; furious at having to say it.
+
+Garth wondered what he had done to offend her.
+
+At this moment there was an interruption; again the apologetic Mr.
+Papps with yet another guest. This was a tradesman's comely young wife,
+with very ruffled plumage, and the distracted air of the unaccustomed
+traveller. She was carrying in her arms a shiny black valise, three
+assorted paper-covered bundles with the string coming off, and a hat in
+a paper bag; and, although it was so warm, she wore her winter's coat,
+plainly because there was no other way to bring it. Her hair was flying
+from its moorings; her face flamed; and her hat sat at a disreputably
+rakish angle. As she piled up her encumbrances on the chair next to the
+girl, and took off her coat, she bubbled over with indistinguishable,
+anxious mutterings. At last she sank into the seat by Garth with
+something between a sigh and a moan.
+
+"I've lost my husband," she announced at large.
+
+Her distress was so comical they could not forbear smiling.
+
+Encouraged by this earnest of sympathy, the newcomer plunged into a
+breathless recital of her mischances.
+
+"Just came in over the A. N. R.," she panted. "By rights we should have
+arrived last night, but day-before-yesterday's train had the right of
+way and we was held up down to Battle Run. I tell you, the rails of that
+line are like the waves of the sea! I was that sea-sick I thought never
+to eat mortal food again--but it's coming back; my appetite I mean. He
+was to meet me, but I suppose he got tired after seventeen hours, small
+blame--and dropped off somewheres. S'pose I'll have to make a round of
+the hotels till I find him. You don't happen to know him, do you?" she
+asked Garth. "John Pink, the carpenter?"
+
+"I'm a stranger in Prince George," said he politely.
+
+"Oh, what and all I've been through!" groaned Mrs. Pink, with an access
+of energetic distress. She shook a warning finger at the girl. "Take my
+advice, Miss," she warned, "and don't you let him out of your sight a
+minute, till you get him safe home!"
+
+The girl looked hard at her plate; while for Garth, a slow, dark red
+crept up from his neck to the roots of his hair. Yet Mrs. Pink's mistake
+was surely a natural one; there they sat lunching privately together in
+the secluded little cabin. Moreover, they looked like fit mates, each for
+the other; and their air of studied indifference was no more than the air
+commonly assumed by young married couples in public places--especially
+the lately married. Without appearing to raise her eyes, the girl in some
+mysterious way, was conscious of Garth's dark flush. "Serve him right,"
+she thought with wicked satisfaction. "I shan't help him out." But
+Garth's blush was for her more than for himself.
+
+Mrs. Pink, absorbed in her own troubles, was innocently unaware of
+the consternation she had thrown them into. She plunged ahead; still
+addressing her remarks to the girl.
+
+"Perhaps you think there's no danger of losing yours so soon," she went
+on; "and very like you're right. But, my dear, you never can tell! Bless
+you, when I was on my wedding journey, he hung around continuous. I
+couldn't get shet of the man for a minute, and I was fair tired out
+of seeing him. But that wears off--not that I mean it would with
+you"--turning to Garth--"but nothing different couldn't hardly be
+expected in the course of nature."
+
+Garth considered whether he should stop Mrs. Pink's tongue by telling
+the truth. But it seemed ungallant to be in such haste to deny the
+responsibility. He felt rather that the disclaimer should come from the
+girl; and she made no move; indeed, he almost fancied he saw the ghost of
+a smile. Under his irritation with the woman and her clumsy tongue, he
+was conscious of a secret glow of pleasure. There was something highly
+flattering in being taken for the husband of such an ultra-desirable
+creature. The thought of her being really one with his future, as the
+woman supposed, and travelling about the country with him made his heart
+beat fast. Slender, trim and mistress of herself, she had exactly the
+look of the wife he had pictured.
+
+Mrs. Pink broke off long enough to order her luncheon, and from the
+extent of the order it appeared she had entirely recovered her appetite.
+
+"The next thing I have to do after finding my man," she resumed, with
+a wild pass at her hat, which lurched it as far over on the other side,
+"is to find a house. They tell me rents are terrible high in Prince
+George. Are you two going to settle here?"
+
+Garth replied in the negative. He had decided if the girl did not choose
+to enlighten Mrs. Pink, he would not.
+
+"It has a great future ahead of it," she said solemnly. "It's a grand
+place for a young couple to start life in. And elegant air for children.
+Mine are at my mother's."
+
+Garth swallowed a gasp at this; but the girl never blinked an eye.
+
+"But how I do run on!" exclaimed Mrs. Pink. "No doubt you've got a good
+start somewheres else."
+
+"Not so very," said Garth with a smile.
+
+The smile disarmed the young lady sitting opposite, and somehow obliged
+her to reconsider her opinion of him. "I believe the creature has a
+sense of humour," was her thought.
+
+"Are you Canadians?" inquired Mrs. Pink politely.
+
+"I am from New York," said Garth.
+
+Mrs. Pink opened her eyes to their widest. If he had said Cochin China
+she could not have appeared more surprised. For New York has a magical
+name in the Provinces; and the more remote, the more glowing the halo
+evoked by the sound.
+
+"Bless me!" she ejaculated. Then, addressing herself to the girl: "How
+fine the shops and the opera houses must be there!"
+
+"I've not been there in some years," she answered coolly. "I am from
+Ontario."
+
+"Well, I declare!" cried Mrs. Pink. "Quite a romance! Where did you
+meet?"
+
+"Here," said Garth readily. There was no turning back now.
+
+"What a nice man!" now thought this perverse young lady.
+
+"Well! Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Pink with immense interest. "Ain't that odd
+now! Was it long since?"
+
+"Not so very," said Garth vaguely. He glanced across the table and saw
+that his supposed wife had finished her lunch. His heart sank heavily.
+
+"Three months?" hazarded Mrs. Pink.
+
+"It was about half an hour ago," came brisk and clear from across the
+table.
+
+Mrs. Pink looked up in utter amazement; her jaw dropped; and a piece
+of bread was arrested halfway to her mouth. The girl had risen and was
+drawing on her gloves.
+
+"Good-bye, Mrs. Pink," she said sweetly. "I hope you find your husband
+sooner than I find mine!"
+
+With that she passed out; and the swing door closed behind her. All the
+light went with her, it seemed to Garth, and the cabin became a sordid,
+spotty little hole. Mrs. Pink stared at the door through which she had
+disappeared, in speechless bewilderment. Finally she turned to Garth.
+
+"Wh-what did she mean?" she stammered.
+
+"I do not know the young lady," said Garth sadly.
+
+"Good land, man!" screamed Mrs. Pink. "Why didn't you say so at first?"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE UNKNOWN LADY
+
+
+Garth Pevensey was a reporter on the _New York Leader_. His choice of
+an occupation had been made more at the dictate of circumstances than
+of his free will; and in the round hole of modern journalism he was
+something of a square and stubborn peg. He had become a reporter because
+he had no taste for business; and a newspaper office is the natural
+refuge for clever young men with a modicum of education, and the need
+of providing an income. He was not considered a "star" on the force;
+and his city editor had been known to tear his hair at the missed
+opportunities in Pevensey's copy, and hand it to one of the more glowing
+stylists for the injection of "ginger." But Garth had his revenge in the
+result; the gingerized phrases in his quiet narrative cried aloud, like
+modern gingerbread work on a goodly old dwelling.
+
+It was agreed in the office that Pevensey was too quiet ever to make a
+crack reporter. On a big story full of human interest he was no good. It
+was not that he failed to realize the possibilities of such stories; he
+had as sure an eye for the picturesque and affecting as Dicky Chatworth
+himself, the city editor's especial favourite; but he had an unconquerable
+repugnance to "letting himself go." Moreover his stuff was suspected of
+having a literary quality, something that is respected but not desired
+in a newspaper office. Howbeit, there were some things Garth could do
+to the entire satisfaction of the powers; he might be depended on for an
+effective description of any big show, when the readers' tear-ducts were
+not to be laid under contribution; he had an undeniable way with him
+of impressing the great and the near-great; and had occasionally been
+surprisingly successful in extracting information from the supposedly
+uninterviewable.
+
+Though his brilliancy might be discounted, Pevensey was one of the most
+looked-up-to, and certainly the best-liked man on the staff. He was
+entirely unassuming for one thing; and though he had the reputation of
+leading rather a saintly life himself, he was as tolerant as Jove; and
+the giddy youngsters who came and went on the staff of the _Leader_ with
+such frequency liked to confide their escapades to him, sure of being
+received with an interest which might pass very well for sympathy.
+It was with the very young ones that he was most popular; he took on
+himself no irritating airs of superiority; he was a good listener; and
+he never flew off the handle. Such a man has the effect of a refreshing
+sedative on the febrile nerves of an up-to-date newspaper office.
+
+Outside the office Garth led an uneventful life. He lived with
+his mother and a younger brother and sister, and ever since his
+knickerbocker days he had been the best head the little family could
+boast of. New York is full of young men like Garth who, deprived of
+the kind of society their parents were accustomed to, do not assimilate
+readily with that which is open to all; and so do without any.
+Young, presentable and clever, Garth had yet never had a woman for
+a friend. Those he met in the course of a reporter's rounds made him
+over-fastidious. He had erected a sky-scraping ideal of fine breeding
+in women, of delicacy, reserve and finish; and his life hitherto had not
+afforded him a single opportunity of meeting a woman who could anywhere
+near measure up to it. That was his little private grievance with Fate.
+
+Garth came of a family of sporting and military traditions, which he had
+inherited in full force. These, in the young bread-winner of the city,
+had had to be largely repressed; but he had found a certain outlet in
+joining a militia regiment, in which he had at length been elected an
+officer. He had a passion for firearms; and was the prize sharpshooter
+of his regiment. Wonderful tales were related of his prowess.
+
+When the _Leader_ was invited to send a representative on the excursion
+of press correspondents, which an enterprising immigration agency
+purposed conducting through the Canadian Northwest, Garth was chosen
+to go--most unexpectedly to himself, and to the higher-paid men on the
+staff. This trip put an entirely new colour on Garth's existence. He had
+always felt a secret longing to travel, to wander under strange skies,
+and observe new sides of life. From the very start of the journey he
+found himself in a state of pleasant exhilaration which was reflected in
+the copy he sent back to his paper. Pevensey's articles on the West made
+a distinct hit. The editors of the _Leader_ did not tell him so; but in
+the very silence from New York that followed him, he knew he had found
+favour in their eyes; and he felt the delicious gratification of one
+who has been unappreciated.
+
+When the excursion, lapped in the luxury of a private car (nothing
+can be too good for those who are going to publish their opinions of
+you), reached Prince George, the outermost point of their wide swing
+around the country, the good people of the town outdid themselves in
+entertaining the correspondents. Among the festivities, a large public
+reception gave the correspondents and the leading men of the country
+the opportunity to become acquainted. To Garth the most interesting man
+present was the Bishop of Miwasa. His Lordship was a retiring man in
+vestments a thought shabby; and the other correspondents overlooked him.
+But Garth had heard by accident that the Bishop's annual tour of his
+diocese included a trip of fifteen hundred miles by canoe and pack-train
+through the wilderness; and he scented a story. The Bishop was one of
+those incorrigibly modest men who are the despair of interviewers; but
+Garth stuck to him, and got the story in the end. It was the best sent
+out of Prince George on that trip.
+
+During the five days the correspondents spent there, the quiet Garth
+and the quiet Bishop became fast friends over innumerable pipes at the
+Athabasca Club. They discovered a common liking for the same brand
+of tobacco, which created a strong bond. Garth was entranced by the
+Bishop's matter-of-fact stories of his long journeys through the
+wilderness during the delightful summers, and in the rigorous winters;
+and the upshot was, the Bishop asked him to join him in his forthcoming
+tour of the diocese, which was to start from Miwasa Landing on the
+first of August.
+
+Garth jumped at the opportunity; and telegraphing lengthily to his
+paper to set forth the rich copy that was pining to be gathered in the
+North, prayed for permission to go. He received a brief answer, allowing
+him two months' leave of absence for the journey at his own risk and
+expense; and promising to purchase what of his stuff might be suitable,
+at space rates. This was precisely what he wanted; it meant two months'
+liberty. By the time he received it, the excursion had left Prince
+George behind; and was turned homeward. Garth dropped off at a way
+station and made his way back, this time without any fêtes to greet
+his arrival. He caught the Bishop as he was starting for the Landing;
+and it was arranged Garth should follow him by stage, three days later.
+Meantime he was to purchase an outfit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the evening of the day following his luncheon at Papps's, Garth, in
+his room at the hotel, was packing in a characteristically masculine
+fashion, preparatory to his start for the North woods next day.
+
+It would have been patent to an infant that he had something on his
+mind. He was not thinking of the romantic journey that lay before him;
+that prospect, so exhilarating the past few days, had, upon the eve of
+realization, lost its savour. He would actually have welcomed an excuse
+to postpone it for a few days--so that he might spend a little more
+money at Papps's. It was a pair of flashing blue eyes--for blue eyes do
+flash, though they be not customarily chosen to illustrate that capacity
+of the human orb--which had disturbed his peace. He was very much
+dissatisfied with the part he had played at luncheon the day before.
+What he ought to have said and done was now distressingly clear to him;
+and he craved an opportunity to put it into practice. He had spent the
+whole middle part of this day at Papps's, loitering in the entrance to
+make sure the blue eyes should not be swallowed in one of the cabins
+without his knowledge; but they had not illumined the place; nor had
+his cautious inquiries elicited a single clue to the identity of the
+possessor. He felt sure if he had three days more in Prince George he
+could discover her: but unfortunately the weekly stage for the North
+left the following morning; and the Bishop was waiting for him at
+the Landing; likewise the _Leader_ back in New York was waiting for
+stories--and not about blue eyes. It was at this point in his circular
+train of reflections that he would resume packing with a gusty sigh.
+
+He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and, upon opening it, was
+not a little astonished to receive a note from the hands of a boy, who
+signified his intention of waiting for an answer. It was contained in a
+thick, square envelope with a crest on the flap; and was addressed in a
+tall, angular, feminine hand. Garth, his mind ever running in the same
+course, tore it open with a crazy hope in his heart; but the first
+words brought him sharply back to earth.
+
+    "Will Mr. Garth Pevensey," thus it ran, "be good enough
+    to oblige an old lady by calling at the Bristol Hotel this
+    evening? Mrs. Mabyn will be awaiting him in the parlour;
+    and as it concerns a matter of supreme importance to her,
+    she trusts he will not fail her; no matter how late the
+    hour at which he may be able to come."
+
+Garth dismissed the boy with a message to the effect that he would
+answer the note in person. As he leisurely put his appearance in order,
+he thought: "Verily one's adventures begin upon leaving home." He was
+human, consequently his curiosity was pleasantly stimulated to discover
+what lay before him: but the little adjective in the first sentence of
+his appellant's letter was fatal to the idea of any violent enthusiasm
+on her behalf.
+
+The parlour of the Bristol Hotel was on the first floor above the street
+level. Garth paused at the door; and cast a glance about the room. It
+was empty except for two figures at the further end. The one he could
+see more plainly was an old lady sitting in an easy-chair; she was
+dressed in black, with a white cap and white wristbands; a spare, erect
+little lady. Garth judged her to be the writer of the note. The other
+figure, also a woman, was partly hidden in a window embrasure. She
+was standing by the window holding the curtain back with one hand, and
+looking into the street. She turned her head to speak to the old lady;
+whereupon Garth's heart leapt in his bosom, the room rocked, and the
+chandeliers burst into song; that clear profile, that slender figure
+could belong to none in Prince George but _Her_! He was overcome with
+delight and amazement; he could scarcely credit his eyes. He wished in
+the same instant he had spent more care on his appearance, and that he
+had not kept them waiting so long.
+
+The younger lady perceived him standing in the shadowy doorway, and came
+toward him.
+
+"Mr. Pevensey?" she began in a voice of cool inquiry. Then she stopped
+aghast; and the colour flamed into her face. "_You!_" she exclaimed in
+a voice too low to reach the older woman's ears. "Oh, I didn't know--I
+never suspected it might be you!"
+
+Garth was conscious of a complicated feeling of irritation, a kind of
+jealousy of himself. "Why did they send for me, if they didn't know it
+was me?" was his thought.
+
+"What must you think of me?" she said in obvious distress.
+
+"I am in the dark," said Garth helplessly.
+
+She recovered her forces. "I am not in the habit of going to restaurants
+alone," she said. "But the hotel here is so bad! I am afraid you must
+think me a frivolous person, and I am anxious you should not think so."
+
+"I don't," said Garth bluntly.
+
+She smiled. "Very well," she said; "then there's no harm done."
+
+"Natalie!" called the old lady, with a hint of irritation.
+
+"Come and meet Mrs. Mabyn," she said quickly; and led the way.
+
+"This is Mr. Pevensey, Mrs. Mabyn," she said.
+
+The old lady regarded Garth with a sharp scrutiny; and Garth looked with
+interest at her. She was a fragile, elegant, plaintive little person
+of the old "lady-like" régime; but for all her gentleness, Garth was
+somehow conscious that he faced a woman of an iron will. She had the
+impatient, inattentive manner of one possessed by a single idea. With
+the result of her examination she appeared but half satisfied; she
+held out a delicate, wrinkled hand, dubiously.
+
+"How do you do?" she said. "Please sit down."
+
+"I am Natalie Bland," further explained the girl, who had again
+retreated to the window embrasure. "Mrs. Mabyn and I are travelling
+together."
+
+"Dear Natalie is a daughter to me," murmured Mrs. Mabyn with commendable
+feeling.
+
+The two women exchanged a glance which Garth was at a loss to interpret.
+He was looking at Natalie and he thought he saw patience, real
+affection, and perhaps a little kindly amusement--but there was
+something beyond; something grimmer and more determined, a hint
+of rebellion.
+
+"My husband, Canon Mabyn, was the rector of Christ's Church Cathedral
+in Millerton, Ontario, up to the time of his death," murmured Mrs.
+Mabyn in her dulcet tones, with the air of one delivering all-sufficient
+credentials.
+
+Garth murmured to show that he was suitably impressed.
+
+"You are from New York, I believe," said Mrs. Mabyn.
+
+Garth acknowledged the fact.
+
+"So the newspaper said," she remarked. "Of course, I know very few
+Americans, still it is possible we may have common friends. You--er--"
+She paused invitingly.
+
+"Hadn't we better explain why we asked Mr. Pevensey to call?" put in
+Natalie quietly.
+
+"My dear, Mr. Pevensey was just about to tell me of his people," Mrs.
+Mabyn said in tones of gentle reproof.
+
+Garth saw what the old lady would be after. "My father, Lieutenant
+Raymond Pevensey, was in the Navy," he said. "He was killed by a powder
+explosion on the gunboat _Arkadelphia_, twelve years ago."
+
+"Dear me, how unfortunate!" murmured Mrs. Mabyn sympathetically; but
+it rang chillingly, and her abstracted eyes dwelt throughout upon that
+relentless thought of hers, whatever it was.
+
+"I am related distantly to the Buhannons of Richmond, and the
+Mainwarings of Philadelphia," continued Garth, willing to humour her.
+
+"There was a Mainwaring at Chelsea with my husband as a boy," remarked
+Mrs. Mabyn.
+
+"Probably my great-uncle," he said. "In this part of the world," he went
+on, "there is no one who knows me beyond mere acquaintanceship, except
+the Bishop of Miwasa--"
+
+"Pray say no more, Mr. Pevensey," interrupted Mrs. Mabyn. "The mere fact
+that the Bishop invited you to accompany him is, after all, sufficient."
+She turned to the girl. "You may continue, dear Natalie."
+
+"We read in this evening's paper," began that young lady with a directness
+refreshing after Mrs. Mabyn's circumlocutions; "that you were starting for
+Miwasa Landing to-morrow morning, to join the Bishop on his annual tour.
+We wished particularly to see you before you started; and that is why
+I--why Mrs. Mabyn wrote."
+
+"We thank you for coming so promptly," put in Mrs. Mabyn with her
+gracious air.
+
+Garth murmured truthfully that the pleasure was his. He felt himself on
+the breathless verge of a discovery. Intuition warned him of what was
+coming; but he could not believe it yet.
+
+"Mr. Pevensey," resumed the young lady as if with an effort; she had the
+humility of a proud soul who stoops to ask a favour; "we are going to
+make a very strange request, as from total strangers."
+
+Mrs. Mabyn raised an agitated hand. "Wait, wait, my dear Natalie," she
+objected. "Perhaps after all, we had better go no further. I--I think we
+had better give the plan up," she said in apparently the deepest
+distress.
+
+The girl turned a patient shoulder, and looked into the street again,
+abstractedly playing with the cord of the blind.
+
+"It is really too much to ask of you," continued Mrs. Mabyn distressfully;
+"and I am so afraid for Natalie! Natalie is so very dear to me. The
+situation is _so_ unusual!" she wailed.
+
+Poor Garth was sadly perplexed and exasperated by all this. The discovery
+he anticipated was now apparently in retreat.
+
+"We are glad, anyway, to have had the pleasure of making your
+acquaintance," said Mrs. Mabyn with an air of finality.
+
+Suddenly it was borne in upon Garth, partly from the girl's patient
+attitude, partly from the other's emphasis upon her distress, that it
+was simply, in newspaper parlance, all a bluff on the part of the older
+woman. Her fanatic eyes seemed to tell him that she was still bent on
+her object, whatever it might be. Experience had taught him that the
+quickest way to find out if he were right was to seem to fall in
+with her desire. So he promptly rose as if to leave. It worked.
+
+Mrs. Mabyn's eyes snapped. She did not relish being taken up so quickly.
+"One moment, Mr. Pevensey," she said plaintively--and hastily. "Overlook
+the distraction of an old woman; I am torn two ways!"
+
+Garth understood by this that the matter was reopened; and sat down
+again. There was a pause, while the old lady struggled, with the air of
+a martyr, to regain her composure. The girl continued to look stolidly
+out of the window; and Garth simply waited for what was coming.
+
+"You may continue, Natalie," said Mrs. Mabyn at length, faintly.
+
+The girl resumed her explanation at the exact point where she left off.
+"We expected--that is, we hoped you were an older man--" Garth looked
+so disappointed she immediately added: "For that would make the request
+seem less strange." She hesitated.
+
+"What is it?" asked Garth.
+
+But she parried awhile. "What sort of a man is the Bishop?" she asked.
+
+Garth described his modesty and his manliness.
+
+"A very proper person to be Bishop in a wild country," remarked Mrs.
+Mabyn, patronizingly.
+
+"And his wife?" asked Natalie.
+
+Garth pictured a homely, unassuming body, with a great heart.
+
+"Of course!" said Mrs. Mabyn. A whole chapter might be devoted to the
+analysis of the tone in which she said it.
+
+"We had heard she accompanies her husband," said Natalie.
+
+"Yes," said Garth.
+
+"That simplifies matters!" exclaimed Mrs. Mabyn.
+
+"Their route takes in Spirit River Crossing, I believe," pursued
+Natalie.
+
+Garth affirmed it, wondering.
+
+Natalie paused before she went on. "Whatever you may think of what I am
+going to tell you, Mr. Pevensey," she said with the same proud appeal in
+her voice, "we may count on you, I am sure, not to speak of it to any
+one for the present."
+
+"Indeed you may!" he said warmly.
+
+"I am obliged to get to Spirit River Crossing at the earliest possible
+moment," she said simply.
+
+Through the wilderness with _her_! Garth had to wait a moment before he
+could trust himself to reply with becoming coolness.
+
+"Have you considered the kind of a journey it is?" he asked quietly.
+
+"That is the worst of it!" complained Mrs. Mabyn. "I had expected to go
+with her; but we find it is out of the question."
+
+Garth hastened to assure her that it was.
+
+"I have considered everything," said Natalie.
+
+"But do you know that you will have to travel two or three weeks in an
+open boat in all weathers, a mere canoe in fact; that you will have to
+sleep out of doors, and live on the very roughest of fare? Could you
+stand it?" he demanded almost sternly.
+
+"I am perfectly well and strong," answered Natalie.
+
+"That is quite so, happily," said Mrs. Mabyn. "Otherwise, I would not
+hear of it for a moment."
+
+"If the Bishop's wife can stand it, certainly I can," said Natalie.
+
+"But she is obliged to do it," said Garth.
+
+"So am I!" said Natalie quickly.
+
+There was an awkward pause. Garth said nothing, but his question was
+felt.
+
+"Naturally you wonder what forces me to undertake such a journey," said
+Natalie uncomfortably.
+
+"Couldn't I help you more intelligently if I knew?" suggested Garth.
+
+"But I cannot tell you," she said. "That is, not yet. Believe me, it is
+nothing I need be ashamed of----"
+
+"Natalie!" exclaimed Mrs. Mabyn indignantly. "Is it not I who urge you
+to go?"
+
+"Yes, I am doing what will be considered a most praiseworthy thing,"
+said Natalie with what sounded strangely like--bitterness.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" urged Mrs. Mabyn, who seemed to have forgotten her late
+anxiety on Natalie's account.
+
+"But in telling you," objected Natalie gently, "I would have to trust
+you to a far greater extent than you would be trusting me, in lending
+me, without knowing my reasons, the assistance of one traveller to
+another."
+
+Garth was ready enough to throw himself at her feet without this
+affecting appeal. "Please count on me," he said, moved more than he
+would let them see, especially the old woman. "How can I help you?"
+
+"See me as far as Miwasa Landing," she said simply. "I will then throw
+myself on the goodness of the Bishop and his wife; and trust to them
+to take me with them the rest of the way--that is, if I wish to go.
+The Bishop may be able to give me information," she added darkly.
+
+"Natalie!" put in Mrs. Mabyn, warningly. "I--I will give her letters to
+those good people," she added hastily, to divert Garth's mind from the
+strangeness of Natalie's last words.
+
+But Garth was in no temper to be deflected by a mystery. "I am thankful
+for the chance to be of service," he said fervently, having a keen sense
+of the poverty of words.
+
+"Thank you," said Natalie, simply. "Let us talk of ways and means," she
+added decisively. "What should I take?"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+ON THE TRAIL
+
+
+At a quarter to eight next morning Garth was waiting again in the
+parlour of the Bristol Hotel. Promptly to the minute Natalie came
+sailing in, in her own inimitable way, walking all of a piece, with a
+sweep like a banner, Garth thought. When he saw her, his last doubt of
+the reality of this intoxicating journey vanished. She bore no trace
+now of the seriousness of the night before; all smiles and red-cheeked
+eagerness, she radiated the very joy of being.
+
+"Enter Mrs. Pink!" she cried.
+
+She had a brown valise, a fat bundle, a flat, square package wrapped in
+paper, a coat and a parasol.
+
+"You said trunks were taboo," she explained. "I only had one valise and
+I couldn't nearly get everything in. Indeed I sat up half the night
+studying how little I could do with."
+
+"We'll get you a duffle-bag at the Landing," he said.
+
+"Am I suitably dressed?" she demanded, showing herself.
+
+Garth smiled. She was perfection; how could he blame her? She had
+interpreted his suggestions as to sober, serviceable clothes, in a
+diabolically well-fitting suit of brown, the colour of her hair. At the
+wrists and neck of her brown-silk waist were spotless bands of white;
+and on her head was a dashing little brown hat with green wings. She
+exhibited square-toed little brown boots as an evidence of exceeding
+common sense; and was pulling on a pair of absurdly small boy's gloves.
+This most suitable costume for the North was completed by a brown-silk
+parasol.
+
+"All in place and well tied down," she announced. "Nothing to fly or
+catch!"
+
+Garth pictured to himself the effect likely to be created in the
+wilderness by this adorable acme of the feminine, with something between
+a smile and a groan.
+
+They walked to the post office, quaffing deep of the delicious morning
+air, Garth glancing sidewise at his exuberant companion, and wondering,
+like the old lady in the nursery rhyme, if this could really be he. It
+was a day to make one walk a-tiptoe; the sky overhead bloomed with the
+exquisite pale tints of a Northern summer's morning; and the bricks of
+Oliver Avenue were washed with gold.
+
+Natalie's face fell a little at the sight of the stage-coach; for it
+had nothing in common with the imagined vehicle of romance except the
+four horses; and they were but sorry beasts. In fact, it was nothing
+but a clumsy, uncovered wagon, which had never been washed since it
+was built; and was worn to a dull drab in a long acquaintance with the
+alternating mud and dust of the trail. Behind the driver's seat was a
+sort of well, for the mail bags and express packages; and behind that,
+two excruciatingly narrow seats for the passengers, running lengthwise
+between the rear wheels. The entrance was by a step at the tail-board.
+
+Everything awaited the word to start. The driver, whip in hand, stood
+by the front wheel surrounded by a group of idlers; and his two great
+mongrel huskies, squatted on the pavement with expectant eyes on their
+master. Garth helped Natalie into the body of the wagon; and, climbing
+in after her, disposed her baggage with his own already in the well. The
+eyes of the driver and all his satellites were promptly transferred in
+wide wonder to the girl with the green wings in her hat. Garth, with a
+keen sense of difficulties ahead, was indignant and uncomfortable; but
+Natalie, serenely conscious that everything was in place, dropped her
+hands in her lap, and chatted away, as if quite unaware of her
+conspicuousness.
+
+Garth had put Natalie in the right-hand corner of the little cockpit.
+Another woman passenger was already in place opposite; and the aspect of
+this lady made an additional element in his uneasiness. She, too, was
+gotten up bravely according to her lights. She seemed something under
+forty, tall and angular; her hair, a crass yellow, was tied with a large
+girlish bow of black ribbon behind; and in her cheeks she had crudely
+striven to recall the hues of youth. Around her long neck another black
+ribbon accentuated the scrawny lines it was designed to hide; and on
+top of all she wore a wide black hat, which had a fresh yet collapsed
+effect, as if it had long been cherished under the lid of a trunk. Her
+knees touched Natalie's, and Garth's gorge rose at her nearness to his
+precious charge--and yet the antique girl greeted them with a sort of
+anxious, appealing smile, which disarmed him in spite of himself.
+
+Promptly at eight o'clock the door of the post office was opened; and
+the last bag of mail was thrown into the stage. Still the driver made no
+move to climb into his seat; and Garth, becoming restless as the minutes
+passed, got out and approached him.
+
+"Good morning, driver," he said, while the bystanders stared afresh.
+"What's the delay?"
+
+He gazed at Garth with a mild and cautious blue eye; and spat deliberately
+before replying. He was one of those withered little men, with a shock of
+grizzled hair, and deeply seamed face and neck and hands, who might be
+forty-five or seventy. As it turned out, Paul Smiley was within three
+years of the latter figure. He had on a pearl Fedora very much over one
+ear, a new suit of store clothes with a mighty watch chain, and new boots,
+which seemed like little souls put to torment--they screeched horribly
+whenever he moved.
+
+"I couldn't start off and leave Nick Grylls," he said deprecatingly. "He
+has spoke for two seats."
+
+Garth was sensible that he was hearing a great man's name.
+
+"I tell you it ain't often Nick Grylls travels by the stage," continued
+Smiley, addressing the bystanders impressively. "He hires a rig and a
+team and a driver to take him to the Landing, _he_ does."
+
+"Who is this Mr. Grylls?" asked Garth, pursuing the reporter's instinct.
+
+"Don't know Nick Grylls!" exclaimed old Paul, exchanging a wondering
+glance around the circle. "You _must_ be a stranger! Nick Grylls is a
+wonderful bright man, wonderful! He's the biggest free-trader in the
+North country; trades down Lake Miwasa way. Wonderful influence with the
+natives; does what he wants with them. I tell you there ain't much north
+of the Landing Nick Grylls ain't in on. Here he comes now! All aboard!"
+
+As Garth resumed his seat by Natalie he saw a burly, broad-shouldered
+figure hurrying along the sidewalk; he saw under the wide, stiff-brimmed
+hat, a red face with an insolent, all-conquering expression, and fat
+lips rolling a big cigar. There followed after, a young breed staggering
+under the weight of a Gladstone bag, which matched its owner. Arrived at
+the stage, Nick Grylls flung a thick word of greeting to the bystanders,
+and taking the bag from the boy, threw it among the mail bags as one
+tosses a pillow; and climbed into the seat by the driver. The breed
+sprang on the step behind; another passenger took the place opposite
+Garth; old Paul cracked his whip and shouted to his horses; the dogs
+leaped and barked madly; and the Royal Mail swung away to the North
+with its oddly assorted company.
+
+As they rattled through the suburbs the fat back on the front seat
+shifted heavily; and the red face was turned on them.
+
+"Hello, old Nell!" shouted Nick.
+
+The woman simpered unhappily. "How's yourself, Mr. Grylls?" she
+returned.
+
+"Fine!" he bellowed from his deep chest.
+
+This little manoeuvre in the front seat was merely for the purpose of
+obtaining a prolonged stare at Natalie. The insolence of the little,
+swimming, pig-eyes infuriated Garth. The young man opposite him too, a
+sullen, scowling bravo, was staring boldly at Natalie. Garth stiffened
+himself to play a difficult part.
+
+"I feel like a rare, exotic bird," whispered Natalie in his ear.
+
+"You are," he returned grimly. "I think it would be better if you did
+not speak my name," he added. "I will not address you by yours. We must
+be prepared to parry questions."
+
+"I will be careful," she said.
+
+To do him justice, Nick Grylls, on a close examination of Natalie, had
+the grace to feel a little ashamed of his rough outburst. He altered his
+features to what he thought was a genteel expression; but Garth called
+it a leer.
+
+"Bully day for our trip," he said.
+
+They all agreed in various tones; even Garth. He knew it would not help
+Natalie for him to start by inviting trouble.
+
+"You're the New York newspaper man," said Grylls to Garth.
+
+"That's right," said Garth quietly.
+
+"They tell me you're going to write up the country," said Grylls;
+exhibiting that curious blend of suspicion, contempt and respect his
+kind has for the fellow who writes. "I can tell you quite a bit about
+the country myself," he added with a braggadocio air.
+
+Garth thanked him.
+
+"It's an onusual trip for a lady," continued Grylls, cunningly trying to
+draw Natalie into the conversation; "but nothing out of the way at this
+season. The Bishop travels comfortable enough; separate tent for the
+women; and an ile stove like."
+
+His move was not successful; Natalie continued looking charmingly blank.
+Old Paul created a diversion by facing them with a confiding smile. The
+pert Fedora with its curly brim was comically ill-suited to his seamed
+old face, and mild blue eye. He pointed with his whip down a road on the
+outskirts of the town.
+
+"My place is down there," he said simply. "Just sold it last week; three
+hundred acres at three hundred dollars an acre. They're layin' it out in
+town lots."
+
+"Good God, man!" cried Grylls. "You could buy me out and have a pile
+over!" Every time he spoke, he glanced over his shoulder at Natalie.
+
+Old Paul smiled up at him admiringly. "But this is only a sort of
+accident," he said. "You made yours."
+
+"What in he--Why are you driving the stage, then?" demanded Grylls.
+
+"Well," said the old man slowly; "seems though I just got in the way of
+it. Seems I just _had_ to keep hanging on to the ribbons, or lose holt
+altogether."
+
+"What are you going to do with all that money?" Grylls wanted to know.
+
+"Well," said Paul with a quiet grin; "I bought me a new hat like the
+swells wear; and a pair of Eastern shoes. They pinch me somepin' cruel,
+too."
+
+"Why don't you travel East, Mr. Smiley?" suggested Nell. She whom they
+all addressed so cavalierly was particular to put a handle to each name.
+
+"Travel! I had enough o' that, my girl," he said. "Forty-five years ago
+I travelled East to Winnipeg and got me a wife. Brought her back over
+the plains in a Red River cart. Eight hunder miles, and hostile redskins
+all the way! What's travellin' nowadays!"
+
+"Were you born out here?" asked Garth, shaping a story for the _Leader_
+in his mind.
+
+"At Howard House, west of here in the Rockies," said Paul. "My father
+was Hudson's Bay trader there."
+
+"Paul's an old-timer all right," said Grylls carelessly. He was
+becoming bored with the trend the conversation was taking.
+
+"One of the first eight who broke ground in Prince George," said the old
+man proudly. "Yonder's the first two-story house in the country. I built
+it. No!" he continued thoughtfully; "I'm keeping my house and ten acres;
+and me and the old woman's calc'latin' to stop there and watch the march
+o' progress by our door. She wouldn't give up her front step for all the
+real-estate sharks in Prince George. But," he added with a chuckle, "I
+shouldn't wonder if she was shocked some when them trolley-cars I hear
+tell of goes kitin' by."
+
+"I kin understand just how she feels," remarked old Nell to Natalie, with
+her apologetic little smile. "What could take the place of a home with
+real nice things in it? I got a house up near the Landing with a carpet
+in every room. I just love to buy things for it. You see I never had what
+you might call a regular house until just lately. This trip I bought a
+pink-and-gold chiny washin' set; and a down comfort for the best room. I
+never could tire of fixin' it up. We'll pass there to-morrow afternoon.
+I'd just love to have you step in--"
+
+Grylls laughed boisterously.
+
+"Ah-h, shut up, Nell!" muttered the dark young man beside her.
+
+"Thank you, I'd like to see it," said Natalie, with a flash of the blue
+eyes.
+
+They had now left the town behind; and were rolling, or rather bumping,
+over the prairie. Here, it is not an empty plain, but a series of
+natural, park-like meadows, broken by graceful clumps of poplar and
+willow. On a prairie trail when the wheels begin to bite through the
+sod, and sink into ruts, a new track is made beside the old--there is
+plenty of room; and in turn another and another, spreading wide on each
+side, crossing and interweaving like a tangled skein of black cotton
+flung down in the green.
+
+Natalie had never seen such luxuriant greenness; such diverse and
+plentiful wild flowers. Nell pointed out the brilliant fire-weed, blending
+from crimson to purple, the wild sunflower, the lovely painted-cup,
+old-rose in colour; and there were other strange and showy plants she
+could not name. Occasionally they passed a log cabin, gayly whitewashed,
+and with its sod roof sprouting greenly. These dwellings, though crude,
+fulfilled the great aim of architecture; they were a part of the landscape
+itself.
+
+When they stopped at one of these places for dinner, Garth watched
+Natalie narrowly to see how she would receive her first taste of rough
+fare. But far from quailing at the salt pork, beans and bitter tea, she
+ate with as much gusto as if it had always been her portion. "She'll
+do," he thought approvingly.
+
+Afterward as they toiled up a long, sandy rise in the full heat of the
+afternoon sun, Paul, the old dandy, had leisure while his horses walked
+to devote to his passengers. He was pleased as a child at the interest
+shown by Garth and Natalie in his anecdotes. Turning to them now, he
+pointed to a high mound topped by a splendid pine standing by itself,
+and said:
+
+"Cannibal Hill. Used to be an Indian called Swift had his lodge there. A
+fine figger of a man too; high-chested; beautiful-muscled. He was a good
+Indian; and I want to say when a redskin is good, he's damn good--beg
+pardon, Miss--he's good and no mistake, I should say. He has a high-minded
+way of looking at things, which ought to make a white man blush; but it
+don't; for them kind makes the softest tradin'. I been a trader myself.
+
+"This here Swift had a wife and ten childer, that he thought a power of.
+He hunted for 'em night and day; and he come to be known as the best
+provider in the tribe. Well, come one winter he went crazy; yes, ma'am,
+plumb looney; and he went for 'em with his hatchet. He killed and _et_
+'em one at a time, beginning with the youngest; while the others waited
+their turn. You see an old-fashioned Indian was the boss of his family;
+and they didn't dast fight him back. Right up there on that hill, under
+that very same tree; I seen the ashes of their bones myself. In the
+Spring he come down to the settlement and give himself up; said he
+didn't want to live no more. Shouldn't think he would."
+
+Grylls made no secret of his impatience with the old man's yarns. He
+interrupted him, careless of his feelings.
+
+"Are you making the round trip with the Bishop?" he asked Garth.
+
+Garth answered in the affirmative.
+
+"I have a rabbit-skin robe at the Landing I'd be glad to lend the lady,"
+he said leering sidewise at Natalie.
+
+"Much obliged," said Garth agreeably; "but we really have all we can
+use."
+
+"What does _she_ say?" growled Nick.
+
+"Thank you very much," said Natalie quickly; "but I could not think of
+accepting it."
+
+He had forced her to speak to him at last; but the words were hardly
+to his satisfaction. He flung around in his seat with an ugly scowl.
+
+Meanwhile old Paul was still pursuing his thoughts about redskins.
+"Indians think when they go off their heads they're obliged to be
+cannibals," he continued agreeably. "They can't separate the two idees
+somehow. So when a redskin feels a screw beginning to work loose up
+above, he settles on a nice, fat, tender subject. He says his head's
+full of ice, and has to be melted. I mind one winter at Caribou Lake
+forty years back, we were all nigh starving, and our bones was comin'
+through our skins, like ten-p'ny nails in a paper bag. And one night
+they comes snoopin' into the settlement an Indian woman as sleek and
+soft and greasy as a fresh sausage--and lickin' her chops--um--um!
+There was a man with her and he let it out. She had knifed two young
+half-breed widows, as fair and beautiful a two girls as ever I see--and
+she et 'em, yes, ma'am! And nobody teched her; they warn't no police
+in them days. She lives to the Lake at this day!"
+
+"Good Law! Mr. Smiley!" cried Nell with an uneasy glance at the grinning
+half-breed on the tail-step.
+
+"Keep cool, old gal!" growled Nick. "Nobody wouldn't pick you out for a
+square meal!"
+
+Nell's companion rewarded this sally with an enormous guffaw; and poor,
+mortified Nell made believe to laugh too. Natalie's cheeks burned.
+
+"I suppose you hunted buffalo in the old days," said Garth to old Paul.
+
+"Sure, I was quite a hunter," he returned with a casual air. "It
+weren't everybody as was considered a hunter, neither. You had to earn
+your reppytation. We didn't do no drivin' over cliffs or wholesale
+slaughterin'; it was clean huntin' with us, powder and ball. I mind they
+used to make a big party, as high as two hundred men, whites, breeds,
+and friendly redskins. Everything was conducted regular; camp-guards
+and a council and a captain was elected; and all rules strict observed.
+Every night we camped inside a barricade. One of the rules was, no tough
+old bulls useless for meat should be killed under penalty of twenty-five
+dollars. I was had up before the council for that; but I proved it was
+self-defense."
+
+"Tell us about it," suggested Garth.
+
+The old man scratched his head, and shot a dubious glance at Natalie. "I
+ain't sure as this is quite a proper story," he said. "You see, I was
+having a wash, as it might happen, at the edge of a slough--a slough is
+a little pond in the prairie, Miss, as you're a stranger--and my clothes
+and my gun was lying beside me, and my horse was croppin' the grass at
+the top of the rise. When I was as clean as slough water would make me,
+which isn't much, 'cause I stirred up a power of mud, and soap was an
+extravagance them days, I begun to dress myself. Well, I had my shirt
+on, and was sittin' down to pull on my pants, when I heard my cayuse
+start off on a dead run. I looked up quick-like and blest if there
+wasn't old Bill Buffalo a-pawin' and a-bellerin' and a-shakin' of his
+head, not thirty yards away! Soon as he see me look up he come chargin'
+down on me with his big head close to the ground like a locomotive
+cow-catcher. And me in that awkward state of dishabilly!"
+
+"What did you do, Mr. Smiley?" cried Nell in suspense.
+
+Paul shifted his quid, spat, and shoved his pearl Fedora a little
+further over his ear. "G'lang there," he cried shaking the reins. "I
+reached my gun before he reached me," he said; "and I gave him the
+charge, bang in his little red eye. He reared up; and come down kerplunk
+right on top o' me; only I rolled away just in time!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trail to the Landing is considered something of a road up North; and
+the natives are apt to stare pityingly at the effeminate stranger who
+complains of the holes. It is something of a road compared to what comes
+after; but Natalie, hitherto accustomed to cushions and springs in her
+drives, could not conceive of anything worse. As the afternoon waned,
+what with the heat, the hard, narrow seat, and the incessant lurching
+and bumping of the crazy stage, which threw her now backward till her
+head threatened to snap off, and now forward on Nell's knees, the
+blooming roses in Natalie's cheeks faded, and her smile grew wan.
+Poor Garth, anxiously watching her, almost burst with suppressed
+solicitousness.
+
+But at last the journey came to its end; and at six o'clock the Royal
+Mail with its bruised and famished passengers swung into the yard at
+Forbie's, the halfway house, fifty miles from Prince George. Garth had
+learned that the men slept in an outside bunkhouse, while the women were
+received into the farmhouse itself. He hastened to interview Mrs. Forbie
+in private, that the dreadful possibility of Natalie's being asked to
+share a room with the other woman passenger might be avoided. It is
+doubtful if Natalie would have taken any harm from poor old Nell; but
+Garth was a young man falling in love; and so, ferociously virtuous in
+judging Nell's kind. Natalie had a room to herself.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE STOPPING-HOUSE YARD
+
+
+Next morning, Old Paul, assisted by Nell's dark companion, and the
+half-breed Xavier, was hitching up in the yard of Forbie's, when Nick
+Grylls appeared from the house, and walked heavily up and down at some
+distance moodily chewing a cigar. Big Nick was wondering dully what
+in hell was the matter with him. He had tossed in his bunk the night
+through; and now, at the beginning of the day, when a man should be at
+his heartiest, he found himself without appetite for his breakfast, and
+in a grinding temper, without any object to vent it on. In his little
+eyes, bloodshot with the lack of sleep, and unwonted emotion, there was
+an almost childish expression of bewilderment.
+
+A deep sense of personal injury lay at the root of his discomfort. Nick
+was accustomed to think of himself as a whale of a fine fellow, as they
+say in the West; he heard every day that he was the smartest man up
+North; and, of course, he believed it. He regarded himself as a prince
+of generosity; for was not his liberality to the half-breed women a
+reproach among cannier white men? He was fond of children, too; and one
+of his amusements was to distribute handfuls of candy over the counter
+of his store. And candy ("French creams," God save the mark!) is worth
+seventy-five cents a pound on Lake Miwasa. When any poor fellow froze
+to death, or went "looney" in the great solitudes, it was Nick Grylls
+who dug deepest in his pocket for the relief of the unfortunate family.
+This, then, was the meat of his amazed grievance; that he, the great
+man, the patron, should, here in his own country, be coolly ignored
+by a mere boy and girl.
+
+There was good in Nick Grylls; and Garth travelling alone would have got
+along very well with him, and worked him for copy; but having Natalie
+to look after, he instinctively put himself on his guard against the
+triumphant Silenus. Grylls, with an enormous capacity for pleasure, had
+carelessly taken his fill. He had to content himself with the coarse
+plants of the North; and up to now he had desired no other. But he had
+arrived at the age when, the passions beginning to cool, the grossest
+man conceives of fastidiousness; and at this crisis Fate had thrust a
+perfect blossom before him. Never so close to a woman of Natalie's world
+before, he had been free to look at her throughout an entire day; and
+she had actually spoken to him once. He did not realize what was the
+matter with him yet; but presently, when Natalie came out of the house,
+he would know.
+
+Garth strolled out from breakfast; and filled his pipe while he waited
+for Natalie to repack her valise within. Nick's chaotic passions leaped
+to meet the aspect of the cool young man, and fastened on him. But there
+was no relief here; his hearty and irresistible career over prostrate
+necks was suddenly arrested in the light of Garth's cool glance. In his
+heart Nick suspected he was despised, and the fact emasculated his rage.
+He hung his head, and looked elsewhere.
+
+When the horses were hitched, Xavier went into the bunkhouse for his
+master's bedding, old Paul pottered around the harness, while Albert,
+Nell's companion, strolled back to join Grylls.
+
+"What do you make of this young couple?" asked Nick, assuming an
+indifferent air.
+
+"I dunno," Albert returned lethargically.
+
+"There wasn't anything about a girl in the newspaper," pursued Nick;
+"and young reporters don't generally have coin enough to travel with
+a wife."
+
+"They ain't married," said Albert.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Nick eagerly.
+
+"Nell says she heard her call him Mr. Pevensey before the stage started;
+and he called her Miss What's-this."
+
+Nick's little eyes glittered. "Then what in hell are they doing up here
+together?" he muttered.
+
+"Search me!" said Albert indifferently. "Nell says she can't make it
+out."
+
+"She seems to have taken a kind of shine to Nell," suggested Nick
+carefully. "Women are sly as links. Pass a quiet word to Nell to draw
+her out."
+
+"She's tried," said Albert. "Nice as you please but mum. Why don't you
+pump _him_?" he suggested, indicating Garth.
+
+"Because he's a damned, self-sufficient dude!" Nick burst out with a
+string of curses. "One of these porridge-mouthed Easterners that run up
+their eyebrows with a 'my word!' at any free speech or liberality in a
+man! The first time he finds himself in man's country he patronizes us!
+Going to write us up! My God! My stomach turns over every time I look
+at him!"
+
+"Well, he better not get _you_ down on him," said Albert propitiatingly.
+
+Natalie came sailing out of the farmhouse as fresh and smiling as
+the morning itself. Garth hastened to meet her. A dark flush rose in
+Grylls's cheeks, and he gritted his teeth, until the muscles stood
+out in lumps on either side his jaw. He felt a desire to possess this
+slender, swimming figure mounting in his brain to the pitch of madness.
+As she passed him Natalie nodded not unkindly, and the big man's eyes
+followed her in a sort of dog's agony.
+
+Nell followed her out of the house; and Garth handed them both into the
+stage. He did not get in himself, but stood on the ground below Natalie,
+talking up to her. One of the horses had refused to drink at the trough,
+and old Paul, wishing to give him another chance, sent Xavier for a pail
+of water.
+
+This Xavier deserves a word. The young breeds run to extremes of good
+looks or ill; and in his case it was the latter. In downright English he
+was hideous. A shock of intractable, lank hair hung over what he had of
+a forehead; and underneath rolled a pair of whitey-blue eyes, with a
+villainous cast in one of them. Some accident had carried Nature's work
+even further, for one swarthy cheek was divided from temple to chin by a
+dirty white scar. He wore a pair of black-and-white checked trousers,
+which, once Nick's, hung strangely on his meagre frame. He was absurdly
+proud of this garment. His outer wear was completed by a black cotton
+shirt, and the inevitable stiff-brimmed hat, without which no brown
+youth feels himself a man. Xavier's face wore an expression of blankness
+verging on idiocy; but he was by no means deficient in cunning. His full
+name was St. Francois Xavier Zero.
+
+Returning from the pump with the pail of water, as he passed Nick,
+the big man threw him an idle word or two in Cree. Xavier grinned
+comprehendingly; and Nick and Albert followed him a little way. Xavier
+came up close behind Garth; and in passing him, made believe to stumble.
+Some of the water splashed over Garth's legs. Garth swung around, and
+took in the situation at a glance; Grylls and Albert were grinning in
+the background. There was a crack as his fist met the half-breed's jaw;
+and Xavier rolled in the dust. In falling the pail capsized, emptying
+its contents on the cherished trousers.
+
+Nick's guffaw was quickly changed for a scowl; Garth saw that an explosion
+was imminent; and that quick thought was necessary. He knew he must at all
+cost to his pride avoid trouble until he got Natalie off his hands. He
+walked over to Nick; the big fellow clenched his fists as he approached.
+
+"Hope I haven't hurt the beggar," said Garth blandly. "Perhaps he didn't
+mean to spill the water; but you have to deal quickly with a breed.
+That's your way, I'm told."
+
+Nick was completely disconcerted by this unexpected line of action. His
+hands dropped; and he muttered something which might pass for agreement.
+Garth coolly returned to Natalie.
+
+The breed picked himself up, and went crouching to his master with a
+voluble, whining complaint in his own tongue. Nick lifted his hand;
+and with a vicious, backhanded stroke sent Xavier again reeling across
+the yard. It was the blow which was meant for Garth. Passion had set
+Nick dancing to a strange tune. Albert, seeing the look in his eye,
+instinctively edged out of reach.
+
+Old Nell looked at these things with a resigned air that spoke volumes
+for her daily life. Natalie kept perfectly quiet; but a bright spot
+burned in either cheek, and she turned a pair of shining eyes on Garth
+when he came back to her. His difficulties were by no means over. Old
+Paul, feeling that it might be well to forego the pail of water, gave
+the word to start. Grylls climbed in by the rear step, and sat next to
+Nell with a dogged air. This brought him opposite Garth, and very near
+Natalie. Albert and the half-breed following him, they started. Xavier,
+covered with dirt, snivelling, and nursing a split lip, was as ugly as
+a gargoyle.
+
+Garth saw a way out in the vacant place beside Paul. "The front seat
+would be more comfortable for you; it's wider," he said to Natalie, loud
+enough for all to hear. "Paul," he called, "have you room beside you for
+the young lady? She wants to hear some more stories."
+
+Paul, delighted, immediately pulled up, and held out a hand. Natalie
+climbed over the mail-bags and took her place beside him. In crossing,
+she gave Garth's hand a grateful squeeze; and he returned to his place
+with a swelling heart, ready for Nick Grylls and any like him. But he
+would not allow himself to depart from the course he had laid out. In
+the past he had been compelled to conciliate, to flatter, to mould such
+men as Grylls for the advantage of the _Leader_; and he could certainly
+do it once more for the sake of Natalie. Nick faced him with a venomous
+eye, but was unable to make an opening for more trouble.
+
+Old Paul, whenever they came to a hill and he could allow his four to
+walk, turned around; and half to Natalie, half to Garth, delivered himself
+of one of his characteristic stories. Neither was Nick impatient with his
+monologues to-day; for when Paul turned Natalie half turned also; and then
+Nick could watch her face.
+
+Garth had asked the old man about the half-breed rebellion.
+
+"Sure, I was through it all," he began. "I was buildin' boats in Prince
+George; and scoutin'. Upwards of three months we hadn't no news from
+outside and the settlement was in a continuous state of scare. It was
+supposed the Crees had been joined by the Montana Indians; and all said
+we was cut off on the south. Women, children and cattle was crowded
+together in the stockade; but I didn't bring my family in. My old woman
+weren't afraid; and somepin' told me it was just one of these here
+panics like.
+
+"Well, one day up came word to the commandant to send a force down the
+river to Fort Pitt, as they called it, to jine with General Middleton.
+Then it was Smiley here, and Smiley there, and they couldn't do nothin'
+without Smiley. I started down the river at last with two work boats
+carryin' fifty men under Major Lewis and Cap'n Caswell. It was a Saturday
+night, I mind. Lewis was one of these stuck-up, know-it-all johnnies, not
+long breeched. But Caswell was an old Crimea veteran; his face had been
+spiled by a powder explosion; but he certainly was a sporter! Me and him
+got along fine. My! My! what a randy old feller he was! The men used to
+sit around him with their mouths open waitin' to laugh. Grimy Caswell
+they called him, along of his speckled face--great big man!
+
+"We travelled for three days and three nights without stoppin'; and
+would you believe it, that damn fool Lewis--'scuse me, Miss--made us
+light a lantern at night! A mark for all the reds in the country! I was
+steerin' the first boat; and signallin' the channel to Dave Sinclair in
+the boat behind, with my hand; this way and so. But the second day Dave
+ran her aground. Young Lewis wouldn't allow that we knew how to lift a
+boat off a shoal up North. I let him break all the ropes tryin' to drag
+her off; then I showed him. Meanwhile, all this time, Grimy Caswell was
+dressin' himself up like a redskin in my boat; and smearin' his face
+with red earth. When it got dusk-like, he hid in the bushes; and by and
+by Lewis came along the shore. All of a sudden, Grimy in his war-paint
+popped out in front of him, let out a hell of a screech, and sent a shot
+over his head. Say, that young man near died right there. He turned the
+colour of a lead bullet; and made some quick tracks to the rear boat.
+Grimy sneaked back to ours and washed and dressed; and all night long he
+plagued Lewis to light the lantern; but he wouldn't; and the men near
+died holdin' theirselves in. Oh! Grimy Caswell was a humorous feller,
+he was!
+
+"We landed at Fort Pitt on the fourth day; and at the same time the
+steamboats come up from Battle Run with the whole army. They landed 'em
+all; and say, they had a brass band; and General Middleton rode a white
+horse. Never see such a grand sight in all my born days; they must have
+been all of seven hundred and fifty men!"
+
+At the foot of another long hill Natalie expressed a wish to walk up;
+and Garth helped her down. They set off briskly, ahead of the horses;
+and for the first time found themselves free to talk to each other.
+
+"How good you have been to me!" she murmured.
+
+"Don't think of thanking me," said Garth, almost roughly.
+
+"If I had known how literally you would have to take care of me, I would
+not have been so quick to ask you."
+
+"It was nothing, really."
+
+"Nothing, you mean to what is before us?" she asked quickly.
+
+"I look for nothing worse," he said.
+
+"Perhaps my appearance is too conspicuous," she suggested with a
+humility new to her.
+
+"A little, perhaps," Garth admitted.
+
+"What shall I do?" she said. "I have nothing else."
+
+"At the Landing I will dress you in a rough sweater, and a felt hat
+strapped under your chin," he said with a smile.
+
+Natalie was aggrieved. "I like to look nice," she protested.
+
+"You would--even then," said poor Garth.
+
+She changed the subject. "What a gross beast that big man is!" she said
+strongly.
+
+"Poor devil!" said Garth unconsciously. He understood from his own
+feelings a little of what Nick was going through.
+
+Natalie turned a surprised face on him. "Are you sorry for him?" she
+demanded.
+
+"A little."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well--I think perhaps he never saw any one like you before," he said
+quietly.
+
+"But he _hates_ you!"
+
+"Naturally!"
+
+"Why?" she demanded again--and was immediately sorry she had spoken.
+
+Garth looked away. "He thinks I am--I am more than I am," he said
+oracularly.
+
+She affected not to hear this. "What shall we do about him?" she asked.
+
+"He won't trouble us after the Landing," said Garth. "He is bound down
+the river to Lake Miwasa, while we go up to Caribou Lake."
+
+"It's a precious good thing for me I didn't start off alone," she said
+feelingly.
+
+"I'm glad if I've won your confidence a little," said Garth hanging his
+head.
+
+This meant: "Aren't you going to tell me about yourself?" Natalie's
+mystery had been a thorn in his flesh all the way along the road. He
+was ashamed to speak of it, for seeming to imply a doubt of her; but
+he couldn't help approaching it in this roundabout way.
+
+Natalie understood. "I'll tell you now, gladly," she said at once. "But
+not here; there isn't time. We have to get in directly."
+
+This was precisely what Garth desired her to say. He longed for her to
+want to tell him; but for the story itself, he dreaded it, and was quite
+willing to have the telling deferred.
+
+Later in the day they reached Nell's house, quite a fine edifice built
+with lumber instead of the usual logs. Natalie, true to her word,
+allowed herself to be shown through; and did not stint her admiration
+of Nell's treasures. When they drove on, she looked back with a genuine
+feeling for the old girl, who was so anxious to please. They left her
+standing in the doorway in her finery, with the sullen, black-browed
+bravo slouching beside her.
+
+The way became very much rougher; and Garth was glad of Natalie's having
+greater comfort on the front seat. About five o'clock they climbed their
+last hill. At the top Old Paul, pulling up his horses, swept his whip
+with an eloquent gesture over the magnificent prospect lying below.
+
+"All the water this side goes to the Arctic," he said.
+
+Looking over a wealth of greenery, away below them they saw the mighty
+Miwasa River coming eastward from the mountains, make its southernmost
+sweep, and shape a course straight away for the North. The Miwasa river!
+There was magic in the name; they gazed down at it with a feeling akin
+to awe. Off to the left lay the roofs of the Landing, farthest outpost
+of civilization.
+
+Presently they were rattling down the steep village street at a great
+pace, traces hanging slack; past the factor's house, the "Company's"
+store, the blacksmith shop and the "French outfit"; with a dash and
+a clatter that brought every inhabitant running to the hotel. Most of
+them were already there; for the arrival of the mail is the event of the
+week. Old Smiley swept up to the gallery at Trudeau's with a flourish
+worthy of coaching's palmiest days. The passengers alighted; and again
+the girl with the green wings in her hat became the cynosure of every
+eye. Garth delivered her into the comfortable arms of Mrs. Trudeau, who
+took her upstairs. Turning back into the general room, he asked the
+first man he met where the Bishop lived.
+
+"Up the street and to the left a piece," was the reply. "But say--"
+
+"Well?" said Garth.
+
+"The Bishop and his party started up the river two days ago."
+
+Garth, turning, saw Nick Grylls listening with an evil grin.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+AT MIWASA LANDING
+
+
+Miwasa Landing is the jumping-off place of civilization; here, at
+Trudeau's, is the last billiard table, and the last piano; here, the
+wayfarer sleeps for the last time on springs, and eats his last "square"
+ere the wilderness swallows him. It is at once the rendezvous, the place
+of good-byes, and the gossip-exchange of the North; here, the incomer
+first apprehends the intimate, village spirit of that vast land, where a
+man's doings are registered with more particularity than in the smallest
+hamlet outside. For where there are not, in half a million square miles,
+enough white men to fill a room, or as many white women as a man has
+fingers, each individual fills a large space in the picture. Away up in
+Fort Somervell, three months' journey from Prince George, they speak of
+"town" as if it were five miles off.
+
+And Trudeau's on the river bank, quite imposing with its three stories
+and its gingerbread gallery, is the nucleus of it all. Trudeau's is a
+reminder of the jolly bustling inns of a century ago. The traders, the
+policemen, the mail-carriers, the rivermen and the freighters come and
+go; each sits for a day or two in the row of chairs tipped back against
+the wall--for no one is ever in a hurry in the North--gives his news,
+if he be on the way "out"; takes it if he be coming "in"; and appoints
+to meet his friends there next year. The commonest type of all is the
+genial dilettante, the man who traps a little, prospects a little, grows
+a few potatoes, and loafs a great deal. Trudeau's is also the eddy which
+sooner or later sucks in the derelicts of the country, sons or brothers
+of somebody, incredibly unshaven and down at heel; capitalists of
+bluster and labourers with the tongue.
+
+Such was the crowd that witnessed Natalie's arrival open-mouthed; and
+such the individuals that fastened themselves in turn on Garth, with
+the determination of extracting a full explanation of the phenomenon.
+Garth succeeded in avoiding at the same time giving offense and giving
+information. But he could not prevent a fine podful of rumours from
+bursting at the Landing, and scattering seeds broadcast over the North.
+
+He found a letter awaiting him from the Bishop.
+
+    "I find," he wrote, "that Captain Jack Dexter's steamboat
+    will be going up the river to the Warehouse in the middle
+    of the week; and as my preparations are completed a day
+    or two earlier than I expected, I am starting on ahead
+    with my outfit. You will probably overtake us in the big
+    river, as we have to track all the way; but should you be
+    delayed, I will go on up the rapids; and will see that a
+    wagon is waiting for you at the Warehouse, to bring you
+    to me at Pierre Toma's house on Musquasepi. This will be
+    more comfortable for you, as all this first part of the
+    journey is tedious up-stream work."
+
+The good man little suspected when he wrote it what a quandary his kindly
+note would throw Garth into.
+
+After supper, he and Natalie, sitting in the rigid little parlour
+upstairs, talked it over; while Mademoiselle Trudeau, aged fifteen, sought
+to entertain them by rendering effete popular songs on the famous piano.
+From below came the rise and fall of deep-voiced talk, and the incessant
+click of billiard balls.
+
+Natalie made a picture of adorable perplexity to Garth's eyes as she said:
+"What would you advise me to do?"
+
+"How can I advise you?" he said, looking away; "I do not know all the
+circumstances."
+
+"But I can't tell you now," she said appealingly. "Don't you see, my
+reasons for going must not be allowed to influence our decision as to
+whether I _can_ go?"
+
+Garth did not exactly see this; but unwilling to beg for her confidence,
+he remained silent.
+
+"My trouble is," she continued presently, "that if we follow the Bishop
+and overtake him, he'll virtually be obliged to take me; and I do not
+wish to force myself on him."
+
+"As to that," Garth said, "one has to give and take in the North. It's not
+like it is outside. Besides, we pay our own score you know; and carry our
+own grub. I'll answer for the Bishop."
+
+"Then I see no reason why I should not go," she said.
+
+The journey with her stretched itself rosily before Garth's mind's eye;
+but his instinct to take care of her made him oppose it. "There is me,"
+he said diffidently; "travelling alone with me, I mean. Even in the
+North a girl is obliged to consider what people will say."
+
+Natalie shook her shoulders impatiently. "There's not the slightest
+use urging reasons of propriety," she said resolutely. "As long as
+my conscience is clear, I can't afford to consider it. This is too
+important. It affects my whole life," she added in a deeper voice.
+"There's something up there I have to find out!"
+
+Something in this made Garth's hopes lift up a little; for she did not
+speak as one whose heart was in thrall.
+
+Mademoiselle Trudeau concluded her piece with an ear-tearing discord;
+and turned, self-consciously inviting applause.
+
+"How well you play, dear!" said Natalie, the wheedler. "Isn't it nice
+to have music away up here! Try something else."
+
+The performer, adoring Natalie, promptly turned her pig-tails to them
+again, and attacked "Two Little Girls in Blue." Garth groaned.
+
+"Discourages listeners," remarked Natalie, indicating the curtained
+doorway.
+
+"So," she continued presently, "if you haven't any better reasons to
+urge against it, we'll consider the matter settled."
+
+"Couldn't I go for you?" asked Garth.
+
+She resolutely shook her head. "I have promised," she said.
+
+"It was a promise given in ignorance of the conditions," Garth persisted
+with rough tenderness. "This wild country is no place for you. I could
+not bear to see you wet and hungry and cold and tired, and all that is
+before us--besides dangers we may not suspect."
+
+Natalie faced him with shining eyes. "Clumsy man!" she cried--but there
+was tenderness in her scorn too. "Do you think this is persuading me not
+to go? I'm not a doll; I won't spoil with a little rough handling! If you
+only knew how I longed to experience the real; to work for my living, to
+get under the surface of things!"
+
+Garth, amazed and admiring of her bold spirit, was silenced.
+
+As they were parting for the night, she said: "As soon as the steamboat
+casts off, and it's too late to turn back, I will tell you what I have
+to do up there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Garth sought an interview with Captain Jack Dexter of the
+_Aurora Borealis_. At once proprietor, skipper and business manager of
+his boat, and serenely independent of competition, he was a type new
+to Garth. His single concession to sea-faring attire was a yachting cap
+several sizes too small, perched on his spreading brown curls. His face
+was red; his eyes anxious, blue and bulging. He had the unwholesome,
+frenetic aspect of the patent medicine enthusiast, not uncommon in the
+North. Garth interrupted him in a grave discussion of the relative
+merits of "Pain Killer" and "Golden Discovery."
+
+"I may take a run up to the Warehouse," he said guardedly, in answer to
+the question. "I'll let you know to-morrow."
+
+"Aren't you sure of going?" asked Garth in some dismay.
+
+"Never sure of nothing in this world," said Captain Jack, with a glance
+around the circle, sure of applause.
+
+Garth bit his lip. "Haven't you freight to go up?" he asked quietly.
+
+"Plenty of freight offered me," said the skipper coolly. "Plenty to go
+down-stream too."
+
+"But it's highly important I should know what you're going to do," said
+Garth with increasing heat.
+
+Captain Jack cocked a wary eye at the sky, and spat. "No water in the
+river," he said at length.
+
+"Then you're _not_ going," said Garth.
+
+"Didn't say so," said Captain Jack. "May rain shortly, and bring her up
+an inch or so."
+
+The sky was clear and speckless as an azure bowl. "Do you mean I've got
+to wait around here indefinitely on the bare chance of its raining?"
+demanded Garth.
+
+"Told the Bishop I'd bring you up," said Captain Jack in his detached
+way. "Reckon I can't break my word to the Church."
+
+"Well, why didn't you say so in the beginning?" said Garth, wondering if
+this was a joke. "When will you be starting?"
+
+"Oh, to-morrow, maybe," said the skipper without suspecting the least
+humour in the situation; "or Thursday--or Friday; whenever I can get the
+boys together. You just stay around and I'll let you know."
+
+With this Garth was forced to be content.
+
+Next there was the business of laying in supplies from the "Company."
+Garth tasted to the full the sweets of partnership, as he and Natalie
+gauged each other's appetite, and made their calculations. Paul Smiley
+accompanied them in the capacity of expert adviser; but the old man was
+inclined to be scandalized at the extravagant luxuries Garth insisted on
+adding to the five great staples of Northern travel; viz., bacon, flour,
+baking-powder, tea and sugar. Garth must have besides, canned vegetables
+and milk for Natalie; also cocoa, jam and fresh butter. The whole was
+contained in four goodly boxes.
+
+"Mercy!" exclaimed Natalie. "Fancy our two little selves getting outside
+all that! Picture us waddling back to civilization."
+
+Garth also made the necessary rougher additions to her wardrobe; and
+bought her a rifle of small calibre.
+
+In the afternoon, with strict injunctions to Natalie to remain indoors
+during his absence, he set off to a half-breed cabin a mile up the
+river, to obtain a supply of moccasins for both. Mademoiselle Trudeau
+undertook to bear Natalie company at home.
+
+He had not been gone long before the Convent-bred child with her precise
+phrases began to get on the nerves of the irrepressible Natalie. At the
+same time the exquisite clarity of the Northern summer air, the delicate
+mantling blue overhead, and the liquid sunshine on the foliage all began
+to tempt her sorely. Across the road a field of squirrel-tail, dimpling
+silkily in the breeze, stretched to the river bank, and she saw she
+could cross it without passing any house. Natalie was never the one to
+resist such a lure; she sent the child away on an imaginary errand, and
+slipping out by the side door, crossed the field, and gained the bank
+without, as she fondly hoped, having been seen by the row of gossipers
+with their chairs tipped back against the front of the building.
+Rejoicing in her freedom, she followed the path Garth had taken along
+the edge of the bank, thinking how pleasant it would be to surprise him
+coming home, and planning how she would cajole him into forgiving her
+disobedience. The thought of Garth's being angry with her caused a
+strange, vague little thrill, half dismay, half pleasure.
+
+Natalie had not escaped the hotel unobserved; as she went leisurely
+waving her banners along the river path, a gross, burly figure with
+downcast head followed, pausing when she paused, and taking advantage
+of the taller bushes for cover. It was not characteristic of Natalie
+to look behind her; she continued her zigzag course all unconscious;
+sweeping her skirts through the grass, and ever and anon whistling
+snatches like a bird. Presently finding herself among wild raspberry
+bushes laden with fruit, she gave herself up to delicate feasting;
+searching among the leaves bright-eyed, like a bird, and popping the
+berries into her mouth--the raspberries paled beside the bloomy lips
+that parted to receive them. At last she plumped down on a stone beside
+the path; and gazing up the unknown river of her journey, thought her
+birdlike thoughts.
+
+Nick Grylls appeared around the bushes. For the fraction of a second
+she was utterly dismayed; then sharply calling in her flying forces, she
+nodded politely, as one nods to a passer-by; and looked elsewhere.
+
+But the man had no intention of taking the hint. He had the grace to
+pull off his hat--the first time he had bared his head to a woman in
+many a long day--and he paused, awkwardly searching in his mind for the
+ingratiating thing to say. What he finally blurted out was not at all
+what he intended.
+
+"You think I'm a coarse, rude fellow, Miss," he said with the air of a
+whipped schoolboy.
+
+Natalie's thoughts beat their wings desperately against her head. Here,
+indeed, was a situation to try the pluck of a highly civilized young
+lady. What should she do? What should she say? What tone should she
+take? In the end she was quite honest.
+
+"You have never given me any reason to think otherwise," she said. Her
+secret agitation peeped out in the added briskness of her tones.
+
+Grylls incessantly turned his hat brim in his fat freckled hands. "I am
+not as bad as you think," he said dully. "Somehow I seem to have a worse
+look when I am by you."
+
+Natalie let it go at that.
+
+"I ain't had early advantages," he continued. "I never learned how to
+dress spruce; and talk good grammar. But a man may have good metal in
+him for all that."
+
+"Certainly!" said Natalie crisply.
+
+"There ain't no reason why we shouldn't be friends," he said humbly.
+
+"None at all," she returned. "Neither do I see any reason why we should
+be."
+
+"But say, I can help you up here," he said eagerly. "I know the ropes. I
+have the trick of mastering the breeds. I have money in the country. I
+can do what I like."
+
+"You wouldn't want me to simulate friendship for the purpose of using
+you?" said Natalie.
+
+"Yes, I would," he sullenly returned. "I'd take your good will on any
+terms."
+
+The difficulties of her position, it seemed to her, were increasing at
+a frightful ratio. The fact that Garth might at any moment come face to
+face with Grylls only added to her fears. But she gave Grylls no sign
+of the weakness within.
+
+"I can't make believe to be friendly," she said briefly. "I give it
+gladly when I can."
+
+"Show me what to do to be friends with you," he pleaded, not without
+eloquence. "I have the time and the money and the determination to do
+it--anything!"
+
+But it was impossible Natalie should feel the slightest pity for a
+creature of so gross an aspect. "I cannot show you," she said coolly.
+"You must teach yourself."
+
+Grylls began to be encouraged by his own rising passion. "All I ask is
+a fair show," he said in a more assured voice. "Give me a chance as well
+as this squib of a reporter you picked up in Prince George. What can
+_he_ do for you? Let me take you to the Bishop. I can carry his whole
+party through the country at a rate he never thought of!"
+
+Downright anger now came to Natalie's aid. "My arrangements are made,"
+she said curtly. "I do not care to change them."
+
+Grylls's eyes quailed again under the direct look of hers; and a deeper
+red crept under his skin. His tone changed. "If I can't help, I can
+hinder," he muttered.
+
+"Threats will not help you," said Natalie, instantly and clearly.
+
+"You don't know what you're up against," he continued, still muttering,
+"I tell you I carry the breeds in my pocket. No white man knows them but
+me. I can hold you up wherever I please. I've only to give the word and
+you'll starve on the trail--you and your reporter!"
+
+Natalie arose. For the moment she was too angry to speak. The man looked
+on her flashing beauty; and in the madness of his desire to possess it
+he forgot his awe of her.
+
+"God! How beautiful you are!" was forced from his breast like a groan.
+"You poison a man's blood!" His speech came in thick blurts like
+clotting blood. "What business have you got up here? This is no country
+for the likes of you!... I was a strong man before you came; and since
+I looked at you I'm sick ... sick ... sick ... you've stolen my manhood
+out of me! Don't you owe me common civility in return? I'd fawn like a
+dog for a kindly look!... But don't you provoke me too far--don't think,
+because maybe I can't meet your eye, I couldn't crush you--or have
+others do it! You and your damned follower!... Oh, that would give me
+ease!"
+
+Natalie's breath came like a frightened bird's. Flight she realized
+was dangerous--but it was as dangerous to stay; and how could she stay
+listening to such impieties! Nick Grylls's own bulk cut off her retreat
+in the direction of the settlement--but somewhere in the other direction
+was Garth. She sized up the man in a darting glance; his swollen bulk
+promised shortness of breath.
+
+He made a move toward her. "What's to prevent me from taking you now?"
+he muttered.
+
+Natalie, turning, fled along the path; running like a bird with
+incredibly swift, short steps.
+
+Nick Grylls plunged after her, passion lending his great bulk lightness
+and speed. The path, which is used for tracking boats up-stream, skirted
+the extreme edge of a high-cut-bank bordering the river. On the one hand
+a single false step would have precipitated them to the beach twenty-five
+feet below; on the other hand the branches of an impenetrable undergrowth
+scourged their faces as they ran. Here and there the rain had worn deep
+fissures, across which leaped the nymph Natalie, with the panting Silenus
+close at her heels. She was running desperately over unfamiliar ground,
+knowing nothing of what lay ahead. She got away quicker than he; but he
+gained on her. The pursuer always has the advantage, in that he can
+measure his distance; and the quarry must make the pace.
+
+The scene flashed past her like the half-sensed panorama of a hideous
+dream. She dared not look over her shoulder, but she could hear his
+heavy steps falling closer and closer. "He can run faster than I," she
+thought; and a dreadful sinking clutched her heart. She hazarded a
+fearful glance at the water below. The man's fingers clawed at her back.
+In another instant she would have leapt over; but she felt the ground
+tremble and give under her feet. She staggered, and with a desperate
+leap, gained a firm foothold beyond. Behind her, with a rumble and a
+hissing roar a great section of the bank half slid, half fell to the
+river beach beneath, carrying down bushes, trees, stones--and her
+pursuer.
+
+She ran on without a backward look. In her thankful heart she could now
+spare a glance of pity for the half-crazed man; but it did not carry her
+to the length of stopping to see what had befallen him.
+
+A little way farther on, the bank flattened down into a little valley,
+which conveyed a brook to the river. A path struck inland here. Natalie,
+leaping from stone to stone across the stream, suddenly saw Garth's
+figure heave into sight around a bend in the path. Instantly she
+slackened her pace; and her hands went to her breast to control the
+agitation of the tenant there. She did not intend he should learn what
+had happened.
+
+So when they met she was perfectly quiet; but her eyes were luminous,
+and her voice had a new dove-like note. To tell the truth, at the sight
+of him striding along, pipe in mouth, with an interested eye for all
+that showed; so cool and strong; so honest and clean and young; after
+what she had just been through, Natalie was hard put to it to forbear
+casting herself on his breast forthwith, and letting her heart still
+itself there.
+
+He instantly started to scold her for venturing so far alone. She was
+glad to be scolded. She could not help slipping her arm through his
+for a moment, just to feel that he was there.
+
+"I will be good," she murmured in a moved, vibrant tone, like the deepest
+note of the oboe. "Hereafter I will do exactly as you say."
+
+Garth trembled at the sound; and was silent in the excess of his
+happiness.
+
+Returning, upon reaching the path up the valley, she made him turn inland;
+and they pursued a roundabout course back to the hotel. Nick Grylls,
+unhurt except as to certain abrasions of the countenance, and furiously
+sullen, had reached there before them. During the rest of their stay he
+carefully avoided them; but Garth was more than once conscious of the
+venomous little eyes fixed upon him.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+NATALIE TELLS ABOUT HERSELF
+
+
+The little stern-wheeler lay with her nose tucked comfortably in the
+mud of the river bank; and a hawser taut between her capstan and a
+tree. Every soul on board, except the three passengers, slept. Garth and
+Natalie were sitting in the corner of the upper deck astern, on the seat
+which encircles the rail. The third passenger, a mysterious person, who
+all unknown to the other two had been making it her business to watch
+them, observing where they sat, had softly entered the end stateroom;
+and with her head at the window, stretched her ears to hear their talk.
+
+The _Aurora Borealis_, after the loss of three precious days, during
+which Captain Jack endlessly backed and filled, and the water in the
+river steadily fell, had finally cast off that afternoon; and after
+ascending twenty miles or so, tied up to the bank to await the dawn.
+It was now about ten; overcast above; velvety dark below; and still
+as death. For the first time Garth and Natalie missed, with a catch in
+the breath, the faint, domestic murmur that rises on the quietest night
+from an inhabited land. It was so still they could occasionally hear the
+stealthy fall of tiny, furry feet among the leaves on shore. The trees
+kept watch on the bank like a regiment of shades at attention. The
+moment provided Natalie's opportunity to fulfil her promise.
+
+"I will try to be very frank," she began by saying, "I am so anxious you
+should not misunderstand. You have been so good to me!"
+
+"Please don't," said Garth uncomfortably. "Take me for granted as a man
+would. I shall never be at ease with you, if you're going to be thanking
+me at every opportunity!"
+
+"I'll try not to," she said meekly. The darkness swallowed the smile and
+the shine her eyes bent on him.
+
+If Garth expected a sad beginning he was immediately undeceived.
+Natalie's invincible spirits launched her gaily on her tale.
+
+"I've lived all my days in a Canadian city back East," she began;
+"too big a place to be simple; and too small to be finished. I never
+appreciated the funny side of it until I travelled. You have no idea
+of the complacency of such a place, the beautiful self-sufficiency of
+the people; you should hear what a patronizing tone they take toward
+the outside world! But they have their good points; they're kind and
+friendly with each other; and not nearly so snobbish as the people of
+little places are generally pictured. Everybody that is anybody knows
+all the other somebodies so well, it's like one great family. My people
+have lived there for ages; and so everybody knows me; and half of them
+are my cousins.
+
+"We've always been as poor as church mice," she continued in a tone of
+cheerful frankness. "We live in a huge house that is gradually coming
+down about our ears; the drawing-room carpet is full of holes; the old
+silver is shockingly dented and the Royal Worcester all chipped. There
+are other household secrets I need not go into. People are kind enough
+to make believe not to notice--even when they get a chunk of plaster on
+the head.
+
+"Everybody says it's my father's fault; they say he's a ne'er-do-weel;
+and even unkinder things. But he's such a dear boy"--Natalie's voice
+softened--"as young, oh! years younger than you! And everything
+invariably goes wrong with his affairs," she continued briskly; "but he
+is always good-tempered, and never neglects to be polite to the ladies.
+My mother has been an invalid for ten years. We do all we can for her;
+but, poor dear! she isn't much interested in us! Can you blame her? And
+I have half a dozen dear, bad little brothers and sisters. We're all
+exactly alike; we fight all the time and love one another to distraction.
+
+"You see it's not a picture of a well-ordered household I'm drawing you.
+Indeed it's a mystery how we ever get along at all; but we do, somehow;
+and no one the worse. Fortunately there seems to be something about us
+that people like. They just wag their heads and laugh and exclaim, 'Oh,
+the Blands!' and don't expect anything better of us. Conversations are
+started when some one comes in saying: 'Have you heard the latest about
+the Blands?' I'm sure they would be disappointed if we ever reformed.
+People have always been so kind to me"--Natalie's voice deepened
+again--"Ah! so _very_ kind, it makes my heart swell and my eyelids
+prickle when I think of it. I've been carried everywhere in luxury
+like an heiress," she briskened, "and there is no doubt I have been
+thoroughly spoiled."
+
+Natalie paused awhile here; and Garth apprehended that, the prologue
+finished, the story was about to commence.
+
+"A man, the first, fell in love with me when I was eighteen--six years
+ago," she presently resumed. "Of course I do not count all the dear,
+foolish boys before that--they say in Millerton that the boys attach
+themselves to me to finish their education--but that's all foolishness.
+I'm so very fond of boys! I could laugh and hug them all! They're so--so
+theatrical! But the man was different; he was fifteen years older
+than I; and alas! another ne'er-do-weel! He had been a football and a
+cricketing hero; he was very good-looking in a worn-out, dissipated kind
+of a way. He had gone to the bad in all the usual ways I believe--even
+dishonesty; though I didn't learn that until long afterward." The fun
+had died out of Natalie's voice now. "It's a miserable, ordinary kind
+of a story, isn't it?" she said deprecatingly. "Most girls go through
+with it safely; but I--well I was the simple sprat that was caught!
+
+"He was returning to Millerton after a long absence," she went on; "his
+people were well known there. He appeared to be perfectly mad about me;
+and my poor little head was quite turned. His wickedness was vague and
+romantic; for no one ever explained anything to me of course; and the
+idea of leading him back into the paths of righteousness was quite
+distractingly attractive. I had no one to put me right, you see--but
+perhaps I wouldn't have listened if I had had.
+
+"I won't weary you with all the silly details of the affair. My cheeks
+are burning now at the thought of my colossal folly. He won his mother
+over to his side. He was an only child; and she would have chopped off
+her hand to serve him. She joined her persuasions to his. He swore if I
+married him he would go out West, turn over that everlasting new leaf,
+and make his fortune. He wanted me to marry him before he went, so that
+he could feel sure of me. I did balk at that; I thought my word ought
+to be sufficient; but he and his mother pleaded and pleaded with me.
+Together, they were too much for me; and so, at last, I gave in. I
+thought I would be saving him; I thought I loved him--it is so
+easy for children to fool themselves! I married him."
+
+Natalie paused; and with the ceasing of her voice, the great silence
+of the North woods seemed to leap between them, thrusting them asunder.
+Garth's heart for the journey was gone. He was thankful for the merciful
+darkness that hid his face.
+
+Presently she resumed in the toneless voice of one who tells what cannot
+be mended: "We were married in Toronto. His mother and the clergyman
+were the only witnesses. The instant the words were spoken, the whole
+extent of the hideous mistake I had made was revealed to me--why is
+it we see so clearly _then_? We went direct from the ceremony to the
+station, where he boarded his train for the West. I have not laid eyes
+on him since. His name is Herbert Mabyn--and that, of course, is my
+legal name, which I have never used. It was his mother you met in
+Prince George."
+
+Garth drew a deep breath; and carefully schooled his voice. "Is he
+alive?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she said. "My journey is to find him."
+
+"Was it necessary for _you_ to come?" he asked.
+
+"There was no one else," she said. "No one but Mrs. Mabyn and he and I
+know of the marriage. There were many reasons--and complicated ones. I
+do wish to be frank with you; but I scarcely know how to explain. Only
+one thing is clear to me; I _had_ to come; or never know peace again.
+
+"I have a conscience," she went on presently; "a queer, twisted thing;
+and with every man that became fond of me, thinking I was free, it hurt
+me more--though perhaps it did _them_ no real harm. And then there was
+Mrs. Mabyn--how can I explain to you about her?"
+
+"I think I understand," Garth put in.
+
+"She has been very kind to me all these years; but it was a kind of
+tyrannical kindness, too--it was as if she was tying me to her with
+one chain of kindness after another. And I wished to live my own life!
+And it seemed to me that the only way in which I could discharge my
+obligations to her, and win my freedom, was by doing this thing, which
+she so ardently desires. She believes, you see, that I am the only one
+who can save him."
+
+Garth muttered something which sounded uncomplimentary to Mrs. Mabyn.
+
+"But I am really fond of her," Natalie said quickly. "She has a mortal
+disease," she added; "one must make allowances for that."
+
+"Where is _he_?" Garth asked.
+
+"His last letter, eight months ago, was post-marked Spirit River
+Crossing," she said. "We gathered from it that he had a place somewhere
+near there. We know very little. At first he wrote often and cheerfully;
+he seemed to be getting on: but later, he moved about a great deal; his
+letters came at longer intervals; and the tone of them changed. His
+mother thinks his health has broken down. I am to find out; and to
+save him, if I can."
+
+There was a long silence here. Garth could not speak for the fear of
+betraying an indignation which could only have hurt her; and Natalie
+was busy with her own painful thoughts.
+
+"There is something else," she resumed at last in a very low tone.
+"I have not yet been quite frank with you--and I do so wish to be! You
+must not think I am undertaking this purely on his mother's account;
+for there is a selfish reason too. In the bottom of my heart there is
+a hope--perhaps it is a wicked hope--but if you knew how this collar has
+galled me!" She stopped; and then quickly resumed. "I married this man
+with my eyes open; and I will do my part by him--but if--" her voice
+fell again--"if it has not helped him; if in spite of my honest efforts
+to save him, and all the letters I wrote, if he has fallen lower than
+ever, and has ceased to struggle--then I will consider my part done!"
+
+There seemed to be no more to say. Garth's heart was beating fast;
+and he was longing to tell her that he understood, and that he loved
+and admired her for what she had told him, but he could not tell her
+coldly, and he would not tell her warmly. As for Natalie, she waited
+breathlessly for his first word; mightily desiring his approval, but
+too proud to ask it. Finally she could stand the suspense no longer
+and pride succumbed. It took her a long time to get the question out.
+
+"Are you--are you sorry you volunteered to take me?" she faltered.
+
+"No!" cried Garth in a great voice.
+
+She found his hand in the darkness; and gave it a swift, grateful
+squeeze. "Good night!" she whispered; and ran to her stateroom.
+
+Garth, with his pipe and the mighty stillness to bear him company,
+remained on deck until dawn. In the spirit of the North he discovered
+something akin to his own soul; the solitude and the stillness braced
+him to deny himself manfully what was not manfully his to have. In the
+act of relinquishing Natalie, he felt, what he would not have supposed
+possible, a great, added tenderness for her. Before he went in, his
+sober cheerfulness had returned; but in the morning he was somehow
+more mature.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+MARY CO-QUE-WASA'S ERRAND
+
+
+At noon next day the little _Aurora Borealis_ was reclining drunkenly
+on a shoal in the river at the foot of Caliper island, sixty miles above
+the Landing, and fifteen below the Warehouse. This had been the place of
+Captain Jack's gloomy forebodings all the way up. The river spread wide,
+shallow and swift on either side the island, and neither one channel nor
+the other would permit their ascent. The _Aurora_ was having a little
+breathing space on the shoal, while Captain Jack and St. Paul, the big
+half-breed pilot, debated below on what to do.
+
+The three passengers looked on from the upper deck. Natalie and Garth
+tacitly ignored any change in their relation to-day; and no reference
+was made to Natalie's story. They seemed, if anything, more friendly
+with each other; nevertheless Constraint, like a spectre standing
+between them, intercepted all their communications.
+
+The third passenger was a half-breed woman nearing middle age, clad in a
+decent black print dress, and a black straw hat, under the brim of which
+depended a circlet of attenuated, grizzled curls. Her face, like that
+of all the natives in the presence of whites, expressed a blank, in her
+case a mysterious blank. She was silent and ubiquitous; whichever way
+they looked, there she was. Captain Jack had mentioned to Garth that
+her name was Mary Co-que-wasa. The off-hand shrug that accompanied the
+information, between men, was significant. Garth resented it; and his
+sympathies were enlisted. He had made several efforts to talk to the
+woman, only to be received with a stupid shake of the head. He thought
+she could not speak English. Natalie, more keenly intuitive, took an
+active dislike to her. "I'm sure she listens to us," she had said.
+
+Meanwhile, preparations were undertaken to hoist the _Aurora Borealis_
+by main strength up the rapids. The "skiff," as they whimsically
+termed the steamboat's great, clumsy tender--its official name of
+"_sturgeon-head_" was more descriptive--was brought alongside; and a
+half-mile of hawser, more or less, patiently coiled in the bottom. The
+end of this rope was made fast on board the steamer, and the skiff,
+pushing off, was poled and tracked up the rapids with heart-breaking
+labour, paying out the hawser over her stern as she went. The other end
+of the rope was made fast to a great tree on the shore above, and, the
+skiff returning, the inboard end was turned about the capstan. Steam
+was then turned on, and with a great to-do of puffing and clanking, the
+_Aurora_ started to haul herself up hand over hand, as one might say.
+
+Alas! she had no sooner raised her head than the hawser parted in the
+middle with a report like a small cannon, and she settled dejectedly
+back on the shoal.
+
+Captain Jack refreshed himself with a pull at the Spring Tonic bottle;
+and started all over. A newer piece of hawser was produced, and the
+skiff despatched once more on its laborious errand. The loose end was
+finally picked up and knotted, and the capstan started again. But no
+better success followed, as soon as the full strain came upon it, the
+rope burst asunder in a new place. After this they went around the other
+side of the island and tried there. Each attempt consumed an hour or
+more, but time is nothing in the North.
+
+At five o'clock, after the failure of the fourth attempt, Captain Jack
+threw up his hands, and turned the _Aurora's_ nose down-stream. The
+little boat, which had sulked and hung back in the rapids all day,
+picked up her heels, and hustled down with the current, like a wilful
+child that obtains its own way at last.
+
+Garth, in dismay, hastened to Captain Jack.
+
+"Where are we going?" he demanded.
+
+Captain Jack cocked an eye, and said with his air of gloomy fatalism:
+"The Landing's the only place for me."
+
+Garth became hot under the collar, as he always did in dealing with the
+pessimistic skipper. "But we're only fifteen miles from the Warehouse!"
+he cried.
+
+"Might as well be fifteen hundred," said Captain Jack, "for all I can
+get you there."
+
+"Is there no house anywhere near?"
+
+The skipper looked at him with gloomy scorn. "Say, do you think you're
+in a rural neighbourhood?" he inquired.
+
+"I asked you a question," Garth repeated. "Is there any one living near
+here?"
+
+Captain Jack shrugged. "Sometimes there's breeds at Bear Portage below,"
+he said. "But not in the summer."
+
+"Is there no road?"
+
+"Not what _you'd_ call a road. How would you carry your outfit?"
+
+This was a poser, Garth could not deny. "Where are the breeds in the
+summer?" he demanded.
+
+Captain Jack flung up his hands. "God knows!" he said. "Pitching
+somewheres about between the East and the West!"
+
+Garth set his jaw. "Well, there's some way of reaching the Warehouse,"
+he said, "and I'm going to find it. You stop at Bear Portage, as you
+call it, and I'll see what I can do."
+
+"Sure!" said Captain Jack hopelessly. "As long as you like--But you'll
+never make it!" he added with an atrabilious eye. "Never in God's world!
+You better take my advice and get out of the country while you can!"
+
+Garth turned on his heel, and Captain Jack revisited his stateroom for
+consolation. Here, two shelves at the foot of his berth contained his
+pharmaceutical stock in ancient, torn and fly-specked wrappers. He
+bought every new variety of remedy he heard of with the ardour of a
+collector. One of his most serious occupations was to lie in bed in
+the morning, making up his mind what to begin the day on. Endless and
+ingenious were the combinations he made.
+
+They tied up at Bear Portage and had supper. Afterward, three breed boys
+with their scent for happenings in the bush, as unerring and mysterious
+as the buzzard's scent for carrion, turned up from nowhere, and at the
+same time a fourth came nosing under the bank in a crazy dugout filled
+with grass. So soft was the arrival of the last that Garth was not aware
+of it, until he happened to catch sight of Mary Co-que-wasa deep in a
+whispered consultation with the paddler. Finding Garth's eyes upon her,
+Mary, with a hasty word to the boy, embarked, and the canoe's nose was
+turned up-stream. As a possible means of transport later, Garth called
+after the boy; but he only paddled the faster. The incident caused Garth
+a vague uneasiness.
+
+In the other three he found a means, such as it was, of extricating them
+from their dilemma. He learned through St. Paul, who interpreted, that
+there was a camp of Indians engaged in cutting wild hay, seven miles
+off, and that a wagon and team could be got there next morning, to carry
+them and their goods to the Warehouse. At the mention of seven miles,
+Garth looked dubiously at Natalie, but she stoutly averred her ability
+to do it twice if necessary, and since nothing better offered, Garth
+hired the boys to show the way and carry the baggage.
+
+The _Aurora Borealis_ presently backed off, and blithely kicking up the
+water astern, disappeared down the river. Her going out severed their
+last bond with the world of civilization and henceforth they must fend
+for themselves in the wilderness. Natalie looked around at the grim,
+empty woods, and at the strange, alien boys who were to conduct them;
+and instinctively put out her hand to Garth.
+
+The eldest and smartest of the breeds was a beady-eyed youth answering
+to the name of Pake. When the _Aurora_ passed out of sight his demeanour
+changed. It was not that he became openly insolent, but what was harder
+for Garth to deal with, he was blandly and blankly indifferent to the
+whites. Garth inwardly fumed, and there was a heavy weight of anxiety,
+too, for Natalie. Pake constructed packing harness out of rope, and
+divided all their goods into five lots, of which four were of about
+equal weight, and the fifth lighter. This one Garth supposed was for
+Natalie, though he thought it too heavy, but to his astonishment he
+learned Pake intended the light pack for himself, and one of the others
+for Natalie. Upon Garth's vigorous objections, Pake coolly added the
+greater part of Natalie's load to Garth's.
+
+Hampered as he was by his augmented pack, Garth still managed to carry
+his rifle across his arm. And yet St. Paul, who interpreted for him, had
+assured him these were good boys and would treat him well. St. Paul was
+right, when Garth had been in the country longer he learned this was
+simply the breed way. Only superior, or at least equal, numbers will
+impress them, and then they are obsequious enough in good sooth.
+
+Whatever Natalie thought of their situation, she put on a bold air. As
+they started Indian file, under the great trees in the gathering dusk,
+the three swarthy youths in advance bowed under their packs: "Look!"
+she cried. "Isn't it like the frontispiece to a book of adventure!"
+
+The breeds inherit from the red side of the house a shuffling half-trot,
+produced with steady shoulders and rolling hips, that is a good deal
+faster than it looks. Natalie with her tiny bundle had much ado to keep
+up, and Garth under his, plodded doggedly behind, with breaking neck and
+shoulders. The breeds, careless of their fate, never once looked behind.
+Garth had to keep them in sight, or instantly lose the faint trail in
+the darkness.
+
+After several miles of this, without warning, the breeds simultaneously
+cast their packs on the ground, and took a rest. Every move these strange
+creatures made was unexpected. Garth laboriously ridding himself of his
+burden, proceeded to read them a severe lecture on the necessity of
+accommodating their pace to the lady's for the rest of the way. It
+was received with stolid, uncomprehending stares.
+
+Among themselves they gossiped freely enough, and from the frequent
+recurrence of the word _moon-i-yas_, Garth knew that he and Natalie were
+the subject of it all. The discomforting thought did not fail to suggest
+itself that they might be hatching a plot in the very presence of their
+intended victims. Their outfit, Garth reflected, must seem a very
+fortune to the ragged breeds. He watched them closely.
+
+Presently they set off again as fast as ever, whereupon Garth did as he
+should have done at first, lost his temper, and swore at them roundly.
+Pake looked around with a gleam of awakened intelligence, and slackened
+his pace. After a brief consultation, Pake and another set off in
+advance with their share of the goods, leaving the third boy to guide
+the feebler steps of the two _moon-i-yas_. Garth wondered if they would
+ever see Pake and the boxes again.
+
+It was a long seven miles; and absolute darkness clothed the lofty
+aisles of the pine trees long before they finished passing through;
+and beyond there were interminable, misty meadows of wild grass to be
+crossed. Garth could no longer distinguish any sign of a trail; but the
+breed bent steadily ahead. Once or twice an owl whirred suddenly low
+over their heads; and somewhere far off a loon guffawed insanely. In
+the end their guide, to cheer his own soul, lifted up his voice in the
+strident, unearthly chant of the Crees; and it only needed this to add
+the last touch of unreality to their eerie journey. They began to feel
+like spirits after death, hurried in the darkness they knew not whither.
+
+At last a bright light flared suddenly across the hay marsh; and from
+their guide's joyful exclamation, they gathered that it marked the end
+of their journey. Fire was something human and known; and amazingly
+cheering. They covered the last lap at a brisk pace.
+
+Five tepees, faintly phosphorescent with interior fires, stood in a line
+where the pine trees bounded the hay marsh. Garth's mind was relieved to
+find Pake waiting with the balance of the outfit intact. The fire they
+had seen was from an armful of brush lighted for a beacon to guide
+them. The people were all within. The three breed boys dived into the
+principal tepee without ceremony, leaving Garth and Natalie standing
+rather foolishly outside. They were evidently expected to follow; for
+presently a head was stuck inquiringly outside; and what they took
+for an invitation to enter was delivered in Cree.
+
+"Let us go in," whispered Natalie. "I'm crazy to see what it's like!"
+
+Without more ado, she lifted the flap which covered the entrance, and
+crawled, blinking, into the light, Garth close at her heels.
+
+A fire was built on the ground in the centre of the tepee; and the
+smoke, filling the apex, finally found itself out at the top. Around
+the fire was grouped a motley, gipsy crew of all ages; the elders in the
+place of honour above the fire; the children by the door. The firelight
+threw their copper-coloured faces into strong relief; each wore an
+expression of stolid expectation. Stolidity is the pet affectation
+of the breed; at heart he is as garrulous as an ape. Like mongrels
+generally, their manners were bad; a grunt served for welcome, and
+places were coolly pointed out where they should sit.
+
+With that the guests were forthwith yielded up to discussion, while the
+whole circle stared at them as if they were vegetables. In especial, the
+children sitting across the fire, transfixed them with eyes, under each
+mop of raven hair, as hard, bright and unwinking as the eyes of little
+birds of prey. Young Pake sat at the right hand of the principal man--a
+personage in frayed overalls and cotton shirt, with a scarlet handkerchief
+about his temples--and called attention to the points of the two
+_moon-i-yas_ like their showman. After all the elders had partaken of
+tea, somebody recollected to thrust the battered pot at Garth and Natalie,
+with two more than doubtful tin cups. They declined to partake.
+
+Garth was fuming. "Let's get out," he whispered.
+
+"Just a minute," Natalie begged, with bright eyes. "Never mind their
+manners. It's all so strange and different!"
+
+Presently the preparations for retiring, which their arrival had
+probably interrupted, were resumed. Hideously dirty and torn comforters
+with protruding cotton filling, were spread on the ground; and
+individuals began to roll up, feet to the fire. A woman indicated a
+place for Garth and Natalie, side by side. When her meaning became
+clear, they elaborately avoided each other's eyes, and Natalie beat
+a hasty retreat outside. She never again expressed a wish to enter a
+tepee. Garth, blushing to the roots of his hair, explained that they
+preferred to sleep outside. The breeds let them go, with a shrug for
+the queer ways of the _moon-i-yas_.
+
+Garth pitched the little tent he had for Natalie under the pine trees
+at a short distance, and spread her bed on balsam boughs inside, with
+tender hands. Natalie had suddenly half collapsed like a sleepy child.
+She disappeared with a murmured good night, and was heard of no more
+until morning. Garth spread his own bed under the stars, athwart the
+door of the tent. He remembered, before turning in, that they lacked
+water, and returned to the tepee to ask where it was to be procured. As
+he entered the second time, his attention was arrested by the sound of
+Mary Co-que-wasa's name on Pake's lips.
+
+"Who is Mary Co-que-wasa?" he asked, recollecting his previous
+uneasiness.
+
+It appeared they could understand English well enough when they had a
+mind to. The women visibly bridled, as women white or red will do,
+when an erring ewe of the flock is mentioned in company.
+
+"Mary Co-que-wasa--one--bad--woman," said one, with the toneless
+enunciation of a parrot.
+
+Another volunteered further information in Cree, in which the names
+of Mary and Nick Grylls were coupled.
+
+"What's that?" demanded the startled Garth.
+
+"Mary Co-que-wasa--Nick Grylls's--woman," said his first informant.
+
+That was all he could get out of them. It did not conduce to the ease
+of his first bed in the wilderness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning Natalie issued forth radiant; and Garth marvelled afresh
+at the vision of urban perfection she made in the wilderness. He was
+blowing the fire at the time; a typical tenderfoot's fire, all tinder
+and no fuel, at which the breeds grinned askance. He soon learned
+better. The breeds haunted their camp, enjoying their struggles with
+that superior, insulting grin. Natalie, rolling up her sleeves,
+announced her intention of cooking the breakfast, while Garth struck
+camp. She who had never cooked under the best of conditions, had a
+sad time of it balancing a frying pan on a fire of twigs, and keeping
+the water in the pot long enough for it to come to a boil. They were
+sad-looking lumps of bacon that she offered Garth, burnt withal, and
+she gravely informed him there was a small slice of her thumb cooked up
+with it. The cocoa, too, which obstinately refused to dissolve in a cold
+element, was watery and full of lumps; however they still had civilized
+bread and butter; and Garth would have eaten Paris green with gusto, if
+offered with the same appealing smile.
+
+Afterward an ancient box wagon came rattling up, drawn by two champing
+cayuses, guided by Pake, the "wise guy" of the bush. The duffle was
+thrown in; Pake and one of his brethren coolly preëmpted the box,
+allowing Garth and Natalie to dispose themselves as they chose among the
+freight; and they set off at a smart pace across the gloriously sunny
+meadow.
+
+It was rough enough in all conscience; and in spite of every effort to
+brace themselves in the body of the wagon, they were shaken about like
+corn in a hopper. But in the bush it was worse; there, though their pace
+necessarily slackened, what with the holes, roots, stumps and fallen
+trunks, they had seldom more than two wheels on the ground; and more
+than once all that stood between them and a total capsize was Pake's
+dexterous wrist. There were deep gullies, down which they precipitated
+themselves, almost turning the wagon over on the horses' backs at the
+bottom; and the climbs up the other side were heart-breaking. Pake was
+often obliged to descend and chop; and on the whole progress was so
+slow, Garth decided they might venture to insure their necks by walking.
+
+So he and Natalie strode on ahead, pausing here and there to pick the
+delicious acrid mooseberries, and discussing their problems. Their talk
+was chiefly of Nick Grylls. Natalie finally confessed what had happened
+at the Landing.
+
+"You should have told me immediately," Garth said with a frown.
+
+Natalie looked "poor," as she called it. "I was afraid you'd send me
+home," she said. "Now you can't," she added provokingly.
+
+Garth in turn told her what he had learned the night before.
+
+"Look here," said Natalie frankly; "what is the use of our hiding these
+things from each other? Let us promise to tell everything that happens
+after this. You wanted me to take you for granted as if I were a man.
+You treat me like a man and I will."
+
+Garth smiled; and promised to try--just as she had done on a similar
+occasion.
+
+"I wish I had some men's clothes," said Natalie stoutly; frowning as
+girls always do, when they see themselves in that character. And in
+the very act of wishing it, she forgot; and drove home her femininity.
+Tipping a palmful of mooseberries into her mouth, "Wouldn't I look
+nice!" she said with a sidewise sparkle.
+
+Garth, swallowing a sigh, smiled, and allowed that she would.
+
+They speculated on what Mary Co-que-wasa's errand might be; neither of
+them was experienced in villainy. There, in the matter-of-fact daylight,
+and, as Natalie said, on Sunday, August the fifth _now_, it was impossible
+for the thought of one silent old woman to cause them much uneasiness;
+besides, they presently expected to join forces with the Bishop's ample
+party. Nothing nearly so simple and devilish as the actual truth occurred
+to them; and it was brought home with the force of a blow, when they
+reached the Warehouse.
+
+About eleven, a final descent brought them to the shore of a demure
+little river flowing softly between high banks--Musquasepi, that they
+were to know so well. Off to the left it merged into the muddier waters
+of the "big" river. On the further shore stood the Warehouse they had
+heard of so often.
+
+"Oh!" said Natalie. "Only another little log shack! Why I imagined
+a--a----"
+
+"Five-story stone front?" suggested Garth.
+
+"Well, I don't know," she said, "but not that!"
+
+On the hither side was a solitary cabin; and in the doorway stood a
+breed, outwardly of a different pattern from any they had seen--but
+after all not so different. He was clad in decent Sunday blacks minus
+the coat; and wore heavy-rimmed spectacles which he took off when he
+really wished to see. On the table within was ostentatiously spread an
+open Bible--the sharp-eyed Natalie took note that it was upside down.
+This young man had a heavy expression of conscious responsibility,
+before which the insouciant Pake visibly quailed. Pake indicated to
+Garth that Ancose Mackey stood before him.
+
+"Where is the Bishop?" Garth demanded impatiently.
+
+Ancose blandly ignored the question for the present. "How-do-you-do,
+sir," he said, like a mechanical doll, at the same time politely
+extending his hand.
+
+Garth, shaking it hastily, repeated his question--but the young man was
+not to be hurried over any of his self-pleasing formalities.
+
+"How-do-you-do, sir," he repeated to Natalie in precisely the same tone,
+gravely shaking hands with her.
+
+Then they must needs come in and sit down, while their host made a
+remark on the weather, and informed them, with an air, that he was
+a very good reader. He wrapped his Bible in an end of comforter, and
+pulling a doll's trunk from under the bed, put it away. Natalie had a
+glimpse of the contents of the trunk; she said afterward, it was like
+the inside of his head; beside the Bible, there were sundry pieces
+of dried moose meat, a gaudy silk handkerchief, tobacco and a brass
+watch-chain of the size of a small cable. He took out the latter
+and put it on.
+
+Finally he appeared to hear Garth's question. "Bishop gone up little
+river. Four days," he said.
+
+"Some one was to meet me here," said Garth confidently.
+
+An expression of genuine concern appeared under Ancose Mackey's solemn
+mugging. "You Garth Pevensey?" he asked.
+
+Garth nodded.
+
+Ancose's English was not equal to the situation. He turned quickly to
+Pake, squatting in the doorway, and exploded in Cree. Pake answered in
+kind. It takes a roundabout course to say anything of an abstract nature
+in Cree. Finally Garth heard the ominous name of Mary Co-que-wasa enter
+into their discourse.
+
+"What is it?" he demanded impatiently.
+
+Ancose turned a long face to him. "Bad medicine here," he said. "Bishop
+send ol' Pierre Toma down from head of rapids with him team to get you,"
+he went on, struggling manfully with his English. "Ol' Pierre stay to me
+three days of waiting. Las' night come boy up big river in canoe. Boy
+say to ol' Pierre, Cap'n Jack stuck at Caliper Island. Boy say, Cap'n
+Jack want tell to Bishop, Garth Pevensey no can come. Garth Pevensey him
+gone back outside."
+
+Garth and Natalie looked at each other in dismay.
+
+"Mary Co-que-wasa do this," added Ancose. "Him no speak never true."
+
+"Of course!" said Natalie. "She knew they wouldn't believe her, so she
+sent the boy up, while she waited below."
+
+"Where's the boy?" Garth demanded.
+
+Ancose shrugged. "Gone down," he said. "No can catch now."
+
+"When did Pierre Toma go back?"
+
+"Early," said Ancose. "Five hours. Him horses fresh."
+
+"Maybe we can catch them yet!" cried Garth. "How much to the head of the
+rapids, Pake?"
+
+Pake had ample English to make a good bargain. However, it was finally
+struck; and cutting Ancose Mackey's elaborate adieus very short, they
+took to the road again.
+
+They had twenty-five miles to cover. This part of the trail is
+considerably used in freighting goods around the rapids, and in the
+North it is considered a good road, though the travellers' bones bore
+testimony to the contrary for several succeeding days. Pake, with the
+prospect of a substantial bonus before him, did not spare his horses;
+but the grass-fed beasts had already lost their enthusiasm for the
+journey, and they made but indifferent progress. They were presently
+compelled to stop a good hour and a half to let them rest and feed.
+
+Garth, though he strove to hide it, was now very anxious. They had laid
+in only two weeks' provisions at the Landing; the trails seemed to be
+narrowing both before and behind; and the North closing in. Moreover, he
+suspected Nick Grylls was not the man to stoop to mere mischief-making;
+and he wondered apprehensively what next move he contemplated. Looking
+at his charming Natalie, he could conceive of a man stooping to any
+villainy to possess her. However, he strove to keep her spirits up--and
+his own--with the oft-expressed belief that the Bishop would not leave
+Pierre Toma's until the next morning.
+
+Six o'clock had passed before they turned into the rough little clearing
+on the river bank. The horses were done up. They had passed no other
+sign of habitation the whole way.
+
+A bent old man with a snowy thatch came hobbling out of the cabin.
+
+His look of surprise, and the quietness of the place, answered Garth's
+question before he put it.
+
+"Where is the Bishop?"
+
+The old man spread out his hands. "Gone. Four hours," he said.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ON THE LITTLE RIVER
+
+
+The next day found Garth and Natalie afloat on Musquasepi, headed alone
+into the North. To be exact, only Natalie was afloat; she sat in the
+stern of a tiny boat, keeping her off shore with a paddle devised
+from the cover of a grub-box. Their outfit was piled amidships. Garth
+harnessed to the end of a towing-line, plodded through the mud and over
+the stones of the bank; climbing over fallen trees, and wading bodily
+into the river, when necessary to drag his tow around a reef.
+
+Indecision had attacked Garth the night before--his responsibility was
+so great! But Natalie had said, pressing the soft curve out of her lips:
+
+"_Any_ means to get ahead! If we have to crawl on hands and knees!"
+
+"Any _safe_ means," Garth amended.
+
+"Nick Grylls without doubt is counting on our being held up or driven
+back," she said. "I have an idea he is not far behind us."
+
+It was Garth's own idea.
+
+"So we _must_ keep ahead!"
+
+"We must do whatever will best ensure your safety," Garth said doggedly.
+
+That bright red spot had appeared in either of Natalie's cheeks. "Bother
+my safety!" she cried. "You will not allow me a shred of pluck! My
+honour is engaged on this journey, just the same as if I were a man! I
+said I'd do it; and I will! And if I hear another word about my comfort
+or my safety, upon my word, I'll go on alone!"
+
+Garth had smiled at the threat, and given in; because on the whole it
+seemed safer to press ahead, than to attempt to return. Secretly, he was
+delighted with the spirit she showed.
+
+They had bought the boat from Pierre Toma, a breed of the more
+self-respecting elder generation, in whose aged eyes still twinkled
+the spirit of the voyageurs. Pake's magnanimous offer of the wagon and
+team at only twice their real value was declined; inasmuch as the trail
+was impassible for wagons beyond Toma's place, and ceased altogether at
+Caribou Lake. They counted on the boat to carry them as far as the lake;
+there, Pierre Toma had assured them, they might very likely overtake the
+Bishop, if he were delayed by contrary winds, or christenings. In any
+case Wall-eye Macgregor, said Pierre, had a strong boat at the lake that
+could take them the eighty miles across. According to the haphazard
+measurements of the breeds, Caribou Lake was twenty-five miles from
+Pierre Toma's.
+
+Their own boat was but crazily hung together. Natalie had christened
+it the _Flat-iron_ from its shape. It was of extremely simple
+construction--two planks laid V-shape, with a shorter plank to close the
+end, and boards nailed on for a bottom. Pierre Toma had said with pride,
+there was no other boat in the country like it; and after using it a day
+they were prepared to agree. It was designed to be propelled with a pole;
+and they had started in that manner; but the _Flat-iron_ showed a perverse
+disposition to travel in any direction save the desired one; and her
+favourite manoeuvre under the impetus of the pole was to swing on her
+centre without moving ahead at all. So Garth, after some study, had
+constructed the tracking apparatus.
+
+It was a simple, park-like, little river with brown, foam-flecked water
+flowing moderately through a country of small timber; and occasionally
+there were natural meadows starred with flowers, where children in their
+white dresses should have been picnicking, so intimate and peaceful it
+seemed. None the less, it was the strange and lonely North into which
+they were thrust, on their own unaided resources--like the babes in
+the woods, Natalie said. They were abruptly cast back on the great and
+simple verities of existence, where a man, be his wits never so sharp,
+must be strong, to survive. Natalie looked at Garth's broad back, as he
+slowly put the miles behind him one after another; and considering the
+impatient vigour, with which he attacked the multitude of obstacles
+strewn along the river, thanked God for sending such a one to her aid.
+
+The wonder of the unknown was in them both; and their breasts throbbed
+a little, as they looked to see what each bend in the stream would have
+to show. Only once in the course of the afternoon was there any reminder
+of human life; a breed boy suddenly appeared on the bank, only to duck
+behind a bush like a little animal, at the startling sight of white
+strangers on the river. Tempted forth at last, in response to Garth's
+question, he said they were twenty-five miles from the lake. Garth, who
+had been doing his best for seven hours to reduce that distance, felt
+distinctly aggrieved.
+
+Natalie insisted on camping early; for it had been a gruelling afternoon
+on Garth. They chose a little promontory running into the water; and once
+he had started a fire, and put up her tent, she made him lie at length
+in the grass, where he stretched his limbs in delicious weariness, and
+watched her settling the camp for the night and cooking the supper. She
+was proud in the acquisition of a new accomplishment, that of baking
+bannock before a fire in the open, learned that morning from Mrs. Toma.
+The sight of her, bustling and cheerful, working for him, had a strange
+and painful pleasure for him. They two, alone together in the wilderness,
+cut off from all their kind!--the thought squeezed his heartstrings; she
+was so much his own there--and so little!
+
+With the sinking of the sun, the awful stillness came stealing to
+envelope them; and with insistent fingers seemed to press upon the very
+drums of their ears. The little river flowed as stilly and darkly as the
+water of Lethe at their feet; and the gaunt pines over the way stood
+transfixed like souls that had drunk of it. Under the spell of the silence
+they instinctively lowered their voices; and they broke sticks for the
+fire with reluctance; so painful was the crash and reverberation up and
+down. But there is always one sound that accompanies this stillness;
+hardly breaks it, so smoothly it comes stealing on the suspended evening
+air--the quavering howl of the coyote. They heard it throb miles off;
+and it was answered from immeasurable distances side to side. Little by
+little, attracted by the smell of cooking food, the animals drew closer,
+and at last stationed themselves in a kind of wide-drawn circle about
+their camp on both sides of the river, wailing back and forth like
+souls inconceivably tormented. Natalie shuddered.
+
+"They are cowardly beasts," Garth said reassuringly. "They won't come
+any closer."
+
+They spoke but little to each other. Night, solitude and that spirit of
+woe abroad, filled them with a mighty longing for each other's arms. At
+last she crept away to her tent.
+
+As the darkness deepened; and the clear-eyed Northern constellations
+looked out, one by one, there were other sounds; a peevish growling and
+whining at the top of the bank above them; a frantic scurry when Garth
+heaved a stone. The better to ensure Natalie's peace of mind, he
+weighted the tent all around with rocks; and heaped wood on the fire.
+
+Natalie stuck her head out of her cosy refuge. "I can't bear to have
+you sleeping unprotected outside," she said anxiously.
+
+Garth's heart paused breathlessly at the thought of the alternative. He
+sprang up and thrust the thought aside. "Nonsense! I'll be all right!"
+he cried. "To please you I'll keep the fire going all night."
+
+Later, he rolled himself in his blankets across the door of her tent,
+as before; and lay there smoking, gazing at the fire, picturing Natalie
+asleep within; and assuaging his hungry heart as best he might with the
+sound of her child-like breathing.
+
+The day broke gloriously; and shortly after sunrise they were on
+their way again, under a sky as tenderly blue as palest turquoise, over
+which were flung bright, silken, cloudy scarves. As they ascended, the
+character of the river changed; the trees disappeared, giving place to
+wide, flat meadows of blue grass as high as a man's waist; the current
+slackened, and its course became more circuitous. Along the shores,
+steep cut-banks alternated with muddy shoals; and a new set of
+problems faced Garth.
+
+These chiefly took the form of stout willow bushes overhanging the
+cut-banks--diabolically malicious, sentient beings, they became to
+Garth. He tried crawling underneath with his tow-line, whereupon the
+earth gave way, precipitating him in water up to his middle; he tried
+crashing bodily through, and the line would invariably knot itself
+around the most inaccessible twig. The _Flat-iron_, too, seemed to
+rejoice in his discomfiture; and at every interruption of her progress
+took the occasion, in spite of Natalie's paddle, to turn about and stick
+her nose stupidly into the mud of the bank. Every bush in turn offered
+a different and more complicated obstacle than the last; in three hours
+they made perhaps twice three hundred yards. Natalie, alarmed by the
+spectacle of Garth's set lips, and the swollen veins of his temples,
+besought him for goodness' sake to swear and not mind her.
+
+He finally decided to change his mode of going; and contriving a
+second little paddle, he embarked with Natalie. They progressed but
+slowly against the current; for the short paddles had about the same
+effectiveness as two of those little instruments for making butter pats,
+which they strongly resembled. Garth figured they would be making a
+mile an hour--but this way was easier on his temper.
+
+To-day, the little river, placidly flowing between its grassy banks,
+had an oddly pastoral look. With the familiar shapes of the overhanging
+willows, and the brilliant marsh marigolds on the shallows, all drenched
+in the opulent sunshine, they found themselves looking for cows on the
+bank; and it seemed incredible that no church spire rose above any
+of the distant clumps of trees. They could not rid themselves of the
+feeling that this was no more than a day's picnic, with a house awaiting
+them just ahead, and company and good cheer. But instead of that,
+silently rounding a bend, they were unexpectedly introduced to the true
+genius of the country. In the mud of one of the flats at the edge of the
+water, sat a large brown bear on his haunches, soberly licking his paws.
+He was no more than twenty feet from them--a room's length. At Natalie's
+slight gasp of astonishment, he turned his head; and stared at them
+agape, with hanging paws, like a great baby. He looked so homely and
+comical Natalie burst out laughing. At the sound, Bruin promptly fell
+to all fours; and with a great "woof!" of astonishment and indignation,
+bundled over the bank out of sight.
+
+To-day, the delicate, heady air of the Northern summer inspired their
+veins like wine. As Olympians, they lunched on the greensward carpeting
+the bank of a little inlet; while their shallop floated among tiny white
+lilies at their feet. All afternoon their spirits soared into the realms
+of incoherent enthusiasm; they filled the air with their full-throated
+laughter and foolish, glancing speech. Garth's old friends would have
+been astonished then to see how he could "let himself go"; but no one
+in the world ever really saw that besides Natalie.
+
+They loved; their happy eyes confessed it freely, though their tongues
+were tied. Nothing needed to be explained, for they were perfectly
+attuned to each other; and everything was clear in an exchange of eyes.
+The tough old world, with all its tiresome, grimy businesses was thrust
+out of sight and out of mind, and they seemed to tread a brand-new sphere,
+created as they would have it, empty of all save their two selfish selves.
+On such a day, in such surroundings, crosses, hindrances, dangers, what
+were they? Life was a great joke: Nick Grylls and his minions were
+blithely whistled down the wind. Ascending between the flowery banks of
+the little river, _their_ river, nothing mattered so they were not parted.
+In the more or less tarnished circlet of life it was their perfect golden
+day; and whenever afterward either remembered it, it was as if a delicate
+fragrance arose in his soul. All day they saw no sign of human habitation.
+
+As long as the sun shone they maintained their light-hearted gaiety,
+neither remembering nor desiring anything more----
+
+"I say, Nat!" it would be, "toss me over the hatchet like a good chap.
+Hey, there! not at my head!"
+
+"What's for supper, Nat? I'm hungry as an ogre!"
+
+"Bacon _aux tomates à la Bland_ and bannock _Musquasepi avec_ ashes!"
+
+"Bully! If you taste it so much there won't be any left to go on the
+table!"
+
+"Where's the bag of hard-tack, Garth?"
+
+"Grub-box number two; port side by the rail."
+
+"Idiot! You put them on the bottom of the box! The water's leaked
+through, and they're all mush underneath!"
+
+"What's the diff? Stick the soft ones in the lobscouse!"
+
+But after supper, when the sun had gone down, and the great stillness
+crept over them again, Natalie's arms dropped at her sides, Garth's
+pipe went out, and an unaccountable sadness fell on both. Then, their
+sporadic attempts to keep up the old, friendly rattle rang so false
+that both fell silent. Their camp of itself had a gloomy aspect. It was
+pitched in an elbow of the river, where a section of the cut-bank had
+sunk down, making a little terrace of grass a few feet above the water.
+Above, there had been a small grove of trees, through which a fire had
+some time swept, leaving only a few slender, charred trunks pointing
+askew against the slow, dusky crimson of the west. On the nearest and
+tallest of these wrecked monuments, immediately above their camp, as on
+a slender pedestal, sat a great owl, the only visible living thing in
+all the wide expanse, besides themselves. As long as there was light
+enough to see him, he crouched there, motionless.
+
+Natalie sat huddled on a box, with Garth's coat thrown about her
+shoulders. Her chin was in her palm, and her lashes veiled rebellious,
+miserable eyes. There are moments when the most ærial spirits sink to
+earth; and just now Natalie could make no pretense at a flight. It was
+clear he loved her, as she loved him; what then were a few words five
+years old, to keep them apart? She tried honestly to arm her breast by
+thinking of the laws that separated them; but the insidious part of it
+was, they were worldly laws; and here the world was thrust out of sight.
+Why did he not take her in his arms, and let her heavy head fall on his
+shoulder? her heart reiterated; and that was the only voice she could
+hear then. Yet if Garth had betrayed any weakness on his part, Natalie
+would have been on the _qui vive_ to repel him. The forces of her soul
+were thrown in a sad confusion; while her woman's instinct raged against
+him, that he could resist her, she loved him tenfold more for that very
+resistance.
+
+And Garth--seeing her sitting there so small under his coat, and all
+relaxed and appealing, her mouth like an unhappy child's, and her eyes
+big with unshed tears--his arms ached to enfold her; his brain reeled
+with the intensity of his desire to take her as she trembled to be
+taken. But her helplessness, which tortured him, nerved him to endure
+the torture. In the turmoil of his blood he could not think coherently;
+but he could repeat to himself, dully, over and over: "I must take
+care of her! I must take care of her!" He busied himself with small
+unnecessary tasks; splicing the tracking line, chopping tent-pegs,
+cleaning the frying pan with sand.
+
+Natalie disappeared within her tent--and cried herself to sleep. Garth,
+lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her
+pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast.
+Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of
+tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing told him she was asleep
+at last, and undressing, waded into the river, and swam back and forth
+until the cold water chilled him through. Brisk, silent exercise
+restored his circulation, and a pipe and communion with the stars
+quieted his nerves. In the end he toppled over all standing, and
+slept on the grass until daylight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Natalie reappeared with the sun, brave and rosy again, and with little
+sign of the night's tumult, save in an added sense of gratitude toward
+Garth, which appeared in the pleasure she took in doing little things
+for him. His grayish pallor, and kind, tired eyes rebuked her sorely
+for having cast the whole burden on him. She vowed to herself it
+should not occur again.
+
+To-day the character of the river changed little; only that the
+bends multiplied and sharpened; and where they were horseshoe curves
+yesterday, to-day they were hair-pin curves. Sometimes, just over the
+bank, they would catch sight again of a particularly marked tree they
+had passed a whole laborious hour before. Endless and futile were the
+calculations they made as to how far they had gone, and had yet to go.
+
+They cut across from point to point, keeping under the bank out of the
+strength of the current as far as possible, and rounding the inside
+of each bend. In this manner they were ascending close under a willow
+bush, when suddenly and silently a huge, brown wing, like the wing of
+Sinbad's auk, sailed athwart the sky. They caught their breaths in
+astonishment. A great gray galley swept around the bend, no more than
+two oars' length from them. With her swarthy crew standing about the
+deck, their brows bound with bright silk handkerchiefs, and at the
+tiller, a great, bearded figure, she was the very picture of a pirate
+craft. It would be impossible to state which crew was the more surprised
+at the unexpected encounter; the seeming pirates likewise stared
+open-mouthed at the _Flat-iron_. Just as the galley was disappearing,
+Garth collected presence of mind sufficient to hail, and inquire the
+distance to the lake.
+
+The answer came back: "Twenty-five miles!"
+
+They began to think there was witchcraft in it.
+
+The wind had changed; and puffy, white clouds came rolling up from
+the west, passing beneath the serene and silky streamers of the upper
+air. Gradually the invaders thickened and spread over the field; their
+underbodies took on a grayish tint; and the blue openings narrowed.
+Finally a sharp shower descended; and the voyageurs sought shelter under
+a bush, where they hung, watching the millions of drops plopping roundly
+into the surface of the river; each drop with its attendant sprite
+leaping at its approach. One shower followed another, with intervals
+of hot and sticky sunshine between. It was more uncomfortable under
+the steamy, dripping bushes than in the thick of it; and they finally
+decided to paddle ahead, let it rain as it would. Luncheon, consisting
+of soaked bannock and cold cocoa, was a sorry affair.
+
+Garth was glum. He had long apprehended that bad weather would treble
+their difficulties. "How can I keep her warm and dry throughout the
+night?" was his ever-present thought. Natalie, on the other hand, was as
+happy as a lark; and she made a very attractive picture in the rain. Her
+dress had altered little by little during the last few days; and now
+comprised a blue sweater, short skirt and moccasins. The hat with the
+green wings was safely wrapped in the duffle-bag; and hitherto she had
+gone bareheaded on the river. When it began to rain she pulled a man's
+cap close over her head to keep her hair dry. As she industriously plied
+her paddle in the bow, ever and anon turning a rosy, streaming face to
+him, with a joke on her lips, in her rough get-up poor Garth thought her
+lovelier than ever. He was continually having to call himself down, as
+he would have said, for presuming to think he had measured the extent
+of her charm.
+
+"Isn't it bully, Garth!" once she cried. "Ever since I was a baby I have
+longed to be allowed to play in the rain for just once, and get as wet
+as I possibly could--just to see how it felt! And now I shall! Isn't it
+funny just to sit and let it come down, without running anywhere? Women
+are babies, anyway. I mean never to put up an umbrella again as long as
+I live. The rain feels good in my face!"
+
+Nevertheless, Garth, occupied as he was with the problems of how to find
+a dry place to put up the tent, and how to build a fire in a downpour,
+was anxious. Little by little the showers merged into each other; and
+before the end of the afternoon, it had settled down to rain steadily
+all night.
+
+He learned in the end never to trust the distances given in an
+unmeasured land. Rounding one of the endless bends toward five o'clock,
+they became aware of a new, indefinable, fresher smell on the air; and
+they increased their pace with an eager sense of a discovery awaiting
+them in the next vista. The next point proved to be the last; looking
+around it, the wind buffeted their faces fresh and cool; the river
+stretched away for half a mile, straight as a canal and there, away
+beyond, leapt the waves of Caribou Lake on the bar.
+
+Natalie cheered. "Hooray for the crew of the _Flat-iron_!" she cried.
+"We've actually done it!" She reached back. "Shake, partner!"
+
+Near the head of the river, in the wild waste of sand on the lake shore,
+squatted a weather-beaten little log cabin, almost eave-deep behind the
+dunes. Smoke arose from the chimney.
+
+"Good!" cried Garth in high satisfaction. "You can dry your clothes
+here, anyway."
+
+A glance up and down the shore of the river revealed no trace of the
+canoes or the outfit of the expedition they were in pursuit of.
+
+"We've missed him again," said Garth grimly.
+
+They landed, dripping and stiff; and plodded through the sand to the
+tiny door. The outlook was desolate in the extreme; there was no sign
+of life anywhere, save only the wisp of smoke from the chimney. At their
+left hand, the lake spread bleakly to the horizon, torn and white under
+the west wind, and with great billows tumbling on the beach.
+
+"The _Flat-iron_ could never negotiate that," remarked Garth.
+
+He knocked on the little door.
+
+"Come in!" rang instantly from within.
+
+They looked at each other in astonishment.
+
+"An English voice!" she whispered.
+
+"A white man! Thank God!" said he.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE HEART OF A BOY
+
+
+It was a youth who presently faced them on the threshold of the hut;
+an apple-cheeked boy of seventeen, who bared two rows of shining white
+teeth; and whose blue eyes, at the sight of them, sparkled with the
+purest enthusiasm of welcome.
+
+"Come right in, and dry out!" he cried. "I certainly am glad to see
+you!" The haunting reed of boyhood still vibrated faintly in the manlier
+notes of his voice.
+
+Here was a greeting from a stranger to warm the hearts of the wet and
+weary wayfarers! It presented the North in a new aspect. Natalie in
+especial, beamed on their young host; he was wholly a boy after her
+own heart.
+
+Looking at Natalie more particularly, the boy blushed and faltered
+a little. "It isn't much of a place to receive a lady in," he said
+apologetically. "I haven't been on my own long enough to get
+anything much together."
+
+It was a characteristically boyish abode. The furniture was limited
+to the cook-stove in the centre of the room; and a home-made table and
+a bench. His bed was spread on straw in one corner; and another corner
+was given up to the heterogeneous assortment of his belongings and his
+grub. Apparently the cabin had long served as a casual storehouse to
+the boatmen of the river; for pieces of mouldy sails were hung over
+the rafters; oars and a mast crossed from beam to beam; and in a third
+corner were a pile of chain and an anchor, slowly mouldering into rust.
+In wet weather, the present tenant evidently did his chopping within
+doors, the floor was littered with chips and broken wood. As they came
+in, a yellow and white kitten, retreating to the darkest corner of
+the cabin, elevated his back and growled threateningly.
+
+"That's my partner, Musq'oosis," explained the boy. "He'll make friends
+directly. He plays with me by the hour; you'd laugh yourself sick to see
+the comical way he carries on. He's great company when you're batching
+alone!"
+
+Natalie liked this boy more and more.
+
+"Say, I'm having no end of company these days," he went on, with his
+happy-go-lucky air. "The Bishop's outfit was here all day yesterday;
+they went up on the last of the east wind, this morning. The old
+woman--that's what we call Mrs. Bishop, you know; no disrespect--she
+baked me a batch of her bread before she went. Real outside bread with
+a crackly crust to it! Oh my! Oh my!--with brown sugar! Say, we'll
+have a loaf of it for supper!"
+
+Natalie in the meantime sat on the bench; and taking off her moccasins,
+put her feet on the oven sill to dry. Garth sat on a box; and their host
+squatted on the floor between.
+
+"By the way," said this youth; "I'm Charley Landrum."
+
+Garth introduced himself and Natalie.
+
+"Hope you'll stay a couple of days," said Charley anxiously--"or longer.
+There's great duck-shooting on the sloughs; and we might get a goose or
+a wavy around the lake shore. It would be a pleasant change of meat for
+the lady."
+
+Charley addressed all his remarks to Garth, without ever once looking
+at Natalie; it was clear, nevertheless, that he was acutely conscious
+of her presence; for he blushed whenever she spoke; and his eyes were
+continually drawn to her, though he dared not raise them quite to her
+face. To Garth and Natalie the nicest thing about this boy was the way
+he took her presence for granted. Of all the males they had met in the
+North, he alone had not gaped at her in vulgar wonder; and to his honest
+heart there was nothing out-of-the-way in the fact that she was Miss
+Bland, and Garth Mr. Pevensey.
+
+"We're obliged to get on as soon as we can," said Garth. "We've been
+chasing the Bishop all the way from the Landing."
+
+"How did you come up the little river?" asked Charley.
+
+"I bought a boat from Pierre Toma."
+
+"I know her," he said with a chuckle; "cranky as a bath-tub! You
+couldn't go up the lake in her!"
+
+"Not while it blows like this," said Garth.
+
+"Then I hope it hits it up for a week!" said Charley, apparently
+addressing the hem of Natalie's skirt.
+
+"I was told one Wall-eye Macgregor had a strong boat," Garth said.
+
+"Nothing doing!" returned the boy. "He's got it up at the head of the
+lake."
+
+"Then I must try to strengthen the bath-tub and coast around the shore,"
+said Garth.
+
+"I'll help you!" said Charley. "We'll pitch in first thing to-morrow."
+
+"How long have you been in the country, Mr. Landrum?" asked Natalie
+softly.
+
+The boy blushed for pure pleasure; and his voice deepened as he replied:
+"Two years next March, Miss. I came in over the ice with a freighter. I
+ran away from school. What was the use?--I got a head like a hickory
+nut; and I couldn't keep out of trouble. They gave me a bad name; and
+everything that happened was put on me. So I cleared out and came
+North."
+
+Gradually the whole naïve, boyish tale came out.
+
+"I had a lot of fool ideas about the country then; but they were soon
+knocked out of me. All the kids that run away soon come sneaking home
+and have to eat their brags; and I wasn't going to do that. So I stuck
+it out. At first I admit I pretty near caved in with homesickness; but
+I'm hardened now. The first year I worked for a trader up at Ostachegan
+creek; and this spring I bought this cabin on credit. Frank Shefford up
+at Nine-Mile-Point is going to lend me his team and mower when his hay
+is put up; and I'll put up hay myself."
+
+The boy's eyes glowed, as he announced his brave plans for the future.
+
+"Next winter I'm going to keep a stopping-house for freighters. I've
+got a good location here, and stable room already for eight teams. I'll
+build to it later. There's money in that; and it's a pleasant life for a
+man--plenty of company. And when I get a little money ahead, I'll trade;
+there's good chances for a free trader that knows the ropes; and in a
+few years I'll branch out and have a whole string of trading posts,
+like Nick Grylls. There's a smart one! They say he could sell out
+for a hundred thousand any day!"
+
+Garth was reminded of his own hopeful, spouting youth.
+
+"I hope you won't be like Nick Grylls," said Natalie gently.
+
+"Don't you like him?" asked Charley in concern. "I always thought he was
+a pretty smart one. No!" he added suddenly. "I don't like him either.
+He's coarse!"
+
+Supper was an affair of joint contributions; Garth's jam for Charley's
+bread. In the meantime Charley had surreptitiously swept up the chips;
+and had then slipped away to the river bank, for a wash and a tidy-up.
+He reappeared with his hair well "slicked," his tip-tilted nose as pink
+as his shiny cheeks, and a smile that extended to the furthest confines
+of his face. But he was distressed that he had no white collar to honour
+the board; and his gratitude was silent and boundless, when Garth
+produced one for him from his duffle-bag.
+
+It was a jovial meal that followed; the spirit of youth presided; and
+wisdom and grave speech were thrust under the table. Charley recovered
+of his bashfulness so far that he could occasionally nerve himself to
+look at Natalie. For all the boy's giddy jollity, his blue eyes had a
+kind of stricken look when they rested on her face. But his appetite did
+not suffer appreciably; and it did Garth's and Natalie's hearts good to
+see the bread and jam disappear between Charley's business-like jaws.
+Jam, they agreed, had surely never before been so successful in tickling
+the human palate. "Just do without it for a couple of years and see for
+yourself," Charley rejoined.
+
+Afterward the cabin was further swept and garnished for Natalie's use;
+and a heap of fragrant hay brought from the stable on which to spread
+her blankets. The house was to be yielded up to her for the night. Garth
+and Charley shared the little tent outside. Garth, with his simplicity,
+and his air of quiet understanding, was above all one to win a boy's
+confidence; and by bedtime they were as friendly as brothers--or perhaps
+more like a very young father and his oldest son.
+
+When they rolled up side by side in their blankets Charley seemed to
+put off several years. He hunched closer to his bedfellow; and pressed
+his shoulder warmly against Garth's.
+
+"Are you sleepy?" he asked diffidently.
+
+Garth's heart warmed to the act and the speech. "Why, no!" he said.
+"Believe I'll have another smoke before dropping off. Fire away, old
+boy!"
+
+"Say, it's simply great to have somebody young to talk to," said poor
+Charley. "Somebody that understands; and that you can let yourself go
+with, and say whatever comes into your head to. Say, I never had such
+a good time in all my life as to-night. All the fellows up here--they're
+a good sort all right--but they're a rough, cursing lot. And of course,
+a fellow has to curse too; and talk big just to keep his end up--chuck
+a bluff, you know, or they'll think you're a molly. And I just love to
+laugh, and act foolish; and I always have to hold myself in. Sometimes
+I near bust!"
+
+"I get like that myself," said Garth encouragingly.
+
+There was something else on Charley's mind; but for a long time his
+tongue sheered off at every approach to it. Finally, rolling over, he
+hid a hot cheek on Garth's shoulder; and it came out with a rush.
+
+"Say! I think she's the prettiest girl I ever laid eyes on!"
+
+Garth's arm tightened about the boy's shoulders "She's the first white
+girl I've seen in nearly two years," he floundered on; "and girls meant
+nothing to me then. But I know darned well she's no ordinary white girl.
+Isn't it wonderful, the different ways she looks; and all that her voice
+seems to mean besides the words she says; and the way she walks and sits
+down; and the way she lifts her arm? Isn't it a pretty arm? And the
+finest thing about her is, she deals plain with you like a fellow;
+no silly fuss and make-believe, and hanging-back about her!"
+
+If Garth liked the boy before, he was prepared to love him for this.
+
+"Did you mark how she called me Mr. Landrum?" continued Charley eagerly.
+"She just did that to please me, I know. Didn't it sound funny? My chest
+expanded two inches, I swear it did! Wasn't she kind to me? She had
+no call to be so kind to me. It just makes me want to do something
+terrific! Oh, if I could only do something for her!--wouldn't I
+just be glad of the chance!"
+
+He was silent for a while, tossing uneasily in his blanket. "Say,
+there's something I want to tell you," he blurted out at last. "I'm
+certainly good and ashamed of myself! There's a girl down the shore, her
+name is Julia; she's not a bad-looker for a breed. She came around my
+cabin sometimes. I was kind of lonesome, you see; and she was young,
+like me--"
+
+Garth let him see that he understood--and he did understand, both the
+pitiful little tale, and the boy's reason for wishing to tell him.
+
+"And to think of _her_ asleep in there now!" he continued remorsefully.
+"It makes me sick and disgusted with myself. I'd give anything if it
+hadn't happened! You bet I'll have no truck with them in future!"
+
+"Every man makes mistakes, old boy," said Garth.
+
+Charley, his mind relieved by confession, in the midst of further
+rhapsodies, suddenly fell asleep.
+
+In the morning he awoke all of a piece, as boys do, and rolling over,
+said instantly:
+
+"Natalie is sure the prettiest name there is!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later in the day in the middle of their somewhat hopeless deliberations
+upon the repairing of the half-submerged _Flat-iron_--her flimsily hung
+planks had been started even by her gentle journey on the river--there
+was a hail from down-stream. Looking, they saw four swart figures
+bending one after another in a tracking-harness, crawling around the
+edge of the cut-bank below. Presently a sharp prow nosed around the
+bend; and a long, low, double-ended galley swung into view, floating
+lazily on the current like a gigantic duck.
+
+"A York boat!" cried Charley in surprise. "Didn't know any was due!
+Here's your chance to cross the lake!"
+
+"Hm!" said Garth doubtfully. "We'll find out, first, what news she
+brings from below."
+
+At the sight of the open water ahead, the breeds redoubled their
+shouting, and hit up their pace. It was interesting to see how, once
+having got her under way, they could allow nothing to stop them; but
+needs must crash through obstructions regardless; slipping scrambling,
+literally clawing their way along. Whenever the rope caught, it was
+the part of the fourth man to slip out of his collar, and disengage it,
+without stopping the others. It was racking work on the frame of a man;
+but the feather-headed breeds ceaselessly chattered and shouted, like
+boys out of school; roaring with laughter when any one of the four came
+down. In the stern stood the helmsman, pulling her head around, with a
+mighty sweep, extending astern; and the other four of the crew, resting
+from their spell of tracking, fended her off the bank with poles. The
+York boat, pointed bow and stern, low amidships, and undecked, reminded
+Garth of the pictures he had seen of ancient Norse galleys.
+
+Arriving opposite the cabin, they all leaped aboard; and poling across,
+landed in front of where Garth and Charley stood. Natalie, not caring to
+run the gauntlet of another battery of stupid stares, had retired to the
+cabin. On the prow of the boat, which had a dingy, weather-beaten look,
+very different from the smart green and white craft of the "Company," was
+crookedly painted the name _Loseis_. Making her fast, the breeds, with
+furtive stares at Garth, threw themselves on the ground like tired dogs.
+It was not long, however, before a "stick-kettle," the invariable tom-tom,
+was produced, the ear-splitting chant raised, and a game of _met-o-wan_,
+a sort of Cree equivalent for Billy-Billy-who's-got-the-button, started
+on the shore.
+
+The steersman, pausing only to put on a gold-embroidered waistcoat,
+approached Garth with a disposition to be friendly--too friendly by
+half, Garth thought. He was an undersized man of not more than thirty,
+but already somewhat withered; a specimen of the unwholesome, weedy
+breed of the settlements.
+
+"Well, Charley," he said affably.
+
+They shook hands with the touch of impressiveness that always marks this
+ceremony in the North; and then Hooliam, with a shifty glance, extended
+his hand to Garth. At the same time he said something in Cree.
+
+"He says: 'You want to go up the lake,'" translated Charley.
+
+"How does he know that?" asked Garth quickly.
+
+Hooliam answered in Cree without waiting for Charley to translate.
+Evidently, like most of the breeds, he understood more English than he
+cared to confess.
+
+"He says that Pierre Toma told him," said Charley.
+
+"Ask him how it is he comes up with such a small load," suggested Garth.
+
+Charley repeated the question in Cree. Hooliam's answer was prompt and
+glib. "He says that the water was too low to bring a full load,"
+translated Charley.
+
+"Ask him when he means to go on," said Garth.
+
+Hooliam gave a glance at the still tossing lake. "As soon as the wind
+dies or changes. This wind would blow him right back on the shore," such
+the gist of his answer by way of Charley.
+
+"Tell him to let me know before he starts; and I'll tell him if we wish
+to go along," said Garth coolly.
+
+"I want to have a talk with you," he added in a lower tone for Charley's
+benefit.
+
+They sat down apart on the sand.
+
+"What do you think of this outfit, Charley?" asked Garth.
+
+The boy was surprised at the question. "Well," he said, "it does look
+a bit queer, their coming all this way with half a load. But you never
+can tell about these crazy niggers; they may have dumped out half their
+stuff on the bank somewhere, and left it to rot. A French range for the
+inspector has been lying on the point across the river for two months."
+
+"Who is this Hooliam?" Garth asked.
+
+"He boats back and forth pretty regular. He's a footless kind of
+breed--but straight, as far as I know. What do you care?" the boy asked
+curiously. "If he takes you on board, he's got to put you across."
+
+Garth looked at Charley estimatingly. But there could be no doubt of the
+boy's straight-eyed, whole-souled devotion to Natalie; and he quickly
+made up his mind. He told him briefly what had occurred on the way in.
+
+Charley whistled in astonishment. "So that's the kind Nick Grylls is!"
+he exclaimed. "He sure must have gone clean daft!"
+
+"This Hooliam," Garth continued, "is too anxious, judging by others of
+his kind, to get us on board. I suspect Nick Grylls has a share in this
+outfit. On the other hand we have less than a week's grub left. What
+have you got, Charley?"
+
+"Nothing but sow-bosom and beans," said the boy disconsolately; "and
+damn little of that! It isn't good enough for _her_!"
+
+"Any chance of another boat?" asked Garth.
+
+Charley shook his head. "No Company boat due for three weeks," he said.
+
+Garth set his jaw. "Then there's no help for it," he said firmly. "We'll
+have to go with Hooliam. I'll make him take our little boat along, so we
+won't be entirely at his mercy; and I'll watch him close."
+
+Charley leaned toward Garth. The boy unconsciously clenched his hands;
+and in the intensity of his eagerness, his eyes actually filled. "I say,
+Garth, take me along with you," he pleaded.
+
+Garth, looking at him gratefully, thought none but a boy could be so
+generous. "But I can't take you away from your own work," he objected.
+
+Charley brushed it impatiently out of sight. "What does that matter!"
+he exclaimed. "It can wait." He redoubled his pleadings. "This was what
+I wanted so badly, Garth! To be a little use to her! I could help--you
+think I'm just a crazy kid, and maybe I am, but I could think like a
+man, and plan like a man for her! You and I could stand watch and watch.
+Say, after what you've told me, I'd go near out of my head to see you
+two sail away, and me left behind, not knowing what was happening!"
+
+Garth was more moved than he cared to show. "You're true blue, Charley,"
+he said in a low tone. "You come along!"
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ON CARIBOU LAKE
+
+
+From sundown until daybreak, the ki-yi-ing and the beating of the
+stick-kettle on the shore desecrated the stillness of the night with
+scarcely any intermission. Shortly after daybreak, the wind having
+gone down, Hooliam sent word to Garth that he would like to start.
+
+They were ready in a few minutes. At the sight of Charley's bundle
+with the others, Hooliam scowled and muttered in Cree.
+
+"Says he can't take me," said Charley.
+
+Garth flushed angrily. "This was all it needed," he burst out. "What
+reason does he give?"
+
+"No reason," said Charley coolly. "Just talks foolish."
+
+Hooliam added something with a great show of plausibility.
+
+"Says he hasn't got room," said Charley with a laugh.
+
+"Rubbish!" said Garth. "You tell him he takes the three of us or none!
+Give it to him strong!"
+
+Upon receipt of this ultimatum, Hooliam, shrugging, turned away; and the
+three of them boarded the _Loseis_.
+
+Running out two pairs of clumsy sweeps, which were no more than
+good-sized trees a little flattened at one end, they laboriously pulled
+out of the river. Before them the lake stretched to the horizon as
+smooth and colourless as a lightly frosted pane. Loons, herons and
+a little kind of gull; ducks in pairs and squadrons; flocks of brown
+geese and shining white swans, wheeled, sailed and swam about them
+in countless numbers.
+
+When they had rowed upward of a mile into the lake a mighty discussion
+suddenly arose amongst the crew. The oarsmen ceased their labours to
+take part in it. Eight wetted brown forefingers were held aloft.
+
+"They're scrapping about whether there is any wind," Charley explained.
+
+To a white man's senses there was no sign of wind; nevertheless the
+oars were run in, the cargo shifted, and the heavy mast, with infinite
+labour, stepped amidships and guyed. Hooliam looked on indifferently
+from the stern, idly swinging his great sweep back and forth. Finally
+a dirty square sail was raised. It declined to belly or flap in the
+slightest degree; but the breeds, satisfied with what they had done, lay
+around the boat, preparing to enjoy themselves in luxurious ease. They
+amused themselves by tempting the water-fowl close with imitations of
+their cries; and popping at them ineffectively with their twenty-two
+"trade-guns."
+
+Garth stood it as long as he could.
+
+"Look here!" he said at length to Charley. "Ask him how long this is
+going to last."
+
+Charley translated. Hooliam looked sagely astern, spat, and answered in
+Cree.
+
+"He says there'll be a breeze by and by," said Charley.
+
+The scarcely veiled insolence of this reply caused Garth inwardly to
+fume. However, reflecting that, after all, Hooliam ought to know more
+about navigation than he, he possessed his soul in patience for another
+half-hour. There was still no sign of wind; and it was growing very hot
+in the sun. Garth, setting his jaw, drew out his watch.
+
+"Tell him I'll give him just fifteen minutes longer," he said quietly.
+"If we're not under way by that time, there's going to be trouble."
+
+Hooliam received the message with apparent indifference. Garth held his
+watch in his hand. Three minutes before the expiration of the time, he
+had Charley convey a final warning to the breed. Hooliam suddenly became
+voluble and expostulatory.
+
+"He says the boys won't work when there's a breeze coming up," said
+Charley.
+
+"You tell him, then, that I will take command of this boat, and run her
+myself," said Garth.
+
+At the last moment the orders were hastily given. The mast was
+reluctantly taken down, and hung over the side; the cargo was shifted
+back, and the sweeps run out. The breeds rowed half-heartedly, with
+furtive scowls for the _moon-i-yas_ who made them work.
+
+After a couple of hours during which they covered a scant three miles,
+a breeze _did_ spring up from astern; whereupon the whole business
+of raising the mast was gone through with again. Little by little it
+freshened, and the _Loseis_ began to forge ahead, making a pleasant
+little murmur under her forefoot. The hearts of the three passengers
+rose in unison.
+
+But they had not sailed two miles more, when the exasperated Garth
+discovered that Hooliam was slyly edging his craft inside a point of the
+shore. At first the breed unblushingly denied any intention of stopping;
+but when it became apparent that he could not round the point without
+hauling down the sail, he coolly admitted that he was going to land.
+
+"What for?" Garth demanded.
+
+"They're going ashore to spell--to cook and eat," Charley explained.
+"Hooliam says there is no other place to land in fifteen miles."
+
+Garth was obliged to be content.
+
+With the characteristic prodigality of the breeds, an enormous fire
+was built on the shore, over which their tea was furiously boiled in an
+iron pail, and their dried moose meat stewed a little less tough than
+moccasins. At a little distance the three passengers made their own
+preparations for lunch.
+
+Natalie, serenely trusting in Garth, put aside all anxiety about the
+outcome of their journey; and was frankly interested and amused.
+
+"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "They'll all die of tannic poisoning! And look
+what they eat! The bacon is as green as arsenic!"
+
+She proved to be using her eyes and ears to good advantage on the way.
+
+"The tall boy," she said, "the one that looks like an actor; he's the
+humourist of the party. He keeps them in fits of laughter by giving
+_moon-i-yas_ imitations. He mimics us to our very faces. Their idea of
+us is too funny! The good-looking little one is his inseparable friend;
+they hold hands when they're not working. The one with the whitey-blue
+eyes is called by a very blasphemous name. I watched him turning over
+the pages of some stove catalogues that dropped out of a crate, with
+_such_ a serious air. And they were all exactly alike, but he didn't
+know it, because he held some of them upside down! What do you suppose
+he made of a picture of a self-feeder standing on its head?"
+
+To Garth it seemed as if they took an interminable time to prepare and
+eat their simple meal; and afterward there could no longer be any doubt,
+from the way they loafed about, that they were soldiering, as a result
+of Hooliam's low-voiced encouragement. They grinned with childish
+impudence at the scowling _moon-i-yas_. At last Hooliam produced a
+pack of cards and a game of "jack-pot" was started on the shore.
+This constituted frank defiance; and Garth took instant action.
+
+"Put up those cards!" he commanded.
+
+The boys laughed and looked at Hooliam.
+
+"Get on board the boat," Garth ordered, through Charley.
+
+Hooliam's eyes bolted; but he made no move. With the sheer perversity
+of a child or a savage, he insisted there was no wind, even while the
+ripples were washing the stones at his feet.
+
+Garth, thoroughly exasperated, picked up his rifle. His eyes glinted
+dangerously. "There's something behind this nonsense!" he cried. "And
+I'm going to stop it! You let him understand that if he opposes me any
+further I have eleven cartridges in the magazine of this rifle, and I
+would think as little of bringing him down as that wavy up there!"
+
+A wild swan, most difficult of marks, was sailing high overhead. Garth,
+as he spoke, took aim and fired; and the great bird dropped like a
+plummet in the shallow water off shore.
+
+Loud exclamations of admiration broke from the boys. Three of them
+dashed enthusiastically into the water to contend for the honour of
+bringing back the prize. Garth builded better than he knew. The boys
+while scarcely understanding the threat, were instantly impressed with
+the successful shot; and with it Garth established himself once and
+for all in their eyes. They instinctively began to carry the things
+on board as he had ordered; and in the end the scowling Hooliam was
+obliged to follow them on board, or be left behind.
+
+As they were getting under way again, Garth observed Hooliam busy with
+the sail. When it was hoisted, it appeared he had taken a reef in it.
+
+"Shake it out!" Garth commanded.
+
+Hooliam shrugged and protested.
+
+"He says the mast is not strong," Charley translated. "This heavy wind
+will carry it away," he says.
+
+"Just now he said there was no wind," Garth said. "Let her go; and if
+anything breaks we'll mend it."
+
+Hooliam in a long harangue, demanded to know through Charley, if Garth
+would pay for the damage.
+
+For answer Garth merely picked up his rifle; and the reef was let out in
+a hurry.
+
+In all this there was something more than mere savage perversity;
+Hooliam, it was clear, had an urgent private reason for wishing to delay
+the journey. He had not sufficient command of his features to hide his
+chagrin at the failure of his several attempts. He sulked all afternoon.
+Garth sat with his weapon across his knees; and his steady gaze never
+wandered far from the steersman. Willy-nilly, Hooliam was compelled to
+hold the _Loseis_ to her course; and by four o'clock, the wind holding
+light and steady, they had covered about thirty miles of their journey.
+
+About this time the mast of another boat was discovered sticking above
+the bank of a creek on shore. The usual excited discussion arose--this
+time as to the identity of the craft. Finally the _Loseis's_ prow was
+turned toward the shore. Garth demanded an explanation. Hooliam, more
+obsequious now, said that it was Phillippe's boat on the way out; and he
+had messages to deliver him from their common employers at the Landing.
+Garth suspected another excuse; but he was very reluctant to interfere
+with the real business of the North; and since it was almost time to
+spell for another meal, he decided to make no objections.
+
+With true half-breed impetuosity they chose the worst place in miles on
+which to beach the _Loseis_. Her forefoot was run on a bar fully two
+hundred yards off shore; and communications were carried on by means of
+laborious wading, waist-deep, to and fro. The moment she touched, the
+entire crew and the skipper, dropping everything, dashed pell mell for
+the beach and across the intervening sand to the camp of the other
+boatmen on the shore of the creek. The passengers ferried themselves
+ashore in the _Flat-iron_, which had been stowed, much against Hooliam's
+will, on board the _Loseis_.
+
+After supper, as time passed and there was no sign of the returning
+crew, Garth sent Charley after Hooliam with a peremptory message.
+Hooliam returned, cap in hand, his whole attitude changed. He expressed
+a willingness to start immediately; but deprecatingly pointed out that
+a storm threatened; and apologized for the unseaworthy condition of the
+_Loseis_. This time he had reason on his side; for angry clouds were
+heaped about the setting sun; and the orb itself was peering luridly
+between parted curtains of crimson rain. Garth, still suspecting him,
+was yet taken at a disadvantage. He thought of Natalie on board the
+shelterless _Loseis_ in a rainstorm; and finally announced his wish
+to remain where they were for the night. Hooliam smirked demurely,
+in ill-concealed satisfaction.
+
+All returned to the _Loseis_ for what was needed during the night. The
+preparations to secure the York boat against the threatening storm were
+highly characteristic of her hit-or-miss crew. A stake was driven in the
+sand of the lake bottom, at either side the stern, and the rudder-post
+lashed between. This flimsy apparatus was designed to keep the boat
+from being driven broadside on the bar. The practical Garth frowned
+impatiently at its utter insufficiency; but the breeds could scarcely
+contain their impatience to resume their gambling with the other crew;
+and presently they dashed off, leaving the _Loseis_ to her fate.
+
+Garth pitched his camp under the shelter of a line of willows, marking
+the edge of higher ground along the wide waste of sand. The two crews
+with their ceaseless tom-tom on the shore of the creek, were upward of
+half a mile away. Natalie was made comfortable in her tent; and Garth
+and Charley, collecting a pile of firewood, covered it with a tarpaulin,
+against the coming rain. Charley, who had slept during the afternoon,
+was to watch until two o'clock; and Garth, covering himself with a
+piece of sail-cloth, lay down at the door of the tent.
+
+It seemed to him he had no more than fallen asleep, when Charley shook
+his shoulder to awaken him.
+
+"It's one o'clock," the boy said. "I think something has happened in the
+camp over there. They quieted down; but now they have started up again,
+and have built up their fire. Looks to me as if somebody had arrived.
+Thought I'd better wake you, while I sneaked over and took a look."
+
+Charley was gone more than an hour. Returning, as soon as he had entered
+the circle of the firelight, Garth saw by his face that something
+important was in the wind.
+
+"I was right," the boy said. "Nick Grylls has come. He arrived in a
+canoe with a breed; and sent him back. Nick and Hooliam went outside the
+camp, and talked by themselves. I listened from behind a willow bush.
+Nick Grylls knows a lot more Cree than I do, and I couldn't understand
+everything; but I got the gist of it. Nick was giving Hooliam hell all
+around--first for making him paddle all night--it seems Hooliam ought
+to have waited for him at that point where we spelled this morning--and
+then for bringing me. That was the sorest touch; for Nick knows I
+understand Cree. He said it upset all his plans."
+
+"It was a mighty good thing for Natalie and me, that we had you to-day!"
+Garth put in.
+
+The boy blushed with pleasure.
+
+"Go on," Garth said.
+
+"Grylls was pretty mum about these plans of his," Charley continued. "I
+guess he only lets Hooliam know part. I caught just a word or two. One
+thing was clear; you are his mark. I made out there was to have been a
+row at the point, and you were to have been put out of business, so you
+couldn't keep on with this journey. Then Nick was to happen along as if
+by accident; you were to be sent to the half-breeds at Swan river to
+be taken care of, and Nick was going to do the friendly act, and help
+Natalie on her way. I bet she never would have got there! In some way
+Nick has learned all about Natalie; for he seems to know where she's
+going; and what for. Anyway, you put his scheme to the bad by winning
+over the boys; and he is hot.
+
+"He acted queer, too," Charley went on. "The first thing he asked
+was, if Natalie was well; and his voice sounded crying-like. Say,
+he's changed altogether from the hearty old sport, that used to travel
+through the country like a lord, handing out cigars. He's losing
+flesh. I think he's a bit touched."
+
+When the boy finished, Garth took a turn, breathing deeply; and finally
+returning to the fire, sought that trusty counsellor, his pipe. "I'm
+glad he's turned up," he said coolly. "This is more like fighting in the
+open. And thanks to you, I'm well warned."
+
+He smoked a while in silence. "I suspect I'll have my work cut out for
+me to-morrow," he resumed reflectively. Presently he gripped Charley's
+shoulder, and searched the boy's face. "I'll be damn thankful to have
+you along, old fellow," he said. "But I don't think I have any right
+to let you in for this. This man is very powerful in the country; and
+he can spoil all your chances. You had better go back with Phillippe.
+Neither Natalie nor I would ever blame you."
+
+The boy turned away his head. "I--I can't talk about it," he faltered.
+"If you go on that way you'll have me crying like a girl! You could talk
+all night, and it wouldn't do any good! What do you think I am? I'm not
+going to miss the fun!"
+
+Garth laughed. "Turn in," he said briefly. "You'll need all the sleep
+you can get."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE STORM
+
+
+Garth and Natalie were wondering next morning with what kind of a face
+Nick Grylls would greet them. He was the last to come off to the boat.
+Hooliam took possession of the punt as a matter of course, to bring
+him aboard; but Garth, determined not to allow the slightest act of
+insolence to pass unchallenged to-day, curtly ordered it back; and the
+fat trader was obliged to wade out like the breeds, and scramble over
+the side of the _Loseis_--a very undignified reëntrance upon the scene.
+
+His demeanour was remarkable. All the way out from the shore he had
+probably been shaping the character in which he meant to make his
+bow. He threw a leg over the side of the boat, affecting all his old,
+blustering heartiness; but the first sight of Natalie and Garth awaiting
+him, wholly self-possessed and unconcerned--they had determined
+in advance not to stoop to the pretense of any surprise at seeing
+him--pricked him like a blown bladder. His eyes bolted; he nodded at
+them askance; and he mumbled the words he had been intending to shout.
+Catching sight of Charley directly, he attempted to carry off his
+discomfiture by assuming an added boisterousness.
+
+"Hello, Charley!" he cried. "What's the good word, boy?"
+
+"Hello, Mr. Grylls," returned Charley with a demure grin, that was
+highly creditable to his powers of dissimulation. "Where did you drop
+from?"
+
+Grylls guffawed with an overdone assumption of a man at his ease. "Oh,
+I got a sudden call up to the Settlement," he said, in a tone meant
+to reach Garth's ears. "Got a big deal on to sell out my posts on the
+Spirit. I overtook you folks last night; and sent my canoe back. Thought
+I might as well save money. Have a cigar?"
+
+"Thanks," said Charley. The boy lighted it elaborately, and commended
+the quality with the air of a connoisseur.
+
+"You're all right, kid!" cried Nick, clapping him on the back. "I tell
+you I'm blame glad to have a white man to talk to on the way up"--this
+with a side glance at Garth. "What are you doing away from home at this
+season?"
+
+"Grub running low," said Charley readily. "Had to go to the Settlement
+for a fresh supply."
+
+"Well you go to Jonesy of the French outfit," bellowed Nick; "and tell
+him to give you my prices!"
+
+Nick kept the boy at his side all day, flattering and cajoling him with
+an immense patronage, that, coming from the great man of the country,
+was meant to turn the head of this, the youngest of its settlers. In
+this Nick had a double purpose: he wished, of course, to secure the
+boy's interest to himself; but he also wished Garth and Natalie to see
+what a fine, generous fellow he could be when he got half a chance.
+There was a great deal of the child in the self-indulgent trader; and
+he had not lived among the breeds for twenty-five years without imbibing
+many of their characteristics. As to the boy, Garth and Natalie felt
+not a moment's uneasiness; Charley met Nick's advances with a kind of
+imitative bluster, that was a source of great secret delight to Natalie.
+
+The day's journey was uneventful. Grylls kept himself forward of the
+mast, and made no attempt to address either Garth or Natalie. Indeed,
+he appeared to ignore their presence on the boat altogether; which,
+considering the shortness of the distance separating them, was not
+without its ridiculous side. Garth, refusing to be deceived by this
+apparent indifference, kept himself quietly on the alert. The breeze
+continued favourable but very light; and the day waxed hotter and
+hotter. By nightfall they had covered perhaps another thirty miles of
+the way. There had been one "spell" on shore, during which Garth and
+Natalie elected to remain on board, satisfied with a cold lunch. No
+further offers were made by Hooliam to delay the journey; indeed, such
+was now their apparent anxiety to complete it, it was announced late in
+the afternoon that they would sail all night. They did not even wait
+for their supper on shore, but brought it off from the fire in a wading
+procession of frying pans, and steaming pails.
+
+A lovely night succeeded. The velvety floor of heaven was strewn
+lavishly with bright stars; and later, the moon, just past the full,
+rose out of the lake astern and hung, a lovely pale globe, in the
+eastern sky. The breeds fell asleep one by one; and for the first, the
+jabbering, the _ki-yi-ing_ and the maddening stick-kettle were all
+stilled. The _Loseis_ hovered over the lake with her gigantic wing
+spread, like some great bird of the night. The only evidences that she
+moved at all were the flecks of foam that drifted slowly astern under
+the counter.
+
+Charley had constructed a little niche for Natalie among the freight
+astern--a bale of blankets serving for a seat, with a tall box inclined
+behind it for a back to lean against. She had insisted that Charley
+share it with her, and the boy had sat beside her too blissful to speak.
+In the end they both fell asleep, and Natalie's head dropped on his
+shoulder. In his dreams the boy smiled seraphically.
+
+Garth watched them kindly and very enviously; and for the moment wished
+that he, too, were a boy, whom she need not take seriously. There was
+no sleep for him. He sat on the narrow seat encircling the stern, with
+his back against the gunwale, where, on the one hand he could watch the
+steersman elevated on his little platform, while on the other side he
+was prepared for any demonstration from the bow. The steersman was
+Natalie's humorous breed; his name was Aleck. Nick Grylls and Hooliam
+were together somewhere forward of the mast; in the darkness Garth
+could not place them.
+
+Garth's rifle lay across his knees--he would have given it, with much to
+boot, for the quicker and handier revolver. He was painfully aware that
+nothing would suit Nick Grylls's purpose so well as to knock him swiftly
+on the head, and heave his body overboard. He shrewdly suspected that
+some such intention was the reason for this night sail. It is easy to
+seek danger, to ride at it with a shout, the pulses leaping--but to
+_wait_ for it, to wait motionless in the still dark for an attack that
+may be delivered one knows not when nor from whence--that is the great
+ordeal. Garth clenched the stem of his pipe hard between his teeth; and
+with a resolute effort of his will, put down the hysteria that will at
+such a time constrict the stoutest throat.
+
+The first interruption of the awful stillness came, not from man, but
+from the elements. All around the western horizon clouds mounted so
+swiftly and imperceptibly that neither Garth nor the helmsman was aware
+of what was preparing, until they had reached the zenith. Caribou Lake
+is known for its swift and terrible summer storms. A sharp crack of
+thunder was their first warning. Aleck shouted; and dark forms arose
+here and there from their resting places. Garth swallowed a sob of
+relief for the diversion. The storm might be playing right into Nick
+Grylls's hand; but one could face the bustle and uproar with renewed
+courage.
+
+The sail was brought clattering to the deck; a couple of sweeps were
+hastily run out; and the _Loseis_ was pulled for the nearest point of
+the shore. With true breed seamanship she was beached on a steep and
+stony incline on the lee side of a point. Garth tried his best to
+make their folly clear to them; but none of the crew, and least of all
+Hooliam, retained presence of mind to comprehend. With united strength
+the breeds dragged her up as far as they could, which was but little,
+and went through the same business of driving stakes into the bottom of
+the lake, and lashing the sternpost between. Garth threw up his hands in
+helpless exasperation. Tarpaulins and sails were spread over the cargo
+and lashed down. Charley made Natalie snug with a tarpaulin roof over
+her seat. Garth commanded him, no matter what might happen, not to
+leave her side.
+
+The storm came roaring down the lake like a vast animate being; and
+there, in their exposed position, smote them hip and thigh. Each crash
+of thunder fell forth right upon the echo of the last; and the lightning
+played like wicked laughter on the face of the destroying heavens. Then
+came the rain, with pitiless, whistling whips that lashed the water, and
+bit cruelly into exposed flesh. Every man on board, save one, instantly
+dived under the sail-cloths; and Hooliam was the first to seek shelter.
+
+Only Garth dared not relax his watch in the open. He maintained his
+place with his back against the stern, a piece of tarpaulin across his
+knees to keep his gun dry, and his eyes bent forward in the boat whence
+any move must be made on him. So sure was he that Grylls would attack
+him, he was scarcely conscious of the tumult that roared about his ears.
+The wind tore his hat off; and the cold rain drenched him to the skin.
+
+Before him, the lightning luridly showed up the trees on the shore,
+writhing horridly; and the wet mast and the guy ropes were often wreathed
+in faint, bluish flames. The _Loseis_ forward, with her irregularly piled
+cargo, and the crouching forms under the sail-cloths, presented a thousand
+shifting, fantastic shapes in the playing flashes; and Garth had a score
+of false alarms. In the end, his enemy crept almost upon him undiscovered.
+
+By the light of a great blaze, which held all the earth and the heavens
+suspended in flames for a moment, Garth suddenly saw revealed a crouching
+figure, and a hideous, distorted face no more than six feet from his own.
+In the blinding glare it was outlined with a horrid clearness; in its
+grossness and bestial hatred, less human than demoniacal.
+
+Garth, snatching up his rifle, sprang to his feet, but before he could
+point it, Grylls had flung himself upon him, and his mighty arms were
+squeezing Garth's ribs into his lungs. The useless weapon dropped to the
+deck. Grylls, trusting to his enormous strength, was unarmed; he wished to
+crush his adversary without leaving obvious traces of violence. No word
+was spoken by either.
+
+They swayed on the narrow seat encircling the stern; and all sound of
+the little human struggle was swallowed up in the dreadful uproar of the
+elements. Natalie and Charley, but three yards away, heard nothing. Grylls
+was the stronger; Garth contented himself with a dogged resistance,
+trusting to his better wind to serve him in the end. Meanwhile the
+_Loseis_ was continually heaved under their feet, and dropped heavily
+on the stones by the mounting breakers; and they maintained a footing
+with difficulty. Nick ceaselessly strained to force Garth to his knees.
+Failing, he lifted him clear of the deck. At the same instant the boat
+lurched drunkenly; and they pitched overboard together.
+
+Somehow, they gained their feet, and stood, still locked together,
+while the tumbling waves boiled around their waists, and sucked at their
+knees. But Garth had struck his head on the gunwale in falling; his
+senses were slipping away, and nausea overcame him. He tried to cry out;
+but the feeble sound was lost at his lips. Nick forced him slowly down
+until the water broke over his head. Garth was dimly conscious of
+hearing him laugh--no one knew; and the explanation next day would be
+so simple! But the wholesome chill of the water rolling over his head
+revived the swooning Garth. He collected his forces for a last effort;
+and, suddenly wrenching his shoulders from under the hands that pressed
+them down, he gained his feet, and his hands seized upon Grylls's
+throat.
+
+It was the big man's vulnerable point; and a subtle sweetness flooded
+Garth's breast as he felt him begin to fail. Foul living was telling in
+the end. Grylls struggled for his breath in loud, strangling sobs; and
+Garth could hear his bursting heart knock at his ribs. The smith's arms
+of him little by little softened of their steely strength; he strove in
+vain now to lift Garth off his feet. Garth, cool and strong again, and
+always waiting, let him tire himself. He disdained to call for help
+now; he even relaxed his grip on the thick throat a little. It was
+not necessary to strangle the man; for he had done for himself.
+
+Meanwhile the waves broke with ever-increasing violence on the frail
+bulwark the two bodies offered to their impetuous course, and it was
+only a question of moments when they would both be beaten down. Grylls's
+knees weakening under him first, down they went, Garth uppermost; and,
+the water seizing them, still gripped together, they were rolled over
+and over, and finally flung up on the stones.
+
+Stunned, bruised and breathless as he was, Garth was still able to free
+himself from the automatic grip of the other man's arms; but Grylls lay
+motionless.
+
+Briefly satisfying himself that the man still lived, Garth dragged him
+out of reach of the waves, and letting him lie in the driving rain,
+turned his attention to the boat.
+
+The _Loseis_ was in a bad way. The waves under her stern had lifted
+the driven stakes as easily as pins are drawn from a cushion. She had
+immediately swung broadside on the beach; and the waves, crashing under
+her counter, were driving over her in clouds of spray while her bottom
+heaved, and gave, and pounded sickeningly on the stones. No one on board
+required to be told that a very little of this would separate every
+plank of her from her aged ribs. The breed boys appeared one by one
+from under the coverings; and standing about, dazed and careless of the
+downpour, waited to be told what to do. There was no sign of Hooliam.
+
+Garth climbed painfully on board. Searching for the degenerate captain,
+he stepped on something soft, and a hollow groan issued from beneath the
+sail-cloth. He threw it back, and dislodged the palpitating Hooliam with
+a vigorous foot. The breed struggled to his knees, supporting himself by
+a guy rope. Just then there was a blinding flash, and the mast and the
+wet ropes were wreathed again for an instant in bluish flame. Partly
+shocked, but more from abject fear, Hooliam collapsed with a brutish
+moan.
+
+"Throw this carrion ashore!" Garth commanded with strong disgust.
+
+The breeds, understanding his gestures, instinctively obeyed; and
+Hooliam was dragged over the side, and dropped on the beach, not very
+far from the body of his unconscious employer.
+
+"We'll have to save her ourselves!" shouted Garth to Charley. "Translate
+my orders!"
+
+The storm had a revolving tendency; and the wind had now hauled to the
+south, whence it came shrieking across the lake with unabated fury. A
+little way ahead, around the shallow crescent of the exposed bay in
+which they lay, they could see by the light of the frequent flashes a
+point on which the waves were beating wildly; and beyond there was a
+promise of smooth water and safety. It was only a little way, scarcely
+an eighth of a mile; but the way was beset with heart-breaking
+difficulties.
+
+"All hands ashore to push her off!" cried Garth.
+
+The breed boys, welcoming a voice of authority in that bewildering
+chaos, sprang to do his bidding. Garth and Charley set the example,
+and the ten backs were braced under the lee gunwale of the _Loseis_,
+measuring their sinews against the crashing blows of the waves on the
+other side. They budged her inch by inch, often thrown back again; but
+at last she floated, and there they managed to hold her for a moment,
+rising and falling. Only one who has measured the strength of the surf
+against the smallest craft, may comprehend the magnitude of their
+labour.
+
+"Aleck's crew ahead with the tracking-line," shouted Garth.
+
+The line is always kept coiled and ready, hanging on the bow. Aleck
+seized it, and followed by three others, ran ahead along the beach,
+paying it out. The four of them slipped into the harness; and digging
+their moccasined toes into the beach, painfully straightened their legs
+under the pull. When the _Loseis_, answering, began to move inch by inch
+along the shore, Garth put the remaining men on board one at a time,
+where, armed with their poles, and braced almost horizontally, they held
+her off the stones.
+
+Natalie had long since deserted her sheltered nook, and, heedless of the
+drenching downpour, watched them with eager eyes. Garth, his bruises
+forgotten, seemed everywhere at once; he had even time to shout a word
+of encouragement to her, and she longed mightily to do something to
+help. Looking around, she saw her chance. The steersman's long sweep lay
+along the deck; running it aft through its ring in the sternpost, and
+pushing with all her strength against the stones astern, she added her
+mite to keep the boat headed off. Garth observing, shouted his approval;
+and Natalie's heart waxed big in her breast.
+
+Inch by inch, then foot by foot, they won their painful way along the
+lee shore. Over and over in spite of the six poles, she was thrown back
+on the stones, whereupon they all leaped overboard and put their backs
+under her lee. There was once when, Garth's pole snapping short, he
+pitched headlong overboard. He climbed back with blood colouring the
+rain in his face, and found another pole. Again, approaching the point,
+the four men on the end of the tracking-line crawling slowly around the
+edge of a steepish bank, were by a sudden heave of the _Loseis_ all four
+jerked into the water. Instantly picking themselves up, they scrambled
+ahead with their line through the breakers. Garth's heart warmed over
+the half-fed, half-clad boys. Not one of the eight faltered for an
+instant, and in the midst of their superhuman labours they could still
+be shouting at each other.
+
+A reef ran out beyond the point; and how they ever got over this, or
+how long it took, none could have told. By that time they were merely
+insensate machines striving automatically against a mighty inhuman
+adversary. The _Loseis's_ ribs yielded and trembled under the renewed
+blows on the stones. Dizzy and blind with fatigue they struggled ahead;
+but they would never have made it, had not the wind hauled still further
+around. Finally a wave greater than any preceding lifted them clear of
+the stones, and dropped them in smooth water inside. For a while, unable
+to realize they had rounded the point, they continued to struggle; then
+the _Loseis_ gently beached herself. The tracking crew scrambled aboard,
+and all hands dropped where they stood for a breathing spell.
+
+Soon after the storm showed signs of abating. In the end it ceased
+almost as abruptly as it had begun; and the moon looked wanly forth, as
+if ashamed for the recent disturbances aloft. Garth, thinking of Grylls
+and Hooliam lying on the beach around the point, consulted with Charley
+what had better be done. It took them about three seconds to arrive at a
+decision.
+
+"It is between eight and ten miles to the head of the lake," Charley
+said.
+
+"Let them walk it then," said Garth coolly.
+
+Presently the same breeze resumed its gentle course up the lake as if
+there had been no such thing as a storm. Tired as they were, it was too
+good to lose; and with hoisted sail, the _Loseis_ forged through the
+rapidly subsiding waters, with Charley at the helm. The breed boys asked
+no questions. Having raised the sail, they promptly fell asleep. Hooliam
+they had little regard for anyway; and Grylls they may have supposed was
+still somewhere under the sail-cloths. In three hours they had reached
+Grier's point, the navigable head of the lake; and all hands slept until
+long after sunrise.
+
+Garth and Natalie, meeting in the daylight, exclaimed each at the
+appearance of the other; Natalie, with remorseful sympathy, that she
+had not sooner learnt the extent of Garth's bruises; and Garth with
+delighted wonder at the freshness of her. Natalie was like the lake
+in the early sunshine; neither showed the slightest trace of a storm
+overnight.
+
+While they were at their breakfast on the shore, a deplorable figure,
+ashen-cheeked and shamed, came shuffling out of the bush. The eight
+breeds, as one, instantly set up a merciless, derisive jeering. It was
+Hooliam. He bore in his hands a little bottle and a bank-bill. Wretched
+as he was, his eyes glinted with satisfaction at the sight of the boat
+safe and sound on the shore. He went to Garth.
+
+"Nick Grylls in the bush," he said, dully pointing back. "Him sick bad.
+Maybe him die. Him give five dollar for drink of whiskey."
+
+Garth filled the bottle from his flask. "Put up your money," he said
+curtly.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE NINETY-MILE PORTAGE
+
+
+The Settlement is upward of three miles from Grier's point. Avoiding
+the houses for the present, Garth pitched his camp outside, well off
+the trail. The first thing they learned was that the Bishop had gone on.
+This time they were not surprised; there seemed to be a fatality in it.
+The old problem confronted Garth anew.
+
+"I think you should wait here," he suggested to Natalie; "and let me
+ride on for you."
+
+Natalie, as she always did when this question was brought up, merely
+looked obstinate.
+
+"It is likely we will miss him again at the Crossing," Garth went on;
+"and I have learned there are only one or two cabins there, and no white
+woman. It would be difficult for you."
+
+Natalie's silence gave him no encouragement.
+
+"But here," he urged, "you could stay with the wife of the inspector of
+the mounted police; while I go on and bring Mabyn back to you. I do not
+think you should put yourself in his hands."
+
+"He would not come with you," she said evasively.
+
+"I promise to bring him," said Garth determinedly; "if he is alive."
+
+"No!" she said with manifest agitation. "That is another reason!"
+
+"What is?" he asked mystified.
+
+"I--I could not have any trouble between you," she said in a low tone.
+
+"But I promise to bring him safely," he said doggedly.
+
+She still shook her head.
+
+"I will go to the wife of the inspector," said Garth--"a woman in such
+a position is sure to be the right sort--and I will explain our position
+frankly. She will be glad to take you in!"
+
+Natalie shot an odd glance at him. "I will not let you," she said
+quickly.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"The risk of the humiliation of a refusal is too great," she said. "I
+do not doubt she is a good woman; I'm sure she rises splendidly to all
+the demands of her position up here. But she _has_ a position to maintain,
+you see; no doubt she is bringing up girls. And me!"--Natalie turned
+away her head--"consider how extraordinary the story sounds! Only one
+woman in a thousand would believe."
+
+Garth turned a distressed face to her. "I have not taken care of you
+properly," he cried remorsefully.
+
+Natalie veiled her eyes; and her hand stole to her breast. "Let us not
+talk about _that_!" she murmured unevenly.
+
+Garth was perplexed and silent.
+
+Natalie recovered herself presently; and looked at him with a misty
+shine in her eyes. "Why do you worry?" she asked. "We're a thousand
+times better off than we were yesterday; for you have laid our enemy
+by the heels! Why mayn't I go on with you just the same as before?
+I cannot trust any one but you!"
+
+How was Garth to resist such an appeal? Besides, there was nothing else
+to do.
+
+Garth might have lodged a complaint against Nick Grylls at the barracks;
+but any investigation would have seriously delayed their journey; and a
+greater reason against it was his care for Natalie's good name. It was
+intolerable to him that the dear circumstances of their journey together
+should be made the subject of the common gossip of the North. It was
+better to let those who saw Natalie on the trail speculate as they
+chose, rather than give them an opportunity to put their own coarse
+construction upon the truth. He was well assured Nick Grylls would
+say nothing.
+
+For the same reason, he decided to avoid the Settlement altogether.
+The two of them remained close in camp; and Charley was dispatched to
+purchase ponies and saddles, and what was needful to replenish their
+stores. He returned with all they required; and during the afternoon
+instructed Garth how to pack the ponies and "throw" the immovable
+diamond hitch. Natalie in the meantime, constructed a divided skirt
+for herself, since side-saddles are unknown in the North.
+
+Their route now lay over the ninety-mile portage to Spirit River
+Crossing. The road, Garth learned, was straight, and, for the
+North, well-travelled. There were no forks or cross-trails, hence no
+possibility of their missing the way. They set off before daybreak next
+morning. The parting with Charley was a wrench all around: but Garth was
+firm in insisting that the boy must go back, and put up his hay. In the
+easy-going North it is only too easy to drop one's tools and start off
+on a jaunt. Charley bade them an abrupt good-bye; and bustled away to
+hide his tears.
+
+In the mystical gloom which, in northern latitudes, precedes the summer
+dawn, Garth and Natalie, each leading a pack pony, rode through the
+Settlement, which straggled for several miles around the shore of Moose
+Bay, a wide, shallow arm of the lake, once navigable, but now given over
+to the wild-fowl. The shacks were infinitely various; for in a land
+where every man builds for himself, a house quaintly expresses the
+character of its owner. But one thing was common to all; no one wastes
+any ornament on his dwelling; and in the luxuriant greenness of the
+northern summer, the grim, solid little houses were a reminder of
+the coming cold.
+
+Later in the day they passed the long, gradual climb over the height
+of land separating the great watersheds of the Miwasa and the Spirit.
+On the other side they came to a flat country and of the same general
+character all the way. It was a shining day; and, being young, they
+forgot their cares and rode gaily. For the most part the trail lay in
+a straight and lofty nave of aspen trees, rearing their slender, snowy
+pillars sixty, eighty--even a hundred feet aloft; and mingling their
+clusters of nimble, chattering leaves high overhead in the sun. There
+was nothing gloomy about this cathedral; the sun found a thousand
+apertures through which to launch his rays against the white pillars;
+while the green and mutable roof was bathed in almost intolerable
+radiance--it was a temple in green and white, Flora's colours.
+
+Occasionally there were cloistered openings; sunny little meadows
+inclining to a spring, where the wild pea-vine, plant beloved of horses,
+and infallible sign of a rich soil, grew knee-deep. Such an opening they
+learned, however small, was quaintly dignified by the natives with the
+name of prairie.
+
+Their ponies, each exhibiting a distinct individuality, afforded the
+excuse for their amusement on the way. Garth's mount, that a previous
+owner had christened "Cyclops," and who was tall enough and bony enough
+to be called a horse, was, like themselves, a stranger in the bush, and
+his face offered a comical study in anxiety, willingness and stupidity,
+under these new conditions. Natalie rode a young sorrel rejoicing in the
+name of Caspar. He had a dull eye, a long, sheeplike nose and a wagging
+under lip; and Natalie vowed he was half-witted. He would not ride
+abreast; but insisted on following; and he screamed with terror,
+if for an instant he lost sight of the other horses.
+
+But it was the two pack horses that offered the most diverting study of
+character. When they left the Settlement behind, Garth cast off their
+leaders. In Emmy, a rotund little mare, they had secured a treasure.
+Emmy had an indifferent air toward them, worthy of a breed; but unlike
+a breed, she was thoroughly business-like. Where the great mudholes of
+unknown depth blocked the trail, and they must strike into the bush, she
+required no guidance. They laughed and admired, to see her stop, looking
+this way and that, and deliberately pick her way through, always with
+due regard to the height and breadth of the pack on her back. Emmy
+declined to be hurried; she had an air that said as plainly as words, if
+they didn't like her pace, they could leave her behind, and be hanged to
+them!
+
+The remaining animal was Emmy's son, a half-broken colt, whose
+only virtue was that he would not stray very far from his mother.
+Mistatimoosis was his mouthful of a name. He forgot his pack sometimes,
+and striking it full tilt against a tree, would be knocked endwise in
+the trail, blinking and dismayed, as who should say, "Who hit me?" The
+thing that caused them the heartiest laughter was to see Mistatimoosis's
+endless attempts to steal the leadership of the caravan from his mother.
+It was the only thing that could tempt Emmy out of her sedate pace. On
+a fair piece of road the two of them would race at top speed for half a
+mile; and the colt was continually making sly detours into the bush to
+get around his mother. But she kept him in his place behind.
+
+The riders finding they could safely leave the packhorses to follow, had
+ridden ahead to spy out grass and water for the noon spell. They were
+walking their horses over the turf bordering the trail, when suddenly
+from among the trees came with startling distinctness the sound of a
+voice. They reined up, astonished. It was the gentle, ambling voice of
+a loquacious old man; and his conversation there in the wilderness was
+as quiet and intimate as chimney-corner talk.
+
+"I should say half-past eleven," they heard. "When Mr. Sun sits down on
+yonder spruce tree we'll make a break. So work your jaws good, Mother,
+old girl; and you Buck, my dear, stop looking around like a fool and get
+busy! Meanwhile, we'll pack up the grub-box."
+
+Garth and Natalie smiled at each other. There was nothing very alarming
+about this.
+
+"Will you have a pipe of baccy now, Tom Lillywhite?" the same voice
+resumed. "Thanks, old man, don't mind if I do! Is there any cut? No?
+Well shave it close."
+
+There was a pause here, while the speaker presumably filled his pipe.
+Then some one drew an audible sigh of content; and a kind of dialogue
+took place--though there was but the one voice full of quaint lifts and
+falls. Garth and Natalie, smiling broadly, listened without shame.
+
+"Ah! a fine day, a bellyful of bacon, and a pipeful of tobacco!--would
+you change with a moneyed man, Tom Lillywhite?"
+
+"Well I don't know, sir! Mebbe he don't enjoy his grub as much as us,
+havin' gen'ally the dyspepsy; but how about the winter, old sport, when
+we don't fetch up no stoppin'-house; and has to make a bed in the snow,
+hey? It's then a flannel bed-gown looks good to old bones; let alone
+woolly slippers and a feather bed! Seems I wouldn't kick agin the
+job of takin' care o' money in the winter time!"
+
+"Ah! g'long with you, Tom Lillywhite! You'd a been dead long ago if you
+had money! Swole up and bust with good eatin', y'old epicoor! You'd be
+havin' a pig killed fresh every week if you had money!"
+
+"Say, b'lieve I would cut some dash if I had money! I'd build me a house
+of lumber clear through, and I'd paint it all over, paint it blue! And
+I'd have sawdust on the settin'-room floor and a brass spittoon in every
+corner! 'Have a chair,' I'd say to stoppers, not lettin' on I was puffed
+up at all. 'Have a ten-cent seegar. Don't mention it! Don't mention it!
+I get a case full in every Fall!'"
+
+Here there was a jolly chuckle.
+
+Their packhorses joining them noisily, the dialogue was cut short.
+
+"Some one comin'," said the voice.
+
+Rounding the clump of bushes, Garth and Natalie found themselves in a
+grassy opening in the bush. An untraced wagon stood in the centre; and
+two horses browsed. Immediately under the bushes, an old man sat on the
+ground. They instinctively looked around for the other persons brought
+into his conversation; but, save for the horses, he was alone.
+
+At the sight of them his face lighted up with the pleased naïveté of
+a child. "How do! How do!" he said immediately, without getting up or
+raising his voice at all. "My horses are quiet. They won't tech yours.
+The spring is down there at the foot of the spruce. Just blow up my fire
+a little and it will do for you." He seemed to take them entirely for
+granted; and he spoke as if resuming a dropped conversation.
+
+There was something very troll-like in the old figure, squatting on the
+ground; in his bright, glancing eyes, in his incessant, matter-of-fact
+loquacity, and the slight, peculiar gesticulation, with which he
+illustrated his talk. He was all of a colour; high moccasins, breeches,
+shirt and cap were weathered to the same grayish-brown shade--and that
+much the colour of his skin. Against a background of withered grass,
+only his white hair would have been visible. He was like some
+good-tempered, little familiar of the forest.
+
+He stared hard at Natalie in his bright-eyed, impersonal way; and as
+soon as Garth, having made his horses comfortable, came to build up the
+fire, he started in with his questions.
+
+"Where you going?"
+
+"Spirit River Crossing," said Garth.
+
+"Thinking of settling?"
+
+Garth shook his head.
+
+"No, you don't look like settlers. Company business, maybe?"
+
+"No," said Garth.
+
+"Police? Gov'ment survey?"
+
+"Private business," said Garth--his usual answer to the question direct.
+
+Baffled inquisitiveness, vice of the kindest natures, made the old man's
+face ugly; and for a moment he looked like a wicked troll. For a little
+while he preserved an offended silence; but then, probably recollecting
+that he would hear the whole story at the Settlement, or simply because
+he could not keep still any longer, his face cleared, and he resumed his
+engaging, inconsequential babble.
+
+"See that horse over there, the buckskin? Best horse I ever had! True
+buckskin! Mark the zebra stripes round his legs, Miss; and the black
+stripe on his backbone. You can't kill a buck; he's got more lives
+than a cat. I call the old one Mother; she's good-natured, she is!"
+
+"You're a freighter, I see," remarked Garth as a leader.
+
+"Sure thing, stranger! Tom Lillywhite and his team is known to every
+settler in the country! Been here thirty-five year; and always on the
+move! Never sleep in the same place two nights going! That wagon there,
+and the grub-box is my home. It's a variegated life!"
+
+Garth bethought himself the old man would likely prove a valuable source
+of information. "You must know everybody in the country!" he said,
+feeling his way.
+
+"None better!" said Tom Lillywhite, bridling with pride.
+
+"Are there many white men at the Crossing?" asked Garth.
+
+"Quite a crowd," said the old man; "eight or nine at the least. There's
+the two traders, and Mert Haywood the farmer, and old Turner the J. P.,
+and the priest, and the English missionary, and the school-master;
+that's seven. Then there's old man Mackensie but you wouldn't hardly
+call him a white man--smoked too deep, and squaw-ridden."
+
+"Is that all?" said Garth, disappointed of his quest.
+
+"Well, there's a sort of another. He doesn't regularly belong to the
+Crossing but he comes into the store for his goods once or twict a year.
+I forgot him--most everybody's forgot him now. It's Bert Mabyn."
+
+Garth and Natalie pricked up their ears; and their hearts began to beat.
+
+"I got good cause to know Bert Mabyn, too," continued old Tom innocently;
+while the other two listened still as mice, and apprehensive of
+disclosures to be made. "But that's all past. I don't bear him no ill-will
+now. He's a cur'us chap, a little teched I guess; but as pleasant a spoken
+and amoosin' a feller as another feller could want to have with him on the
+road! Want to hear about him?"
+
+Garth looked at Natalie dubiously.
+
+"Yes," she said boldly.
+
+"Well, it was three years ago," began Tom Lillywhite, with the zest of
+the true story-teller. "The Gov'ment sent four surveyin' parties in; and
+I had more'n I could do freightin' from the Settlement to the different
+camps. It was rough haulin', you understand, over the lines they cut
+through the bush, straight as a string over muskeg and coulée. You
+couldn't load over twenty hundredweight, and sometimes you had to dump
+half of that, and go back for it. But right good pay, Gov'ment pay is.
+
+"I needed another team bad, and I see a good chance to get one on credit
+from Dick Staley, with the wagon and all; but I couldn't get no white
+men to drive it for me. A breed, you understand, soon kills your horses
+on you!
+
+"Well, it might be I was settin' outside the French outfit, talkin' it
+over," he went on tranquilly, little suspecting with what meaning his
+story was charged for the two strangers; "when along comes a feller and
+asts for me. Say, he was a sight! He was wearin' black clothes, though
+it were a workin'-day; and all muddied and tore, showin' the skin under;
+and his coat was pinned acrost the neck, with a safety-pin 'cause he
+hadn't no shirt. He had a Sunday hat on too--all busted. At the best
+he weren't no beauty; his teeth was out."
+
+Natalie shuddered.
+
+Garth, suffering for her, could not bear to meet her eyes. "Perhaps
+you'd rather hear another story," he suggested.
+
+She braced herself. "No! Go on!" she said.
+
+"Soon as I see him, I knew who he was," continued old Tom; "for I hear
+the fellers talk about a white man that took passage up from the Landing
+on Phillippe's boat. He let them pull him all the way; and when they got
+to Grier's point, he hadn't no money. They took it out of his skin; and
+say, when a white man is beat by a breed it's good-day to him up here!
+In a hundred years he couldn't live it down.
+
+"'Do you want to hire a man?' says he mumbling-like; he was too far down
+to meet your eye.
+
+"'Hum!' says I thoughtful, 'I want a _man_,' I says.
+
+"You should have heard the fellers laugh at that! They still talk about
+it! 'Tom Lillywhite, he wants a man', they say. It's quite a word in the
+country. 'Tom Lillywhite wants a _man_!'"
+
+The old freighter went off into an interminable chuckling over the
+antique jest.
+
+It was inexpressibly painful to Natalie to have Garth there, a witness
+to her humiliation; but she would not stop the story-teller, nor let
+Garth stop him.
+
+"However, thinks I, you can sometimes make a man out of unpromisin'
+mater'al," he resumed. "And in the end I took him for his grub. That was
+Bert Mabyn. For three months I didn't regret it; he was used to horses,
+and was first-rate company on the trail. I didn't give him no money--said
+he didn't want none--but I fed him up good, and he soon got fat and sassy.
+I give him other things too. I couldn't stand for the poor wretch a
+shiverin' by my fire in his buttoned-up coat, so I give him blankets;
+and afterward an outfit of clothes.
+
+"What do you think was the first thing he ever ast me for?--a razor
+and a glass! And every day after that he used to shave hisself--every
+day mind you, if we was in the thickest part of the bush! And forever
+trimmin' of his nails, and polishin' 'em to make 'em shine! Wasn't
+that remarkable?
+
+"He was a great talker. Nights around the fire he used to tell me all
+about himself. Seems he comes of real high-toned folks outside; but went
+to the bad young. Said he come West three years before that again, full
+of good resolutions, which lasted just so long as his money. Since then
+he'd been a grub-rider 'round the ranches, and dish-washer in hotels,
+and, 'scusin' your presence, Miss, worse than that--but he hadn't no
+shame about it!
+
+"I liked the feller. He wasn't no good, but he had that persuasive way
+with him! And he knew so much more than me! You'd think a man 'ud feel
+shame to tell such stories on himself; but no! he'd make out as you
+ought to like him for bein' such a good-for-nothing waster; and by Gum!
+in the end you did! Never see such a feller!
+
+"Well, all summer we travelled, me and him; him always behind me on the
+trail; and I hadn't any fault to find. But come September I had a rush
+lot up to Whitefish Lake; and at the same time there was some stuff
+wanted in a hurry in Pentland's camp over on the Great Smoky. So for the
+first time we divided. I sent him to Pentland's over this very trail!
+
+"I got back long before he did. After a while word come from Pentland,
+where in thunder were the goods? It was after the first snow before
+Mabyn come back. He was a wreck and the horses were just alive, and no
+more. He told a story how his wagon capsized in the river, and he lost
+everything; but the whiskey gave the lie to that. By and by we found
+he'd buried a keg of it, outside the Settlement. In the Spring when it
+was too late to do anything, it all come out through a breed. Seems away
+up by Fort St. Pierre, he met one of them crooked traders, that
+sometimes sneaks acrost the mountains; and he sold him the stuff for a
+keg of rot-gut. When I hear that I was thankful he brought back the
+horses at all. The business near busted me; for I had to make good three
+hundred worth of groceries to Pentland; and sacrificed the second team,
+'count of the shape they were in. That was what Bert Mabyn cost _me_!"
+
+"Didn't you have him arrested?" asked Garth indignantly.
+
+Tom shrugged. "What were the use of that? The inspector was after me to
+prosecute; but it was too late to get my money back, and put flesh on
+the horses--besides, I was too busy. Of course, it weren't just the same
+as robbin' me in cold blood," he added in the tone of one who must be
+fair; "for it were the whiskey, you see."
+
+Natalie kept her face averted from the old man. "And what has become of
+this man since?" she asked, steadily controlling her voice.
+
+"Oh, he hung around the Settlement, sponging on one and another till he
+were kicked out; then he come down to the breeds. It was a great honour
+for them to have a white man of any kind runnin' after them, you see, so
+they put up with him. Then he drifted West, up Ostachegan way; and
+lately, I understand, he's taken up a deserted shack he found on
+Clearwater Lake, away up on the bench there, northwest of the Spirit.
+There they tell me he lives all alone; but no one's seen him in a dog's
+age."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Garth and Natalie avoided everything beyond the merest commonplaces to
+each other until they were alone; and even after Tom Lillywhite, bidding
+them farewell, had driven off, chirping to his horses, it was a long
+time before either had the courage to make a move toward overcoming the
+ghastly constraint his story had caused between them.
+
+"Haven't we heard enough?" said Garth quietly at last. "Need you go any
+further?"
+
+Natalie in the interim had had time to pass her emotional crisis. She
+was very pale, and her eyes were big; but she was now calmer than he. "I
+have heard enough, surely," she said; "but after coming all this way it
+would seem cowardly, wouldn't it, to be satisfied with hearsay
+evidence?--and there is still my promise to his mother."
+
+Her tone impressed Garth with the utter hopelessness of trying to
+dissuade her. "But how can I let you expose yourself to--to what we may
+find!" he groaned.
+
+"I am not a child," said Natalie quietly. "And I shall not quail at the
+mere sight of ugliness." She turned away from him. "Besides," she added
+in a lower tone, "you know the worst now; and that was the hardest thing
+to bear--your hearing it I mean. No," she went on, facing him again,
+wistfully and valorously; "it promises to be _very_ ugly, but then I
+undertook it, you see. I am going on."
+
+They could not bear to meet each other's eyes; and miserably turning
+their backs, affected to busy themselves with small tasks. Natalie,
+quivering with the shame of the lash all unwittingly applied by old Tom,
+longed with an inexpressible longing to have Garth with a hint or a look
+assure her that he loved her, and so, thrusting the wretch Mabyn out of
+their charmed circle, reinstate her in her self-respect. But poor Garth
+in his clumsy, masculine delicacy thought that to obtrude himself at
+such a moment would only hurt her more. He kept silent, and he averted
+his eyes, and Natalie, misunderstanding, tasted the very dregs of
+shame.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE NEWLY-MARRIED PAIR
+
+
+Out on the bosom of that infinite prairie, which rolls its unmeasured
+miles north and west of the Spirit River, a last place of mystery and
+dreams, still unharnessed by the geographers, and reluctantly written
+down "unexplored" on their maps, two human figures were riding slowly,
+with their horses' heads turned away from the last habitations of men.
+The prairie undulated about them like a sea congealed in motion--but
+seemingly vaster than the sea; for at sea the horizon is ever near at
+hand; while here the very unevenness of the ground marked, and fixed,
+and opened up the awful distances. The grass was short, rich and browned
+by the summer sun; and it mantled the distant rounds and hollows with
+the changing lights of beaver fur. The only breaks in its expanse were
+here and there, springing in the sheltered hollows, coppices or bluffs
+of slender poplar saplings, with crowding stems, as close and even as
+hair. The leaves were yellowed by the first frosts.
+
+The man rode ahead, slouching on the back of his wretched cayuse, with
+eyes blank alike of inward thought or outward observation. He was not
+yet forty years old, but bore the cast of premature decay, more aged
+than age. What showed of his hair beneath his hat was sparse and faded;
+and of his visible teeth he had no more than a perishing stump or two
+left in his jaws. His discontented, satiated, exhausted mien, had a
+strange look there in the fresh and potent wilderness.
+
+The girl who followed with a travoise dragging at her pony's heels, was,
+on the other hand, in harmony with the land. Of the extremes to which the
+breeds run in looks, she was of the rare beauties of that strange race.
+Her features were moulded in a delicate, definite harmony that would have
+marked her out in any assemblage of beauty; and the spirit of beauty
+was there too. There were actually pride and dignity under the arched
+brows--so capricious is Nature in shaping her wilder daughters--and in the
+deep soft eyes brooded, even when she was happiest, a heart-disquieting
+quality of wistfulness. She was happy now; and ever and anon she raised
+her eyes to the slouching back of the man riding ahead with a look of
+passionate abandon in which there was nothing civilized at all. She was
+slenderer than the run of brown maidens, and her clumsy print dress could
+not hide the girlish, perfect contour of her shoulders. In her dusky
+cheeks there glowed a tinge of deep rose; testimony to the lingering
+influence of the white blood in her veins.
+
+Topping a rise, the man paused for her to overtake him.
+
+"Here we are, Rina," he said indifferently. His voice was oddly cracked.
+His manner toward her expressed a good-humoured tolerance. His eyes
+approved her casually; inner tenderness there was none.
+
+The girl apparently was sensible of no lack--but the breeds do not bring
+up their daughters to expect tenderness. Her eyes sparkled. "How pretty
+it is, 'Erbe't!" she breathed. "Ver' moch good land!" She spoke the
+pretty, clipped English of the convent school.
+
+At their feet lay a shallow valley, hidden close until the very moment
+of stumbling upon it. In it was a sparkling slough but large enough to
+be dignified with the name of lake. It was something the shape of a
+gourd, with a long end that curved out of sight below, a very girdle of
+blue velvet binding the waists of the brown hills. At their left the
+shores of the wider part of the lake, the bulb of the gourd, were, in
+unexpected contrast to the bareness of the uplands, heavily wooded with
+great cottonwood trees and spruce. A grassy islet ringed with willows
+seemed to be moored here like the barge of some woodland princess. Away
+beyond, elevated on a grassy terrace at the head of the lake, and
+overlooking its whole expanse, stood a tiny weather-beaten shack,
+startlingly conspicuous in that great expanse of untouched nature.
+Sheltered by the hills from the howling blasts of the prairie above; and
+with wood, water and unlimited game at its door, it was a wholly
+desirable situation for a Northern dwelling--but it was seventy-five
+miles off the trail.
+
+The girl brought her pony alongside Mabyn's; and slipped her hand into
+his. "It is jus' right!" she whispered. "We will be ver' happy,
+'Erbe't!"
+
+He let her hand fall carelessly. "It's damn lonesome!" he grumbled.
+
+All the shy boldness of an enamoured girl peeped out of Rina's eyes, as
+she whispered: "I'm glad it's lonesome! I don' want nobody to come--but
+you!"
+
+Mabyn was unimpressed. He struck the ribs of his tired pony with his
+heels. "Come on," he said; and led the way down the incline.
+
+Later, reaching the shack, on the threshold Rina spread out her arms
+with an unconscious gesture. "This is my home!" she cried. "I will jus'
+love it!"
+
+Mabyn looking around at the gaping walls, the empty panes and the foul
+litter, laughed jeeringly at her simplicity.
+
+The girl was too happy to feel the sting. "I will fix it!" she said
+stoutly. "I will mak' it like an outside house. It will be as nice than
+the priest's parlour in the Settlement!" She clasped her hands against
+her breast in the intensity of her eagerness. "Jus' you wait, 'Erbe't!
+Some day I will have white curtains in the window! and a piece of carpet
+on the floor! and a holy picture on the wall! Oh! I will work so hard!"
+
+"Get about the supper, Rina," said Mabyn shortly.
+
+She prepared the meal at the rough mud fireplace built across the corner
+of the shack, for they had no stove; and they ate squatting on the floor
+in the breed fashion, for neither was there a table. Afterward Mabyn
+dragged the bench--a relic of the former tenant, and sole article of
+furniture they possessed--outside the door; and sat upon it, smoking,
+yawning, looking across the lake with lack-lustre eyes.
+
+Rina having redd up the shack, came to the doorway, where she stood
+looking at him wistfully. Finally she hovered toward him and retreated;
+and her hands stole to her breast. She was longing mightily to sit
+beside him; but she did not dare. In a breed's wife it would have been
+highly presumptuous, and would very likely have been rewarded with a
+blow; but Rina had a dim notion that a white man's wife had the right to
+sit beside him--still she was afraid. In the end her desire overcame her
+fears; drifting hither and thither toward the bench like a frond of
+thistledown, she finally alighted on the edge, and her cheek dropped on
+his shoulder. The act must have been subtly suggested by the tincture of
+white blood in her veins, for it is not a redskin attitude. The man
+neither repulsed nor welcomed her.
+
+"'Erbe't," she whispered, "my head is so full of things I am near crazy
+wit' thoughts! And my tongue is in a snare; I cannot speak at all!"
+
+Mabyn's only comment was a sort of grunt, which meant anything--or
+nothing.
+
+Rina was encouraged to creep a little closer. "Oh, 'Erbe't, I love you!"
+she whispered. "I am loving you every minute! I so glad you marry me,
+'Erbe't!"
+
+The man took his pipe out of his mouth, and uttered his brief, jeering
+cackle of laughter. "That wasn't altogether a matter of choice, my
+girl," he said. "It was a little preliminary insisted on by your father
+and mother."
+
+Rina hardly took the sense of this. "But you do love me, 'Erbe't? jus' a
+little?" she pleaded.
+
+"You're all right, Rina," he said patronizingly. "I never was one to
+make much of a fuss about a woman."
+
+Little by little gathering courage, she began to pour out her soul for
+the man she loved. "I never love any man but you, 'Erbe't," so ran the
+naïve confession; "the breed boys, they always come aroun' and show off.
+I not lak them. They foolish and dirty; they eat same lak cocouche; and
+they know not'ing; but they think themself so fine. They mak' me sick!
+My mot'er say to me; 'You eighteen year old, Rina; w'en you go to
+marry?' I say to my mot'er, 'I never marry a pig-man; I want to stay to
+you.'"
+
+Her voice changed, borrowing the soft, passionate music of the
+nightingale she had never heard. "Then bam-bye w'en the spring come, an'
+we pitch by Ostachegan creek, an' the crocus flowers are coming up on
+Sah-ko-da-tah prairie so many as stars in the sky--then you come by our
+camp, 'Erbe't; and you so poor an' sick I feel ver' bad for you! An' you
+talk so pretty, and know so much, my heart him fly straight out of my
+breast like a bird, 'Erbe't; an' perch on your shoulder; an' him go
+everywhere you go; an' I got no heart any more. I empty lak a nest in
+the snow-time!
+
+"So you stay to us," she went on, "and I mad to see all the men mock at
+you, an' treat you bad, an' mak' you eat after all have finished, and
+mak' you lie outside the fire. They t'ink themself better than a white
+man, hey! All the time you ask me to come away from the camp with you;
+an' you t'ink I don' want to come, but you don' know. Many, many nights
+I not sleep, 'Erbe't. I want so bad to come to the ot'er side of the
+tepee where you are, but I hold to my mot'er's blanket!"
+
+The man looked up. "Hm! You did, eh?" he exclaimed. "If I had known!"
+
+"But I t'ink I mos' not let you see I love you. So I mak' show I don'
+care at all. An' it hurt me ver' moch in my empty breast, 'Erbe't. But
+why I do it?--I want you so to marry me! an' bam-bye you marry me; an' I
+so scare and happy lak I was lose my head! Four days I married now! You
+not mad at me, 'Erbe't, 'cause I mak' you marry me?"
+
+He shrugged. "What's the diff?" he said carelessly.
+
+Rina dared to let her arm creep around his shoulders. "But bam-bye you
+ver' glad you marry me," she whispered. "For I mak' me ver' nice! I
+white woman now. I go no more to the breeds. I spik only Engliss now; we
+will sit in chairs and eat pretty with knives and forks; and always say
+good morning and good night, lak white people. 'Erbe't, you will teach
+me all the ways of white people, lak they do outside? I want so bad to
+be ver' nice, jus' lak white woman!"
+
+"Sure!" said Mabyn vaguely.
+
+Rina was silent for a while. "'Erbe't," she said at last, "you never
+tell me about your folks; about your house where you live outside.
+Please tell me."
+
+He muttered, and writhed uncomfortably on the bench. "What's the use of
+bringing that up?" he said at last. "You wouldn't understand if I tried
+to tell you."
+
+"Loving makes me onderstan' moch," she softly pleaded.
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Have you any sisters outside, 'Erbe't?" she gently persisted.
+
+"No," he said.
+
+"Your mot'er, she is not dead?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She mos' be ver' nice, I think."
+
+"She's a lady!" he blurted out.
+
+Rina nodded wisely. "I know what that is," she said. "A lady is a ver'
+nice woman." Her voice dropped very low. "'Erbe't," she whispered, with
+infinite, passionate desire in her voice--stroking his cheek, "will you
+teach me to be a lady?"
+
+He laughed. "You 'tend to your work about the place," he said, "and
+don't bother your head over that."
+
+Tears slowly welled up in Rina's eyes, and stole one after another down
+her cheeks. "I do so ver' moch want to be a lady," she whispered, more
+to herself than to him. He did not know she wept, she was so still.
+
+By and by she raised her head, and shook the tears away. "To-morrow, I
+will begin to fix things nice for you, 'Erbe't," she said with renewed,
+soft tenderness.
+
+He vented his hopeless, jeering chuckle. "Nice!" he echoed. "My God,
+Rina! What are you going to begin on?"
+
+"I show you!" she said eagerly. "I have a whole tanned buckskin my
+father give to me when I go 'way; and my mot'er, she give silk, all
+colours. I make seven, eight, maybe ten pairs of glove, with cuffs; and
+work them with silk flowers! No woman can work so good with silk than
+me! I work all the time there is light; and when all are done I get
+forty dollar in trade at the store! And I buy cartridges and traps and
+grub, and another skin to work. Not any more will you be poor, 'Erbe't!"
+
+"Lord! How will we ever drag out the winter in this God-forsaken spot!"
+he grumbled--unconsciously shifting the initiative to her shoulders.
+
+Her arm tightened about him. "We will do fine!" she said eagerly. "We
+will mak' moch money. There is no plentier place for fur; and we will
+have it all! Me, I can set traps and snares as good as Michel Whitebear.
+Maybe I will get a silver fox, or a black one. I know the fox! In the
+spring we will have plenty good credit at the store. We can travel to
+the Settlement then, and you will not be lonesome. There are many white
+men. We could stay in the Settlement all summer; and I would cook meals
+for the freighters and the travellers and mak' more money. I am a good
+worker, 'Erbe't. Everybody say so!"
+
+Mabyn partly roused himself. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "Under
+cover of the restaurant, it would be dead easy to run in a little
+whiskey over the Berry Mountain trail, and make a pot of money. Fifty
+cents a drink, by Gad!"
+
+Rina drew away from him. "I will not help you do that, 'Erbe't," she
+said quietly.
+
+"You'll do what I tell you to do," he said coolly.
+
+Rina remained silent. Her breast heaved and trembled with terror at her
+own temerity in defying her husband--but there were both firmness and
+reproach in her attitude. It was more than the weak Mabyn could bear for
+long in silence.
+
+"Good God!" he burst out. "Have I married a breed to tell me what I
+ought to do, and ought not to do? Better learn once for all, my girl,
+that I'm the head of this outfit, and I mean to do whatever I damned
+please!"
+
+Rina sat gripping her hands together in her lap to control their
+trembling. Her head was bowed. "I am only a breed girl," she said. "You
+are my 'osban', and you can beat me, and you can kill me, but I would
+not cry out, or think bad of you. But you cannot mak' me help you to
+mak' a pig of you again. I will mak' you to have good credit, an' to be
+a rich and strong man, an' you can go back and spit on the poor breeds
+that mock you before. I will not help you trade in whiskey; whiskey mak'
+you poor, an' sick, an' crazy!"
+
+Mabyn got up. "God! Women are all alike, white or brown!" he muttered
+indifferently. "Come on in."
+
+But he had yielded the point. The regeneration of Herbert Mabyn had been
+undertaken.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE LAST STAGE
+
+
+The hours of the afternoon that followed their encounter with
+Tom Lillywhite were long and heavy ones for Natalie and Garth. A
+haggard misunderstanding rode between them on the trail. Denied the
+all-explaining, all-healing touch of hands--or lips, the unreasonable
+despair of lovers seized on each; and the sunny way was plunged in murk.
+They rode, and camped, and ate their supper in silence; and in silence
+they turned in for the night. But there was little sleep for either; they
+lay apart, each nursing a burden of unhappiness; unable to say now what
+it was all about, only dreadfully conscious that they were divided.
+
+As soon as it was light enough to see, a pale and heavy-lidded Natalie
+crept noiselessly out of her tent. In front of the door she saw Garth
+on his knees preparing to build a fire; but the hand that held the
+hatchet-helve had dropped nervelessly to the ground; and his eyes, fixed
+and staring in the torpor of miserableness, had forgotten what he had
+set out to do. At the sight, a rapturous peace came back to Natalie's
+harried soul; for, she thought, if he were so unhappy as that, he must
+love her in spite of all. And Garth, looking up, saw the tenderness
+break in her weary face, and he understood it all too. The forest sprang
+into leaf again for them; and presently the sun came gaily up. They
+became as wildly and unreasonably happy as they had just been miserable;
+and not a word was exchanged either way. It was not necessary. That they
+did not fling themselves into each other's arms at that moment, must
+surely be written down to their credit somewhere.
+
+They made but a leisurely progress this day and the next. The labour of
+the journey was greater than at any time hitherto, for in addition to
+the ordinary routine of making and breaking camp twice a day, Garth had
+now the four horses to look after. Catching them was a task of uncertain
+duration, even though they were turned out hobbled; in particular, the
+exasperating Timoosis developed the proficiency of a very circus horse,
+in walking on his hind legs. And once caught, there was all the business
+of saddling, packing and drawing the hitch.
+
+Besides, there was that in both their hearts which delayed them even
+more. No ardently desired goal awaited them at the end of this journey;
+on the contrary they dreaded what they were to find. The last few miles
+of the way together, before the inevitable came between them, was
+therefore very dear; and it became ever easier to say "Let's camp!" and
+harder to say "Let's move!"
+
+Their boisterous jollity on the trail gave place to much quiet
+happiness; and there was ceaseless friendly contention, where Garth's
+every thought was for Natalie; and hers for him. Each was on his mettle
+to be worthy of the other's best. Above all they avoided the insidious
+danger of contact; but inevitably sometimes in the business of the camp,
+their hands did meet--and each to himself stored up and told over the
+events like secret treasures. In every labour Natalie insisted on taking
+her share like a man; and Garth never ceasing to upbraid her, yet loved
+her for it prodigiously.
+
+Day by day, now, the leaves of the more exposed trees were yellowing;
+and on the second night of their journey across the portage, the first
+heavy frost of the season descended. Garth, under his sail-cloth at the
+door of the tent, awoke covered with rime.
+
+Toward the end of the third day they had their never-to-be-forgotten
+first glimpse of the mighty Spirit, the dream river of the North, whose
+name evokes the thought of a garden in a bleak land. The unvarying
+flatness of the portage with its standing pools, and the interminable
+lofty wood that had hemmed them in for three days, had given them the
+sense of travelling on the bottom of the world, and that somewhere ahead
+must be a hill to climb. What then was their astonishment this
+afternoon, when, without warning they emerged from among the trees on
+an abrupt grassy terrace, and beheld the great river lying nearly a
+thousand feet _below_.
+
+It was a view inimitably gorgeous and sublime. Coming so suddenly upon
+it they caught their breaths and gazed in silence; for there was nothing
+fitting to say. The high point on which they stood overlooked a deep and
+narrow gorge at their left, through which a little river fell to the
+great stream; and across this they could look up the vast trough for
+miles. In the distance the river seemed to rise, until one would say it
+issued molten from the low-hung sun itself.
+
+It had an individual and peculiar look, like no watercourse they had
+seen. Its course drew a sharp line between the wooded country and the
+prairie. Like a figure dressed in motley, the steep southern bank was
+everywhere dark and wooded, while the other side, sweeping up in
+countless fantastic knolls and terraces, was bare, except for the brown
+grass, and patches of scrub-like hair in the hollows. Far back from the
+opposite rim of the vast trough swept the unmeasured prairie, as flat,
+in the whole prospect, as the country they had lately traversed.
+
+It was the wealth of colour that most of all bewitched their eyes. The
+river itself was of an odd, insistent green--emerald tinged with milk;
+the islands on its bosom hung out the rich bottle-green of spruce; the
+grass on the north bank was beaver-brown; the wild-rose scrub glowed
+blood-crimson in the hollows; and the aspen bluffs, touched with frost,
+were as yellow as saffron. The wild and beautiful panorama was made
+complete in their eyes by a great golden eagle perched on the brink of
+the immediate foreground and, like themselves, gazing over. Though but a
+hundred yards or so distant, he contemptuously disregarded their
+arrival. When Garth, full of curiosity, came closer, he spread his vast
+wings and drifted indifferently out into space.
+
+For a long time they gazed at the scene without speaking. It was Natalie
+who finally expressed their common thought.
+
+"Wouldn't it be sweet," she said wistfully, "if our journey had no other
+object but to see this! With what satisfied hearts we could now turn
+back!"
+
+Skirting the edge of the steep, presently the Settlement came into view
+far below, a hut or two along the river, hugging the base of the cliffs.
+The trail zigzagged gradually down, frequently doubling on itself; and
+whereas the eagle might have descended in a minute, it promised to be
+more like half an hour for them.
+
+Garth, following his previous policy, did not intend to expose Natalie
+to the stares of the Settlement, until he had at least reconnoitred.
+Before coming on the houses, therefore, he led his little caravan off
+through the bush to the left; and descended to the shore of the smaller
+stream they had seen from above. Here, in a private glade beside the
+noisy brown water, they pitched their camp; and Garth, leaving Natalie
+armed against all eventualities, proceeded into the Settlement.
+
+His inevitable first question at the store elicited the information that
+the Bishop had gone up the river to Binchinnin, Ostachegan Creek and Fort
+St. Pierre. Next, the name of Herbert Mabyn called forth contemptuous
+shrugs. None of the men could give certain information of his whereabouts,
+though Clearwater Lake was mentioned again. He had not been in to the post
+for four months; and there was a handful of letters waiting for him.
+Garth was referred to the breeds across the river for better news. It was
+clearly intimated that all self-respecting white men had cast Mabyn off.
+
+Inquiring the means of crossing the river, the ferry was pointed out
+to Garth, a barge propelled with sweeps. It must be tracked up-stream
+for a quarter of a mile before starting across, to allow for the current,
+he was told. The trader offered to help him when he was ready. Garth
+thanking him, privately resolved to cross before the Settlement was
+astir next morning. He saw that his own reticence in answering questions
+inspired the three simultaneously with the idea that he was a detective
+from outside, in pursuit of Herbert Mabyn for some early sin; and he let
+it go at that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Garth roused Natalie long before dawn; and they crossed the river by the
+first greenish light of the East. Garth handled one sweep, Natalie the
+other; and their labour was great. The incorrigible Timoosis, who never
+neglected an opportunity to make trouble, balked furiously at the ferry;
+and, finally driven on board and tied, managed to work the other horses
+up to a high state of excitement during the passage.
+
+Finally, when they had almost made the other shore, he succeeded in
+breaking his halter; and, leaping over the stern, perversely struck
+out for the shore they had left. Cy and Caspar, horses of no character,
+blindly leaped after him. For a moment a dire disaster threatened; for
+Timoosis, borne down by the weight of his pack, could scarcely keep his
+head above water; and they thought they had lost both their horse and
+their camp equipment. But the self-contained Emmy, who had not budged
+during all the excitement, merely turned her head, and sent an imperious
+whinny in the direction of her offspring; whereupon Timoosis, with true
+coltish inconsistency, turned about, and came meekly swimming after
+the barge, followed by the other two. Since the shore was not above
+twenty-five yards off he managed to win it pack and all, and staggered
+up on the beach, chilled, exhausted, and much chastened in mind.
+Warned by previous experiences, they never trusted him with anything
+perishable, so the damage to his pack was slight.
+
+After an hour's travelling, they halted by the trail at sunrise to eat,
+and to dry out what had been wet. This part of the trail traversed the
+heavily wooded bottom-lands, before starting to climb the grassy steeps
+of the further bank. As they sat on a log discussing their bread and
+cocoa, a rollicking song came, as a sound comes fluctuating through the
+woods, now from this side, now from that, and curiously deadened. It
+finally resolved itself into the air of _Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay_ with words
+in Cree. While it still seemed some distance away, suddenly the singer
+rode upon them; and reining up his horse, called the song into his
+surprised throat.
+
+He was the handsomest native they had met, a young fellow of twenty-odd,
+lean and broad-shouldered, with flashing black eyes and high-bridged
+nose. His stiff-brimmed "Stetson" was tilted at a dashing angle; he had
+a scarlet silk handkerchief about his throat; and he sat his horse like
+a young prince of the woods. Whether pure redskin or breed it was
+impossible for them to tell; certainly there was no visible evidence of
+a white admixture; but in spite of his strange and savage air, there was
+something instantly likeable about the young man--according to Natalie
+he was the first native they had met who seemed human. He rode a fine
+black horse as bravely accoutred as would become the captain of a
+round-up.
+
+He seemed disposed to be friendly; and Garth invited him to share their
+meal. As politeness demanded, he broke a small piece of bread, and drank
+some cocoa, which was plainly not at all to his taste. When he sat down
+he had the grace to take off his hat, something else they had not seen
+before in a native.
+
+His name, he volunteered, was Gene Lafabe. Since his English was about
+on a par with Garth's Cree, communication was difficult. In his
+simplicity, the young man was continually forgetting they could not
+understand his language; and when Garth shook his head, only shouted the
+louder.
+
+"You know Herbert Mabyn?" Garth asked.
+
+Gene vigorously nodded his head, adding a stream of information, which,
+had they only understood, would have materially altered their subsequent
+line of action.
+
+Garth shook his head hopelessly. "Where is he?" he asked.
+
+Gene pointed north. "Clearwater Lake," he said; and in the twinkling of
+an eye, counted seventy-five with his ten fingers.
+
+"Where is the trail?" Garth asked.
+
+Gene shrugged. "Nomoya!" he said. "No trail!"
+
+Garth had an inspiration. "Can you take us there?" he asked.
+
+Considerable patience and good-humour were called for from both sides,
+in the arduous course of arriving at an understanding; but finally a
+bargain was struck. Gene, in addition to the credentials of his person,
+bore a highly satisfactory letter of recommendation from the company
+trader at the Crossing. Whatever his errand in the first place may have
+been, he never gave it another thought; and in half an hour blithely
+turned his horse's head, and took the lead on the trail.
+
+Gene looked at every considerable tree, every little gulley, and every
+rise in the ground with the eye of an old friend. In a mile or so, at a
+place marked in no way that Garth could see, he abruptly turned out of
+the trail; and led them with an air of certainty through the apparently
+trackless woods. The trees ended at the steep rise that marked the
+bottom of the northern bank; and thereafter they climbed the grass.
+
+By a devious route known to himself Gene led them through many little
+grassy ravines, and over ridges, gradually upward. There was no sense or
+order in the arrangement of the knolls and terraces and spurs of
+turf--the ground seemed to be pushed up anyhow, like bubbles on the
+surface of yeasty dough. For a while they would be swallowed in a
+cup-like hollow; then, surmounting a ridge, they would have a brief
+glimpse of the distant river behind. It was only when they reached the
+top that, looking back over the turbulent rounded masses of earth, they
+were able to comprehend the great height to which they had climbed.
+
+Reaching level ground, Gene with a shout set off at a lope in a bee line
+across the prairie; and Garth bringing up the packhorses in the rear,
+caused the sedate Emmy to put her best foot foremost. Meanwhile, with
+pocket-compass and memorandum book, he made notes of the route they
+took; and when opportunity offered tied a strip of white cotton to a
+bush. It was his intention to dismiss Gene before coming to Mabyn's hut;
+and he wished to be sure of the way back. The guide, comprehending what
+he was doing, gave him to understand that Emmy could bring them back
+over their own tracks--unless snow should fall. But Garth was neglecting
+no precautions.
+
+Garth and Natalie deplored to each other the inadequacy of their means
+of communication with their guide. The bright-eyed Gene had a hundred
+things to point out to them on the prairie, most of which they could
+only guess at. For one thing, he made them understand he was following
+in the tracks of two cayuses that had gone that way three days before.
+One was lame, he said, and the other dragged a travoise. All this he
+learned from certain marks in the grass, which the other two could not
+see at all. In all ways Gene proved himself a very pearl among guides.
+Garth, merely from watching him, learned as much trail-craft these two
+days as he had picked up during the weeks preceding; and Natalie
+confessed that his cooking put her utterly to shame.
+
+Such was the energy of their pace that they reached the last waterhole
+before coming to Clearwater Lake early next afternoon. Here Garth
+decided to camp; for he had determined with Natalie to time their
+arrival at Mabyn's hut for the morning; so that after the briefest stay,
+they could immediately start back. Clearwater Lake was only three miles
+distant; and Gene was able to point out a poplar bluff marking the rise
+behind which it lay.
+
+Neither Garth nor Natalie obtained much sleep that night; only Gene,
+wrapped in his rabbit-skin robe beyond the fire, slept the sleep of the
+savage or the child. They were all astir at dawn; and after eating, they
+parted; Gene careering south without a care on his mind; while Garth and
+Natalie turned their apprehensive faces toward the lake. What they were
+to find there they did not know; but intuition warned them it would be
+sufficiently painful.
+
+When they reached the brow of the last hill, and the lake stretched
+vividly below them, they had no eyes for the loveliness of the prospect.
+The little hut at the head of the water far to the left was the first
+thing they saw; and it was charged with a significance that obliterated
+everything else. Facing the early sunlight it stood revealed with
+startling distinctness; and even at the distance had a ghastly look;
+gray, artificial and decayed in the midst of the mellow autumn
+loveliness.
+
+"I will picket the packhorses down at the edge of the water," Garth
+said; "and we'll ride on without them. It will provide us with an
+obvious excuse to return immediately."
+
+Natalie scarcely heard. Her eyes were fixed on the distant shack. "What
+do you suppose it hides from us?" she whispered. "Death, misery, or
+disgrace?"
+
+Garth could scarcely forbear groaning in the pain of his solicitude for
+her. "Oh, Natalie!" he said hoarsely, "I haven't done right to expose
+you to this!"
+
+"I made you!" she said quickly. "Besides, it's not a question of right
+or wrong. As you said we would, we have only done the best we could,
+under the circumstances that arose."
+
+"At least let me ride on ahead a little," he begged. "You stay with the
+outfit. I will hurry back."
+
+She shook her head. "I couldn't stand the suspense," she said simply.
+"Do not be afraid on my account," she added; "merely looking with my
+outward eyes at something that always faces me within won't hurt me.
+Come on!"
+
+But presently she reined up her pony again, and turning a pair of
+brimming eyes on him, extended her hand. "Garth!" she murmured, "I--I
+would like to thank you--but I can't!"
+
+"Oh, don't!" he begged.
+
+"Whatever we find down there," she said wistfully, "it can't make any
+difference, can it? We will still be the same partners of the trail?"
+
+Garth went pale to his lips--but he contrived to smile at her. He took
+her hand and looked at her full. "Until death," he said quietly.
+
+She drew her hand away, with a deep breath. "Come on," she said. "We've
+got to face it!"
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE MEETING
+
+
+The spot of the lake shore where Garth picketed the two horses was
+something under two miles from Mabyn's hut. The way led among the trees
+which filled this part of the valley of the lake; and underfoot they
+could distinguish traces of an old trail. The growth ended abruptly at
+the edge of a small, dry watercourse, which came down to the lake; and
+issuing into the open here, the riders beheld the dreaded goal of their
+long journey immediately before them.
+
+As they crossed the stones, they were ready to fancy they could hear,
+each the beating of the other's heart; and the scene before them was
+bitten into their brains, to endure hideously vivid and minute while
+life endured. The shack presented a three-quarter view, front and side.
+It topped a gentle, uneven acclivity of grass, rising from the
+watercourse at its side; while in front, the ground extended level a
+hundred feet to the edge of a cut-bank. This bank rose out of the lake
+sheer and loamy, to the height of a cottage roof; and over the edge hung
+a tangled fringe of grass-roots.
+
+Desolation was the cry of it all; winters upon winters had bleached the
+logs of the shack silvery like old hair; the chimney had fallen; and all
+four quarters of glass in the single window were out. At one time the
+slope between the hut and the bed of the stream had evidently been a
+theatre of industry; for the ground was pitted and hummocked and rutted;
+but long ago the grass had indifferently muffled it over, like graves in
+an old cemetery. In the centre of this waste stood, the picture of
+dejection, an Indian-bred cayuse, miserable burlesque of the equine
+species, no bigger than a donkey, and incredibly hairy and misshapen.
+His back was galled; and one leg, which he painfully favoured, puffed to
+treble its size at the hock. Even the great cottonwood trees springing
+beyond the hut, with their shattered branches, and blotched and greenish
+trunks, breathed decay. An ancient dugout, lying at the mouth of the
+watercourse, was, like everything else, rotting and seamed.
+
+And on the bench at the door of the hut sat the evil genius of the
+scene; a man with his legs sprawling in front of him, and his head
+fallen over and back against the wall. He made no move at their
+approach; and when they came close, they saw that he slept. Pitilessly
+revealed in the strong sunlight, he made a spectacle at which the most
+indifferent stranger would have shuddered and sickened--and it was
+reserved for the woman who had exalted him in her maiden's heart, to see
+him then. His mouth hung open; he breathed stertorously; and the flies,
+buzzing in and out of the open door beside him, crawled at will over his
+ashen face. That his chin was freshly shaven, and his hair brushed,
+added to the ghastliness. The whole picture was horribly vivid; the
+littlest details of it struck on the retinas of the two observers like
+blows--the oblong patch of sunlight cleaving the gloom of the shack
+inside the door; six muskrat pelts above the man's head, tacked to the
+logs to dry; an old foul pipe with a silver mounting, half fallen from
+his relaxed fingers and spilling ashes on the bench; his old-fashioned
+rifle leaning against the door-frame. Garth could have furnished the
+size, the style and the make of that gun.
+
+Natalie turned a stony face to Garth. "It is he," she whispered.
+
+Garth thought of an old photograph she had shown him of a dark-haired
+youth sitting on a horse, with a charming, imperious grace of body and
+feature, in which there was something godlike and unanswerable; and
+looking at this wreck of a man, toothless, bald and livid, he was struck
+with awe.
+
+"You have seen," he whispered to Natalie. "Let us ride back."
+
+She shook her head. "I must say what I came for," she said.
+
+"Will you dismount?" he asked.
+
+Natalie shuddered. "Never, here!" she whispered.
+
+In a moment she had commanded herself again. "Please speak to him," she
+said.
+
+"Mabyn!" called Garth peremptorily.
+
+The man's lids parted. Natalie was directly in front of him. As his
+sleep-stupefied eyes slowly took her in, he raised himself to an upright
+position, and struck his eyeballs sharply with his knuckles.
+
+Garth instinctively drew away a little.
+
+"A white woman!" muttered the man, lost in amazement.
+
+Natalie, her head slightly averted, sat her horse like a carven woman.
+
+Fear grew apace with wonder in Mabyn's eyes; his breath quickened; he
+ceaselessly passed his hand in front of his face. "Natalie!" he
+muttered, still in the toneless voice of one who sleeps. "Oh, my God!
+It's Natalie!"
+
+Grasping the edge of the bench, he pulled himself to his feet; and took
+a few uncertain steps toward her. He put out his hand fearfully.
+
+Natalie sharply reined back her horse. "Don't touch me!" she said.
+
+It broke the spell that held him--but not wholly. His hands dropped to
+his sides; a saner light appeared in his eyes; and he looked all around,
+as if to convince himself of the realness of his surroundings. On Garth
+his eyes lingered stupidly for a moment; then impatiently returned to
+Natalie.
+
+"If it's you, how did you get here?" he asked quietly enough--still
+bemused.
+
+"I came over the prairie, as every one comes," she said sharply.
+
+Mabyn frowned. "I'm wide awake," he said irritably. "I know where I am.
+I fell asleep on the bench half an hour ago--but," his voice deepened
+and swelled on the note of awe, "_you_, Natalie! You or your wraith!
+I--I can't take it in!" The faded eyes bolted, and swept wearily and
+unseeingly over the lake.
+
+Natalie winced every time he spoke her name. "Try to collect yourself,"
+she said coldly. "There is no doubt of its being I."
+
+"The voice too!" he muttered, struck with the new thought. His eyes
+returned to her. "Natalie--and not changed at all!" he murmured
+dreamily. "But more beautiful!"
+
+"If you please!" said Natalie haughtily.
+
+He still stood looking at her with something the air of a bewildered
+child, but more of the aged lunatic. "The first time I saw her, she was
+on a horse," he said in his dull voice. "But she was better dressed.
+Where did you get those clothes?" he asked suddenly.
+
+Natalie shot an appealing glance at Garth.
+
+He, in his over-mastering disgust of the man, could not put away the
+thought that there was something feigned in this excessive bewilderment.
+"Come to yourself, Mabyn!" he said sharply. "We can't stop here!"
+
+Mabyn darted a startled, spiteful glance at the new speaker, and without
+another word, turned and went back to the bench, where he sat, burying
+his face in his hands. Natalie and Garth looked at each other, scarcely
+knowing how to act. But presently Mabyn lifted his head again; and,
+spying his pipe where it had fallen, picked it up, and attentively
+knocked out what remained of the ashes in the bowl.
+
+Natalie thought she might venture to address him again. "I have
+something important to tell you," she began.
+
+Mabyn darted a queer, furtive look at her; shame, suspicion,
+obsequiousness and a sudden, reborn passion all had a part in it.
+"Won't you shake hands with me?" he asked suddenly.
+
+Natalie drew the long breath that invokes Patience and looked elsewhere.
+
+"You've changed toward me," the man whined.
+
+Indignation suddenly reddened her cheeks, and she levelled her blue eyes
+upon him in a glance that should have struck to his soul.
+
+But it failed to penetrate very far. "I know I've treated you badly,"
+he went on. "I was coming out in the spring, though; just as soon as I
+got things straight. I've worked like a son-of-a-gun too, but luck has
+always been against me." His voice gathered assurance from his own
+excuses.
+
+"Never mind that now," said Natalie. "Please listen to what I have to
+say."
+
+But the man, shrinking from matter hateful to his ears, strove to divert
+her. He struck his forehead with his knuckles, and jumped up. "By Gad!
+What's the matter with me!" he cried. "I never asked you in! It's a
+wretched hole, but such as it is----" He had turned to the door. Sudden
+recollection chopped off the speech midway; and he turned a furtive,
+frightened face over his shoulder to Natalie.
+
+"N-never mind," he gabbled hurriedly. "Don't come in! It's not fit to
+receive you! It's better out here!" Little beads of sweat were springing
+out on his forehead.
+
+His whole bearing had been so wild and stupefied since his waking, that
+they attached small importance to this display of terror. Natalie
+patiently essayed to speak again; but again he interrupted.
+
+His face cleared. "You've left your outfit somewhere back on the trail,"
+he said eagerly. "I'll go back with you; and we can talk things over
+quietly there!" He actually started toward the watercourse, walking with
+jerky, uneven steps.
+
+Natalie made no move to follow. "I will say what I have to say here,"
+she spoke after him.
+
+Mabyn was voluble, scarcely coherent in his incontinent desire to take
+her away from the hut. Natalie waited, letting him talk himself out.
+Finally compelled to give in, he returned with strange, apprehensive
+glances around the hut, and over the summits of the hills behind. Garth
+thought his brain was beginning to be affected by a solitary life.
+
+However, he now listened patiently enough.
+
+"You have not written to your mother or to me in many months," began
+Natalie coldly; "and your letters for three years past have given us no
+information. Your mother's whole thought is of you; and through her
+anxiety and suspense she is worn to a shadow of what she was; the
+doctors tell her she has a mortal disease that must soon prevail."
+
+In spite of herself Natalie's voice softened as she delivered her
+pitiful plea; but it was not from any kindness for him. "She has been
+very kind to me all these years," she went on, "and I, to ease her what
+I could of the torment of her mind during her last days, volunteered to
+go with her to find you. Her age and her infirmities prevented her from
+coming any farther than Prince George. I have been fortunate in finding
+friends who have assisted me the rest of the way. I have come to beg
+you, on behalf of your mother, to let her see you before she dies. She
+is waiting in Prince George. She bade me tell you that neither poverty,
+misfortune nor disgrace could abate any of her love for you; that she
+would die happy if she might once more press your hand against her
+cheek."
+
+Garth watched Mabyn narrowly while Natalie was speaking. He saw by the
+man's rapt expression that her voice charmed his senses, while the
+purport of what she said was wholly lost on his consciousness. When her
+voice broke a little at the close, Mabyn's lips parted, and his breath
+came quicker--but it was no tenderness for a devoted parent, only a
+passion purely selfish, that caused his lack-lustre eyes to glitter
+again.
+
+"These letters," concluded Natalie, drawing them forth as she spoke,
+"three of which I have brought from the post office, and the fourth
+which she gave me herself, will let you know, better than I can tell
+you, what she feels."
+
+Mabyn took the letters; and thrusting them carelessly in his pocket--one
+fell to the ground and lay there unheeded--snatched back at Natalie's
+hand, and attempted to retain it. Reining her horse back, she wrenched
+it free.
+
+A little shame reached the seat of Mabyn's consciousness. He reddened.
+"I'm not a leper," he muttered. "You came to me of your own free will,
+didn't you?"
+
+"Build nothing on that!" said Natalie instantly and clearly. "I allow no
+claim on me!"
+
+Mabyn quickly changed to obsequiousness. "I don't want to quarrel with
+you, Natalie," he whined. "Especially not after what you've just done!"
+
+He went to his bench again; and sat heavily. Again he struck his
+forehead with his knuckles. "Gad! I can't yet realize it is you that is
+here!"
+
+Natalie looked at Garth as much as to say that she had accomplished what
+she came for.
+
+The look was not lost on Mabyn. He sprang up. "I'll do just what
+you want!" he said hurriedly. "I'll start for Prince George at
+once--to-day--this minute! God knows there's nothing to keep me here! You
+have a spare horse, I suppose. I've nothing but that galled cayuse and
+another as bad!" He uttered his cracked laugh in a tone that was intended
+to be ingratiating. "That's the advantage of poverty! I've no preparations
+to make; so lead on!"
+
+Natalie paused irresolutely. This was a contingency she had not foreseen.
+She shuddered at the possibilities it opened up. In her perplexity she
+looked again at Garth.
+
+"We will leave you a horse," said he curtly. "And your passage out from
+the lake Settlement will be arranged for."
+
+"And what money you need," added Natalie in a low tone, and blushing
+painfully.
+
+But Mabyn's feelings were not hurt. "I can go with you just as well," he
+blustered.
+
+Natalie looked at Garth once more.
+
+"You may follow us as soon as you choose," said Garth coolly. "We do not
+desire your company on the way."
+
+For the first time Mabyn appeared to recognize Garth's presence on the
+scene. He turned a baleful eye on him; and his lips curled back over his
+gums. "Who are _you_?" he snarled, adding an oath.
+
+"That is neither here nor there," said Garth. "I speak for Miss Bland."
+
+"Mrs. Mabyn, you mean," sneered the other, thinking to crush him with
+the information.
+
+"She does not use that name," returned Garth imperturbably.
+
+Mabyn turned furiously to Natalie. "Who is this man?" he cried, his
+cracked voice sliding into falsetto; "this sleek young sprig that rides
+alone with you through the country! I demand to know! I have a right to
+know!"
+
+"I admit no right!" Natalie said firmly.
+
+Mabyn, beside himself with jealous rage, no longer knew what he said.
+"You won't explain!" he cried. "You _can't_ explain! Here's a nasty
+situation for a married woman!"
+
+Garth's self-control, stretched on the rack through all this scene,
+suddenly snapped in twain. Temper with Garth took the form of laughter;
+mocking, dangerous laughter, that issued startlingly from his grave
+lips.
+
+He laughed now. "You scoundrel!" he said in cool, incisive tones--though
+he was not a whit less blinded by passion than Mabyn himself--"after the
+kind of life you've been leading up here, have you still the assurance
+to lay a claim upon _her_! And to cast a reflection on _her_ good name!
+Have you no mirror to see what you are? Go in the lake, then, and see
+the vile record written on your face!"
+
+Mabyn was staggered. Garth's terrible scorn penetrated the last
+wrappings of the warmly nurtured ego within. He shot a startled glance
+at Garth; and from Garth to the hut and behind, as if wondering how much
+he knew.
+
+Garth was not through with him. He slipped his stirrups, preparatory to
+leaping off his horse. Natalie trembled at the quiet man's new aspect.
+
+"Garth!" she entreated urgently.
+
+The sound of her voice recalled him to himself. Settling back in his
+saddle, he abruptly turned his horse, and went off a little way,
+struggling to regain his self-command.
+
+Mabyn, misunderstanding, was vastly lifted up by this word of Natalie's,
+and the writhing ego within hastened to repair the horrid breach Garth
+had made. He approached her, hidden by her horse from Garth.
+
+"Oh, Natalie!" he gabbled whiningly; "don't listen to him. He's a low
+cur! But he can't make trouble between you and me! Send him away!
+Natalie, I seem to have acted badly; but I can explain everything!
+Circumstances were all against me! In my heart I've never swerved from
+you! I dream of you every night in my lonesomeness! Wherever I look I
+see your face before my eyes!"
+
+It was the old trick of passionate speech; Natalie remembered the very
+words of old; but the man--she averted her head from the hideous
+spectacle. She was afraid to move or cry out, sure that Garth in his
+present mind would kill him if he heard.
+
+Mabyn, conceiving nothing of the sublime irony of the figure he made,
+continued to plead. "Natalie, don't turn away from me! You took me for
+better or worse, remember! You found me at a disadvantage to-day; I
+don't look like this ordinarily. And you can make whatever you like of
+me! Remember the old days at home! I am the same man--Bert--your Bert!
+Look--he can't see us--I kneel to you as I did then!"
+
+And down he went on his knees, stretching out his arms to her.
+
+There was an odd, slight sound behind him. They both looked--and froze
+in the attitude of looking. Garth from his station, seeing the new look
+of horror overspread Natalie's face, spurred to join her.
+
+There, clinging to the corner of the cabin for support, stood the figure
+of a woman. Her brown skin was blanched to a livid yellow; and her eyes
+were the eyes of one dead from a shock. She swayed forward from the
+waist as if her backbone could no longer support her. At her feet a tin
+pail emptied wild cherries on the ground.
+
+Mabyn scrambled to his feet, shamed, chagrined, furious. "What do you
+want around here?" he cried brutally--even now seeking to outface her.
+
+The piteous, stricken girl moistened her lips; and essayed more than
+once to speak, before any words came. "'Erbe't, who is this woman?" she
+said quite simply at last.
+
+"What is that to you?" he blustered roughly, thinking to beat her down;
+perhaps to kill her outright with cruelty. "This is my wife!"
+
+"Oh, no! no!" whispered Natalie, sick with the sight of so much misery.
+
+It is doubtful if the girl heard her. She tottered forward; and seized
+and clung to Mabyn's arm. Her breast was heaved on hard, quick pants
+like a wounded animal's; and her eyes were as frantic, and as inhuman.
+
+"'Erbe't, who am I?" she breathed.
+
+Mabyn, seeing that Natalie heard and understood, beside himself, and
+reckless with rage, flung out his arm, throwing her heavily to the
+ground. "You! damn you!" he cried. "You're just my----"
+
+Natalie, with a low cry of horror, instinctively clapped her heels to
+her horse's ribs, and set off down the hill. Garth wheeled after her.
+
+"Oh, stay--stay and help her!" she gasped.
+
+"You come first!" said Garth grimly.
+
+Mabyn, as Natalie turned, sprang after her; and running desperately,
+managed to cling to her stirrup. Casting off the last vestiges of
+manliness he wept and prayed her to wait for him. Her horse, Caspar,
+kicked out wildly, and struck him off. He lay on the ground sobbing and
+cursing; striving to drag himself along with clawing hands.
+
+Just before they gained the watercourse, Garth looked over his shoulder;
+and his heart leapt into his throat. The brown woman was reaching for
+Mabyn's rifle. He shouted a warning; and desperately strove to throw
+his horse behind Natalie. But it was too late. Hard upon his voice, the
+shot rang. A strange, low cry broke from Natalie; and she reeled in her
+saddle. Garth, spurring ahead, grasped Caspar's bridle, and caught her
+from falling. A pang, far more dreadful than the hurt of a bullet, smote
+his own breast.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+NATALIE WOUNDED
+
+
+The frightened horses struggled over the watercourse, and gained the
+trees before Garth, hampered as he was, succeeded in drawing their heads
+together, and stopping them. Slipping out of the saddle without
+loosening his grasp of Natalie, he lifted her off, ever careful to
+shield her from possible further shots with his own body. He remembered
+Mabyn's was a single-shot weapon; and he counted on the time it would
+take the Indian woman to obtain ammunition, and reload. Quickly and
+tenderly laying Natalie on the ground under shelter of a stump, he
+unslung his own rifle. But as he dropped to his knee, and raised it, he
+saw the woman on the edge of the cut-bank swing the stock of her gun
+around her head, and send the weapon spinning out over the water.
+Meanwhile Mabyn was running up the hill toward her with significant
+action. No immediate further danger threatened. Garth put the pair out
+of his mind, and bent over Natalie. What happened to the woman at
+Mabyn's hands was a matter of indifference to him now.
+
+Natalie's left arm hung useless; and a soaking crimson stain spread
+broadly on her sleeve between elbow and shoulder. Her face had gone chalky
+white, her eyes were half closed, and her teeth were set painfully in her
+blue nether lip. To see his sparkling, vivid Natalie brought so low, was a
+sight to open all the doors of Garth's brain to madness. His heart swelled
+suffocatingly with rage and grief, but there was no time for that, when
+every faculty he possessed must be concentrated on saving her; and forcing
+it back, he picked her up again with infinite tenderness. His first and
+instinctive thought was to return and seize the hut; so that he might
+at least have a roof to cover her. He suspected the other two were now
+without arms; but even if they had a weapon, he had a better one; was
+a sure shot; and was on his guard.
+
+At the first move he made in the direction of the hut, Natalie, whom he
+had thought unconscious, divined his intention.
+
+"Garth! Not in his house!" she murmured feverishly. "I will not go in
+there! I will not!"
+
+He paused in a painful perplexity. "But dearest, there is no other
+house," he said.
+
+"Put me down in the open air," she begged. "It would suffocate me! I
+will not endure it!"
+
+So Garth turned back among the trees. He strode over the dead leaves and
+the pine needles to the lake shore. Here, between the willows that grew
+thickly at the water's verge, and the heavier timber, extended an open
+strip of grass, still fresh and green. He laid his burden down upon it;
+and, rolling up his coat, put it under her head for a pillow.
+
+He hastily cut away her sleeve, exposing the injury. The ball had passed
+through, making a clean opening where it entered, and a jagged wound
+whence it issued. It was clear the bone was broken; but from the
+character of the bleeding, even Garth could see that the artery was
+uninjured. He brought water from the lake in his hat, and gently washed
+the wound; but even in this he doubted if he did right; for the water
+was cold--but he had nothing in which to heat it. The best he could do
+was to take the chill out of it by pressing the handkerchief between his
+hot hands.
+
+Everything they possessed that might have been of service was two miles
+off; and might just as well have been a hundred; for Garth could not
+think of leaving her; and he shrank from the thought of inflicting the
+agony it would cause her to be carried so far. And even suppose they
+gained their own camp, the situation would be little improved; for how
+was he in his ignorance to undertake the delicate task of setting the
+shattered bone; of improvising splints and bandages; and supplying, what
+a glance at the ugly wound showed to be needful, antiseptics? A surgeon,
+whatever his skill, rarely dares trust the steadiness of his hand on the
+bodies of those he loves; what then was Garth to do, who had no skill at
+all?
+
+He had his dark hour then, tasting ultimate despair. He sat beside her,
+gripping his dull head between his hands, and striving desperately to
+contrive, where there was nothing to contrive with. Oh, the pity and the
+wrong of it, that it was _she_ who must be hurt! he thought; and how
+joyfully he would have taken it himself to relieve her. _He_ bled
+inwardly; and the physical pain of the most hideous wounds could not
+equal the agony he experienced in his helplessness.
+
+Meanwhile the wound momentarily changed. The arm began to swell and
+darken; and Garth knew there was no time to lose. He made one attempt to
+proceed, kneading the flesh of the arm very gently to explore the broken
+ends of the bone--but Natalie's piteous cry of pain completely unmanned
+him. He desisted, shaking like a leaf, and sick with compassion; and he
+knew he would never be able to do it.
+
+What seemed like an age passed; though it was no more than a few
+minutes. He was bending over her, doing what little he could to ease her
+pain; and with knotted brows rapidly considering, and rejecting, one
+after another, the desperate expedients that suggested themselves.
+Suddenly looking up he perceived among the trees, at the distance of a
+few paces, Rina standing. Hot anger instantly welled up in his breast,
+and made a red blur before his eyes. Rina's sex was no protection to her
+then. He picked up his gun.
+
+Observing the action, Rina mutely spread her hands, palms outward. Her
+entire aspect had changed; the storm of passion had passed; and she
+stood contrite and sullen. It was impossible for the blindest passion
+to shoot at a figure in such an attitude. Garth lowered his gun; but he
+still kept it across his knees, and his face did not relax. The woman
+was loathsome to him.
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded coldly.
+
+Rina came a little closer. "I sorry," she said sulkily--like a child
+unwillingly confessing a fault. "I t'ink I go looney for a while. I not
+hear right. I t'ink she try to tak' my 'osban' from me!"
+
+Garth glanced at the suffering Natalie with contracted brows. "That's
+all very well!" he said bitterly. "But it can't undo what's done!"
+
+"I can mak' her well, maybe," said Rina, still affecting indifference.
+"I know what to do. My mot'er, she teach me. If you let me look at her,
+I tell you."
+
+A wild hope sprang up in Garth's breast. If the girl were only able to
+help Natalie, his hate of her could very well content itself a while.
+But dare he trust her? With keen, hard eyes he sought to read her face.
+Her own eyes avoided his; and she made a picture of savage indifference;
+but as he looked he saw two great tears roll down her cheeks. In his
+desperate situation it was well worth the risk.
+
+Raising his gun, he said coldly: "You may look at her. If you try to
+injure her, I will send a bullet through your head."
+
+Receiving the permission, Rina came forward, careless of the threatening
+gun; and dropped to her knees beside Natalie. She examined the wound on
+both sides; and felt of the fracture with delicate fingers. To judge of
+the normal position of the bones, she manipulated her own arm. Garth never
+took his eyes from her; but she was tenderer with the patient than he
+could have been.
+
+Finally she raised a mask-like face to Garth. "I can fix it," she said.
+"If you let me."
+
+Whatever her private feelings were, she had a confident air, that could
+not but convey some assurance to him. He nodded silently; after what he
+had suffered, he scarcely dared believe in such good fortune.
+
+Rina quickly rose. "You mak' a fire to heat water," she said coolly. "I
+go to bring everyt'ing."
+
+With the words, she was gone among the trees; and Garth, overjoyed to be
+able to do something with his hands, hastened to build a fire.
+
+Before he really expected her, she was back with what she needed, a pot
+for heating the water, a basin, several kinds of herbs, some strips of
+yellowed linen for bandages, a blanket and a knife. While the water was
+heating, she cut a deep segment of the smooth white bark of a young
+poplar for a splint--the curve of it was judged to a nicety to fit
+Natalie's arm. During the operation of setting the bone, Garth watched
+her unswervingly, clenching his teeth to bear the spectacle of Natalie's
+agony. For every pang of hers he suffered a sharper; the sweat coursed
+down his face.
+
+But at last it was over; the wound washed and fomented with bruised
+leaves, the splint fitted snug, and the whole neatly bandaged. Natalie,
+wrapped in the blanket, soon fell into the sleep of exhaustion.
+
+Rina looked at the pale and shaken Garth with an odd expression. "If you
+have whiskey, better tak' a drink," she suggested.
+
+Garth had his flask; and he obeyed without question.
+
+Throughout the operation, Rina had preserved an admirable, professional
+air, intent and impersonal; and when necessary she had brusquely ordered
+Garth to help her. Now that it was all over her face altered; she
+continued to kneel at Natalie's side, gazing at her soft hair, and the
+whiteness of her skin with a kind of sad and jealous wonder.
+
+Garth on the alert at the change, which portended he knew not what
+explosion of passion in the savage woman's breast, ordered her from
+Natalie's side. She obeyed, resuming her sullen mask, but lingered near
+him, plainly full of some question she desired to ask. He observed for
+the first, a purpling bruise above her temple. Rina saw his eyes upon
+it, and her colour changed.
+
+"I run against a tree," she hastily volunteered.
+
+At the same time her hand stole to her throat to hide certain marks on
+its dusky roundness. Garth knew instinctively that she was loyally
+lying. Mabyn had beaten her. He wondered how far the wish to serve the
+woman she had injured was Rina's own impulse and how far she had been
+forced to it by Mabyn. He began dimly to conceive that the red woman had
+good qualities.
+
+At last the question on her breast was spoken. "Who is she?" she asked,
+pointing sullenly at the sleeping Natalie.
+
+Garth rapidly considered what he should answer. He could not pretend to
+himself that he had forgiven the woman; but since Natalie's pain was
+mitigated he was cooler; and his sense of justice forced it home on him
+that Rina, too, had been through her ordeal. In his present desperate
+situation, his only chance of assistance lay in her--Mabyn was an
+egomaniac, and utterly irresponsible. Frankness had served Garth in good
+stead before this; and finally he told her the plain truth in such terms
+that she could understand.
+
+"This feeling Mabyn has for her," he insisted in the end, "is only a
+passing one. If we can get her out of his sight all will go on as
+before."
+
+Rina nodded. Her inscrutable face softened a little, he thought. "I
+on'erstan' now," she said quietly. "So I not go crazy wit' t'inking
+about it."
+
+Garth was glad he had told her.
+
+Rina stood studying him with her strange and secret air. "You love her
+ver' moch," she said suddenly, pointing to Natalie.
+
+Garth bent over the sleeping figure in a way that answered her better
+than words.
+
+"I t'ink she love you too," said Rina gravely. "When I 'urt her, she try
+not to cry because it 'urt you so bad."
+
+A slow red crept under Garth's skin. He hated to betray himself under
+the eyes of the red woman; and he bustled about, averting his face from
+her. "When can she be moved?" he asked, brusquely changing the subject.
+
+Rina shook her head. "I not know," she said. "Maybe she have fever.
+Three, four week maybe."
+
+Garth's heart sunk heavily, as he considered their scanty supplies, the
+approach of winter--and, more dangerous still, the fruitful opportunities
+of conflict the weeks would offer to four souls so strangely opposed, and
+so strangely bound together in the wilderness.
+
+"What is Mabyn doing now?" he asked suddenly.
+
+Rina's face instantly became as blank as plaster. "I not talk to you
+about him," she said coolly.
+
+Garth was conscious of receiving a rebuke.
+
+"But I help you," she added presently. "I go bring your outfit in."
+
+Before she went, she brewed a draught for Natalie with some of the herbs
+she had brought; and instructed Garth to administer it when she woke.
+For an instant all Garth's suspicions returned; and he looked at her
+hard. Rina, divining his thought, coolly lifted the pail to her lips,
+and drank of it. Once more he felt himself rebuked.
+
+Left alone, his thoughts reverted to Mabyn. What would he have been
+plotting all this time? he wondered; what stand would he take in this
+new posture of affairs? It was too much to hope, he decided, that one so
+selfish and so jealous could be persuaded to sink his animosity against
+Garth, for the purpose of serving Natalie while she lay injured. Garth's
+business had made him more or less familiar with the workings of the
+diseased ego; and he was convinced that Mabyn, if for nothing else,
+hated him intolerably for having been the spectator of his repulse by
+Natalie.
+
+As time passed, Natalie began to stir and mutter in her sleep and Garth,
+bending over her, fearful of fever, put the man out of his head.
+Returning to her from the edge of the lake, with cloths wrung out of
+cold water, he found her with wide eyes and flushed cheeks.
+
+"Send him away! Send him away!" she muttered. "I cannot have him near
+me!"
+
+At first he thought her mind wandered, but following the direction of
+her eyes, he saw the figure of a man skulking among the trees; and his
+face grimmed. Soothing her, he offered Rina's drink; and it had an
+immediate effect. She dropped off to sleep again. Then Garth picked up
+his gun and strode toward Mabyn.
+
+The man waited for him with an air oddly mixed of fear and bravado.
+As Garth came close he smiled in a way that he intended to be
+ingratiating--but Mabyn's smile only rendered him more hideous.
+Garth's first look made sure that both his hands were empty.
+
+"Is there anything I can do?" Mabyn asked with apparent solicitude.
+
+"Yes, keep away from here," returned Garth curtly. "If I catch you
+within a hundred yards of my camp, I'll wing you so you won't move again
+as long as we're here."
+
+Mabyn assumed an aggrieved expression. "You needn't take that tone," he
+grumbled. "I came in friendliness. I want to have a talk with you."
+
+"I'm listening," said Garth.
+
+Mabyn twisted uneasily. "Damn it! How can a man make friendly advances
+when you're standing over him with a gun!" he said.
+
+"Say what you've got to say, or clear out," said Garth.
+
+The aggrieved air proving ineffectual, Mabyn substituted offended
+silence; offered to go; and came back. "Well, look here!" he said at
+last. "This is it. Here are the three of us up here----"
+
+"Four," amended Garth.
+
+"Well, four if you like," said Mabyn. "We're stuck here together. We
+can't afford to quarrel. We've got to have some working agreement."
+
+"Is that all?" said Garth uncompromisingly.
+
+Mabyn looked around with the air of a much-tried man, appealing to the
+bystanders--that they were only indifferent trees, rather spoiled the
+effect. "I wouldn't take this from any man if it wasn't that I was bent
+on avoiding trouble," he blustered.
+
+Garth suppressed the scornful inclination to laugh.
+
+"Look here," began Mabyn afresh, with a reasonable air. "I came to offer
+you the shack for Natalie. She can't sleep in the open in her condition."
+
+"Much obliged," said Garth coolly. "I intended to take it in the first
+place. But Miss Bland refused to allow herself to be carried there."
+
+Mabyn's eyes bolted. His control over his facial muscles was imperfect;
+and the struggle between the open character he desired to convey, and
+the secret feelings that tortured him, was plain. "What are you going
+to do?" he asked.
+
+"Build her a house," said Garth.
+
+Mabyn, turning his back, appeared to be considering.
+
+"Is that all you have to say?" asked Garth.
+
+The other turned a face of obstinate friendliness and good will. "Look
+here--" he began all over. "I don't know your name----"
+
+Garth informed him.
+
+"Well, Pevensey, I'm sorry for what passed this morning. I regret what I
+said. I was only half awake; and scarcely knew what I did. Will you
+overlook it?"
+
+"Talk is cheap," said Garth guardedly. "I will be guided by your actions
+henceforth." But his voice was milder; for an apology could not help but
+speak to his sense of generosity.
+
+Mabyn, encouraged, amplified his penitent, ingratiating air. "As to the
+future," he said, "I mean to show you. You'll soon be satisfied!" He
+came closer. "In the meantime let's make a truce! Shake hands on it!"
+
+Garth thoroughly distrusted the man; but he could see no harm to Natalie
+in accepting his offer, while privately determining to relax none of his
+vigilance. It was only too true, as Mabyn had said; neither could afford
+to quarrel. Mabyn had no gun, and Garth could not leave Natalie's side
+for an instant.
+
+"I am willing," said Garth readily. "But it's understood this doesn't
+affect what I said before. You are not to come within a hundred yards of
+this camp!"
+
+Mabyn shrugged, as at the unworthiness of Garth's suspicions.
+
+"You agree to it?" Garth persisted.
+
+"All right!" said Mabyn--a shade too readily. "Shake!"
+
+Garth shifted his gun; and advanced to take Mabyn's hand. The man could
+not keep an ugly little gleam from showing in his shifty gray eye; and
+Garth stopped abruptly. Mabyn sneered. Garth, fired by one of the
+imperious impulses of the blood of youth, strode forward and grasped the
+extended hand defiantly.
+
+He saw instantly his mistake. Mabyn's face was suddenly transfigured by
+the deadly hatred he had long repressed. His right hand closed on
+Garth's like a vice; and at the same time a knife slipped out of his
+sleeve into the other hand. He jerked the surprised Garth halfway round;
+and aimed a blow between his shoulders. Garth was oddly conscious of the
+fresh marks of the whetstone on the blade of the knife. With the
+incredible swiftness of our subconscious moves, he dropped his useless
+gun; and twisting his body around, flung up his free hand, and warded
+the descending blow. Seizing Mabyn's wrist, he flung himself forward to
+bear the other back.
+
+It was all very brief. Mabyn, braced to receive Garth's weight, held his
+ground. Inspired with a febrile strength, he enjoyed a temporary
+advantage. Unable to reach Garth's back, he thrust desperately at his
+face, his neck--but only stabbed the air. They were locked together with
+their arms crossed--surely as strange a posture as ever men fought in!
+But Mabyn had staked all on the first blow; and that failing, there
+could be but one result. His fictitious strength suddenly failing, he
+collapsed in Garth's arms. Garth wrenched his hand free and hurled him
+to the ground, where he lay, livid and sobbing for breath. The attack
+had been contrived with devilish cunning; but every design this man
+undertook in life was foredoomed to failure.
+
+Garth secured the knife; and stood looking down at the broken wretch,
+with strong waves of disgust welling over him. He laughed briefly.
+
+"Too contemptible to kill!" he said; and turned on his heel.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE CLUE TO RINA
+
+
+Rina brought all four horses handily through the wood, bringing up the
+rear on the back of old Cy. She slipped off beside Garth, and looked in
+the direction where Natalie lay.
+
+"Still sleeping," Garth said.
+
+As Rina's eyes fell on him, they suddenly widened; and plain fear broke
+through the mask of her face. "'Erbe't been here!" she said breathlessly.
+
+"How do you know?" he said in surprise.
+
+Rina pointed to his belt. "You got his knife!" she said. "How you get
+his knife?"
+
+"He tried to murder me with it," said Garth, watching her face narrowly.
+
+Rina had no more thought for Natalie. "Where is he?" she said agitatedly.
+"W'at you do to him?"
+
+"I let him go," Garth said carelessly. "Murder is not exactly in my
+line."
+
+"He try to kill you an' you let him go!" she breathed incredulously.
+Plainly such magnanimity was outside her ken. She walked away from him,
+considering it.
+
+Presently she came back with a swift glide. "You got to promise me not
+to 'urt 'Erbe't!" she said, threateningly and passionately.
+
+"If he attacks me, I defend myself--and her," Garth said coolly.
+
+Rina studied the ground. It was impossible for him to tell what was
+going on behind her inscrutable eyes. In a moment she went to Natalie as
+if nothing had happened; and dropping beside her, listened attentively
+to her breathing. Garth, ever watchful, followed her close. When she
+arose, they moved off a little to avoid disturbing the patient; and
+Rina briefly instructed Garth what he should do during the night.
+
+Garth, not satisfied with merely knowing what to do, asked the reason
+of her various measures; whereupon Rina became suddenly evasive.
+
+"But I must know why you do these things," he insisted.
+
+Rina looked away. "I not tell you," she said coolly.
+
+"What does this mean?" he demanded, surprised and frowning.
+
+Rina met his eyes. "Nobody but me can mak' her well," she said boldly.
+"I mak' her well if you not 'urt 'Erbe't. If you go after 'Erbe't, she
+can die. I not look at her no more!"
+
+This at least was honest; and Garth could respect such an opponent.
+"He's safe!" he said coolly. "Provided he keeps away from here."
+
+Rina vouchsafed no comment. "I come to-morrow," she said and disappeared
+through the trees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The horses offered Garth his next problem. Since immediately they were
+turned out they would bolt for the sweet grass of the prairie above,
+there was no way in which he could secure them from Mabyn, or keep them
+within reach against a time of need. They might stray for miles over the
+plains before he could leave Natalie long enough to round them up. But
+there was no help for it; the beasts would all die of starvation, if he
+attempted to keep them in his camp. There was a little grass between
+the willows and the timber; and he determined to keep old Cy picketed
+nearby, to be sure of one mount in the case of an emergency. The other
+three he hobbled, hung a bell around Emmy's neck, and turned them loose.
+
+He was now able to make Natalie more comfortable. Putting up her tent,
+he spread a bed of balsam within, and her own blankets upon it. The next
+time she awoke, he carried her inside; and at the door of the tent,
+where he could look at her, and speak to her, he cooked her the best
+invalid's supper the grub-box and his own skill could afford. This same
+grub-box was an ever-fresh cause of anxiety to him; allowing for liberal
+contributions from his own gun, he could not see much more than a week's
+supply for two. This he kept to himself, however, while he joked and
+made light of their situation for Natalie's benefit. She was very
+quiet; she did not suffer much, she said; but she had little humour to
+talk. When Garth thought of her, only the day before, galloping over
+the prairie, he ground his teeth afresh. But the silver lining of
+this blackest cloud of his was that in her weakness she clung to
+him unreservedly.
+
+Some time after supper she fell asleep again; and Garth prepared for
+his night-long vigil. His head was much too busy to allow of any desire
+for sleep. Sitting in the dark, he faced the situation open-eyed. There
+they were in the remotest wilderness, imprisoned in the narrow valley by
+Natalie's injury for weeks to come; with insufficient food and inclement
+weather in prospect, and without the remotest chance of succour from the
+outside. Moreover, there hovered about them an implacable and half-insane
+enemy, whose busy brain was bent on Garth's destruction. The outlook was
+enough to unnerve the strongest; there were things in it that Garth in his
+courage could only glance at, and hurriedly avert the eyes of his mind.
+
+The night was so still he could hear the breathing of the horse at fifty
+paces. He had let the fire die down, for fear its loud crackling would
+awaken Natalie. Overhead the Northern lights flung their ragged pennons
+across the zenith, with a ghostly echo of rustling. He suddenly became
+conscious of distant human voices in the void of stillness; and presently
+distinguished the voice of Mabyn. Rina's answers he could not hear,
+though he sensed a second voice. The sound was from the neighbourhood
+of the hut.
+
+Garth was tempted by the opportunity to discover at the same time the
+plans of his enemy, and Rina's true disposition toward himself. He glanced
+at Natalie; she had but lately fallen asleep, and was sleeping soundly;
+there were no animals abroad that could harm her; he need be gone but half
+an hour. The rôle of eavesdropper was not at all attractive to him; but he
+felt he had no right to refuse to use any weapon that offered. Finally he
+fastened the flaps of Natalie's tent, replenished the fire, and stole away
+through the trees.
+
+He crossed the stony watercourse to the left of the usual place and
+mounted the slope. Coming closer, he satisfied himself that the speakers
+were sitting on the bench at the door of the shack. In the darkness he
+almost fell across the figure of the little cayuse, prone in the grass.
+The animal scrambled to its feet and trotted away. Garth paused,
+listening, his heart in his throat--but Mabyn's voice presently went
+on undisturbed.
+
+He finally gained the top of the rise; and let himself down in the
+grass, distant some thirty feet from them. A flash of lightning--or even
+the lighting of a lantern would have revealed him clearly.
+
+He instantly understood that he was the subject of their talk.
+
+"It's his life or mine," in Mabyn's blustering whine were the first
+words he distinctly heard.
+
+"He could kill you to-day, and he let you go," Rina quietly returned.
+
+"That's a lie!" blustered Mabyn. "How do you know?" he added
+inconsequentially.
+
+"He tak' your knife from you. I saw it in his belt," said Rina. "And he
+let you go."
+
+Mabyn made no reply.
+
+"He say to me he not 'urt you, if you keep away from there," Rina went
+on.
+
+"Keep away!" Mabyn fumed. "This is my place! I'll go where I choose on
+it! He's trespassing on my land! I've a right to drive him off! I've a
+right to kill him if he doesn't go!"
+
+"He will hear you!" said Rina warningly.
+
+"Let him hear me!" said the man--nevertheless he lowered his voice.
+"They're a quarter-mile off," he added.
+
+"Listen!" said Rina.
+
+Over the lake, from an immeasurable distance, came throbbing the
+imbecile laughter of a loon.
+
+"Loon, him three miles off," said Rina significantly.
+
+Thereafter, Mabyn spoke in a whisper; a wheedling note crept into his
+voice. "That was a good scheme of yours, going to the camp to set the
+girl's arm," he said. "Now we can find out all they do!"
+
+"I not go to find out," said Rina sadly. "I go for I sorry I 'urt her. I
+shoot her jus' lak a breed I am!"
+
+Mabyn paid no attention to this. "Keep your eyes open when you're in
+their camp every day," he urged. "See how much food they have; find out
+where he keeps the shells for his gun. If you could only steal the gun!"
+
+"He carry it always on his back," said Rina. "He never put it down."
+
+"I know, he's on his guard now," said Mabyn. "But if you act friendly
+all the time, he'll forget. We've got plenty of time; do nothing for a
+few days. I'll keep away from there too. He'll think it's all right.
+_Then_"--Mabyn's whisper was pure venom--"sneak up behind him and knock
+him on the head with an axe! Choose a moment when the girl is asleep or
+delirious. We will throw his body in the lake. No one will ever know how
+it happened!"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Will you do it?" said Mabyn eagerly.
+
+Rina remained silent.
+
+Mabyn cursed her under his breath. "I believe this smooth-faced young
+whelp has cast an eye on you too," he snarled. "You're false to me!"
+
+A low cry was forced from Rina's lips; she made a rapid move; and Garth
+understood that she had thrown herself at the man's feet. "'Erbe't, you
+know you don' speak true," she whispered painfully. "You my 'osban'! All
+men I hate, but you!"
+
+"Then do what I tell you," snarled Mabyn.
+
+"'Erbe't!" she pleaded rapidly and urgently. "Let them go! What have
+they got to do with us? To-morrow I go to him. I tell him how to mak'
+her well. The man will give me a horse and things. An' you and I will
+ride to the Rice River people. They are my people. They will give me a
+gun. We will be so ver' happy, and not think of this man and this woman
+any more!"
+
+"You can go, and be damned to you!" said Mabyn sullenly. "I stay on my
+own place!"
+
+Garth understood then, that she drew very close to the man, lavish in
+the expression of her sad love and timid caresses, in a desperate effort
+to move him. He could not hear it all; but his cheeks burned to be the
+intruder on such an exposure of a woman's soul--a white soul, he
+thought, whatever the colour of her skin.
+
+Mabyn was utterly insensible to it all. In the end he became impatient,
+and flung her away from him with an oath. She fell to the ground with a
+soft thud; and for a while there was no other sound, but the dreadful,
+low catch of her breath, as she sought to strangle her sobs.
+
+"'Erbe't, if you no love me I die," she breathed.
+
+"Rid me of this man and I'll love you fast enough!" said Mabyn eagerly.
+His breath came thick and stertorous. "Ah! Let me once grind my heel in
+the smooth, sneering face of him! and you shall do what you like with
+me!" Rage robbed him of speech; he made mere brutish sounds in his
+throat.
+
+By and by he managed to control himself; and his voice resumed its
+crafty, wheedling tone. "Only do what I tell you, my Rina, and you shall
+know what it is to be loved by a white man. I shall have no thought all
+day, but of you! Up to now you have done all the loving; I will repay it
+twice over! You shall be loved as no red woman was ever loved before!"
+
+"'Erbe't! 'Erbe't! Don't mak' me do it!" she whispered terror-stricken.
+
+Garth could stand no more. Springing to his feet, he strode forward,
+grasping the barrel of his rifle to use it for a club. Shooting was too
+merciful for such a creature.
+
+"You damned scoundrel!" he cried.
+
+Mabyn fell back against the wall with a gasping cry of fright. Quick as
+Garth was, Rina was quicker. Before he could reach the man, she
+scrambled over the ground, and clutched him by the knees.
+
+"Let him be!" she screamed. "I kill you!"
+
+Garth struggled vainly to free himself. Finally bending over and seizing
+her shoulders, he thrust her away. But the blow he again aimed at Mabyn
+never descended; for with incredible swiftness Rina gained her feet, and
+darted down hill.
+
+"I kill _her!_" she shrilled.
+
+A sickening fear gripped Garth's heart, instantly obliterating all
+thought of Mabyn. He dashed after Rina, nerved to a desperate fleetness.
+She knew the ground better than he; and hampered, moreover, by the
+weight of his gun, he despaired of overtaking the moccasined savage. But
+at the watercourse the strange creature stopped dead; and waited for him
+to come up.
+
+"Go back to your white woman!" she cried stormily. "If you 'urt him, I
+pull her bandage off, and beat her arm till she die of pain!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+MABYN MAROONED
+
+
+When Natalie awoke, it was a gray and haggard Garth she saw through the
+raised flaps of her tent. His arms, folded on his knees, bore up his
+chin; and he stared before him, still pursuing the narrow round of his
+troublous thoughts. He was the gainer for his excursion, by valuable
+information--but he was no nearer the solution of it all.
+
+Natalie partly raised herself on her good arm. "My poor Garth!" she said
+softly. "How very tired you are!"
+
+His weary eyes lighted up. "I'm all right," he cried. "And how are you?"
+
+"Splendid!" she said, matching his tone--while her face was drawn with
+pain. "Come in," she added softly.
+
+He sat a little diffidently on the ground beside her; Natalie's
+room--though its walls were of canvas--was a sacred place to him when
+she was in it.
+
+"Look at me!" she commanded.
+
+He turned his grave, smiling eyes down on her. In spite of difficulties,
+dangers and weariness, he had to smile when he looked at her; he loved
+her so! His eyes were full of it.
+
+Natalie's eyes fell; her hand crept into his. "You may tell me to-day,"
+she whispered.
+
+He understood. "Oh, my Natalie!" he murmured deeply. "I love you! It
+breaks my heart to see you suffer!"
+
+She caught up his hand, and pressed it to her cheek. "I am cured!" she
+whispered with a lift in her voice.
+
+"There is something I want you to do for me," she said presently.
+
+"Anything in the world!" he cried.
+
+"No!" she said. "This is only a little thing--but you mustn't laugh!"
+
+He immediately smiled.
+
+"I want to feel, for a moment, that I have helped you too," she
+whispered. "Put your head down on my good shoulder."
+
+He flung himself down beside her, and laid his head where she bid. Her
+breath was warm on his cheek. He slipped his over-heavy burden, and
+glided into Paradise for awhile.
+
+"My brave, brave Garth," she whispered in his ear. "All my heart is
+yours! I thought about this last night--every time I woke. I thought we
+might steal one such moment. I thought, what if something happened to
+you, or to me, and we had never known it!"
+
+She tried to tempt him to sleep a while, but Garth, fearful of tiring
+her, and with his responsibilities pressing on him, drew himself away.
+He arose, better refreshed, he vowed, than by all the nights of sleep he
+had ever had in his life.
+
+As he rose, their lips met, once and briefly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Garth's first task after breakfast was to clear the growth of willows
+that obstructed their access to the lake. The little island was framed
+squarely in the centre of the opening made by his axe; and off to the
+left, across an estuary formed at the mouth of the watercourse, Mabyn's
+shack stood on top of its cut-bank in plain view.
+
+At sight of the convenient island, Garth was struck by an idea. He
+examined it attentively. It lay something less than a quarter of a mile
+off shore; and a triangle might have been drawn between his camp, the
+island and Mabyn's shack, of which the three sides would have been of
+about equal length. The island was about three acres in extent; and
+completely ringed about with willow bushes. In the centre, two or three
+cottonwood trees elevated their heads above the willows.
+
+Later, he asked Natalie casually: "Could Mabyn swim, when you knew him,
+do you remember?"
+
+"He could not," she said instantly. "In fact he had a childish horror of
+the water."
+
+Garth turned his head to hide his satisfaction; and his plan began to
+take shape.
+
+While the sun was yet low, Rina, true to her promise, came to attend
+upon Natalie. There was no change in her manner; her unreadable eyes
+expressed no consciousness of the events of the night before. She
+questioned Natalie in her best professional way. It was not yet
+necessary to disturb the dressings on the arm; but she volunteered to do
+Natalie's hair; and what other offices would contribute to her comfort.
+Garth, convinced now that he had as sure a hold on her as she on him,
+unhesitatingly allowed her to enter the tent alone. But he kept within
+earshot.
+
+He necessarily overheard part of their talk. Natalie, it seemed, had a
+method of her own with Rina. Obliterating the fact that she had received
+her injury at the breed's hands, she was unaffectedly grateful for all
+that was done for her; and what was more subtle--or kinder--she treated
+Rina as her equal, as one who understood in herself the thoughts and the
+instincts of a lady. Garth, with the clue he possessed to the unhappy
+heart of the girl, could not tell which he ought to commend the more,
+Natalie's mother-wit, or her generosity.
+
+Rina apparently sought to steel her breast against the other's
+overtures. For the most part she maintained a hardy silence; and when
+she did speak, it was in sullen monosyllables.
+
+Issuing out of the tent, she surprised Garth by asking, as one who
+demands a right, to take old Cy. She needed an herb for Natalie, she
+said, that could only be procured on the shore of a slough five miles
+away. Garth was prompt with his permission. There was a possibility
+that it was merely a pretext to deprive them of the horse; but his heart
+leaped at the chance of getting Rina out of the way for an hour. It was
+all he needed to complete his plan; and it had seemed an insuperable
+bar. If she turned the horse out, he would come back anyway; for Cy was
+the town-bred horse, always waiting anxiously about camp for his
+vanished stable; and Garth had further trained him to stick to the
+outfit, with judicious presents of salt and tobacco.
+
+Rina, disdaining a saddle, scrambled on his back, and rode off. Garth
+waited, not without anxiety, to see what direction she would take. She
+presently reappeared, mounting the rise to the shack. Pausing briefly at
+the door, apparently to speak within, she continued her way up the slope
+behind; and, gaining the prairie, disappeared over the brow.
+
+Garth instantly put himself in motion. He had his compunctions in thus
+moving against Rina while she was absent on an errand for Natalie; but
+he consoled himself with the thought that Rina, with all she could do,
+had still a heavy score to pay off. He told Natalie what he was about to
+do; and at her earnest pleading carried her out of the tent, and propped
+her partly upright at the edge of the lake where she would be able to
+see him. Then, looking to his gun, he set off a second time for the
+shack.
+
+From the circumstance of Rina's pausing at the door, he was well assured
+that Mabyn was within. He had marked that the door stood open. On his
+way, he paused to examine the ancient dugout lying at the mouth of the
+watercourse; and found it in a sufficiently seaworthy condition to
+answer his purpose. A paddle lay in the bottom.
+
+Garth ascended the grassy slope swiftly and noiselessly; and making a
+détour around the window, presented himself suddenly at the door. Mabyn
+was revealed to him sprawling on his blankets in the corner, plucking at
+his face, and scowling at the rafters, he, too, no doubt, plotting and
+scheming. When the armed shadow fell across the floor of his shack, he
+started to his elbow; his eyes widened, his flesh blanched and a visible
+trembling seized his limbs.
+
+"What do you want?" he contrived to stammer.
+
+Strong disgust seized Garth again; so despicable an adversary shamed his
+own manhood. He shifted his gun significantly.
+
+"Get up!" he said.
+
+Mabyn dragged himself to his hands and knees. It was some moments before
+he could control himself sufficiently to stand upright.
+
+"What are you going to do with me?" he kept muttering.
+
+Garth stepped backward. "Come outside!" he commanded.
+
+Mabyn obeyed, making a circuit of the walls for support. His eyes were
+always riveted on the gun; and however slightly it was moved, he
+experienced a fresh spasm of fear.
+
+"Face about!" ordered Garth; "and walk to the mouth of the creek!"
+
+Mabyn became even paler. His skin was like white paper on which ashes
+have been rubbed, leaving streaks and patches of gray. "Would you shoot
+me in the back?" he said shrilly. "An unarmed man! I will not turn my
+back!"
+
+"Then walk backward!" said Garth, with his laconic start of laughter.
+
+Mabyn went like a crab down the rise, with his head over his shoulder, a
+ludicrous and deplorable figure. He was unable to drag his eyes from the
+gun, consequently he stumbled and lurched over every obstacle. Once he
+fell flat; and a sharp scream of fright was forced from him. Garth
+sickened at the sight, while he laughed. He had to give him a minute in
+which to recover himself.
+
+Mabyn, scarcely coherent, ceaselessly begged for mercy. "Do not kill
+me!" he whimpered. "I _can't_ die! Oh, God! Not like this! I never had a
+chance! You kill Natalie if you kill me--the breed will fix her!--and my
+mother! You'll have three murders on your soul! I _can't_ die yet!"
+
+"Get up!" commanded Garth.
+
+Reaching the edge of the water, he ordered him into the dugout.
+
+Mabyn fell on his knees on the stones. "Not in the water! Not in the
+water!" he shrilled. "Kill me here!"
+
+"No one is going to kill you," said Garth with scornful patience. "Do
+what you're told, and you'll not be hurt!"
+
+Mabyn darted a furtive look of hope and suspicion in Garth's face. He
+got up.
+
+"What are you going to do with me?" he muttered.
+
+"Put you on the island," said Garth coolly.
+
+"I'll starve," he whined.
+
+"Food will be brought you regularly, as long as you obey orders," said
+Garth.
+
+Mabyn, his extreme terror subsiding, showed an inclination to temporize.
+"Let me get a few things," he begged. His eyes wandered to the hill over
+which Rina had disappeared.
+
+Garth was anxious on the same score. He fingered the trigger of his gun.
+"In with you!" he said.
+
+Mabyn jumped to obey.
+
+Garth, sitting in the bow with his weapon in his arms, faced Mabyn; and
+forced him to wield the paddle. Mabyn, seeing that he did mean to put
+him on the island, realized there had been no occasion for his brutish
+terror; but instead of feeling any shame for the self-betrayal, he
+characteristically added it to his score against Garth. His gray eyes
+contracted in an agony of impotent hate. At that moment unspeakable
+atrocities committed on Garth's body would not have satisfied Mabyn's
+lust to destroy his flesh. Any move on his part would have overturned
+the crazy dugout, but, shivering at the sight of the water, he was
+unable to take that way.
+
+Garth, wary of the furtive gleam in the man's eye, sprang to his feet
+the instant they touched the island, and leaped out, careful never to
+turn his back. He forced Mabyn to retire a dozen paces, while he took
+the place he vacated in the stern; and then he ordered him to push off.
+
+At the prospect of being left alone, Mabyn's flesh failed him again. He
+clung to the bow of the canoe, and gabbled anew for mercy. Garth,
+wearying of it all, suddenly sent a shot over his head. His weapon,
+silent and smokeless, had an effect of horrible deadliness. Mabyn, with
+a moan of fear, pushed the canoe off, and sank back on the grass of the
+islet.
+
+Exchanging his gun for the paddle, Garth hastened back to the mouth of
+the creek, pausing only to wave his hat reassuringly at Natalie, whom he
+could see reclining on her grassy couch. An essential part of his plan
+was yet to be effected; and he knew not how soon Rina might return.
+Hastily ransacking the cabin, he gathered together all their meagre
+rations; flour, sugar, beans, tea and pork; and he likewise commandeered
+everything that might be turned to use for a weapon; an axe, a chisel,
+and all knives. Three trips up and down the hill conveyed it to the
+dugout. Reëmbarking, he had no sooner brought it all to his own camp
+than Natalie's sharp eyes discovered Rina returning on the distant hill.
+
+Garth carried Natalie into the tent again; and nerved himself to await
+the inevitable scene. Meanwhile he could see Rina alight at the door,
+search the cabin hastily, and dart about outside, like a distracted ant
+returning to find her dwelling rifled. She followed the tracks down to
+the water's edge, dragging the horse after her. Seeking over the water,
+she soon discovered the dugout lying at Garth's camp; whereupon she
+clambered on the horse again. Presently she came crashing through the
+bush.
+
+This was a vastly different kind of antagonist, that slipped from the
+horse and faced him with blazing eyes. Rina regarded the weapon in his
+hands with as little respect as if it had been a pop-gun. But there was
+nothing baffling about her now, she was just the furious woman common to
+any shade of skin.
+
+"Where is he?" she cried--and without waiting for any answer, emptied
+the hissing ewer of her wrath over Garth's head. Her careful English was
+drowned in a flood of guttural Cree--she fished it up only to curse him.
+
+Garth received the impact in silence, for at first she was in no
+condition to take in the answers she demanded. He suddenly realized, as
+a man thinks of an interesting circumstance that does not concern him at
+all, how beautiful she was; and the thought gave him greater patience.
+
+Rina, bethinking herself at last that her Cree was wasted on him, went
+back to English. "You wait!" she cried threateningly. "Bam-bye, her
+bone, him grow together, and she all the time cry of pain! Then you
+want me bad, and I not come! She will have fever and die!" She
+passionately threw down the leaves she had brought and ground them under
+her heel.
+
+"Mabyn is unhurt!" Garth repeated patiently more than once. "I put him
+on the island."
+
+At last it seemed to reach her. "What for you do that?" she demanded.
+
+"He is always trying to kill me," he said. "I have only put him where he
+can do no harm!"
+
+"I tak' him off!" she cried defiantly. "I mak' a raft! You can't stop
+me!"
+
+"I have seized all the food," said Garth quietly. "You will get none for
+him unless he stays where he is."
+
+Rina's anger stilled and concentrated. "You devil!" she hissed.
+
+Garth turned away. "When you are yourself," he said coolly, "I will talk
+to you plainly and honestly about us all."
+
+"I not talk with you!" she stormed. "You tell lies to me! I not come
+again--till some time you sleep--then I come and kill you!"
+
+He faced her with a sudden imperiousness she could not ignore. "Then the
+way is made open for Mabyn to come to _her_!" he cried. "Where will you
+be then?--thrown on the ground, as you were yesterday!"
+
+The shot told. Her arms dropped, she visibly paled. The white man's
+blood in Rina's cheeks betrayed her at the moments when most she
+desired to secrete her heart. She lowered her head to hide her stricken
+eyes from him. Suddenly she turned and fled through the trees.
+
+Garth was beginning to believe that Rina after all was not so different
+from her white sisters; if so, he thought she would come back. Natalie,
+who had overheard all that passed, said so too. Garth wished to carry
+Natalie out of the tent, that she might help him work with the girl; but
+Natalie, with better wisdom, said no, that Rina would be more tractable
+if she were out of sight.
+
+Meanwhile he set to work with an air of unconcern he was far from
+feeling--there were a hundred ways this plan of his might miscarry, and
+only one way it could succeed! He tied old Cy to his stake again; and
+carefully gathered up what remained of the herbs Rina had cast on the
+ground. He unloaded the seized supplies and made a temporary cache under
+a piece of sail-cloth.
+
+By and by, while he was so engaged, he became aware that Rina was
+hovering about among the trees. He went on with his task, carefully
+avoiding any notice of her. She approached by devious stages, like a
+child drawn against its will. When it became impossible longer to
+conceal herself, she came into the open with her old, wistful, sullen,
+inscrutable face. Garth went about his work, displaying no anxiety to
+treat. He made her speak first.
+
+"What you want say to me?" she asked at last, feigning supreme
+indifference.
+
+"Sit down," he said.
+
+She dropped obediently on the grass; and averted her head. She did not
+squat like the other red people; but reclined, supporting herself on one
+hand, much as Natalie might have done.
+
+Garth lit his pipe, considering what simple, figurative form of words
+would best appeal to her understanding.
+
+"I do not wish Mabyn harm," he began mildly. "He is nothing to me. My
+heart knows only one wish--to make her well, and to take her back safely
+to her friends outside. To accomplish that, I will let nothing stop me!"
+
+He paused to let it sink in. Rina gave no sign of having even heard.
+
+"That is your wish, too," he continued. "You want her away from here.
+She and I are nothing to you. You were happy before we came!"
+
+She darted a startled look at the man who could so well read her
+feelings.
+
+"Mabyn is mad because she will not have him!" Garth went on. "He is
+always crazy for what he cannot have."
+
+She turned her head again with the look that said so plainly, "How did
+you know that?"
+
+"When we get her away, he will soon forget. All will be as it was
+before!"
+
+She maintained her obstinate silence.
+
+"Do I not speak true words?" Garth challenged.
+
+She evaded the question. "If you go out, you send the police after him,"
+she muttered.
+
+He saw Mabyn's hand here. "I will not," he said quickly. "I give you my
+word on that!"
+
+She looked at him incredulously. She did not understand the pledge.
+
+"There's my hand on it," said Garth, offering it.
+
+Rina gravely laid her own in it, and let him wag it up and down. This
+form of binding an agreement she knew.
+
+Still she had not committed herself to anything; and Garth paused,
+determined to make her speak before he went on.
+
+She favoured him at last with a walled glance purely savage. "Let
+'Erbe't go off the island," she said indifferently. Clearly she asked it
+more with the idea to see what he would say, than with any hope of his
+agreeing.
+
+"I will not do that," said Garth firmly. "Night and day he would be
+plotting to kill me. Night and day he would be driving you on to do it
+for him. You would try to do it. You cannot say no to him! And if you
+did bring me down--" Garth sunk his voice--"all, _all_ would be
+lost!--Mabyn and you and Natalie and I!"
+
+Her eyes sought his with a poignant glance; and she paled again. He felt
+he had made an impression.
+
+"I will treat him kindly," he said, seeking to follow up his advantage.
+"You shall go to the shack now for everything he needs; and we will take
+it to him."
+
+"Can I spik with him?" asked Rina in a low tone.
+
+Garth rejoiced--it was the first token of submission. "For five minutes
+by my watch," he said.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+GRYLLS REDIVIVUS
+
+
+On the next day but one Natalie's condition took a sharp turn for the
+worse; and for many days thereafter, Garth put every other thought out
+of his head. She fell into a high fever and suffered incessantly and
+cruelly. At this call, Rina showed forth in colours wholly admirable;
+day or night she seldom left her patient's side; she was never at a loss
+what to do; and Garth comforted himself with the thought that Natalie
+could scarcely have had better care anywhere.
+
+During these busy days Rina appeared to forget her own heartache in a
+measure; and never once on the occasion of their daily trip to the
+island (Garth forcing her to accompany him) did she again express a wish
+to speak to Mabyn. At their approach Mabyn always retreated; and they
+were accustomed to set his rations down on the shore and immediately go
+back.
+
+But Garth could not trust the breed unreservedly, and unceasing
+vigilance was his portion. He had little enough sleep before, and now he
+strove to do without it altogether. For three days and three nights he
+did not close his eyes. On the fourth day, warned by his tortured,
+wavering brain that it must be either sleep or madness, he took his fate
+in his hands and lay down on top of the cache, with his gun beside him.
+
+He was unconscious for nearly twelve hours. When he awoke it was to find
+Rina's eyes fixed upon him strangely. He sprang up, and she turned away
+her head. He could not read that expression--still he had lain there at
+her mercy and she had spared him. Neither had she liberated Mabyn from
+the island, for Garth could see him moving about. He began to hope that
+his arguments had real weight with the breed; and little by little,
+under pressure of his great need, he began to trust her.
+
+But when the dread promontory was weathered at last, and Natalie, a
+wraith of her blooming self, awoke in her right senses, Rina changed
+again, resuming her old sullen, moody self; and all his work was undone.
+It was clear the unfortunate girl was dragged ceaselessly back and forth
+between her new-fledged soul and the old savage impulses of her blood.
+She learned to love the irresistible Natalie whom she had snatched back
+from death--but she likewise hated her; hated her blindly because Mabyn
+loved her; and inconsistently, but naturally, too, hated her because she
+despised Mabyn. The same with Garth; over and over she unconsciously
+showed she trusted him; but her blood still rebelled because he was
+Mabyn's enemy; and he would sometimes find her eyes fixed on him in a
+quickly veiled expression of savage, implacable hatred.
+
+On the first day of his imprisonment, Garth, under threat of withholding
+supplies, had forced Mabyn to cut down the willows fringing the hither
+side of the island; and his movements about his fire and tepee were in
+plain view of those on shore. Concealed from him by a tree, Rina would
+often sit by the hour, watching him wistfully. "God knows what course
+her harried brain pursues!" Garth, observing her, thought--"if she
+thinks at all!" One thing was sure: under the strain of continued
+separation, her resistance to Mabyn's evil suggestions was gradually
+breaking down.
+
+Meanwhile Garth was straining every nerve to complete the shack that was
+to be at once their habitation and their fortress. Within the shelter of
+its walls he hoped to sleep at peace again. His nerves were stretched
+like violin strings from the lack of it; for all he could permit himself
+was an hour or two in the morning while Natalie was awake and could warn
+him. All afternoon he chopped pine trees, which old Cy with an
+improvised harness dragged into camp; and far into the night, until
+overtaken with complete exhaustion, he trimmed his logs, squared the
+ends, and lifted them into place.
+
+It was their second red-letter day, when the last sod was dropped into
+place on the roof, and Garth carried Natalie inside. Strictly considered,
+the house was not very much to brag about, perhaps; for it slanted this
+way and that like the first pothooks in a child's copybook; but Garth,
+fired by Natalie's enthusiastic praises, could not have been prouder
+if he had completed the Taj Mahal.
+
+One end had been partitioned off for Natalie's room; and in finishing
+this part Garth had spent all his pains. The floor was made of small
+logs, filled and plastered with clay, which he had hardened by building
+fires upon it; and had then strewn rushes over the whole. There was a
+rough bunk in one corner, with a low table by its side--the latest thing
+in rustics, the maker explained. There was a tiny window high up on the
+side overlooking the lake; it had no glass, but a stout shutter swinging
+on wooden pins, and which fastened with a strong wooden bar. But the
+crowning feature of the room, constructed with infinite pains after
+countless failures, was the fireplace in the corner. Garth deprecated
+it; it wasn't much of a fireplace; only a sort of little arched doorway
+of baked clay, so narrow the logs had to stand upright in it, making
+cooking very difficult--but when Natalie saw the flames curling up the
+chimney in the most natural way possible, she set up a feeble crow of
+delight.
+
+The balance of the interior was to serve for Garth's room and storeroom
+combined. It had a very small door, also on the lake side; but he could
+not afford a window beside; and he also saved himself the trouble of
+flooring it. The door was constructed in the same manner as the shutter,
+of matched poles strongly braced behind, and further strengthened with
+rawhide lashings.
+
+Natalie had Garth hang a spare blanket over the doorway between the
+two rooms; and she produced a shawl to serve for a table cloth. After
+supper, when they locked themselves in and heaped up the fire, Natalie
+propped up on her couch, and Garth sitting on a stool, smoking by
+especial request--it was as snug as Heaven, Natalie said. The nights had
+been growing dreadfully keen of late; and poor Natalie wrapped in all
+the blankets they possessed had nevertheless more than once lain awake
+with the cold. But now, within thick walls--what matter if they were out
+of the perpendicular?--and under a tight roof, with the flames leaping
+briskly up the chimney, no king in his palace ever experienced such a
+sense of opulent and all-sufficing luxury as Garth and Natalie the first
+night in their miserable shack.
+
+This was the fourteenth day after Natalie's accident. Every day after
+the first week had shown a slight improvement in her condition; and
+every day had therefore lessened the hold Rina had over them; until now
+Garth felt, should it be necessary, he could bring the patient safely
+back to health unaided. Rina knew this too; and became daily more morose
+and sullen in her demeanour. To separate her longer from Mabyn would be,
+Garth felt, simply to promote an explosion. Besides, sufficiently housed
+now, well armed, and with the food safely stored, he felt strong enough
+to be merciful. On the night they moved into the shack he pointed out
+the canoe to Rina, telling her that henceforth she was free to use it as
+she would. He would go to the island no more, he added; but Rina might
+come every day for rations for both--as long as Mabyn remained where he
+was.
+
+He hoped by this to incite the energetic Rina into planning Mabyn's
+escape from the island. They could catch a couple of horses and ride to
+their friends at the distant Settlement, or where they would. He felt he
+could trust Rina, if she ever got Mabyn among her own people, to keep
+him from coming back. Thus he would at the same stroke be rid of them,
+and conserve his rapidly diminishing stores. It was no great matter if
+they drove off all the horses, for he still had old Cy under his eye for
+Natalie to ride; and their own journey back would have to be undertaken
+at a walking pace, anyway. He had learned enough of Rina's mixed
+character to be sure that this would have a greater chance of coming
+about if he let her think of it for herself, so he said nothing to her.
+
+He was disappointed. Mabyn, too timid to undertake so long a journey
+without ample supplies, or perhaps too obstinate to go, they remained on
+the island; and Rina came every day for food. If she was grateful for
+being allowed to join Mabyn she did not show it. Every trace of her
+better nature rapidly disappeared, and she seemed wholly the sullen
+savage. Bad treatment was the explanation they thought; and they pitied
+her.
+
+Garth waited five days more. Natalie was by that time moving around
+freely; and they had begun to count the days to their ardently desired
+retreat from that unhappy valley. The question of food became more and
+more pressing--their journey would have to be spread over many slow
+stages; and he finally decided to drive Mabyn and Rina away.
+
+So the next time Rina came, he told her he would give her two days'
+rations for two persons the following day; and after that they need
+expect no more. In the meantime, he said, she was free to go up on the
+prairie and catch the first two horses she met. He even offered her old
+Cy to round them up, secure in holding the dugout for a hostage. Rina
+betrayed not the least surprise, or any other feeling at his ultimatum,
+but coolly rode off as he bid her. She returned within an hour driving
+Emmy and Timoosis, which she picketed below Mabyn's hut.
+
+What passed between Rina and Mabyn when she returned to the island, the
+other two could only guess at. However, Garth, up at dawn next morning,
+saw them striking the tepee. They made two trips back and forth between
+the island and the mouth of the creek; and afterward, while Mabyn
+saddled and packed the horses, Rina paddled to Garth's camp to get the
+promised rations. They both awaited her on the bank.
+
+Rina presented the mask-like face they had grown accustomed to, and
+maintained a dogged silence. The only sign of feeling she gave was a
+shadow-like pain drowned deep in her dark eyes. Natalie's own eyes
+filled at the sight of her stubbornness; in the days of her suffering
+she had grown very fond of her dark-skinned nurse; and it was she who
+had insisted throughout on the existence of Rina's better nature, and
+had never given up hope of reclaiming the worser part. And now it
+seemed, she must admit herself defeated.
+
+Garth laid out the food he had allotted them; and packed it in a
+flour-bag convenient to carry. He also gave Rina an open letter he had
+written, setting forth their situation (without implicating Mabyn or
+Rina) and asking that food and an escort be sent. That it would ever
+fall into responsible hands was problematical; but it was a chance. He
+refrained from any suggestion that it should be concealed from Mabyn,
+but Rina of her own accord thrust it in her dress; and he argued well
+from the act.
+
+Rina turned to go without a word; but Natalie called her softly. In her
+hand she was holding a round silver locket, in which she had put a tiny
+picture of herself. She held it out to Rina with a wistful smile.
+
+"For you," she murmured. "Keep it because I love you."
+
+Rina looked at the little picture, struggling to maintain her parade of
+unconcern. But suddenly she snatched it out of Natalie's hand; and
+thrust it in her own bosom. Her face worked with the pain of those who
+weep with difficulty; her eyes filled and overflowed at last. With a
+wild, brusque abandon, she flung herself at Natalie's feet and pressed
+the hem of her dress to her trembling lips.
+
+"You good! You good!" she sobbed. Then springing to her feet as abruptly
+as she had fallen, she flew away among the trees.
+
+Half an hour later they heard the two horses passing the trail behind
+their camp; the same trail by which they had all first entered the
+valley; and the way to Spirit River Crossing.
+
+At first they dared not believe they could really be free of their enemy
+so easily; and they continually found themselves listening for the sound
+of their return. Garth saddled Cy at last; and rode along the trail to
+the top of the bench. He saw Mabyn and Rina two specks in the distance;
+and still travelling south. When he returned with the news to Natalie,
+they allowed themselves to rejoice at last; and they were filled with a
+great peace.
+
+Going home! was the burden of their happy speech; home to the land of
+friendly faces, the urbane land, the place of comfortable little things,
+where life was lapped in ease, sane and well-ordered! How their ears
+ached for a human noise again! the bustle of crowded sidewalks, the
+clang of gongs, the fall of hoofs on asphalt! How their flesh yearned
+for the creature comforts! delicate feasting and good clothes to wear!
+One must be plunged into the wilderness for a while to sense the gifts
+of civilization at their true value.
+
+"I can understand now why men are so crazy to be explorers and things,"
+said Natalie. "They go away just for the tremendous fun of coming back
+to it all! Oh-h! Think of dances--and even despised tea-parties now!
+Think of theatres and restaurants and going to the races!"
+
+"And wouldn't I like to take you straight through to New York, though!"
+sang Garth. "Oh! Broadway and the Avenue in September! Everything
+getting under way again! And Coney Island is still going! Picture Luna
+Park dropped down on the island out there!"
+
+They laughed at the incongruous picture.
+
+"Where would we dine the first night?" asked Natalie.
+
+"Martin's," said Garth. "Fancy us in the balcony looking down on the
+giddy crowd; and the orchestra sawing off the sextet from _Lucia_ for
+dear life!"
+
+"Lobster à la Newburg and a _pèche Melba_!" cried Natalie in an ecstasy.
+
+"Not on your life!" said Garth. "Just like a girl's bill-of-fare.
+Something sensible for yours when you go out with me! How about a filet
+_dernier cri_?"
+
+"Don't know it," said Natalie. "Besides, I refuse to be sensible in my
+imagination," she added.
+
+Garth described the delicacy. "And a cheese sauce on top all browned,
+with strips of red pepper laid criss-cross; and it comes steaming hot
+under a little glass cover!"
+
+Natalie groaned. "Oh, talk about something else!" she said faintly.
+
+"What will you wear?" asked Garth with a grin.
+
+Natalie drew a long breath and plunged forthwith into elaborate, excited
+descriptions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Their respite was very short--only to the middle of the following
+morning. They were still dwelling on the subject of home. Garth had
+carefully lifted Natalie into the saddle; and was leading the horse up
+and down the strip of grass to see how she bore it. Suddenly she bent
+her head, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Horses!" she said.
+
+Garth sharply pulled up old Cy. "The Indian cayuses, perhaps," he said.
+
+Natalie shook her head. "Heavier animals than that," she said. "And more
+like the steady trot of ridden horses!"
+
+They listened with strained attention; and presently the pound of hoofs
+was clearly audible returning on the same trail through the woods of the
+lake shore. The approach of strangers is charged with a tremendous
+significance to those immured in a wilderness. They bated their breaths
+to hear better.
+
+Garth scowled. "If they come back they can starve!" he said shortly.
+"They'll not get another stiver's worth from our store!"
+
+Natalie's ears were very sharp. "There are more than two!" she said
+suddenly. "Four--six--more than that!"
+
+Garth's face cleared. "Friends, undoubtedly," he said. "Mabyn could
+never enlist anybody, not even breeds, against us!"
+
+But this was only for Natalie's benefit. Even while he spoke another
+thought struck a chill to his heart. Lifting Natalie off the horse, he
+sent her into the house; and taking his gun, he struck back through the
+woods to the side of the trail, to reconnoitre. He dropped behind a
+clump of mooseberry bushes where he could see without being seen.
+
+The cavalcade was close upon him. The first to ride past was Herbert
+Mabyn. His livid face was alight with triumph; and he carried a new
+Winchester slung over his back. An ill-favoured breed youth followed;
+his face struck a chord in Garth's memory; but so hard is it to
+distinguish alien faces that for the moment he could not place him. Next
+there came six packhorses, laden with food and camp outfit, and driven
+by the next rider, a breed woman, whose face happened to be turned from
+Garth as she passed. He had an uncomfortable sense that he knew her too.
+Rina followed, turning a sad and troubled face in the direction of their
+camp as she rode by.
+
+This seemed to be all; and Garth was about to rise, when he heard still
+another rider approaching. He crouched back with a sure foreboding of
+who it was; hence there was little surprise in the actual sight of the
+faded check suit enwrapping the burly figure, the broad-rimmed
+"Stetson," and the ragged cigar ceaselessly twisted between fat lips. He
+looked older, that was all; and he bore marks of illness. Nick Grylls
+had found them out.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+SUCCOUR
+
+
+Garth was thankful he was alone when it happened. The reaction after
+their day of joyous hopefulness was too sudden to be borne. Crouching
+behind the bush, he dropped his head in his arms. What could he hope
+for, single-handed against such overwhelming odds? For a while his heart
+failed him utterly, and all his faculties were scattered in clownish
+confusion. He knew not which way to turn. At last one thought shone
+through the murk of his brain like a star: Natalie must not be rudely
+frightened. He got up; and composing his face with a great effort of
+will, he hastened back to her.
+
+But the riders having crossed the bed of the stream, and mounted the
+rise, Natalie already knew as much as he. Her first thought was likewise
+for him. She turned a solicitous face.
+
+"My poor Garth!" she said. "More care and danger for you!"
+
+The simple words acted on him like a strong tonic. His brow smoothed;
+his mouth hardened; and he was mightily ashamed for his moment of
+weakness.
+
+"More fun!" he said with his dry, arrogant note of laughter. "Act four
+of the drama begins!"
+
+Natalie caught his spirit and laughed back.
+
+"Who was the half-breed, do you suppose?" he said. "Whitey-blue eyes,
+ugly scar!"
+
+"Don't you remember?" she said quickly. "The stage to the Landing----"
+
+"Xavier! Of course!" he cried.
+
+"And the second woman?"
+
+"I only saw a ring of gray curls under her hat."
+
+"Mary Co-que-wasa!"
+
+"Hm! The entire _dramatis personæ_?" said Garth.
+
+Natalie, not to be outdone, saluted with her good arm, and asked:
+"Orders of the day, Captain?"
+
+In a truly desperate pass one breaks down--or laughs. Youth laughs. They
+bolstered each other's courage with their jests, each secretly wondering
+and admiring of the other.
+
+"We have the house, anyway!" said Garth. "Good old tumbledown shanty!"
+
+"No! Fort Indefatigable!" amended Natalie.
+
+"It'll be besieged all right," said Garth. "We must carry in everything
+we own, and fill up the rest of the space with wood for the fire. I
+would share my room with Cy, but the old boy couldn't get his ribs
+through the door!"
+
+Natalie was told off for sentry duty. She took up her position at the
+edge of the shore, where she could report on all that transpired in the
+other camp. It seemed to be the design of these people first to overawe
+them with a display of force. They pitched camp openly, in and around
+Mabyn's hut; and moved about all day in plain view. The men amused
+themselves by shooting their guns at various marks, clearly to show the
+number and strength of their weapons. Up to dark, Natalie was able to
+report that none of the five had left camp.
+
+Garth, meanwhile, worked like a Trojan. All the wood cut for the fire
+was carried inside, and he had, besides, a quantity of logs left over or
+discarded from the building of the shack; and these were likewise
+stored. The hut was built so near the edge of the bank there was little
+possibility of an attack from in front; in each of the other three sides
+he cut a loophole for observation and defense. The last hours of
+daylight he spent in hunting near camp; and in setting snares to be
+visited later. Two rabbits were all that fell to his bag.
+
+At nightfall they locked themselves in. Garth did not stop then, but
+worked for hours piling the spare logs around the three vulnerable sides
+of the shack; so that if the bullets should fly, they would be protected
+under a double barrier.
+
+The night passed without alarms.
+
+In the morning Garth wished to venture forth as if nothing had happened.
+Inaction was intolerable to him. He insisted it would be fatal for him
+to act as if he were afraid.
+
+Natalie was all against it.
+
+"But this is the twentieth century after all," he said; "and we're under
+a civilized Government. They would never dare shoot me in cold blood!"
+
+"Not kill you, perhaps," she said; "but bring you down, helpless!" Tears
+threatened here; and Garth was silenced.
+
+Opening the shutter in Natalie's room, they could still command a view
+of the other camp. Grylls and Mabyn were visible; and at intervals the
+two women appeared. Xavier was missing.
+
+"He will be watching us," Natalie said.
+
+As if to give point to her words, a rifle suddenly barked its hoarse
+note, close outside. Garth sprang to the loophole in Natalie's room; and
+was in time to see the poor, stupid, faithful old horse, tethered
+outside, sink to his knees, and collapse on the grass.
+
+He leaped up, turning an ominous, wrathful face.
+
+"Oh! The damned cowards!" he muttered.
+
+Natalie flew into the adjoining room, and flung herself in front of the
+door. "You must not go out!" she cried. "What would I do, if you were
+hurt?"
+
+She was unanswerable, and he turned from the door, sickened with balked
+wrath, and flung himself face down on his blankets until he could
+command himself.
+
+As if to give this act time to sink in, nothing further was undertaken
+against Garth and Natalie all day; though they were undoubtedly under
+surveillance, because the five were never about their own camp at the
+same time. It was a bitter, hard day on the besieged; Garth, chafing
+intolerably, paced the shack like a newly caged animal; and even Natalie
+suffered from his temper.
+
+At nightfall he eased his pent-up feelings by a cautious sally. He
+filled all their vessels in the lake; and revisited his snares, which,
+however, yielded nothing. They were too near camp. He saw no sign of any
+adversary; but some of them came about later in the night like coyotes;
+for in the morning Garth saw that the body of old Cy had been dragged
+away--in the fear, perhaps, that his flesh might furnish them with food.
+
+After breakfast Garth took his pipe to the window, and folding his arms
+on the high sill, watched the movements in the camp across the little
+bay. They were watching him too; he presently sensed a pair of
+field-glasses in Grylls's hands. Garth laughed and obeying a sudden,
+ironical impulse, waved his hand. Grylls abruptly lowered the glass and
+walked away.
+
+Garth was still smiling, when all at once, without warning, Rina came
+around the corner of his shack and faced him point blank. The smile was
+fixed in astonishment; Rina was unperturbed.
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded, picking up his gun.
+
+"I got no gun," she said, indifferently, exhibiting her empty hands.
+"Nick Grylls, him send you letter."
+
+Garth reflected that by letting her in, he stood the chance of getting
+much useful information; so bidding Natalie stay in her own room, he
+opened the door.
+
+Rina handed him the note from Grylls. It was scribbled in a small,
+crabbed hand on the back of a business letter. On the other side Garth
+had a glimpse of the time-honoured formula: "_Dear Sir: Yours of the
+first instant to hand, and contents noted. In reply we beg to say_----"
+It gave him a queer, incongruous start: outside, it seemed, people still
+went to and from their offices, absorbed in their inconsequential
+affairs--while here in the woods he was fighting for his life, and
+Natalie's honour!
+
+"Where is _she_?" Rina asked--she had never referred to Natalie by name.
+"I will fix her hair for her if she want," she added humbly enough.
+
+Natalie immediately came forward, offering her hand. Rina clung to it
+without speaking, turning away her head to hide welling tears.
+
+"Where did you meet these people?" Garth asked her.
+
+"On the prairie," she answered, low-voiced. "Yesterday, noon spell. They
+coming this way. Nick Grylls, him mak' moch friend with 'Erbe't, and
+'Erbe't, him glad. Nick Grylls big man, rich man, everybody lak to be
+friend with him. Nick Grylls say him come to help 'Erbe't. Him give
+'Erbe't ver' fine gun."
+
+"Humph! Mabyn will pay dear for it!" Garth exclaimed.
+
+"I say so him," Rina said eagerly. "Me, I tell 'Erbe't everybody see
+Nick Grylls him jus' mak' a fool of you. What he want with you? He want
+her for himself. 'Erbe't on'y laugh. 'E say--" Rina's voice sunk very
+low--"'Let him help me get her, and I'll keep her, all right!'"
+
+Garth frowned and clenched his fists. His gorge rose intolerably, at the
+thought of this precious pair contending which was to have Natalie.
+
+Rina went on: "Nick Grylls say to 'Erbe't, mustn't let her get out of
+the country. He say 'If she go out she divorce you.'" Rina pronounced
+the word strangely. "Nick Grylls say he know a place to tak' her all
+winter, Northwest, many days to Death River, where no white man ever go
+before. Him think I not hear what he say."
+
+This was valuable information indeed.
+
+Garth opened the letter. It was a curious document, for while the
+thoughts were like Grylls's, they were clothed in a certain smoothness
+of phrase more likely supplied by Mabyn:
+
+     MR. GARTH PEVENSEY, SIR: (Thus it ran) I am astonished beyond
+     measure at the story I have learned from the lips of my good
+     friend, Mr. Herbert Mabyn. I assure you, sir, that, though this is
+     an unsettled country, we are not accustomed to lawlessness; nor do
+     we propose to stand for it from strangers. You have twice attempted
+     Mr. Mabyn's life; you have stolen and converted to your own use his
+     household effects and supplies; you have unwarrantably imprisoned
+     him on an exposed island to the great detriment of his health. Your
+     purpose in all this is transparent. You seek to part him from his
+     wife; and you are at this moment detaining Mrs. Mabyn in your
+     shack.
+
+     I flatter myself I am not without weight and standing in this
+     community; and I hereby warn you that in the absence of the regular
+     police, I mean to see this wrong righted. If Mrs. Mabyn is
+     immediately returned to her husband, you will be allowed to go
+     unmolested. If you still detain her, we will seize her by force, as
+     we have every right, moral and legal, to do. We know you have only
+     food enough for a few days, so in any case the end cannot remain
+     long in doubt.
+
+     NICHOLAS GRYLLS.
+
+Scorn and amusement struggled in Garth's face. His nostrils thinned; he
+suddenly threw up his head and grimly laughed.
+
+"Well, this beats the Dutch!" he said feelingly.
+
+Natalie, reading the cunningly plausible sentences over his shoulder,
+was inclined to be anxious. "Surely he has no legal right over me," she
+said.
+
+"Not a shadow!" Garth said.
+
+"Grylls may have believed this story Mabyn told him," she said.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" Garth said quickly. "Grylls is not so simple." He
+stuck the letter sharply with his forefinger. "I'm a newspaper
+reporter," he went on dryly, "you can believe me, this is a perfect, a
+beautiful, a monumental bluff! I'm almost inclined to take off my hat to
+him! But the length of it gives them away, rather; they must have spent
+all day yesterday cooking this up."
+
+"What will you do?" Natalie asked.
+
+A wicked gleam appeared in Garth's eyes. "Oh, wouldn't I love to answer
+it in kind!" he said longingly.
+
+"An innocent, simple little billet-doux that would make them squirm.
+Why, that's my business!"
+
+"Better not," said Natalie anxiously.
+
+"You're right," he said with a sigh. "It's the first thing you learn:
+never to write when you feel that way. But it's mighty hard to resist
+it!"
+
+Rina understood little of all this. "You send answer back?" she asked.
+
+"No. Tell him there's no answer," said Garth. "Tell him we nearly died
+laughing," he added.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Garth determined not to leave the cabin until shortly before
+dawn. He had seen Xavier leave the other camp before dark; and he
+guessed the breed youth had been told off to watch them. From what he
+had observed of the incontinuity of the breed mind in any given
+direction, he strongly suspected if they kept still throughout the first
+part of the night Xavier would fall asleep before morning. He had a
+little plan in his mind, which he did not confide to Natalie. About
+three o'clock, therefore, he called Natalie to bar the door after him;
+and he sallied forth, concealing from her that he carried a coil of
+light rope.
+
+He was gone more than an hour, of which every minute was an age to poor
+Natalie crouching over the fire and straining her ears. She had
+successively pictured every possible accident that might have befallen
+him, before her heart leaped at the sound of his signal at the door.
+
+Garth was for sending her back to bed forthwith, but Natalie apprehended
+he had not been gone so long for nothing; and presently she heard him
+stand two guns in the corner.
+
+"What have you got?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"Oh, I just made a trade." Garth airily returned. "Thirty feet of
+clothesline for a Winchester and a bag of cartridges. I threw in a
+handkerchief to boot. Pretty good, eh?"
+
+Natalie pulled him in by the fire, and made him light his pipe and tell
+her what had happened.
+
+"Well, I had a hunch Xavier was watching us to-night," he began. "I bore
+a grudge against Xavier's pretty face, and I thought I'd have a little
+fun with him, you see."
+
+Natalie glanced up in alarm.
+
+"A fellow would go mad, if he couldn't do _anything_," Garth apologized.
+"I'll be good now for a week."
+
+"Xavier?" said Natalie inquiringly.
+
+"I wouldn't have minded a little bit, giving the brute his quietus,"
+Garth said coolly. "He killed my horse. But he had no chance to put up a
+fight; and I couldn't murder him; so at this present moment he's
+unhurt--except his feelings. But Grylls will half kill him in the
+morning!"
+
+"What did you do to him?" she demanded.
+
+"I was pretty sure he would be watching the path we have made to the
+trail," Garth went on. "I figured he would be on my left hand--his
+right; it's the position a man instinctively takes. You can't shoot so
+well over your right. So I crawled along the path, inch by inch on my
+stomach----"
+
+"Garth!" she cried in horror. "If I had known!"
+
+"Exactly!" he said. "So I didn't tell you. But there was no danger,
+really. It was too dark for him to shoot me--pitchy dark there, under
+the trees. I couldn't see an inch before my nose; and as I went I felt
+with my hand out in front of me, both sides the path. Thistledown was
+nothing to the lightness of my touch.
+
+"Sure enough, no more than thirty yards behind the house here, I touched
+his moccasin--you couldn't mistake the feel of a moccasin. And, just as
+I expected, he was sitting on my left. That was a pretty good guess
+if----"
+
+"Oh! Go on! Go on!" she begged.
+
+"He had his back against a tree. I listened for his breathing. They
+breathe very light--tubercular, probably. Finally, I decided he was
+asleep.
+
+"Well, I mosied around behind him; and then I grabbed him. He let out
+just one little squawk; and then he shut his mouth. He struggled;
+slippery as an oiled cat, but not very strong. Finally I got him gagged
+with my handkerchief. Then I tied him up with my rope; round and round;
+just like the stories we read when we were kids. I expect I pinched him
+some; that was for poor old Cy.
+
+"Afterward I sat down opposite him; and lit my pipe; and thought over
+what I'd do with him, now I had him. We certainly weren't going to feed
+his ugly phiz; and he was no use as a hostage, for Grylls wouldn't give
+a hang what became of him. Meanwhile I was relieving my mind, by telling
+him a few plain truths about making war on dumb beasts. Hope he
+understood!"
+
+Natalie concealed a smile. "What did you say?" she asked.
+
+"Never mind," said Garth. "It was more forcible than polite. It's been
+sizzling inside me for two days. Finally I decided to return him to his
+own camp."
+
+"Their camp!" exclaimed the startled Natalie.
+
+"Not all the way," he said; "but just where they'd see him in the
+morning. Horrible example, and all that, you know. So I hoisted him on
+my back, and carried him around to the brook. I propped him against a
+tree there, with his face turned home." Garth chuckled. "To finish the
+thing up brown, I suppose I ought to have pinned a placard on his
+breast: Notice! This is the fate that awaits all who--_et cetera_. But I
+didn't think to take any writing materials along with me!"
+
+"Oh, Garth!" said Natalie reproachfully, as he finished.
+
+He turned a face of whimsical penitence. "Honest, I won't do it again!"
+he said. "But I was under two hundred pounds pressure. It was a case of
+blow off or bust!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They could joke for each other's benefit; but privately neither
+attempted to disguise from himself what a desperate pass they had
+reached. When they parted for the night, Natalie would lie staring
+wide-eyed at the fire, and ceaselessly reproaching herself for having
+drawn Garth into the sad tangle of her life; while he, tossing on his
+blankets on the other side of the partition, blamed himself no less
+bitterly for having allowed her to run into danger; and wrung his
+exhausted brain for an expedient to save her.
+
+A little beleaguered garrison watching its small store lessen day by
+day, and counting the crumbs--this is the situation of all to try the
+soul. But a garrison is always buoyed up by the hope of succour; and
+Garth and Natalie could expect none. On the other hand there was no
+possibility of treachery within this garrison; no need to measure out
+the rations, or to guard the store; for each was jealous of the other's
+having _less_; and each sought to give away his share.
+
+There was no variety in those days. They waited in vain for an
+attack--even longed for it; for behind their walls, the odds would be
+more nearly equal. But the other party knew this too; and preferred to
+starve them out. Garth's snares yielded nothing in four days; the only
+flesh they ate during that time was a fish he caught with a line set at
+night in the lake. Their stores were reduced to a few handfuls of flour
+and a little tea. Meanwhile their enemies feasted insolently all day
+about their fire; this siege was child's play for them; they were so
+perfectly sure of their prey in the end.
+
+There came a night at last when Garth and Natalie no longer cared to
+keep up the show of joking; they liked to be quiet instead; and they
+instinctively drew close together. They sat in the inner room; her head
+dropped frankly on his shoulder; and her hand lay in his. It made his
+heart ache to see how thin it was. But her spirit was still strong.
+
+"Garth!" she said suddenly. "Let's make a break for it! Anything would
+be better than this!"
+
+He shook his head. "No go, dearest," he said. "I've been over that, over
+and over it, every night for a week!"
+
+"Couldn't we start down the lake in the canoe?" she said. "And make our
+way from some point below? We could cover our tracks that way, and gain
+much time. You have a rough map and a compass."
+
+"They would discover in the morning that the canoe was gone," he said.
+
+"They might not miss it for a day or two."
+
+"They have the smoke of our fire to go by, too."
+
+"They're careless. We might get a good start."
+
+"Dearest, even if we had many days' start, they know we must make for
+the Settlement. How easy it would be to head us off!"
+
+"But it _might_ succeed," was all she could say.
+
+"It's seventy-five miles," he said sadly. "You're not strong yet. How
+could you walk it, without food to support you on the way?"
+
+"You have your gun," she said faintly.
+
+"There's no hunting on the open prairie for a man on foot!"
+
+Natalie dropped her head back on his shoulder; and said no more.
+
+Garth's face grew grimmer and grimmer in the firelight. "Do not lose
+heart, dear," he said at last, in a gentle voice that was strangely at
+variance with his eyes. "Matters will take a turn to-morrow; I promise
+you that."
+
+"What are you going to do?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"I'm thinking it out," he said, evasively. "I'll tell you when it's
+pieced together."
+
+She was too weary to question him further.
+
+In the darkness of his own room, he faced the thing. There was to be no
+sleep for him this night. The alternative had been there from the first;
+but hitherto he had averted his eyes from it, hoping against hope. Now
+it could be put off no longer. It was Natalie's life against theirs; and
+throughout the hours of the night, he steeled his heart to launch five
+souls to eternity--two of them the souls of women. Rina he knew would be
+transformed into a tigress by the death of Mabyn; so even Rina, whom
+Natalie loved, must go too. He found himself dwelling with horror on the
+harmony of her beauty, the deep fire of her eyes, the soft play of
+colour in her cheeks--which he was to mar!
+
+Supposing he succeeded, the dreadful consequences were painfully clear
+to him; the hideous noise it would make in the world when they got out;
+the ugly look it would have, with no one to bear out his story but
+Natalie, and her lawful husband among the dead! Grylls's lying letter
+had shown him how easy it would be to paint that side of the story in
+the colours of justice. For himself, Garth cared nothing; but the
+thought of Natalie, the sport of a world of malicious tongues, maddened
+him. But there was no help for it; it had to be done.
+
+His plan was simple in the extreme. He intended to cross the lake in the
+canoe; land well beyond Mabyn's camp; and fire the grass to the windward
+of the shack. No rain had fallen in weeks; the grass was as dry as
+tinder; and the old bleached shack itself almost as inflammable as
+gunpowder. He had, moreover, a small quantity of oil among the things
+seized from Mabyn. The night itself seemed to speak for the deed; it was
+as dark as Erebus; and there was a blustering, raw wind from the north,
+presaging snow.
+
+After starting the fire, he meant to climb the rising ground behind; and
+when they ran to beat out the flames, he would pick them off one by one.
+His gun would shoot as fast as he could think; he might get all five
+then. And if any regained the hut, they would soon be driven out again.
+Whichever way they ran, Garth could run as fast on the higher ground;
+and none of them was such a shot as he. Grylls first; then Mabyn; then
+the breeds. He meant to wait until dawn, so that if any escaped the
+radius of the fire, he could get them by daylight.
+
+But no executioner may have imagination; in the darkness of his room the
+attitudes of the slain were pictured to Garth as clearly as if they
+already lay before him: Grylls's gross body huddled in the grass; Mabyn
+hideous in death; and Rina cold and still in her wistful beauty. Cries
+of terror and agony rang in his ears; and he saw himself afterward
+burying the bodies--partly eaten by the flames. Small icy drops broke
+out on his forehead. Though he was doing it for her, when it was done,
+Natalie could not but shrink from such a bloody wretch. It would part
+them forever. But it must be done!
+
+When his watch showed half-past four--the dawn was later now--he arose
+to start. He called Natalie to bar the door after him. He told her he
+was going merely to look about and that she must not worry if he was not
+back until daylight. Natalie was scarcely awake. He yearned mightily to
+take her soft, sleepy form in his arms for once before they were
+imbrued; but he dared not, knowing she would instantly interpret the act
+as a possible farewell.
+
+When she closed the door behind him, he felt as one lost to hope.
+
+As he grasped the canoe, preparatory to pushing it off, he suddenly
+became aware through his sharpened senses--he could not have said
+how--that some one was very near him. He noiselessly dropped to one
+knee; and unslinging his gun, waited. The wind was making confusing
+noises and he could not be sure. The suspense became too great to be
+borne in silence.
+
+"Who's there?" he said sharply.
+
+There came a strange, new, and yet familiar voice out of the darkness:
+"Garth, is that you?"
+
+His heart began to beat wildly. "Who are you?" he whispered.
+
+"Charley!" returned the voice with the boyish break in it.
+
+They sprang to their feet simultaneously, not ten paces apart in the
+grass.
+
+"I've brought you grub!" sang the boy. "How's Natalie?"
+
+In an instant they were in each other's arms. A swift reaction passed
+over Garth; his knees weakened under him; he clung to the boy's
+shoulders; and lowered his head.
+
+"Oh, thank God! thank God!" he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE BROKEN DOOR
+
+
+Garth beat recklessly on the cabin door crying:
+
+"Natalie! Natalie! Good news!"
+
+She was not long in opening.
+
+"See what I've brought you back!" he shouted.
+
+They slammed the door shut; and together pulled Charley in by the light
+of the fire.
+
+"Charley! _Charley!_" cried Natalie, quite beside herself with delight;
+and flinging her free arm around his neck, she pressed her lips full on
+his.
+
+The honest full-moon face of the boy turned as red as a peony; but his
+arms closed around her too, with a right good will; and it was Natalie
+in the end, who was obliged gently to disengage herself.
+
+They all talked at once; they laughed and wept in concert. As soon as
+they finished shaking hands all around, they began again. Whenever Garth
+was at a loss to express his feelings, he whacked Charley between the
+shoulders, until the boy coughed. In the end, speech failing them
+completely, they whooped and capered about the shack like wild things.
+
+"I say!" said Garth suddenly. "We're giving ourselves away nicely! The
+news has reached Mabyn and Grylls by this time."
+
+They quieted down.
+
+"Tell us your adventures, Charley dear," said Natalie.
+
+"I'd better bring my stuff in first," said he.
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+The boy unslung a bundle from his back. "Thought you might be hungry, so
+I brought enough for a couple of squares," he said; "sugar, and tea, and
+bacon, and flour. And say, I thought something fancy would go down good;
+so there's a tin of sardines and a box of biscuits."
+
+"Oh! you darling!" said Natalie.
+
+Charley was much embarrassed. "The rest of the stuff's cached two miles
+down the shore," he went on hastily. "I'll trot along and bring it in."
+
+"Take the canoe," said Garth; "and they can't hold you up."
+
+"What will I do with the horses?" asked Charley.
+
+This was a problem. "How many?" Garth asked.
+
+"Three."
+
+"How will we keep them out of Grylls's hands?"
+
+"Why wait at all?" asked Natalie. "Let us all get in the canoe, and
+start for home. It will take me just five minutes to get ready!"
+
+But Garth shook his head. "You can't ride above a walk yet," he said.
+"It would mean a running fight all the way. The odds are still too
+great against us in the open!"
+
+"The fellows from the Settlement promised to come look for us in a week
+if we weren't home," said Charley.
+
+"Good!" said Garth. "Then we'll wait for them!"
+
+"And the horses?" said the boy anxiously. "They're not much to brag
+about; but I'm in debt a hundred bones for them."
+
+Garth clapped him on the back again. "Don't you worry about that, old
+boy!" he cried. "The debt is mine! Tell you what we'll do!" he added,
+"We'll bring them up here, and swim them off to the island. There's
+forage enough over there for a day or two, and they will be right under
+our eyes!"
+
+They set off immediately in the canoe; and it was all accomplished as
+planned. Charley brought the precious grub back by water, out of
+Grylls's possible reach; while Garth drove the horses in over the trail
+at a smart pace. Nothing happened en route; it was probably all done
+before their adversaries had time to plan an attack. They swam the
+horses to the island, and were both back in the shack, before it was
+light enough to aim a gun.
+
+Breakfast followed; and such a breakfast! They both helped the one-armed
+cook. There was bannock light and snowy; bacon fried crisp--"breakfast"
+bacon, very different in the North from plain "bacon"; and fried
+sardines--delectable morsels! and coffee, and jam. All the delicious
+things Garth and Natalie had dreamed of paled beside this homely
+reality. Each of the three was delighted, moreover, to see the others
+eat; Charley in especial, at the sight of the good he had brought, could
+scarcely stop grinning to chew. Afterward he had to be told all that had
+happened; and he in return related his adventures.
+
+"Tell you what! I was sore when Garth sent me back!" Charley began.
+"'What's the use!' I thought. 'I can't do any work, not knowing what's
+come of them.' In the end I just didn't go back. I had all kinds of
+crazy ideas about following you along the trail; but at last I thought
+maybe I could be some real use by hanging round the Settlement, and
+keeping an eye on Nick Grylls. And I did.
+
+"Say, he really was knocked out all right, all right. They carried
+him in from the lake; and the sisters nursed him in the Convent.
+Construction of the brain he had, or something like that. Seems he
+got up when he first come to on the shore, walked ten miles, and then
+collapsed right near Grier's Point. But they kept that low. Hooliam gave
+out a great story, how a big storm came up on the lake, and how Nick
+fell overboard, _et cetera, et cetera_; Garth wasn't mentioned in it
+at all!
+
+"Long before Nick was able to be around, he sent down for Mary Co-que-wasa
+and Xavier; and then I knew there was more mischief brewing. Say, those
+two are the toughest of the whole tough bunch. They say Xavier is Mary's
+son. All this time I was getting mighty worried myself, why you didn't
+come back, and I was going to look for you anyway. However, as soon as he
+was up, Grylls got a big outfit together, and started over the portage
+with the two breeds. He gave out that he was going up to Ostachegan
+Creek--but I knew! I got a couple of cayuses on credit, and a little
+grub; and followed him inside three hours.
+
+"He beat me by a day to the Crossing, and went right through. Over there
+I heard about you from the fellows; and say, I was scared for fair, when
+I counted up the grub I knew you had, and then thought how long you'd
+been away! I hustled and got another horse and all the grub they would
+trust me for. I tried my darnedest to get some of the fellows to come
+with me. They laughed at me! They said I'd been reading too many dime
+novels--I never read any! You see, every one knows Nick Grylls so well,
+and nothing like this ever happened before. Jim Plaskett, the policeman,
+would have believed me; but he was away. I left a letter for him. I lost
+a couple of good days at the Crossing over this. The most the fellows
+would say was, if I didn't bring you back in a week, the bunch would
+ride up here.
+
+"I was so excited with it all, I lost myself like a bloody fool for two
+days on the prairie; and I just ran on the lake, by accident, yesterday
+afternoon. Say, I almost gave the whole snap away, for I came over the
+hill right above Mabyn's shack. Maybe I didn't duck in a hurry! There
+was the whole bunch below me! Across the corner of the lake, I could see
+this house too. I know it must be yours because it was just built; and
+it had a sort of tenderfoot look to it. Say! I wasn't glad to see smoke
+coming out of the chimney! Oh, no!
+
+"Well, that's about all. I took a long sweep around the prairie, and
+came down at the place where we got the horses. I thought they would
+have you watched, so I figured I'd better wait for night, before trying
+to open up communications. When she got good and dark, I crawled around
+the shore of the lake. But when I got here, I didn't know how in thunder
+to let you know it was me, without bringing down the bunch on us. So I
+decided to lay low till morning, and show myself to you, the first
+chance I got. Then Garth came out and it was all right!"
+
+"Just in the nick of time!" said Garth grimly.
+
+"What were you going to do?" asked Natalie quickly.
+
+But he never told her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They settled down with what patience they could muster, to wait for
+their relief. Two days passed without any hostile demonstration from the
+camp on the hill; but that their enemies kept themselves well informed,
+they had the best reason to know; for it snowed on the second day, and
+on the following morning there were moccasin tracks around the house,
+and the rounded marks of two knees under the loophole in Natalie's room.
+Garth had taken the precaution to hang a piece of canvas over the hole;
+nevertheless, the discovery made them decidedly uncomfortable. Garth
+nailed a board over the hole; and they searched the walls anew for any
+tell-tale crack that might betray them.
+
+It grew warm again; and the snow melted off the ground. Frequent
+observations of the other camp taught them nothing. This apparent
+inactivity puzzled Garth, since the others must know that the game of
+starving them out was blocked with the arrival of Charley. They waited
+in momentary expectation of attack, or a proposal; but none came.
+
+Garth's only serious anxiety now was for the three horses. They must by
+this time have cropped the limited herbage of the island; and in another
+day, when they began to suffer with hunger, they would undoubtedly swim
+off; and all his trouble to save them would be lost. He was greatly
+tempted by the recollection of a wide, low meadow on the edge of the
+lake below, where the blue-joint grass grew as high as a man's thigh,
+curing naturally in the sun. With an hour's labour, he reflected, he
+could cut enough to last them for a day.
+
+There was a risk, of course, in depriving the cabin of its principal
+defender for even so long; but he would not be at any time more than
+half an hour's journey from them; and Charley ought surely to be able
+to hold the fort for that time. In case of an attack it might even be
+an advantage for him, Garth, to be on the outside of the cabin, where he
+could flank the attackers with his gun.
+
+In the end he went; setting off two hours before dawn, according to his
+custom. On issuing from the shack, he found with some anxiety that the
+sky had become heavily overcast, and an east wind had sprung up. This
+would prevent his hearing as well as he wished; however, he considered
+that if Grylls intended a night attack, he would scarcely wait until so
+near morning: and he kept on.
+
+He sat in the stern of the canoe pushing hard against the opposing wind.
+The raised bow danced over the water, slapping the little waves, and
+sending out musical cascades of drops on either side. The wind had the
+same cool, damp smell of the east winds at home; and he was reminded of
+a score of nights when he had nothing heavier on his mind than the
+approaching end of a vacation. After two days' imprisonment in the
+shack, the tussle with the wind was highly exhilarating; and it was very
+good to measure the strength of his arms. He sang under his breath as he
+worked. Black as it was, he could guide himself by the dimly-sensed
+outline of the tree masses; and when they receded he knew he had arrived
+opposite the meadow.
+
+It took him longer than he had counted on to gather what he could carry;
+for he was hampered by the intense darkness. He collected the hay into
+small armfuls, which in turn he tied into great bundles; and wedged them
+into the canoe. Embarking again, he raced back before the wind at double
+the speed he had made against it.
+
+On the way, a single, dull sound, coming muffled through the night,
+brought his heart into his throat. He paused; but no other sound
+followed, except the song of the water, and the sweep of the wind
+through the branches on shore. He redoubled his strokes, filled with a
+vague anxiety; and pausing only to cast out his bundles on the shore of
+the island, hastened back to the camp. He heard no other untoward
+sounds; but crossing from the island, he saw that the fire in the other
+camp had died down. This had never happened any night before; and it
+added to his uneasiness. The increased chill of the air now heralded the
+approach of dawn; but it was not yet any lighter.
+
+As he landed, the familiar outline of his own house, just as he had left
+it, allayed his fears. Everything about the camp was still. Cautiously
+drawing up the canoe, he advanced with confidence to give the prearranged
+knock on the door. His knuckles beat upon the air. The door was wide open.
+
+Then Garth's heart shrivelled in his breast; and his throat was
+constricted as by sudden deadly fumes. He staggered in. There was
+a stale odour of gunpowder in the room.
+
+"Natalie! Charley!" he called, in a choked whisper.
+
+The stillness mocked him.
+
+He ran into Natalie's room, still faintly illumined by the embers of
+the hearth. A glance told him it was empty; but he felt with his hands
+in all the dim corners, agonizingly whispering her name. There was no
+evidence here that any struggle had taken place.
+
+Running out to the outer room toward Charley's bed, he fell over a body
+lying on the floor. A touch told him it was the boy. He disregarded it,
+until he had made sure Natalie was not there. Then dragging the body
+into the inner room, he built up the fire. He saw the boy was not dead;
+he could find no wound on him. He worked desperately to bring him to.
+
+Charley stirred at last, and opened his eyes.
+
+"What happened?" besought the distracted Garth.
+
+The boy only looked at him stupidly.
+
+"For God's sake collect your wits, and tell me!" he cried.
+
+Charley, suddenly clutching Garth's arm, raised himself on his elbow.
+"Garth!" he cried wildly. "Natalie! Where is she?"
+
+"God knows!" groaned Garth.
+
+Terrible recollection returned to the boy's eyes. He sat up dizzy and
+nauseated. "I remember now!" he stuttered.
+
+"Quick! Quick!" implored Garth.
+
+"It was a little while after you went," Charley continued, getting it
+out with difficulty. "Natalie came and shook me. She said she heard a
+sound outside.... We waited and listened--a quarter of an hour it
+seemed.... We heard nothing.... Then suddenly with one big crack, the
+door flew open. They drove a log against it.... I couldn't tell how many
+came in--maybe three.... I shoved Natalie behind me in the farthest
+corner. I had the Winchester ready in my hands.... They dropped to the
+floor when they came in; and scattered. I couldn't tell where they
+were--I don't know how long it was.... Suddenly I heard something close
+to--somebody breathing. I fired. In the flash I saw them all, Xavier,
+Mary, and right over me, Nick Grylls, swinging the butt of his gun--then
+my head split in pieces ... and you came!"
+
+"Oh, my God!" cried Garth.
+
+He picked up his rifle, and ran like a madman from the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE BLIZZARD
+
+
+Garth had no conscious design in running; his muscles merely reacted in
+obedience to the grinding tumult in his brain. His eardrums rang with the
+fancied sound of Natalie's cries; and his eyeballs were seared with the
+picture of her shrinking in the brutal hands of Grylls. As he crashed
+through the wood, the little branches whipped his face unmercifully; and
+the spiny shoots of the jackpines tore his clothes. He ran full tilt into
+unyielding obstacles; and was flung aside, unconscious of the shock.
+
+He instinctively sought the other camp. He found it deserted; the tent
+gone; the door of the empty cabin swinging idly in the wind. He came to
+a stop then; and his arms dropped to his sides: without knowledge of the
+direction they had taken; and without the craft to follow their tracks
+in the grass, in his helplessness he hovered on the brink of sheer
+madness. He was sharply called back to himself by the sound of a faint
+groan from the edge of the cut-bank. A tinge of gray had by this time
+been woven into the unrelieved blackness. Running toward the sound, he
+found a human form prone in the grass; and he saw it was a woman lying
+on her face. Grasping her shoulders, he rolled her over. It was Rina.
+
+A tiny hope sprang in his breast. Here at last was a clue.
+
+"Get up!" he said roughly.
+
+She made no answer. From her limpness, and her cold, moist hands, Garth
+apprehended that she was physically sick. Partly raising her, he poured
+part of the contents of his flask down her throat. She choked, and
+turned her head away.
+
+"Let me be!" she murmured. "Let me die!"
+
+The wildness in Garth's veins subsided. Here he had something tangible
+to work upon; and his conscious brain resumed operations; prompting him
+at first like a small, strange voice at an immense distance.
+
+"Tell me what happened!" he said hoarsely. "If they have wronged you,
+too, help me to find them, and we'll pay them off together!"
+
+"No! I want die!" whispered Rina in a voice as dull and hopeless as the
+sound of all-day rain in the grass. "I say I kill myself. He laugh. He
+see me tak' bad medicine. He don' care. I fall down. He leave me. I
+t'ink I die then. I ver' glad. But I tak' too much; and it only mak' my
+stomach sick. Bam-by I try to go to lake and jomp in--but my head go
+off!"
+
+In spite of her unwillingness, Garth forced more of the stimulant down
+her throat. Presently she was able to sit up. She bowed her back, and
+buried her face in her crossed arms.
+
+"Ride with me after them!" urged Garth. "They have less than an hour's
+start! We will overtake them at their first camp. Rouse yourself!"
+
+But Rina only shook her head; and continued to murmur: "He want me die!
+He glad I die!"
+
+Garth's desperate need brought craft to his aid. "Very well," he said
+coolly. "I shoot him on sight! Mabyn goes first!"
+
+Rina, touched home, raised an agitated face. "No! No!" she said
+tremblingly. "Grylls, him took her--not 'Erbe't!"
+
+"No matter!" he said, feigning to leave her. "Mabyn dies like a
+dog--unless you come with me."
+
+Rina struggled to her knees, and clutched at him. "Wait a minute!" she
+stammered.
+
+"Come with me, and I promise you his life, if I can save it," he urged.
+"I will give it to you!"
+
+She attempted to rise; and he lifted her. She stood swaying dizzily,
+clinging to his arm for support.
+
+"I come," she said faintly at last. "Tak' me to the water, then go get
+your horses. When you come back I ride with you."
+
+She stopped in the cabin, and got an herb she knew of to restore her.
+Garth then carried her down the hill, and laying her at the brink of the
+water, where she could drink and bathe her face, he hastened back to his
+own shack.
+
+It was now light enough to see a way through the wood. A spectral mist
+hung suspended a few feet over the lake; beneath it the water was like a
+steel cuirass, reflecting bordering foliage as black as jet. Charley had
+gone for the horses as a matter of course and was even now landing them.
+The boy's whilom rosy cheeks were as white as the mist; and his face was
+twisted with pain. His jaw was set doggedly; and he worked ahead without
+question or comment.
+
+No orders were required; they laboured instinctively. Saddles were
+carried out, and flung on the dripping beasts; and while Charley girthed
+them, Garth rolled the blankets, and made three bundles of grub, as
+heavy as he dared ask each horse to carry, in addition to his rider.
+Natalie's little rifle he gave to Charley; the second Winchester had
+been won back in the raid, and the twenty-two was the only other weapon
+they possessed. In twenty minutes they were ready. Securing the door of
+the hut against the entrance of animals, they hastened to pick up Rina.
+
+They found her waiting, outwardly collected; her old walled, sullen
+self--but in the early light her skin showed a deathly, yellowish gray.
+Refusing any assistance, she climbed into the empty saddle without
+comment; and mutely pointed the way over the hills to the west. Garth
+lingered to affix a note to the door of the shack for those they
+expected to follow.
+
+As he caught up to them again, he overlooked his little party with the
+eye of a commander. It was not a hopeful view: three wretched, half-fed
+beasts he had, complaining at the very start under their loads; and for
+his aids an injured boy and a sick girl; with one first-class weapon and
+a toy among the three of them. This was all he had with which to meet
+and overcome Grylls's strong and well-provided party. The odds were so
+preposterous, he put the thought out of his head with a shrug. At the
+last there is a moment when the hard-pressed commander must wall up his
+brain; and let the tide of his blood carry him. The daylight revealed
+Garth's face gaunt and sunken; his lips a grim stroke of red; and his
+eyes contracted to two icy points.
+
+As they climbed the hill Rina said: "They got fourteen horse. Nick
+Grylls bring nine, three yours, and two cayuse 'Erbe't's."
+
+At the top she halted them, while she walked her horse back and forth,
+searching the grass. Garth's eyes meanwhile swept the wide, brown,
+undulating sea, seeking in the hollows and the coppices for any sign of
+motion. But the plain was as empty of life as the gray sky.
+
+Rina rejoined him. "They break up so we can't see them so good," she
+said in her indifferent way. "Seven horse go by the edge of the coulée,
+southwest. Five horse go west. Two horse go northwest. Bam-by I t'ink
+they come together."
+
+"What horse was _she_ on?" Garth demanded.
+
+"Nick Grylls's big roan," she answered. "They mak' a bag for her to sit
+in. She sit one side; Mary Co-que-wasa sit the other."
+
+"Find the roan's tracks," ordered Garth.
+
+Rina shook her head. "I never follow that horse," she said.
+
+"Find the heaviest tracks then!"
+
+She obediently wheeled her horse; and searched the turf again; riding
+around them in wide fanlike sweeps, while Garth waited with a deadly
+patience. At last she struck off to the northwest, calling to them, and
+Garth and Charley spurred after.
+
+"'Erbe't, Mary and her, go this way," she said briefly, as they came up.
+"Nick Grylls take six horse west, and Xavier take four by coulée."
+
+"If we can overtake her before the others come up!" muttered Garth.
+
+Rina, looking at their horses, shrugged significantly.
+
+For half an hour they loped over the prairie without speech. A chill,
+damp wind stung their faces. The immense and empty plain with its cold
+shadows wore an ominous look under the lowering sky; a look that
+clutched at the breast.
+
+"I t'ink it snow bam-by," Rina had said.
+
+It would need only snow to complete their difficulties. Garth ground his
+teeth; and urged his horse afresh up every little rise, eagerly
+searching the expanse ahead from the top. A glance at last at the
+stretched nostrils and wet flanks of their mounts told him plainly such
+a pace would be slowest in the end. Hardest of all to bear was the
+necessity of going slowly.
+
+"What do you know of their plans?" he demanded of Rina.
+
+She shook her head. "They not tell me moch," she said. "They t'ink I too
+friendly for you!"
+
+Little by little as they rode, the story was drawn painfully out. "Soon
+as Charley come to you, they get ready right away," said Rina. "They
+catch all horses, and keep them up coulée, and pack everyt'ing. Mary
+Co-que-wasa, her go down and watch your house all the time, for good
+chance to tak' _her_. When you go out she mak' little fire under the
+bank for signal; and Nick Grylls and 'Erbe't and Xavier, them all go
+down. They not tak' me."
+
+Garth cursed himself to think how he had played directly into their
+hands.
+
+"I wait, and bam-by they bring her back," continued Rina in her toneless
+voice. "She ver' quiet. She mak' no cry. By the fire I see her face. It
+is the face of a dead woman."
+
+A groan was forced between Garth's clenched teeth. "Did they hurt her?"
+he demanded, waiting for the answer like a condemned man waits for the
+final stroke.
+
+But Rina shook her head. "Nick Grylls, him tak' off his hat, polite,"
+she said. "'Erbe't not say anyt'ing to her."
+
+He breathed again. "Did they refuse to take you along?" he asked.
+
+The stolid brown face was twisted with pain again. She lowered her head,
+and clung to the horn of her saddle. "No," she said very low. "They
+'fraid to leave me be'ind. But they don' want me. And I want to die when
+I see 'Erbe't with _her_. They all glad when t'ink I to die!"
+
+Garth forbore to question her further.
+
+His impatience could scarcely brook the necessary pause to let the
+horses feed at noon. It was a camp of wretchedness; none of the three
+riders thought of eating. All the while the horses cropped, Garth strode
+ceaselessly up and down, biting his lips; while the white-faced boy, who
+had not spoken all morning, sat holding his bursting head between his
+hands; and Rina, crouching apart, gazed over the prairie with unseeing
+eyes.
+
+Garth had it ever in mind to save the horses, but his impatience was
+incontrollable; he made them start too soon; and throughout the
+afternoon he urged them more than he knew. The animals failed visibly,
+hour by hour. It was more than three hours before they came upon the
+site of the noon camp of those ahead, showing that they were steadily
+losing in the chase.
+
+To be obliged to stop again two hours short of darkness was a crushing
+disappointment to Garth; but the horses could go no farther. He could
+never have told how he curbed his impatience throughout that age-long
+night. He did not sleep: but an excess of suffering is in the end its
+own merciful opiate; and he was not always fully conscious.
+
+With the morning a fresh blow awaited them. Daylight revealed Garth's
+mount lying dead of exhaustion fifty yards from camp. In a wide circle
+on the neighbouring heights, the coyotes were squatting on their
+haunches, waiting for the sure feast. It was colder than the day before;
+and the clouds hung thicker and lower. The three of them approached the
+dead animal, and looked down upon it stolidly.
+
+Garth set his teeth, and laughed his harsh note. "I will walk," he said
+shortly. "I can keep going while you are spelling the horses."
+
+Charley, for the first time, questioned a decision of his leader. "We
+can't spare an hour!" he said with a dull decisiveness, in which there
+was nothing boyish. "You have got to keep on ahead. Besides, you can't
+follow the tracks as well as I can, you would lose yourself. I will
+walk."
+
+Of the two desperate expedients it was clearly the better; and Garth
+instantly acquiesced. Possessed by a master idea, he was incapable of
+feeling any great compunctions at the idea of the injured boy setting
+forth on the prairie alone--that would come later. At present he stood
+equally ready to sacrifice Charley, or himself, or all three of them
+together, if it would save Natalie.
+
+The boy doggedly busied himself making a bundle of his blankets, and
+food enough to last him three days. The rest of his pack was added to
+the complaining backs of the other two horses.
+
+Garth did not neglect to consider what he could do to ensure the boy's
+safety. "Better return to the shack," he urged. "You can do it in two
+marches. There's plenty of grub there."
+
+But Charley flatly refused.
+
+"Very well," said Garth. "I'll leave a note for you every time we stop,
+telling you what time we passed. If you don't overtake us to-night or
+to-morrow, I'll leave more grub for you. If we don't catch them in a day
+or so," he added with a look at the remaining horses, "we'll all be in
+the same boat again."
+
+It was a grim, brusque leave-taking. The boy averted his head as they
+left him, to hide the look of despair in his eyes. He knew what the
+lowering, wintry clouds portended on the prairie; and in his heart it
+was a final farewell that he bade them. But he kept his chin up, and
+strode manfully after.
+
+Garth did not suspect what was passing in his mind; the city man had
+never seen a snowstorm on the prairie. Topping every rise, he looked
+back, and waved his hat at the plodding figure, slightly bent under the
+weight of his pack.
+
+"He's tough! He'll come through all right!" he said to Rina more than
+once--perhaps because he needed secretly to reassure himself.
+
+Rina, preoccupied with her own heavy thoughts, did not seem to care
+either way.
+
+About ten o'clock they descended into a considerable coulée whose stony
+bed still contained some standing pools. Here, by the water, Grylls's
+party had encamped for the night; and the ashes of their fire were still
+warm. From the extent of the trampling in the mud, it was clear the
+whole party had made a rendezvous here; and beyond the coulée, even
+Garth had no difficulty in following the trail of the fourteen horses
+over the turf. He rode ahead now; consulting his compass, he saw that
+the way always led due northwest.
+
+Some time later his eye was attracted by a splash of white in the grass.
+Throwing himself off his horse, he pounced upon it. It was a plain
+little square of linen; and in the border was printed in small neat
+characters "N. Bland." The find nearly unmanned him; he fancied the
+scrap of linen was still damp with her tears; and the old madness of
+desperation surged over him again. He forced his weary horse into a
+gallop. Rina indifferently followed.
+
+Pretty soon the snow began to fall in large, wet flakes, drifting down
+as idly and erratically as the opening notes of one who dreams at the
+piano--large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering there
+like measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither and
+thither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard.
+
+Rina lifted her brown face to the darkening sky. "We better go back to
+the coulée," she called after Garth.
+
+He frowned. "Nonsense!" he cried irritably. "A flurry of snow can't
+hurt anybody! It'll turn into rain directly!"
+
+She shrugged, and said no more.
+
+The mute symphony of the snow was played imperceptibly accelerando. The
+flakes became smaller, and thicker, and dryer; and each gust of wind was
+a hint steadier and stronger than the last. Their radius of view was
+little by little restricted: the distant hills faded out of sight, and
+the white dome closed over and around them, until at last they seemed to
+be traversing a little island of firm ground, with edges crumbling into
+a misty void. Presently the ground, too, was overlaid with white; earth
+and sky commingled indistinguishably; and all that held them to earth
+was the quadruple line of black hoof-marks extending a little way
+behind. The horses sulked and hung their heads.
+
+They came to another and a shallower coulée, which seemed to take a
+northeasterly direction across the prairie; whereas all the watercourses
+they had crossed hitherto tended to the southeast. Garth, on the watch
+for any such evidences, suspected they had crossed a height of land. On
+the other side of this coulée he found he could no longer trace the
+passage of the preceding cavalcade under the thickening snow. He
+impatiently called on Rina; but she merely shrugged, refusing to look.
+
+"No can follow in the snow!" she said contemptuously.
+
+At every hint of stoppage, Garth's blood surged dangerously upward. He
+pressed his knuckles against his temples, and strove to think. The two
+horses, instinctively drawing close together, turned their tails to the
+driving flakes. Rina sat hunched in her saddle, as indifferent as a
+squat, clay image.
+
+"I will ride on," he said thickly.
+
+She gave no sign.
+
+He consulted his compass. "We have ridden due northwest all the way," he
+said. "Where are they heading for?"
+
+"Death River, I guess," she answered, pointing. "The crossing is
+northwest."
+
+"How far?" he demanded.
+
+"Two days' journey, maybe seventy-five miles."
+
+"You wait for the boy in the shelter of the poplar bluff across the
+coulée," he said. "When the snow stops, follow on as well as you can."
+
+"Charley not come any more," said Rina in a tone of quiet fatalism.
+"When snow hide our track, he walk round and round. Bam-by he fall down,
+and not get up. He die. He know that."
+
+Garth, ready to push into the storm, reined up again. Her sureness
+chilled his impatient hurry; and the oft-told tragedies of prairie
+snowstorms recurred to him.
+
+"Die in the snow!" he repeated dully, hanging in agonizing indecision
+between the two images; Natalie ahead, and the solitary boy plodding
+behind. On the one hand he thought: "The storm has held them up,
+somewhere just ahead! It is my only chance of overtaking them!" and then
+he turned his horse's head north. But the other thought would not down.
+"The kid knew it meant death to walk; and he chose it!" Garth finally
+led the way back over the coulée.
+
+Rina had no difficulty making herself comfortable among the young poplar
+trees. She improvised a shelter out of a blanket stretched over two
+inclined saplings; and in front of it she built a fire. Garth meanwhile
+changed to the fresher horse, and started back over their own dimming
+trail.
+
+"You never find him now," Rina said hopelessly, as he left her.
+
+Garth merely set his jaw.
+
+His watch told him it was past eleven. He calculated they had covered
+five miles between the two coulées, and that it would be about
+twenty-five miles all told back to their own camping-place. Supposing
+the boy to have averaged three miles an hour, he would now be some
+twelve miles away, and if he kept walking, Garth, at his present pace,
+should come upon him in an hour and a half's riding.
+
+The marks of their previous passage were soon completely obliterated;
+and thereafter Garth rode compass in hand. With the wind behind, his
+horse showed a better stomach for travelling; and he made the first
+coulée in something under an hour. Here a little search revealed the
+half-burned logs of Grylls's fire under the snow; and this put him
+directly in the path again. He stood up the logs, to make a better mark
+against his return.
+
+He began to keep a sharp lookout for the boy, frequently shouting his
+name. His voice, muffled by the thickly falling flakes, had an odd,
+deadened ring in his own ears; and he doubted if he could be heard very
+far. When he considered the vast width of the prairie, and the extreme
+improbability of two figures, shaping opposite courses, meeting
+point-blank in the middle of it, he was ready to despair of finding the
+boy. It maddened him to think how close they might pass, without either
+being aware.
+
+Later, he adopted another expedient. Every fifteen minutes he turned his
+horse at right angles to his course, and galloping far to the right and
+left searched the snow for human tracks; then, picking up his trail
+where he left it, he would push a little farther ahead. In this way he
+could sweep a path about a mile wide on the prairie.
+
+But the hours passed, and the snow deepened, and there was neither sight
+nor sound of the boy. Garth was not sparing of his bitter self-reproaches
+then, for having abandoned him. It seemed to poor Garth in his
+hopelessness, as if his whole course through the country had been
+marked by a series of hideous blunders.
+
+Less than three hours of daylight now remained to him, and he was all
+of ten miles from his own base. He dared not push farther away, for,
+little as he regarded himself, he could take no risks while Natalie's
+fate still hung in the balance. But before giving up, he determined
+to make one last sortie back and forth across the prairie. Far to the
+right, just as hope was expiring, he saw, crossing the white expanse, a
+crooked, double row of slight depressions, like little moulds, slowly
+filling with powdery snow.
+
+Flinging himself off his horse, with a beating heart, he hastily scooped
+out the snow. A man's footprint was clearly revealed. With a shout,
+he mounted again and jerked his horse's head around. The weary animal
+balked flatly at facing the storm, but Garth, beside himself, lashed him
+until he plunged into it. The tracks momentarily grew plainer. While
+they had strayed far to the left of his own course, he wondered to see
+that they still held the right direction in the main.
+
+He redoubled his shouting. At last a muffled, indistinguishable sound
+answered him from ahead; and presently out of the wild whirl of flakes,
+a spectral figure was slowly resolved--as poignant a symbol of humanity
+as the last man on earth.
+
+"Charley! Charley!" shouted Garth.
+
+The figure turned uncertainly. Under the snow-laden lashes the eyes were
+vague.
+
+Garth slipped out of the saddle; and, throwing his arm about the boy's
+shoulders, caught him to his breast. "Thank God! I was in time!" he
+cried in a great voice.
+
+"It's really you!" the boy murmured. "I thought I was hearing things."
+
+Garth clapped him between the shoulders. "Buck up, my hearty!" he cried.
+"It's all right now!"
+
+"Have you got Natalie?" the boy said quickly.
+
+Garth sadly shook his head.
+
+"You shouldn't have come back then," he said dully. "I didn't expect
+it!"
+
+Garth hugged him anew. "Dear lad!" he cried with a break in his voice.
+"I couldn't let you die in the snow!"
+
+The kindness brought fuller consciousness back to the boy's eyes. He
+clung to Garth then; and lowered his head; and whimpered a little. After
+all he was only seventeen.
+
+Garth hoisted him to the saddle; and headed into the storm again. The
+horse balked continually, sorely trying his patience. Their progress was
+very slow. Garth sought to keep Charley up with cheerful speech.
+
+"Bully for you to keep going!" he cried.
+
+"It was because--Natalie might need me," the boy's voice trailed.
+
+"And right on the course!" Garth sang. "How did you keep it?"
+
+"When the snow hid your tracks--I remembered--to keep the wind on my
+right cheek," he murmured.
+
+That was the last Garth could get out of him. He was presently alarmed
+to find the boy growing increasingly numb and drowsy; even he knew what
+this portended in the North. He pulled him out of the saddle; and made
+him walk; supporting him with one arm, while with the other he led the
+horse. The animal took advantage of his partial helplessness, to plant
+his legs and pull back anew. If there was ever an excuse for anger
+against a dumb beast, surely hard-pressed Garth had it then. The horse
+was crazed with exhaustion, and terror of the storm; and tugs and kicks
+were of no avail. Garth could not bring in both boy and horse by main
+strength; and in the end, with hearty curses, he was obliged to abandon
+the beast to his fate.
+
+Garth, pulling his hat over his eyes, and drawing the boy's arm across
+his shoulders, doggedly pushed into the storm. He thus half supported,
+half dragged his companion, who was, nevertheless, compelled to use his
+own legs. Charley never spoke except now and then to beg drowsily to be
+let alone. In Garth's flask was about a gill of precious stimulant, and,
+when the boy's legs failed him, he doled it out in sips.
+
+They had at least nine miles to cover--and only two hours of daylight
+left. Try as he would to banish it, the sense of nine miles' distance
+would roll itself interminably out before Garth's mind's eye. Nine miles
+into two hours--the sum had no answer. Afterward night and storm on the
+empty prairie--what was the use? But when he reached this point, he
+would grit his teeth and take a fresh hold of the boy. If he had any
+other defined thought besides this painful round, it was to thank God
+that he was strong; he needed every ounce of it now.
+
+Instead of attempting to pick up his own trail--surely obscured by now
+in the snow--he shaped his course northwest, trusting to strike the
+coulée at its nearest point, and travel down until he hit the mark he
+had set up. It was a little longer so; but the result justified it, for
+there was some shelter in the coulée; and working down the bottom, they
+could not miss the mark.
+
+It was half-past four by Garth's watch when they laboriously climbed up
+the other side; and set their course by compass again for Rina's camp.
+It grew colder hourly; and the snowflakes became as hard and sharp as
+grains of coarse powder. Charley was kept going automatically by
+frequent small doses of the spirit from the flask. Garth dared not spare
+any of it for himself. It soon began to grow dark; and long before Garth
+could hope they had nearly covered the distance between the two coulées,
+it became totally dark; and he could no longer read the face of his
+compass. Fortunately the wind held steady from the north; he struggled
+ahead, keeping it on his right cheek as Charley had done before him.
+
+Garth's head became confused; he was no longer sensible of the passage
+of time. Only his will kept his legs at their work. Drowsiness crept
+over him; and with it a growing sense of the uselessness of struggling
+further. He fought it for a while, but with subsiding energy. His knees
+began to weaken under him; he sank down. With a desperate effort, he
+struggled up again; and won another painful hundred yards. He was
+falling again--and this time he did not care--when suddenly the ground
+fell away from under his feet, he pitched forward, and he and the boy
+rolled down a steep declivity together.
+
+Garth instantly knew they had reached the second coulée; and the thought
+cleared his fogged senses like the draught from his flask which he could
+not spare himself. He poured the last drops between Charley's numb lips;
+and turned to the right over the stony bed of the watercourse. He
+remembered Charley had strayed far to the left of his true course when
+guiding himself by the wind; and he had also observed in himself a
+tendency to swerve to that side, when working by compass. So he was sure
+they were somewhere above the poplar bluff--how far he dared not guess.
+
+He was right. Utterly worn out by a seeming interminable struggle
+through the drifts in the bottom of the coulée, at last a misty, pinkish
+aura blushed in the snowy night. It was Rina's fire--warmth and shelter!
+and before it a little animal was roasting on a spit. Garth's senses
+slipped away in rapture at the smell it sent forth.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE SOLITARY PURSUER
+
+
+Sometime during the course of the night the snow ceased to fall; and
+morning broke clear and cold. Garth had turned in, intending to rise at
+four; but Nature exacted her due, and it was seven before he awoke. The
+sky was a bowl of palest, fleckless azure; the sun shone gloriously on
+the field of snow; and the air stung the nostrils like the heady fumes
+of wine. But he was in no temper to take any delight in morning
+beauties; he ached in every bone and muscle as if he had been beaten
+with a club; and at the sight of the mounting sun, he bitterly
+reproached himself--and Rina, for the lost hours.
+
+As for Charley, a glance at the boy showed that he was quite incapable
+of further travelling for the present. He suffered as much from the blow
+on the head as from the exposure in the snow. His mind was hopelessly
+confused and wandering. In any case they had but a single horse left;
+and only the one course of action was open to Garth. He instructed Rina
+to remain where she was and care for the boy, while he pushed ahead.
+
+Even Rina betrayed some surprise. "What you do?" she said. "Three men to
+shoot, and Mary to watch _her_. You got no chance!"
+
+"I'll find a way!" he said desperately. "This Death River, tell me about
+it!"
+
+Rina pointed northwest. "Big river, moch water," she said. "Come from
+mountains. Ver' moch high falls; mak' lak thunder! Above falls, ver'
+rough rapids, no can cross. Below falls, deep black hole; breeds say bad
+spirits go there. Only one place to cross, half-mile below falls."
+
+Garth caught the horse, who had fed himself as best he could by pawing
+the snow off the grass, and packed his blankets and a supply of food,
+including what was left of the little carcass Rina roasted. He learned
+it was a lynx; but the flesh was sweet, and he was too thankful for
+fresh meat to quarrel with the nature of it. He left Rina and Charley
+with a better will, knowing she could doubtless get others, as she had
+snared the first.
+
+There was about ten inches of snow on the flat, with deep encumbering
+drifts in the hollows; and his advance was very slow. The ill-nourished
+horse wearied immediately; and any pace beyond a walk was out of the
+question. Had Garth only possessed snow-shoes he could have made much
+better time on foot. The vast expanse was as empty as a clean sheet of
+paper; nevertheless, he saw the prairie was not without its busy
+population, as evidenced by the number of tracks of little furry paws
+that had crossed his course already since the snow finished falling.
+
+At noon, having made about eleven miles (he figured), he came to the
+brink of a coulée wider and deeper than any they had crossed hitherto;
+and which contained a stream in the bottom, running blackly around
+snow-capped stones. As he refreshed himself, and allowed his horse to
+drink, he reflected that Grylls would have reached this stream the day
+before about the time the snow commenced; and that it was likely the
+outfit had camped on its bank until the storm passed. He determined to
+search up and down before pushing ahead.
+
+Sure enough, no more than two hundred yards down-stream he began to come
+upon the tracks of horses and saw the bare patches they had pawed to
+reach the grass; and a little farther he ran plump upon the fresh
+remains of the camp; two bare spots where tents had been pitched, the
+ashes of a fire, and innumerable tracks of men and horses--the whole
+startlingly conspicuous in the sweep of unbroken snow.
+
+Garth's heart swelled with rage and mortification to think what a little
+distance had separated them during the night; and how by rising only
+three hours earlier, he might perhaps have caught them. But presently
+cooler counsels came to his aid; and when he considered the well-beaten
+track that led over the hill beyond, he was thankful for so much luck.
+He knew that at least until more snow should fall, they could never
+shake him off again; and he rode after with a renewed courage. His
+horse, too, freed of the entangling drifts, and sensing the other horses
+ahead, seemed to overcome his weakness for a while; and loped over the
+beaten trail with a good will.
+
+Beyond this coulée the character of the country began to change.
+Crossing a height, Garth saw a range of gleaming mountains off to the
+west at no great distance; his course was heading him obliquely into the
+foothills. The prairie gradually broke up; the mounds became hills; and
+the hollows deepened into valleys. With every mile, almost, the hills
+became higher and more conical; outcroppings of rock began to appear;
+and the little streams ran in gorges now, instead of coulées.
+
+In the rougher country the horse's access of courage soon failed. His
+wind was gone, he sobbed for breath; and Garth was presently reduced to
+the necessity of leading him up every incline. On a wide flat between
+two ranges, he mounted after a long walk, and urged him into a run over
+this easy piece. The slack-twisted animal was not equal to the effort;
+halfway across, his heart broke; and he collapsed in a heap, ploughing
+up the snow, and flinging his rider over his head. When Garth returned
+to him, he was stone dead. In the midst of his chagrin the man could
+spare a glance of pity for the shaggy, misshapen beast. One of the
+vulgar equine tribe, at his best neither beautiful nor courageous, he
+had nevertheless given his life to the journey.
+
+Beside the stony watercourse that traversed this little plain, he made a
+cache of saddle, bridle and what food he could not carry on his back.
+Over the spot he piled a cairn of stones to mark it, and protect the
+little store from marauding animals. In addition to blankets, rifle and
+ammunition, he carried with him food sufficient for about five days. In
+an hour he was on his way again.
+
+During the rest of the day, and the following day, the character of the
+country changed only in degree. The trail never carried him directly into
+the mountains, but skirted among the foothills, which raised strange,
+abrupt, detached cones on either hand--steep, naked, unreasonable shapes
+of earth, like nightmare forms. Each day Garth plodded to the limit of his
+strength, reckless of what lay before him, regarding only the beaten trail
+which led the way. From various signs it was clear those ahead ever gained
+on him; but he kept himself up with the thought that they must sooner or
+later make an extended stop to recuperate their horses. Each night he made
+his tea with snow-water; and, rolling up in his blankets beside the fire,
+slept under the stars; and at dawn he was astir again. Hard work was his
+beneficent sedative.
+
+On the second night as he lay down he heard, or fancied he heard in the
+stillness, the breath of a far-off, heavy sound. He ascribed it to the
+roar of the great falls Rina had told him of; and the thought lent new
+vigour to his limbs next morning. He had another reason to hurry his
+steps; for each day had waxed a little warmer; and to-day the snow
+melted fast, threatening at last to obliterate the track he followed.
+
+In the afternoon the going became harder, for the mountains reached down
+long spurs athwart his path, over which he had to toil. Like the conical
+hills they were bare of all timber; only the valleys and gulches were
+wooded. On the first of these ascents, burdened as he was, over-exertion
+and insufficient sleep began to tell on Garth; and he became conscious,
+for the first, of a terrible weariness in his back. He crushed it down;
+he could _not_ fail; he _had_ to keep on. But the next ascent was harder
+still; and the shape of fear grew in his breast.
+
+The third long climb was nearly his finish. He would not allow himself
+to pause on the way up, though his heart knocked sickeningly against his
+ribs, while flames danced in front of his eyes, and there was a roaring
+in his ears. Gaining the summit at last, he flung himself down, afraid
+for the moment to look at the obstacles beyond. As he slowly recovered,
+a real booming disassociated itself from the noises in his head; and he
+eagerly raised his head. His eyes swept over a far and wide expanse of
+snow, a dish-like plateau among the hills. His heart leaped; for through
+the centre of the plateau ran a black fissure, like a crack in the dish;
+and off to the left a fleecy cloud rose lazily from the gorge, blushing
+pinkly in the light of the setting sun. This must mark the falls; the
+Death River lay at his feet.
+
+The excitement of this discovery was immediately superseded by a far
+greater. In a direct line with him, on the plain beyond the gorge, he
+presently distinguished a few scattering, black objects like insects on
+the snow--but insects of the shape of horses. From the gorge itself,
+perfectly distinct in the crystalline air, rose a thin, blue column of
+smoke!
+
+The haggard furrows in Garth's face smoothed out; his weary eyes shot
+forth a quiet glint; and he slowly and grimly smiled. He arose; and
+instinctively unslinging his gun, examined the mechanism. A goodly
+warmth diffused itself throughout his veins; and he felt strong again.
+The end of his journey was in sight.
+
+Darkness had fallen before he reached the lip of the canyon. With bated
+breath he crawled to the edge and looked over--there was a chance they
+had escaped him again--but in the bottom of the pit, on the other side
+of the river, a fire was flickering redly in the darkness; and there was
+a hint of figures sitting around it. His heart beat strongly at the
+reassuring sight.
+
+The tracks in the snow led him to the top of the path, which descended
+into the gorge. This path was steep, narrow, tortuous and slippery; and
+he knew not what conditions awaited him at the bottom. Prudence
+counselled him to wait for daylight to reconnoitre; but it was not
+possible to contain his impatience the night through, with Natalie so
+near, and he not knowing if she was safe. He started down instantly,
+feeling his way foot by foot; and ever careful to dislodge no stone that
+might betray him. Within the gorge the boom of the falls was largely
+deadened by a bend in the walls above; and lighter sounds became
+audible: the lapping of the river on the stones; and, as he came nearer,
+someone breaking sticks for the fire below.
+
+Between him and the fire rolled the river with a deep, swift current.
+There was no more than a scant fifty yards between wall and wall of the
+gorge at the bottom. Coming still closer, he saw by the light of the
+fire that their camp was pitched on a triangle of flat ground, formed
+where a steep watercourse had made a perpendicular fissure in the
+opposite wall of the gorge. On one side of the fire was pitched a small
+"outside" tent--the same tent Garth had watched so long when it stood
+outside Mabyn's shack--and on the other side stood a tepee. A small
+raft, half drawn out of the water, explained their means of crossing the
+river.
+
+The descending path finally landed Garth on a precipitous incline of
+broken rock at the water's edge; and there, across the stream, so close
+he could have tossed a pebble into their midst, sat those he had tracked
+so far, all unsuspicious of his nearness. They were having their evening
+meal. Natalie was among them, facing him, the firelight strong on her.
+Her face was set and sad--but still unhumbled; and from this and the
+obsequious poise of Grylls's head, when he turned to her, Garth knew she
+was so far safe from him. His heart breathed a still hymn of thankfulness.
+
+Grylls sat on the other side of the fire, with his back against a rock.
+He still wore the bewrinkled suit of store clothes which had become so
+hateful in Garth's sight; and the broad-brimmed hat was set at a rakish
+angle. He was in a jovial humour, judging from the thick unction of his
+speech; doubtless, though he seldom looked at her, in his own way he was
+seeking to charm his cold and silent prisoner.
+
+Mabyn's back was turned to Garth; his attitude was furtive; and
+apparently he spoke little. Garth did not trouble about him; for he knew
+instinctively that so long as the stronger man was by, Natalie stood in
+no danger from Mabyn. Mary Co-que-wasa, serving the food, hovered behind
+the fire, which threw a strange, exaggerated shadow of her hag-like form
+on the cliff. Nearer Garth, at a little distance from the others, Xavier
+sat on the ground, busy with his cup and plate.
+
+Garth watched Natalie with a swelling heart. How brave she was! how
+noble and befitting the air with which she faced her terrible situation!
+The proud sadness of her face was infinitely more affecting than any
+extreme of distress could have been. Garth bled inwardly, to think of
+the torments of mind she must have endured. He yearned mightily to let
+her know he was near. He crouched at the edge of the water, willing a
+message of cheer to her; and heartened himself with the assurance that
+she could not but feel it.
+
+She ate little; and, presently arising, disappeared within the tent.
+Grylls drew out the inevitable cigars, and, carelessly tossing one
+to Mabyn, lit his own. Mary went about collecting the dishes. Xavier
+carried his plate to the river side to wash it. Garth handled his
+rifle with fingers itching for the trigger. There were the four of
+them, all unconscious, delivered into his hands, it seemed.
+
+But he spared them for a while. It was not that he shrank from shedding
+blood now; taking their lives troubled him no more than killing so much
+vermin. But, close as they were, he could not be sure of nailing them
+all; a dive outside the firelight, and they were safe. And Natalie was
+in their hands; and he had no way of crossing the river. He must rescue
+her first.
+
+Mary went into the tent, which she apparently shared with Natalie; and
+presently reappeared with a dishtowel. Lifting a pail of hot water from
+the fire, she prepared to wash the dishes. The fire was dying down, and
+gathering an armful of brush, she heaped it on to make a light.
+
+Too late Garth appreciated the significance of this act. He turned to
+escape up the path again; and in his hurry dislodged a heavy stone,
+which rolled into the water with a splash. He faced about with his rifle
+ready. Only Xavier, at the water's edge, heard the sound, and looked up.
+At the same instant the fire sprang into a blaze, filling the canyon
+with light; and plainly revealing Garth and his shadow behind him on the
+rock. The breed sprang to his feet with a cry of warning. It was the
+last sound, save one, that he ever made. The sharp, light bark of
+Garth's rifle reverberated in the gorge; the breed spun around with a
+throaty, quenched cry, toppled over backward into deep water, and was
+swept away.
+
+Before Garth could aim again, Mary Co-que-wasa seized her pail of water,
+and flung it hissing on the fire. Absolute darkness filled the canyon.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+IN DEATH CANYON
+
+
+Garth crouched at the water's edge, striving to pierce the murk with his
+eyes; but the blackness was like a wall. By and by the outlying embers
+of the fire began to glow faintly; but there was another splash, and
+every spark was quenched. Bending his head, he strained his ears. For a
+long time there was no sound from across the river; then little by
+little, and softly, he heard them set to work like mice behind a
+wainscot. There was a singular, measured falling of stones, which at
+first he could not interpret; then it suddenly occurred to him they were
+building a barricade across their little terrace; and he took heart; for
+the act was opposed to any design of immediate flight. But then, he
+thought, Mary, behind the wall, could easily hold the crossing by
+daylight, while the two men escaped with Natalie. Somehow, he must get
+across first.
+
+He searched noiselessly among the stones above the water line for
+driftwood; and succeeded in picking up a stick here and a branch there.
+Four of the stouter pieces he tied in a square with the rope that bound
+his pack; and upon this frame he piled a crib of sticks, of sufficient
+buoyancy to float his clothes, his pack and his gun. He stripped to the
+skin and waded cautiously into the water. It was of an icy coldness that
+bit like a great burn, and forced the breath out of his lungs like a
+squeezed bellows. But he set his jaws and struck out, towing his little
+raft with the end of the rope between his teeth.
+
+He headed straight across, leaving it to the current to carry him safely
+below the camp. Ordinarily, fifty strokes would have carried him over,
+but the terrible cold congealed the very sap of his body; and the clumsy
+little raft offered as much resistance as a log. He could not tell how
+far he was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could
+scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on
+his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and
+writhe to restore the circulation.
+
+His limbs were rigid; his feet and hands wholly numb--but the will rules
+even bodily exhaustion. He would not tolerate the thought of weakness;
+he _would_ get warm; and his reluctant blood was forced at last to
+resume its course through his veins. Warmth returned with excruciating
+pain. He conceded his worn body a little rest--for he knew they could
+not get their horses before morning--but in an hour, dressed, and with
+his pack and his gun on his back, he was crawling back toward Grylls's
+camp.
+
+This shore of the river, like the other, was formed of fragments and
+masses of rock, which had fallen from the cliffs above. He made his way
+with infinite caution, giving heed to every foothold, and feeling before
+him with his hands. Fortunately there was little snow to obstruct him;
+for what had descended into the gorge was lodged in the crevices of the
+stones. He crawled over heaps of rubble, digging his toes in, to keep
+from sliding into the water; and there were great hundred-ton boulders,
+over which he dragged himself on his stomach. Above the canyon there
+were no stars visible; and below, it was wrapped in darkness, thick,
+velvety, palpable as lamp-black.
+
+After measuring the inches of a long and painful journey over the
+stones, he sensed at last that he was drawing near the camp again. He
+redoubled his caution, hugging close to the wall of rock. Presently it
+fell away to the right; and before him he distinguished a faint whitish
+blur that he knew for the tepee. He stretched himself out to listen.
+Under all was the deadened boom of the falls; below him an indefinable
+murmur arose from the smooth river, and an occasional eddy slapped the
+stones; in front he was vaguely conscious of the three persons moving to
+and fro, and he heard the dull chink of each stone, as it ground its
+edges on the pile. They had relaxed their caution somewhat; once or
+twice a stone, rolling out of place, plumped into the water. They were
+at work at the other end of their barricade from Garth.
+
+He considered what he should do. His brain was working very
+clearly--dragging his exhausted body along after, as it were; for
+excitement and over-exertion had produced a curious feeling of
+detachment from it. As he waited there, the work on the barricade
+ceased; and a whispered consultation was held. If he could only hear!
+Afterward two figures approached the tepee and entered. Instantly
+Garth let himself down over the rocks behind, and snaking his body
+through the bit of herbage on the flat, applied his ear to the
+bottom of the canvas.
+
+He heard Mabyn's voice ask querulously: "What was it you said to her?"
+
+"Told her to sit on top of the wall, and watch," Grylls carelessly
+answered. "They can't cross the river until morning, but we're not
+taking any chances, just the same. She's to watch, too, that the lady
+doesn't try to sneak the raft across to her friends."
+
+"You're going to clear out in the morning?" Mabyn asked anxiously.
+
+"Not on your life!" the other coolly returned. "We got shelter and good
+water here, the horses are safe above; and we command the only crossing
+of the river. We'll sit right here until their grub runs out. They can't
+have brought much!"
+
+"The police may hear," Mabyn murmured.
+
+"Let 'em come and welcome," said Grylls. "They know me! As for you, I
+guess a man can take a journey with his lawful wife, can't he?"
+
+There was a pause. A match was struck. Garth guessed that Grylls was
+resuming his interrupted smoke.
+
+"Seems to me we hold pretty much all the trumps," he went on complacently.
+"My idea is, Pevensey's all alone over there. That was a pretty smart rap
+on the nut, the boy got. But even if there's two of them, what can they
+do? We've got cover, and they've got to show themselves; it's a funny
+thing if we can't pot them easy. We got a right to; they killed our man
+first."
+
+"Hadn't I better ride on with her to the Slavi Indians?" Mabyn suggested
+in a tone that he laboured to make sound off-hand.
+
+Grylls chuckled fatly. "What! And deprive me of the pleasure of her
+company!" he said mockingly. "I guess not!"
+
+Mabyn was silent. Garth dimly apprehended what a torment of impotent
+fear and rage the creature must be enduring. He had delivered himself
+hand and foot into Grylls's power; and Grylls no longer even kept up a
+pretense of hiding his own designs on Natalie.
+
+"Better turn in," Grylls said indifferently. "No need for you to watch
+to-night. I'll have a snooze myself, and go out and relieve Mary before
+dawn."
+
+Garth had heard enough; they were all placed for him; and his way was
+clear. He softly drew himself around the further side of the tepee,
+pausing long between every move, to listen. Both their lives depended on
+his making no sound now; every faculty he possessed was bent on it; he
+took half an hour to make thirty feet. He circled the inside edge of the
+little triangle of flat ground, keeping in the shadow of the piled
+rocks. Crossing the little stream that issued over the flat was hardest;
+but he managed it; patiently studying each move in advance. Finally he
+approached the tent. Beyond, he fancied he could distinguish the vague
+outline of the wall running across; and upon it a huddled figure, a mere
+hint of substance against the pit of darkness behind.
+
+He felt his way around the tent. He found the canvas of the back wall
+was made in one piece. With shaking fingers, he drew his knife out of
+its sheath; and inserting the point in the centre of the stuff, softly
+drew it back and forth, a stroke at a time. His heart was beating like a
+steam drill; he swallowed his sobbing breath. Every instant he expected
+to hear Natalie scream from within.
+
+He severed the last thread at last; and put up his knife. He parted the
+flaps; and listened for sounds from within in an agony of indecision. He
+could not tell if she slept or was awake; he dared not so much as
+whisper her name; and if he touched her and she slept, how could she
+help but awake with a cry!
+
+But she was not asleep; and she had all her wits about her. Close to his
+ear, a voice soft as a zephyr in the grass whispered his name. A
+trembling breath of relief escaped his lips; and instantly an arm was
+wreathed about his neck; and a soft cheek pressed against his rough
+one. He caught her to him; her slim frame quivered through and through.
+It was his own Natalie; the feel of her! the fragrance of her! Life
+holds but one such moment.
+
+"I knew you'd come! I knew you'd come!" she breathed in his ear.
+
+Her terrible agitation was the means of calming his own. He had to be
+cool for both. He pressed her close to him, stroking her hair.
+
+"Brave, _brave_ Natalie!" he whispered. "Not a sound, till we are
+clear!"
+
+He gave her a moment to recover herself, letting his encircling arms
+speak the comfort and cheer he could not utter. Little by little the
+piteous trembling subsided and the rigid form relaxed.
+
+"Ready, now?" he whispered.
+
+She eagerly nodded.
+
+"I lead the way," he breathed in her ear; "and you keep close at my
+heels. Take it easy. It must be hands and knees, and an inch at a time."
+
+Natalie pressed his hand to her lips.
+
+He crawled through the hole, and waited for her outside. She made no
+sound. He touched her reassuringly; and realized with a pang how she was
+handicapped, with one arm in a sling. They crept back around the foot of
+the piled rocks, dragging themselves with tense muscles, a foot at a
+time and waiting long between. By the touch of her hand on his foot he
+knew she followed close. Looking over his shoulder, he sensed the
+huddled figure still motionless on the wall.
+
+He could not have told what gave the alarm. They had reached the
+rivulet, when suddenly Mary leaped off the wall with a cry that brought
+the two men tumbling out of the tepee.
+
+Garth, springing to his feet, seized Natalie's hand, and pulled her
+after him.
+
+"Come on!" he whispered cheerily. "We're safe now!"
+
+They scrambled up over the stones of the watercourse, careless of the
+noise they made.
+
+"What is it?" they heard Grylls shout below.
+
+A sentence in Cree explained.
+
+"Watch the raft!" he shouted. "I'll bring her back!"
+
+They heard him run heavily toward them. Hastily unslinging his gun,
+Garth sent a shot at random through the darkness. They heard the bullet
+spring off a stone. The steps ceased.
+
+"By God! _he's_ up there!" cried Grylls thickly. "Come back, Mabyn!
+We'll get 'em easy in the morning!"
+
+There was no further sound of pursuit.
+
+As they climbed, Garth searched from side to side, as well as he could
+in the darkness, for a suitable spot to make a stand. High above the
+level of the river, a huge cube of rock resting squarely in the bottom
+of the ravine, and forcing the stream to travel around it, offered what
+he wanted. One side of the boulder lay against a steep rocky wall; and
+in the angle was a secure niche for Natalie.
+
+Her courage failed a little when she saw he meant to stop. "Not here!
+Not here!" she protested nervously. "We must put miles between us before
+morning!"
+
+"The way home lies back across the river," Garth said gently.
+
+"Then why did you come up here?" she said a little wildly. "They'll
+never let us back!"
+
+His heart ached for her, at the thought of what she must still go
+through. "Courage! for one more day, my Natalie!" he urged, drawing her
+to him. "We can't start without horses and food, and those I have to win
+for you!"
+
+"You make me ashamed!" she whispered.
+
+He heard no more whimpering.
+
+Garth, appreciating the vital necessity of sleep, if he was to keep his
+wits about him next day, lay down in his blankets while Natalie kept
+watch. With the first tinge of gray overhead, she woke him, as he had
+bidden her.
+
+"If we only had a good breakfast to begin on!" were his waking words;
+"and there's nothing but raw flour and water."
+
+Natalie, in answer to this prayer, produced a flat package from her
+dress which proved to contain bread and meat. "I always kept something,
+in case I should be able to get away," she explained.
+
+They ate, sitting quietly side by side in the darkness--they could even
+laugh a little together now--and they arose vastly refreshed.
+
+Garth climbed the big rock to wait for daylight to reveal the strength
+and the weakness of the position he had chosen. The top of the rock
+formed a flat plane slightly inclined toward their rear; and, lying at
+full length upon it, he could shoot over the edge without exposing more
+than the top of his head. He lifted up a heavy stone or two; and stood
+them along the edge for further protection. Then he waited--waited for
+hours it seemed to him; looking and looking down the ravine until his
+eyes were fit to start out of his head; and he could see nothing; but
+lo! when he looked again the light was there!
+
+On the whole he was satisfied. His rock commanded the entire ravine
+below; it was as steep as a pair of stairs. There was not a stick of
+herbage below; only a trough of heaped and broken rock masses. On either
+hand they were shut in by straight lead-coloured walls of rock; and at
+the bottom of the ravine, the forbidding, mist-gray wall of the main
+gorge cut off the view. In front and on the left they were amply
+protected; their right flank was the weak spot. Above them on this side,
+part of the wall of the ravine had given way some ages past; and a bit
+of the plain had sunk down. The hollow thus formed contained a grove of
+gaunt trees and underbrush. If their assailants, under cover of the
+rocks on the way, ever climbed to it, Garth and Natalie would be badly
+off indeed.
+
+It was a grim figure that the first rays of light revealed sitting on
+the big rock. Garth had lost his hat long ago; and he was both unshaven
+and unshorn. He crouched, hugging his knees, with his rifle across his
+thighs; and his sheepskin coat hung over his shoulders ready to fling
+off, when he needed to act. The flannel shirt beneath was in rags; and
+his moccasins, mere apologies for foot-coverings. But to Natalie,
+regarding the cool, bright shine of his eyes, as he smiled down on her,
+he was wholly beautiful. She was scarcely better off; her pale face was
+enframed in a sad wreck of a limp, stained felt hat; but she could smile
+too; and Garth had never found her lovelier in her bravery.
+
+The suspense was well-nigh intolerable--and so they fell to chaffing.
+
+"If mother could only see us now!" said Garth with a grin.
+
+"I feel like a white cat coming out of a coal-bin," said Natalie.
+"'What's the use!' she says, looking round at herself. 'The job is too
+big to tackle. If I was only a black cat it wouldn't show!'"
+
+"You could walk right on as Liz, the girl bandit of the Rockies," said
+Garth.
+
+"Don't you talk!" she retorted. "You look as if Liz had missed her cue,
+and you'd been through the sawmill!"
+
+And then Garth saw a black sleeve sticking out from behind a rock in
+the ravine below; and he got down to business. A little sigh of relief
+escaped him at the sight of his enemies at last. He fired. The shot went
+wide.
+
+Natalie sank back in her corner, deathly pale; and with a hand over her
+lips, to keep from crying out. Her part was harder than his.
+
+He called down to her reassuringly. "All right! Only a try-out!"
+
+Further down, a second figure showed briefly, scrambling up the
+right-hand side of the trough. Garth fired--a fraction of a second too
+late. He could scarcely credit such nimble agility in a figure so gross.
+It was Grylls. Thus two of them were accounted for. Searching for the
+third, he saw the black crown of a hat projecting above a stone on the
+other side of the ravine. This was an easy shot; he aimed and fired with
+a savage satisfaction. The hat disappeared; but again he knew, somehow,
+that his bullet had not found its mark.
+
+At the same moment Grylls won a rock a yard higher up. He was not coming
+up the bottom of the ravine, but aiming obliquely up the side for the
+trees high above. Garth, grimly covering his shelter, saw him bob his
+head around; a bare, cropped, tousled head, like a hiding schoolboy's.
+Quick as he was with the trigger, Grylls was quicker. The bullet
+flattened itself harmlessly beyond.
+
+As he shot there was a scramble across the ravine; and he saw the other
+figure had mounted. The hat, Mabyn's hat, again showed; and he took
+another shot at it. This time the bullet knocked it spinning off the
+rifle barrel which upheld it; and in a flash Garth understood how neatly
+they were fooling him. Each in turn drew his fire, while the other made
+an advance. He resolved to shoot no more.
+
+Meanwhile the first one he had glimpsed, which must be Mary, had not
+moved from the middle of the ravine. Some of the stones were moved, and
+he guessed she had made a permanent shelter there. There was a shot from
+below, and the bullet spattered itself on the heavy base of rock.
+Holding his hand, Garth awaited a second shot. He saw a tiny white puff
+at last, and marked the aperture whence it issued. The bullet hurtled
+whiningly overhead. Steadying his gun on the edge of the rock, he took
+careful aim--but the other spoke first. It was a marvellous shot--or a
+chance one. The bullet splintered the edge of the stone protecting
+Garth's head, and sang off. A jagged sliver of stone ploughed across the
+back of his extended hand. He exclaimed as in casual surprise, and his
+gun exploded harmlessly in the air. He looked at his hand stupidly as at
+an alien member; then suddenly he understood; and whipping out his
+handkerchief, bound up the wound, knotting the linen with teeth and
+fingers.
+
+Up to this moment Garth had been playing a dispassionate game; but he
+returned to his loophole conscious of a great surge of cold rage against
+those below. He yearned to get even; but he could wait for it. Mabyn
+exposed his hat tantalizingly; Grylls shot out a foot, or bobbed up his
+head--but Garth saved his bullets. He would not even try to pierce the
+sharpshooters' defenses again. An occasional shot came from there; but
+never such another as the last.
+
+Finally Grylls changed his tactics. From behind his rock he taunted
+Garth vilely. The walls of the ravine reverberated horridly with the
+sound of the sudden human voice.
+
+But Garth still bided his time; merely adding the insult of the words to
+Natalie's ears, to the score of his rage.
+
+Natalie in the meantime, thankful to have something to do, had been
+piling stones as heavy as she could lift, on the rock behind him. She
+had torn the sling from her arm; and was using the weaker member to
+steady the other.
+
+Garth, fearful that Grylls might succeed in flanking them at last,
+ordered her to climb up behind him; and without turning his head, told
+her how to make a little parapet along the top of the rock on the
+exposed side.
+
+Garth finally got his chance. A little stone rolled down from Mabyn's
+hiding-place; and he instantly trained his gun on the spot. Mabyn,
+miscalculating, or losing his head, suddenly scurried for the next rock.
+Garth had marked it. Mabyn gained it, but before he could pull his legs
+after him the rifle spoke. There was a scream of pain; and Mabyn's
+body, sliding from behind the rock, rolled and dropped heavily from
+stone to stone. A leg caught in a fissure and stayed him; he hung head
+downward, writhing in hideous, theatrical postures of agony, and
+screaming like a woman. Garth, thinking of Natalie, longed to send a
+shot to still the noise; but his hand was held by his promise to Rina.
+
+It was all over in a minute after that. Grylls, careless of the other's
+fate, scrambled up from stone to stone. Garth peppered his course with
+bullets; but the rocks were scattered so thickly, Grylls needed to
+expose himself for scarcely a second at a time. He gained the trees at
+last.
+
+An instant of terrible suspense succeeded. Garth made Natalie lie close
+under the little wall she had been building. He crouched over her,
+himself fully exposed, searching the hillside with strained eyes.
+Suddenly he saw the bloated face not thirty yards away. Grylls had
+partly stepped from behind a tree and was deliberately taking aim. Garth
+sprang to his knees. The two guns spoke at once. Grylls pitched
+headfirst down the steep slope into view; and rolled down the bare rocks
+into the tiny stream.
+
+"I've got him!" shouted Garth triumphantly.
+
+Even as he spoke he toppled over sideways. Natalie clutched at him
+wildly; but his coat was pulled out of her grasp. He slid off the rock
+and dropped on the stones behind. In an instant she was at his side. He
+was already struggling to rise--his teeth pressed into his lip until the
+blood oozed between.
+
+"Only my left shoulder," he muttered. "I can still shoot. There's Mary,
+yet. Help me up."
+
+Somehow, with her aid, he managed to pull himself back on the rock, one
+arm dangling useless. Through his loophole, he saw Mary toiling openly
+up the ravine. He showed himself. At the sight of him the old woman
+paused and held out her hands as if inviting him to shoot. She had left
+her gun. When he made no offer to fire, she quietly continued her climb.
+Garth watched her grimly.
+
+Reaching Grylls's body, she unwound a woollen scarf from about her
+waist; and passing it under his shoulders, partly hoisted his great bulk
+on her back with an incredible effort; and started down again. Grylls
+was quite dead; his heels thudded limply from stone to stone.
+
+Long before she reached the bottom, Garth lost interest in her progress.
+He had fainted.
+
+Natalie, working to restore him, distracted, hopeless, crazed, suddenly
+heard a distant shout; and looking up distinguished a little cavalcade
+winding down the face of the great gorge. There was a red coat among
+them.
+
+"Garth! We're saved! We're _saved_!" she cried to his unhearing ears.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+EPILOGUE: SPOKEN BY CHARLEY
+
+
+In the city of Winnipeg on a brilliant day toward the end of winter, a
+broad-shouldered, ruddy youth, with dancing blue eyes and a capacious
+smile, came running down a side street, and catching a certain
+fence-post at full speed, swung himself inside the gate with the
+dexterity of old practice; sprang up the steps and banged on the door.
+
+It was opened questioningly by a little mouse of a woman, with great
+brown eyes, and gray strands mixing in her bright, brown hair.
+
+The boy flung his arms around her like a bear. "Mother!" he cried
+breathlessly.
+
+"Charley! My boy!" she gasped.
+
+He picked her up bodily; and, kicking the door shut, carried her into
+the cheerful sitting room, where geraniums bloomed on the sunny
+window-sill, and a fire danced in the grate.
+
+"I'm bigger than you are now!" he chuckled joyously. He put her in her
+chair; and waltzed about the room, touching the well-remembered objects.
+"By Jolly! the very same pictures, the good old sofa!" he sang. "Oh,
+it's good to be home!"
+
+The mother held out her arms. "My boy! My boy!" was all she could say.
+
+Dropping to his knees, he embraced her again. "You dear old lady," he
+cried. "What a trouble I always was! It's your turn to have a good time
+now!"
+
+"It's enough to have you back," she murmured.
+
+He gyrated about the room again. "Say, I feel as giddy as a puppy after
+a bath! Imagine trolley-cars and baby-carriages and show windows and
+silver knives and forks after two years in the North. Say, I've clean
+forgot how to eat stylish!"
+
+"How long are you going to stay?" she murmured.
+
+He came to a stand beside her. "I'm not going back," he said in a deeper
+tone. "It's a bully country and I had a whale of a time--but I belong
+here! I'm going to take care of you now, and bring up the kids. I'm a
+man now,"--his face changed comically--"Don't laugh!" he begged. "I used
+to say that all the time; but it's different now; you'll see! I've had
+experience!"
+
+She held out her arms to him again. "Tell me, my son," she whispered.
+
+He dropped to the floor beside her; and laid his head against her knee.
+There, in front of the fire, while the sun went down, and the early
+winter twilight gathered, he told her the story.
+
+"When Garth rode away leaving me and Rina in the poplar bluff," he
+said--reaching that part in due course--"I didn't know much what was
+happening. But say, that Rina, she's an out-o'-sight nurse! She brought
+me around in great shape; and the second day afterward I was as peart as
+you please. That same day the fellows from the Crossing turned up; Jim
+Plaskett, the policeman, and three others. It was Jim made them come,
+soon as he heard the story. Jim's a peacherino! One of these lean, quiet
+chaps you can depend on; decent, too, clean-mouthed--Oh! Jim's looked up
+to, I can tell you!
+
+"They wanted me to rest a while yet, till they came back. But they had
+plenty of spare horses, and Rina and I wouldn't stand for being left
+behind. We rode like sixty all next day, and camped only fifteen miles
+from Death River. We found the bones of Garth's horse on the way--picked
+clean; and the note he left every place he camped. You ought to have
+heard Jim Plaskett crack up Garth's pluck--and Jim knows!
+
+"We reached the canyon about half-past six in the morning. I'd heard of
+that place from the Indians. Say, it was a fearsome spot! a kind of
+crooked, gaping split in the prairie like the pictures in Dante's
+Inferno. The walls were as bare and hard and cold as black ice; and way
+down in the bottom there was a horrible jelly-like water swirling around
+without making any noise. Seems if you couldn't breathe good when you
+got into the place! Minded me of the receiving vault in the cemetery.
+
+"There was a risky little path going down, and we kept right on. Across
+the river, there was a break in the wall where a creek came down a
+steep, wild-looking ravine. At the bottom of it we could see a tepee and
+a tent; but no people. Some said they saw a body in the ravine, but you
+couldn't rightly make out."
+
+Charley paused and shuddered. "Say, it was horrible!" he whispered.
+"Glad I don't have dreams! When we got down near the water suddenly we
+saw old Mary Co-que-wasa come climbing over a heap of stones that was
+piled on the flat; and she was bent almost double, half lifting, half
+dragging a man by a rope under his arms. It was Nick Grylls. He looked
+dead.
+
+"We shouted at her; and she looked up just once. I saw her face plain.
+It wasn't surprised or glad or anything--just stupid like a breed. She
+never stopped walking. She stepped right off the flat rock into the deep
+water with the man on her back; and they went out of sight; and some
+bubbles came up."
+
+He stopped, staring into the fire. His mother caught him to her breast.
+"Oh, my son! what sights were these!" she murmured.
+
+"Mary was a deep one!" Charley said slowly. "You couldn't tell about
+her! I never heard her open her mouth!
+
+"We hustled down to the edge of the water," he resumed presently. "Jim
+Plaskett threw off his coat; and went in after them. But it was no use;
+the current carried them down; and it was too cold to stay in more than
+a minute or two. We never saw them again.
+
+"Jim landed on the other side; and brought us back the raft that was
+there; and we all crossed. There was nobody in the tents--blankets in a
+heap, as if they'd sprung out of bed suddenly. We started to climb the
+ravine. It _was_ a body lying there on the rocks; it was Mabyn. Rina was
+halfway to it, before any of us saw. He wasn't dead; but had a bullet
+through both legs.
+
+"Say that place was full of horrors! It stunk of gunpowder; and there
+was little thin layers of smoke hanging quiet between the walls. I was
+near out of my head, thinking what had become of them. We shouted all
+the time; and by and by we got a faint kind of an answer back. By Jolly!
+I went up those rocks like a cat! I found them behind a whopping big
+rock. Garth was stretched out all bloody and she was trying to get his
+coat off; and she couldn't. She looked up at me with a face like chalk;
+and when she saw who it was, she just gave a little cry like a baby, and
+keeled over. Oh, it was pitiful! I carried her down to the river. I
+wouldn't let anybody else touch her.
+
+"Well, to make a long story short, we decided to raft it down the river
+to Fort Ochre, instead of trying to win overland to the Crossing. Garth
+had a ball through his shoulder and a gashed hand; and Mabyn was pretty
+low. It was longer that way, but we could carry them comfortable.
+
+"We built another raft and started next morning. Jim Plaskett, Mabyn and
+Rina went on the first; and Sandy Arkess, Garth, Natalie and I followed
+on the other. The other two fellows were to drive all the horses back
+over the prairie. Say, that was quite a journey! Garth was getting
+better; and we all felt pretty good, sitting round and swapping yarns,
+and looking at the scenery, while the current carried us down. When we
+got out of the gorge, coming down so quietly as we were, we saw any
+amount of game. Got a moose right on the bank! Gee! that was good meat!
+And at night, say it was out o' sight! sitting there talking about going
+home, and watching the trees march past, and a bang-up show of Northern
+lights up above! It was pretty cold.
+
+"There was the Dickens of a pow-pow at the Fort, when we got there at
+last! It's great sport being a hero! The Bishop and his party were
+there, just ready to start for home, and you never saw such a surprised
+man, when he saw Garth coming in from the other direction. And the old
+woman--I mean Mrs. Bishop--took to Natalie like her long-lost mother.
+
+"Their party was obliged to start at once for fear of the river's
+closing on them; and Garth insisted on sending Natalie out with the old
+lady. She kicked like anything at leaving him there wounded; and I
+braced him, too, to let her stay; but he told me it was for the sake of
+her good name. I didn't quite see that--why any one who _knew_
+Natalie!--but I suppose he knew best.
+
+"Garth and I stayed at Fort Ochre. The Inspector came down the river;
+and there was an official investigation. I was right in the thick of it.
+Gee! but it was sport! Colonel Whinyates is a great little chap--cheeks
+as red as church cushions, and eyes that pop like gooseberries! It was
+great to hear him bawl at the witnesses. But he's all right. Him and I
+were good friends!
+
+"Garth told his story and I told mine, and Rina and Plaskett. And
+Natalie had left what they call a disposition behind her. Everything was
+all straight, but Garth clinched the matter by calling Mabyn to testify.
+He was carried in on a stretcher. And blamed if he didn't tell the
+truth! He'd had a close call, you see, and had what Garth called a
+change of heart. It was Rina did it; day and night she never left him!
+
+"The investigation ended in a love feast--that's what Garth called it.
+Old Colonel shook hands with Garth and me, and said we were heroes, by
+Gad! He's a bird. Garth wouldn't prosecute Mabyn; and he was let out
+from under arrest.
+
+"The winter had set in by that time; and Garth and I couldn't get out
+till the ice formed. It was pretty slow up there, you bet! and, as Garth
+said, our hearts were outside. We talked about Natalie all the time.
+Mabyn got well, and he and Rina set off for their place with a
+dog-train. Garth gave them a bang-up outfit! Mabyn was a decent head,
+after he got well; and Rina certainly was happy about it. I forgot to
+tell you that Mabyn's mother had died in the fall; and there was no need
+for him to go out.
+
+"The first mail got through in January, and we heard from Natalie at last.
+Bully news! Garth had sent her another one of those dispositions--Mabyn
+swore to it--in the November mail; and it seems that was all she needed in
+order to have the courts annul the old marriage they had gone through
+together. Natalie has been a free woman since Christmas!
+
+"We came out with the mail man next day, you bet! That was six weeks ago,
+and here we are! Garth is waiting for me down at the station. I wanted
+him to come up; but he said he guessed you would want me to yourself
+for a while. Gee! I must be hustling! Train goes at six-thirty!"
+
+"But where are you going?" she asked in dismay.
+
+Charley kissed her. "East to Millerton, to the wedding, of course! Back
+in two weeks! Oh, what larks! What do you think! I'm going to be best
+man. Garth is getting me a silk tile and a frock coat! Oh, Crikey!
+Good-bye!"
+
+The door slammed.
+
+
+                                  THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+
+The following typographical corrections have been made:
+
+  (page 41) "et'em" to "et 'em"
+  (page 73) "immeately" to "immediately"
+  (page 85) "dug-out" to "dugout"
+  (page 89) comma added after "into the light"
+  (page 119) added missing quotes after "came North"
+  (page 152) "heartbreaking" to "heart-breaking"
+  (page 163) added missing quotes after "Lillywhite"
+  (page 180) "Erbe't" to "'Erbe't"
+  (page 197) added missing quotes before "I haven't"
+  (page 200) "dug-out" to "dugout"
+  (page 216) "possesssed" to "possessed"
+  (page 227) "half-way" to "halfway"
+  (page 238) "," to "--" on 253 after canvas
+  (page 240) added a comma after "promise"
+  (page 269) quotation marks removed before "As if"
+  (page 278) "beleaguered" to "beleaguered"
+  (page 285) "!" to "?" after "hands"
+  (page 317) "downstream" to "down-stream"
+
+The word "manoeuvre" on pages 34 and 102 was printed with an
+oe-ligature in the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO ON THE TRAIL***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25159-8.txt or 25159-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/5/25159
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/25159-8.zip b/25159-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15655b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-8.zip
diff --git a/25159-h.zip b/25159-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c25cc24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h.zip
diff --git a/25159-h/25159-h.htm b/25159-h/25159-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b4b407
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/25159-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,9997 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Two on the Trail, by Hulbert Footner</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
+    p {  margin-top: .75em;
+         text-align: justify;
+         margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    p.toclink {text-align: right; font-size: 80%;}
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;
+                       page-break-after: avoid; }
+    hr     {width: 65%; margin: 2em auto 2em auto; clear: both;}
+    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+    .iefix  {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;}
+    body  {margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;}
+    .mainbody  {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .tn       {margin: 4em 7em 4em 7em; padding: 1em; background-color: #f6f2f2;
+               color: black; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 80%;
+               border: dotted black 1px; text-indent: 0em;}
+
+    .noborder {border:none;}
+    .nopad    {margin: 0em;}
+    .pad1     {margin: 1em auto;}
+    .pad1top  {margin: 1em auto 0em auto;}
+    .pad1bot  {margin: 0em auto 1em auto;}
+    .pad2     {margin: 2em auto;}
+    .pad2top  {margin: 2em auto 0em auto;}
+    .pad2bot  {margin: 0em auto 2em auto;}
+    .pad4     {margin: 4em auto;}
+    .pad4top  {margin: 4em auto 0em auto;}
+    .pad4bot  {margin: 0em auto 4em auto;}
+    .w438     {width: 438px;}
+    .w500     {width: 500px;}
+    .w600     {width: 600px;}
+
+    .pagenum  { visibility: hidden;
+                position: absolute;
+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;}
+    .linenum  {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;}
+    .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em;
+               padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em;
+               float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em;
+               font-size: smaller; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;}
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .right    {text-align: right;}
+    .smaller  {font-size: smaller;}
+    .larger   {font-size: larger;}
+    .xlarge   {font-size: x-large;}
+    .xxlarge  {font-size: xx-large;}
+    .chhead   {font-size: larger; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .smtoc    {font-variant: small-caps; font-size: larger;}
+    .u        {text-decoration: underline;}
+
+    .s1       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 400%;}
+    .s2       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 300%;}
+    .s3       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 250%;}
+    .s4       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 200%;}
+    .s5       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 150%;}
+    .s6       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 120%;}
+    .s7       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 100%;}
+    .s8       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 90%;}
+    .s9       {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 80%;}
+
+    .caption  {font-weight: bold;}
+
+    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+
+    .figleft     {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top:
+                 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
+
+    .figleftno   {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top:
+                 0em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
+
+    .figright    {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;
+                 margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
+
+    hr.full { width: 100%;
+              margin-top: 3em;
+              margin-bottom: 0em;
+              margin-left: auto;
+              margin-right: auto;
+              height: 4px;
+              border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */
+              border-style: solid;
+              border-color: #000000;
+              clear: both; }
+    pre      {font-size: 85%;}
+
+@media print {
+    p.toclink {visibility: hidden;}
+    .pagenum {visibility: hidden;} }
+    // -->
+    /* XML end  ]]>*/
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Two on the Trail, by Hulbert Footner,
+Illustrated by W. Sherman Potts</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Two on the Trail</p>
+<p>       A Story of the Far Northwest</p>
+<p>Author: Hulbert Footner</p>
+<p>Release Date: April 24, 2008  [eBook #25159]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO ON THE TRAIL***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Andrew Wainwright, Suzanne Shell,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="iefix"><table summary="(layout)"><tr><td>
+
+<div class="figleftno w438">
+<img src="images/gucosp.jpg" alt="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+</td><td>
+
+<p class="center caption xxlarge">TWO ON THE TRAIL</p>
+
+<p class="center caption xlarge">A STORY OF<br />
+THE FAR NORTHWEST</p>
+
+<p class="center caption smaller">BY</p>
+
+<p class="center caption">HULBERT FOOTNER</p><br />
+
+<p class="center caption">ILLUSTRATED BY W. SHERMAN POTTS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center caption smaller"><span class="smcap">New York</span><br />
+GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP<br />
+<span class="smcap">Publishers</span></p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION<br />
+INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN</p>
+
+<p class="center smaller">COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY<br />
+COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+PUBLISHED, FEBRUARY, 1911</p>
+
+<p class="center caption">To<br />
+H. L. D.</p>
+
+</td></tr></table></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="mainbody">
+
+<p class="center caption">&quot;Look!&quot; she cried. &quot;Isn&#39;t it like the frontispiece to a book of adventure!&quot;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter w500"><a name="gu01" id="gu01" href="images/hu01.jpg">
+<img class="noborder" src="images/iu01.jpg" alt="&quot;Look!&quot; she cried. &quot;Isn&#39;t it like the frontispiece to a book of adventure!&quot;" />
+</a></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td align="left"><a href="#I"><span class="smtoc">In Papps's Restaurant</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td align="left"><a href="#II"><span class="smtoc">The Unknown Lady</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td align="left"><a href="#III"><span class="smtoc">On the Trail</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td align="left"><a href="#IV"><span class="smtoc">The Stopping-house Yard</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td align="left"><a href="#V"><span class="smtoc">At Miwasa Landing</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td align="left"><a href="#VI"><span class="smtoc">Natalie Tells About Herself</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#VII"><span class="smtoc">Mary Co-que-wasa's Errand</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#VIII"><span class="smtoc">On the Little River</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IX.</td><td align="left"><a href="#IX"><span class="smtoc">The Heart of a Boy</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">X.</td><td align="left"><a href="#X"><span class="smtoc">On Caribou Lake</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XI.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XI"><span class="smtoc">The Fight in the Storm</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XII"><span class="smtoc">The Ninety-mile Portage</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XIII"><span class="smtoc">The Newly-Married Pair</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIV.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XIV"><span class="smtoc">The Last Stage</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XV.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XV"><span class="smtoc">The Meeting</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XVI.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XVI"><span class="smtoc">Natalie Wounded</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XVII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XVII"><span class="smtoc">The Clue to Rina</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>XVIII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XVIII"><span class="smtoc">Mabyn Marooned</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIX.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XIX"><span class="smtoc">Grylls Redivivus</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XX.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XX"><span class="smtoc">Succour</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XXI.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XXI"><span class="smtoc">The Broken Door</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XXII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XXII"><span class="smtoc">The Blizzard</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XXIII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XXIII"><span class="smtoc">The Solitary Pursuer</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XXIV.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XXIV"><span class="smtoc">In Death Canyon</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XXV.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XXV"><span class="smtoc">Epilogue: Spoken by Charley</span></a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#gu01">"Look!" she cried. "Isn't it like the frontispiece to a book of adventure!" (<i>Frontispiece</i>)</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#gu02">At the same instant the boat lurched drunkenly; and they pitched overboard together</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#gu03">There, clinging to the corner of the cabin for support, stood the figure of a woman</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#gu04">It was a grim figure that the first rays of light revealed sitting on the big rock</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>TWO ON THE TRAIL</h1>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">IN PAPPS'S RESTAURANT</p>
+
+<p>The interior of Papps's, like most Western restaurants, was divided into
+a double row of little cabins with a passage between, each cabin having
+a swing door. Garth Pevensey found the place very full; and he was
+ushered into a cubby-hole which already contained two diners, a man and
+a woman nearing the end of their meal. They appeared to be incoming
+settlers of the better class&mdash;a farmer and his wife from across the
+line. Far from resenting Garth's intrusion, they visibly welcomed it;
+after all, there was something uncomfortably suggestive of a cell in
+those narrow cabins to which the light of day never penetrated.</p>
+
+<p>Garth passed behind the farmer's chair, and seated himself next the
+wall. He had no sooner ordered his luncheon than the door was again
+opened, and the rotund Mr. Papps, with profuse apologies, introduced a
+fourth to their table. The vacant place, it appeared, was the very last
+remaining in his establishment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The newcomer was a girl; young, slender and decidedly pretty: such was
+Garth's first impression. She came in without hesitation, and took the
+place opposite Garth with that serenely oblivious air so characteristic
+of the highly civilized young lady. Very trimly and quietly dressed,
+sufficiently well-bred to accept the situation as a matter of course.
+Thus Garth's further impressions. "What a girl to be meeting up in this
+corner of the world, and how I should like to know her!" he added in his
+mind. The maiden's bland aloofness was discouraging to this hope;
+nevertheless, his heart worked in an extra beat or two, as he considered
+the added relish his luncheon would have, garnished by occasional
+glances at such a delightful <i>vis-&agrave;-vis</i>. Meanwhile, he was careful to
+take his cue from her; his face, likewise, expressed a blank.</p>
+
+<p>The farmer and his wife became very uncomfortable. Simple souls, they
+could not understand how a personable youth and a charming girl should
+sit opposite each other with such wooden faces. Their feeling was that
+at quarters so close extra sociability was demanded, and the utter lack
+of it caused them to move uneasily in their chairs, and gently perspire.
+They unconsciously hastened to finish, and having at length dutifully
+polished their plates, arose and left the cabin with audible sighs of
+relief.</p>
+
+<p>This was a contingency Garth had not foreseen, and his heart jumped. At
+the same time he felt a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> sorry for the girl. He wondered if she
+would consider it an act of delicacy if he fastened the door open with a
+chair. On second thoughts, he decided such a move would be open to
+misconstruction. Had he only known it, she was dying to laugh and, at
+the slightest twinkle in his eyes, would have gone off into a peal. Only
+Garth's severe gravity restrained her&mdash;and that in turn made her want to
+laugh harder than ever. But how was Garth to learn all that? Girls, more
+especially girls like this, were to him insolvable mysteries&mdash;like the
+heavenly constellations. Of course, there are those who pretend to have
+discovered their orbits, and have written books on the subject; but for
+him, he preferred simply to wonder and to admire.</p>
+
+<p>Since her arrival the objective point of his desire shifted from his
+plate some three feet across the table; he now gazed covertly at her
+with more hunger than he evinced for his food. She had a good deal the
+aspect of a plucky boy, he thought; a direct, level gaze; a quick, sure
+turn to her head; and the fresh, bright lips of a boy. But that was no
+more than a pleasant fancy; in reality she was woman clear through. Eve
+lurked in the depths of her blue eyes, for all they hung out the colours
+of simple honesty; and Eve winked at him out of every fold of her rich
+chestnut hair. She was quick and impulsive in her motions; and although
+she showed such a blank front to the man opposite, her lips flickered
+with the desire to smile; and tiny frowns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> came and went between the
+twin crescents of her brows.</p>
+
+<p>As for her, she was sizing him up too, though with skilfully veiled
+glances. She saw a square-shouldered young man, who sat calmly eating
+his lunch, without betraying too much self-consciousness on the one
+hand, or any desire to make flirtatious advances on the other. Yet he
+was not stupid, either; he had eyes that saw what they were turned on,
+she noted. His admirable, detached attitude piqued her, though she would
+have been quick to resent any other. She was angry with him for forcing
+this repression on her; repression was not natural to this young lady.
+She longed to clear the air with a burst of laughter, but the thought of
+a quick, cool glance of surprise from the steady eyes opposite
+effectually checked her. As for his features, they were well enough, she
+thought. He had a shapely head, broadest over the ears, and thatched
+with thick, straight hair of the ashy-brown just the other side of
+blonde. His eyes were of the shade politely called gray, though yellow
+or green might be said with equal truth, had not those colours
+unpleasant associations. His nose was longish, and he had a comical
+trick of seeming to look down it, at which she greatly desired to laugh.
+His mouth was well cut, and decisively finished at the corners; and he
+had a chin to match. In spite of her irritation with him, she was
+reminded of a picture she had seen of Henry Fifth looking out from his
+helmet on the field of Agincourt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As the minutes passed, and Garth maintained his calm, she became quite
+unreasonably wroth. Her own luncheon was now before her. By and by she
+wanted salt, and the only cellar stood at Garth's elbow. Nothing could
+have induced her to ask for it; she merely stared fixedly. Garth,
+presently observing, politely offered the salt-cellar. She waited until
+he had put it down on the table, and removed his hand from the
+neighbourhood; then took it.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," she murmured indignantly; furious at having to say it.</p>
+
+<p>Garth wondered what he had done to offend her.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment there was an interruption; again the apologetic Mr. Papps
+with yet another guest. This was a tradesman's comely young wife, with
+very ruffled plumage, and the distracted air of the unaccustomed
+traveller. She was carrying in her arms a shiny black valise, three
+assorted paper-covered bundles with the string coming off, and a hat in
+a paper bag; and, although it was so warm, she wore her winter's coat,
+plainly because there was no other way to bring it. Her hair was flying
+from its moorings; her face flamed; and her hat sat at a disreputably
+rakish angle. As she piled up her encumbrances on the chair next to the
+girl, and took off her coat, she bubbled over with indistinguishable,
+anxious mutterings. At last she sank into the seat by Garth with
+something between a sigh and a moan.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've lost my husband," she announced at large.</p>
+
+<p>Her distress was so comical they could not forbear smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by this earnest of sympathy, the newcomer plunged into a
+breathless recital of her mischances.</p>
+
+<p>"Just came in over the A. N. R.," she panted. "By rights we should have
+arrived last night, but day-before-yesterday's train had the right of
+way and we was held up down to Battle Run. I tell you, the rails of that
+line are like the waves of the sea! I was that sea-sick I thought never
+to eat mortal food again&mdash;but it's coming back; my appetite I mean. He
+was to meet me, but I suppose he got tired after seventeen hours, small
+blame&mdash;and dropped off somewheres. S'pose I'll have to make a round of
+the hotels till I find him. You don't happen to know him, do you?" she
+asked Garth. "John Pink, the carpenter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a stranger in Prince George," said he politely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what and all I've been through!" groaned Mrs. Pink, with an access
+of energetic distress. She shook a warning finger at the girl. "Take my
+advice, Miss," she warned, "and don't you let him out of your sight a
+minute, till you get him safe home!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked hard at her plate; while for Garth, a slow, dark red
+crept up from his neck to the roots of his hair. Yet Mrs. Pink's mistake
+was surely a natural one; there they sat lunching privately together in
+the secluded little cabin. Moreover, they looked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> like fit mates, each
+for the other; and their air of studied indifference was no more than
+the air commonly assumed by young married couples in public
+places&mdash;especially the lately married. Without appearing to raise her
+eyes, the girl in some mysterious way, was conscious of Garth's dark
+flush. "Serve him right," she thought with wicked satisfaction. "I
+shan't help him out." But Garth's blush was for her more than for
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pink, absorbed in her own troubles, was innocently unaware of the
+consternation she had thrown them into. She plunged ahead; still
+addressing her remarks to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you think there's no danger of losing yours so soon," she went
+on; "and very like you're right. But, my dear, you never can tell! Bless
+you, when I was on my wedding journey, he hung around continuous. I
+couldn't get shet of the man for a minute, and I was fair tired out of
+seeing him. But that wears off&mdash;not that I mean it would with
+you"&mdash;turning to Garth&mdash;"but nothing different couldn't hardly be
+expected in the course of nature."</p>
+
+<p>Garth considered whether he should stop Mrs. Pink's tongue by telling
+the truth. But it seemed ungallant to be in such haste to deny the
+responsibility. He felt rather that the disclaimer should come from the
+girl; and she made no move; indeed, he almost fancied he saw the ghost
+of a smile. Under his irritation with the woman and her clumsy tongue,
+he was conscious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> of a secret glow of pleasure. There was something
+highly flattering in being taken for the husband of such an
+ultra-desirable creature. The thought of her being really one with his
+future, as the woman supposed, and travelling about the country with him
+made his heart beat fast. Slender, trim and mistress of herself, she had
+exactly the look of the wife he had pictured.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pink broke off long enough to order her luncheon, and from the
+extent of the order it appeared she had entirely recovered her appetite.</p>
+
+<p>"The next thing I have to do after finding my man," she resumed, with a
+wild pass at her hat, which lurched it as far over on the other side,
+"is to find a house. They tell me rents are terrible high in Prince
+George. Are you two going to settle here?"</p>
+
+<p>Garth replied in the negative. He had decided if the girl did not choose
+to enlighten Mrs. Pink, he would not.</p>
+
+<p>"It has a great future ahead of it," she said solemnly. "It's a grand
+place for a young couple to start life in. And elegant air for children.
+Mine are at my mother's."</p>
+
+<p>Garth swallowed a gasp at this; but the girl never blinked an eye.</p>
+
+<p>"But how I do run on!" exclaimed Mrs. Pink. "No doubt you've got a good
+start somewheres else."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so very," said Garth with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>The smile disarmed the young lady sitting opposite,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> and somehow obliged
+her to reconsider her opinion of him. "I believe the creature has a
+sense of humour," was her thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you Canadians?" inquired Mrs. Pink politely.</p>
+
+<p>"I am from New York," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pink opened her eyes to their widest. If he had said Cochin China
+she could not have appeared more surprised. For New York has a magical
+name in the Provinces; and the more remote, the more glowing the halo
+evoked by the sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Bless me!" she ejaculated. Then, addressing herself to the girl: "How
+fine the shops and the opera houses must be there!"</p>
+
+<p>"I've not been there in some years," she answered coolly. "I am from
+Ontario."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I declare!" cried Mrs. Pink. "Quite a romance! Where did you
+meet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said Garth readily. There was no turning back now.</p>
+
+<p>"What a nice man!" now thought this perverse young lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Well! Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Pink with immense interest. "Ain't that odd
+now! Was it long since?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not so very," said Garth vaguely. He glanced across the table and saw
+that his supposed wife had finished her lunch. His heart sank heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"Three months?" hazarded Mrs. Pink.</p>
+
+<p>"It was about half an hour ago," came brisk and clear from across the
+table.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pink looked up in utter amazement; her jaw dropped; and a piece of
+bread was arrested halfway to her mouth. The girl had risen and was
+drawing on her gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Mrs. Pink," she said sweetly. "I hope you find your husband
+sooner than I find mine!"</p>
+
+<p>With that she passed out; and the swing door closed behind her. All the
+light went with her, it seemed to Garth, and the cabin became a sordid,
+spotty little hole. Mrs. Pink stared at the door through which she had
+disappeared, in speechless bewilderment. Finally she turned to Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Wh-what did she mean?" she stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know the young lady," said Garth sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"Good land, man!" screamed Mrs. Pink. "Why didn't you say so at first?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE UNKNOWN LADY</p>
+
+<p>Garth Pevensey was a reporter on the <i>New York Leader</i>. His choice of an
+occupation had been made more at the dictate of circumstances than of
+his free will; and in the round hole of modern journalism he was
+something of a square and stubborn peg. He had become a reporter because
+he had no taste for business; and a newspaper office is the natural
+refuge for clever young men with a modicum of education, and the need of
+providing an income. He was not considered a "star" on the force; and
+his city editor had been known to tear his hair at the missed
+opportunities in Pevensey's copy, and hand it to one of the more glowing
+stylists for the injection of "ginger." But Garth had his revenge in the
+result; the gingerized phrases in his quiet narrative cried aloud, like
+modern gingerbread work on a goodly old dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>It was agreed in the office that Pevensey was too quiet ever to make a
+crack reporter. On a big story full of human interest he was no good. It
+was not that he failed to realize the possibilities of such stories;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> he
+had as sure an eye for the picturesque and affecting as Dicky Chatworth
+himself, the city editor's especial favourite; but he had an
+unconquerable repugnance to "letting himself go." Moreover his stuff was
+suspected of having a literary quality, something that is respected but
+not desired in a newspaper office. Howbeit, there were some things Garth
+could do to the entire satisfaction of the powers; he might be depended
+on for an effective description of any big show, when the readers'
+tear-ducts were not to be laid under contribution; he had an undeniable
+way with him of impressing the great and the near-great; and had
+occasionally been surprisingly successful in extracting information from
+the supposedly uninterviewable.</p>
+
+<p>Though his brilliancy might be discounted, Pevensey was one of the most
+looked-up-to, and certainly the best-liked man on the staff. He was
+entirely unassuming for one thing; and though he had the reputation of
+leading rather a saintly life himself, he was as tolerant as Jove; and
+the giddy youngsters who came and went on the staff of the <i>Leader</i> with
+such frequency liked to confide their escapades to him, sure of being
+received with an interest which might pass very well for sympathy. It
+was with the very young ones that he was most popular; he took on
+himself no irritating airs of superiority; he was a good listener; and
+he never flew off the handle. Such a man has the effect of a refreshing
+sedative on the febrile nerves of an up-to-date newspaper office.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Outside the office Garth led an uneventful life. He lived with his
+mother and a younger brother and sister, and ever since his
+knickerbocker days he had been the best head the little family could
+boast of. New York is full of young men like Garth who, deprived of the
+kind of society their parents were accustomed to, do not assimilate
+readily with that which is open to all; and so do without any. Young,
+presentable and clever, Garth had yet never had a woman for a friend.
+Those he met in the course of a reporter's rounds made him
+over-fastidious. He had erected a sky-scraping ideal of fine breeding in
+women, of delicacy, reserve and finish; and his life hitherto had not
+afforded him a single opportunity of meeting a woman who could anywhere
+near measure up to it. That was his little private grievance with Fate.</p>
+
+<p>Garth came of a family of sporting and military traditions, which he had
+inherited in full force. These, in the young bread-winner of the city,
+had had to be largely repressed; but he had found a certain outlet in
+joining a militia regiment, in which he had at length been elected an
+officer. He had a passion for firearms; and was the prize sharpshooter
+of his regiment. Wonderful tales were related of his prowess.</p>
+
+<p>When the <i>Leader</i> was invited to send a representative on the excursion
+of press correspondents, which an enterprising immigration agency
+purposed conducting through the Canadian Northwest, Garth was chosen to
+go&mdash;most unexpectedly to himself, and to the higher-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>paid men on the
+staff. This trip put an entirely new colour on Garth's existence. He had
+always felt a secret longing to travel, to wander under strange skies,
+and observe new sides of life. From the very start of the journey he
+found himself in a state of pleasant exhilaration which was reflected in
+the copy he sent back to his paper. Pevensey's articles on the West made
+a distinct hit. The editors of the <i>Leader</i> did not tell him so; but in
+the very silence from New York that followed him, he knew he had found
+favour in their eyes; and he felt the delicious gratification of one who
+has been unappreciated.</p>
+
+<p>When the excursion, lapped in the luxury of a private car (nothing can
+be too good for those who are going to publish their opinions of you),
+reached Prince George, the outermost point of their wide swing around
+the country, the good people of the town outdid themselves in
+entertaining the correspondents. Among the festivities, a large public
+reception gave the correspondents and the leading men of the country the
+opportunity to become acquainted. To Garth the most interesting man
+present was the Bishop of Miwasa. His Lordship was a retiring man in
+vestments a thought shabby; and the other correspondents overlooked him.
+But Garth had heard by accident that the Bishop's annual tour of his
+diocese included a trip of fifteen hundred miles by canoe and pack-train
+through the wilderness; and he scented a story. The Bishop was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> one of
+those incorrigibly modest men who are the despair of interviewers; but
+Garth stuck to him, and got the story in the end. It was the best sent
+out of Prince George on that trip.</p>
+
+<p>During the five days the correspondents spent there, the quiet Garth and
+the quiet Bishop became fast friends over innumerable pipes at the
+Athabasca Club. They discovered a common liking for the same brand of
+tobacco, which created a strong bond. Garth was entranced by the
+Bishop's matter-of-fact stories of his long journeys through the
+wilderness during the delightful summers, and in the rigorous winters;
+and the upshot was, the Bishop asked him to join him in his forthcoming
+tour of the diocese, which was to start from Miwasa Landing on the first
+of August.</p>
+
+<p>Garth jumped at the opportunity; and telegraphing lengthily to his paper
+to set forth the rich copy that was pining to be gathered in the North,
+prayed for permission to go. He received a brief answer, allowing him
+two months' leave of absence for the journey at his own risk and
+expense; and promising to purchase what of his stuff might be suitable,
+at space rates. This was precisely what he wanted; it meant two months'
+liberty. By the time he received it, the excursion had left Prince
+George behind; and was turned homeward. Garth dropped off at a way
+station and made his way back, this time without any f&ecirc;tes to greet his
+arrival. He caught the Bishop as he was starting for the Landing; and it
+was arranged Garth should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> follow him by stage, three days later.
+Meantime he was to purchase an outfit.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On the evening of the day following his luncheon at Papps's, Garth, in
+his room at the hotel, was packing in a characteristically masculine
+fashion, preparatory to his start for the North woods next day.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been patent to an infant that he had something on his
+mind. He was not thinking of the romantic journey that lay before him;
+that prospect, so exhilarating the past few days, had, upon the eve of
+realization, lost its savour. He would actually have welcomed an excuse
+to postpone it for a few days&mdash;so that he might spend a little more
+money at Papps's. It was a pair of flashing blue eyes&mdash;for blue eyes do
+flash, though they be not customarily chosen to illustrate that capacity
+of the human orb&mdash;which had disturbed his peace. He was very much
+dissatisfied with the part he had played at luncheon the day before.
+What he ought to have said and done was now distressingly clear to him;
+and he craved an opportunity to put it into practice. He had spent the
+whole middle part of this day at Papps's, loitering in the entrance to
+make sure the blue eyes should not be swallowed in one of the cabins
+without his knowledge; but they had not illumined the place; nor had his
+cautious inquiries elicited a single clue to the identity of the
+possessor. He felt sure if he had three days more in Prince George he
+could discover her: but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> unfortunately the weekly stage for the North
+left the following morning; and the Bishop was waiting for him at the
+Landing; likewise the <i>Leader</i> back in New York was waiting for
+stories&mdash;and not about blue eyes. It was at this point in his circular
+train of reflections that he would resume packing with a gusty sigh.</p>
+
+<p>He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and, upon opening it, was not
+a little astonished to receive a note from the hands of a boy, who
+signified his intention of waiting for an answer. It was contained in a
+thick, square envelope with a crest on the flap; and was addressed in a
+tall, angular, feminine hand. Garth, his mind ever running in the same
+course, tore it open with a crazy hope in his heart; but the first words
+brought him sharply back to earth.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Will Mr. Garth Pevensey," thus it ran, "be good enough to oblige
+an old lady by calling at the Bristol Hotel this evening? Mrs.
+Mabyn will be awaiting him in the parlour; and as it concerns a
+matter of supreme importance to her, she trusts he will not fail
+her; no matter how late the hour at which he may be able to come." </p></div>
+
+<p>Garth dismissed the boy with a message to the effect that he would
+answer the note in person. As he leisurely put his appearance in order,
+he thought: "Verily one's adventures begin upon leaving home." He was
+human, consequently his curiosity was pleasantly stimulated to discover
+what lay before him: but the little adjective in the first sentence of
+his appellant's letter was fatal to the idea of any violent enthusiasm
+on her behalf.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The parlour of the Bristol Hotel was on the first floor above the street
+level. Garth paused at the door; and cast a glance about the room. It
+was empty except for two figures at the further end. The one he could
+see more plainly was an old lady sitting in an easy-chair; she was
+dressed in black, with a white cap and white wristbands; a spare, erect
+little lady. Garth judged her to be the writer of the note. The other
+figure, also a woman, was partly hidden in a window embrasure. She was
+standing by the window holding the curtain back with one hand, and
+looking into the street. She turned her head to speak to the old lady;
+whereupon Garth's heart leapt in his bosom, the room rocked, and the
+chandeliers burst into song; that clear profile, that slender figure
+could belong to none in Prince George but <i>Her</i>! He was overcome with
+delight and amazement; he could scarcely credit his eyes. He wished in
+the same instant he had spent more care on his appearance, and that he
+had not kept them waiting so long.</p>
+
+<p>The younger lady perceived him standing in the shadowy doorway, and came
+toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Pevensey?" she began in a voice of cool inquiry. Then she stopped
+aghast; and the colour flamed into her face. "<i>You!</i>" she exclaimed in a
+voice too low to reach the older woman's ears. "Oh, I didn't know&mdash;I
+never suspected it might be you!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth was conscious of a complicated feeling of irritation, a kind of
+jealousy of himself. "Why did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> they send for me, if they didn't know it
+was me?" was his thought.</p>
+
+<p>"What must you think of me?" she said in obvious distress.</p>
+
+<p>"I am in the dark," said Garth helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>She recovered her forces. "I am not in the habit of going to restaurants
+alone," she said. "But the hotel here is so bad! I am afraid you must
+think me a frivolous person, and I am anxious you should not think so."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't," said Garth bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled. "Very well," she said; "then there's no harm done."</p>
+
+<p>"Natalie!" called the old lady, with a hint of irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and meet Mrs. Mabyn," she said quickly; and led the way.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mr. Pevensey, Mrs. Mabyn," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady regarded Garth with a sharp scrutiny; and Garth looked with
+interest at her. She was a fragile, elegant, plaintive little person of
+the old "lady-like" r&eacute;gime; but for all her gentleness, Garth was
+somehow conscious that he faced a woman of an iron will. She had the
+impatient, inattentive manner of one possessed by a single idea. With
+the result of her examination she appeared but half satisfied; she held
+out a delicate, wrinkled hand, dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do?" she said. "Please sit down."</p>
+
+<p>"I am Natalie Bland," further explained the girl,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> who had again
+retreated to the window embrasure. "Mrs. Mabyn and I are travelling
+together."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Natalie is a daughter to me," murmured Mrs. Mabyn with commendable
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>The two women exchanged a glance which Garth was at a loss to interpret.
+He was looking at Natalie and he thought he saw patience, real
+affection, and perhaps a little kindly amusement&mdash;but there was
+something beyond; something grimmer and more determined, a hint of
+rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband, Canon Mabyn, was the rector of Christ's Church Cathedral in
+Millerton, Ontario, up to the time of his death," murmured Mrs. Mabyn in
+her dulcet tones, with the air of one delivering all-sufficient
+credentials.</p>
+
+<p>Garth murmured to show that he was suitably impressed.</p>
+
+<p>"You are from New York, I believe," said Mrs. Mabyn.</p>
+
+<p>Garth acknowledged the fact.</p>
+
+<p>"So the newspaper said," she remarked. "Of course, I know very few
+Americans, still it is possible we may have common friends. You&mdash;er&mdash;"
+She paused invitingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't we better explain why we asked Mr. Pevensey to call?" put in
+Natalie quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, Mr. Pevensey was just about to tell me of his people," Mrs.
+Mabyn said in tones of gentle reproof.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Garth saw what the old lady would be after. "My father, Lieutenant
+Raymond Pevensey, was in the Navy," he said. "He was killed by a powder
+explosion on the gunboat <i>Arkadelphia</i>, twelve years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, how unfortunate!" murmured Mrs. Mabyn sympathetically; but it
+rang chillingly, and her abstracted eyes dwelt throughout upon that
+relentless thought of hers, whatever it was.</p>
+
+<p>"I am related distantly to the Buhannons of Richmond, and the
+Mainwarings of Philadelphia," continued Garth, willing to humour her.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a Mainwaring at Chelsea with my husband as a boy," remarked
+Mrs. Mabyn.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably my great-uncle," he said. "In this part of the world," he went
+on, "there is no one who knows me beyond mere acquaintanceship, except
+the Bishop of Miwasa&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Pray say no more, Mr. Pevensey," interrupted Mrs. Mabyn. "The mere fact
+that the Bishop invited you to accompany him is, after all, sufficient."
+She turned to the girl. "You may continue, dear Natalie."</p>
+
+<p>"We read in this evening's paper," began that young lady with a
+directness refreshing after Mrs. Mabyn's circumlocutions; "that you were
+starting for Miwasa Landing to-morrow morning, to join the Bishop on his
+annual tour. We wished particularly to see you before you started; and
+that is why I&mdash;why Mrs. Mabyn wrote."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We thank you for coming so promptly," put in Mrs. Mabyn with her
+gracious air.</p>
+
+<p>Garth murmured truthfully that the pleasure was his. He felt himself on
+the breathless verge of a discovery. Intuition warned him of what was
+coming; but he could not believe it yet.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Pevensey," resumed the young lady as if with an effort; she had the
+humility of a proud soul who stoops to ask a favour; "we are going to
+make a very strange request, as from total strangers."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mabyn raised an agitated hand. "Wait, wait, my dear Natalie," she
+objected. "Perhaps after all, we had better go no further. I&mdash;I think we
+had better give the plan up," she said in apparently the deepest
+distress.</p>
+
+<p>The girl turned a patient shoulder, and looked into the street again,
+abstractedly playing with the cord of the blind.</p>
+
+<p>"It is really too much to ask of you," continued Mrs. Mabyn
+distressfully; "and I am so afraid for Natalie! Natalie is so very dear
+to me. The situation is <i>so</i> unusual!" she wailed.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Garth was sadly perplexed and exasperated by all this. The
+discovery he anticipated was now apparently in retreat.</p>
+
+<p>"We are glad, anyway, to have had the pleasure of making your
+acquaintance," said Mrs. Mabyn with an air of finality.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly it was borne in upon Garth, partly from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> girl's patient
+attitude, partly from the other's emphasis upon her distress, that it
+was simply, in newspaper parlance, all a bluff on the part of the older
+woman. Her fanatic eyes seemed to tell him that she was still bent on
+her object, whatever it might be. Experience had taught him that the
+quickest way to find out if he were right was to seem to fall in with
+her desire. So he promptly rose as if to leave. It worked.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Mabyn's eyes snapped. She did not relish being taken up so quickly.
+"One moment, Mr. Pevensey," she said plaintively&mdash;and hastily. "Overlook
+the distraction of an old woman; I am torn two ways!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth understood by this that the matter was reopened; and sat down
+again. There was a pause, while the old lady struggled, with the air of
+a martyr, to regain her composure. The girl continued to look stolidly
+out of the window; and Garth simply waited for what was coming.</p>
+
+<p>"You may continue, Natalie," said Mrs. Mabyn at length, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>The girl resumed her explanation at the exact point where she left off.
+"We expected&mdash;that is, we hoped you were an older man&mdash;" Garth looked so
+disappointed she immediately added: "For that would make the request
+seem less strange." She hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" asked Garth.</p>
+
+<p>But she parried awhile. "What sort of a man is the Bishop?" she asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Garth described his modesty and his manliness.</p>
+
+<p>"A very proper person to be Bishop in a wild country," remarked Mrs.
+Mabyn, patronizingly.</p>
+
+<p>"And his wife?" asked Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>Garth pictured a homely, unassuming body, with a great heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" said Mrs. Mabyn. A whole chapter might be devoted to the
+analysis of the tone in which she said it.</p>
+
+<p>"We had heard she accompanies her husband," said Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"That simplifies matters!" exclaimed Mrs. Mabyn.</p>
+
+<p>"Their route takes in Spirit River Crossing, I believe," pursued
+Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>Garth affirmed it, wondering.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie paused before she went on. "Whatever you may think of what I am
+going to tell you, Mr. Pevensey," she said with the same proud appeal in
+her voice, "we may count on you, I am sure, not to speak of it to any
+one for the present."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed you may!" he said warmly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am obliged to get to Spirit River Crossing at the earliest possible
+moment," she said simply.</p>
+
+<p>Through the wilderness with <i>her</i>! Garth had to wait a moment before he
+could trust himself to reply with becoming coolness.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you considered the kind of a journey it is?" he asked quietly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That is the worst of it!" complained Mrs. Mabyn. "I had expected to go
+with her; but we find it is out of the question."</p>
+
+<p>Garth hastened to assure her that it was.</p>
+
+<p>"I have considered everything," said Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"But do you know that you will have to travel two or three weeks in an
+open boat in all weathers, a mere canoe in fact; that you will have to
+sleep out of doors, and live on the very roughest of fare? Could you
+stand it?" he demanded almost sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"I am perfectly well and strong," answered Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"That is quite so, happily," said Mrs. Mabyn. "Otherwise, I would not
+hear of it for a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"If the Bishop's wife can stand it, certainly I can," said Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"But she is obliged to do it," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"So am I!" said Natalie quickly.</p>
+
+<p>There was an awkward pause. Garth said nothing, but his question was
+felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally you wonder what forces me to undertake such a journey," said
+Natalie uncomfortably.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't I help you more intelligently if I knew?" suggested Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"But I cannot tell you," she said. "That is, not yet. Believe me, it is
+nothing I need be ashamed of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Natalie!" exclaimed Mrs. Mabyn indignantly. "Is it not I who urge you
+to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am doing what will be considered a most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> praiseworthy thing,"
+said Natalie with what sounded strangely like&mdash;bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, indeed!" urged Mrs. Mabyn, who seemed to have forgotten her late
+anxiety on Natalie's account.</p>
+
+<p>"But in telling you," objected Natalie gently, "I would have to trust
+you to a far greater extent than you would be trusting me, in lending
+me, without knowing my reasons, the assistance of one traveller to
+another."</p>
+
+<p>Garth was ready enough to throw himself at her feet without this
+affecting appeal. "Please count on me," he said, moved more than he
+would let them see, especially the old woman. "How can I help you?"</p>
+
+<p>"See me as far as Miwasa Landing," she said simply. "I will then throw
+myself on the goodness of the Bishop and his wife; and trust to them to
+take me with them the rest of the way&mdash;that is, if I wish to go. The
+Bishop may be able to give me information," she added darkly.</p>
+
+<p>"Natalie!" put in Mrs. Mabyn, warningly. "I&mdash;I will give her letters to
+those good people," she added hastily, to divert Garth's mind from the
+strangeness of Natalie's last words.</p>
+
+<p>But Garth was in no temper to be deflected by a mystery. "I am thankful
+for the chance to be of service," he said fervently, having a keen sense
+of the poverty of words.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Natalie, simply. "Let us talk of ways and means," she
+added decisively. "What should I take?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">ON THE TRAIL</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter to eight next morning Garth was waiting again in the
+parlour of the Bristol Hotel. Promptly to the minute Natalie came
+sailing in, in her own inimitable way, walking all of a piece, with a
+sweep like a banner, Garth thought. When he saw her, his last doubt of
+the reality of this intoxicating journey vanished. She bore no trace now
+of the seriousness of the night before; all smiles and red-cheeked
+eagerness, she radiated the very joy of being.</p>
+
+<p>"Enter Mrs. Pink!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>She had a brown valise, a fat bundle, a flat, square package wrapped in
+paper, a coat and a parasol.</p>
+
+<p>"You said trunks were taboo," she explained. "I only had one valise and
+I couldn't nearly get everything in. Indeed I sat up half the night
+studying how little I could do with."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll get you a duffle-bag at the Landing," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I suitably dressed?" she demanded, showing herself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Garth smiled. She was perfection; how could he blame her? She had
+interpreted his suggestions as to sober, serviceable clothes, in a
+diabolically well-fitting suit of brown, the colour of her hair. At the
+wrists and neck of her brown-silk waist were spotless bands of white;
+and on her head was a dashing little brown hat with green wings. She
+exhibited square-toed little brown boots as an evidence of exceeding
+common sense; and was pulling on a pair of absurdly small boy's gloves.
+This most suitable costume for the North was completed by a brown-silk
+parasol.</p>
+
+<p>"All in place and well tied down," she announced. "Nothing to fly or
+catch!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth pictured to himself the effect likely to be created in the
+wilderness by this adorable acme of the feminine, with something between
+a smile and a groan.</p>
+
+<p>They walked to the post office, quaffing deep of the delicious morning
+air, Garth glancing sidewise at his exuberant companion, and wondering,
+like the old lady in the nursery rhyme, if this could really be he. It
+was a day to make one walk a-tiptoe; the sky overhead bloomed with the
+exquisite pale tints of a Northern summer's morning; and the bricks of
+Oliver Avenue were washed with gold.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie's face fell a little at the sight of the stage-coach; for it had
+nothing in common with the imagined vehicle of romance except the four
+horses; and they were but sorry beasts. In fact, it was nothing but a
+clumsy, uncovered wagon, which had never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> been washed since it was
+built; and was worn to a dull drab in a long acquaintance with the
+alternating mud and dust of the trail. Behind the driver's seat was a
+sort of well, for the mail bags and express packages; and behind that,
+two excruciatingly narrow seats for the passengers, running lengthwise
+between the rear wheels. The entrance was by a step at the tail-board.</p>
+
+<p>Everything awaited the word to start. The driver, whip in hand, stood by
+the front wheel surrounded by a group of idlers; and his two great
+mongrel huskies, squatted on the pavement with expectant eyes on their
+master. Garth helped Natalie into the body of the wagon; and, climbing
+in after her, disposed her baggage with his own already in the well. The
+eyes of the driver and all his satellites were promptly transferred in
+wide wonder to the girl with the green wings in her hat. Garth, with a
+keen sense of difficulties ahead, was indignant and uncomfortable; but
+Natalie, serenely conscious that everything was in place, dropped her
+hands in her lap, and chatted away, as if quite unaware of her
+conspicuousness.</p>
+
+<p>Garth had put Natalie in the right-hand corner of the little cockpit.
+Another woman passenger was already in place opposite; and the aspect of
+this lady made an additional element in his uneasiness. She, too, was
+gotten up bravely according to her lights. She seemed something under
+forty, tall and angular; her hair, a crass yellow, was tied with a large
+girlish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> bow of black ribbon behind; and in her cheeks she had crudely
+striven to recall the hues of youth. Around her long neck another black
+ribbon accentuated the scrawny lines it was designed to hide; and on top
+of all she wore a wide black hat, which had a fresh yet collapsed
+effect, as if it had long been cherished under the lid of a trunk. Her
+knees touched Natalie's, and Garth's gorge rose at her nearness to his
+precious charge&mdash;and yet the antique girl greeted them with a sort of
+anxious, appealing smile, which disarmed him in spite of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Promptly at eight o'clock the door of the post office was opened; and
+the last bag of mail was thrown into the stage. Still the driver made no
+move to climb into his seat; and Garth, becoming restless as the minutes
+passed, got out and approached him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, driver," he said, while the bystanders stared afresh.
+"What's the delay?"</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at Garth with a mild and cautious blue eye; and spat
+deliberately before replying. He was one of those withered little men,
+with a shock of grizzled hair, and deeply seamed face and neck and
+hands, who might be forty-five or seventy. As it turned out, Paul Smiley
+was within three years of the latter figure. He had on a pearl Fedora
+very much over one ear, a new suit of store clothes with a mighty watch
+chain, and new boots, which seemed like little souls put to
+torment&mdash;they screeched horribly whenever he moved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't start off and leave Nick Grylls," he said deprecatingly. "He
+has spoke for two seats."</p>
+
+<p>Garth was sensible that he was hearing a great man's name.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you it ain't often Nick Grylls travels by the stage," continued
+Smiley, addressing the bystanders impressively. "He hires a rig and a
+team and a driver to take him to the Landing, <i>he</i> does."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is this Mr. Grylls?" asked Garth, pursuing the reporter's instinct.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know Nick Grylls!" exclaimed old Paul, exchanging a wondering
+glance around the circle. "You <i>must</i> be a stranger! Nick Grylls is a
+wonderful bright man, wonderful! He's the biggest free-trader in the
+North country; trades down Lake Miwasa way. Wonderful influence with the
+natives; does what he wants with them. I tell you there ain't much north
+of the Landing Nick Grylls ain't in on. Here he comes now! All aboard!"</p>
+
+<p>As Garth resumed his seat by Natalie he saw a burly, broad-shouldered
+figure hurrying along the sidewalk; he saw under the wide, stiff-brimmed
+hat, a red face with an insolent, all-conquering expression, and fat
+lips rolling a big cigar. There followed after, a young breed staggering
+under the weight of a Gladstone bag, which matched its owner. Arrived at
+the stage, Nick Grylls flung a thick word of greeting to the bystanders,
+and taking the bag from the boy, threw it among the mail bags as one
+tosses a pillow; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> climbed into the seat by the driver. The breed
+sprang on the step behind; another passenger took the place opposite
+Garth; old Paul cracked his whip and shouted to his horses; the dogs
+leaped and barked madly; and the Royal Mail swung away to the North with
+its oddly assorted company.</p>
+
+<p>As they rattled through the suburbs the fat back on the front seat
+shifted heavily; and the red face was turned on them.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, old Nell!" shouted Nick.</p>
+
+<p>The woman simpered unhappily. "How's yourself, Mr. Grylls?" she
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine!" he bellowed from his deep chest.</p>
+
+<p>This little man&oelig;uvre in the front seat was merely for the purpose of
+obtaining a prolonged stare at Natalie. The insolence of the little,
+swimming, pig-eyes infuriated Garth. The young man opposite him too, a
+sullen, scowling bravo, was staring boldly at Natalie. Garth stiffened
+himself to play a difficult part.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel like a rare, exotic bird," whispered Natalie in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>"You are," he returned grimly. "I think it would be better if you did
+not speak my name," he added. "I will not address you by yours. We must
+be prepared to parry questions."</p>
+
+<p>"I will be careful," she said.</p>
+
+<p>To do him justice, Nick Grylls, on a close examination of Natalie, had
+the grace to feel a little ashamed of his rough outburst. He altered his
+features to what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> he thought was a genteel expression; but Garth called
+it a leer.</p>
+
+<p>"Bully day for our trip," he said.</p>
+
+<p>They all agreed in various tones; even Garth. He knew it would not help
+Natalie for him to start by inviting trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the New York newspaper man," said Grylls to Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," said Garth quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"They tell me you're going to write up the country," said Grylls;
+exhibiting that curious blend of suspicion, contempt and respect his
+kind has for the fellow who writes. "I can tell you quite a bit about
+the country myself," he added with a braggadocio air.</p>
+
+<p>Garth thanked him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an onusual trip for a lady," continued Grylls, cunningly trying to
+draw Natalie into the conversation; "but nothing out of the way at this
+season. The Bishop travels comfortable enough; separate tent for the
+women; and an ile stove like."</p>
+
+<p>His move was not successful; Natalie continued looking charmingly blank.
+Old Paul created a diversion by facing them with a confiding smile. The
+pert Fedora with its curly brim was comically ill-suited to his seamed
+old face, and mild blue eye. He pointed with his whip down a road on the
+outskirts of the town.</p>
+
+<p>"My place is down there," he said simply. "Just sold it last week; three
+hundred acres at three hundred dollars an acre. They're layin' it out in
+town lots."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good God, man!" cried Grylls. "You could buy me out and have a pile
+over!" Every time he spoke, he glanced over his shoulder at Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>Old Paul smiled up at him admiringly. "But this is only a sort of
+accident," he said. "You made yours."</p>
+
+<p>"What in he&mdash;Why are you driving the stage, then?" demanded Grylls.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the old man slowly; "seems though I just got in the way of
+it. Seems I just <i>had</i> to keep hanging on to the ribbons, or lose holt
+altogether."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do with all that money?" Grylls wanted to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Paul with a quiet grin; "I bought me a new hat like the
+swells wear; and a pair of Eastern shoes. They pinch me somepin' cruel,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you travel East, Mr. Smiley?" suggested Nell. She whom they
+all addressed so cavalierly was particular to put a handle to each name.</p>
+
+<p>"Travel! I had enough o' that, my girl," he said. "Forty-five years ago
+I travelled East to Winnipeg and got me a wife. Brought her back over
+the plains in a Red River cart. Eight hunder miles, and hostile redskins
+all the way! What's travellin' nowadays!"</p>
+
+<p>"Were you born out here?" asked Garth, shaping a story for the <i>Leader</i>
+in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"At Howard House, west of here in the Rockies," said Paul. "My father
+was Hudson's Bay trader there."</p>
+
+<p>"Paul's an old-timer all right," said Grylls care<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>lessly. He was
+becoming bored with the trend the conversation was taking.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the first eight who broke ground in Prince George," said the old
+man proudly. "Yonder's the first two-story house in the country. I built
+it. No!" he continued thoughtfully; "I'm keeping my house and ten acres;
+and me and the old woman's calc'latin' to stop there and watch the march
+o' progress by our door. She wouldn't give up her front step for all the
+real-estate sharks in Prince George. But," he added with a chuckle, "I
+shouldn't wonder if she was shocked some when them trolley-cars I hear
+tell of goes kitin' by."</p>
+
+<p>"I kin understand just how she feels," remarked old Nell to Natalie,
+with her apologetic little smile. "What could take the place of a home
+with real nice things in it? I got a house up near the Landing with a
+carpet in every room. I just love to buy things for it. You see I never
+had what you might call a regular house until just lately. This trip I
+bought a pink-and-gold chiny washin' set; and a down comfort for the
+best room. I never could tire of fixin' it up. We'll pass there
+to-morrow afternoon. I'd just love to have you step in&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Grylls laughed boisterously.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-h, shut up, Nell!" muttered the dark young man beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, I'd like to see it," said Natalie, with a flash of the blue
+eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>They had now left the town behind; and were rolling, or rather bumping,
+over the prairie. Here, it is not an empty plain, but a series of
+natural, park-like meadows, broken by graceful clumps of poplar and
+willow. On a prairie trail when the wheels begin to bite through the
+sod, and sink into ruts, a new track is made beside the old&mdash;there is
+plenty of room; and in turn another and another, spreading wide on each
+side, crossing and interweaving like a tangled skein of black cotton
+flung down in the green.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie had never seen such luxuriant greenness; such diverse and
+plentiful wild flowers. Nell pointed out the brilliant fire-weed,
+blending from crimson to purple, the wild sunflower, the lovely
+painted-cup, old-rose in colour; and there were other strange and showy
+plants she could not name. Occasionally they passed a log cabin, gayly
+whitewashed, and with its sod roof sprouting greenly. These dwellings,
+though crude, fulfilled the great aim of architecture; they were a part
+of the landscape itself.</p>
+
+<p>When they stopped at one of these places for dinner, Garth watched
+Natalie narrowly to see how she would receive her first taste of rough
+fare. But far from quailing at the salt pork, beans and bitter tea, she
+ate with as much gusto as if it had always been her portion. "She'll
+do," he thought approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward as they toiled up a long, sandy rise in the full heat of the
+afternoon sun, Paul, the old dandy, had leisure while his horses walked
+to devote to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> passengers. He was pleased as a child at the interest
+shown by Garth and Natalie in his anecdotes. Turning to them now, he
+pointed to a high mound topped by a splendid pine standing by itself,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Cannibal Hill. Used to be an Indian called Swift had his lodge there. A
+fine figger of a man too; high-chested; beautiful-muscled. He was a good
+Indian; and I want to say when a redskin is good, he's damn good&mdash;beg
+pardon, Miss&mdash;he's good and no mistake, I should say. He has a
+high-minded way of looking at things, which ought to make a white man
+blush; but it don't; for them kind makes the softest tradin'. I been a
+trader myself.</p>
+
+<p>"This here Swift had a wife and ten childer, that he thought a power of.
+He hunted for 'em night and day; and he come to be known as the best
+provider in the tribe. Well, come one winter he went crazy; yes, ma'am,
+plumb looney; and he went for 'em with his hatchet. He killed and <i>et</i>
+'em one at a time, beginning with the youngest; while the others waited
+their turn. You see an old-fashioned Indian was the boss of his family;
+and they didn't dast fight him back. Right up there on that hill, under
+that very same tree; I seen the ashes of their bones myself. In the
+Spring he come down to the settlement and give himself up; said he
+didn't want to live no more. Shouldn't think he would."</p>
+
+<p>Grylls made no secret of his impatience with the old man's yarns. He
+interrupted him, careless of his feelings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Are you making the round trip with the Bishop?" he asked Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Garth answered in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a rabbit-skin robe at the Landing I'd be glad to lend the lady,"
+he said leering sidewise at Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Much obliged," said Garth agreeably; "but we really have all we can
+use."</p>
+
+<p>"What does <i>she</i> say?" growled Nick.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you very much," said Natalie quickly; "but I could not think of
+accepting it."</p>
+
+<p>He had forced her to speak to him at last; but the words were hardly to
+his satisfaction. He flung around in his seat with an ugly scowl.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile old Paul was still pursuing his thoughts about redskins.
+"Indians think when they go off their heads they're obliged to be
+cannibals," he continued agreeably. "They can't separate the two idees
+somehow. So when a redskin feels a screw beginning to work loose up
+above, he settles on a nice, fat, tender subject. He says his head's
+full of ice, and has to be melted. I mind one winter at Caribou Lake
+forty years back, we were all nigh starving, and our bones was comin'
+through our skins, like ten-p'ny nails in a paper bag. And one night
+they comes snoopin' into the settlement an Indian woman as sleek and
+soft and greasy as a fresh sausage&mdash;and lickin' her chops&mdash;um&mdash;um! There
+was a man with her and he let it out. She had knifed two young
+half-breed widows, as fair and beautiful a two girls as ever I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> see&mdash;and
+she et 'em, yes, ma'am! And nobody teched her; they warn't no police in
+them days. She lives to the Lake at this day!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good Law! Mr. Smiley!" cried Nell with an uneasy glance at the grinning
+half-breed on the tail-step.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep cool, old gal!" growled Nick. "Nobody wouldn't pick you out for a
+square meal!"</p>
+
+<p>Nell's companion rewarded this sally with an enormous guffaw; and poor,
+mortified Nell made believe to laugh too. Natalie's cheeks burned.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you hunted buffalo in the old days," said Garth to old Paul.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I was quite a hunter," he returned with a casual air. "It weren't
+everybody as was considered a hunter, neither. You had to earn your
+reppytation. We didn't do no drivin' over cliffs or wholesale
+slaughterin'; it was clean huntin' with us, powder and ball. I mind they
+used to make a big party, as high as two hundred men, whites, breeds,
+and friendly redskins. Everything was conducted regular; camp-guards and
+a council and a captain was elected; and all rules strict observed.
+Every night we camped inside a barricade. One of the rules was, no tough
+old bulls useless for meat should be killed under penalty of twenty-five
+dollars. I was had up before the council for that; but I proved it was
+self-defense."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell us about it," suggested Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The old man scratched his head, and shot a dubious glance at Natalie. "I
+ain't sure as this is quite a proper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> story," he said. "You see, I was
+having a wash, as it might happen, at the edge of a slough&mdash;a slough is
+a little pond in the prairie, Miss, as you're a stranger&mdash;and my clothes
+and my gun was lying beside me, and my horse was croppin' the grass at
+the top of the rise. When I was as clean as slough water would make me,
+which isn't much, 'cause I stirred up a power of mud, and soap was an
+extravagance them days, I begun to dress myself. Well, I had my shirt
+on, and was sittin' down to pull on my pants, when I heard my cayuse
+start off on a dead run. I looked up quick-like and blest if there
+wasn't old Bill Buffalo a-pawin' and a-bellerin' and a-shakin' of his
+head, not thirty yards away! Soon as he see me look up he come chargin'
+down on me with his big head close to the ground like a locomotive
+cow-catcher. And me in that awkward state of dishabilly!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do, Mr. Smiley?" cried Nell in suspense.</p>
+
+<p>Paul shifted his quid, spat, and shoved his pearl Fedora a little
+further over his ear. "G'lang there," he cried shaking the reins. "I
+reached my gun before he reached me," he said; "and I gave him the
+charge, bang in his little red eye. He reared up; and come down kerplunk
+right on top o' me; only I rolled away just in time!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The trail to the Landing is considered something of a road up North; and
+the natives are apt to stare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> pityingly at the effeminate stranger who
+complains of the holes. It is something of a road compared to what comes
+after; but Natalie, hitherto accustomed to cushions and springs in her
+drives, could not conceive of anything worse. As the afternoon waned,
+what with the heat, the hard, narrow seat, and the incessant lurching
+and bumping of the crazy stage, which threw her now backward till her
+head threatened to snap off, and now forward on Nell's knees, the
+blooming roses in Natalie's cheeks faded, and her smile grew wan. Poor
+Garth, anxiously watching her, almost burst with suppressed
+solicitousness.</p>
+
+<p>But at last the journey came to its end; and at six o'clock the Royal
+Mail with its bruised and famished passengers swung into the yard at
+Forbie's, the halfway house, fifty miles from Prince George. Garth had
+learned that the men slept in an outside bunkhouse, while the women were
+received into the farmhouse itself. He hastened to interview Mrs. Forbie
+in private, that the dreadful possibility of Natalie's being asked to
+share a room with the other woman passenger might be avoided. It is
+doubtful if Natalie would have taken any harm from poor old Nell; but
+Garth was a young man falling in love; and so, ferociously virtuous in
+judging Nell's kind. Natalie had a room to herself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE STOPPING-HOUSE YARD</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, Old Paul, assisted by Nell's dark companion, and the
+half-breed Xavier, was hitching up in the yard of Forbie's, when Nick
+Grylls appeared from the house, and walked heavily up and down at some
+distance moodily chewing a cigar. Big Nick was wondering dully what in
+hell was the matter with him. He had tossed in his bunk the night
+through; and now, at the beginning of the day, when a man should be at
+his heartiest, he found himself without appetite for his breakfast, and
+in a grinding temper, without any object to vent it on. In his little
+eyes, bloodshot with the lack of sleep, and unwonted emotion, there was
+an almost childish expression of bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>A deep sense of personal injury lay at the root of his discomfort. Nick
+was accustomed to think of himself as a whale of a fine fellow, as they
+say in the West; he heard every day that he was the smartest man up
+North; and, of course, he believed it. He regarded himself as a prince
+of generosity; for was not his liberality to the half-breed women a
+reproach among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> cannier white men? He was fond of children, too; and one
+of his amusements was to distribute handfuls of candy over the counter
+of his store. And candy ("French creams," God save the mark!) is worth
+seventy-five cents a pound on Lake Miwasa. When any poor fellow froze to
+death, or went "looney" in the great solitudes, it was Nick Grylls who
+dug deepest in his pocket for the relief of the unfortunate family.
+This, then, was the meat of his amazed grievance; that he, the great
+man, the patron, should, here in his own country, be coolly ignored by a
+mere boy and girl.</p>
+
+<p>There was good in Nick Grylls; and Garth travelling alone would have got
+along very well with him, and worked him for copy; but having Natalie to
+look after, he instinctively put himself on his guard against the
+triumphant Silenus. Grylls, with an enormous capacity for pleasure, had
+carelessly taken his fill. He had to content himself with the coarse
+plants of the North; and up to now he had desired no other. But he had
+arrived at the age when, the passions beginning to cool, the grossest
+man conceives of fastidiousness; and at this crisis Fate had thrust a
+perfect blossom before him. Never so close to a woman of Natalie's world
+before, he had been free to look at her throughout an entire day; and
+she had actually spoken to him once. He did not realize what was the
+matter with him yet; but presently, when Natalie came out of the house,
+he would know.</p>
+
+<p>Garth strolled out from breakfast; and filled his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> pipe while he waited
+for Natalie to repack her valise within. Nick's chaotic passions leaped
+to meet the aspect of the cool young man, and fastened on him. But there
+was no relief here; his hearty and irresistible career over prostrate
+necks was suddenly arrested in the light of Garth's cool glance. In his
+heart Nick suspected he was despised, and the fact emasculated his rage.
+He hung his head, and looked elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>When the horses were hitched, Xavier went into the bunkhouse for his
+master's bedding, old Paul pottered around the harness, while Albert,
+Nell's companion, strolled back to join Grylls.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you make of this young couple?" asked Nick, assuming an
+indifferent air.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno," Albert returned lethargically.</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't anything about a girl in the newspaper," pursued Nick;
+"and young reporters don't generally have coin enough to travel with a
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>"They ain't married," said Albert.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed Nick eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nell says she heard her call him Mr. Pevensey before the stage started;
+and he called her Miss What's-this."</p>
+
+<p>Nick's little eyes glittered. "Then what in hell are they doing up here
+together?" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Search me!" said Albert indifferently. "Nell says she can't make it
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"She seems to have taken a kind of shine to Nell," suggested Nick
+carefully. "Women are sly as links. Pass a quiet word to Nell to draw
+her out."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She's tried," said Albert. "Nice as you please but mum. Why don't you
+pump <i>him</i>?" he suggested, indicating Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Because he's a damned, self-sufficient dude!" Nick burst out with a
+string of curses. "One of these porridge-mouthed Easterners that run up
+their eyebrows with a 'my word!' at any free speech or liberality in a
+man! The first time he finds himself in man's country he patronizes us!
+Going to write us up! My God! My stomach turns over every time I look at
+him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he better not get <i>you</i> down on him," said Albert propitiatingly.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie came sailing out of the farmhouse as fresh and smiling as the
+morning itself. Garth hastened to meet her. A dark flush rose in
+Grylls's cheeks, and he gritted his teeth, until the muscles stood out
+in lumps on either side his jaw. He felt a desire to possess this
+slender, swimming figure mounting in his brain to the pitch of madness.
+As she passed him Natalie nodded not unkindly, and the big man's eyes
+followed her in a sort of dog's agony.</p>
+
+<p>Nell followed her out of the house; and Garth handed them both into the
+stage. He did not get in himself, but stood on the ground below Natalie,
+talking up to her. One of the horses had refused to drink at the trough,
+and old Paul, wishing to give him another chance, sent Xavier for a pail
+of water.</p>
+
+<p>This Xavier deserves a word. The young breeds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> run to extremes of good
+looks or ill; and in his case it was the latter. In downright English he
+was hideous. A shock of intractable, lank hair hung over what he had of
+a forehead; and underneath rolled a pair of whitey-blue eyes, with a
+villainous cast in one of them. Some accident had carried Nature's work
+even further, for one swarthy cheek was divided from temple to chin by a
+dirty white scar. He wore a pair of black-and-white checked trousers,
+which, once Nick's, hung strangely on his meagre frame. He was absurdly
+proud of this garment. His outer wear was completed by a black cotton
+shirt, and the inevitable stiff-brimmed hat, without which no brown
+youth feels himself a man. Xavier's face wore an expression of blankness
+verging on idiocy; but he was by no means deficient in cunning. His full
+name was St. Francois Xavier Zero.</p>
+
+<p>Returning from the pump with the pail of water, as he passed Nick, the
+big man threw him an idle word or two in Cree. Xavier grinned
+comprehendingly; and Nick and Albert followed him a little way. Xavier
+came up close behind Garth; and in passing him, made believe to stumble.
+Some of the water splashed over Garth's legs. Garth swung around, and
+took in the situation at a glance; Grylls and Albert were grinning in
+the background. There was a crack as his fist met the half-breed's jaw;
+and Xavier rolled in the dust. In falling the pail capsized, emptying
+its contents on the cherished trousers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nick's guffaw was quickly changed for a scowl; Garth saw that an
+explosion was imminent; and that quick thought was necessary. He knew he
+must at all cost to his pride avoid trouble until he got Natalie off his
+hands. He walked over to Nick; the big fellow clenched his fists as he
+approached.</p>
+
+<p>"Hope I haven't hurt the beggar," said Garth blandly. "Perhaps he didn't
+mean to spill the water; but you have to deal quickly with a breed.
+That's your way, I'm told."</p>
+
+<p>Nick was completely disconcerted by this unexpected line of action. His
+hands dropped; and he muttered something which might pass for agreement.
+Garth coolly returned to Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>The breed picked himself up, and went crouching to his master with a
+voluble, whining complaint in his own tongue. Nick lifted his hand; and
+with a vicious, backhanded stroke sent Xavier again reeling across the
+yard. It was the blow which was meant for Garth. Passion had set Nick
+dancing to a strange tune. Albert, seeing the look in his eye,
+instinctively edged out of reach.</p>
+
+<p>Old Nell looked at these things with a resigned air that spoke volumes
+for her daily life. Natalie kept perfectly quiet; but a bright spot
+burned in either cheek, and she turned a pair of shining eyes on Garth
+when he came back to her. His difficulties were by no means over. Old
+Paul, feeling that it might be well to forego the pail of water, gave
+the word to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> start. Grylls climbed in by the rear step, and sat next to
+Nell with a dogged air. This brought him opposite Garth, and very near
+Natalie. Albert and the half-breed following him, they started. Xavier,
+covered with dirt, snivelling, and nursing a split lip, was as ugly as a
+gargoyle.</p>
+
+<p>Garth saw a way out in the vacant place beside Paul. "The front seat
+would be more comfortable for you; it's wider," he said to Natalie, loud
+enough for all to hear. "Paul," he called, "have you room beside you for
+the young lady? She wants to hear some more stories."</p>
+
+<p>Paul, delighted, immediately pulled up, and held out a hand. Natalie
+climbed over the mail-bags and took her place beside him. In crossing,
+she gave Garth's hand a grateful squeeze; and he returned to his place
+with a swelling heart, ready for Nick Grylls and any like him. But he
+would not allow himself to depart from the course he had laid out. In
+the past he had been compelled to conciliate, to flatter, to mould such
+men as Grylls for the advantage of the <i>Leader</i>; and he could certainly
+do it once more for the sake of Natalie. Nick faced him with a venomous
+eye, but was unable to make an opening for more trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Old Paul, whenever they came to a hill and he could allow his four to
+walk, turned around; and half to Natalie, half to Garth, delivered
+himself of one of his characteristic stories. Neither was Nick
+impatient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> with his monologues to-day; for when Paul turned Natalie half
+turned also; and then Nick could watch her face.</p>
+
+<p>Garth had asked the old man about the half-breed rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I was through it all," he began. "I was buildin' boats in Prince
+George; and scoutin'. Upwards of three months we hadn't no news from
+outside and the settlement was in a continuous state of scare. It was
+supposed the Crees had been joined by the Montana Indians; and all said
+we was cut off on the south. Women, children and cattle was crowded
+together in the stockade; but I didn't bring my family in. My old woman
+weren't afraid; and somepin' told me it was just one of these here
+panics like.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, one day up came word to the commandant to send a force down the
+river to Fort Pitt, as they called it, to jine with General Middleton.
+Then it was Smiley here, and Smiley there, and they couldn't do nothin'
+without Smiley. I started down the river at last with two work boats
+carryin' fifty men under Major Lewis and Cap'n Caswell. It was a
+Saturday night, I mind. Lewis was one of these stuck-up, know-it-all
+johnnies, not long breeched. But Caswell was an old Crimea veteran; his
+face had been spiled by a powder explosion; but he certainly was a
+sporter! Me and him got along fine. My! My! what a randy old feller he
+was! The men used to sit around him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> with their mouths open waitin' to
+laugh. Grimy Caswell they called him, along of his speckled face&mdash;great
+big man!</p>
+
+<p>"We travelled for three days and three nights without stoppin'; and
+would you believe it, that damn fool Lewis&mdash;'scuse me, Miss&mdash;made us
+light a lantern at night! A mark for all the reds in the country! I was
+steerin' the first boat; and signallin' the channel to Dave Sinclair in
+the boat behind, with my hand; this way and so. But the second day Dave
+ran her aground. Young Lewis wouldn't allow that we knew how to lift a
+boat off a shoal up North. I let him break all the ropes tryin' to drag
+her off; then I showed him. Meanwhile, all this time, Grimy Caswell was
+dressin' himself up like a redskin in my boat; and smearin' his face
+with red earth. When it got dusk-like, he hid in the bushes; and by and
+by Lewis came along the shore. All of a sudden, Grimy in his war-paint
+popped out in front of him, let out a hell of a screech, and sent a shot
+over his head. Say, that young man near died right there. He turned the
+colour of a lead bullet; and made some quick tracks to the rear boat.
+Grimy sneaked back to ours and washed and dressed; and all night long he
+plagued Lewis to light the lantern; but he wouldn't; and the men near
+died holdin' theirselves in. Oh! Grimy Caswell was a humorous feller, he
+was!</p>
+
+<p>"We landed at Fort Pitt on the fourth day; and at the same time the
+steamboats come up from Battle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> Run with the whole army. They landed 'em
+all; and say, they had a brass band; and General Middleton rode a white
+horse. Never see such a grand sight in all my born days; they must have
+been all of seven hundred and fifty men!"</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of another long hill Natalie expressed a wish to walk up;
+and Garth helped her down. They set off briskly, ahead of the horses;
+and for the first time found themselves free to talk to each other.</p>
+
+<p>"How good you have been to me!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't think of thanking me," said Garth, almost roughly.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had known how literally you would have to take care of me, I would
+not have been so quick to ask you."</p>
+
+<p>"It was nothing, really."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, you mean to what is before us?" she asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"I look for nothing worse," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps my appearance is too conspicuous," she suggested with a
+humility new to her.</p>
+
+<p>"A little, perhaps," Garth admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do?" she said. "I have nothing else."</p>
+
+<p>"At the Landing I will dress you in a rough sweater, and a felt hat
+strapped under your chin," he said with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie was aggrieved. "I like to look nice," she protested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You would&mdash;even then," said poor Garth.</p>
+
+<p>She changed the subject. "What a gross beast that big man is!" she said
+strongly.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor devil!" said Garth unconsciously. He understood from his own
+feelings a little of what Nick was going through.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie turned a surprised face on him. "Are you sorry for him?" she
+demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"A little."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I think perhaps he never saw any one like you before," he said
+quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"But he <i>hates</i> you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she demanded again&mdash;and was immediately sorry she had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>Garth looked away. "He thinks I am&mdash;I am more than I am," he said
+oracularly.</p>
+
+<p>She affected not to hear this. "What shall we do about him?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't trouble us after the Landing," said Garth. "He is bound down
+the river to Lake Miwasa, while we go up to Caribou Lake."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a precious good thing for me I didn't start off alone," she said
+feelingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad if I've won your confidence a little," said Garth hanging his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>This meant: "Aren't you going to tell me about yourself?" Natalie's
+mystery had been a thorn in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> flesh all the way along the road. He
+was ashamed to speak of it, for seeming to imply a doubt of her; but he
+couldn't help approaching it in this roundabout way.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie understood. "I'll tell you now, gladly," she said at once. "But
+not here; there isn't time. We have to get in directly."</p>
+
+<p>This was precisely what Garth desired her to say. He longed for her to
+want to tell him; but for the story itself, he dreaded it, and was quite
+willing to have the telling deferred.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the day they reached Nell's house, quite a fine edifice built
+with lumber instead of the usual logs. Natalie, true to her word,
+allowed herself to be shown through; and did not stint her admiration of
+Nell's treasures. When they drove on, she looked back with a genuine
+feeling for the old girl, who was so anxious to please. They left her
+standing in the doorway in her finery, with the sullen, black-browed
+bravo slouching beside her.</p>
+
+<p>The way became very much rougher; and Garth was glad of Natalie's having
+greater comfort on the front seat. About five o'clock they climbed their
+last hill. At the top Old Paul, pulling up his horses, swept his whip
+with an eloquent gesture over the magnificent prospect lying below.</p>
+
+<p>"All the water this side goes to the Arctic," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Looking over a wealth of greenery, away below them they saw the mighty
+Miwasa River coming eastward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> from the mountains, make its southernmost
+sweep, and shape a course straight away for the North. The Miwasa river!
+There was magic in the name; they gazed down at it with a feeling akin
+to awe. Off to the left lay the roofs of the Landing, farthest outpost
+of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they were rattling down the steep village street at a great
+pace, traces hanging slack; past the factor's house, the "Company's"
+store, the blacksmith shop and the "French outfit"; with a dash and a
+clatter that brought every inhabitant running to the hotel. Most of them
+were already there; for the arrival of the mail is the event of the
+week. Old Smiley swept up to the gallery at Trudeau's with a flourish
+worthy of coaching's palmiest days. The passengers alighted; and again
+the girl with the green wings in her hat became the cynosure of every
+eye. Garth delivered her into the comfortable arms of Mrs. Trudeau, who
+took her upstairs. Turning back into the general room, he asked the
+first man he met where the Bishop lived.</p>
+
+<p>"Up the street and to the left a piece," was the reply. "But say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"The Bishop and his party started up the river two days ago."</p>
+
+<p>Garth, turning, saw Nick Grylls listening with an evil grin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">AT MIWASA LANDING</p>
+
+<p>Miwasa Landing is the jumping-off place of civilization; here, at
+Trudeau's, is the last billiard table, and the last piano; here, the
+wayfarer sleeps for the last time on springs, and eats his last "square"
+ere the wilderness swallows him. It is at once the rendezvous, the place
+of good-byes, and the gossip-exchange of the North; here, the incomer
+first apprehends the intimate, village spirit of that vast land, where a
+man's doings are registered with more particularity than in the smallest
+hamlet outside. For where there are not, in half a million square miles,
+enough white men to fill a room, or as many white women as a man has
+fingers, each individual fills a large space in the picture. Away up in
+Fort Somervell, three months' journey from Prince George, they speak of
+"town" as if it were five miles off.</p>
+
+<p>And Trudeau's on the river bank, quite imposing with its three stories
+and its gingerbread gallery, is the nucleus of it all. Trudeau's is a
+reminder of the jolly bustling inns of a century ago. The traders, the
+policemen, the mail-carriers, the rivermen and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> freighters come and
+go; each sits for a day or two in the row of chairs tipped back against
+the wall&mdash;for no one is ever in a hurry in the North&mdash;gives his news, if
+he be on the way "out"; takes it if he be coming "in"; and appoints to
+meet his friends there next year. The commonest type of all is the
+genial dilettante, the man who traps a little, prospects a little, grows
+a few potatoes, and loafs a great deal. Trudeau's is also the eddy which
+sooner or later sucks in the derelicts of the country, sons or brothers
+of somebody, incredibly unshaven and down at heel; capitalists of
+bluster and labourers with the tongue.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the crowd that witnessed Natalie's arrival open-mouthed; and
+such the individuals that fastened themselves in turn on Garth, with the
+determination of extracting a full explanation of the phenomenon. Garth
+succeeded in avoiding at the same time giving offense and giving
+information. But he could not prevent a fine podful of rumours from
+bursting at the Landing, and scattering seeds broadcast over the North.</p>
+
+<p>He found a letter awaiting him from the Bishop.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I find," he wrote, "that Captain Jack Dexter's steamboat will be
+going up the river to the Warehouse in the middle of the week; and
+as my preparations are completed a day or two earlier than I
+expected, I am starting on ahead with my outfit. You will probably
+overtake us in the big river, as we have to track all the way; but
+should you be delayed, I will go on up the rapids; and will see
+that a wagon is waiting for you at the Warehouse, to bring you to
+me at Pierre Toma's house on Musquasepi. This will be more
+comfortable for you, as all this first part of the journey is
+tedious up-stream work." </p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The good man little suspected when he wrote it what a quandary his
+kindly note would throw Garth into.</p>
+
+<p>After supper, he and Natalie, sitting in the rigid little parlour
+upstairs, talked it over; while Mademoiselle Trudeau, aged fifteen,
+sought to entertain them by rendering effete popular songs on the famous
+piano. From below came the rise and fall of deep-voiced talk, and the
+incessant click of billiard balls.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie made a picture of adorable perplexity to Garth's eyes as she
+said: "What would you advise me to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I advise you?" he said, looking away; "I do not know all the
+circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>"But I can't tell you now," she said appealingly. "Don't you see, my
+reasons for going must not be allowed to influence our decision as to
+whether I <i>can</i> go?"</p>
+
+<p>Garth did not exactly see this; but unwilling to beg for her confidence,
+he remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>"My trouble is," she continued presently, "that if we follow the Bishop
+and overtake him, he'll virtually be obliged to take me; and I do not
+wish to force myself on him."</p>
+
+<p>"As to that," Garth said, "one has to give and take in the North. It's
+not like it is outside. Besides, we pay our own score you know; and
+carry our own grub. I'll answer for the Bishop."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I see no reason why I should not go," she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The journey with her stretched itself rosily before Garth's mind's eye;
+but his instinct to take care of her made him oppose it. "There is me,"
+he said diffidently; "travelling alone with me, I mean. Even in the
+North a girl is obliged to consider what people will say."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie shook her shoulders impatiently. "There's not the slightest use
+urging reasons of propriety," she said resolutely. "As long as my
+conscience is clear, I can't afford to consider it. This is too
+important. It affects my whole life," she added in a deeper voice.
+"There's something up there I have to find out!"</p>
+
+<p>Something in this made Garth's hopes lift up a little; for she did not
+speak as one whose heart was in thrall.</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle Trudeau concluded her piece with an ear-tearing discord;
+and turned, self-consciously inviting applause.</p>
+
+<p>"How well you play, dear!" said Natalie, the wheedler. "Isn't it nice to
+have music away up here! Try something else."</p>
+
+<p>The performer, adoring Natalie, promptly turned her pig-tails to them
+again, and attacked "Two Little Girls in Blue." Garth groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"Discourages listeners," remarked Natalie, indicating the curtained
+doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"So," she continued presently, "if you haven't any better reasons to
+urge against it, we'll consider the matter settled."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't I go for you?" asked Garth.</p>
+
+<p>She resolutely shook her head. "I have promised," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a promise given in ignorance of the conditions," Garth persisted
+with rough tenderness. "This wild country is no place for you. I could
+not bear to see you wet and hungry and cold and tired, and all that is
+before us&mdash;besides dangers we may not suspect."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie faced him with shining eyes. "Clumsy man!" she cried&mdash;but there
+was tenderness in her scorn too. "Do you think this is persuading me not
+to go? I'm not a doll; I won't spoil with a little rough handling! If
+you only knew how I longed to experience the real; to work for my
+living, to get under the surface of things!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth, amazed and admiring of her bold spirit, was silenced.</p>
+
+<p>As they were parting for the night, she said: "As soon as the steamboat
+casts off, and it's too late to turn back, I will tell you what I have
+to do up there."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Next morning Garth sought an interview with Captain Jack Dexter of the
+<i>Aurora Borealis</i>. At once proprietor, skipper and business manager of
+his boat, and serenely independent of competition, he was a type new to
+Garth. His single concession to sea-faring attire was a yachting cap
+several sizes too small, perched on his spreading brown curls. His face
+was red;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> his eyes anxious, blue and bulging. He had the unwholesome,
+frenetic aspect of the patent medicine enthusiast, not uncommon in the
+North. Garth interrupted him in a grave discussion of the relative
+merits of "Pain Killer" and "Golden Discovery."</p>
+
+<p>"I may take a run up to the Warehouse," he said guardedly, in answer to
+the question. "I'll let you know to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you sure of going?" asked Garth in some dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Never sure of nothing in this world," said Captain Jack, with a glance
+around the circle, sure of applause.</p>
+
+<p>Garth bit his lip. "Haven't you freight to go up?" he asked quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty of freight offered me," said the skipper coolly. "Plenty to go
+down-stream too."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's highly important I should know what you're going to do," said
+Garth with increasing heat.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack cocked a wary eye at the sky, and spat. "No water in the
+river," he said at length.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you're <i>not</i> going," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't say so," said Captain Jack. "May rain shortly, and bring her up
+an inch or so."</p>
+
+<p>The sky was clear and speckless as an azure bowl. "Do you mean I've got
+to wait around here indefinitely on the bare chance of its raining?"
+demanded Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Told the Bishop I'd bring you up," said Captain Jack in his detached
+way. "Reckon I can't break my word to the Church."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, why didn't you say so in the beginning?" said Garth, wondering if
+this was a joke. "When will you be starting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, to-morrow, maybe," said the skipper without suspecting the least
+humour in the situation; "or Thursday&mdash;or Friday; whenever I can get the
+boys together. You just stay around and I'll let you know."</p>
+
+<p>With this Garth was forced to be content.</p>
+
+<p>Next there was the business of laying in supplies from the "Company."
+Garth tasted to the full the sweets of partnership, as he and Natalie
+gauged each other's appetite, and made their calculations. Paul Smiley
+accompanied them in the capacity of expert adviser; but the old man was
+inclined to be scandalized at the extravagant luxuries Garth insisted on
+adding to the five great staples of Northern travel; viz., bacon, flour,
+baking-powder, tea and sugar. Garth must have besides, canned vegetables
+and milk for Natalie; also cocoa, jam and fresh butter. The whole was
+contained in four goodly boxes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy!" exclaimed Natalie. "Fancy our two little selves getting outside
+all that! Picture us waddling back to civilization."</p>
+
+<p>Garth also made the necessary rougher additions to her wardrobe; and
+bought her a rifle of small calibre.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon, with strict injunctions to Natalie to remain indoors
+during his absence, he set off to a half-breed cabin a mile up the
+river, to obtain a supply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> of moccasins for both. Mademoiselle Trudeau
+undertook to bear Natalie company at home.</p>
+
+<p>He had not been gone long before the Convent-bred child with her precise
+phrases began to get on the nerves of the irrepressible Natalie. At the
+same time the exquisite clarity of the Northern summer air, the delicate
+mantling blue overhead, and the liquid sunshine on the foliage all began
+to tempt her sorely. Across the road a field of squirrel-tail, dimpling
+silkily in the breeze, stretched to the river bank, and she saw she
+could cross it without passing any house. Natalie was never the one to
+resist such a lure; she sent the child away on an imaginary errand, and
+slipping out by the side door, crossed the field, and gained the bank
+without, as she fondly hoped, having been seen by the row of gossipers
+with their chairs tipped back against the front of the building.
+Rejoicing in her freedom, she followed the path Garth had taken along
+the edge of the bank, thinking how pleasant it would be to surprise him
+coming home, and planning how she would cajole him into forgiving her
+disobedience. The thought of Garth's being angry with her caused a
+strange, vague little thrill, half dismay, half pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie had not escaped the hotel unobserved; as she went leisurely
+waving her banners along the river path, a gross, burly figure with
+downcast head followed, pausing when she paused, and taking advantage of
+the taller bushes for cover. It was not characteristic of Natalie to
+look behind her; she continued her zigzag<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> course all unconscious;
+sweeping her skirts through the grass, and ever and anon whistling
+snatches like a bird. Presently finding herself among wild raspberry
+bushes laden with fruit, she gave herself up to delicate feasting;
+searching among the leaves bright-eyed, like a bird, and popping the
+berries into her mouth&mdash;the raspberries paled beside the bloomy lips
+that parted to receive them. At last she plumped down on a stone beside
+the path; and gazing up the unknown river of her journey, thought her
+birdlike thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Nick Grylls appeared around the bushes. For the fraction of a second she
+was utterly dismayed; then sharply calling in her flying forces, she
+nodded politely, as one nods to a passer-by; and looked elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>But the man had no intention of taking the hint. He had the grace to
+pull off his hat&mdash;the first time he had bared his head to a woman in
+many a long day&mdash;and he paused, awkwardly searching in his mind for the
+ingratiating thing to say. What he finally blurted out was not at all
+what he intended.</p>
+
+<p>"You think I'm a coarse, rude fellow, Miss," he said with the air of a
+whipped schoolboy.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie's thoughts beat their wings desperately against her head. Here,
+indeed, was a situation to try the pluck of a highly civilized young
+lady. What should she do? What should she say? What tone should she
+take? In the end she was quite honest.</p>
+
+<p>"You have never given me any reason to think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> otherwise," she said. Her
+secret agitation peeped out in the added briskness of her tones.</p>
+
+<p>Grylls incessantly turned his hat brim in his fat freckled hands. "I am
+not as bad as you think," he said dully. "Somehow I seem to have a worse
+look when I am by you."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie let it go at that.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't had early advantages," he continued. "I never learned how to
+dress spruce; and talk good grammar. But a man may have good metal in
+him for all that."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly!" said Natalie crisply.</p>
+
+<p>"There ain't no reason why we shouldn't be friends," he said humbly.</p>
+
+<p>"None at all," she returned. "Neither do I see any reason why we should
+be."</p>
+
+<p>"But say, I can help you up here," he said eagerly. "I know the ropes. I
+have the trick of mastering the breeds. I have money in the country. I
+can do what I like."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't want me to simulate friendship for the purpose of using
+you?" said Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I would," he sullenly returned. "I'd take your good will on any
+terms."</p>
+
+<p>The difficulties of her position, it seemed to her, were increasing at a
+frightful ratio. The fact that Garth might at any moment come face to
+face with Grylls only added to her fears. But she gave Grylls no sign of
+the weakness within.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I can't make believe to be friendly," she said briefly. "I give it
+gladly when I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Show me what to do to be friends with you," he pleaded, not without
+eloquence. "I have the time and the money and the determination to do
+it&mdash;anything!"</p>
+
+<p>But it was impossible Natalie should feel the slightest pity for a
+creature of so gross an aspect. "I cannot show you," she said coolly.
+"You must teach yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Grylls began to be encouraged by his own rising passion. "All I ask is a
+fair show," he said in a more assured voice. "Give me a chance as well
+as this squib of a reporter you picked up in Prince George. What can
+<i>he</i> do for you? Let me take you to the Bishop. I can carry his whole
+party through the country at a rate he never thought of!"</p>
+
+<p>Downright anger now came to Natalie's aid. "My arrangements are made,"
+she said curtly. "I do not care to change them."</p>
+
+<p>Grylls's eyes quailed again under the direct look of hers; and a deeper
+red crept under his skin. His tone changed. "If I can't help, I can
+hinder," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Threats will not help you," said Natalie, instantly and clearly.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know what you're up against," he continued, still muttering,
+"I tell you I carry the breeds in my pocket. No white man knows them but
+me. I can hold you up wherever I please. I've only to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> give the word and
+you'll starve on the trail&mdash;you and your reporter!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie arose. For the moment she was too angry to speak. The man looked
+on her flashing beauty; and in the madness of his desire to possess it
+he forgot his awe of her.</p>
+
+<p>"God! How beautiful you are!" was forced from his breast like a groan.
+"You poison a man's blood!" His speech came in thick blurts like
+clotting blood. "What business have you got up here? This is no country
+for the likes of you!... I was a strong man before you came; and since I
+looked at you I'm sick ... sick ... sick ... you've stolen my manhood
+out of me! Don't you owe me common civility in return? I'd fawn like a
+dog for a kindly look!... But don't you provoke me too far&mdash;don't think,
+because maybe I can't meet your eye, I couldn't crush you&mdash;or have
+others do it! You and your damned follower!... Oh, that would give me
+ease!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie's breath came like a frightened bird's. Flight she realized was
+dangerous&mdash;but it was as dangerous to stay; and how could she stay
+listening to such impieties! Nick Grylls's own bulk cut off her retreat
+in the direction of the settlement&mdash;but somewhere in the other direction
+was Garth. She sized up the man in a darting glance; his swollen bulk
+promised shortness of breath.</p>
+
+<p>He made a move toward her. "What's to prevent me from taking you now?"
+he muttered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Natalie, turning, fled along the path; running like a bird with
+incredibly swift, short steps.</p>
+
+<p>Nick Grylls plunged after her, passion lending his great bulk lightness
+and speed. The path, which is used for tracking boats up-stream, skirted
+the extreme edge of a high-cut-bank bordering the river. On the one hand
+a single false step would have precipitated them to the beach
+twenty-five feet below; on the other hand the branches of an
+impenetrable undergrowth scourged their faces as they ran. Here and
+there the rain had worn deep fissures, across which leaped the nymph
+Natalie, with the panting Silenus close at her heels. She was running
+desperately over unfamiliar ground, knowing nothing of what lay ahead.
+She got away quicker than he; but he gained on her. The pursuer always
+has the advantage, in that he can measure his distance; and the quarry
+must make the pace.</p>
+
+<p>The scene flashed past her like the half-sensed panorama of a hideous
+dream. She dared not look over her shoulder, but she could hear his
+heavy steps falling closer and closer. "He can run faster than I," she
+thought; and a dreadful sinking clutched her heart. She hazarded a
+fearful glance at the water below. The man's fingers clawed at her back.
+In another instant she would have leapt over; but she felt the ground
+tremble and give under her feet. She staggered, and with a desperate
+leap, gained a firm foothold beyond. Behind her, with a rumble and a
+hissing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> roar a great section of the bank half slid, half fell to the
+river beach beneath, carrying down bushes, trees, stones&mdash;and her
+pursuer.</p>
+
+<p>She ran on without a backward look. In her thankful heart she could now
+spare a glance of pity for the half-crazed man; but it did not carry her
+to the length of stopping to see what had befallen him.</p>
+
+<p>A little way farther on, the bank flattened down into a little valley,
+which conveyed a brook to the river. A path struck inland here. Natalie,
+leaping from stone to stone across the stream, suddenly saw Garth's
+figure heave into sight around a bend in the path. Instantly she
+slackened her pace; and her hands went to her breast to control the
+agitation of the tenant there. She did not intend he should learn what
+had happened.</p>
+
+<p>So when they met she was perfectly quiet; but her eyes were luminous,
+and her voice had a new dove-like note. To tell the truth, at the sight
+of him striding along, pipe in mouth, with an interested eye for all
+that showed; so cool and strong; so honest and clean and young; after
+what she had just been through, Natalie was hard put to it to forbear
+casting herself on his breast forthwith, and letting her heart still
+itself there.</p>
+
+<p>He instantly started to scold her for venturing so far alone. She was
+glad to be scolded. She could not help slipping her arm through his for
+a moment, just to feel that he was there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I will be good," she murmured in a moved, vibrant tone, like the
+deepest note of the oboe. "Hereafter I will do exactly as you say."</p>
+
+<p>Garth trembled at the sound; and was silent in the excess of his
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>Returning, upon reaching the path up the valley, she made him turn
+inland; and they pursued a roundabout course back to the hotel. Nick
+Grylls, unhurt except as to certain abrasions of the countenance, and
+furiously sullen, had reached there before them. During the rest of
+their stay he carefully avoided them; but Garth was more than once
+conscious of the venomous little eyes fixed upon him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">NATALIE TELLS ABOUT HERSELF</p>
+
+<p>The little stern-wheeler lay with her nose tucked comfortably in the mud
+of the river bank; and a hawser taut between her capstan and a tree.
+Every soul on board, except the three passengers, slept. Garth and
+Natalie were sitting in the corner of the upper deck astern, on the seat
+which encircles the rail. The third passenger, a mysterious person, who
+all unknown to the other two had been making it her business to watch
+them, observing where they sat, had softly entered the end stateroom;
+and with her head at the window, stretched her ears to hear their talk.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Aurora Borealis</i>, after the loss of three precious days, during
+which Captain Jack endlessly backed and filled, and the water in the
+river steadily fell, had finally cast off that afternoon; and after
+ascending twenty miles or so, tied up to the bank to await the dawn. It
+was now about ten; overcast above; velvety dark below; and still as
+death. For the first time Garth and Natalie missed, with a catch in the
+breath, the faint, domestic murmur that rises on the quietest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> night
+from an inhabited land. It was so still they could occasionally hear the
+stealthy fall of tiny, furry feet among the leaves on shore. The trees
+kept watch on the bank like a regiment of shades at attention. The
+moment provided Natalie's opportunity to fulfil her promise.</p>
+
+<p>"I will try to be very frank," she began by saying, "I am so anxious you
+should not misunderstand. You have been so good to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't," said Garth uncomfortably. "Take me for granted as a man
+would. I shall never be at ease with you, if you're going to be thanking
+me at every opportunity!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try not to," she said meekly. The darkness swallowed the smile and
+the shine her eyes bent on him.</p>
+
+<p>If Garth expected a sad beginning he was immediately undeceived.
+Natalie's invincible spirits launched her gaily on her tale.</p>
+
+<p>"I've lived all my days in a Canadian city back East," she began; "too
+big a place to be simple; and too small to be finished. I never
+appreciated the funny side of it until I travelled. You have no idea of
+the complacency of such a place, the beautiful self-sufficiency of the
+people; you should hear what a patronizing tone they take toward the
+outside world! But they have their good points; they're kind and
+friendly with each other; and not nearly so snobbish as the people of
+little places are generally pictured. Everybody that is anybody knows
+all the other some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>bodies so well, it's like one great family. My people
+have lived there for ages; and so everybody knows me; and half of them
+are my cousins.</p>
+
+<p>"We've always been as poor as church mice," she continued in a tone of
+cheerful frankness. "We live in a huge house that is gradually coming
+down about our ears; the drawing-room carpet is full of holes; the old
+silver is shockingly dented and the Royal Worcester all chipped. There
+are other household secrets I need not go into. People are kind enough
+to make believe not to notice&mdash;even when they get a chunk of plaster on
+the head.</p>
+
+<p>"Everybody says it's my father's fault; they say he's a ne'er-do-weel;
+and even unkinder things. But he's such a dear boy"&mdash;Natalie's voice
+softened&mdash;"as young, oh! years younger than you! And everything
+invariably goes wrong with his affairs," she continued briskly; "but he
+is always good-tempered, and never neglects to be polite to the ladies.
+My mother has been an invalid for ten years. We do all we can for her;
+but, poor dear! she isn't much interested in us! Can you blame her? And
+I have half a dozen dear, bad little brothers and sisters. We're all
+exactly alike; we fight all the time and love one another to
+distraction.</p>
+
+<p>"You see it's not a picture of a well-ordered household I'm drawing you.
+Indeed it's a mystery how we ever get along at all; but we do, somehow;
+and no one the worse. Fortunately there seems to be some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>thing about us
+that people like. They just wag their heads and laugh and exclaim, 'Oh,
+the Blands!' and don't expect anything better of us. Conversations are
+started when some one comes in saying: 'Have you heard the latest about
+the Blands?' I'm sure they would be disappointed if we ever reformed.
+People have always been so kind to me"&mdash;Natalie's voice deepened
+again&mdash;"Ah! so <i>very</i> kind, it makes my heart swell and my eyelids
+prickle when I think of it. I've been carried everywhere in luxury like
+an heiress," she briskened, "and there is no doubt I have been
+thoroughly spoiled."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie paused awhile here; and Garth apprehended that, the prologue
+finished, the story was about to commence.</p>
+
+<p>"A man, the first, fell in love with me when I was eighteen&mdash;six years
+ago," she presently resumed. "Of course I do not count all the dear,
+foolish boys before that&mdash;they say in Millerton that the boys attach
+themselves to me to finish their education&mdash;but that's all foolishness.
+I'm so very fond of boys! I could laugh and hug them all! They're so&mdash;so
+theatrical! But the man was different; he was fifteen years older than
+I; and alas! another ne'er-do-weel! He had been a football and a
+cricketing hero; he was very good-looking in a worn-out, dissipated kind
+of a way. He had gone to the bad in all the usual ways I believe&mdash;even
+dishonesty; though I didn't learn that until long afterward." The fun
+had died<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> out of Natalie's voice now. "It's a miserable, ordinary kind
+of a story, isn't it?" she said deprecatingly. "Most girls go through
+with it safely; but I&mdash;well I was the simple sprat that was caught!</p>
+
+<p>"He was returning to Millerton after a long absence," she went on; "his
+people were well known there. He appeared to be perfectly mad about me;
+and my poor little head was quite turned. His wickedness was vague and
+romantic; for no one ever explained anything to me of course; and the
+idea of leading him back into the paths of righteousness was quite
+distractingly attractive. I had no one to put me right, you see&mdash;but
+perhaps I wouldn't have listened if I had had.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't weary you with all the silly details of the affair. My cheeks
+are burning now at the thought of my colossal folly. He won his mother
+over to his side. He was an only child; and she would have chopped off
+her hand to serve him. She joined her persuasions to his. He swore if I
+married him he would go out West, turn over that everlasting new leaf,
+and make his fortune. He wanted me to marry him before he went, so that
+he could feel sure of me. I did balk at that; I thought my word ought to
+be sufficient; but he and his mother pleaded and pleaded with me.
+Together, they were too much for me; and so, at last, I gave in. I
+thought I would be saving him; I thought I loved him&mdash;it is so easy for
+children to fool themselves! I married him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Natalie paused; and with the ceasing of her voice, the great silence of
+the North woods seemed to leap between them, thrusting them asunder.
+Garth's heart for the journey was gone. He was thankful for the merciful
+darkness that hid his face.</p>
+
+<p>Presently she resumed in the toneless voice of one who tells what cannot
+be mended: "We were married in Toronto. His mother and the clergyman
+were the only witnesses. The instant the words were spoken, the whole
+extent of the hideous mistake I had made was revealed to me&mdash;why is it
+we see so clearly <i>then</i>? We went direct from the ceremony to the
+station, where he boarded his train for the West. I have not laid eyes
+on him since. His name is Herbert Mabyn&mdash;and that, of course, is my
+legal name, which I have never used. It was his mother you met in Prince
+George."</p>
+
+<p>Garth drew a deep breath; and carefully schooled his voice. "Is he
+alive?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said. "My journey is to find him."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it necessary for <i>you</i> to come?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There was no one else," she said. "No one but Mrs. Mabyn and he and I
+know of the marriage. There were many reasons&mdash;and complicated ones. I
+do wish to be frank with you; but I scarcely know how to explain. Only
+one thing is clear to me; I <i>had</i> to come; or never know peace again.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a conscience," she went on presently; "a queer, twisted thing;
+and with every man that became fond of me, thinking I was free, it hurt
+me more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>&mdash;though perhaps it did <i>them</i> no real harm. And then there was
+Mrs. Mabyn&mdash;how can I explain to you about her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I understand," Garth put in.</p>
+
+<p>"She has been very kind to me all these years; but it was a kind of
+tyrannical kindness, too&mdash;it was as if she was tying me to her with one
+chain of kindness after another. And I wished to live my own life! And
+it seemed to me that the only way in which I could discharge my
+obligations to her, and win my freedom, was by doing this thing, which
+she so ardently desires. She believes, you see, that I am the only one
+who can save him."</p>
+
+<p>Garth muttered something which sounded uncomplimentary to Mrs. Mabyn.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am really fond of her," Natalie said quickly. "She has a mortal
+disease," she added; "one must make allowances for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is <i>he</i>?" Garth asked.</p>
+
+<p>"His last letter, eight months ago, was post-marked Spirit River
+Crossing," she said. "We gathered from it that he had a place somewhere
+near there. We know very little. At first he wrote often and cheerfully;
+he seemed to be getting on: but later, he moved about a great deal; his
+letters came at longer intervals; and the tone of them changed. His
+mother thinks his health has broken down. I am to find out; and to save
+him, if I can."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence here. Garth could not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> speak for the fear of
+betraying an indignation which could only have hurt her; and Natalie was
+busy with her own painful thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something else," she resumed at last in a very low tone. "I
+have not yet been quite frank with you&mdash;and I do so wish to be! You must
+not think I am undertaking this purely on his mother's account; for
+there is a selfish reason too. In the bottom of my heart there is a
+hope&mdash;perhaps it is a wicked hope&mdash;but if you knew how this collar has
+galled me!" She stopped; and then quickly resumed. "I married this man
+with my eyes open; and I will do my part by him&mdash;but if&mdash;" her voice
+fell again&mdash;"if it has not helped him; if in spite of my honest efforts
+to save him, and all the letters I wrote, if he has fallen lower than
+ever, and has ceased to struggle&mdash;then I will consider my part done!"</p>
+
+<p>There seemed to be no more to say. Garth's heart was beating fast; and
+he was longing to tell her that he understood, and that he loved and
+admired her for what she had told him, but he could not tell her coldly,
+and he would not tell her warmly. As for Natalie, she waited
+breathlessly for his first word; mightily desiring his approval, but too
+proud to ask it. Finally she could stand the suspense no longer and
+pride succumbed. It took her a long time to get the question out.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you&mdash;are you sorry you volunteered to take me?" she faltered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No!" cried Garth in a great voice.</p>
+
+<p>She found his hand in the darkness; and gave it a swift, grateful
+squeeze. "Good night!" she whispered; and ran to her stateroom.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, with his pipe and the mighty stillness to bear him company,
+remained on deck until dawn. In the spirit of the North he discovered
+something akin to his own soul; the solitude and the stillness braced
+him to deny himself manfully what was not manfully his to have. In the
+act of relinquishing Natalie, he felt, what he would not have supposed
+possible, a great, added tenderness for her. Before he went in, his
+sober cheerfulness had returned; but in the morning he was somehow more
+mature.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">MARY CO-QUE-WASA'S ERRAND</p>
+
+<p>At noon next day the little <i>Aurora Borealis</i> was reclining drunkenly on
+a shoal in the river at the foot of Caliper island, sixty miles above
+the Landing, and fifteen below the Warehouse. This had been the place of
+Captain Jack's gloomy forebodings all the way up. The river spread wide,
+shallow and swift on either side the island, and neither one channel nor
+the other would permit their ascent. The <i>Aurora</i> was having a little
+breathing space on the shoal, while Captain Jack and St. Paul, the big
+half-breed pilot, debated below on what to do.</p>
+
+<p>The three passengers looked on from the upper deck. Natalie and Garth
+tacitly ignored any change in their relation to-day; and no reference
+was made to Natalie's story. They seemed, if anything, more friendly
+with each other; nevertheless Constraint, like a spectre standing
+between them, intercepted all their communications.</p>
+
+<p>The third passenger was a half-breed woman nearing middle age, clad in a
+decent black print dress, and a black straw hat, under the brim of which
+depended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> a circlet of attenuated, grizzled curls. Her face, like that
+of all the natives in the presence of whites, expressed a blank, in her
+case a mysterious blank. She was silent and ubiquitous; whichever way
+they looked, there she was. Captain Jack had mentioned to Garth that her
+name was Mary Co-que-wasa. The off-hand shrug that accompanied the
+information, between men, was significant. Garth resented it; and his
+sympathies were enlisted. He had made several efforts to talk to the
+woman, only to be received with a stupid shake of the head. He thought
+she could not speak English. Natalie, more keenly intuitive, took an
+active dislike to her. "I'm sure she listens to us," she had said.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, preparations were undertaken to hoist the <i>Aurora Borealis</i>
+by main strength up the rapids. The "skiff," as they whimsically termed
+the steamboat's great, clumsy tender&mdash;its official name of
+"<i>sturgeon-head</i>" was more descriptive&mdash;was brought alongside; and a
+half-mile of hawser, more or less, patiently coiled in the bottom. The
+end of this rope was made fast on board the steamer, and the skiff,
+pushing off, was poled and tracked up the rapids with heart-breaking
+labour, paying out the hawser over her stern as she went. The other end
+of the rope was made fast to a great tree on the shore above, and, the
+skiff returning, the inboard end was turned about the capstan. Steam was
+then turned on, and with a great to-do of puffing and clanking, the
+<i>Aurora</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> started to haul herself up hand over hand, as one might say.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! she had no sooner raised her head than the hawser parted in the
+middle with a report like a small cannon, and she settled dejectedly
+back on the shoal.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack refreshed himself with a pull at the Spring Tonic bottle;
+and started all over. A newer piece of hawser was produced, and the
+skiff despatched once more on its laborious errand. The loose end was
+finally picked up and knotted, and the capstan started again. But no
+better success followed, as soon as the full strain came upon it, the
+rope burst asunder in a new place. After this they went around the other
+side of the island and tried there. Each attempt consumed an hour or
+more, but time is nothing in the North.</p>
+
+<p>At five o'clock, after the failure of the fourth attempt, Captain Jack
+threw up his hands, and turned the <i>Aurora's</i> nose down-stream. The
+little boat, which had sulked and hung back in the rapids all day,
+picked up her heels, and hustled down with the current, like a wilful
+child that obtains its own way at last.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, in dismay, hastened to Captain Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack cocked an eye, and said with his air of gloomy fatalism:
+"The Landing's the only place for me."</p>
+
+<p>Garth became hot under the collar, as he always did in dealing with the
+pessimistic skipper. "But we're only fifteen miles from the Warehouse!"
+he cried.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Might as well be fifteen hundred," said Captain Jack, "for all I can
+get you there."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no house anywhere near?"</p>
+
+<p>The skipper looked at him with gloomy scorn. "Say, do you think you're
+in a rural neighbourhood?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked you a question," Garth repeated. "Is there any one living near
+here?"</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack shrugged. "Sometimes there's breeds at Bear Portage below,"
+he said. "But not in the summer."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no road?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not what <i>you'd</i> call a road. How would you carry your outfit?"</p>
+
+<p>This was a poser, Garth could not deny. "Where are the breeds in the
+summer?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Jack flung up his hands. "God knows!" he said. "Pitching
+somewheres about between the East and the West!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth set his jaw. "Well, there's some way of reaching the Warehouse,"
+he said, "and I'm going to find it. You stop at Bear Portage, as you
+call it, and I'll see what I can do."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" said Captain Jack hopelessly. "As long as you like&mdash;But you'll
+never make it!" he added with an atrabilious eye. "Never in God's world!
+You better take my advice and get out of the country while you can!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth turned on his heel, and Captain Jack revisited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> his stateroom for
+consolation. Here, two shelves at the foot of his berth contained his
+pharmaceutical stock in ancient, torn and fly-specked wrappers. He
+bought every new variety of remedy he heard of with the ardour of a
+collector. One of his most serious occupations was to lie in bed in the
+morning, making up his mind what to begin the day on. Endless and
+ingenious were the combinations he made.</p>
+
+<p>They tied up at Bear Portage and had supper. Afterward, three breed boys
+with their scent for happenings in the bush, as unerring and mysterious
+as the buzzard's scent for carrion, turned up from nowhere, and at the
+same time a fourth came nosing under the bank in a crazy dugout filled
+with grass. So soft was the arrival of the last that Garth was not aware
+of it, until he happened to catch sight of Mary Co-que-wasa deep in a
+whispered consultation with the paddler. Finding Garth's eyes upon her,
+Mary, with a hasty word to the boy, embarked, and the canoe's nose was
+turned up-stream. As a possible means of transport later, Garth called
+after the boy; but he only paddled the faster. The incident caused Garth
+a vague uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>In the other three he found a means, such as it was, of extricating them
+from their dilemma. He learned through St. Paul, who interpreted, that
+there was a camp of Indians engaged in cutting wild hay, seven miles
+off, and that a wagon and team could be got there next morning, to carry
+them and their goods to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> the Warehouse. At the mention of seven miles,
+Garth looked dubiously at Natalie, but she stoutly averred her ability
+to do it twice if necessary, and since nothing better offered, Garth
+hired the boys to show the way and carry the baggage.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Aurora Borealis</i> presently backed off, and blithely kicking up the
+water astern, disappeared down the river. Her going out severed their
+last bond with the world of civilization and henceforth they must fend
+for themselves in the wilderness. Natalie looked around at the grim,
+empty woods, and at the strange, alien boys who were to conduct them;
+and instinctively put out her hand to Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The eldest and smartest of the breeds was a beady-eyed youth answering
+to the name of Pake. When the <i>Aurora</i> passed out of sight his demeanour
+changed. It was not that he became openly insolent, but what was harder
+for Garth to deal with, he was blandly and blankly indifferent to the
+whites. Garth inwardly fumed, and there was a heavy weight of anxiety,
+too, for Natalie. Pake constructed packing harness out of rope, and
+divided all their goods into five lots, of which four were of about
+equal weight, and the fifth lighter. This one Garth supposed was for
+Natalie, though he thought it too heavy, but to his astonishment he
+learned Pake intended the light pack for himself, and one of the others
+for Natalie. Upon Garth's vigorous objections, Pake coolly added the
+greater part of Natalie's load to Garth's.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hampered as he was by his augmented pack, Garth still managed to carry
+his rifle across his arm. And yet St. Paul, who interpreted for him, had
+assured him these were good boys and would treat him well. St. Paul was
+right, when Garth had been in the country longer he learned this was
+simply the breed way. Only superior, or at least equal, numbers will
+impress them, and then they are obsequious enough in good sooth.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever Natalie thought of their situation, she put on a bold air. As
+they started Indian file, under the great trees in the gathering dusk,
+the three swarthy youths in advance bowed under their packs: "Look!" she
+cried. "Isn't it like the frontispiece to a book of adventure!"</p>
+
+<p>The breeds inherit from the red side of the house a shuffling half-trot,
+produced with steady shoulders and rolling hips, that is a good deal
+faster than it looks. Natalie with her tiny bundle had much ado to keep
+up, and Garth under his, plodded doggedly behind, with breaking neck and
+shoulders. The breeds, careless of their fate, never once looked behind.
+Garth had to keep them in sight, or instantly lose the faint trail in
+the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>After several miles of this, without warning, the breeds simultaneously
+cast their packs on the ground, and took a rest. Every move these
+strange creatures made was unexpected. Garth laboriously ridding himself
+of his burden, proceeded to read them a severe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> lecture on the necessity
+of accommodating their pace to the lady's for the rest of the way. It
+was received with stolid, uncomprehending stares.</p>
+
+<p>Among themselves they gossiped freely enough, and from the frequent
+recurrence of the word <i>moon-i-yas</i>, Garth knew that he and Natalie were
+the subject of it all. The discomforting thought did not fail to suggest
+itself that they might be hatching a plot in the very presence of their
+intended victims. Their outfit, Garth reflected, must seem a very
+fortune to the ragged breeds. He watched them closely.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they set off again as fast as ever, whereupon Garth did as he
+should have done at first, lost his temper, and swore at them roundly.
+Pake looked around with a gleam of awakened intelligence, and slackened
+his pace. After a brief consultation, Pake and another set off in
+advance with their share of the goods, leaving the third boy to guide
+the feebler steps of the two <i>moon-i-yas</i>. Garth wondered if they would
+ever see Pake and the boxes again.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long seven miles; and absolute darkness clothed the lofty
+aisles of the pine trees long before they finished passing through; and
+beyond there were interminable, misty meadows of wild grass to be
+crossed. Garth could no longer distinguish any sign of a trail; but the
+breed bent steadily ahead. Once or twice an owl whirred suddenly low
+over their heads; and somewhere far off a loon guffawed insanely. In the
+end their guide, to cheer his own soul, lifted up his voice in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+strident, unearthly chant of the Crees; and it only needed this to add
+the last touch of unreality to their eerie journey. They began to feel
+like spirits after death, hurried in the darkness they knew not whither.</p>
+
+<p>At last a bright light flared suddenly across the hay marsh; and from
+their guide's joyful exclamation, they gathered that it marked the end
+of their journey. Fire was something human and known; and amazingly
+cheering. They covered the last lap at a brisk pace.</p>
+
+<p>Five tepees, faintly phosphorescent with interior fires, stood in a line
+where the pine trees bounded the hay marsh. Garth's mind was relieved to
+find Pake waiting with the balance of the outfit intact. The fire they
+had seen was from an armful of brush lighted for a beacon to guide them.
+The people were all within. The three breed boys dived into the
+principal tepee without ceremony, leaving Garth and Natalie standing
+rather foolishly outside. They were evidently expected to follow; for
+presently a head was stuck inquiringly outside; and what they took for
+an invitation to enter was delivered in Cree.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us go in," whispered Natalie. "I'm crazy to see what it's like!"</p>
+
+<p>Without more ado, she lifted the flap which covered the entrance, and
+crawled, blinking, into the light, Garth close at her heels.</p>
+
+<p>A fire was built on the ground in the centre of the tepee; and the
+smoke, filling the apex, finally found itself out at the top. Around the
+fire was grouped a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> motley, gipsy crew of all ages; the elders in the
+place of honour above the fire; the children by the door. The firelight
+threw their copper-coloured faces into strong relief; each wore an
+expression of stolid expectation. Stolidity is the pet affectation of
+the breed; at heart he is as garrulous as an ape. Like mongrels
+generally, their manners were bad; a grunt served for welcome, and
+places were coolly pointed out where they should sit.</p>
+
+<p>With that the guests were forthwith yielded up to discussion, while the
+whole circle stared at them as if they were vegetables. In especial, the
+children sitting across the fire, transfixed them with eyes, under each
+mop of raven hair, as hard, bright and unwinking as the eyes of little
+birds of prey. Young Pake sat at the right hand of the principal man&mdash;a
+personage in frayed overalls and cotton shirt, with a scarlet
+handkerchief about his temples&mdash;and called attention to the points of
+the two <i>moon-i-yas</i> like their showman. After all the elders had
+partaken of tea, somebody recollected to thrust the battered pot at
+Garth and Natalie, with two more than doubtful tin cups. They declined
+to partake.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was fuming. "Let's get out," he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute," Natalie begged, with bright eyes. "Never mind their
+manners. It's all so strange and different!"</p>
+
+<p>Presently the preparations for retiring, which their arrival had
+probably interrupted, were resumed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Hideously dirty and torn comforters
+with protruding cotton filling, were spread on the ground; and
+individuals began to roll up, feet to the fire. A woman indicated a
+place for Garth and Natalie, side by side. When her meaning became
+clear, they elaborately avoided each other's eyes, and Natalie beat a
+hasty retreat outside. She never again expressed a wish to enter a
+tepee. Garth, blushing to the roots of his hair, explained that they
+preferred to sleep outside. The breeds let them go, with a shrug for the
+queer ways of the <i>moon-i-yas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Garth pitched the little tent he had for Natalie under the pine trees at
+a short distance, and spread her bed on balsam boughs inside, with
+tender hands. Natalie had suddenly half collapsed like a sleepy child.
+She disappeared with a murmured good night, and was heard of no more
+until morning. Garth spread his own bed under the stars, athwart the
+door of the tent. He remembered, before turning in, that they lacked
+water, and returned to the tepee to ask where it was to be procured. As
+he entered the second time, his attention was arrested by the sound of
+Mary Co-que-wasa's name on Pake's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Mary Co-que-wasa?" he asked, recollecting his previous
+uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared they could understand English well enough when they had a
+mind to. The women visibly bridled, as women white or red will do, when
+an erring ewe of the flock is mentioned in company.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mary Co-que-wasa&mdash;one&mdash;bad&mdash;woman," said one, with the toneless
+enunciation of a parrot.</p>
+
+<p>Another volunteered further information in Cree, in which the names of
+Mary and Nick Grylls were coupled.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" demanded the startled Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary Co-que-wasa&mdash;Nick Grylls's&mdash;woman," said his first informant.</p>
+
+<p>That was all he could get out of them. It did not conduce to the ease of
+his first bed in the wilderness.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the morning Natalie issued forth radiant; and Garth marvelled afresh
+at the vision of urban perfection she made in the wilderness. He was
+blowing the fire at the time; a typical tenderfoot's fire, all tinder
+and no fuel, at which the breeds grinned askance. He soon learned
+better. The breeds haunted their camp, enjoying their struggles with
+that superior, insulting grin. Natalie, rolling up her sleeves,
+announced her intention of cooking the breakfast, while Garth struck
+camp. She who had never cooked under the best of conditions, had a sad
+time of it balancing a frying pan on a fire of twigs, and keeping the
+water in the pot long enough for it to come to a boil. They were
+sad-looking lumps of bacon that she offered Garth, burnt withal, and she
+gravely informed him there was a small slice of her thumb cooked up with
+it. The cocoa, too, which obstinately refused to dissolve in a cold
+element, was watery and full of lumps; however they still had civilized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+bread and butter; and Garth would have eaten Paris green with gusto, if
+offered with the same appealing smile.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward an ancient box wagon came rattling up, drawn by two champing
+cayuses, guided by Pake, the "wise guy" of the bush. The duffle was
+thrown in; Pake and one of his brethren coolly pre&euml;mpted the box,
+allowing Garth and Natalie to dispose themselves as they chose among the
+freight; and they set off at a smart pace across the gloriously sunny
+meadow.</p>
+
+<p>It was rough enough in all conscience; and in spite of every effort to
+brace themselves in the body of the wagon, they were shaken about like
+corn in a hopper. But in the bush it was worse; there, though their pace
+necessarily slackened, what with the holes, roots, stumps and fallen
+trunks, they had seldom more than two wheels on the ground; and more
+than once all that stood between them and a total capsize was Pake's
+dexterous wrist. There were deep gullies, down which they precipitated
+themselves, almost turning the wagon over on the horses' backs at the
+bottom; and the climbs up the other side were heart-breaking. Pake was
+often obliged to descend and chop; and on the whole progress was so
+slow, Garth decided they might venture to insure their necks by walking.</p>
+
+<p>So he and Natalie strode on ahead, pausing here and there to pick the
+delicious acrid mooseberries, and discussing their problems. Their talk
+was chiefly of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> Nick Grylls. Natalie finally confessed what had happened
+at the Landing.</p>
+
+<p>"You should have told me immediately," Garth said with a frown.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie looked "poor," as she called it. "I was afraid you'd send me
+home," she said. "Now you can't," she added provokingly.</p>
+
+<p>Garth in turn told her what he had learned the night before.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," said Natalie frankly; "what is the use of our hiding these
+things from each other? Let us promise to tell everything that happens
+after this. You wanted me to take you for granted as if I were a man.
+You treat me like a man and I will."</p>
+
+<p>Garth smiled; and promised to try&mdash;just as she had done on a similar
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I had some men's clothes," said Natalie stoutly; frowning as
+girls always do, when they see themselves in that character. And in the
+very act of wishing it, she forgot; and drove home her femininity.
+Tipping a palmful of mooseberries into her mouth, "Wouldn't I look
+nice!" she said with a sidewise sparkle.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, swallowing a sigh, smiled, and allowed that she would.</p>
+
+<p>They speculated on what Mary Co-que-wasa's errand might be; neither of
+them was experienced in villainy. There, in the matter-of-fact daylight,
+and, as Natalie said, on Sunday, August the fifth <i>now</i>, it was
+impossible for the thought of one silent old woman<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> to cause them much
+uneasiness; besides, they presently expected to join forces with the
+Bishop's ample party. Nothing nearly so simple and devilish as the
+actual truth occurred to them; and it was brought home with the force of
+a blow, when they reached the Warehouse.</p>
+
+<p>About eleven, a final descent brought them to the shore of a demure
+little river flowing softly between high banks&mdash;Musquasepi, that they
+were to know so well. Off to the left it merged into the muddier waters
+of the "big" river. On the further shore stood the Warehouse they had
+heard of so often.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Natalie. "Only another little log shack! Why I imagined
+a&mdash;a&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Five-story stone front?" suggested Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know," she said, "but not that!"</p>
+
+<p>On the hither side was a solitary cabin; and in the doorway stood a
+breed, outwardly of a different pattern from any they had seen&mdash;but
+after all not so different. He was clad in decent Sunday blacks minus
+the coat; and wore heavy-rimmed spectacles which he took off when he
+really wished to see. On the table within was ostentatiously spread an
+open Bible&mdash;the sharp-eyed Natalie took note that it was upside down.
+This young man had a heavy expression of conscious responsibility,
+before which the insouciant Pake visibly quailed. Pake indicated to
+Garth that Ancose Mackey stood before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the Bishop?" Garth demanded impatiently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ancose blandly ignored the question for the present. "How-do-you-do,
+sir," he said, like a mechanical doll, at the same time politely
+extending his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, shaking it hastily, repeated his question&mdash;but the young man was
+not to be hurried over any of his self-pleasing formalities.</p>
+
+<p>"How-do-you-do, sir," he repeated to Natalie in precisely the same tone,
+gravely shaking hands with her.</p>
+
+<p>Then they must needs come in and sit down, while their host made a
+remark on the weather, and informed them, with an air, that he was a
+very good reader. He wrapped his Bible in an end of comforter, and
+pulling a doll's trunk from under the bed, put it away. Natalie had a
+glimpse of the contents of the trunk; she said afterward, it was like
+the inside of his head; beside the Bible, there were sundry pieces of
+dried moose meat, a gaudy silk handkerchief, tobacco and a brass
+watch-chain of the size of a small cable. He took out the latter and put
+it on.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he appeared to hear Garth's question. "Bishop gone up little
+river. Four days," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Some one was to meet me here," said Garth confidently.</p>
+
+<p>An expression of genuine concern appeared under Ancose Mackey's solemn
+mugging. "You Garth Pevensey?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Garth nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Ancose's English was not equal to the situation. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> turned quickly to
+Pake, squatting in the doorway, and exploded in Cree. Pake answered in
+kind. It takes a roundabout course to say anything of an abstract nature
+in Cree. Finally Garth heard the ominous name of Mary Co-que-wasa enter
+into their discourse.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he demanded impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Ancose turned a long face to him. "Bad medicine here," he said. "Bishop
+send ol' Pierre Toma down from head of rapids with him team to get you,"
+he went on, struggling manfully with his English. "Ol' Pierre stay to me
+three days of waiting. Las' night come boy up big river in canoe. Boy
+say to ol' Pierre, Cap'n Jack stuck at Caliper Island. Boy say, Cap'n
+Jack want tell to Bishop, Garth Pevensey no can come. Garth Pevensey him
+gone back outside."</p>
+
+<p>Garth and Natalie looked at each other in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary Co-que-wasa do this," added Ancose. "Him no speak never true."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" said Natalie. "She knew they wouldn't believe her, so she
+sent the boy up, while she waited below."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the boy?" Garth demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Ancose shrugged. "Gone down," he said. "No can catch now."</p>
+
+<p>"When did Pierre Toma go back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Early," said Ancose. "Five hours. Him horses fresh."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe we can catch them yet!" cried Garth. "How much to the head of the
+rapids, Pake?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Pake had ample English to make a good bargain. However, it was finally
+struck; and cutting Ancose Mackey's elaborate adieus very short, they
+took to the road again.</p>
+
+<p>They had twenty-five miles to cover. This part of the trail is
+considerably used in freighting goods around the rapids, and in the
+North it is considered a good road, though the travellers' bones bore
+testimony to the contrary for several succeeding days. Pake, with the
+prospect of a substantial bonus before him, did not spare his horses;
+but the grass-fed beasts had already lost their enthusiasm for the
+journey, and they made but indifferent progress. They were presently
+compelled to stop a good hour and a half to let them rest and feed.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, though he strove to hide it, was now very anxious. They had laid
+in only two weeks' provisions at the Landing; the trails seemed to be
+narrowing both before and behind; and the North closing in. Moreover, he
+suspected Nick Grylls was not the man to stoop to mere mischief-making;
+and he wondered apprehensively what next move he contemplated. Looking
+at his charming Natalie, he could conceive of a man stooping to any
+villainy to possess her. However, he strove to keep her spirits up&mdash;and
+his own&mdash;with the oft-expressed belief that the Bishop would not leave
+Pierre Toma's until the next morning.</p>
+
+<p>Six o'clock had passed before they turned into the rough little clearing
+on the river bank. The horses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> were done up. They had passed no other
+sign of habitation the whole way.</p>
+
+<p>A bent old man with a snowy thatch came hobbling out of the cabin.</p>
+
+<p>His look of surprise, and the quietness of the place, answered Garth's
+question before he put it.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the Bishop?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man spread out his hands. "Gone. Four hours," he said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">ON THE LITTLE RIVER</p>
+
+<p>The next day found Garth and Natalie afloat on Musquasepi, headed alone
+into the North. To be exact, only Natalie was afloat; she sat in the
+stern of a tiny boat, keeping her off shore with a paddle devised from
+the cover of a grub-box. Their outfit was piled amidships. Garth
+harnessed to the end of a towing-line, plodded through the mud and over
+the stones of the bank; climbing over fallen trees, and wading bodily
+into the river, when necessary to drag his tow around a reef.</p>
+
+<p>Indecision had attacked Garth the night before&mdash;his responsibility was
+so great! But Natalie had said, pressing the soft curve out of her lips:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Any</i> means to get ahead! If we have to crawl on hands and knees!"</p>
+
+<p>"Any <i>safe</i> means," Garth amended.</p>
+
+<p>"Nick Grylls without doubt is counting on our being held up or driven
+back," she said. "I have an idea he is not far behind us."</p>
+
+<p>It was Garth's own idea.</p>
+
+<p>"So we <i>must</i> keep ahead!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We must do whatever will best ensure your safety," Garth said doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>That bright red spot had appeared in either of Natalie's cheeks. "Bother
+my safety!" she cried. "You will not allow me a shred of pluck! My
+honour is engaged on this journey, just the same as if I were a man! I
+said I'd do it; and I will! And if I hear another word about my comfort
+or my safety, upon my word, I'll go on alone!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth had smiled at the threat, and given in; because on the whole it
+seemed safer to press ahead, than to attempt to return. Secretly, he was
+delighted with the spirit she showed.</p>
+
+<p>They had bought the boat from Pierre Toma, a breed of the more
+self-respecting elder generation, in whose aged eyes still twinkled the
+spirit of the voyageurs. Pake's magnanimous offer of the wagon and team
+at only twice their real value was declined; inasmuch as the trail was
+impassible for wagons beyond Toma's place, and ceased altogether at
+Caribou Lake. They counted on the boat to carry them as far as the lake;
+there, Pierre Toma had assured them, they might very likely overtake the
+Bishop, if he were delayed by contrary winds, or christenings. In any
+case Wall-eye Macgregor, said Pierre, had a strong boat at the lake that
+could take them the eighty miles across. According to the haphazard
+measurements of the breeds, Caribou Lake was twenty-five miles from
+Pierre Toma's.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Their own boat was but crazily hung together. Natalie had christened it
+the <i>Flat-iron</i> from its shape. It was of extremely simple
+construction&mdash;two planks laid V-shape, with a shorter plank to close the
+end, and boards nailed on for a bottom. Pierre Toma had said with pride,
+there was no other boat in the country like it; and after using it a day
+they were prepared to agree. It was designed to be propelled with a
+pole; and they had started in that manner; but the <i>Flat-iron</i> showed a
+perverse disposition to travel in any direction save the desired one;
+and her favourite man&oelig;uvre under the impetus of the pole was to swing
+on her centre without moving ahead at all. So Garth, after some study,
+had constructed the tracking apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>It was a simple, park-like, little river with brown, foam-flecked water
+flowing moderately through a country of small timber; and occasionally
+there were natural meadows starred with flowers, where children in their
+white dresses should have been picnicking, so intimate and peaceful it
+seemed. None the less, it was the strange and lonely North into which
+they were thrust, on their own unaided resources&mdash;like the babes in the
+woods, Natalie said. They were abruptly cast back on the great and
+simple verities of existence, where a man, be his wits never so sharp,
+must be strong, to survive. Natalie looked at Garth's broad back, as he
+slowly put the miles behind him one after another; and considering the
+impatient vigour, with which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> attacked the multitude of obstacles
+strewn along the river, thanked God for sending such a one to her aid.</p>
+
+<p>The wonder of the unknown was in them both; and their breasts throbbed a
+little, as they looked to see what each bend in the stream would have to
+show. Only once in the course of the afternoon was there any reminder of
+human life; a breed boy suddenly appeared on the bank, only to duck
+behind a bush like a little animal, at the startling sight of white
+strangers on the river. Tempted forth at last, in response to Garth's
+question, he said they were twenty-five miles from the lake. Garth, who
+had been doing his best for seven hours to reduce that distance, felt
+distinctly aggrieved.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie insisted on camping early; for it had been a gruelling afternoon
+on Garth. They chose a little promontory running into the water; and
+once he had started a fire, and put up her tent, she made him lie at
+length in the grass, where he stretched his limbs in delicious
+weariness, and watched her settling the camp for the night and cooking
+the supper. She was proud in the acquisition of a new accomplishment,
+that of baking bannock before a fire in the open, learned that morning
+from Mrs. Toma. The sight of her, bustling and cheerful, working for
+him, had a strange and painful pleasure for him. They two, alone
+together in the wilderness, cut off from all their kind!&mdash;the thought
+squeezed his heartstrings; she was so much his own there&mdash;and so little!</p>
+
+<p>With the sinking of the sun, the awful stillness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> came stealing to
+envelope them; and with insistent fingers seemed to press upon the very
+drums of their ears. The little river flowed as stilly and darkly as the
+water of Lethe at their feet; and the gaunt pines over the way stood
+transfixed like souls that had drunk of it. Under the spell of the
+silence they instinctively lowered their voices; and they broke sticks
+for the fire with reluctance; so painful was the crash and reverberation
+up and down. But there is always one sound that accompanies this
+stillness; hardly breaks it, so smoothly it comes stealing on the
+suspended evening air&mdash;the quavering howl of the coyote. They heard it
+throb miles off; and it was answered from immeasurable distances side to
+side. Little by little, attracted by the smell of cooking food, the
+animals drew closer, and at last stationed themselves in a kind of
+wide-drawn circle about their camp on both sides of the river, wailing
+back and forth like souls inconceivably tormented. Natalie shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"They are cowardly beasts," Garth said reassuringly. "They won't come
+any closer."</p>
+
+<p>They spoke but little to each other. Night, solitude and that spirit of
+woe abroad, filled them with a mighty longing for each other's arms. At
+last she crept away to her tent.</p>
+
+<p>As the darkness deepened; and the clear-eyed Northern constellations
+looked out, one by one, there were other sounds; a peevish growling and
+whining at the top of the bank above them; a frantic scurry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> when Garth
+heaved a stone. The better to ensure Natalie's peace of mind, he
+weighted the tent all around with rocks; and heaped wood on the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie stuck her head out of her cosy refuge. "I can't bear to have you
+sleeping unprotected outside," she said anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>Garth's heart paused breathlessly at the thought of the alternative. He
+sprang up and thrust the thought aside. "Nonsense! I'll be all right!"
+he cried. "To please you I'll keep the fire going all night."</p>
+
+<p>Later, he rolled himself in his blankets across the door of her tent, as
+before; and lay there smoking, gazing at the fire, picturing Natalie
+asleep within; and assuaging his hungry heart as best he might with the
+sound of her child-like breathing.</p>
+
+<p>The day broke gloriously; and shortly after sunrise they were on their
+way again, under a sky as tenderly blue as palest turquoise, over which
+were flung bright, silken, cloudy scarves. As they ascended, the
+character of the river changed; the trees disappeared, giving place to
+wide, flat meadows of blue grass as high as a man's waist; the current
+slackened, and its course became more circuitous. Along the shores,
+steep cut-banks alternated with muddy shoals; and a new set of problems
+faced Garth.</p>
+
+<p>These chiefly took the form of stout willow bushes overhanging the
+cut-banks&mdash;diabolically malicious, sentient beings, they became to
+Garth. He tried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> crawling underneath with his tow-line, whereupon the
+earth gave way, precipitating him in water up to his middle; he tried
+crashing bodily through, and the line would invariably knot itself
+around the most inaccessible twig. The <i>Flat-iron</i>, too, seemed to
+rejoice in his discomfiture; and at every interruption of her progress
+took the occasion, in spite of Natalie's paddle, to turn about and stick
+her nose stupidly into the mud of the bank. Every bush in turn offered a
+different and more complicated obstacle than the last; in three hours
+they made perhaps twice three hundred yards. Natalie, alarmed by the
+spectacle of Garth's set lips, and the swollen veins of his temples,
+besought him for goodness' sake to swear and not mind her.</p>
+
+<p>He finally decided to change his mode of going; and contriving a second
+little paddle, he embarked with Natalie. They progressed but slowly
+against the current; for the short paddles had about the same
+effectiveness as two of those little instruments for making butter pats,
+which they strongly resembled. Garth figured they would be making a mile
+an hour&mdash;but this way was easier on his temper.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, the little river, placidly flowing between its grassy banks, had
+an oddly pastoral look. With the familiar shapes of the overhanging
+willows, and the brilliant marsh marigolds on the shallows, all drenched
+in the opulent sunshine, they found themselves looking for cows on the
+bank; and it seemed incredible that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> no church spire rose above any of
+the distant clumps of trees. They could not rid themselves of the
+feeling that this was no more than a day's picnic, with a house awaiting
+them just ahead, and company and good cheer. But instead of that,
+silently rounding a bend, they were unexpectedly introduced to the true
+genius of the country. In the mud of one of the flats at the edge of the
+water, sat a large brown bear on his haunches, soberly licking his paws.
+He was no more than twenty feet from them&mdash;a room's length. At Natalie's
+slight gasp of astonishment, he turned his head; and stared at them
+agape, with hanging paws, like a great baby. He looked so homely and
+comical Natalie burst out laughing. At the sound, Bruin promptly fell to
+all fours; and with a great "woof!" of astonishment and indignation,
+bundled over the bank out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, the delicate, heady air of the Northern summer inspired their
+veins like wine. As Olympians, they lunched on the greensward carpeting
+the bank of a little inlet; while their shallop floated among tiny white
+lilies at their feet. All afternoon their spirits soared into the realms
+of incoherent enthusiasm; they filled the air with their full-throated
+laughter and foolish, glancing speech. Garth's old friends would have
+been astonished then to see how he could "let himself go"; but no one in
+the world ever really saw that besides Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>They loved; their happy eyes confessed it freely, though their tongues
+were tied. Nothing needed to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> explained, for they were perfectly
+attuned to each other; and everything was clear in an exchange of eyes.
+The tough old world, with all its tiresome, grimy businesses was thrust
+out of sight and out of mind, and they seemed to tread a brand-new
+sphere, created as they would have it, empty of all save their two
+selfish selves. On such a day, in such surroundings, crosses,
+hindrances, dangers, what were they? Life was a great joke: Nick Grylls
+and his minions were blithely whistled down the wind. Ascending between
+the flowery banks of the little river, <i>their</i> river, nothing mattered
+so they were not parted. In the more or less tarnished circlet of life
+it was their perfect golden day; and whenever afterward either
+remembered it, it was as if a delicate fragrance arose in his soul. All
+day they saw no sign of human habitation.</p>
+
+<p>As long as the sun shone they maintained their light-hearted gaiety,
+neither remembering nor desiring anything more&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Nat!" it would be, "toss me over the hatchet like a good chap.
+Hey, there! not at my head!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's for supper, Nat? I'm hungry as an ogre!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bacon <i>aux tomates &agrave; la Bland</i> and bannock <i>Musquasepi avec</i> ashes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bully! If you taste it so much there won't be any left to go on the
+table!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where's the bag of hard-tack, Garth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Grub-box number two; port side by the rail."</p>
+
+<p>"Idiot! You put them on the bottom of the box!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> The water's leaked
+through, and they're all mush underneath!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's the diff? Stick the soft ones in the lobscouse!"</p>
+
+<p>But after supper, when the sun had gone down, and the great stillness
+crept over them again, Natalie's arms dropped at her sides, Garth's pipe
+went out, and an unaccountable sadness fell on both. Then, their
+sporadic attempts to keep up the old, friendly rattle rang so false that
+both fell silent. Their camp of itself had a gloomy aspect. It was
+pitched in an elbow of the river, where a section of the cut-bank had
+sunk down, making a little terrace of grass a few feet above the water.
+Above, there had been a small grove of trees, through which a fire had
+some time swept, leaving only a few slender, charred trunks pointing
+askew against the slow, dusky crimson of the west. On the nearest and
+tallest of these wrecked monuments, immediately above their camp, as on
+a slender pedestal, sat a great owl, the only visible living thing in
+all the wide expanse, besides themselves. As long as there was light
+enough to see him, he crouched there, motionless.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie sat huddled on a box, with Garth's coat thrown about her
+shoulders. Her chin was in her palm, and her lashes veiled rebellious,
+miserable eyes. There are moments when the most &aelig;rial spirits sink to
+earth; and just now Natalie could make no pretense at a flight. It was
+clear he loved her, as she loved him; what then were a few words five
+years old, to keep them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> apart? She tried honestly to arm her breast by
+thinking of the laws that separated them; but the insidious part of it
+was, they were worldly laws; and here the world was thrust out of sight.
+Why did he not take her in his arms, and let her heavy head fall on his
+shoulder? her heart reiterated; and that was the only voice she could
+hear then. Yet if Garth had betrayed any weakness on his part, Natalie
+would have been on the <i>qui vive</i> to repel him. The forces of her soul
+were thrown in a sad confusion; while her woman's instinct raged against
+him, that he could resist her, she loved him tenfold more for that very
+resistance.</p>
+
+<p>And Garth&mdash;seeing her sitting there so small under his coat, and all
+relaxed and appealing, her mouth like an unhappy child's, and her eyes
+big with unshed tears&mdash;his arms ached to enfold her; his brain reeled
+with the intensity of his desire to take her as she trembled to be
+taken. But her helplessness, which tortured him, nerved him to endure
+the torture. In the turmoil of his blood he could not think coherently;
+but he could repeat to himself, dully, over and over: "I must take care
+of her! I must take care of her!" He busied himself with small
+unnecessary tasks; splicing the tracking line, chopping tent-pegs,
+cleaning the frying pan with sand.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie disappeared within her tent&mdash;and cried herself to sleep. Garth,
+lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her
+pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> breast.
+Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of
+tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing told him she was asleep
+at last, and undressing, waded into the river, and swam back and forth
+until the cold water chilled him through. Brisk, silent exercise
+restored his circulation, and a pipe and communion with the stars
+quieted his nerves. In the end he toppled over all standing, and slept
+on the grass until daylight.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Natalie reappeared with the sun, brave and rosy again, and with little
+sign of the night's tumult, save in an added sense of gratitude toward
+Garth, which appeared in the pleasure she took in doing little things
+for him. His grayish pallor, and kind, tired eyes rebuked her sorely for
+having cast the whole burden on him. She vowed to herself it should not
+occur again.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the character of the river changed little; only that the bends
+multiplied and sharpened; and where they were horseshoe curves
+yesterday, to-day they were hair-pin curves. Sometimes, just over the
+bank, they would catch sight again of a particularly marked tree they
+had passed a whole laborious hour before. Endless and futile were the
+calculations they made as to how far they had gone, and had yet to go.</p>
+
+<p>They cut across from point to point, keeping under the bank out of the
+strength of the current as far as possible, and rounding the inside of
+each bend. In this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> manner they were ascending close under a willow
+bush, when suddenly and silently a huge, brown wing, like the wing of
+Sinbad's auk, sailed athwart the sky. They caught their breaths in
+astonishment. A great gray galley swept around the bend, no more than
+two oars' length from them. With her swarthy crew standing about the
+deck, their brows bound with bright silk handkerchiefs, and at the
+tiller, a great, bearded figure, she was the very picture of a pirate
+craft. It would be impossible to state which crew was the more surprised
+at the unexpected encounter; the seeming pirates likewise stared
+open-mouthed at the <i>Flat-iron</i>. Just as the galley was disappearing,
+Garth collected presence of mind sufficient to hail, and inquire the
+distance to the lake.</p>
+
+<p>The answer came back: "Twenty-five miles!"</p>
+
+<p>They began to think there was witchcraft in it.</p>
+
+<p>The wind had changed; and puffy, white clouds came rolling up from the
+west, passing beneath the serene and silky streamers of the upper air.
+Gradually the invaders thickened and spread over the field; their
+underbodies took on a grayish tint; and the blue openings narrowed.
+Finally a sharp shower descended; and the voyageurs sought shelter under
+a bush, where they hung, watching the millions of drops plopping roundly
+into the surface of the river; each drop with its attendant sprite
+leaping at its approach. One shower followed another, with intervals of
+hot and sticky sunshine between. It was more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> uncomfortable under the
+steamy, dripping bushes than in the thick of it; and they finally
+decided to paddle ahead, let it rain as it would. Luncheon, consisting
+of soaked bannock and cold cocoa, was a sorry affair.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was glum. He had long apprehended that bad weather would treble
+their difficulties. "How can I keep her warm and dry throughout the
+night?" was his ever-present thought. Natalie, on the other hand, was as
+happy as a lark; and she made a very attractive picture in the rain. Her
+dress had altered little by little during the last few days; and now
+comprised a blue sweater, short skirt and moccasins. The hat with the
+green wings was safely wrapped in the duffle-bag; and hitherto she had
+gone bareheaded on the river. When it began to rain she pulled a man's
+cap close over her head to keep her hair dry. As she industriously plied
+her paddle in the bow, ever and anon turning a rosy, streaming face to
+him, with a joke on her lips, in her rough get-up poor Garth thought her
+lovelier than ever. He was continually having to call himself down, as
+he would have said, for presuming to think he had measured the extent of
+her charm.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it bully, Garth!" once she cried. "Ever since I was a baby I have
+longed to be allowed to play in the rain for just once, and get as wet
+as I possibly could&mdash;just to see how it felt! And now I shall! Isn't it
+funny just to sit and let it come down, without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> running anywhere? Women
+are babies, anyway. I mean never to put up an umbrella again as long as
+I live. The rain feels good in my face!"</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Garth, occupied as he was with the problems of how to find
+a dry place to put up the tent, and how to build a fire in a downpour,
+was anxious. Little by little the showers merged into each other; and
+before the end of the afternoon, it had settled down to rain steadily
+all night.</p>
+
+<p>He learned in the end never to trust the distances given in an
+unmeasured land. Rounding one of the endless bends toward five o'clock,
+they became aware of a new, indefinable, fresher smell on the air; and
+they increased their pace with an eager sense of a discovery awaiting
+them in the next vista. The next point proved to be the last; looking
+around it, the wind buffeted their faces fresh and cool; the river
+stretched away for half a mile, straight as a canal and there, away
+beyond, leapt the waves of Caribou Lake on the bar.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie cheered. "Hooray for the crew of the <i>Flat-iron</i>!" she cried.
+"We've actually done it!" She reached back. "Shake, partner!"</p>
+
+<p>Near the head of the river, in the wild waste of sand on the lake shore,
+squatted a weather-beaten little log cabin, almost eave-deep behind the
+dunes. Smoke arose from the chimney.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" cried Garth in high satisfaction. "You can dry your clothes
+here, anyway."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A glance up and down the shore of the river revealed no trace of the
+canoes or the outfit of the expedition they were in pursuit of.</p>
+
+<p>"We've missed him again," said Garth grimly.</p>
+
+<p>They landed, dripping and stiff; and plodded through the sand to the
+tiny door. The outlook was desolate in the extreme; there was no sign of
+life anywhere, save only the wisp of smoke from the chimney. At their
+left hand, the lake spread bleakly to the horizon, torn and white under
+the west wind, and with great billows tumbling on the beach.</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>Flat-iron</i> could never negotiate that," remarked Garth.</p>
+
+<p>He knocked on the little door.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in!" rang instantly from within.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"An English voice!" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"A white man! Thank God!" said he.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE HEART OF A BOY</p>
+
+<p>It was a youth who presently faced them on the threshold of the hut; an
+apple-cheeked boy of seventeen, who bared two rows of shining white
+teeth; and whose blue eyes, at the sight of them, sparkled with the
+purest enthusiasm of welcome.</p>
+
+<p>"Come right in, and dry out!" he cried. "I certainly am glad to see
+you!" The haunting reed of boyhood still vibrated faintly in the manlier
+notes of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a greeting from a stranger to warm the hearts of the wet and
+weary wayfarers! It presented the North in a new aspect. Natalie in
+especial, beamed on their young host; he was wholly a boy after her own
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at Natalie more particularly, the boy blushed and faltered a
+little. "It isn't much of a place to receive a lady in," he said
+apologetically. "I haven't been on my own long enough to get anything
+much together."</p>
+
+<p>It was a characteristically boyish abode. The furniture was limited to
+the cook-stove in the centre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> of the room; and a home-made table and a
+bench. His bed was spread on straw in one corner; and another corner was
+given up to the heterogeneous assortment of his belongings and his grub.
+Apparently the cabin had long served as a casual storehouse to the
+boatmen of the river; for pieces of mouldy sails were hung over the
+rafters; oars and a mast crossed from beam to beam; and in a third
+corner were a pile of chain and an anchor, slowly mouldering into rust.
+In wet weather, the present tenant evidently did his chopping within
+doors, the floor was littered with chips and broken wood. As they came
+in, a yellow and white kitten, retreating to the darkest corner of the
+cabin, elevated his back and growled threateningly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's my partner, Musq'oosis," explained the boy. "He'll make friends
+directly. He plays with me by the hour; you'd laugh yourself sick to see
+the comical way he carries on. He's great company when you're batching
+alone!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie liked this boy more and more.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, I'm having no end of company these days," he went on, with his
+happy-go-lucky air. "The Bishop's outfit was here all day yesterday;
+they went up on the last of the east wind, this morning. The old
+woman&mdash;that's what we call Mrs. Bishop, you know; no disrespect&mdash;she
+baked me a batch of her bread before she went. Real outside bread with a
+crackly crust to it! Oh my! Oh my!&mdash;with brown sugar! Say, we'll have a
+loaf of it for supper!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Natalie in the meantime sat on the bench; and taking off her moccasins,
+put her feet on the oven sill to dry. Garth sat on a box; and their host
+squatted on the floor between.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," said this youth; "I'm Charley Landrum."</p>
+
+<p>Garth introduced himself and Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Hope you'll stay a couple of days," said Charley anxiously&mdash;"or longer.
+There's great duck-shooting on the sloughs; and we might get a goose or
+a wavy around the lake shore. It would be a pleasant change of meat for
+the lady."</p>
+
+<p>Charley addressed all his remarks to Garth, without ever once looking at
+Natalie; it was clear, nevertheless, that he was acutely conscious of
+her presence; for he blushed whenever she spoke; and his eyes were
+continually drawn to her, though he dared not raise them quite to her
+face. To Garth and Natalie the nicest thing about this boy was the way
+he took her presence for granted. Of all the males they had met in the
+North, he alone had not gaped at her in vulgar wonder; and to his honest
+heart there was nothing out-of-the-way in the fact that she was Miss
+Bland, and Garth Mr. Pevensey.</p>
+
+<p>"We're obliged to get on as soon as we can," said Garth. "We've been
+chasing the Bishop all the way from the Landing."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you come up the little river?" asked Charley.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I bought a boat from Pierre Toma."</p>
+
+<p>"I know her," he said with a chuckle; "cranky as a bath-tub! You
+couldn't go up the lake in her!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not while it blows like this," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I hope it hits it up for a week!" said Charley, apparently
+addressing the hem of Natalie's skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"I was told one Wall-eye Macgregor had a strong boat," Garth said.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing doing!" returned the boy. "He's got it up at the head of the
+lake."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must try to strengthen the bath-tub and coast around the shore,"
+said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll help you!" said Charley. "We'll pitch in first thing to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been in the country, Mr. Landrum?" asked Natalie
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>The boy blushed for pure pleasure; and his voice deepened as he replied:
+"Two years next March, Miss. I came in over the ice with a freighter. I
+ran away from school. What was the use?&mdash;I got a head like a hickory
+nut; and I couldn't keep out of trouble. They gave me a bad name; and
+everything that happened was put on me. So I cleared out and came
+North."</p>
+
+<p>Gradually the whole na&iuml;ve, boyish tale came out.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a lot of fool ideas about the country then; but they were soon
+knocked out of me. All the kids that run away soon come sneaking home
+and have to eat their brags; and I wasn't going to do that. So<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> I stuck
+it out. At first I admit I pretty near caved in with homesickness; but
+I'm hardened now. The first year I worked for a trader up at Ostachegan
+creek; and this spring I bought this cabin on credit. Frank Shefford up
+at Nine-Mile-Point is going to lend me his team and mower when his hay
+is put up; and I'll put up hay myself."</p>
+
+<p>The boy's eyes glowed, as he announced his brave plans for the future.</p>
+
+<p>"Next winter I'm going to keep a stopping-house for freighters. I've got
+a good location here, and stable room already for eight teams. I'll
+build to it later. There's money in that; and it's a pleasant life for a
+man&mdash;plenty of company. And when I get a little money ahead, I'll trade;
+there's good chances for a free trader that knows the ropes; and in a
+few years I'll branch out and have a whole string of trading posts, like
+Nick Grylls. There's a smart one! They say he could sell out for a
+hundred thousand any day!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth was reminded of his own hopeful, spouting youth.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you won't be like Nick Grylls," said Natalie gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you like him?" asked Charley in concern. "I always thought he was
+a pretty smart one. No!" he added suddenly. "I don't like him either.
+He's coarse!"</p>
+
+<p>Supper was an affair of joint contributions; Garth's jam for Charley's
+bread. In the meantime Charley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> had surreptitiously swept up the chips;
+and had then slipped away to the river bank, for a wash and a tidy-up.
+He reappeared with his hair well "slicked," his tip-tilted nose as pink
+as his shiny cheeks, and a smile that extended to the furthest confines
+of his face. But he was distressed that he had no white collar to honour
+the board; and his gratitude was silent and boundless, when Garth
+produced one for him from his duffle-bag.</p>
+
+<p>It was a jovial meal that followed; the spirit of youth presided; and
+wisdom and grave speech were thrust under the table. Charley recovered
+of his bashfulness so far that he could occasionally nerve himself to
+look at Natalie. For all the boy's giddy jollity, his blue eyes had a
+kind of stricken look when they rested on her face. But his appetite did
+not suffer appreciably; and it did Garth's and Natalie's hearts good to
+see the bread and jam disappear between Charley's business-like jaws.
+Jam, they agreed, had surely never before been so successful in tickling
+the human palate. "Just do without it for a couple of years and see for
+yourself," Charley rejoined.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward the cabin was further swept and garnished for Natalie's use;
+and a heap of fragrant hay brought from the stable on which to spread
+her blankets. The house was to be yielded up to her for the night. Garth
+and Charley shared the little tent outside. Garth, with his simplicity,
+and his air of quiet understanding, was above all one to win a boy's
+confidence; and by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> bedtime they were as friendly as brothers&mdash;or
+perhaps more like a very young father and his oldest son.</p>
+
+<p>When they rolled up side by side in their blankets Charley seemed to put
+off several years. He hunched closer to his bedfellow; and pressed his
+shoulder warmly against Garth's.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sleepy?" he asked diffidently.</p>
+
+<p>Garth's heart warmed to the act and the speech. "Why, no!" he said.
+"Believe I'll have another smoke before dropping off. Fire away, old
+boy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Say, it's simply great to have somebody young to talk to," said poor
+Charley. "Somebody that understands; and that you can let yourself go
+with, and say whatever comes into your head to. Say, I never had such a
+good time in all my life as to-night. All the fellows up here&mdash;they're a
+good sort all right&mdash;but they're a rough, cursing lot. And of course, a
+fellow has to curse too; and talk big just to keep his end up&mdash;chuck a
+bluff, you know, or they'll think you're a molly. And I just love to
+laugh, and act foolish; and I always have to hold myself in. Sometimes I
+near bust!"</p>
+
+<p>"I get like that myself," said Garth encouragingly.</p>
+
+<p>There was something else on Charley's mind; but for a long time his
+tongue sheered off at every approach to it. Finally, rolling over, he
+hid a hot cheek on Garth's shoulder; and it came out with a rush.</p>
+
+<p>"Say! I think she's the prettiest girl I ever laid eyes on!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth's arm tightened about the boy's shoulders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> "She's the first white
+girl I've seen in nearly two years," he floundered on; "and girls meant
+nothing to me then. But I know darned well she's no ordinary white girl.
+Isn't it wonderful, the different ways she looks; and all that her voice
+seems to mean besides the words she says; and the way she walks and sits
+down; and the way she lifts her arm? Isn't it a pretty arm? And the
+finest thing about her is, she deals plain with you like a fellow; no
+silly fuss and make-believe, and hanging-back about her!"</p>
+
+<p>If Garth liked the boy before, he was prepared to love him for this.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you mark how she called me Mr. Landrum?" continued Charley eagerly.
+"She just did that to please me, I know. Didn't it sound funny? My chest
+expanded two inches, I swear it did! Wasn't she kind to me? She had no
+call to be so kind to me. It just makes me want to do something
+terrific! Oh, if I could only do something for her!&mdash;wouldn't I just be
+glad of the chance!"</p>
+
+<p>He was silent for a while, tossing uneasily in his blanket. "Say,
+there's something I want to tell you," he blurted out at last. "I'm
+certainly good and ashamed of myself! There's a girl down the shore, her
+name is Julia; she's not a bad-looker for a breed. She came around my
+cabin sometimes. I was kind of lonesome, you see; and she was young,
+like me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Garth let him see that he understood&mdash;and he did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> understand, both the
+pitiful little tale, and the boy's reason for wishing to tell him.</p>
+
+<p>"And to think of <i>her</i> asleep in there now!" he continued remorsefully.
+"It makes me sick and disgusted with myself. I'd give anything if it
+hadn't happened! You bet I'll have no truck with them in future!"</p>
+
+<p>"Every man makes mistakes, old boy," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Charley, his mind relieved by confession, in the midst of further
+rhapsodies, suddenly fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning he awoke all of a piece, as boys do, and rolling over,
+said instantly:</p>
+
+<p>"Natalie is sure the prettiest name there is!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Later in the day in the middle of their somewhat hopeless deliberations
+upon the repairing of the half-submerged <i>Flat-iron</i>&mdash;her flimsily hung
+planks had been started even by her gentle journey on the river&mdash;there
+was a hail from down-stream. Looking, they saw four swart figures
+bending one after another in a tracking-harness, crawling around the
+edge of the cut-bank below. Presently a sharp prow nosed around the
+bend; and a long, low, double-ended galley swung into view, floating
+lazily on the current like a gigantic duck.</p>
+
+<p>"A York boat!" cried Charley in surprise. "Didn't know any was due!
+Here's your chance to cross the lake!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hm!" said Garth doubtfully. "We'll find out, first, what news she
+brings from below."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the sight of the open water ahead, the breeds redoubled their
+shouting, and hit up their pace. It was interesting to see how, once
+having got her under way, they could allow nothing to stop them; but
+needs must crash through obstructions regardless; slipping scrambling,
+literally clawing their way along. Whenever the rope caught, it was the
+part of the fourth man to slip out of his collar, and disengage it,
+without stopping the others. It was racking work on the frame of a man;
+but the feather-headed breeds ceaselessly chattered and shouted, like
+boys out of school; roaring with laughter when any one of the four came
+down. In the stern stood the helmsman, pulling her head around, with a
+mighty sweep, extending astern; and the other four of the crew, resting
+from their spell of tracking, fended her off the bank with poles. The
+York boat, pointed bow and stern, low amidships, and undecked, reminded
+Garth of the pictures he had seen of ancient Norse galleys.</p>
+
+<p>Arriving opposite the cabin, they all leaped aboard; and poling across,
+landed in front of where Garth and Charley stood. Natalie, not caring to
+run the gauntlet of another battery of stupid stares, had retired to the
+cabin. On the prow of the boat, which had a dingy, weather-beaten look,
+very different from the smart green and white craft of the "Company,"
+was crookedly painted the name <i>Loseis</i>. Making her fast, the breeds,
+with furtive stares at Garth, threw themselves on the ground like tired
+dogs. It was not long, however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> before a "stick-kettle," the invariable
+tom-tom, was produced, the ear-splitting chant raised, and a game of
+<i>met-o-wan</i>, a sort of Cree equivalent for
+Billy-Billy-who's-got-the-button, started on the shore.</p>
+
+<p>The steersman, pausing only to put on a gold-embroidered waistcoat,
+approached Garth with a disposition to be friendly&mdash;too friendly by
+half, Garth thought. He was an undersized man of not more than thirty,
+but already somewhat withered; a specimen of the unwholesome, weedy
+breed of the settlements.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Charley," he said affably.</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands with the touch of impressiveness that always marks this
+ceremony in the North; and then Hooliam, with a shifty glance, extended
+his hand to Garth. At the same time he said something in Cree.</p>
+
+<p>"He says: 'You want to go up the lake,'" translated Charley.</p>
+
+<p>"How does he know that?" asked Garth quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Hooliam answered in Cree without waiting for Charley to translate.
+Evidently, like most of the breeds, he understood more English than he
+cared to confess.</p>
+
+<p>"He says that Pierre Toma told him," said Charley.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him how it is he comes up with such a small load," suggested Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Charley repeated the question in Cree. Hooliam's answer was prompt and
+glib. "He says that the water was too low to bring a full load,"
+translated Charley.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him when he means to go on," said Garth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Hooliam gave a glance at the still tossing lake. "As soon as the wind
+dies or changes. This wind would blow him right back on the shore," such
+the gist of his answer by way of Charley.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him to let me know before he starts; and I'll tell him if we wish
+to go along," said Garth coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to have a talk with you," he added in a lower tone for Charley's
+benefit.</p>
+
+<p>They sat down apart on the sand.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of this outfit, Charley?" asked Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was surprised at the question. "Well," he said, "it does look a
+bit queer, their coming all this way with half a load. But you never can
+tell about these crazy niggers; they may have dumped out half their
+stuff on the bank somewhere, and left it to rot. A French range for the
+inspector has been lying on the point across the river for two months."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is this Hooliam?" Garth asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He boats back and forth pretty regular. He's a footless kind of
+breed&mdash;but straight, as far as I know. What do you care?" the boy asked
+curiously. "If he takes you on board, he's got to put you across."</p>
+
+<p>Garth looked at Charley estimatingly. But there could be no doubt of the
+boy's straight-eyed, whole-souled devotion to Natalie; and he quickly
+made up his mind. He told him briefly what had occurred on the way in.</p>
+
+<p>Charley whistled in astonishment. "So that's the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> kind Nick Grylls is!"
+he exclaimed. "He sure must have gone clean daft!"</p>
+
+<p>"This Hooliam," Garth continued, "is too anxious, judging by others of
+his kind, to get us on board. I suspect Nick Grylls has a share in this
+outfit. On the other hand we have less than a week's grub left. What
+have you got, Charley?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but sow-bosom and beans," said the boy disconsolately; "and
+damn little of that! It isn't good enough for <i>her</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Any chance of another boat?" asked Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Charley shook his head. "No Company boat due for three weeks," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Garth set his jaw. "Then there's no help for it," he said firmly. "We'll
+have to go with Hooliam. I'll make him take our little boat along, so we
+won't be entirely at his mercy; and I'll watch him close."</p>
+
+<p>Charley leaned toward Garth. The boy unconsciously clenched his hands;
+and in the intensity of his eagerness, his eyes actually filled. "I say,
+Garth, take me along with you," he pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, looking at him gratefully, thought none but a boy could be so
+generous. "But I can't take you away from your own work," he objected.</p>
+
+<p>Charley brushed it impatiently out of sight. "What does that matter!" he
+exclaimed. "It can wait." He redoubled his pleadings. "This was what I
+wanted so badly, Garth! To be a little use to her! I could help&mdash;you
+think I'm just a crazy kid, and maybe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> I am, but I could think like a
+man, and plan like a man for her! You and I could stand watch and watch.
+Say, after what you've told me, I'd go near out of my head to see you
+two sail away, and me left behind, not knowing what was happening!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth was more moved than he cared to show. "You're true blue, Charley,"
+he said in a low tone. "You come along!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">ON CARIBOU LAKE</p>
+
+<p>From sundown until daybreak, the ki-yi-ing and the beating of the
+stick-kettle on the shore desecrated the stillness of the night with
+scarcely any intermission. Shortly after daybreak, the wind having gone
+down, Hooliam sent word to Garth that he would like to start.</p>
+
+<p>They were ready in a few minutes. At the sight of Charley's bundle with
+the others, Hooliam scowled and muttered in Cree.</p>
+
+<p>"Says he can't take me," said Charley.</p>
+
+<p>Garth flushed angrily. "This was all it needed," he burst out. "What
+reason does he give?"</p>
+
+<p>"No reason," said Charley coolly. "Just talks foolish."</p>
+
+<p>Hooliam added something with a great show of plausibility.</p>
+
+<p>"Says he hasn't got room," said Charley with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish!" said Garth. "You tell him he takes the three of us or none!
+Give it to him strong!"</p>
+
+<p>Upon receipt of this ultimatum, Hooliam, shrugging, turned away; and the
+three of them boarded the <i>Loseis</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Running out two pairs of clumsy sweeps, which were no more than
+good-sized trees a little flattened at one end, they laboriously pulled
+out of the river. Before them the lake stretched to the horizon as
+smooth and colourless as a lightly frosted pane. Loons, herons and a
+little kind of gull; ducks in pairs and squadrons; flocks of brown geese
+and shining white swans, wheeled, sailed and swam about them in
+countless numbers.</p>
+
+<p>When they had rowed upward of a mile into the lake a mighty discussion
+suddenly arose amongst the crew. The oarsmen ceased their labours to
+take part in it. Eight wetted brown forefingers were held aloft.</p>
+
+<p>"They're scrapping about whether there is any wind," Charley explained.</p>
+
+<p>To a white man's senses there was no sign of wind; nevertheless the oars
+were run in, the cargo shifted, and the heavy mast, with infinite
+labour, stepped amidships and guyed. Hooliam looked on indifferently
+from the stern, idly swinging his great sweep back and forth. Finally a
+dirty square sail was raised. It declined to belly or flap in the
+slightest degree; but the breeds, satisfied with what they had done, lay
+around the boat, preparing to enjoy themselves in luxurious ease. They
+amused themselves by tempting the water-fowl close with imitations of
+their cries; and popping at them ineffectively with their twenty-two
+"trade-guns."</p>
+
+<p>Garth stood it as long as he could.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Look here!" he said at length to Charley. "Ask him how long this is
+going to last."</p>
+
+<p>Charley translated. Hooliam looked sagely astern, spat, and answered in
+Cree.</p>
+
+<p>"He says there'll be a breeze by and by," said Charley.</p>
+
+<p>The scarcely veiled insolence of this reply caused Garth inwardly to
+fume. However, reflecting that, after all, Hooliam ought to know more
+about navigation than he, he possessed his soul in patience for another
+half-hour. There was still no sign of wind; and it was growing very hot
+in the sun. Garth, setting his jaw, drew out his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him I'll give him just fifteen minutes longer," he said quietly.
+"If we're not under way by that time, there's going to be trouble."</p>
+
+<p>Hooliam received the message with apparent indifference. Garth held his
+watch in his hand. Three minutes before the expiration of the time, he
+had Charley convey a final warning to the breed. Hooliam suddenly became
+voluble and expostulatory.</p>
+
+<p>"He says the boys won't work when there's a breeze coming up," said
+Charley.</p>
+
+<p>"You tell him, then, that I will take command of this boat, and run her
+myself," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>At the last moment the orders were hastily given. The mast was
+reluctantly taken down, and hung over the side; the cargo was shifted
+back, and the sweeps run out. The breeds rowed half-heartedly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> with
+furtive scowls for the <i>moon-i-yas</i> who made them work.</p>
+
+<p>After a couple of hours during which they covered a scant three miles, a
+breeze <i>did</i> spring up from astern; whereupon the whole business of
+raising the mast was gone through with again. Little by little it
+freshened, and the <i>Loseis</i> began to forge ahead, making a pleasant
+little murmur under her forefoot. The hearts of the three passengers
+rose in unison.</p>
+
+<p>But they had not sailed two miles more, when the exasperated Garth
+discovered that Hooliam was slyly edging his craft inside a point of the
+shore. At first the breed unblushingly denied any intention of stopping;
+but when it became apparent that he could not round the point without
+hauling down the sail, he coolly admitted that he was going to land.</p>
+
+<p>"What for?" Garth demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"They're going ashore to spell&mdash;to cook and eat," Charley explained.
+"Hooliam says there is no other place to land in fifteen miles."</p>
+
+<p>Garth was obliged to be content.</p>
+
+<p>With the characteristic prodigality of the breeds, an enormous fire was
+built on the shore, over which their tea was furiously boiled in an iron
+pail, and their dried moose meat stewed a little less tough than
+moccasins. At a little distance the three passengers made their own
+preparations for lunch.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie, serenely trusting in Garth, put aside all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> anxiety about the
+outcome of their journey; and was frankly interested and amused.</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "They'll all die of tannic poisoning! And look
+what they eat! The bacon is as green as arsenic!"</p>
+
+<p>She proved to be using her eyes and ears to good advantage on the way.</p>
+
+<p>"The tall boy," she said, "the one that looks like an actor; he's the
+humourist of the party. He keeps them in fits of laughter by giving
+<i>moon-i-yas</i> imitations. He mimics us to our very faces. Their idea of
+us is too funny! The good-looking little one is his inseparable friend;
+they hold hands when they're not working. The one with the whitey-blue
+eyes is called by a very blasphemous name. I watched him turning over
+the pages of some stove catalogues that dropped out of a crate, with
+<i>such</i> a serious air. And they were all exactly alike, but he didn't
+know it, because he held some of them upside down! What do you suppose
+he made of a picture of a self-feeder standing on its head?"</p>
+
+<p>To Garth it seemed as if they took an interminable time to prepare and
+eat their simple meal; and afterward there could no longer be any doubt,
+from the way they loafed about, that they were soldiering, as a result
+of Hooliam's low-voiced encouragement. They grinned with childish
+impudence at the scowling <i>moon-i-yas</i>. At last Hooliam produced a pack
+of cards and a game of "jack-pot" was started on the shore.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> This
+constituted frank defiance; and Garth took instant action.</p>
+
+<p>"Put up those cards!" he commanded.</p>
+
+<p>The boys laughed and looked at Hooliam.</p>
+
+<p>"Get on board the boat," Garth ordered, through Charley.</p>
+
+<p>Hooliam's eyes bolted; but he made no move. With the sheer perversity of
+a child or a savage, he insisted there was no wind, even while the
+ripples were washing the stones at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, thoroughly exasperated, picked up his rifle. His eyes glinted
+dangerously. "There's something behind this nonsense!" he cried. "And
+I'm going to stop it! You let him understand that if he opposes me any
+further I have eleven cartridges in the magazine of this rifle, and I
+would think as little of bringing him down as that wavy up there!"</p>
+
+<p>A wild swan, most difficult of marks, was sailing high overhead. Garth,
+as he spoke, took aim and fired; and the great bird dropped like a
+plummet in the shallow water off shore.</p>
+
+<p>Loud exclamations of admiration broke from the boys. Three of them
+dashed enthusiastically into the water to contend for the honour of
+bringing back the prize. Garth builded better than he knew. The boys
+while scarcely understanding the threat, were instantly impressed with
+the successful shot; and with it Garth established himself once and for
+all in their eyes. They instinctively began to carry the things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> on
+board as he had ordered; and in the end the scowling Hooliam was obliged
+to follow them on board, or be left behind.</p>
+
+<p>As they were getting under way again, Garth observed Hooliam busy with
+the sail. When it was hoisted, it appeared he had taken a reef in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Shake it out!" Garth commanded.</p>
+
+<p>Hooliam shrugged and protested.</p>
+
+<p>"He says the mast is not strong," Charley translated. "This heavy wind
+will carry it away," he says.</p>
+
+<p>"Just now he said there was no wind," Garth said. "Let her go; and if
+anything breaks we'll mend it."</p>
+
+<p>Hooliam in a long harangue, demanded to know through Charley, if Garth
+would pay for the damage.</p>
+
+<p>For answer Garth merely picked up his rifle; and the reef was let out in
+a hurry.</p>
+
+<p>In all this there was something more than mere savage perversity;
+Hooliam, it was clear, had an urgent private reason for wishing to delay
+the journey. He had not sufficient command of his features to hide his
+chagrin at the failure of his several attempts. He sulked all afternoon.
+Garth sat with his weapon across his knees; and his steady gaze never
+wandered far from the steersman. Willy-nilly, Hooliam was compelled to
+hold the <i>Loseis</i> to her course; and by four o'clock, the wind holding
+light and steady, they had covered about thirty miles of their journey.</p>
+
+<p>About this time the mast of another boat was discovered sticking above
+the bank of a creek on shore.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> The usual excited discussion arose&mdash;this
+time as to the identity of the craft. Finally the <i>Loseis's</i> prow was
+turned toward the shore. Garth demanded an explanation. Hooliam, more
+obsequious now, said that it was Phillippe's boat on the way out; and he
+had messages to deliver him from their common employers at the Landing.
+Garth suspected another excuse; but he was very reluctant to interfere
+with the real business of the North; and since it was almost time to
+spell for another meal, he decided to make no objections.</p>
+
+<p>With true half-breed impetuosity they chose the worst place in miles on
+which to beach the <i>Loseis</i>. Her forefoot was run on a bar fully two
+hundred yards off shore; and communications were carried on by means of
+laborious wading, waist-deep, to and fro. The moment she touched, the
+entire crew and the skipper, dropping everything, dashed pell mell for
+the beach and across the intervening sand to the camp of the other
+boatmen on the shore of the creek. The passengers ferried themselves
+ashore in the <i>Flat-iron</i>, which had been stowed, much against Hooliam's
+will, on board the <i>Loseis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>After supper, as time passed and there was no sign of the returning
+crew, Garth sent Charley after Hooliam with a peremptory message.
+Hooliam returned, cap in hand, his whole attitude changed. He expressed
+a willingness to start immediately; but deprecatingly pointed out that a
+storm threatened; and apologized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> for the unseaworthy condition of the
+<i>Loseis</i>. This time he had reason on his side; for angry clouds were
+heaped about the setting sun; and the orb itself was peering luridly
+between parted curtains of crimson rain. Garth, still suspecting him,
+was yet taken at a disadvantage. He thought of Natalie on board the
+shelterless <i>Loseis</i> in a rainstorm; and finally announced his wish to
+remain where they were for the night. Hooliam smirked demurely, in
+ill-concealed satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>All returned to the <i>Loseis</i> for what was needed during the night. The
+preparations to secure the York boat against the threatening storm were
+highly characteristic of her hit-or-miss crew. A stake was driven in the
+sand of the lake bottom, at either side the stern, and the rudder-post
+lashed between. This flimsy apparatus was designed to keep the boat from
+being driven broadside on the bar. The practical Garth frowned
+impatiently at its utter insufficiency; but the breeds could scarcely
+contain their impatience to resume their gambling with the other crew;
+and presently they dashed off, leaving the <i>Loseis</i> to her fate.</p>
+
+<p>Garth pitched his camp under the shelter of a line of willows, marking
+the edge of higher ground along the wide waste of sand. The two crews
+with their ceaseless tom-tom on the shore of the creek, were upward of
+half a mile away. Natalie was made comfortable in her tent; and Garth
+and Charley, collecting a pile of firewood, covered it with a tarpaulin,
+against the coming rain. Charley, who had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> slept during the afternoon,
+was to watch until two o'clock; and Garth, covering himself with a piece
+of sail-cloth, lay down at the door of the tent.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to him he had no more than fallen asleep, when Charley shook
+his shoulder to awaken him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's one o'clock," the boy said. "I think something has happened in the
+camp over there. They quieted down; but now they have started up again,
+and have built up their fire. Looks to me as if somebody had arrived.
+Thought I'd better wake you, while I sneaked over and took a look."</p>
+
+<p>Charley was gone more than an hour. Returning, as soon as he had entered
+the circle of the firelight, Garth saw by his face that something
+important was in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"I was right," the boy said. "Nick Grylls has come. He arrived in a
+canoe with a breed; and sent him back. Nick and Hooliam went outside the
+camp, and talked by themselves. I listened from behind a willow bush.
+Nick Grylls knows a lot more Cree than I do, and I couldn't understand
+everything; but I got the gist of it. Nick was giving Hooliam hell all
+around&mdash;first for making him paddle all night&mdash;it seems Hooliam ought to
+have waited for him at that point where we spelled this morning&mdash;and
+then for bringing me. That was the sorest touch; for Nick knows I
+understand Cree. He said it upset all his plans."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a mighty good thing for Natalie and me, that we had you to-day!"
+Garth put in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The boy blushed with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," Garth said.</p>
+
+<p>"Grylls was pretty mum about these plans of his," Charley continued. "I
+guess he only lets Hooliam know part. I caught just a word or two. One
+thing was clear; you are his mark. I made out there was to have been a
+row at the point, and you were to have been put out of business, so you
+couldn't keep on with this journey. Then Nick was to happen along as if
+by accident; you were to be sent to the half-breeds at Swan river to be
+taken care of, and Nick was going to do the friendly act, and help
+Natalie on her way. I bet she never would have got there! In some way
+Nick has learned all about Natalie; for he seems to know where she's
+going; and what for. Anyway, you put his scheme to the bad by winning
+over the boys; and he is hot.</p>
+
+<p>"He acted queer, too," Charley went on. "The first thing he asked was,
+if Natalie was well; and his voice sounded crying-like. Say, he's
+changed altogether from the hearty old sport, that used to travel
+through the country like a lord, handing out cigars. He's losing flesh.
+I think he's a bit touched."</p>
+
+<p>When the boy finished, Garth took a turn, breathing deeply; and finally
+returning to the fire, sought that trusty counsellor, his pipe. "I'm
+glad he's turned up," he said coolly. "This is more like fighting in the
+open. And thanks to you, I'm well warned."</p>
+
+<p>He smoked a while in silence. "I suspect I'll have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> my work cut out for
+me to-morrow," he resumed reflectively. Presently he gripped Charley's
+shoulder, and searched the boy's face. "I'll be damn thankful to have
+you along, old fellow," he said. "But I don't think I have any right to
+let you in for this. This man is very powerful in the country; and he
+can spoil all your chances. You had better go back with Phillippe.
+Neither Natalie nor I would ever blame you."</p>
+
+<p>The boy turned away his head. "I&mdash;I can't talk about it," he faltered.
+"If you go on that way you'll have me crying like a girl! You could talk
+all night, and it wouldn't do any good! What do you think I am? I'm not
+going to miss the fun!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth laughed. "Turn in," he said briefly. "You'll need all the sleep
+you can get."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE FIGHT IN THE STORM</p>
+
+<p>Garth and Natalie were wondering next morning with what kind of a face
+Nick Grylls would greet them. He was the last to come off to the boat.
+Hooliam took possession of the punt as a matter of course, to bring him
+aboard; but Garth, determined not to allow the slightest act of
+insolence to pass unchallenged to-day, curtly ordered it back; and the
+fat trader was obliged to wade out like the breeds, and scramble over
+the side of the <i>Loseis</i>&mdash;a very undignified re&euml;ntrance upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p>His demeanour was remarkable. All the way out from the shore he had
+probably been shaping the character in which he meant to make his bow.
+He threw a leg over the side of the boat, affecting all his old,
+blustering heartiness; but the first sight of Natalie and Garth awaiting
+him, wholly self-possessed and unconcerned&mdash;they had determined in
+advance not to stoop to the pretense of any surprise at seeing
+him&mdash;pricked him like a blown bladder. His eyes bolted; he nodded at
+them askance; and he mumbled the words he had been intending to shout.
+Catching sight of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> Charley directly, he attempted to carry off his
+discomfiture by assuming an added boisterousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Charley!" he cried. "What's the good word, boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Mr. Grylls," returned Charley with a demure grin, that was
+highly creditable to his powers of dissimulation. "Where did you drop
+from?"</p>
+
+<p>Grylls guffawed with an overdone assumption of a man at his ease. "Oh, I
+got a sudden call up to the Settlement," he said, in a tone meant to
+reach Garth's ears. "Got a big deal on to sell out my posts on the
+Spirit. I overtook you folks last night; and sent my canoe back. Thought
+I might as well save money. Have a cigar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," said Charley. The boy lighted it elaborately, and commended
+the quality with the air of a connoisseur.</p>
+
+<p>"You're all right, kid!" cried Nick, clapping him on the back. "I tell
+you I'm blame glad to have a white man to talk to on the way up"&mdash;this
+with a side glance at Garth. "What are you doing away from home at this
+season?"</p>
+
+<p>"Grub running low," said Charley readily. "Had to go to the Settlement
+for a fresh supply."</p>
+
+<p>"Well you go to Jonesy of the French outfit," bellowed Nick; "and tell
+him to give you my prices!"</p>
+
+<p>Nick kept the boy at his side all day, flattering and cajoling him with
+an immense patronage, that, coming from the great man of the country,
+was meant to turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> the head of this, the youngest of its settlers. In
+this Nick had a double purpose: he wished, of course, to secure the
+boy's interest to himself; but he also wished Garth and Natalie to see
+what a fine, generous fellow he could be when he got half a chance.
+There was a great deal of the child in the self-indulgent trader; and he
+had not lived among the breeds for twenty-five years without imbibing
+many of their characteristics. As to the boy, Garth and Natalie felt not
+a moment's uneasiness; Charley met Nick's advances with a kind of
+imitative bluster, that was a source of great secret delight to Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>The day's journey was uneventful. Grylls kept himself forward of the
+mast, and made no attempt to address either Garth or Natalie. Indeed, he
+appeared to ignore their presence on the boat altogether; which,
+considering the shortness of the distance separating them, was not
+without its ridiculous side. Garth, refusing to be deceived by this
+apparent indifference, kept himself quietly on the alert. The breeze
+continued favourable but very light; and the day waxed hotter and
+hotter. By nightfall they had covered perhaps another thirty miles of
+the way. There had been one "spell" on shore, during which Garth and
+Natalie elected to remain on board, satisfied with a cold lunch. No
+further offers were made by Hooliam to delay the journey; indeed, such
+was now their apparent anxiety to complete it, it was announced late in
+the afternoon that they would sail all night. They did not even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> wait
+for their supper on shore, but brought it off from the fire in a wading
+procession of frying pans, and steaming pails.</p>
+
+<p>A lovely night succeeded. The velvety floor of heaven was strewn
+lavishly with bright stars; and later, the moon, just past the full,
+rose out of the lake astern and hung, a lovely pale globe, in the
+eastern sky. The breeds fell asleep one by one; and for the first, the
+jabbering, the <i>ki-yi-ing</i> and the maddening stick-kettle were all
+stilled. The <i>Loseis</i> hovered over the lake with her gigantic wing
+spread, like some great bird of the night. The only evidences that she
+moved at all were the flecks of foam that drifted slowly astern under
+the counter.</p>
+
+<p>Charley had constructed a little niche for Natalie among the freight
+astern&mdash;a bale of blankets serving for a seat, with a tall box inclined
+behind it for a back to lean against. She had insisted that Charley
+share it with her, and the boy had sat beside her too blissful to speak.
+In the end they both fell asleep, and Natalie's head dropped on his
+shoulder. In his dreams the boy smiled seraphically.</p>
+
+<p>Garth watched them kindly and very enviously; and for the moment wished
+that he, too, were a boy, whom she need not take seriously. There was no
+sleep for him. He sat on the narrow seat encircling the stern, with his
+back against the gunwale, where, on the one hand he could watch the
+steersman elevated on his little platform, while on the other side he
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> prepared for any demonstration from the bow. The steersman was
+Natalie's humorous breed; his name was Aleck. Nick Grylls and Hooliam
+were together somewhere forward of the mast; in the darkness Garth could
+not place them.</p>
+
+<p>Garth's rifle lay across his knees&mdash;he would have given it, with much to
+boot, for the quicker and handier revolver. He was painfully aware that
+nothing would suit Nick Grylls's purpose so well as to knock him swiftly
+on the head, and heave his body overboard. He shrewdly suspected that
+some such intention was the reason for this night sail. It is easy to
+seek danger, to ride at it with a shout, the pulses leaping&mdash;but to
+<i>wait</i> for it, to wait motionless in the still dark for an attack that
+may be delivered one knows not when nor from whence&mdash;that is the great
+ordeal. Garth clenched the stem of his pipe hard between his teeth; and
+with a resolute effort of his will, put down the hysteria that will at
+such a time constrict the stoutest throat.</p>
+
+<p>The first interruption of the awful stillness came, not from man, but
+from the elements. All around the western horizon clouds mounted so
+swiftly and imperceptibly that neither Garth nor the helmsman was aware
+of what was preparing, until they had reached the zenith. Caribou Lake
+is known for its swift and terrible summer storms. A sharp crack of
+thunder was their first warning. Aleck shouted; and dark forms arose
+here and there from their resting places.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> Garth swallowed a sob of
+relief for the diversion. The storm might be playing right into Nick
+Grylls's hand; but one could face the bustle and uproar with renewed
+courage.</p>
+
+<p>The sail was brought clattering to the deck; a couple of sweeps were
+hastily run out; and the <i>Loseis</i> was pulled for the nearest point of
+the shore. With true breed seamanship she was beached on a steep and
+stony incline on the lee side of a point. Garth tried his best to make
+their folly clear to them; but none of the crew, and least of all
+Hooliam, retained presence of mind to comprehend. With united strength
+the breeds dragged her up as far as they could, which was but little,
+and went through the same business of driving stakes into the bottom of
+the lake, and lashing the sternpost between. Garth threw up his hands in
+helpless exasperation. Tarpaulins and sails were spread over the cargo
+and lashed down. Charley made Natalie snug with a tarpaulin roof over
+her seat. Garth commanded him, no matter what might happen, not to leave
+her side.</p>
+
+<p>The storm came roaring down the lake like a vast animate being; and
+there, in their exposed position, smote them hip and thigh. Each crash
+of thunder fell forth right upon the echo of the last; and the lightning
+played like wicked laughter on the face of the destroying heavens. Then
+came the rain, with pitiless, whistling whips that lashed the water, and
+bit cruelly into exposed flesh. Every man on board, save one,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> instantly
+dived under the sail-cloths; and Hooliam was the first to seek shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Only Garth dared not relax his watch in the open. He maintained his
+place with his back against the stern, a piece of tarpaulin across his
+knees to keep his gun dry, and his eyes bent forward in the boat whence
+any move must be made on him. So sure was he that Grylls would attack
+him, he was scarcely conscious of the tumult that roared about his ears.
+The wind tore his hat off; and the cold rain drenched him to the skin.</p>
+
+<p>Before him, the lightning luridly showed up the trees on the shore,
+writhing horridly; and the wet mast and the guy ropes were often
+wreathed in faint, bluish flames. The <i>Loseis</i> forward, with her
+irregularly piled cargo, and the crouching forms under the sail-cloths,
+presented a thousand shifting, fantastic shapes in the playing flashes;
+and Garth had a score of false alarms. In the end, his enemy crept
+almost upon him undiscovered.</p>
+
+<p>By the light of a great blaze, which held all the earth and the heavens
+suspended in flames for a moment, Garth suddenly saw revealed a
+crouching figure, and a hideous, distorted face no more than six feet
+from his own. In the blinding glare it was outlined with a horrid
+clearness; in its grossness and bestial hatred, less human than
+demoniacal.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, snatching up his rifle, sprang to his feet, but before he could
+point it, Grylls had flung himself upon him, and his mighty arms were
+squeezing Garth's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> ribs into his lungs. The useless weapon dropped to
+the deck. Grylls, trusting to his enormous strength, was unarmed; he
+wished to crush his adversary without leaving obvious traces of
+violence. No word was spoken by either.</p>
+
+<p>They swayed on the narrow seat encircling the stern; and all sound of
+the little human struggle was swallowed up in the dreadful uproar of the
+elements. Natalie and Charley, but three yards away, heard nothing.
+Grylls was the stronger; Garth contented himself with a dogged
+resistance, trusting to his better wind to serve him in the end.
+Meanwhile the <i>Loseis</i> was continually heaved under their feet, and
+dropped heavily on the stones by the mounting breakers; and they
+maintained a footing with difficulty. Nick ceaselessly strained to force
+Garth to his knees. Failing, he lifted him clear of the deck. At the
+same instant the boat lurched drunkenly; and they pitched overboard
+together.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter w500"><a name="gu02" id="gu02" href="images/hu02.jpg">
+<img class="noborder" src="images/iu02.jpg" alt="At the same instant the boat lurched drunkenly; and they pitched overboard together" />
+</a><span class="caption">At the same instant the boat lurched drunkenly; and they pitched overboard together</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Somehow, they gained their feet, and stood, still locked together, while
+the tumbling waves boiled around their waists, and sucked at their
+knees. But Garth had struck his head on the gunwale in falling; his
+senses were slipping away, and nausea overcame him. He tried to cry out;
+but the feeble sound was lost at his lips. Nick forced him slowly down
+until the water broke over his head. Garth was dimly conscious of
+hearing him laugh&mdash;no one knew; and the explanation next day would be so
+simple! But the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> wholesome chill of the water rolling over his head
+revived the swooning Garth. He collected his forces for a last effort;
+and, suddenly wrenching his shoulders from under the hands that pressed
+them down, he gained his feet, and his hands seized upon Grylls's
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>It was the big man's vulnerable point; and a subtle sweetness flooded
+Garth's breast as he felt him begin to fail. Foul living was telling in
+the end. Grylls struggled for his breath in loud, strangling sobs; and
+Garth could hear his bursting heart knock at his ribs. The smith's arms
+of him little by little softened of their steely strength; he strove in
+vain now to lift Garth off his feet. Garth, cool and strong again, and
+always waiting, let him tire himself. He disdained to call for help now;
+he even relaxed his grip on the thick throat a little. It was not
+necessary to strangle the man; for he had done for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the waves broke with ever-increasing violence on the frail
+bulwark the two bodies offered to their impetuous course, and it was
+only a question of moments when they would both be beaten down. Grylls's
+knees weakening under him first, down they went, Garth uppermost; and,
+the water seizing them, still gripped together, they were rolled over
+and over, and finally flung up on the stones.</p>
+
+<p>Stunned, bruised and breathless as he was, Garth was still able to free
+himself from the automatic grip of the other man's arms; but Grylls lay
+motionless.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+
+<p>Briefly satisfying himself that the man still lived, Garth dragged him
+out of reach of the waves, and letting him lie in the driving rain,
+turned his attention to the boat.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Loseis</i> was in a bad way. The waves under her stern had lifted the
+driven stakes as easily as pins are drawn from a cushion. She had
+immediately swung broadside on the beach; and the waves, crashing under
+her counter, were driving over her in clouds of spray while her bottom
+heaved, and gave, and pounded sickeningly on the stones. No one on board
+required to be told that a very little of this would separate every
+plank of her from her aged ribs. The breed boys appeared one by one from
+under the coverings; and standing about, dazed and careless of the
+downpour, waited to be told what to do. There was no sign of Hooliam.</p>
+
+<p>Garth climbed painfully on board. Searching for the degenerate captain,
+he stepped on something soft, and a hollow groan issued from beneath the
+sail-cloth. He threw it back, and dislodged the palpitating Hooliam with
+a vigorous foot. The breed struggled to his knees, supporting himself by
+a guy rope. Just then there was a blinding flash, and the mast and the
+wet ropes were wreathed again for an instant in bluish flame. Partly
+shocked, but more from abject fear, Hooliam collapsed with a brutish
+moan.</p>
+
+<p>"Throw this carrion ashore!" Garth commanded with strong disgust.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The breeds, understanding his gestures, instinctively obeyed; and
+Hooliam was dragged over the side, and dropped on the beach, not very
+far from the body of his unconscious employer.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to save her ourselves!" shouted Garth to Charley. "Translate
+my orders!"</p>
+
+<p>The storm had a revolving tendency; and the wind had now hauled to the
+south, whence it came shrieking across the lake with unabated fury. A
+little way ahead, around the shallow crescent of the exposed bay in
+which they lay, they could see by the light of the frequent flashes a
+point on which the waves were beating wildly; and beyond there was a
+promise of smooth water and safety. It was only a little way, scarcely
+an eighth of a mile; but the way was beset with heart-breaking
+difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>"All hands ashore to push her off!" cried Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The breed boys, welcoming a voice of authority in that bewildering
+chaos, sprang to do his bidding. Garth and Charley set the example, and
+the ten backs were braced under the lee gunwale of the <i>Loseis</i>,
+measuring their sinews against the crashing blows of the waves on the
+other side. They budged her inch by inch, often thrown back again; but
+at last she floated, and there they managed to hold her for a moment,
+rising and falling. Only one who has measured the strength of the surf
+against the smallest craft, may comprehend the magnitude of their
+labour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Aleck's crew ahead with the tracking-line," shouted Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The line is always kept coiled and ready, hanging on the bow. Aleck
+seized it, and followed by three others, ran ahead along the beach,
+paying it out. The four of them slipped into the harness; and digging
+their moccasined toes into the beach, painfully straightened their legs
+under the pull. When the <i>Loseis</i>, answering, began to move inch by inch
+along the shore, Garth put the remaining men on board one at a time,
+where, armed with their poles, and braced almost horizontally, they held
+her off the stones.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie had long since deserted her sheltered nook, and, heedless of the
+drenching downpour, watched them with eager eyes. Garth, his bruises
+forgotten, seemed everywhere at once; he had even time to shout a word
+of encouragement to her, and she longed mightily to do something to
+help. Looking around, she saw her chance. The steersman's long sweep lay
+along the deck; running it aft through its ring in the sternpost, and
+pushing with all her strength against the stones astern, she added her
+mite to keep the boat headed off. Garth observing, shouted his approval;
+and Natalie's heart waxed big in her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Inch by inch, then foot by foot, they won their painful way along the
+lee shore. Over and over in spite of the six poles, she was thrown back
+on the stones, whereupon they all leaped overboard and put their backs
+under her lee. There was once when, Garth's pole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> snapping short, he
+pitched headlong overboard. He climbed back with blood colouring the
+rain in his face, and found another pole. Again, approaching the point,
+the four men on the end of the tracking-line crawling slowly around the
+edge of a steepish bank, were by a sudden heave of the <i>Loseis</i> all four
+jerked into the water. Instantly picking themselves up, they scrambled
+ahead with their line through the breakers. Garth's heart warmed over
+the half-fed, half-clad boys. Not one of the eight faltered for an
+instant, and in the midst of their superhuman labours they could still
+be shouting at each other.</p>
+
+<p>A reef ran out beyond the point; and how they ever got over this, or how
+long it took, none could have told. By that time they were merely
+insensate machines striving automatically against a mighty inhuman
+adversary. The <i>Loseis's</i> ribs yielded and trembled under the renewed
+blows on the stones. Dizzy and blind with fatigue they struggled ahead;
+but they would never have made it, had not the wind hauled still further
+around. Finally a wave greater than any preceding lifted them clear of
+the stones, and dropped them in smooth water inside. For a while, unable
+to realize they had rounded the point, they continued to struggle; then
+the <i>Loseis</i> gently beached herself. The tracking crew scrambled aboard,
+and all hands dropped where they stood for a breathing spell.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after the storm showed signs of abating. In the end it ceased
+almost as abruptly as it had begun;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> and the moon looked wanly forth, as
+if ashamed for the recent disturbances aloft. Garth, thinking of Grylls
+and Hooliam lying on the beach around the point, consulted with Charley
+what had better be done. It took them about three seconds to arrive at a
+decision.</p>
+
+<p>"It is between eight and ten miles to the head of the lake," Charley
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Let them walk it then," said Garth coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the same breeze resumed its gentle course up the lake as if
+there had been no such thing as a storm. Tired as they were, it was too
+good to lose; and with hoisted sail, the <i>Loseis</i> forged through the
+rapidly subsiding waters, with Charley at the helm. The breed boys asked
+no questions. Having raised the sail, they promptly fell asleep. Hooliam
+they had little regard for anyway; and Grylls they may have supposed was
+still somewhere under the sail-cloths. In three hours they had reached
+Grier's point, the navigable head of the lake; and all hands slept until
+long after sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>Garth and Natalie, meeting in the daylight, exclaimed each at the
+appearance of the other; Natalie, with remorseful sympathy, that she had
+not sooner learnt the extent of Garth's bruises; and Garth with
+delighted wonder at the freshness of her. Natalie was like the lake in
+the early sunshine; neither showed the slightest trace of a storm
+overnight.</p>
+
+<p>While they were at their breakfast on the shore, a deplorable figure,
+ashen-cheeked and shamed, came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> shuffling out of the bush. The eight
+breeds, as one, instantly set up a merciless, derisive jeering. It was
+Hooliam. He bore in his hands a little bottle and a bank-bill. Wretched
+as he was, his eyes glinted with satisfaction at the sight of the boat
+safe and sound on the shore. He went to Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Nick Grylls in the bush," he said, dully pointing back. "Him sick bad.
+Maybe him die. Him give five dollar for drink of whiskey."</p>
+
+<p>Garth filled the bottle from his flask. "Put up your money," he said
+curtly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE NINETY-MILE PORTAGE</p>
+
+<p>The Settlement is upward of three miles from Grier's point. Avoiding the
+houses for the present, Garth pitched his camp outside, well off the
+trail. The first thing they learned was that the Bishop had gone on.
+This time they were not surprised; there seemed to be a fatality in it.
+The old problem confronted Garth anew.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you should wait here," he suggested to Natalie; "and let me
+ride on for you."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie, as she always did when this question was brought up, merely
+looked obstinate.</p>
+
+<p>"It is likely we will miss him again at the Crossing," Garth went on;
+"and I have learned there are only one or two cabins there, and no white
+woman. It would be difficult for you."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie's silence gave him no encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>"But here," he urged, "you could stay with the wife of the inspector of
+the mounted police; while I go on and bring Mabyn back to you. I do not
+think you should put yourself in his hands."</p>
+
+<p>"He would not come with you," she said evasively.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I promise to bring him," said Garth determinedly; "if he is alive."</p>
+
+<p>"No!" she said with manifest agitation. "That is another reason!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is?" he asked mystified.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I could not have any trouble between you," she said in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>"But I promise to bring him safely," he said doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>She still shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"I will go to the wife of the inspector," said Garth&mdash;"a woman in such a
+position is sure to be the right sort&mdash;and I will explain our position
+frankly. She will be glad to take you in!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie shot an odd glance at him. "I will not let you," she said
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"The risk of the humiliation of a refusal is too great," she said. "I do
+not doubt she is a good woman; I'm sure she rises splendidly to all the
+demands of her position up here. But she <i>has</i> a position to maintain,
+you see; no doubt she is bringing up girls. And me!"&mdash;Natalie turned
+away her head&mdash;"consider how extraordinary the story sounds! Only one
+woman in a thousand would believe."</p>
+
+<p>Garth turned a distressed face to her. "I have not taken care of you
+properly," he cried remorsefully.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie veiled her eyes; and her hand stole to her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> breast. "Let us not
+talk about <i>that</i>!" she murmured unevenly.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was perplexed and silent.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie recovered herself presently; and looked at him with a misty
+shine in her eyes. "Why do you worry?" she asked. "We're a thousand
+times better off than we were yesterday; for you have laid our enemy by
+the heels! Why mayn't I go on with you just the same as before? I cannot
+trust any one but you!"</p>
+
+<p>How was Garth to resist such an appeal? Besides, there was nothing else
+to do.</p>
+
+<p>Garth might have lodged a complaint against Nick Grylls at the barracks;
+but any investigation would have seriously delayed their journey; and a
+greater reason against it was his care for Natalie's good name. It was
+intolerable to him that the dear circumstances of their journey together
+should be made the subject of the common gossip of the North. It was
+better to let those who saw Natalie on the trail speculate as they
+chose, rather than give them an opportunity to put their own coarse
+construction upon the truth. He was well assured Nick Grylls would say
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>For the same reason, he decided to avoid the Settlement altogether. The
+two of them remained close in camp; and Charley was dispatched to
+purchase ponies and saddles, and what was needful to replenish their
+stores. He returned with all they required; and during the afternoon
+instructed Garth how to pack<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> the ponies and "throw" the immovable
+diamond hitch. Natalie in the meantime, constructed a divided skirt for
+herself, since side-saddles are unknown in the North.</p>
+
+<p>Their route now lay over the ninety-mile portage to Spirit River
+Crossing. The road, Garth learned, was straight, and, for the North,
+well-travelled. There were no forks or cross-trails, hence no
+possibility of their missing the way. They set off before daybreak next
+morning. The parting with Charley was a wrench all around: but Garth was
+firm in insisting that the boy must go back, and put up his hay. In the
+easy-going North it is only too easy to drop one's tools and start off
+on a jaunt. Charley bade them an abrupt good-bye; and bustled away to
+hide his tears.</p>
+
+<p>In the mystical gloom which, in northern latitudes, precedes the summer
+dawn, Garth and Natalie, each leading a pack pony, rode through the
+Settlement, which straggled for several miles around the shore of Moose
+Bay, a wide, shallow arm of the lake, once navigable, but now given over
+to the wild-fowl. The shacks were infinitely various; for in a land
+where every man builds for himself, a house quaintly expresses the
+character of its owner. But one thing was common to all; no one wastes
+any ornament on his dwelling; and in the luxuriant greenness of the
+northern summer, the grim, solid little houses were a reminder of the
+coming cold.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the day they passed the long, gradual climb over the height of
+land separating the great watersheds of the Miwasa and the Spirit. On
+the other side they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> came to a flat country and of the same general
+character all the way. It was a shining day; and, being young, they
+forgot their cares and rode gaily. For the most part the trail lay in a
+straight and lofty nave of aspen trees, rearing their slender, snowy
+pillars sixty, eighty&mdash;even a hundred feet aloft; and mingling their
+clusters of nimble, chattering leaves high overhead in the sun. There
+was nothing gloomy about this cathedral; the sun found a thousand
+apertures through which to launch his rays against the white pillars;
+while the green and mutable roof was bathed in almost intolerable
+radiance&mdash;it was a temple in green and white, Flora's colours.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally there were cloistered openings; sunny little meadows
+inclining to a spring, where the wild pea-vine, plant beloved of horses,
+and infallible sign of a rich soil, grew knee-deep. Such an opening they
+learned, however small, was quaintly dignified by the natives with the
+name of prairie.</p>
+
+<p>Their ponies, each exhibiting a distinct individuality, afforded the
+excuse for their amusement on the way. Garth's mount, that a previous
+owner had christened "Cyclops," and who was tall enough and bony enough
+to be called a horse, was, like themselves, a stranger in the bush, and
+his face offered a comical study in anxiety, willingness and stupidity,
+under these new conditions. Natalie rode a young sorrel rejoicing in the
+name of Caspar. He had a dull eye, a long, sheeplike nose and a wagging
+under lip; and Natalie vowed he was half-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>witted. He would not ride
+abreast; but insisted on following; and he screamed with terror, if for
+an instant he lost sight of the other horses.</p>
+
+<p>But it was the two pack horses that offered the most diverting study of
+character. When they left the Settlement behind, Garth cast off their
+leaders. In Emmy, a rotund little mare, they had secured a treasure.
+Emmy had an indifferent air toward them, worthy of a breed; but unlike a
+breed, she was thoroughly business-like. Where the great mudholes of
+unknown depth blocked the trail, and they must strike into the bush, she
+required no guidance. They laughed and admired, to see her stop, looking
+this way and that, and deliberately pick her way through, always with
+due regard to the height and breadth of the pack on her back. Emmy
+declined to be hurried; she had an air that said as plainly as words, if
+they didn't like her pace, they could leave her behind, and be hanged to
+them!</p>
+
+<p>The remaining animal was Emmy's son, a half-broken colt, whose only
+virtue was that he would not stray very far from his mother.
+Mistatimoosis was his mouthful of a name. He forgot his pack sometimes,
+and striking it full tilt against a tree, would be knocked endwise in
+the trail, blinking and dismayed, as who should say, "Who hit me?" The
+thing that caused them the heartiest laughter was to see Mistatimoosis's
+endless attempts to steal the leadership of the caravan from his mother.
+It was the only thing that could tempt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> Emmy out of her sedate pace. On
+a fair piece of road the two of them would race at top speed for half a
+mile; and the colt was continually making sly detours into the bush to
+get around his mother. But she kept him in his place behind.</p>
+
+<p>The riders finding they could safely leave the packhorses to follow, had
+ridden ahead to spy out grass and water for the noon spell. They were
+walking their horses over the turf bordering the trail, when suddenly
+from among the trees came with startling distinctness the sound of a
+voice. They reined up, astonished. It was the gentle, ambling voice of a
+loquacious old man; and his conversation there in the wilderness was as
+quiet and intimate as chimney-corner talk.</p>
+
+<p>"I should say half-past eleven," they heard. "When Mr. Sun sits down on
+yonder spruce tree we'll make a break. So work your jaws good, Mother,
+old girl; and you Buck, my dear, stop looking around like a fool and get
+busy! Meanwhile, we'll pack up the grub-box."</p>
+
+<p>Garth and Natalie smiled at each other. There was nothing very alarming
+about this.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you have a pipe of baccy now, Tom Lillywhite?" the same voice
+resumed. "Thanks, old man, don't mind if I do! Is there any cut? No?
+Well shave it close."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause here, while the speaker presumably filled his pipe.
+Then some one drew an audible sigh of content; and a kind of dialogue
+took place&mdash;though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> there was but the one voice full of quaint lifts and
+falls. Garth and Natalie, smiling broadly, listened without shame.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! a fine day, a bellyful of bacon, and a pipeful of tobacco!&mdash;would
+you change with a moneyed man, Tom Lillywhite?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well I don't know, sir! Mebbe he don't enjoy his grub as much as us,
+havin' gen'ally the dyspepsy; but how about the winter, old sport, when
+we don't fetch up no stoppin'-house; and has to make a bed in the snow,
+hey? It's then a flannel bed-gown looks good to old bones; let alone
+woolly slippers and a feather bed! Seems I wouldn't kick agin the job of
+takin' care o' money in the winter time!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! g'long with you, Tom Lillywhite! You'd a been dead long ago if you
+had money! Swole up and bust with good eatin', y'old epicoor! You'd be
+havin' a pig killed fresh every week if you had money!"</p>
+
+<p>"Say, b'lieve I would cut some dash if I had money! I'd build me a house
+of lumber clear through, and I'd paint it all over, paint it blue! And
+I'd have sawdust on the settin'-room floor and a brass spittoon in every
+corner! 'Have a chair,' I'd say to stoppers, not lettin' on I was puffed
+up at all. 'Have a ten-cent seegar. Don't mention it! Don't mention it!
+I get a case full in every Fall!'"</p>
+
+<p>Here there was a jolly chuckle.</p>
+
+<p>Their packhorses joining them noisily, the dialogue was cut short.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Some one comin'," said the voice.</p>
+
+<p>Rounding the clump of bushes, Garth and Natalie found themselves in a
+grassy opening in the bush. An untraced wagon stood in the centre; and
+two horses browsed. Immediately under the bushes, an old man sat on the
+ground. They instinctively looked around for the other persons brought
+into his conversation; but, save for the horses, he was alone.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of them his face lighted up with the pleased na&iuml;vet&eacute; of a
+child. "How do! How do!" he said immediately, without getting up or
+raising his voice at all. "My horses are quiet. They won't tech yours.
+The spring is down there at the foot of the spruce. Just blow up my fire
+a little and it will do for you." He seemed to take them entirely for
+granted; and he spoke as if resuming a dropped conversation.</p>
+
+<p>There was something very troll-like in the old figure, squatting on the
+ground; in his bright, glancing eyes, in his incessant, matter-of-fact
+loquacity, and the slight, peculiar gesticulation, with which he
+illustrated his talk. He was all of a colour; high moccasins, breeches,
+shirt and cap were weathered to the same grayish-brown shade&mdash;and that
+much the colour of his skin. Against a background of withered grass,
+only his white hair would have been visible. He was like some
+good-tempered, little familiar of the forest.</p>
+
+<p>He stared hard at Natalie in his bright-eyed, impersonal way; and as
+soon as Garth, having made his horses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> comfortable, came to build up the
+fire, he started in with his questions.</p>
+
+<p>"Where you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Spirit River Crossing," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Thinking of settling?"</p>
+
+<p>Garth shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you don't look like settlers. Company business, maybe?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Police? Gov'ment survey?"</p>
+
+<p>"Private business," said Garth&mdash;his usual answer to the question direct.</p>
+
+<p>Baffled inquisitiveness, vice of the kindest natures, made the old man's
+face ugly; and for a moment he looked like a wicked troll. For a little
+while he preserved an offended silence; but then, probably recollecting
+that he would hear the whole story at the Settlement, or simply because
+he could not keep still any longer, his face cleared, and he resumed his
+engaging, inconsequential babble.</p>
+
+<p>"See that horse over there, the buckskin? Best horse I ever had! True
+buckskin! Mark the zebra stripes round his legs, Miss; and the black
+stripe on his backbone. You can't kill a buck; he's got more lives than
+a cat. I call the old one Mother; she's good-natured, she is!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're a freighter, I see," remarked Garth as a leader.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure thing, stranger! Tom Lillywhite and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> team is known to every
+settler in the country! Been here thirty-five year; and always on the
+move! Never sleep in the same place two nights going! That wagon there,
+and the grub-box is my home. It's a variegated life!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth bethought himself the old man would likely prove a valuable source
+of information. "You must know everybody in the country!" he said,
+feeling his way.</p>
+
+<p>"None better!" said Tom Lillywhite, bridling with pride.</p>
+
+<p>"Are there many white men at the Crossing?" asked Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite a crowd," said the old man; "eight or nine at the least. There's
+the two traders, and Mert Haywood the farmer, and old Turner the J. P.,
+and the priest, and the English missionary, and the school-master;
+that's seven. Then there's old man Mackensie but you wouldn't hardly
+call him a white man&mdash;smoked too deep, and squaw-ridden."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all?" said Garth, disappointed of his quest.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's a sort of another. He doesn't regularly belong to the
+Crossing but he comes into the store for his goods once or twict a year.
+I forgot him&mdash;most everybody's forgot him now. It's Bert Mabyn."</p>
+
+<p>Garth and Natalie pricked up their ears; and their hearts began to beat.</p>
+
+<p>"I got good cause to know Bert Mabyn, too,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> continued old Tom
+innocently; while the other two listened still as mice, and apprehensive
+of disclosures to be made. "But that's all past. I don't bear him no
+ill-will now. He's a cur'us chap, a little teched I guess; but as
+pleasant a spoken and amoosin' a feller as another feller could want to
+have with him on the road! Want to hear about him?"</p>
+
+<p>Garth looked at Natalie dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said boldly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was three years ago," began Tom Lillywhite, with the zest of
+the true story-teller. "The Gov'ment sent four surveyin' parties in; and
+I had more'n I could do freightin' from the Settlement to the different
+camps. It was rough haulin', you understand, over the lines they cut
+through the bush, straight as a string over muskeg and coul&eacute;e. You
+couldn't load over twenty hundredweight, and sometimes you had to dump
+half of that, and go back for it. But right good pay, Gov'ment pay is.</p>
+
+<p>"I needed another team bad, and I see a good chance to get one on credit
+from Dick Staley, with the wagon and all; but I couldn't get no white
+men to drive it for me. A breed, you understand, soon kills your horses
+on you!</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it might be I was settin' outside the French outfit, talkin' it
+over," he went on tranquilly, little suspecting with what meaning his
+story was charged for the two strangers; "when along comes a feller and
+asts for me. Say, he was a sight! He was wearin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> black clothes, though
+it were a workin'-day; and all muddied and tore, showin' the skin under;
+and his coat was pinned acrost the neck, with a safety-pin 'cause he
+hadn't no shirt. He had a Sunday hat on too&mdash;all busted. At the best he
+weren't no beauty; his teeth was out."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, suffering for her, could not bear to meet her eyes. "Perhaps
+you'd rather hear another story," he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>She braced herself. "No! Go on!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Soon as I see him, I knew who he was," continued old Tom; "for I hear
+the fellers talk about a white man that took passage up from the Landing
+on Phillippe's boat. He let them pull him all the way; and when they got
+to Grier's point, he hadn't no money. They took it out of his skin; and
+say, when a white man is beat by a breed it's good-day to him up here!
+In a hundred years he couldn't live it down.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you want to hire a man?' says he mumbling-like; he was too far down
+to meet your eye.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hum!' says I thoughtful, 'I want a <i>man</i>,' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"You should have heard the fellers laugh at that! They still talk about
+it! 'Tom Lillywhite, he wants a man', they say. It's quite a word in the
+country. 'Tom Lillywhite wants a <i>man</i>!'"</p>
+
+<p>The old freighter went off into an interminable chuckling over the
+antique jest.</p>
+
+<p>It was inexpressibly painful to Natalie to have Garth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> there, a witness
+to her humiliation; but she would not stop the story-teller, nor let
+Garth stop him.</p>
+
+<p>"However, thinks I, you can sometimes make a man out of unpromisin'
+mater'al," he resumed. "And in the end I took him for his grub. That was
+Bert Mabyn. For three months I didn't regret it; he was used to horses,
+and was first-rate company on the trail. I didn't give him no
+money&mdash;said he didn't want none&mdash;but I fed him up good, and he soon got
+fat and sassy. I give him other things too. I couldn't stand for the
+poor wretch a shiverin' by my fire in his buttoned-up coat, so I give
+him blankets; and afterward an outfit of clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think was the first thing he ever ast me for?&mdash;a razor and
+a glass! And every day after that he used to shave hisself&mdash;every day
+mind you, if we was in the thickest part of the bush! And forever
+trimmin' of his nails, and polishin' 'em to make 'em shine! Wasn't that
+remarkable?</p>
+
+<p>"He was a great talker. Nights around the fire he used to tell me all
+about himself. Seems he comes of real high-toned folks outside; but went
+to the bad young. Said he come West three years before that again, full
+of good resolutions, which lasted just so long as his money. Since then
+he'd been a grub-rider 'round the ranches, and dish-washer in hotels,
+and, 'scusin' your presence, Miss, worse than that&mdash;but he hadn't no
+shame about it!</p>
+
+<p>"I liked the feller. He wasn't no good, but he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> that persuasive way
+with him! And he knew so much more than me! You'd think a man 'ud feel
+shame to tell such stories on himself; but no! he'd make out as you
+ought to like him for bein' such a good-for-nothing waster; and by Gum!
+in the end you did! Never see such a feller!</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all summer we travelled, me and him; him always behind me on the
+trail; and I hadn't any fault to find. But come September I had a rush
+lot up to Whitefish Lake; and at the same time there was some stuff
+wanted in a hurry in Pentland's camp over on the Great Smoky. So for the
+first time we divided. I sent him to Pentland's over this very trail!</p>
+
+<p>"I got back long before he did. After a while word come from Pentland,
+where in thunder were the goods? It was after the first snow before
+Mabyn come back. He was a wreck and the horses were just alive, and no
+more. He told a story how his wagon capsized in the river, and he lost
+everything; but the whiskey gave the lie to that. By and by we found
+he'd buried a keg of it, outside the Settlement. In the Spring when it
+was too late to do anything, it all come out through a breed. Seems away
+up by Fort St. Pierre, he met one of them crooked traders, that
+sometimes sneaks acrost the mountains; and he sold him the stuff for a
+keg of rot-gut. When I hear that I was thankful he brought back the
+horses at all. The business near busted me; for I had to make good three
+hundred worth of groceries to Pentland; and sacrificed the second team,
+'count<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> of the shape they were in. That was what Bert Mabyn cost <i>me</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you have him arrested?" asked Garth indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>Tom shrugged. "What were the use of that? The inspector was after me to
+prosecute; but it was too late to get my money back, and put flesh on
+the horses&mdash;besides, I was too busy. Of course, it weren't just the same
+as robbin' me in cold blood," he added in the tone of one who must be
+fair; "for it were the whiskey, you see."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie kept her face averted from the old man. "And what has become of
+this man since?" she asked, steadily controlling her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he hung around the Settlement, sponging on one and another till he
+were kicked out; then he come down to the breeds. It was a great honour
+for them to have a white man of any kind runnin' after them, you see, so
+they put up with him. Then he drifted West, up Ostachegan way; and
+lately, I understand, he's taken up a deserted shack he found on
+Clearwater Lake, away up on the bench there, northwest of the Spirit.
+There they tell me he lives all alone; but no one's seen him in a dog's
+age."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Garth and Natalie avoided everything beyond the merest commonplaces to
+each other until they were alone; and even after Tom Lillywhite, bidding
+them farewell, had driven off, chirping to his horses, it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> a long
+time before either had the courage to make a move toward overcoming the
+ghastly constraint his story had caused between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't we heard enough?" said Garth quietly at last. "Need you go any
+further?"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie in the interim had had time to pass her emotional crisis. She
+was very pale, and her eyes were big; but she was now calmer than he. "I
+have heard enough, surely," she said; "but after coming all this way it
+would seem cowardly, wouldn't it, to be satisfied with hearsay
+evidence?&mdash;and there is still my promise to his mother."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone impressed Garth with the utter hopelessness of trying to
+dissuade her. "But how can I let you expose yourself to&mdash;to what we may
+find!" he groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a child," said Natalie quietly. "And I shall not quail at the
+mere sight of ugliness." She turned away from him. "Besides," she added
+in a lower tone, "you know the worst now; and that was the hardest thing
+to bear&mdash;your hearing it I mean. No," she went on, facing him again,
+wistfully and valorously; "it promises to be <i>very</i> ugly, but then I
+undertook it, you see. I am going on."</p>
+
+<p>They could not bear to meet each other's eyes; and miserably turning
+their backs, affected to busy themselves with small tasks. Natalie,
+quivering with the shame of the lash all unwittingly applied by old Tom,
+longed with an inexpressible longing to have Garth with a hint or a look
+assure her that he loved her, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> so, thrusting the wretch Mabyn out of
+their charmed circle, reinstate her in her self-respect. But poor Garth
+in his clumsy, masculine delicacy thought that to obtrude himself at
+such a moment would only hurt her more. He kept silent, and he averted
+his eyes, and Natalie, misunderstanding, tasted the very dregs of
+shame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE NEWLY-MARRIED PAIR</p>
+
+<p>Out on the bosom of that infinite prairie, which rolls its unmeasured
+miles north and west of the Spirit River, a last place of mystery and
+dreams, still unharnessed by the geographers, and reluctantly written
+down "unexplored" on their maps, two human figures were riding slowly,
+with their horses' heads turned away from the last habitations of men.
+The prairie undulated about them like a sea congealed in motion&mdash;but
+seemingly vaster than the sea; for at sea the horizon is ever near at
+hand; while here the very unevenness of the ground marked, and fixed,
+and opened up the awful distances. The grass was short, rich and browned
+by the summer sun; and it mantled the distant rounds and hollows with
+the changing lights of beaver fur. The only breaks in its expanse were
+here and there, springing in the sheltered hollows, coppices or bluffs
+of slender poplar saplings, with crowding stems, as close and even as
+hair. The leaves were yellowed by the first frosts.</p>
+
+<p>The man rode ahead, slouching on the back of his wretched cayuse, with
+eyes blank alike of inward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> thought or outward observation. He was not
+yet forty years old, but bore the cast of premature decay, more aged
+than age. What showed of his hair beneath his hat was sparse and faded;
+and of his visible teeth he had no more than a perishing stump or two
+left in his jaws. His discontented, satiated, exhausted mien, had a
+strange look there in the fresh and potent wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>The girl who followed with a travoise dragging at her pony's heels, was,
+on the other hand, in harmony with the land. Of the extremes to which
+the breeds run in looks, she was of the rare beauties of that strange
+race. Her features were moulded in a delicate, definite harmony that
+would have marked her out in any assemblage of beauty; and the spirit of
+beauty was there too. There were actually pride and dignity under the
+arched brows&mdash;so capricious is Nature in shaping her wilder
+daughters&mdash;and in the deep soft eyes brooded, even when she was
+happiest, a heart-disquieting quality of wistfulness. She was happy now;
+and ever and anon she raised her eyes to the slouching back of the man
+riding ahead with a look of passionate abandon in which there was
+nothing civilized at all. She was slenderer than the run of brown
+maidens, and her clumsy print dress could not hide the girlish, perfect
+contour of her shoulders. In her dusky cheeks there glowed a tinge of
+deep rose; testimony to the lingering influence of the white blood in
+her veins.</p>
+
+<p>Topping a rise, the man paused for her to overtake him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Here we are, Rina," he said indifferently. His voice was oddly cracked.
+His manner toward her expressed a good-humoured tolerance. His eyes
+approved her casually; inner tenderness there was none.</p>
+
+<p>The girl apparently was sensible of no lack&mdash;but the breeds do not bring
+up their daughters to expect tenderness. Her eyes sparkled. "How pretty
+it is, 'Erbe't!" she breathed. "Ver' moch good land!" She spoke the
+pretty, clipped English of the convent school.</p>
+
+<p>At their feet lay a shallow valley, hidden close until the very moment
+of stumbling upon it. In it was a sparkling slough but large enough to
+be dignified with the name of lake. It was something the shape of a
+gourd, with a long end that curved out of sight below, a very girdle of
+blue velvet binding the waists of the brown hills. At their left the
+shores of the wider part of the lake, the bulb of the gourd, were, in
+unexpected contrast to the bareness of the uplands, heavily wooded with
+great cottonwood trees and spruce. A grassy islet ringed with willows
+seemed to be moored here like the barge of some woodland princess. Away
+beyond, elevated on a grassy terrace at the head of the lake, and
+overlooking its whole expanse, stood a tiny weather-beaten shack,
+startlingly conspicuous in that great expanse of untouched nature.
+Sheltered by the hills from the howling blasts of the prairie above; and
+with wood, water and unlimited game at its door, it was a wholly
+desirable situation for a Northern dwelling&mdash;but it was seventy-five
+miles off the trail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The girl brought her pony alongside Mabyn's; and slipped her hand into
+his. "It is jus' right!" she whispered. "We will be ver' happy,
+'Erbe't!"</p>
+
+<p>He let her hand fall carelessly. "It's damn lonesome!" he grumbled.</p>
+
+<p>All the shy boldness of an enamoured girl peeped out of Rina's eyes, as
+she whispered: "I'm glad it's lonesome! I don' want nobody to come&mdash;but
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn was unimpressed. He struck the ribs of his tired pony with his
+heels. "Come on," he said; and led the way down the incline.</p>
+
+<p>Later, reaching the shack, on the threshold Rina spread out her arms
+with an unconscious gesture. "This is my home!" she cried. "I will jus'
+love it!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn looking around at the gaping walls, the empty panes and the foul
+litter, laughed jeeringly at her simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>The girl was too happy to feel the sting. "I will fix it!" she said
+stoutly. "I will mak' it like an outside house. It will be as nice than
+the priest's parlour in the Settlement!" She clasped her hands against
+her breast in the intensity of her eagerness. "Jus' you wait, 'Erbe't!
+Some day I will have white curtains in the window! and a piece of carpet
+on the floor! and a holy picture on the wall! Oh! I will work so hard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Get about the supper, Rina," said Mabyn shortly.</p>
+
+<p>She prepared the meal at the rough mud fireplace built across the corner
+of the shack, for they had no stove; and they ate squatting on the floor
+in the breed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> fashion, for neither was there a table. Afterward Mabyn
+dragged the bench&mdash;a relic of the former tenant, and sole article of
+furniture they possessed&mdash;outside the door; and sat upon it, smoking,
+yawning, looking across the lake with lack-lustre eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Rina having redd up the shack, came to the doorway, where she stood
+looking at him wistfully. Finally she hovered toward him and retreated;
+and her hands stole to her breast. She was longing mightily to sit
+beside him; but she did not dare. In a breed's wife it would have been
+highly presumptuous, and would very likely have been rewarded with a
+blow; but Rina had a dim notion that a white man's wife had the right to
+sit beside him&mdash;still she was afraid. In the end her desire overcame her
+fears; drifting hither and thither toward the bench like a frond of
+thistledown, she finally alighted on the edge, and her cheek dropped on
+his shoulder. The act must have been subtly suggested by the tincture of
+white blood in her veins, for it is not a redskin attitude. The man
+neither repulsed nor welcomed her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Erbe't," she whispered, "my head is so full of things I am near crazy
+wit' thoughts! And my tongue is in a snare; I cannot speak at all!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn's only comment was a sort of grunt, which meant anything&mdash;or
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Rina was encouraged to creep a little closer. "Oh, 'Erbe't, I love you!"
+she whispered. "I am loving you every minute! I so glad you marry me,
+'Erbe't!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The man took his pipe out of his mouth, and uttered his brief, jeering
+cackle of laughter. "That wasn't altogether a matter of choice, my
+girl," he said. "It was a little preliminary insisted on by your father
+and mother."</p>
+
+<p>Rina hardly took the sense of this. "But you do love me, 'Erbe't? jus' a
+little?" she pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"You're all right, Rina," he said patronizingly. "I never was one to
+make much of a fuss about a woman."</p>
+
+<p>Little by little gathering courage, she began to pour out her soul for
+the man she loved. "I never love any man but you, 'Erbe't," so ran the
+na&iuml;ve confession; "the breed boys, they always come aroun' and show off.
+I not lak them. They foolish and dirty; they eat same lak cocouche; and
+they know not'ing; but they think themself so fine. They mak' me sick!
+My mot'er say to me; 'You eighteen year old, Rina; w'en you go to
+marry?' I say to my mot'er, 'I never marry a pig-man; I want to stay to
+you.'"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice changed, borrowing the soft, passionate music of the
+nightingale she had never heard. "Then bam-bye w'en the spring come, an'
+we pitch by Ostachegan creek, an' the crocus flowers are coming up on
+Sah-ko-da-tah prairie so many as stars in the sky&mdash;then you come by our
+camp, 'Erbe't; and you so poor an' sick I feel ver' bad for you! An' you
+talk so pretty, and know so much, my heart him fly straight out of my
+breast like a bird, 'Erbe't; an' perch on your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> shoulder; an' him go
+everywhere you go; an' I got no heart any more. I empty lak a nest in
+the snow-time!</p>
+
+<p>"So you stay to us," she went on, "and I mad to see all the men mock at
+you, an' treat you bad, an' mak' you eat after all have finished, and
+mak' you lie outside the fire. They t'ink themself better than a white
+man, hey! All the time you ask me to come away from the camp with you;
+an' you t'ink I don' want to come, but you don' know. Many, many nights
+I not sleep, 'Erbe't. I want so bad to come to the ot'er side of the
+tepee where you are, but I hold to my mot'er's blanket!"</p>
+
+<p>The man looked up. "Hm! You did, eh?" he exclaimed. "If I had known!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I t'ink I mos' not let you see I love you. So I mak' show I don'
+care at all. An' it hurt me ver' moch in my empty breast, 'Erbe't. But
+why I do it?&mdash;I want you so to marry me! an' bam-bye you marry me; an' I
+so scare and happy lak I was lose my head! Four days I married now! You
+not mad at me, 'Erbe't, 'cause I mak' you marry me?"</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged. "What's the diff?" he said carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>Rina dared to let her arm creep around his shoulders. "But bam-bye you
+ver' glad you marry me," she whispered. "For I mak' me ver' nice! I
+white woman now. I go no more to the breeds. I spik only Engliss now; we
+will sit in chairs and eat pretty with knives and forks; and always say
+good morning and good night, lak white people. 'Erbe't, you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> teach
+me all the ways of white people, lak they do outside? I want so bad to
+be ver' nice, jus' lak white woman!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" said Mabyn vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>Rina was silent for a while. "'Erbe't," she said at last, "you never
+tell me about your folks; about your house where you live outside.
+Please tell me."</p>
+
+<p>He muttered, and writhed uncomfortably on the bench. "What's the use of
+bringing that up?" he said at last. "You wouldn't understand if I tried
+to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Loving makes me onderstan' moch," she softly pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>He was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any sisters outside, 'Erbe't?" she gently persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mot'er, she is not dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"She mos' be ver' nice, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a lady!" he blurted out.</p>
+
+<p>Rina nodded wisely. "I know what that is," she said. "A lady is a ver'
+nice woman." Her voice dropped very low. "'Erbe't," she whispered, with
+infinite, passionate desire in her voice&mdash;stroking his cheek, "will you
+teach me to be a lady?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. "You 'tend to your work about the place," he said, "and
+don't bother your head over that."</p>
+
+<p>Tears slowly welled up in Rina's eyes, and stole one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> after another down
+her cheeks. "I do so ver' moch want to be a lady," she whispered, more
+to herself than to him. He did not know she wept, she was so still.</p>
+
+<p>By and by she raised her head, and shook the tears away. "To-morrow, I
+will begin to fix things nice for you, 'Erbe't," she said with renewed,
+soft tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>He vented his hopeless, jeering chuckle. "Nice!" he echoed. "My God,
+Rina! What are you going to begin on?"</p>
+
+<p>"I show you!" she said eagerly. "I have a whole tanned buckskin my
+father give to me when I go 'way; and my mot'er, she give silk, all
+colours. I make seven, eight, maybe ten pairs of glove, with cuffs; and
+work them with silk flowers! No woman can work so good with silk than
+me! I work all the time there is light; and when all are done I get
+forty dollar in trade at the store! And I buy cartridges and traps and
+grub, and another skin to work. Not any more will you be poor, 'Erbe't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord! How will we ever drag out the winter in this God-forsaken spot!"
+he grumbled&mdash;unconsciously shifting the initiative to her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>Her arm tightened about him. "We will do fine!" she said eagerly. "We
+will mak' moch money. There is no plentier place for fur; and we will
+have it all! Me, I can set traps and snares as good as Michel Whitebear.
+Maybe I will get a silver fox, or a black one. I know the fox! In the
+spring we will have plenty good credit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> at the store. We can travel to
+the Settlement then, and you will not be lonesome. There are many white
+men. We could stay in the Settlement all summer; and I would cook meals
+for the freighters and the travellers and mak' more money. I am a good
+worker, 'Erbe't. Everybody say so!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn partly roused himself. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "Under
+cover of the restaurant, it would be dead easy to run in a little
+whiskey over the Berry Mountain trail, and make a pot of money. Fifty
+cents a drink, by Gad!"</p>
+
+<p>Rina drew away from him. "I will not help you do that, 'Erbe't," she
+said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do what I tell you to do," he said coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Rina remained silent. Her breast heaved and trembled with terror at her
+own temerity in defying her husband&mdash;but there were both firmness and
+reproach in her attitude. It was more than the weak Mabyn could bear for
+long in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" he burst out. "Have I married a breed to tell me what I
+ought to do, and ought not to do? Better learn once for all, my girl,
+that I'm the head of this outfit, and I mean to do whatever I damned
+please!"</p>
+
+<p>Rina sat gripping her hands together in her lap to control their
+trembling. Her head was bowed. "I am only a breed girl," she said. "You
+are my 'osban', and you can beat me, and you can kill me, but I would
+not cry out, or think bad of you. But you cannot mak' me help you to
+mak' a pig of you again. I will mak' you to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> have good credit, an' to be
+a rich and strong man, an' you can go back and spit on the poor breeds
+that mock you before. I will not help you trade in whiskey; whiskey mak'
+you poor, an' sick, an' crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn got up. "God! Women are all alike, white or brown!" he muttered
+indifferently. "Come on in."</p>
+
+<p>But he had yielded the point. The regeneration of Herbert Mabyn had been
+undertaken.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE LAST STAGE</p>
+
+<p>The hours of the afternoon that followed their encounter with Tom
+Lillywhite were long and heavy ones for Natalie and Garth. A haggard
+misunderstanding rode between them on the trail. Denied the
+all-explaining, all-healing touch of hands&mdash;or lips, the unreasonable
+despair of lovers seized on each; and the sunny way was plunged in murk.
+They rode, and camped, and ate their supper in silence; and in silence
+they turned in for the night. But there was little sleep for either;
+they lay apart, each nursing a burden of unhappiness; unable to say now
+what it was all about, only dreadfully conscious that they were divided.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as it was light enough to see, a pale and heavy-lidded Natalie
+crept noiselessly out of her tent. In front of the door she saw Garth on
+his knees preparing to build a fire; but the hand that held the
+hatchet-helve had dropped nervelessly to the ground; and his eyes, fixed
+and staring in the torpor of miserableness, had forgotten what he had
+set out to do. At the sight, a rapturous peace came back to Natalie's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+harried soul; for, she thought, if he were so unhappy as that, he must
+love her in spite of all. And Garth, looking up, saw the tenderness
+break in her weary face, and he understood it all too. The forest sprang
+into leaf again for them; and presently the sun came gaily up. They
+became as wildly and unreasonably happy as they had just been miserable;
+and not a word was exchanged either way. It was not necessary. That they
+did not fling themselves into each other's arms at that moment, must
+surely be written down to their credit somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>They made but a leisurely progress this day and the next. The labour of
+the journey was greater than at any time hitherto, for in addition to
+the ordinary routine of making and breaking camp twice a day, Garth had
+now the four horses to look after. Catching them was a task of uncertain
+duration, even though they were turned out hobbled; in particular, the
+exasperating Timoosis developed the proficiency of a very circus horse,
+in walking on his hind legs. And once caught, there was all the business
+of saddling, packing and drawing the hitch.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, there was that in both their hearts which delayed them even
+more. No ardently desired goal awaited them at the end of this journey;
+on the contrary they dreaded what they were to find. The last few miles
+of the way together, before the inevitable came between them, was
+therefore very dear; and it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> became ever easier to say "Let's camp!" and
+harder to say "Let's move!"</p>
+
+<p>Their boisterous jollity on the trail gave place to much quiet
+happiness; and there was ceaseless friendly contention, where Garth's
+every thought was for Natalie; and hers for him. Each was on his mettle
+to be worthy of the other's best. Above all they avoided the insidious
+danger of contact; but inevitably sometimes in the business of the camp,
+their hands did meet&mdash;and each to himself stored up and told over the
+events like secret treasures. In every labour Natalie insisted on taking
+her share like a man; and Garth never ceasing to upbraid her, yet loved
+her for it prodigiously.</p>
+
+<p>Day by day, now, the leaves of the more exposed trees were yellowing;
+and on the second night of their journey across the portage, the first
+heavy frost of the season descended. Garth, under his sail-cloth at the
+door of the tent, awoke covered with rime.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of the third day they had their never-to-be-forgotten
+first glimpse of the mighty Spirit, the dream river of the North, whose
+name evokes the thought of a garden in a bleak land. The unvarying
+flatness of the portage with its standing pools, and the interminable
+lofty wood that had hemmed them in for three days, had given them the
+sense of travelling on the bottom of the world, and that somewhere ahead
+must be a hill to climb. What then was their astonishment this
+afternoon, when, without warn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>ing they emerged from among the trees on
+an abrupt grassy terrace, and beheld the great river lying nearly a
+thousand feet <i>below</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It was a view inimitably gorgeous and sublime. Coming so suddenly upon
+it they caught their breaths and gazed in silence; for there was nothing
+fitting to say. The high point on which they stood overlooked a deep and
+narrow gorge at their left, through which a little river fell to the
+great stream; and across this they could look up the vast trough for
+miles. In the distance the river seemed to rise, until one would say it
+issued molten from the low-hung sun itself.</p>
+
+<p>It had an individual and peculiar look, like no watercourse they had
+seen. Its course drew a sharp line between the wooded country and the
+prairie. Like a figure dressed in motley, the steep southern bank was
+everywhere dark and wooded, while the other side, sweeping up in
+countless fantastic knolls and terraces, was bare, except for the brown
+grass, and patches of scrub-like hair in the hollows. Far back from the
+opposite rim of the vast trough swept the unmeasured prairie, as flat,
+in the whole prospect, as the country they had lately traversed.</p>
+
+<p>It was the wealth of colour that most of all bewitched their eyes. The
+river itself was of an odd, insistent green&mdash;emerald tinged with milk;
+the islands on its bosom hung out the rich bottle-green of spruce; the
+grass on the north bank was beaver-brown; the wild-rose scrub glowed
+blood-crimson in the hollows; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> the aspen bluffs, touched with frost,
+were as yellow as saffron. The wild and beautiful panorama was made
+complete in their eyes by a great golden eagle perched on the brink of
+the immediate foreground and, like themselves, gazing over. Though but a
+hundred yards or so distant, he contemptuously disregarded their
+arrival. When Garth, full of curiosity, came closer, he spread his vast
+wings and drifted indifferently out into space.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time they gazed at the scene without speaking. It was Natalie
+who finally expressed their common thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't it be sweet," she said wistfully, "if our journey had no other
+object but to see this! With what satisfied hearts we could now turn
+back!"</p>
+
+<p>Skirting the edge of the steep, presently the Settlement came into view
+far below, a hut or two along the river, hugging the base of the cliffs.
+The trail zigzagged gradually down, frequently doubling on itself; and
+whereas the eagle might have descended in a minute, it promised to be
+more like half an hour for them.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, following his previous policy, did not intend to expose Natalie
+to the stares of the Settlement, until he had at least reconnoitred.
+Before coming on the houses, therefore, he led his little caravan off
+through the bush to the left; and descended to the shore of the smaller
+stream they had seen from above. Here, in a private glade beside the
+noisy brown water, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> pitched their camp; and Garth, leaving Natalie
+armed against all eventualities, proceeded into the Settlement.</p>
+
+<p>His inevitable first question at the store elicited the information that
+the Bishop had gone up the river to Binchinnin, Ostachegan Creek and
+Fort St. Pierre. Next, the name of Herbert Mabyn called forth
+contemptuous shrugs. None of the men could give certain information of
+his whereabouts, though Clearwater Lake was mentioned again. He had not
+been in to the post for four months; and there was a handful of letters
+waiting for him. Garth was referred to the breeds across the river for
+better news. It was clearly intimated that all self-respecting white men
+had cast Mabyn off.</p>
+
+<p>Inquiring the means of crossing the river, the ferry was pointed out to
+Garth, a barge propelled with sweeps. It must be tracked up-stream for a
+quarter of a mile before starting across, to allow for the current, he
+was told. The trader offered to help him when he was ready. Garth
+thanking him, privately resolved to cross before the Settlement was
+astir next morning. He saw that his own reticence in answering questions
+inspired the three simultaneously with the idea that he was a detective
+from outside, in pursuit of Herbert Mabyn for some early sin; and he let
+it go at that.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Garth roused Natalie long before dawn; and they crossed the river by the
+first greenish light of the East. Garth handled one sweep, Natalie the
+other; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> their labour was great. The incorrigible Timoosis, who never
+neglected an opportunity to make trouble, balked furiously at the ferry;
+and, finally driven on board and tied, managed to work the other horses
+up to a high state of excitement during the passage.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, when they had almost made the other shore, he succeeded in
+breaking his halter; and, leaping over the stern, perversely struck out
+for the shore they had left. Cy and Caspar, horses of no character,
+blindly leaped after him. For a moment a dire disaster threatened; for
+Timoosis, borne down by the weight of his pack, could scarcely keep his
+head above water; and they thought they had lost both their horse and
+their camp equipment. But the self-contained Emmy, who had not budged
+during all the excitement, merely turned her head, and sent an imperious
+whinny in the direction of her offspring; whereupon Timoosis, with true
+coltish inconsistency, turned about, and came meekly swimming after the
+barge, followed by the other two. Since the shore was not above
+twenty-five yards off he managed to win it pack and all, and staggered
+up on the beach, chilled, exhausted, and much chastened in mind. Warned
+by previous experiences, they never trusted him with anything
+perishable, so the damage to his pack was slight.</p>
+
+<p>After an hour's travelling, they halted by the trail at sunrise to eat,
+and to dry out what had been wet. This part of the trail traversed the
+heavily wooded bottom-lands, before starting to climb the grassy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> steeps
+of the further bank. As they sat on a log discussing their bread and
+cocoa, a rollicking song came, as a sound comes fluctuating through the
+woods, now from this side, now from that, and curiously deadened. It
+finally resolved itself into the air of <i>Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay</i> with words
+in Cree. While it still seemed some distance away, suddenly the singer
+rode upon them; and reining up his horse, called the song into his
+surprised throat.</p>
+
+<p>He was the handsomest native they had met, a young fellow of twenty-odd,
+lean and broad-shouldered, with flashing black eyes and high-bridged
+nose. His stiff-brimmed "Stetson" was tilted at a dashing angle; he had
+a scarlet silk handkerchief about his throat; and he sat his horse like
+a young prince of the woods. Whether pure redskin or breed it was
+impossible for them to tell; certainly there was no visible evidence of
+a white admixture; but in spite of his strange and savage air, there was
+something instantly likeable about the young man&mdash;according to Natalie
+he was the first native they had met who seemed human. He rode a fine
+black horse as bravely accoutred as would become the captain of a
+round-up.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed disposed to be friendly; and Garth invited him to share their
+meal. As politeness demanded, he broke a small piece of bread, and drank
+some cocoa, which was plainly not at all to his taste. When he sat down
+he had the grace to take off his hat, something else they had not seen
+before in a native.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His name, he volunteered, was Gene Lafabe. Since his English was about
+on a par with Garth's Cree, communication was difficult. In his
+simplicity, the young man was continually forgetting they could not
+understand his language; and when Garth shook his head, only shouted the
+louder.</p>
+
+<p>"You know Herbert Mabyn?" Garth asked.</p>
+
+<p>Gene vigorously nodded his head, adding a stream of information, which,
+had they only understood, would have materially altered their subsequent
+line of action.</p>
+
+<p>Garth shook his head hopelessly. "Where is he?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Gene pointed north. "Clearwater Lake," he said; and in the twinkling of
+an eye, counted seventy-five with his ten fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the trail?" Garth asked.</p>
+
+<p>Gene shrugged. "Nomoya!" he said. "No trail!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth had an inspiration. "Can you take us there?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Considerable patience and good-humour were called for from both sides,
+in the arduous course of arriving at an understanding; but finally a
+bargain was struck. Gene, in addition to the credentials of his person,
+bore a highly satisfactory letter of recommendation from the company
+trader at the Crossing. Whatever his errand in the first place may have
+been, he never gave it another thought; and in half an hour blithely
+turned his horse's head, and took the lead on the trail.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gene looked at every considerable tree, every little gulley, and every
+rise in the ground with the eye of an old friend. In a mile or so, at a
+place marked in no way that Garth could see, he abruptly turned out of
+the trail; and led them with an air of certainty through the apparently
+trackless woods. The trees ended at the steep rise that marked the
+bottom of the northern bank; and thereafter they climbed the grass.</p>
+
+<p>By a devious route known to himself Gene led them through many little
+grassy ravines, and over ridges, gradually upward. There was no sense or
+order in the arrangement of the knolls and terraces and spurs of
+turf&mdash;the ground seemed to be pushed up anyhow, like bubbles on the
+surface of yeasty dough. For a while they would be swallowed in a
+cup-like hollow; then, surmounting a ridge, they would have a brief
+glimpse of the distant river behind. It was only when they reached the
+top that, looking back over the turbulent rounded masses of earth, they
+were able to comprehend the great height to which they had climbed.</p>
+
+<p>Reaching level ground, Gene with a shout set off at a lope in a bee line
+across the prairie; and Garth bringing up the packhorses in the rear,
+caused the sedate Emmy to put her best foot foremost. Meanwhile, with
+pocket-compass and memorandum book, he made notes of the route they
+took; and when opportunity offered tied a strip of white cotton to a
+bush. It was his intention to dismiss Gene before coming to Mabyn's hut;
+and he wished to be sure of the way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> back. The guide, comprehending what
+he was doing, gave him to understand that Emmy could bring them back
+over their own tracks&mdash;unless snow should fall. But Garth was neglecting
+no precautions.</p>
+
+<p>Garth and Natalie deplored to each other the inadequacy of their means
+of communication with their guide. The bright-eyed Gene had a hundred
+things to point out to them on the prairie, most of which they could
+only guess at. For one thing, he made them understand he was following
+in the tracks of two cayuses that had gone that way three days before.
+One was lame, he said, and the other dragged a travoise. All this he
+learned from certain marks in the grass, which the other two could not
+see at all. In all ways Gene proved himself a very pearl among guides.
+Garth, merely from watching him, learned as much trail-craft these two
+days as he had picked up during the weeks preceding; and Natalie
+confessed that his cooking put her utterly to shame.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the energy of their pace that they reached the last waterhole
+before coming to Clearwater Lake early next afternoon. Here Garth
+decided to camp; for he had determined with Natalie to time their
+arrival at Mabyn's hut for the morning; so that after the briefest stay,
+they could immediately start back. Clearwater Lake was only three miles
+distant; and Gene was able to point out a poplar bluff marking the rise
+behind which it lay.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Garth nor Natalie obtained much sleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> that night; only Gene,
+wrapped in his rabbit-skin robe beyond the fire, slept the sleep of the
+savage or the child. They were all astir at dawn; and after eating, they
+parted; Gene careering south without a care on his mind; while Garth and
+Natalie turned their apprehensive faces toward the lake. What they were
+to find there they did not know; but intuition warned them it would be
+sufficiently painful.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the brow of the last hill, and the lake stretched
+vividly below them, they had no eyes for the loveliness of the prospect.
+The little hut at the head of the water far to the left was the first
+thing they saw; and it was charged with a significance that obliterated
+everything else. Facing the early sunlight it stood revealed with
+startling distinctness; and even at the distance had a ghastly look;
+gray, artificial and decayed in the midst of the mellow autumn
+loveliness.</p>
+
+<p>"I will picket the packhorses down at the edge of the water," Garth
+said; "and we'll ride on without them. It will provide us with an
+obvious excuse to return immediately."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie scarcely heard. Her eyes were fixed on the distant shack. "What
+do you suppose it hides from us?" she whispered. "Death, misery, or
+disgrace?"</p>
+
+<p>Garth could scarcely forbear groaning in the pain of his solicitude for
+her. "Oh, Natalie!" he said hoarsely, "I haven't done right to expose
+you to this!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I made you!" she said quickly. "Besides, it's not a question of right
+or wrong. As you said we would, we have only done the best we could,
+under the circumstances that arose."</p>
+
+<p>"At least let me ride on ahead a little," he begged. "You stay with the
+outfit. I will hurry back."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "I couldn't stand the suspense," she said simply.
+"Do not be afraid on my account," she added; "merely looking with my
+outward eyes at something that always faces me within won't hurt me.
+Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>But presently she reined up her pony again, and turning a pair of
+brimming eyes on him, extended her hand. "Garth!" she murmured, "I&mdash;I
+would like to thank you&mdash;but I can't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't!" he begged.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever we find down there," she said wistfully, "it can't make any
+difference, can it? We will still be the same partners of the trail?"</p>
+
+<p>Garth went pale to his lips&mdash;but he contrived to smile at her. He took
+her hand and looked at her full. "Until death," he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She drew her hand away, with a deep breath. "Come on," she said. "We've
+got to face it!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE MEETING</p>
+
+<p>The spot of the lake shore where Garth picketed the two horses was
+something under two miles from Mabyn's hut. The way led among the trees
+which filled this part of the valley of the lake; and underfoot they
+could distinguish traces of an old trail. The growth ended abruptly at
+the edge of a small, dry watercourse, which came down to the lake; and
+issuing into the open here, the riders beheld the dreaded goal of their
+long journey immediately before them.</p>
+
+<p>As they crossed the stones, they were ready to fancy they could hear,
+each the beating of the other's heart; and the scene before them was
+bitten into their brains, to endure hideously vivid and minute while
+life endured. The shack presented a three-quarter view, front and side.
+It topped a gentle, uneven acclivity of grass, rising from the
+watercourse at its side; while in front, the ground extended level a
+hundred feet to the edge of a cut-bank. This bank rose out of the lake
+sheer and loamy, to the height of a cottage roof; and over the edge hung
+a tangled fringe of grass-roots.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Desolation was the cry of it all; winters upon winters had bleached the
+logs of the shack silvery like old hair; the chimney had fallen; and all
+four quarters of glass in the single window were out. At one time the
+slope between the hut and the bed of the stream had evidently been a
+theatre of industry; for the ground was pitted and hummocked and rutted;
+but long ago the grass had indifferently muffled it over, like graves in
+an old cemetery. In the centre of this waste stood, the picture of
+dejection, an Indian-bred cayuse, miserable burlesque of the equine
+species, no bigger than a donkey, and incredibly hairy and misshapen.
+His back was galled; and one leg, which he painfully favoured, puffed to
+treble its size at the hock. Even the great cottonwood trees springing
+beyond the hut, with their shattered branches, and blotched and greenish
+trunks, breathed decay. An ancient dugout, lying at the mouth of the
+watercourse, was, like everything else, rotting and seamed.</p>
+
+<p>And on the bench at the door of the hut sat the evil genius of the
+scene; a man with his legs sprawling in front of him, and his head
+fallen over and back against the wall. He made no move at their
+approach; and when they came close, they saw that he slept. Pitilessly
+revealed in the strong sunlight, he made a spectacle at which the most
+indifferent stranger would have shuddered and sickened&mdash;and it was
+reserved for the woman who had exalted him in her maiden's heart, to see
+him then. His mouth hung open; he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> breathed stertorously; and the flies,
+buzzing in and out of the open door beside him, crawled at will over his
+ashen face. That his chin was freshly shaven, and his hair brushed,
+added to the ghastliness. The whole picture was horribly vivid; the
+littlest details of it struck on the retinas of the two observers like
+blows&mdash;the oblong patch of sunlight cleaving the gloom of the shack
+inside the door; six muskrat pelts above the man's head, tacked to the
+logs to dry; an old foul pipe with a silver mounting, half fallen from
+his relaxed fingers and spilling ashes on the bench; his old-fashioned
+rifle leaning against the door-frame. Garth could have furnished the
+size, the style and the make of that gun.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie turned a stony face to Garth. "It is he," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Garth thought of an old photograph she had shown him of a dark-haired
+youth sitting on a horse, with a charming, imperious grace of body and
+feature, in which there was something godlike and unanswerable; and
+looking at this wreck of a man, toothless, bald and livid, he was struck
+with awe.</p>
+
+<p>"You have seen," he whispered to Natalie. "Let us ride back."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "I must say what I came for," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you dismount?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie shuddered. "Never, here!" she whispered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In a moment she had commanded herself again. "Please speak to him," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn!" called Garth peremptorily.</p>
+
+<p>The man's lids parted. Natalie was directly in front of him. As his
+sleep-stupefied eyes slowly took her in, he raised himself to an upright
+position, and struck his eyeballs sharply with his knuckles.</p>
+
+<p>Garth instinctively drew away a little.</p>
+
+<p>"A white woman!" muttered the man, lost in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie, her head slightly averted, sat her horse like a carven woman.</p>
+
+<p>Fear grew apace with wonder in Mabyn's eyes; his breath quickened; he
+ceaselessly passed his hand in front of his face. "Natalie!" he
+muttered, still in the toneless voice of one who sleeps. "Oh, my God!
+It's Natalie!"</p>
+
+<p>Grasping the edge of the bench, he pulled himself to his feet; and took
+a few uncertain steps toward her. He put out his hand fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie sharply reined back her horse. "Don't touch me!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>It broke the spell that held him&mdash;but not wholly. His hands dropped to
+his sides; a saner light appeared in his eyes; and he looked all around,
+as if to convince himself of the realness of his surroundings. On Garth
+his eyes lingered stupidly for a moment; then impatiently returned to
+Natalie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If it's you, how did you get here?" he asked quietly enough&mdash;still
+bemused.</p>
+
+<p>"I came over the prairie, as every one comes," she said sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn frowned. "I'm wide awake," he said irritably. "I know where I am.
+I fell asleep on the bench half an hour ago&mdash;but," his voice deepened
+and swelled on the note of awe, "<i>you</i>, Natalie! You or your wraith!
+I&mdash;I can't take it in!" The faded eyes bolted, and swept wearily and
+unseeingly over the lake.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie winced every time he spoke her name. "Try to collect yourself,"
+she said coldly. "There is no doubt of its being I."</p>
+
+<p>"The voice too!" he muttered, struck with the new thought. His eyes
+returned to her. "Natalie&mdash;and not changed at all!" he murmured
+dreamily. "But more beautiful!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you please!" said Natalie haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>He still stood looking at her with something the air of a bewildered
+child, but more of the aged lunatic. "The first time I saw her, she was
+on a horse," he said in his dull voice. "But she was better dressed.
+Where did you get those clothes?" he asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie shot an appealing glance at Garth.</p>
+
+<p>He, in his over-mastering disgust of the man, could not put away the
+thought that there was something feigned in this excessive bewilderment.
+"Come to yourself, Mabyn!" he said sharply. "We can't stop here!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mabyn darted a startled, spiteful glance at the new speaker, and without
+another word, turned and went back to the bench, where he sat, burying
+his face in his hands. Natalie and Garth looked at each other, scarcely
+knowing how to act. But presently Mabyn lifted his head again; and,
+spying his pipe where it had fallen, picked it up, and attentively
+knocked out what remained of the ashes in the bowl.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie thought she might venture to address him again. "I have
+something important to tell you," she began.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn darted a queer, furtive look at her; shame, suspicion,
+obsequiousness and a sudden, reborn passion all had a part in it. "Won't
+you shake hands with me?" he asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie drew the long breath that invokes Patience and looked elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>"You've changed toward me," the man whined.</p>
+
+<p>Indignation suddenly reddened her cheeks, and she levelled her blue eyes
+upon him in a glance that should have struck to his soul.</p>
+
+<p>But it failed to penetrate very far. "I know I've treated you badly," he
+went on. "I was coming out in the spring, though; just as soon as I got
+things straight. I've worked like a son-of-a-gun too, but luck has
+always been against me." His voice gathered assurance from his own
+excuses.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind that now," said Natalie. "Please listen to what I have to
+say."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the man, shrinking from matter hateful to his ears, strove to divert
+her. He struck his forehead with his knuckles, and jumped up. "By Gad!
+What's the matter with me!" he cried. "I never asked you in! It's a
+wretched hole, but such as it is&mdash;&mdash;" He had turned to the door. Sudden
+recollection chopped off the speech midway; and he turned a furtive,
+frightened face over his shoulder to Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"N-never mind," he gabbled hurriedly. "Don't come in! It's not fit to
+receive you! It's better out here!" Little beads of sweat were springing
+out on his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>His whole bearing had been so wild and stupefied since his waking, that
+they attached small importance to this display of terror. Natalie
+patiently essayed to speak again; but again he interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>His face cleared. "You've left your outfit somewhere back on the trail,"
+he said eagerly. "I'll go back with you; and we can talk things over
+quietly there!" He actually started toward the watercourse, walking with
+jerky, uneven steps.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie made no move to follow. "I will say what I have to say here,"
+she spoke after him.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn was voluble, scarcely coherent in his incontinent desire to take
+her away from the hut. Natalie waited, letting him talk himself out.
+Finally compelled to give in, he returned with strange, apprehensive
+glances around the hut, and over the summits of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> hills behind. Garth
+thought his brain was beginning to be affected by a solitary life.</p>
+
+<p>However, he now listened patiently enough.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not written to your mother or to me in many months," began
+Natalie coldly; "and your letters for three years past have given us no
+information. Your mother's whole thought is of you; and through her
+anxiety and suspense she is worn to a shadow of what she was; the
+doctors tell her she has a mortal disease that must soon prevail."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of herself Natalie's voice softened as she delivered her
+pitiful plea; but it was not from any kindness for him. "She has been
+very kind to me all these years," she went on, "and I, to ease her what
+I could of the torment of her mind during her last days, volunteered to
+go with her to find you. Her age and her infirmities prevented her from
+coming any farther than Prince George. I have been fortunate in finding
+friends who have assisted me the rest of the way. I have come to beg
+you, on behalf of your mother, to let her see you before she dies. She
+is waiting in Prince George. She bade me tell you that neither poverty,
+misfortune nor disgrace could abate any of her love for you; that she
+would die happy if she might once more press your hand against her
+cheek."</p>
+
+<p>Garth watched Mabyn narrowly while Natalie was speaking. He saw by the
+man's rapt expression that her voice charmed his senses, while the
+purport of what she said was wholly lost on his consciousness. When<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> her
+voice broke a little at the close, Mabyn's lips parted, and his breath
+came quicker&mdash;but it was no tenderness for a devoted parent, only a
+passion purely selfish, that caused his lack-lustre eyes to glitter
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"These letters," concluded Natalie, drawing them forth as she spoke,
+"three of which I have brought from the post office, and the fourth
+which she gave me herself, will let you know, better than I can tell
+you, what she feels."</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn took the letters; and thrusting them carelessly in his pocket&mdash;one
+fell to the ground and lay there unheeded&mdash;snatched back at Natalie's
+hand, and attempted to retain it. Reining her horse back, she wrenched
+it free.</p>
+
+<p>A little shame reached the seat of Mabyn's consciousness. He reddened.
+"I'm not a leper," he muttered. "You came to me of your own free will,
+didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Build nothing on that!" said Natalie instantly and clearly. "I allow no
+claim on me!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn quickly changed to obsequiousness. "I don't want to quarrel with
+you, Natalie," he whined. "Especially not after what you've just done!"</p>
+
+<p>He went to his bench again; and sat heavily. Again he struck his
+forehead with his knuckles. "Gad! I can't yet realize it is you that is
+here!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie looked at Garth as much as to say that she had accomplished what
+she came for.</p>
+
+<p>The look was not lost on Mabyn. He sprang up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> "I'll do just what you
+want!" he said hurriedly. "I'll start for Prince George at
+once&mdash;to-day&mdash;this minute! God knows there's nothing to keep me here!
+You have a spare horse, I suppose. I've nothing but that galled cayuse
+and another as bad!" He uttered his cracked laugh in a tone that was
+intended to be ingratiating. "That's the advantage of poverty! I've no
+preparations to make; so lead on!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie paused irresolutely. This was a contingency she had not
+foreseen. She shuddered at the possibilities it opened up. In her
+perplexity she looked again at Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"We will leave you a horse," said he curtly. "And your passage out from
+the lake Settlement will be arranged for."</p>
+
+<p>"And what money you need," added Natalie in a low tone, and blushing
+painfully.</p>
+
+<p>But Mabyn's feelings were not hurt. "I can go with you just as well," he
+blustered.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie looked at Garth once more.</p>
+
+<p>"You may follow us as soon as you choose," said Garth coolly. "We do not
+desire your company on the way."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time Mabyn appeared to recognize Garth's presence on the
+scene. He turned a baleful eye on him; and his lips curled back over his
+gums. "Who are <i>you</i>?" he snarled, adding an oath.</p>
+
+<p>"That is neither here nor there," said Garth. "I speak for Miss Bland."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Mabyn, you mean," sneered the other, thinking to crush him with
+the information.</p>
+
+<p>"She does not use that name," returned Garth imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn turned furiously to Natalie. "Who is this man?" he cried, his
+cracked voice sliding into falsetto; "this sleek young sprig that rides
+alone with you through the country! I demand to know! I have a right to
+know!"</p>
+
+<p>"I admit no right!" Natalie said firmly.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, beside himself with jealous rage, no longer knew what he said.
+"You won't explain!" he cried. "You <i>can't</i> explain! Here's a nasty
+situation for a married woman!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth's self-control, stretched on the rack through all this scene,
+suddenly snapped in twain. Temper with Garth took the form of laughter;
+mocking, dangerous laughter, that issued startlingly from his grave
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed now. "You scoundrel!" he said in cool, incisive tones&mdash;though
+he was not a whit less blinded by passion than Mabyn himself&mdash;"after the
+kind of life you've been leading up here, have you still the assurance
+to lay a claim upon <i>her</i>! And to cast a reflection on <i>her</i> good name!
+Have you no mirror to see what you are? Go in the lake, then, and see
+the vile record written on your face!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn was staggered. Garth's terrible scorn penetrated the last
+wrappings of the warmly nurtured ego<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> within. He shot a startled glance
+at Garth; and from Garth to the hut and behind, as if wondering how much
+he knew.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was not through with him. He slipped his stirrups, preparatory to
+leaping off his horse. Natalie trembled at the quiet man's new aspect.</p>
+
+<p>"Garth!" she entreated urgently.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of her voice recalled him to himself. Settling back in his
+saddle, he abruptly turned his horse, and went off a little way,
+struggling to regain his self-command.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, misunderstanding, was vastly lifted up by this word of Natalie's,
+and the writhing ego within hastened to repair the horrid breach Garth
+had made. He approached her, hidden by her horse from Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Natalie!" he gabbled whiningly; "don't listen to him. He's a low
+cur! But he can't make trouble between you and me! Send him away!
+Natalie, I seem to have acted badly; but I can explain everything!
+Circumstances were all against me! In my heart I've never swerved from
+you! I dream of you every night in my lonesomeness! Wherever I look I
+see your face before my eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the old trick of passionate speech; Natalie remembered the very
+words of old; but the man&mdash;she averted her head from the hideous
+spectacle. She was afraid to move or cry out, sure that Garth in his
+present mind would kill him if he heard.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, conceiving nothing of the sublime irony of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> the figure he made,
+continued to plead. "Natalie, don't turn away from me! You took me for
+better or worse, remember! You found me at a disadvantage to-day; I
+don't look like this ordinarily. And you can make whatever you like of
+me! Remember the old days at home! I am the same man&mdash;Bert&mdash;your Bert!
+Look&mdash;he can't see us&mdash;I kneel to you as I did then!"</p>
+
+<p>And down he went on his knees, stretching out his arms to her.</p>
+
+<p>There was an odd, slight sound behind him. They both looked&mdash;and froze
+in the attitude of looking. Garth from his station, seeing the new look
+of horror overspread Natalie's face, spurred to join her.</p>
+
+<p>There, clinging to the corner of the cabin for support, stood the figure
+of a woman. Her brown skin was blanched to a livid yellow; and her eyes
+were the eyes of one dead from a shock. She swayed forward from the
+waist as if her backbone could no longer support her. At her feet a tin
+pail emptied wild cherries on the ground.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter w600"><a name="gu03" id="gu03" href="images/hu03.jpg">
+<img class="noborder" src="images/iu03.jpg" alt="There, clinging to the corner of the cabin for support, stood the figure of a woman" />
+</a><span class="caption">There, clinging to the corner of the cabin for support, stood the figure of a woman</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mabyn scrambled to his feet, shamed, chagrined, furious. "What do you
+want around here?" he cried brutally&mdash;even now seeking to outface her.</p>
+
+<p>The piteous, stricken girl moistened her lips; and essayed more than
+once to speak, before any words came. "'Erbe't, who is this woman?" she
+said quite simply at last.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that to you?" he blustered roughly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> thinking to beat her down;
+perhaps to kill her outright with cruelty. "This is my wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! no!" whispered Natalie, sick with the sight of so much misery.</p>
+
+<p>It is doubtful if the girl heard her. She tottered forward; and seized
+and clung to Mabyn's arm. Her breast was heaved on hard, quick pants
+like a wounded animal's; and her eyes were as frantic, and as inhuman.</p>
+
+<p>"'Erbe't, who am I?" she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, seeing that Natalie heard and understood, beside himself, and
+reckless with rage, flung out his arm, throwing her heavily to the
+ground. "You! damn you!" he cried. "You're just my&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie, with a low cry of horror, instinctively clapped her heels to
+her horse's ribs, and set off down the hill. Garth wheeled after her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stay&mdash;stay and help her!" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"You come first!" said Garth grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, as Natalie turned, sprang after her; and running desperately,
+managed to cling to her stirrup. Casting off the last vestiges of
+manliness he wept and prayed her to wait for him. Her horse, Caspar,
+kicked out wildly, and struck him off. He lay on the ground sobbing and
+cursing; striving to drag himself along with clawing hands.</p>
+
+<p>Just before they gained the watercourse, Garth looked over his shoulder;
+and his heart leapt into his throat. The brown woman was reaching for
+Mabyn's rifle. He shouted a warning; and desperately strove<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+to throw his horse behind Natalie. But it was too late. Hard upon his
+voice, the shot rang. A strange, low cry broke from Natalie; and she
+reeled in her saddle. Garth, spurring ahead, grasped Caspar's bridle,
+and caught her from falling. A pang, far more dreadful than the hurt of
+a bullet, smote his own breast.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">NATALIE WOUNDED</p>
+
+<p>The frightened horses struggled over the watercourse, and gained the
+trees before Garth, hampered as he was, succeeded in drawing their heads
+together, and stopping them. Slipping out of the saddle without
+loosening his grasp of Natalie, he lifted her off, ever careful to
+shield her from possible further shots with his own body. He remembered
+Mabyn's was a single-shot weapon; and he counted on the time it would
+take the Indian woman to obtain ammunition, and reload. Quickly and
+tenderly laying Natalie on the ground under shelter of a stump, he
+unslung his own rifle. But as he dropped to his knee, and raised it, he
+saw the woman on the edge of the cut-bank swing the stock of her gun
+around her head, and send the weapon spinning out over the water.
+Meanwhile Mabyn was running up the hill toward her with significant
+action. No immediate further danger threatened. Garth put the pair out
+of his mind, and bent over Natalie. What happened to the woman at
+Mabyn's hands was a matter of indifference to him now.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Natalie's left arm hung useless; and a soaking crimson stain spread
+broadly on her sleeve between elbow and shoulder. Her face had gone
+chalky white, her eyes were half closed, and her teeth were set
+painfully in her blue nether lip. To see his sparkling, vivid Natalie
+brought so low, was a sight to open all the doors of Garth's brain to
+madness. His heart swelled suffocatingly with rage and grief, but there
+was no time for that, when every faculty he possessed must be
+concentrated on saving her; and forcing it back, he picked her up again
+with infinite tenderness. His first and instinctive thought was to
+return and seize the hut; so that he might at least have a roof to cover
+her. He suspected the other two were now without arms; but even if they
+had a weapon, he had a better one; was a sure shot; and was on his
+guard.</p>
+
+<p>At the first move he made in the direction of the hut, Natalie, whom he
+had thought unconscious, divined his intention.</p>
+
+<p>"Garth! Not in his house!" she murmured feverishly. "I will not go in
+there! I will not!"</p>
+
+<p>He paused in a painful perplexity. "But dearest, there is no other
+house," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Put me down in the open air," she begged. "It would suffocate me! I
+will not endure it!"</p>
+
+<p>So Garth turned back among the trees. He strode over the dead leaves and
+the pine needles to the lake shore. Here, between the willows that grew
+thickly at the water's verge, and the heavier timber, extended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> an open
+strip of grass, still fresh and green. He laid his burden down upon it;
+and, rolling up his coat, put it under her head for a pillow.</p>
+
+<p>He hastily cut away her sleeve, exposing the injury. The ball had passed
+through, making a clean opening where it entered, and a jagged wound
+whence it issued. It was clear the bone was broken; but from the
+character of the bleeding, even Garth could see that the artery was
+uninjured. He brought water from the lake in his hat, and gently washed
+the wound; but even in this he doubted if he did right; for the water
+was cold&mdash;but he had nothing in which to heat it. The best he could do
+was to take the chill out of it by pressing the handkerchief between his
+hot hands.</p>
+
+<p>Everything they possessed that might have been of service was two miles
+off; and might just as well have been a hundred; for Garth could not
+think of leaving her; and he shrank from the thought of inflicting the
+agony it would cause her to be carried so far. And even suppose they
+gained their own camp, the situation would be little improved; for how
+was he in his ignorance to undertake the delicate task of setting the
+shattered bone; of improvising splints and bandages; and supplying, what
+a glance at the ugly wound showed to be needful, antiseptics? A surgeon,
+whatever his skill, rarely dares trust the steadiness of his hand on the
+bodies of those he loves; what then was Garth to do, who had no skill at
+all?</p>
+
+<p>He had his dark hour then, tasting ultimate despair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> He sat beside her,
+gripping his dull head between his hands, and striving desperately to
+contrive, where there was nothing to contrive with. Oh, the pity and the
+wrong of it, that it was <i>she</i> who must be hurt! he thought; and how
+joyfully he would have taken it himself to relieve her. <i>He</i> bled
+inwardly; and the physical pain of the most hideous wounds could not
+equal the agony he experienced in his helplessness.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the wound momentarily changed. The arm began to swell and
+darken; and Garth knew there was no time to lose. He made one attempt to
+proceed, kneading the flesh of the arm very gently to explore the broken
+ends of the bone&mdash;but Natalie's piteous cry of pain completely unmanned
+him. He desisted, shaking like a leaf, and sick with compassion; and he
+knew he would never be able to do it.</p>
+
+<p>What seemed like an age passed; though it was no more than a few
+minutes. He was bending over her, doing what little he could to ease her
+pain; and with knotted brows rapidly considering, and rejecting, one
+after another, the desperate expedients that suggested themselves.
+Suddenly looking up he perceived among the trees, at the distance of a
+few paces, Rina standing. Hot anger instantly welled up in his breast,
+and made a red blur before his eyes. Rina's sex was no protection to her
+then. He picked up his gun.</p>
+
+<p>Observing the action, Rina mutely spread her hands, palms outward. Her
+entire aspect had changed; the storm of passion had passed; and she
+stood con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>trite and sullen. It was impossible for the blindest passion
+to shoot at a figure in such an attitude. Garth lowered his gun; but he
+still kept it across his knees, and his face did not relax. The woman
+was loathsome to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" he demanded coldly.</p>
+
+<p>Rina came a little closer. "I sorry," she said sulkily&mdash;like a child
+unwillingly confessing a fault. "I t'ink I go looney for a while. I not
+hear right. I t'ink she try to tak' my 'osban' from me!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth glanced at the suffering Natalie with contracted brows. "That's
+all very well!" he said bitterly. "But it can't undo what's done!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can mak' her well, maybe," said Rina, still affecting indifference.
+"I know what to do. My mot'er, she teach me. If you let me look at her,
+I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>A wild hope sprang up in Garth's breast. If the girl were only able to
+help Natalie, his hate of her could very well content itself a while.
+But dare he trust her? With keen, hard eyes he sought to read her face.
+Her own eyes avoided his; and she made a picture of savage indifference;
+but as he looked he saw two great tears roll down her cheeks. In his
+desperate situation it was well worth the risk.</p>
+
+<p>Raising his gun, he said coldly: "You may look at her. If you try to
+injure her, I will send a bullet through your head."</p>
+
+<p>Receiving the permission, Rina came forward,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> careless of the
+threatening gun; and dropped to her knees beside Natalie. She examined
+the wound on both sides; and felt of the fracture with delicate fingers.
+To judge of the normal position of the bones, she manipulated her own
+arm. Garth never took his eyes from her; but she was tenderer with the
+patient than he could have been.</p>
+
+<p>Finally she raised a mask-like face to Garth. "I can fix it," she said.
+"If you let me."</p>
+
+<p>Whatever her private feelings were, she had a confident air, that could
+not but convey some assurance to him. He nodded silently; after what he
+had suffered, he scarcely dared believe in such good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Rina quickly rose. "You mak' a fire to heat water," she said coolly. "I
+go to bring everyt'ing."</p>
+
+<p>With the words, she was gone among the trees; and Garth, overjoyed to be
+able to do something with his hands, hastened to build a fire.</p>
+
+<p>Before he really expected her, she was back with what she needed, a pot
+for heating the water, a basin, several kinds of herbs, some strips of
+yellowed linen for bandages, a blanket and a knife. While the water was
+heating, she cut a deep segment of the smooth white bark of a young
+poplar for a splint&mdash;the curve of it was judged to a nicety to fit
+Natalie's arm. During the operation of setting the bone, Garth watched
+her unswervingly, clenching his teeth to bear the spectacle of Natalie's
+agony. For every pang of hers he suffered a sharper; the sweat coursed
+down his face.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But at last it was over; the wound washed and fomented with bruised
+leaves, the splint fitted snug, and the whole neatly bandaged. Natalie,
+wrapped in the blanket, soon fell into the sleep of exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>Rina looked at the pale and shaken Garth with an odd expression. "If you
+have whiskey, better tak' a drink," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Garth had his flask; and he obeyed without question.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the operation, Rina had preserved an admirable, professional
+air, intent and impersonal; and when necessary she had brusquely ordered
+Garth to help her. Now that it was all over her face altered; she
+continued to kneel at Natalie's side, gazing at her soft hair, and the
+whiteness of her skin with a kind of sad and jealous wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Garth on the alert at the change, which portended he knew not what
+explosion of passion in the savage woman's breast, ordered her from
+Natalie's side. She obeyed, resuming her sullen mask, but lingered near
+him, plainly full of some question she desired to ask. He observed for
+the first, a purpling bruise above her temple. Rina saw his eyes upon
+it, and her colour changed.</p>
+
+<p>"I run against a tree," she hastily volunteered.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time her hand stole to her throat to hide certain marks on
+its dusky roundness. Garth knew instinctively that she was loyally
+lying. Mabyn had beaten her. He wondered how far the wish to serve the
+woman she had injured was Rina's own impulse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> and how far she had been
+forced to it by Mabyn. He began dimly to conceive that the red woman had
+good qualities.</p>
+
+<p>At last the question on her breast was spoken. "Who is she?" she asked,
+pointing sullenly at the sleeping Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>Garth rapidly considered what he should answer. He could not pretend to
+himself that he had forgiven the woman; but since Natalie's pain was
+mitigated he was cooler; and his sense of justice forced it home on him
+that Rina, too, had been through her ordeal. In his present desperate
+situation, his only chance of assistance lay in her&mdash;Mabyn was an
+egomaniac, and utterly irresponsible. Frankness had served Garth in good
+stead before this; and finally he told her the plain truth in such terms
+that she could understand.</p>
+
+<p>"This feeling Mabyn has for her," he insisted in the end, "is only a
+passing one. If we can get her out of his sight all will go on as
+before."</p>
+
+<p>Rina nodded. Her inscrutable face softened a little, he thought. "I
+on'erstan' now," she said quietly. "So I not go crazy wit' t'inking
+about it."</p>
+
+<p>Garth was glad he had told her.</p>
+
+<p>Rina stood studying him with her strange and secret air. "You love her
+ver' moch," she said suddenly, pointing to Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>Garth bent over the sleeping figure in a way that answered her better
+than words.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I t'ink she love you too," said Rina gravely. "When I 'urt her, she try
+not to cry because it 'urt you so bad."</p>
+
+<p>A slow red crept under Garth's skin. He hated to betray himself under
+the eyes of the red woman; and he bustled about, averting his face from
+her. "When can she be moved?" he asked, brusquely changing the subject.</p>
+
+<p>Rina shook her head. "I not know," she said. "Maybe she have fever.
+Three, four week maybe."</p>
+
+<p>Garth's heart sunk heavily, as he considered their scanty supplies, the
+approach of winter&mdash;and, more dangerous still, the fruitful
+opportunities of conflict the weeks would offer to four souls so
+strangely opposed, and so strangely bound together in the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>"What is Mabyn doing now?" he asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>Rina's face instantly became as blank as plaster. "I not talk to you
+about him," she said coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was conscious of receiving a rebuke.</p>
+
+<p>"But I help you," she added presently. "I go bring your outfit in."</p>
+
+<p>Before she went, she brewed a draught for Natalie with some of the herbs
+she had brought; and instructed Garth to administer it when she woke.
+For an instant all Garth's suspicions returned; and he looked at her
+hard. Rina, divining his thought, coolly lifted the pail to her lips,
+and drank of it. Once more he felt himself rebuked.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, his thoughts reverted to Mabyn. What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> would he have been
+plotting all this time? he wondered; what stand would he take in this
+new posture of affairs? It was too much to hope, he decided, that one so
+selfish and so jealous could be persuaded to sink his animosity against
+Garth, for the purpose of serving Natalie while she lay injured. Garth's
+business had made him more or less familiar with the workings of the
+diseased ego; and he was convinced that Mabyn, if for nothing else,
+hated him intolerably for having been the spectator of his repulse by
+Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>As time passed, Natalie began to stir and mutter in her sleep and Garth,
+bending over her, fearful of fever, put the man out of his head.
+Returning to her from the edge of the lake, with cloths wrung out of
+cold water, he found her with wide eyes and flushed cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Send him away! Send him away!" she muttered. "I cannot have him near
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>At first he thought her mind wandered, but following the direction of
+her eyes, he saw the figure of a man skulking among the trees; and his
+face grimmed. Soothing her, he offered Rina's drink; and it had an
+immediate effect. She dropped off to sleep again. Then Garth picked up
+his gun and strode toward Mabyn.</p>
+
+<p>The man waited for him with an air oddly mixed of fear and bravado. As
+Garth came close he smiled in a way that he intended to be
+ingratiating&mdash;but Mabyn's smile only rendered him more hideous.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> Garth's
+first look made sure that both his hands were empty.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything I can do?" Mabyn asked with apparent solicitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, keep away from here," returned Garth curtly. "If I catch you
+within a hundred yards of my camp, I'll wing you so you won't move again
+as long as we're here."</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn assumed an aggrieved expression. "You needn't take that tone," he
+grumbled. "I came in friendliness. I want to have a talk with you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm listening," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn twisted uneasily. "Damn it! How can a man make friendly advances
+when you're standing over him with a gun!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Say what you've got to say, or clear out," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The aggrieved air proving ineffectual, Mabyn substituted offended
+silence; offered to go; and came back. "Well, look here!" he said at
+last. "This is it. Here are the three of us up here&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Four," amended Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, four if you like," said Mabyn. "We're stuck here together. We
+can't afford to quarrel. We've got to have some working agreement."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all?" said Garth uncompromisingly.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn looked around with the air of a much-tried man, appealing to the
+bystanders&mdash;that they were only indifferent trees, rather spoiled the
+effect. "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> wouldn't take this from any man if it wasn't that I was bent
+on avoiding trouble," he blustered.</p>
+
+<p>Garth suppressed the scornful inclination to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," began Mabyn afresh, with a reasonable air. "I came to offer
+you the shack for Natalie. She can't sleep in the open in her
+condition."</p>
+
+<p>"Much obliged," said Garth coolly. "I intended to take it in the first
+place. But Miss Bland refused to allow herself to be carried there."</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn's eyes bolted. His control over his facial muscles was imperfect;
+and the struggle between the open character he desired to convey, and
+the secret feelings that tortured him, was plain. "What are you going to
+do?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Build her a house," said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, turning his back, appeared to be considering.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all you have to say?" asked Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The other turned a face of obstinate friendliness and good will. "Look
+here&mdash;" he began all over. "I don't know your name&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Garth informed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Pevensey, I'm sorry for what passed this morning. I regret what I
+said. I was only half awake; and scarcely knew what I did. Will you
+overlook it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Talk is cheap," said Garth guardedly. "I will be guided by your actions
+henceforth." But his voice was milder; for an apology could not help but
+speak to his sense of generosity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, encouraged, amplified his penitent, ingratiating air. "As to the
+future," he said, "I mean to show you. You'll soon be satisfied!" He
+came closer. "In the meantime let's make a truce! Shake hands on it!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth thoroughly distrusted the man; but he could see no harm to Natalie
+in accepting his offer, while privately determining to relax none of his
+vigilance. It was only too true, as Mabyn had said; neither could afford
+to quarrel. Mabyn had no gun, and Garth could not leave Natalie's side
+for an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"I am willing," said Garth readily. "But it's understood this doesn't
+affect what I said before. You are not to come within a hundred yards of
+this camp!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn shrugged, as at the unworthiness of Garth's suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>"You agree to it?" Garth persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" said Mabyn&mdash;a shade too readily. "Shake!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth shifted his gun; and advanced to take Mabyn's hand. The man could
+not keep an ugly little gleam from showing in his shifty gray eye; and
+Garth stopped abruptly. Mabyn sneered. Garth, fired by one of the
+imperious impulses of the blood of youth, strode forward and grasped the
+extended hand defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>He saw instantly his mistake. Mabyn's face was suddenly transfigured by
+the deadly hatred he had long repressed. His right hand closed on
+Garth's like a vice; and at the same time a knife slipped out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> of his
+sleeve into the other hand. He jerked the surprised Garth halfway round;
+and aimed a blow between his shoulders. Garth was oddly conscious of the
+fresh marks of the whetstone on the blade of the knife. With the
+incredible swiftness of our subconscious moves, he dropped his useless
+gun; and twisting his body around, flung up his free hand, and warded
+the descending blow. Seizing Mabyn's wrist, he flung himself forward to
+bear the other back.</p>
+
+<p>It was all very brief. Mabyn, braced to receive Garth's weight, held his
+ground. Inspired with a febrile strength, he enjoyed a temporary
+advantage. Unable to reach Garth's back, he thrust desperately at his
+face, his neck&mdash;but only stabbed the air. They were locked together with
+their arms crossed&mdash;surely as strange a posture as ever men fought in!
+But Mabyn had staked all on the first blow; and that failing, there
+could be but one result. His fictitious strength suddenly failing, he
+collapsed in Garth's arms. Garth wrenched his hand free and hurled him
+to the ground, where he lay, livid and sobbing for breath. The attack
+had been contrived with devilish cunning; but every design this man
+undertook in life was foredoomed to failure.</p>
+
+<p>Garth secured the knife; and stood looking down at the broken wretch,
+with strong waves of disgust welling over him. He laughed briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"Too contemptible to kill!" he said; and turned on his heel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE CLUE TO RINA</p>
+
+<p>Rina brought all four horses handily through the wood, bringing up the
+rear on the back of old Cy. She slipped off beside Garth, and looked in
+the direction where Natalie lay.</p>
+
+<p>"Still sleeping," Garth said.</p>
+
+<p>As Rina's eyes fell on him, they suddenly widened; and plain fear broke
+through the mask of her face. "'Erbe't been here!" she said
+breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?" he said in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>Rina pointed to his belt. "You got his knife!" she said. "How you get
+his knife?"</p>
+
+<p>"He tried to murder me with it," said Garth, watching her face narrowly.</p>
+
+<p>Rina had no more thought for Natalie. "Where is he?" she said
+agitatedly. "W'at you do to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I let him go," Garth said carelessly. "Murder is not exactly in my
+line."</p>
+
+<p>"He try to kill you an' you let him go!" she breathed incredulously.
+Plainly such magnanimity was outside her ken. She walked away from him,
+considering it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Presently she came back with a swift glide. "You got to promise me not
+to 'urt 'Erbe't!" she said, threateningly and passionately.</p>
+
+<p>"If he attacks me, I defend myself&mdash;and her," Garth said coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Rina studied the ground. It was impossible for him to tell what was
+going on behind her inscrutable eyes. In a moment she went to Natalie as
+if nothing had happened; and dropping beside her, listened attentively
+to her breathing. Garth, ever watchful, followed her close. When she
+arose, they moved off a little to avoid disturbing the patient; and Rina
+briefly instructed Garth what he should do during the night.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, not satisfied with merely knowing what to do, asked the reason of
+her various measures; whereupon Rina became suddenly evasive.</p>
+
+<p>"But I must know why you do these things," he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>Rina looked away. "I not tell you," she said coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"What does this mean?" he demanded, surprised and frowning.</p>
+
+<p>Rina met his eyes. "Nobody but me can mak' her well," she said boldly.
+"I mak' her well if you not 'urt 'Erbe't. If you go after 'Erbe't, she
+can die. I not look at her no more!"</p>
+
+<p>This at least was honest; and Garth could respect such an opponent.
+"He's safe!" he said coolly. "Provided he keeps away from here."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Rina vouchsafed no comment. "I come to-morrow," she said and disappeared
+through the trees.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The horses offered Garth his next problem. Since immediately they were
+turned out they would bolt for the sweet grass of the prairie above,
+there was no way in which he could secure them from Mabyn, or keep them
+within reach against a time of need. They might stray for miles over the
+plains before he could leave Natalie long enough to round them up. But
+there was no help for it; the beasts would all die of starvation, if he
+attempted to keep them in his camp. There was a little grass between the
+willows and the timber; and he determined to keep old Cy picketed
+nearby, to be sure of one mount in the case of an emergency. The other
+three he hobbled, hung a bell around Emmy's neck, and turned them loose.</p>
+
+<p>He was now able to make Natalie more comfortable. Putting up her tent,
+he spread a bed of balsam within, and her own blankets upon it. The next
+time she awoke, he carried her inside; and at the door of the tent,
+where he could look at her, and speak to her, he cooked her the best
+invalid's supper the grub-box and his own skill could afford. This same
+grub-box was an ever-fresh cause of anxiety to him; allowing for liberal
+contributions from his own gun, he could not see much more than a week's
+supply for two. This he kept to himself, however, while he joked and
+made light of their situation for Natalie's benefit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> She was very
+quiet; she did not suffer much, she said; but she had little humour to
+talk. When Garth thought of her, only the day before, galloping over the
+prairie, he ground his teeth afresh. But the silver lining of this
+blackest cloud of his was that in her weakness she clung to him
+unreservedly.</p>
+
+<p>Some time after supper she fell asleep again; and Garth prepared for his
+night-long vigil. His head was much too busy to allow of any desire for
+sleep. Sitting in the dark, he faced the situation open-eyed. There they
+were in the remotest wilderness, imprisoned in the narrow valley by
+Natalie's injury for weeks to come; with insufficient food and inclement
+weather in prospect, and without the remotest chance of succour from the
+outside. Moreover, there hovered about them an implacable and
+half-insane enemy, whose busy brain was bent on Garth's destruction. The
+outlook was enough to unnerve the strongest; there were things in it
+that Garth in his courage could only glance at, and hurriedly avert the
+eyes of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>The night was so still he could hear the breathing of the horse at fifty
+paces. He had let the fire die down, for fear its loud crackling would
+awaken Natalie. Overhead the Northern lights flung their ragged pennons
+across the zenith, with a ghostly echo of rustling. He suddenly became
+conscious of distant human voices in the void of stillness; and
+presently distinguished the voice of Mabyn. Rina's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> answers he could not
+hear, though he sensed a second voice. The sound was from the
+neighbourhood of the hut.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was tempted by the opportunity to discover at the same time the
+plans of his enemy, and Rina's true disposition toward himself. He
+glanced at Natalie; she had but lately fallen asleep, and was sleeping
+soundly; there were no animals abroad that could harm her; he need be
+gone but half an hour. The r&ocirc;le of eavesdropper was not at all
+attractive to him; but he felt he had no right to refuse to use any
+weapon that offered. Finally he fastened the flaps of Natalie's tent,
+replenished the fire, and stole away through the trees.</p>
+
+<p>He crossed the stony watercourse to the left of the usual place and
+mounted the slope. Coming closer, he satisfied himself that the speakers
+were sitting on the bench at the door of the shack. In the darkness he
+almost fell across the figure of the little cayuse, prone in the grass.
+The animal scrambled to its feet and trotted away. Garth paused,
+listening, his heart in his throat&mdash;but Mabyn's voice presently went on
+undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>He finally gained the top of the rise; and let himself down in the
+grass, distant some thirty feet from them. A flash of lightning&mdash;or even
+the lighting of a lantern would have revealed him clearly.</p>
+
+<p>He instantly understood that he was the subject of their talk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's his life or mine," in Mabyn's blustering whine were the first
+words he distinctly heard.</p>
+
+<p>"He could kill you to-day, and he let you go," Rina quietly returned.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a lie!" blustered Mabyn. "How do you know?" he added
+inconsequentially.</p>
+
+<p>"He tak' your knife from you. I saw it in his belt," said Rina. "And he
+let you go."</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"He say to me he not 'urt you, if you keep away from there," Rina went
+on.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep away!" Mabyn fumed. "This is my place! I'll go where I choose on
+it! He's trespassing on my land! I've a right to drive him off! I've a
+right to kill him if he doesn't go!"</p>
+
+<p>"He will hear you!" said Rina warningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him hear me!" said the man&mdash;nevertheless he lowered his voice.
+"They're a quarter-mile off," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!" said Rina.</p>
+
+<p>Over the lake, from an immeasurable distance, came throbbing the
+imbecile laughter of a loon.</p>
+
+<p>"Loon, him three miles off," said Rina significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Thereafter, Mabyn spoke in a whisper; a wheedling note crept into his
+voice. "That was a good scheme of yours, going to the camp to set the
+girl's arm," he said. "Now we can find out all they do!"</p>
+
+<p>"I not go to find out," said Rina sadly. "I go for I sorry I 'urt her. I
+shoot her jus' lak a breed I am!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mabyn paid no attention to this. "Keep your eyes open when you're in
+their camp every day," he urged. "See how much food they have; find out
+where he keeps the shells for his gun. If you could only steal the gun!"</p>
+
+<p>"He carry it always on his back," said Rina. "He never put it down."</p>
+
+<p>"I know, he's on his guard now," said Mabyn. "But if you act friendly
+all the time, he'll forget. We've got plenty of time; do nothing for a
+few days. I'll keep away from there too. He'll think it's all right.
+<i>Then</i>"&mdash;Mabyn's whisper was pure venom&mdash;"sneak up behind him and knock
+him on the head with an axe! Choose a moment when the girl is asleep or
+delirious. We will throw his body in the lake. No one will ever know how
+it happened!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you do it?" said Mabyn eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>Rina remained silent.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn cursed her under his breath. "I believe this smooth-faced young
+whelp has cast an eye on you too," he snarled. "You're false to me!"</p>
+
+<p>A low cry was forced from Rina's lips; she made a rapid move; and Garth
+understood that she had thrown herself at the man's feet. "'Erbe't, you
+know you don' speak true," she whispered painfully. "You my 'osban'! All
+men I hate, but you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then do what I tell you," snarled Mabyn.</p>
+
+<p>"'Erbe't!" she pleaded rapidly and urgently. "Let<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> them go! What have
+they got to do with us? To-morrow I go to him. I tell him how to mak'
+her well. The man will give me a horse and things. An' you and I will
+ride to the Rice River people. They are my people. They will give me a
+gun. We will be so ver' happy, and not think of this man and this woman
+any more!"</p>
+
+<p>"You can go, and be damned to you!" said Mabyn sullenly. "I stay on my
+own place!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth understood then, that she drew very close to the man, lavish in
+the expression of her sad love and timid caresses, in a desperate effort
+to move him. He could not hear it all; but his cheeks burned to be the
+intruder on such an exposure of a woman's soul&mdash;a white soul, he
+thought, whatever the colour of her skin.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn was utterly insensible to it all. In the end he became impatient,
+and flung her away from him with an oath. She fell to the ground with a
+soft thud; and for a while there was no other sound, but the dreadful,
+low catch of her breath, as she sought to strangle her sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"'Erbe't, if you no love me I die," she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"Rid me of this man and I'll love you fast enough!" said Mabyn eagerly.
+His breath came thick and stertorous. "Ah! Let me once grind my heel in
+the smooth, sneering face of him! and you shall do what you like with
+me!" Rage robbed him of speech; he made mere brutish sounds in his
+throat.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By and by he managed to control himself; and his voice resumed its
+crafty, wheedling tone. "Only do what I tell you, my Rina, and you shall
+know what it is to be loved by a white man. I shall have no thought all
+day, but of you! Up to now you have done all the loving; I will repay it
+twice over! You shall be loved as no red woman was ever loved before!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Erbe't! 'Erbe't! Don't mak' me do it!" she whispered terror-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>Garth could stand no more. Springing to his feet, he strode forward,
+grasping the barrel of his rifle to use it for a club. Shooting was too
+merciful for such a creature.</p>
+
+<p>"You damned scoundrel!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn fell back against the wall with a gasping cry of fright. Quick as
+Garth was, Rina was quicker. Before he could reach the man, she
+scrambled over the ground, and clutched him by the knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Let him be!" she screamed. "I kill you!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth struggled vainly to free himself. Finally bending over and seizing
+her shoulders, he thrust her away. But the blow he again aimed at Mabyn
+never descended; for with incredible swiftness Rina gained her feet, and
+darted down hill.</p>
+
+<p>"I kill <i>her!</i>" she shrilled.</p>
+
+<p>A sickening fear gripped Garth's heart, instantly obliterating all
+thought of Mabyn. He dashed after Rina, nerved to a desperate fleetness.
+She knew the ground better than he; and hampered, moreover, by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> the
+weight of his gun, he despaired of overtaking the moccasined savage. But
+at the watercourse the strange creature stopped dead; and waited for him
+to come up.</p>
+
+<p>"Go back to your white woman!" she cried stormily. "If you 'urt him, I
+pull her bandage off, and beat her arm till she die of pain!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">MABYN MAROONED</p>
+
+<p>When Natalie awoke, it was a gray and haggard Garth she saw through the
+raised flaps of her tent. His arms, folded on his knees, bore up his
+chin; and he stared before him, still pursuing the narrow round of his
+troublous thoughts. He was the gainer for his excursion, by valuable
+information&mdash;but he was no nearer the solution of it all.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie partly raised herself on her good arm. "My poor Garth!" she said
+softly. "How very tired you are!"</p>
+
+<p>His weary eyes lighted up. "I'm all right," he cried. "And how are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid!" she said, matching his tone&mdash;while her face was drawn with
+pain. "Come in," she added softly.</p>
+
+<p>He sat a little diffidently on the ground beside her; Natalie's
+room&mdash;though its walls were of canvas&mdash;was a sacred place to him when
+she was in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at me!" she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his grave, smiling eyes down on her. In spite of difficulties,
+dangers and weariness, he had to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> smile when he looked at her; he loved
+her so! His eyes were full of it.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie's eyes fell; her hand crept into his. "You may tell me to-day,"
+she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He understood. "Oh, my Natalie!" he murmured deeply. "I love you! It
+breaks my heart to see you suffer!"</p>
+
+<p>She caught up his hand, and pressed it to her cheek. "I am cured!" she
+whispered with a lift in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"There is something I want you to do for me," she said presently.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything in the world!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" she said. "This is only a little thing&mdash;but you mustn't laugh!"</p>
+
+<p>He immediately smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to feel, for a moment, that I have helped you too," she
+whispered. "Put your head down on my good shoulder."</p>
+
+<p>He flung himself down beside her, and laid his head where she bid. Her
+breath was warm on his cheek. He slipped his over-heavy burden, and
+glided into Paradise for awhile.</p>
+
+<p>"My brave, brave Garth," she whispered in his ear. "All my heart is
+yours! I thought about this last night&mdash;every time I woke. I thought we
+might steal one such moment. I thought, what if something happened to
+you, or to me, and we had never known it!"</p>
+
+<p>She tried to tempt him to sleep a while, but Garth, fearful of tiring
+her, and with his responsibilities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> pressing on him, drew himself away.
+He arose, better refreshed, he vowed, than by all the nights of sleep he
+had ever had in his life.</p>
+
+<p>As he rose, their lips met, once and briefly.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Garth's first task after breakfast was to clear the growth of willows
+that obstructed their access to the lake. The little island was framed
+squarely in the centre of the opening made by his axe; and off to the
+left, across an estuary formed at the mouth of the watercourse, Mabyn's
+shack stood on top of its cut-bank in plain view.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of the convenient island, Garth was struck by an idea. He
+examined it attentively. It lay something less than a quarter of a mile
+off shore; and a triangle might have been drawn between his camp, the
+island and Mabyn's shack, of which the three sides would have been of
+about equal length. The island was about three acres in extent; and
+completely ringed about with willow bushes. In the centre, two or three
+cottonwood trees elevated their heads above the willows.</p>
+
+<p>Later, he asked Natalie casually: "Could Mabyn swim, when you knew him,
+do you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"He could not," she said instantly. "In fact he had a childish horror of
+the water."</p>
+
+<p>Garth turned his head to hide his satisfaction; and his plan began to
+take shape.</p>
+
+<p>While the sun was yet low, Rina, true to her promise, came to attend
+upon Natalie. There was no change<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> in her manner; her unreadable eyes
+expressed no consciousness of the events of the night before. She
+questioned Natalie in her best professional way. It was not yet
+necessary to disturb the dressings on the arm; but she volunteered to do
+Natalie's hair; and what other offices would contribute to her comfort.
+Garth, convinced now that he had as sure a hold on her as she on him,
+unhesitatingly allowed her to enter the tent alone. But he kept within
+earshot.</p>
+
+<p>He necessarily overheard part of their talk. Natalie, it seemed, had a
+method of her own with Rina. Obliterating the fact that she had received
+her injury at the breed's hands, she was unaffectedly grateful for all
+that was done for her; and what was more subtle&mdash;or kinder&mdash;she treated
+Rina as her equal, as one who understood in herself the thoughts and the
+instincts of a lady. Garth, with the clue he possessed to the unhappy
+heart of the girl, could not tell which he ought to commend the more,
+Natalie's mother-wit, or her generosity.</p>
+
+<p>Rina apparently sought to steel her breast against the other's
+overtures. For the most part she maintained a hardy silence; and when
+she did speak, it was in sullen monosyllables.</p>
+
+<p>Issuing out of the tent, she surprised Garth by asking, as one who
+demands a right, to take old Cy. She needed an herb for Natalie, she
+said, that could only be procured on the shore of a slough five miles
+away. Garth was prompt with his permission. There was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> a possibility
+that it was merely a pretext to deprive them of the horse; but his heart
+leaped at the chance of getting Rina out of the way for an hour. It was
+all he needed to complete his plan; and it had seemed an insuperable
+bar. If she turned the horse out, he would come back anyway; for Cy was
+the town-bred horse, always waiting anxiously about camp for his
+vanished stable; and Garth had further trained him to stick to the
+outfit, with judicious presents of salt and tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>Rina, disdaining a saddle, scrambled on his back, and rode off. Garth
+waited, not without anxiety, to see what direction she would take. She
+presently reappeared, mounting the rise to the shack. Pausing briefly at
+the door, apparently to speak within, she continued her way up the slope
+behind; and, gaining the prairie, disappeared over the brow.</p>
+
+<p>Garth instantly put himself in motion. He had his compunctions in thus
+moving against Rina while she was absent on an errand for Natalie; but
+he consoled himself with the thought that Rina, with all she could do,
+had still a heavy score to pay off. He told Natalie what he was about to
+do; and at her earnest pleading carried her out of the tent, and propped
+her partly upright at the edge of the lake where she would be able to
+see him. Then, looking to his gun, he set off a second time for the
+shack.</p>
+
+<p>From the circumstance of Rina's pausing at the door, he was well assured
+that Mabyn was within. He had marked that the door stood open. On his
+way, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> paused to examine the ancient dugout lying at the mouth of the
+watercourse; and found it in a sufficiently seaworthy condition to
+answer his purpose. A paddle lay in the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>Garth ascended the grassy slope swiftly and noiselessly; and making a
+d&eacute;tour around the window, presented himself suddenly at the door. Mabyn
+was revealed to him sprawling on his blankets in the corner, plucking at
+his face, and scowling at the rafters, he, too, no doubt, plotting and
+scheming. When the armed shadow fell across the floor of his shack, he
+started to his elbow; his eyes widened, his flesh blanched and a visible
+trembling seized his limbs.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" he contrived to stammer.</p>
+
+<p>Strong disgust seized Garth again; so despicable an adversary shamed his
+own manhood. He shifted his gun significantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn dragged himself to his hands and knees. It was some moments before
+he could control himself sufficiently to stand upright.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do with me?" he kept muttering.</p>
+
+<p>Garth stepped backward. "Come outside!" he commanded.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn obeyed, making a circuit of the walls for support. His eyes were
+always riveted on the gun; and however slightly it was moved, he
+experienced a fresh spasm of fear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Face about!" ordered Garth; "and walk to the mouth of the creek!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn became even paler. His skin was like white paper on which ashes
+have been rubbed, leaving streaks and patches of gray. "Would you shoot
+me in the back?" he said shrilly. "An unarmed man! I will not turn my
+back!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then walk backward!" said Garth, with his laconic start of laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn went like a crab down the rise, with his head over his shoulder, a
+ludicrous and deplorable figure. He was unable to drag his eyes from the
+gun, consequently he stumbled and lurched over every obstacle. Once he
+fell flat; and a sharp scream of fright was forced from him. Garth
+sickened at the sight, while he laughed. He had to give him a minute in
+which to recover himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, scarcely coherent, ceaselessly begged for mercy. "Do not kill
+me!" he whimpered. "I <i>can't</i> die! Oh, God! Not like this! I never had a
+chance! You kill Natalie if you kill me&mdash;the breed will fix her!&mdash;and my
+mother! You'll have three murders on your soul! I <i>can't</i> die yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"Get up!" commanded Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Reaching the edge of the water, he ordered him into the dugout.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn fell on his knees on the stones. "Not in the water! Not in the
+water!" he shrilled. "Kill me here!"</p>
+
+<p>"No one is going to kill you," said Garth with scorn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>ful patience. "Do
+what you're told, and you'll not be hurt!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn darted a furtive look of hope and suspicion in Garth's face. He
+got up.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do with me?" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Put you on the island," said Garth coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll starve," he whined.</p>
+
+<p>"Food will be brought you regularly, as long as you obey orders," said
+Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn, his extreme terror subsiding, showed an inclination to temporize.
+"Let me get a few things," he begged. His eyes wandered to the hill over
+which Rina had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was anxious on the same score. He fingered the trigger of his gun.
+"In with you!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn jumped to obey.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, sitting in the bow with his weapon in his arms, faced Mabyn; and
+forced him to wield the paddle. Mabyn, seeing that he did mean to put
+him on the island, realized there had been no occasion for his brutish
+terror; but instead of feeling any shame for the self-betrayal, he
+characteristically added it to his score against Garth. His gray eyes
+contracted in an agony of impotent hate. At that moment unspeakable
+atrocities committed on Garth's body would not have satisfied Mabyn's
+lust to destroy his flesh. Any move on his part would have overturned
+the crazy dugout, but, shivering at the sight of the water, he was
+unable to take that way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Garth, wary of the furtive gleam in the man's eye, sprang to his feet
+the instant they touched the island, and leaped out, careful never to
+turn his back. He forced Mabyn to retire a dozen paces, while he took
+the place he vacated in the stern; and then he ordered him to push off.</p>
+
+<p>At the prospect of being left alone, Mabyn's flesh failed him again. He
+clung to the bow of the canoe, and gabbled anew for mercy. Garth,
+wearying of it all, suddenly sent a shot over his head. His weapon,
+silent and smokeless, had an effect of horrible deadliness. Mabyn, with
+a moan of fear, pushed the canoe off, and sank back on the grass of the
+islet.</p>
+
+<p>Exchanging his gun for the paddle, Garth hastened back to the mouth of
+the creek, pausing only to wave his hat reassuringly at Natalie, whom he
+could see reclining on her grassy couch. An essential part of his plan
+was yet to be effected; and he knew not how soon Rina might return.
+Hastily ransacking the cabin, he gathered together all their meagre
+rations; flour, sugar, beans, tea and pork; and he likewise commandeered
+everything that might be turned to use for a weapon; an axe, a chisel,
+and all knives. Three trips up and down the hill conveyed it to the
+dugout. Re&euml;mbarking, he had no sooner brought it all to his own camp
+than Natalie's sharp eyes discovered Rina returning on the distant hill.</p>
+
+<p>Garth carried Natalie into the tent again; and nerved himself to await
+the inevitable scene. Meanwhile he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> could see Rina alight at the door,
+search the cabin hastily, and dart about outside, like a distracted ant
+returning to find her dwelling rifled. She followed the tracks down to
+the water's edge, dragging the horse after her. Seeking over the water,
+she soon discovered the dugout lying at Garth's camp; whereupon she
+clambered on the horse again. Presently she came crashing through the
+bush.</p>
+
+<p>This was a vastly different kind of antagonist, that slipped from the
+horse and faced him with blazing eyes. Rina regarded the weapon in his
+hands with as little respect as if it had been a pop-gun. But there was
+nothing baffling about her now, she was just the furious woman common to
+any shade of skin.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" she cried&mdash;and without waiting for any answer, emptied
+the hissing ewer of her wrath over Garth's head. Her careful English was
+drowned in a flood of guttural Cree&mdash;she fished it up only to curse him.</p>
+
+<p>Garth received the impact in silence, for at first she was in no
+condition to take in the answers she demanded. He suddenly realized, as
+a man thinks of an interesting circumstance that does not concern him at
+all, how beautiful she was; and the thought gave him greater patience.</p>
+
+<p>Rina, bethinking herself at last that her Cree was wasted on him, went
+back to English. "You wait!" she cried threateningly. "Bam-bye, her
+bone, him grow together, and she all the time cry of pain! Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> you
+want me bad, and I not come! She will have fever and die!" She
+passionately threw down the leaves she had brought and ground them under
+her heel.</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn is unhurt!" Garth repeated patiently more than once. "I put him
+on the island."</p>
+
+<p>At last it seemed to reach her. "What for you do that?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"He is always trying to kill me," he said. "I have only put him where he
+can do no harm!"</p>
+
+<p>"I tak' him off!" she cried defiantly. "I mak' a raft! You can't stop
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have seized all the food," said Garth quietly. "You will get none for
+him unless he stays where he is."</p>
+
+<p>Rina's anger stilled and concentrated. "You devil!" she hissed.</p>
+
+<p>Garth turned away. "When you are yourself," he said coolly, "I will talk
+to you plainly and honestly about us all."</p>
+
+<p>"I not talk with you!" she stormed. "You tell lies to me! I not come
+again&mdash;till some time you sleep&mdash;then I come and kill you!"</p>
+
+<p>He faced her with a sudden imperiousness she could not ignore. "Then the
+way is made open for Mabyn to come to <i>her</i>!" he cried. "Where will you
+be then?&mdash;thrown on the ground, as you were yesterday!"</p>
+
+<p>The shot told. Her arms dropped, she visibly paled. The white man's
+blood in Rina's cheeks betrayed her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> at the moments when most she
+desired to secrete her heart. She lowered her head to hide her stricken
+eyes from him. Suddenly she turned and fled through the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was beginning to believe that Rina after all was not so different
+from her white sisters; if so, he thought she would come back. Natalie,
+who had overheard all that passed, said so too. Garth wished to carry
+Natalie out of the tent, that she might help him work with the girl; but
+Natalie, with better wisdom, said no, that Rina would be more tractable
+if she were out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile he set to work with an air of unconcern he was far from
+feeling&mdash;there were a hundred ways this plan of his might miscarry, and
+only one way it could succeed! He tied old Cy to his stake again; and
+carefully gathered up what remained of the herbs Rina had cast on the
+ground. He unloaded the seized supplies and made a temporary cache under
+a piece of sail-cloth.</p>
+
+<p>By and by, while he was so engaged, he became aware that Rina was
+hovering about among the trees. He went on with his task, carefully
+avoiding any notice of her. She approached by devious stages, like a
+child drawn against its will. When it became impossible longer to
+conceal herself, she came into the open with her old, wistful, sullen,
+inscrutable face. Garth went about his work, displaying no anxiety to
+treat. He made her speak first.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What you want say to me?" she asked at last, feigning supreme
+indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped obediently on the grass; and averted her head. She did not
+squat like the other red people; but reclined, supporting herself on one
+hand, much as Natalie might have done.</p>
+
+<p>Garth lit his pipe, considering what simple, figurative form of words
+would best appeal to her understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish Mabyn harm," he began mildly. "He is nothing to me. My
+heart knows only one wish&mdash;to make her well, and to take her back safely
+to her friends outside. To accomplish that, I will let nothing stop me!"</p>
+
+<p>He paused to let it sink in. Rina gave no sign of having even heard.</p>
+
+<p>"That is your wish, too," he continued. "You want her away from here.
+She and I are nothing to you. You were happy before we came!"</p>
+
+<p>She darted a startled look at the man who could so well read her
+feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn is mad because she will not have him!" Garth went on. "He is
+always crazy for what he cannot have."</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head again with the look that said so plainly, "How did
+you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"When we get her away, he will soon forget. All will be as it was
+before!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She maintained her obstinate silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I not speak true words?" Garth challenged.</p>
+
+<p>She evaded the question. "If you go out, you send the police after him,"
+she muttered.</p>
+
+<p>He saw Mabyn's hand here. "I will not," he said quickly. "I give you my
+word on that!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him incredulously. She did not understand the pledge.</p>
+
+<p>"There's my hand on it," said Garth, offering it.</p>
+
+<p>Rina gravely laid her own in it, and let him wag it up and down. This
+form of binding an agreement she knew.</p>
+
+<p>Still she had not committed herself to anything; and Garth paused,
+determined to make her speak before he went on.</p>
+
+<p>She favoured him at last with a walled glance purely savage. "Let
+'Erbe't go off the island," she said indifferently. Clearly she asked it
+more with the idea to see what he would say, than with any hope of his
+agreeing.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not do that," said Garth firmly. "Night and day he would be
+plotting to kill me. Night and day he would be driving you on to do it
+for him. You would try to do it. You cannot say no to him! And if you
+did bring me down&mdash;" Garth sunk his voice&mdash;"all, <i>all</i> would be
+lost!&mdash;Mabyn and you and Natalie and I!"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes sought his with a poignant glance; and she paled again. He felt
+he had made an impression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I will treat him kindly," he said, seeking to follow up his advantage.
+"You shall go to the shack now for everything he needs; and we will take
+it to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Can I spik with him?" asked Rina in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>Garth rejoiced&mdash;it was the first token of submission. "For five minutes
+by my watch," he said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">GRYLLS REDIVIVUS</p>
+
+<p>On the next day but one Natalie's condition took a sharp turn for the
+worse; and for many days thereafter, Garth put every other thought out
+of his head. She fell into a high fever and suffered incessantly and
+cruelly. At this call, Rina showed forth in colours wholly admirable;
+day or night she seldom left her patient's side; she was never at a loss
+what to do; and Garth comforted himself with the thought that Natalie
+could scarcely have had better care anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>During these busy days Rina appeared to forget her own heartache in a
+measure; and never once on the occasion of their daily trip to the
+island (Garth forcing her to accompany him) did she again express a wish
+to speak to Mabyn. At their approach Mabyn always retreated; and they
+were accustomed to set his rations down on the shore and immediately go
+back.</p>
+
+<p>But Garth could not trust the breed unreservedly, and unceasing
+vigilance was his portion. He had little enough sleep before, and now he
+strove to do without it altogether. For three days and three nights<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> he
+did not close his eyes. On the fourth day, warned by his tortured,
+wavering brain that it must be either sleep or madness, he took his fate
+in his hands and lay down on top of the cache, with his gun beside him.</p>
+
+<p>He was unconscious for nearly twelve hours. When he awoke it was to find
+Rina's eyes fixed upon him strangely. He sprang up, and she turned away
+her head. He could not read that expression&mdash;still he had lain there at
+her mercy and she had spared him. Neither had she liberated Mabyn from
+the island, for Garth could see him moving about. He began to hope that
+his arguments had real weight with the breed; and little by little,
+under pressure of his great need, he began to trust her.</p>
+
+<p>But when the dread promontory was weathered at last, and Natalie, a
+wraith of her blooming self, awoke in her right senses, Rina changed
+again, resuming her old sullen, moody self; and all his work was undone.
+It was clear the unfortunate girl was dragged ceaselessly back and forth
+between her new-fledged soul and the old savage impulses of her blood.
+She learned to love the irresistible Natalie whom she had snatched back
+from death&mdash;but she likewise hated her; hated her blindly because Mabyn
+loved her; and inconsistently, but naturally, too, hated her because she
+despised Mabyn. The same with Garth; over and over she unconsciously
+showed she trusted him; but her blood still rebelled because he was
+Mabyn's enemy; and he would sometimes find her eyes fixed on him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> in a
+quickly veiled expression of savage, implacable hatred.</p>
+
+<p>On the first day of his imprisonment, Garth, under threat of withholding
+supplies, had forced Mabyn to cut down the willows fringing the hither
+side of the island; and his movements about his fire and tepee were in
+plain view of those on shore. Concealed from him by a tree, Rina would
+often sit by the hour, watching him wistfully. "God knows what course
+her harried brain pursues!" Garth, observing her, thought&mdash;"if she
+thinks at all!" One thing was sure: under the strain of continued
+separation, her resistance to Mabyn's evil suggestions was gradually
+breaking down.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Garth was straining every nerve to complete the shack that was
+to be at once their habitation and their fortress. Within the shelter of
+its walls he hoped to sleep at peace again. His nerves were stretched
+like violin strings from the lack of it; for all he could permit himself
+was an hour or two in the morning while Natalie was awake and could warn
+him. All afternoon he chopped pine trees, which old Cy with an
+improvised harness dragged into camp; and far into the night, until
+overtaken with complete exhaustion, he trimmed his logs, squared the
+ends, and lifted them into place.</p>
+
+<p>It was their second red-letter day, when the last sod was dropped into
+place on the roof, and Garth carried Natalie inside. Strictly
+considered, the house was not very much to brag about, perhaps; for it
+slanted this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> way and that like the first pothooks in a child's
+copybook; but Garth, fired by Natalie's enthusiastic praises, could not
+have been prouder if he had completed the Taj Mahal.</p>
+
+<p>One end had been partitioned off for Natalie's room; and in finishing
+this part Garth had spent all his pains. The floor was made of small
+logs, filled and plastered with clay, which he had hardened by building
+fires upon it; and had then strewn rushes over the whole. There was a
+rough bunk in one corner, with a low table by its side&mdash;the latest thing
+in rustics, the maker explained. There was a tiny window high up on the
+side overlooking the lake; it had no glass, but a stout shutter swinging
+on wooden pins, and which fastened with a strong wooden bar. But the
+crowning feature of the room, constructed with infinite pains after
+countless failures, was the fireplace in the corner. Garth deprecated
+it; it wasn't much of a fireplace; only a sort of little arched doorway
+of baked clay, so narrow the logs had to stand upright in it, making
+cooking very difficult&mdash;but when Natalie saw the flames curling up the
+chimney in the most natural way possible, she set up a feeble crow of
+delight.</p>
+
+<p>The balance of the interior was to serve for Garth's room and storeroom
+combined. It had a very small door, also on the lake side; but he could
+not afford a window beside; and he also saved himself the trouble of
+flooring it. The door was constructed in the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> manner as the
+shutter, of matched poles strongly braced behind, and further
+strengthened with rawhide lashings.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie had Garth hang a spare blanket over the doorway between the two
+rooms; and she produced a shawl to serve for a table cloth. After
+supper, when they locked themselves in and heaped up the fire, Natalie
+propped up on her couch, and Garth sitting on a stool, smoking by
+especial request&mdash;it was as snug as Heaven, Natalie said. The nights had
+been growing dreadfully keen of late; and poor Natalie wrapped in all
+the blankets they possessed had nevertheless more than once lain awake
+with the cold. But now, within thick walls&mdash;what matter if they were out
+of the perpendicular?&mdash;and under a tight roof, with the flames leaping
+briskly up the chimney, no king in his palace ever experienced such a
+sense of opulent and all-sufficing luxury as Garth and Natalie the first
+night in their miserable shack.</p>
+
+<p>This was the fourteenth day after Natalie's accident. Every day after
+the first week had shown a slight improvement in her condition; and
+every day had therefore lessened the hold Rina had over them; until now
+Garth felt, should it be necessary, he could bring the patient safely
+back to health unaided. Rina knew this too; and became daily more morose
+and sullen in her demeanour. To separate her longer from Mabyn would be,
+Garth felt, simply to promote an explosion. Besides, sufficiently housed
+now, well armed, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> with the food safely stored, he felt strong enough
+to be merciful. On the night they moved into the shack he pointed out
+the canoe to Rina, telling her that henceforth she was free to use it as
+she would. He would go to the island no more, he added; but Rina might
+come every day for rations for both&mdash;as long as Mabyn remained where he
+was.</p>
+
+<p>He hoped by this to incite the energetic Rina into planning Mabyn's
+escape from the island. They could catch a couple of horses and ride to
+their friends at the distant Settlement, or where they would. He felt he
+could trust Rina, if she ever got Mabyn among her own people, to keep
+him from coming back. Thus he would at the same stroke be rid of them,
+and conserve his rapidly diminishing stores. It was no great matter if
+they drove off all the horses, for he still had old Cy under his eye for
+Natalie to ride; and their own journey back would have to be undertaken
+at a walking pace, anyway. He had learned enough of Rina's mixed
+character to be sure that this would have a greater chance of coming
+about if he let her think of it for herself, so he said nothing to her.</p>
+
+<p>He was disappointed. Mabyn, too timid to undertake so long a journey
+without ample supplies, or perhaps too obstinate to go, they remained on
+the island; and Rina came every day for food. If she was grateful for
+being allowed to join Mabyn she did not show it. Every trace of her
+better nature rapidly disappeared, and she seemed wholly the sullen
+savage. Bad treat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>ment was the explanation they thought; and they pitied
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Garth waited five days more. Natalie was by that time moving around
+freely; and they had begun to count the days to their ardently desired
+retreat from that unhappy valley. The question of food became more and
+more pressing&mdash;their journey would have to be spread over many slow
+stages; and he finally decided to drive Mabyn and Rina away.</p>
+
+<p>So the next time Rina came, he told her he would give her two days'
+rations for two persons the following day; and after that they need
+expect no more. In the meantime, he said, she was free to go up on the
+prairie and catch the first two horses she met. He even offered her old
+Cy to round them up, secure in holding the dugout for a hostage. Rina
+betrayed not the least surprise, or any other feeling at his ultimatum,
+but coolly rode off as he bid her. She returned within an hour driving
+Emmy and Timoosis, which she picketed below Mabyn's hut.</p>
+
+<p>What passed between Rina and Mabyn when she returned to the island, the
+other two could only guess at. However, Garth, up at dawn next morning,
+saw them striking the tepee. They made two trips back and forth between
+the island and the mouth of the creek; and afterward, while Mabyn
+saddled and packed the horses, Rina paddled to Garth's camp to get the
+promised rations. They both awaited her on the bank.</p>
+
+<p>Rina presented the mask-like face they had grown<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> accustomed to, and
+maintained a dogged silence. The only sign of feeling she gave was a
+shadow-like pain drowned deep in her dark eyes. Natalie's own eyes
+filled at the sight of her stubbornness; in the days of her suffering
+she had grown very fond of her dark-skinned nurse; and it was she who
+had insisted throughout on the existence of Rina's better nature, and
+had never given up hope of reclaiming the worser part. And now it
+seemed, she must admit herself defeated.</p>
+
+<p>Garth laid out the food he had allotted them; and packed it in a
+flour-bag convenient to carry. He also gave Rina an open letter he had
+written, setting forth their situation (without implicating Mabyn or
+Rina) and asking that food and an escort be sent. That it would ever
+fall into responsible hands was problematical; but it was a chance. He
+refrained from any suggestion that it should be concealed from Mabyn,
+but Rina of her own accord thrust it in her dress; and he argued well
+from the act.</p>
+
+<p>Rina turned to go without a word; but Natalie called her softly. In her
+hand she was holding a round silver locket, in which she had put a tiny
+picture of herself. She held it out to Rina with a wistful smile.</p>
+
+<p>"For you," she murmured. "Keep it because I love you."</p>
+
+<p>Rina looked at the little picture, struggling to maintain her parade of
+unconcern. But suddenly she snatched it out of Natalie's hand; and
+thrust it in her own bosom. Her face worked with the pain of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> who
+weep with difficulty; her eyes filled and overflowed at last. With a
+wild, brusque abandon, she flung herself at Natalie's feet and pressed
+the hem of her dress to her trembling lips.</p>
+
+<p>"You good! You good!" she sobbed. Then springing to her feet as abruptly
+as she had fallen, she flew away among the trees.</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later they heard the two horses passing the trail behind
+their camp; the same trail by which they had all first entered the
+valley; and the way to Spirit River Crossing.</p>
+
+<p>At first they dared not believe they could really be free of their enemy
+so easily; and they continually found themselves listening for the sound
+of their return. Garth saddled Cy at last; and rode along the trail to
+the top of the bench. He saw Mabyn and Rina two specks in the distance;
+and still travelling south. When he returned with the news to Natalie,
+they allowed themselves to rejoice at last; and they were filled with a
+great peace.</p>
+
+<p>Going home! was the burden of their happy speech; home to the land of
+friendly faces, the urbane land, the place of comfortable little things,
+where life was lapped in ease, sane and well-ordered! How their ears
+ached for a human noise again! the bustle of crowded sidewalks, the
+clang of gongs, the fall of hoofs on asphalt! How their flesh yearned
+for the creature comforts! delicate feasting and good clothes to wear!
+One must be plunged into the wilderness for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> a while to sense the gifts
+of civilization at their true value.</p>
+
+<p>"I can understand now why men are so crazy to be explorers and things,"
+said Natalie. "They go away just for the tremendous fun of coming back
+to it all! Oh-h! Think of dances&mdash;and even despised tea-parties now!
+Think of theatres and restaurants and going to the races!"</p>
+
+<p>"And wouldn't I like to take you straight through to New York, though!"
+sang Garth. "Oh! Broadway and the Avenue in September! Everything
+getting under way again! And Coney Island is still going! Picture Luna
+Park dropped down on the island out there!"</p>
+
+<p>They laughed at the incongruous picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Where would we dine the first night?" asked Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Martin's," said Garth. "Fancy us in the balcony looking down on the
+giddy crowd; and the orchestra sawing off the sextet from <i>Lucia</i> for
+dear life!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lobster &agrave; la Newburg and a <i>p&egrave;che Melba</i>!" cried Natalie in an ecstasy.</p>
+
+<p>"Not on your life!" said Garth. "Just like a girl's bill-of-fare.
+Something sensible for yours when you go out with me! How about a filet
+<i>dernier cri</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know it," said Natalie. "Besides, I refuse to be sensible in my
+imagination," she added.</p>
+
+<p>Garth described the delicacy. "And a cheese sauce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> on top all browned,
+with strips of red pepper laid criss-cross; and it comes steaming hot
+under a little glass cover!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie groaned. "Oh, talk about something else!" she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you wear?" asked Garth with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie drew a long breath and plunged forthwith into elaborate, excited
+descriptions.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Their respite was very short&mdash;only to the middle of the following
+morning. They were still dwelling on the subject of home. Garth had
+carefully lifted Natalie into the saddle; and was leading the horse up
+and down the strip of grass to see how she bore it. Suddenly she bent
+her head, and laid a hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Horses!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Garth sharply pulled up old Cy. "The Indian cayuses, perhaps," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie shook her head. "Heavier animals than that," she said. "And more
+like the steady trot of ridden horses!"</p>
+
+<p>They listened with strained attention; and presently the pound of hoofs
+was clearly audible returning on the same trail through the woods of the
+lake shore. The approach of strangers is charged with a tremendous
+significance to those immured in a wilderness. They bated their breaths
+to hear better.</p>
+
+<p>Garth scowled. "If they come back they can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> starve!" he said shortly.
+"They'll not get another stiver's worth from our store!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie's ears were very sharp. "There are more than two!" she said
+suddenly. "Four&mdash;six&mdash;more than that!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth's face cleared. "Friends, undoubtedly," he said. "Mabyn could
+never enlist anybody, not even breeds, against us!"</p>
+
+<p>But this was only for Natalie's benefit. Even while he spoke another
+thought struck a chill to his heart. Lifting Natalie off the horse, he
+sent her into the house; and taking his gun, he struck back through the
+woods to the side of the trail, to reconnoitre. He dropped behind a
+clump of mooseberry bushes where he could see without being seen.</p>
+
+<p>The cavalcade was close upon him. The first to ride past was Herbert
+Mabyn. His livid face was alight with triumph; and he carried a new
+Winchester slung over his back. An ill-favoured breed youth followed;
+his face struck a chord in Garth's memory; but so hard is it to
+distinguish alien faces that for the moment he could not place him. Next
+there came six packhorses, laden with food and camp outfit, and driven
+by the next rider, a breed woman, whose face happened to be turned from
+Garth as she passed. He had an uncomfortable sense that he knew her too.
+Rina followed, turning a sad and troubled face in the direction of their
+camp as she rode by.</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to be all; and Garth was about to rise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> when he heard still
+another rider approaching. He crouched back with a sure foreboding of
+who it was; hence there was little surprise in the actual sight of the
+faded check suit enwrapping the burly figure, the broad-rimmed
+"Stetson," and the ragged cigar ceaselessly twisted between fat lips. He
+looked older, that was all; and he bore marks of illness. Nick Grylls
+had found them out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">SUCCOUR</p>
+
+<p>Garth was thankful he was alone when it happened. The reaction after
+their day of joyous hopefulness was too sudden to be borne. Crouching
+behind the bush, he dropped his head in his arms. What could he hope
+for, single-handed against such overwhelming odds? For a while his heart
+failed him utterly, and all his faculties were scattered in clownish
+confusion. He knew not which way to turn. At last one thought shone
+through the murk of his brain like a star: Natalie must not be rudely
+frightened. He got up; and composing his face with a great effort of
+will, he hastened back to her.</p>
+
+<p>But the riders having crossed the bed of the stream, and mounted the
+rise, Natalie already knew as much as he. Her first thought was likewise
+for him. She turned a solicitous face.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Garth!" she said. "More care and danger for you!"</p>
+
+<p>The simple words acted on him like a strong tonic. His brow smoothed;
+his mouth hardened; and he was mightily ashamed for his moment of
+weakness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"More fun!" he said with his dry, arrogant note of laughter. "Act four
+of the drama begins!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie caught his spirit and laughed back.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was the half-breed, do you suppose?" he said. "Whitey-blue eyes,
+ugly scar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember?" she said quickly. "The stage to the Landing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Xavier! Of course!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"And the second woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"I only saw a ring of gray curls under her hat."</p>
+
+<p>"Mary Co-que-wasa!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hm! The entire <i>dramatis person&aelig;</i>?" said Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie, not to be outdone, saluted with her good arm, and asked:
+"Orders of the day, Captain?"</p>
+
+<p>In a truly desperate pass one breaks down&mdash;or laughs. Youth laughs. They
+bolstered each other's courage with their jests, each secretly wondering
+and admiring of the other.</p>
+
+<p>"We have the house, anyway!" said Garth. "Good old tumbledown shanty!"</p>
+
+<p>"No! Fort Indefatigable!" amended Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be besieged all right," said Garth. "We must carry in everything
+we own, and fill up the rest of the space with wood for the fire. I
+would share my room with Cy, but the old boy couldn't get his ribs
+through the door!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie was told off for sentry duty. She took up her position at the
+edge of the shore, where she could report on all that transpired in the
+other camp. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> seemed to be the design of these people first to overawe
+them with a display of force. They pitched camp openly, in and around
+Mabyn's hut; and moved about all day in plain view. The men amused
+themselves by shooting their guns at various marks, clearly to show the
+number and strength of their weapons. Up to dark, Natalie was able to
+report that none of the five had left camp.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, meanwhile, worked like a Trojan. All the wood cut for the fire
+was carried inside, and he had, besides, a quantity of logs left over or
+discarded from the building of the shack; and these were likewise
+stored. The hut was built so near the edge of the bank there was little
+possibility of an attack from in front; in each of the other three sides
+he cut a loophole for observation and defense. The last hours of
+daylight he spent in hunting near camp; and in setting snares to be
+visited later. Two rabbits were all that fell to his bag.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall they locked themselves in. Garth did not stop then, but
+worked for hours piling the spare logs around the three vulnerable sides
+of the shack; so that if the bullets should fly, they would be protected
+under a double barrier.</p>
+
+<p>The night passed without alarms.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Garth wished to venture forth as if nothing had happened.
+Inaction was intolerable to him. He insisted it would be fatal for him
+to act as if he were afraid.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie was all against it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But this is the twentieth century after all," he said; "and we're under
+a civilized Government. They would never dare shoot me in cold blood!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not kill you, perhaps," she said; "but bring you down, helpless!" Tears
+threatened here; and Garth was silenced.</p>
+
+<p>Opening the shutter in Natalie's room, they could still command a view
+of the other camp. Grylls and Mabyn were visible; and at intervals the
+two women appeared. Xavier was missing.</p>
+
+<p>"He will be watching us," Natalie said.</p>
+
+<p>As if to give point to her words, a rifle suddenly barked its hoarse
+note, close outside. Garth sprang to the loophole in Natalie's room; and
+was in time to see the poor, stupid, faithful old horse, tethered
+outside, sink to his knees, and collapse on the grass.</p>
+
+<p>He leaped up, turning an ominous, wrathful face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! The damned cowards!" he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie flew into the adjoining room, and flung herself in front of the
+door. "You must not go out!" she cried. "What would I do, if you were
+hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>She was unanswerable, and he turned from the door, sickened with balked
+wrath, and flung himself face down on his blankets until he could
+command himself.</p>
+
+<p>As if to give this act time to sink in, nothing further was undertaken
+against Garth and Natalie all day; though they were undoubtedly under
+surveillance, because the five were never about their own camp at the
+same time. It was a bitter, hard day on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> besieged; Garth, chafing
+intolerably, paced the shack like a newly caged animal; and even Natalie
+suffered from his temper.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall he eased his pent-up feelings by a cautious sally. He
+filled all their vessels in the lake; and revisited his snares, which,
+however, yielded nothing. They were too near camp. He saw no sign of any
+adversary; but some of them came about later in the night like coyotes;
+for in the morning Garth saw that the body of old Cy had been dragged
+away&mdash;in the fear, perhaps, that his flesh might furnish them with food.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast Garth took his pipe to the window, and folding his arms
+on the high sill, watched the movements in the camp across the little
+bay. They were watching him too; he presently sensed a pair of
+field-glasses in Grylls's hands. Garth laughed and obeying a sudden,
+ironical impulse, waved his hand. Grylls abruptly lowered the glass and
+walked away.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was still smiling, when all at once, without warning, Rina came
+around the corner of his shack and faced him point blank. The smile was
+fixed in astonishment; Rina was unperturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" he demanded, picking up his gun.</p>
+
+<p>"I got no gun," she said, indifferently, exhibiting her empty hands.
+"Nick Grylls, him send you letter."</p>
+
+<p>Garth reflected that by letting her in, he stood the chance of getting
+much useful information; so bidding Natalie stay in her own room, he
+opened the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Rina handed him the note from Grylls. It was scribbled in a small,
+crabbed hand on the back of a business letter. On the other side Garth
+had a glimpse of the time-honoured formula: "<i>Dear Sir: Yours of the
+first instant to hand, and contents noted. In reply we beg to say</i>&mdash;&mdash;"
+It gave him a queer, incongruous start: outside, it seemed, people still
+went to and from their offices, absorbed in their inconsequential
+affairs&mdash;while here in the woods he was fighting for his life, and
+Natalie's honour!</p>
+
+<p>"Where is <i>she</i>?" Rina asked&mdash;she had never referred to Natalie by name.
+"I will fix her hair for her if she want," she added humbly enough.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie immediately came forward, offering her hand. Rina clung to it
+without speaking, turning away her head to hide welling tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you meet these people?" Garth asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"On the prairie," she answered, low-voiced. "Yesterday, noon spell. They
+coming this way. Nick Grylls, him mak' moch friend with 'Erbe't, and
+'Erbe't, him glad. Nick Grylls big man, rich man, everybody lak to be
+friend with him. Nick Grylls say him come to help 'Erbe't. Him give
+'Erbe't ver' fine gun."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! Mabyn will pay dear for it!" Garth exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"I say so him," Rina said eagerly. "Me, I tell 'Erbe't everybody see
+Nick Grylls him jus' mak' a fool of you. What he want with you? He want
+her for himself. 'Erbe't on'y laugh. 'E say&mdash;" Rina's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> voice sunk very
+low&mdash;"'Let him help me get her, and I'll keep her, all right!'"</p>
+
+<p>Garth frowned and clenched his fists. His gorge rose intolerably, at the
+thought of this precious pair contending which was to have Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>Rina went on: "Nick Grylls say to 'Erbe't, mustn't let her get out of
+the country. He say 'If she go out she divorce you.'" Rina pronounced
+the word strangely. "Nick Grylls say he know a place to tak' her all
+winter, Northwest, many days to Death River, where no white man ever go
+before. Him think I not hear what he say."</p>
+
+<p>This was valuable information indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Garth opened the letter. It was a curious document, for while the
+thoughts were like Grylls's, they were clothed in a certain smoothness
+of phrase more likely supplied by Mabyn:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Mr. Garth Pevensey, Sir</span>: (Thus it ran) I am astonished beyond
+measure at the story I have learned from the lips of my good
+friend, Mr. Herbert Mabyn. I assure you, sir, that, though this is
+an unsettled country, we are not accustomed to lawlessness; nor do
+we propose to stand for it from strangers. You have twice attempted
+Mr. Mabyn's life; you have stolen and converted to your own use his
+household effects and supplies; you have unwarrantably imprisoned
+him on an exposed island to the great detriment of his health. Your
+purpose in all this is transparent. You seek to part him from his
+wife; and you are at this moment detaining Mrs. Mabyn in your
+shack.</p>
+
+<p>I flatter myself I am not without weight and standing in this
+community; and I hereby warn you that in the absence of the regular
+police, I mean to see this wrong righted. If Mrs. Mabyn is
+immediately returned to her husband, you will be allowed to go
+unmolested. If you still detain her, we will seize her by force, as
+we have every right, moral and legal, to do. We know you have only
+food enough for a few days, so in any case the end cannot remain
+long in doubt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nicholas Grylls.</span> </p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Scorn and amusement struggled in Garth's face. His nostrils thinned; he
+suddenly threw up his head and grimly laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this beats the Dutch!" he said feelingly.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie, reading the cunningly plausible sentences over his shoulder,
+was inclined to be anxious. "Surely he has no legal right over me," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a shadow!" Garth said.</p>
+
+<p>"Grylls may have believed this story Mabyn told him," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit of it!" Garth said quickly. "Grylls is not so simple." He
+stuck the letter sharply with his forefinger. "I'm a newspaper
+reporter," he went on dryly, "you can believe me, this is a perfect, a
+beautiful, a monumental bluff! I'm almost inclined to take off my hat to
+him! But the length of it gives them away, rather; they must have spent
+all day yesterday cooking this up."</p>
+
+<p>"What will you do?" Natalie asked.</p>
+
+<p>A wicked gleam appeared in Garth's eyes. "Oh, wouldn't I love to answer
+it in kind!" he said longingly.</p>
+
+<p>"An innocent, simple little billet-doux that would make them squirm.
+Why, that's my business!"</p>
+
+<p>"Better not," said Natalie anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," he said with a sigh. "It's the first thing you learn:
+never to write when you feel that way. But it's mighty hard to resist
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>Rina understood little of all this. "You send answer back?" she asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No. Tell him there's no answer," said Garth. "Tell him we nearly died
+laughing," he added.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That night Garth determined not to leave the cabin until shortly before
+dawn. He had seen Xavier leave the other camp before dark; and he
+guessed the breed youth had been told off to watch them. From what he
+had observed of the incontinuity of the breed mind in any given
+direction, he strongly suspected if they kept still throughout the first
+part of the night Xavier would fall asleep before morning. He had a
+little plan in his mind, which he did not confide to Natalie. About
+three o'clock, therefore, he called Natalie to bar the door after him;
+and he sallied forth, concealing from her that he carried a coil of
+light rope.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone more than an hour, of which every minute was an age to poor
+Natalie crouching over the fire and straining her ears. She had
+successively pictured every possible accident that might have befallen
+him, before her heart leaped at the sound of his signal at the door.</p>
+
+<p>Garth was for sending her back to bed forthwith, but Natalie apprehended
+he had not been gone so long for nothing; and presently she heard him
+stand two guns in the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got?" she asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I just made a trade." Garth airily returned. "Thirty feet of
+clothesline for a Winchester and a bag of cartridges. I threw in a
+handkerchief to boot. Pretty good, eh?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Natalie pulled him in by the fire, and made him light his pipe and tell
+her what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I had a hunch Xavier was watching us to-night," he began. "I bore
+a grudge against Xavier's pretty face, and I thought I'd have a little
+fun with him, you see."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie glanced up in alarm.</p>
+
+<p>"A fellow would go mad, if he couldn't do <i>anything</i>," Garth apologized.
+"I'll be good now for a week."</p>
+
+<p>"Xavier?" said Natalie inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't have minded a little bit, giving the brute his quietus,"
+Garth said coolly. "He killed my horse. But he had no chance to put up a
+fight; and I couldn't murder him; so at this present moment he's
+unhurt&mdash;except his feelings. But Grylls will half kill him in the
+morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you do to him?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"I was pretty sure he would be watching the path we have made to the
+trail," Garth went on. "I figured he would be on my left hand&mdash;his
+right; it's the position a man instinctively takes. You can't shoot so
+well over your right. So I crawled along the path, inch by inch on my
+stomach&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Garth!" she cried in horror. "If I had known!"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly!" he said. "So I didn't tell you. But there was no danger,
+really. It was too dark for him to shoot me&mdash;pitchy dark there, under
+the trees. I couldn't see an inch before my nose; and as I went I felt
+with my hand out in front of me, both sides the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> path. Thistledown was
+nothing to the lightness of my touch.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough, no more than thirty yards behind the house here, I touched
+his moccasin&mdash;you couldn't mistake the feel of a moccasin. And, just as
+I expected, he was sitting on my left. That was a pretty good guess
+if&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Go on! Go on!" she begged.</p>
+
+<p>"He had his back against a tree. I listened for his breathing. They
+breathe very light&mdash;tubercular, probably. Finally, I decided he was
+asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I mosied around behind him; and then I grabbed him. He let out
+just one little squawk; and then he shut his mouth. He struggled;
+slippery as an oiled cat, but not very strong. Finally I got him gagged
+with my handkerchief. Then I tied him up with my rope; round and round;
+just like the stories we read when we were kids. I expect I pinched him
+some; that was for poor old Cy.</p>
+
+<p>"Afterward I sat down opposite him; and lit my pipe; and thought over
+what I'd do with him, now I had him. We certainly weren't going to feed
+his ugly phiz; and he was no use as a hostage, for Grylls wouldn't give
+a hang what became of him. Meanwhile I was relieving my mind, by telling
+him a few plain truths about making war on dumb beasts. Hope he
+understood!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie concealed a smile. "What did you say?" she asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," said Garth. "It was more forcible than polite. It's been
+sizzling inside me for two days. Finally I decided to return him to his
+own camp."</p>
+
+<p>"Their camp!" exclaimed the startled Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Not all the way," he said; "but just where they'd see him in the
+morning. Horrible example, and all that, you know. So I hoisted him on
+my back, and carried him around to the brook. I propped him against a
+tree there, with his face turned home." Garth chuckled. "To finish the
+thing up brown, I suppose I ought to have pinned a placard on his
+breast: Notice! This is the fate that awaits all who&mdash;<i>et cetera</i>. But I
+didn't think to take any writing materials along with me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Garth!" said Natalie reproachfully, as he finished.</p>
+
+<p>He turned a face of whimsical penitence. "Honest, I won't do it again!"
+he said. "But I was under two hundred pounds pressure. It was a case of
+blow off or bust!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>They could joke for each other's benefit; but privately neither
+attempted to disguise from himself what a desperate pass they had
+reached. When they parted for the night, Natalie would lie staring
+wide-eyed at the fire, and ceaselessly reproaching herself for having
+drawn Garth into the sad tangle of her life; while he, tossing on his
+blankets on the other side of the partition, blamed himself no less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+bitterly for having allowed her to run into danger; and wrung his
+exhausted brain for an expedient to save her.</p>
+
+<p>A little beleaguered garrison watching its small store lessen day by
+day, and counting the crumbs&mdash;this is the situation of all to try the
+soul. But a garrison is always buoyed up by the hope of succour; and
+Garth and Natalie could expect none. On the other hand there was no
+possibility of treachery within this garrison; no need to measure out
+the rations, or to guard the store; for each was jealous of the other's
+having <i>less</i>; and each sought to give away his share.</p>
+
+<p>There was no variety in those days. They waited in vain for an
+attack&mdash;even longed for it; for behind their walls, the odds would be
+more nearly equal. But the other party knew this too; and preferred to
+starve them out. Garth's snares yielded nothing in four days; the only
+flesh they ate during that time was a fish he caught with a line set at
+night in the lake. Their stores were reduced to a few handfuls of flour
+and a little tea. Meanwhile their enemies feasted insolently all day
+about their fire; this siege was child's play for them; they were so
+perfectly sure of their prey in the end.</p>
+
+<p>There came a night at last when Garth and Natalie no longer cared to
+keep up the show of joking; they liked to be quiet instead; and they
+instinctively drew close together. They sat in the inner room; her head
+dropped frankly on his shoulder; and her hand lay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> in his. It made his
+heart ache to see how thin it was. But her spirit was still strong.</p>
+
+<p>"Garth!" she said suddenly. "Let's make a break for it! Anything would
+be better than this!"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. "No go, dearest," he said. "I've been over that, over
+and over it, every night for a week!"</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't we start down the lake in the canoe?" she said. "And make our
+way from some point below? We could cover our tracks that way, and gain
+much time. You have a rough map and a compass."</p>
+
+<p>"They would discover in the morning that the canoe was gone," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"They might not miss it for a day or two."</p>
+
+<p>"They have the smoke of our fire to go by, too."</p>
+
+<p>"They're careless. We might get a good start."</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, even if we had many days' start, they know we must make for
+the Settlement. How easy it would be to head us off!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it <i>might</i> succeed," was all she could say.</p>
+
+<p>"It's seventy-five miles," he said sadly. "You're not strong yet. How
+could you walk it, without food to support you on the way?"</p>
+
+<p>"You have your gun," she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no hunting on the open prairie for a man on foot!"</p>
+
+<p>Natalie dropped her head back on his shoulder; and said no more.</p>
+
+<p>Garth's face grew grimmer and grimmer in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> firelight. "Do not lose
+heart, dear," he said at last, in a gentle voice that was strangely at
+variance with his eyes. "Matters will take a turn to-morrow; I promise
+you that."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?" she asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm thinking it out," he said, evasively. "I'll tell you when it's
+pieced together."</p>
+
+<p>She was too weary to question him further.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness of his own room, he faced the thing. There was to be no
+sleep for him this night. The alternative had been there from the first;
+but hitherto he had averted his eyes from it, hoping against hope. Now
+it could be put off no longer. It was Natalie's life against theirs; and
+throughout the hours of the night, he steeled his heart to launch five
+souls to eternity&mdash;two of them the souls of women. Rina he knew would be
+transformed into a tigress by the death of Mabyn; so even Rina, whom
+Natalie loved, must go too. He found himself dwelling with horror on the
+harmony of her beauty, the deep fire of her eyes, the soft play of
+colour in her cheeks&mdash;which he was to mar!</p>
+
+<p>Supposing he succeeded, the dreadful consequences were painfully clear
+to him; the hideous noise it would make in the world when they got out;
+the ugly look it would have, with no one to bear out his story but
+Natalie, and her lawful husband among the dead! Grylls's lying letter
+had shown him how easy it would be to paint that side of the story in
+the colours of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> justice. For himself, Garth cared nothing; but the
+thought of Natalie, the sport of a world of malicious tongues, maddened
+him. But there was no help for it; it had to be done.</p>
+
+<p>His plan was simple in the extreme. He intended to cross the lake in the
+canoe; land well beyond Mabyn's camp; and fire the grass to the windward
+of the shack. No rain had fallen in weeks; the grass was as dry as
+tinder; and the old bleached shack itself almost as inflammable as
+gunpowder. He had, moreover, a small quantity of oil among the things
+seized from Mabyn. The night itself seemed to speak for the deed; it was
+as dark as Erebus; and there was a blustering, raw wind from the north,
+presaging snow.</p>
+
+<p>After starting the fire, he meant to climb the rising ground behind; and
+when they ran to beat out the flames, he would pick them off one by one.
+His gun would shoot as fast as he could think; he might get all five
+then. And if any regained the hut, they would soon be driven out again.
+Whichever way they ran, Garth could run as fast on the higher ground;
+and none of them was such a shot as he. Grylls first; then Mabyn; then
+the breeds. He meant to wait until dawn, so that if any escaped the
+radius of the fire, he could get them by daylight.</p>
+
+<p>But no executioner may have imagination; in the darkness of his room the
+attitudes of the slain were pictured to Garth as clearly as if they
+already lay before him: Grylls's gross body huddled in the grass; Mabyn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+hideous in death; and Rina cold and still in her wistful beauty. Cries
+of terror and agony rang in his ears; and he saw himself afterward
+burying the bodies&mdash;partly eaten by the flames. Small icy drops broke
+out on his forehead. Though he was doing it for her, when it was done,
+Natalie could not but shrink from such a bloody wretch. It would part
+them forever. But it must be done!</p>
+
+<p>When his watch showed half-past four&mdash;the dawn was later now&mdash;he arose
+to start. He called Natalie to bar the door after him. He told her he
+was going merely to look about and that she must not worry if he was not
+back until daylight. Natalie was scarcely awake. He yearned mightily to
+take her soft, sleepy form in his arms for once before they were
+imbrued; but he dared not, knowing she would instantly interpret the act
+as a possible farewell.</p>
+
+<p>When she closed the door behind him, he felt as one lost to hope.</p>
+
+<p>As he grasped the canoe, preparatory to pushing it off, he suddenly
+became aware through his sharpened senses&mdash;he could not have said
+how&mdash;that some one was very near him. He noiselessly dropped to one
+knee; and unslinging his gun, waited. The wind was making confusing
+noises and he could not be sure. The suspense became too great to be
+borne in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" he said sharply.</p>
+
+<p>There came a strange, new, and yet familiar voice out of the darkness:
+"Garth, is that you?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His heart began to beat wildly. "Who are you?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley!" returned the voice with the boyish break in it.</p>
+
+<p>They sprang to their feet simultaneously, not ten paces apart in the
+grass.</p>
+
+<p>"I've brought you grub!" sang the boy. "How's Natalie?"</p>
+
+<p>In an instant they were in each other's arms. A swift reaction passed
+over Garth; his knees weakened under him; he clung to the boy's
+shoulders; and lowered his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, thank God! thank God!" he murmured.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE BROKEN DOOR</p>
+
+<p>Garth beat recklessly on the cabin door crying:</p>
+
+<p>"Natalie! Natalie! Good news!"</p>
+
+<p>She was not long in opening.</p>
+
+<p>"See what I've brought you back!" he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>They slammed the door shut; and together pulled Charley in by the light
+of the fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley! <i>Charley!</i>" cried Natalie, quite beside herself with delight;
+and flinging her free arm around his neck, she pressed her lips full on
+his.</p>
+
+<p>The honest full-moon face of the boy turned as red as a peony; but his
+arms closed around her too, with a right good will; and it was Natalie
+in the end, who was obliged gently to disengage herself.</p>
+
+<p>They all talked at once; they laughed and wept in concert. As soon as
+they finished shaking hands all around, they began again. Whenever Garth
+was at a loss to express his feelings, he whacked Charley between the
+shoulders, until the boy coughed. In the end, speech failing them
+completely, they whooped and capered about the shack like wild things.</p>
+
+<p>"I say!" said Garth suddenly. "We're giving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> ourselves away nicely! The
+news has reached Mabyn and Grylls by this time."</p>
+
+<p>They quieted down.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell us your adventures, Charley dear," said Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd better bring my stuff in first," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy unslung a bundle from his back. "Thought you might be hungry, so
+I brought enough for a couple of squares," he said; "sugar, and tea, and
+bacon, and flour. And say, I thought something fancy would go down good;
+so there's a tin of sardines and a box of biscuits."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you darling!" said Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>Charley was much embarrassed. "The rest of the stuff's cached two miles
+down the shore," he went on hastily. "I'll trot along and bring it in."</p>
+
+<p>"Take the canoe," said Garth; "and they can't hold you up."</p>
+
+<p>"What will I do with the horses?" asked Charley.</p>
+
+<p>This was a problem. "How many?" Garth asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Three."</p>
+
+<p>"How will we keep them out of Grylls's hands?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why wait at all?" asked Natalie. "Let us all get in the canoe, and
+start for home. It will take me just five minutes to get ready!"</p>
+
+<p>But Garth shook his head. "You can't ride above a walk yet," he said.
+"It would mean a running<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> fight all the way. The odds are still too
+great against us in the open!"</p>
+
+<p>"The fellows from the Settlement promised to come look for us in a week
+if we weren't home," said Charley.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" said Garth. "Then we'll wait for them!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the horses?" said the boy anxiously. "They're not much to brag
+about; but I'm in debt a hundred bones for them."</p>
+
+<p>Garth clapped him on the back again. "Don't you worry about that, old
+boy!" he cried. "The debt is mine! Tell you what we'll do!" he added,
+"We'll bring them up here, and swim them off to the island. There's
+forage enough over there for a day or two, and they will be right under
+our eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>They set off immediately in the canoe; and it was all accomplished as
+planned. Charley brought the precious grub back by water, out of
+Grylls's possible reach; while Garth drove the horses in over the trail
+at a smart pace. Nothing happened en route; it was probably all done
+before their adversaries had time to plan an attack. They swam the
+horses to the island, and were both back in the shack, before it was
+light enough to aim a gun.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast followed; and such a breakfast! They both helped the one-armed
+cook. There was bannock light and snowy; bacon fried crisp&mdash;"breakfast"
+bacon, very different in the North from plain "bacon"; and fried
+sardines&mdash;delectable morsels! and coffee, and jam. All the delicious
+things Garth and Natalie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> had dreamed of paled beside this homely
+reality. Each of the three was delighted, moreover, to see the others
+eat; Charley in especial, at the sight of the good he had brought, could
+scarcely stop grinning to chew. Afterward he had to be told all that had
+happened; and he in return related his adventures.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell you what! I was sore when Garth sent me back!" Charley began.
+"'What's the use!' I thought. 'I can't do any work, not knowing what's
+come of them.' In the end I just didn't go back. I had all kinds of
+crazy ideas about following you along the trail; but at last I thought
+maybe I could be some real use by hanging round the Settlement, and
+keeping an eye on Nick Grylls. And I did.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, he really was knocked out all right, all right. They carried him
+in from the lake; and the sisters nursed him in the Convent.
+Construction of the brain he had, or something like that. Seems he got
+up when he first come to on the shore, walked ten miles, and then
+collapsed right near Grier's Point. But they kept that low. Hooliam gave
+out a great story, how a big storm came up on the lake, and how Nick
+fell overboard, <i>et cetera, et cetera</i>; Garth wasn't mentioned in it at
+all!</p>
+
+<p>"Long before Nick was able to be around, he sent down for Mary
+Co-que-wasa and Xavier; and then I knew there was more mischief brewing.
+Say, those two are the toughest of the whole tough bunch. They say
+Xavier is Mary's son. All this time I was getting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> mighty worried
+myself, why you didn't come back, and I was going to look for you
+anyway. However, as soon as he was up, Grylls got a big outfit together,
+and started over the portage with the two breeds. He gave out that he
+was going up to Ostachegan Creek&mdash;but I knew! I got a couple of cayuses
+on credit, and a little grub; and followed him inside three hours.</p>
+
+<p>"He beat me by a day to the Crossing, and went right through. Over there
+I heard about you from the fellows; and say, I was scared for fair, when
+I counted up the grub I knew you had, and then thought how long you'd
+been away! I hustled and got another horse and all the grub they would
+trust me for. I tried my darnedest to get some of the fellows to come
+with me. They laughed at me! They said I'd been reading too many dime
+novels&mdash;I never read any! You see, every one knows Nick Grylls so well,
+and nothing like this ever happened before. Jim Plaskett, the policeman,
+would have believed me; but he was away. I left a letter for him. I lost
+a couple of good days at the Crossing over this. The most the fellows
+would say was, if I didn't bring you back in a week, the bunch would
+ride up here.</p>
+
+<p>"I was so excited with it all, I lost myself like a bloody fool for two
+days on the prairie; and I just ran on the lake, by accident, yesterday
+afternoon. Say, I almost gave the whole snap away, for I came over the
+hill right above Mabyn's shack. Maybe I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> didn't duck in a hurry! There
+was the whole bunch below me! Across the corner of the lake, I could see
+this house too. I know it must be yours because it was just built; and
+it had a sort of tenderfoot look to it. Say! I wasn't glad to see smoke
+coming out of the chimney! Oh, no!</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's about all. I took a long sweep around the prairie, and
+came down at the place where we got the horses. I thought they would
+have you watched, so I figured I'd better wait for night, before trying
+to open up communications. When she got good and dark, I crawled around
+the shore of the lake. But when I got here, I didn't know how in thunder
+to let you know it was me, without bringing down the bunch on us. So I
+decided to lay low till morning, and show myself to you, the first
+chance I got. Then Garth came out and it was all right!"</p>
+
+<p>"Just in the nick of time!" said Garth grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"What were you going to do?" asked Natalie quickly.</p>
+
+<p>But he never told her.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>They settled down with what patience they could muster, to wait for
+their relief. Two days passed without any hostile demonstration from the
+camp on the hill; but that their enemies kept themselves well informed,
+they had the best reason to know; for it snowed on the second day, and
+on the following morning there were moccasin tracks around the house,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+and the rounded marks of two knees under the loophole in Natalie's room.
+Garth had taken the precaution to hang a piece of canvas over the hole;
+nevertheless, the discovery made them decidedly uncomfortable. Garth
+nailed a board over the hole; and they searched the walls anew for any
+tell-tale crack that might betray them.</p>
+
+<p>It grew warm again; and the snow melted off the ground. Frequent
+observations of the other camp taught them nothing. This apparent
+inactivity puzzled Garth, since the others must know that the game of
+starving them out was blocked with the arrival of Charley. They waited
+in momentary expectation of attack, or a proposal; but none came.</p>
+
+<p>Garth's only serious anxiety now was for the three horses. They must by
+this time have cropped the limited herbage of the island; and in another
+day, when they began to suffer with hunger, they would undoubtedly swim
+off; and all his trouble to save them would be lost. He was greatly
+tempted by the recollection of a wide, low meadow on the edge of the
+lake below, where the blue-joint grass grew as high as a man's thigh,
+curing naturally in the sun. With an hour's labour, he reflected, he
+could cut enough to last them for a day.</p>
+
+<p>There was a risk, of course, in depriving the cabin of its principal
+defender for even so long; but he would not be at any time more than
+half an hour's journey from them; and Charley ought surely to be able
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> hold the fort for that time. In case of an attack it might even be
+an advantage for him, Garth, to be on the outside of the cabin, where he
+could flank the attackers with his gun.</p>
+
+<p>In the end he went; setting off two hours before dawn, according to his
+custom. On issuing from the shack, he found with some anxiety that the
+sky had become heavily overcast, and an east wind had sprung up. This
+would prevent his hearing as well as he wished; however, he considered
+that if Grylls intended a night attack, he would scarcely wait until so
+near morning: and he kept on.</p>
+
+<p>He sat in the stern of the canoe pushing hard against the opposing wind.
+The raised bow danced over the water, slapping the little waves, and
+sending out musical cascades of drops on either side. The wind had the
+same cool, damp smell of the east winds at home; and he was reminded of
+a score of nights when he had nothing heavier on his mind than the
+approaching end of a vacation. After two days' imprisonment in the
+shack, the tussle with the wind was highly exhilarating; and it was very
+good to measure the strength of his arms. He sang under his breath as he
+worked. Black as it was, he could guide himself by the dimly-sensed
+outline of the tree masses; and when they receded he knew he had arrived
+opposite the meadow.</p>
+
+<p>It took him longer than he had counted on to gather what he could carry;
+for he was hampered by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> intense darkness. He collected the hay into
+small armfuls, which in turn he tied into great bundles; and wedged them
+into the canoe. Embarking again, he raced back before the wind at double
+the speed he had made against it.</p>
+
+<p>On the way, a single, dull sound, coming muffled through the night,
+brought his heart into his throat. He paused; but no other sound
+followed, except the song of the water, and the sweep of the wind
+through the branches on shore. He redoubled his strokes, filled with a
+vague anxiety; and pausing only to cast out his bundles on the shore of
+the island, hastened back to the camp. He heard no other untoward
+sounds; but crossing from the island, he saw that the fire in the other
+camp had died down. This had never happened any night before; and it
+added to his uneasiness. The increased chill of the air now heralded the
+approach of dawn; but it was not yet any lighter.</p>
+
+<p>As he landed, the familiar outline of his own house, just as he had left
+it, allayed his fears. Everything about the camp was still. Cautiously
+drawing up the canoe, he advanced with confidence to give the
+prearranged knock on the door. His knuckles beat upon the air. The door
+was wide open.</p>
+
+<p>Then Garth's heart shrivelled in his breast; and his throat was
+constricted as by sudden deadly fumes. He staggered in. There was a
+stale odour of gunpowder in the room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Natalie! Charley!" he called, in a choked whisper.</p>
+
+<p>The stillness mocked him.</p>
+
+<p>He ran into Natalie's room, still faintly illumined by the embers of the
+hearth. A glance told him it was empty; but he felt with his hands in
+all the dim corners, agonizingly whispering her name. There was no
+evidence here that any struggle had taken place.</p>
+
+<p>Running out to the outer room toward Charley's bed, he fell over a body
+lying on the floor. A touch told him it was the boy. He disregarded it,
+until he had made sure Natalie was not there. Then dragging the body
+into the inner room, he built up the fire. He saw the boy was not dead;
+he could find no wound on him. He worked desperately to bring him to.</p>
+
+<p>Charley stirred at last, and opened his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What happened?" besought the distracted Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The boy only looked at him stupidly.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake collect your wits, and tell me!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>Charley, suddenly clutching Garth's arm, raised himself on his elbow.
+"Garth!" he cried wildly. "Natalie! Where is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"God knows!" groaned Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Terrible recollection returned to the boy's eyes. He sat up dizzy and
+nauseated. "I remember now!" he stuttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! Quick!" implored Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a little while after you went," Charley con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>tinued, getting it
+out with difficulty. "Natalie came and shook me. She said she heard a
+sound outside.... We waited and listened&mdash;a quarter of an hour it
+seemed.... We heard nothing.... Then suddenly with one big crack, the
+door flew open. They drove a log against it.... I couldn't tell how many
+came in&mdash;maybe three.... I shoved Natalie behind me in the farthest
+corner. I had the Winchester ready in my hands.... They dropped to the
+floor when they came in; and scattered. I couldn't tell where they
+were&mdash;I don't know how long it was.... Suddenly I heard something close
+to&mdash;somebody breathing. I fired. In the flash I saw them all, Xavier,
+Mary, and right over me, Nick Grylls, swinging the butt of his gun&mdash;then
+my head split in pieces ... and you came!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my God!" cried Garth.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up his rifle, and ran like a madman from the cabin.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE BLIZZARD</p>
+
+<p>Garth had no conscious design in running; his muscles merely reacted in
+obedience to the grinding tumult in his brain. His eardrums rang with
+the fancied sound of Natalie's cries; and his eyeballs were seared with
+the picture of her shrinking in the brutal hands of Grylls. As he
+crashed through the wood, the little branches whipped his face
+unmercifully; and the spiny shoots of the jackpines tore his clothes. He
+ran full tilt into unyielding obstacles; and was flung aside,
+unconscious of the shock.</p>
+
+<p>He instinctively sought the other camp. He found it deserted; the tent
+gone; the door of the empty cabin swinging idly in the wind. He came to
+a stop then; and his arms dropped to his sides: without knowledge of the
+direction they had taken; and without the craft to follow their tracks
+in the grass, in his helplessness he hovered on the brink of sheer
+madness. He was sharply called back to himself by the sound of a faint
+groan from the edge of the cut-bank. A tinge of gray had by this time
+been woven into the unrelieved blackness. Running toward the sound,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> he
+found a human form prone in the grass; and he saw it was a woman lying
+on her face. Grasping her shoulders, he rolled her over. It was Rina.</p>
+
+<p>A tiny hope sprang in his breast. Here at last was a clue.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up!" he said roughly.</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer. From her limpness, and her cold, moist hands, Garth
+apprehended that she was physically sick. Partly raising her, he poured
+part of the contents of his flask down her throat. She choked, and
+turned her head away.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me be!" she murmured. "Let me die!"</p>
+
+<p>The wildness in Garth's veins subsided. Here he had something tangible
+to work upon; and his conscious brain resumed operations; prompting him
+at first like a small, strange voice at an immense distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what happened!" he said hoarsely. "If they have wronged you,
+too, help me to find them, and we'll pay them off together!"</p>
+
+<p>"No! I want die!" whispered Rina in a voice as dull and hopeless as the
+sound of all-day rain in the grass. "I say I kill myself. He laugh. He
+see me tak' bad medicine. He don' care. I fall down. He leave me. I
+t'ink I die then. I ver' glad. But I tak' too much; and it only mak' my
+stomach sick. Bam-by I try to go to lake and jomp in&mdash;but my head go
+off!"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her unwillingness, Garth forced more of the stimulant down
+her throat. Presently she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> able to sit up. She bowed her back, and
+buried her face in her crossed arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Ride with me after them!" urged Garth. "They have less than an hour's
+start! We will overtake them at their first camp. Rouse yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>But Rina only shook her head; and continued to murmur: "He want me die!
+He glad I die!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth's desperate need brought craft to his aid. "Very well," he said
+coolly. "I shoot him on sight! Mabyn goes first!"</p>
+
+<p>Rina, touched home, raised an agitated face. "No! No!" she said
+tremblingly. "Grylls, him took her&mdash;not 'Erbe't!"</p>
+
+<p>"No matter!" he said, feigning to leave her. "Mabyn dies like a
+dog&mdash;unless you come with me."</p>
+
+<p>Rina struggled to her knees, and clutched at him. "Wait a minute!" she
+stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Come with me, and I promise you his life, if I can save it," he urged.
+"I will give it to you!"</p>
+
+<p>She attempted to rise; and he lifted her. She stood swaying dizzily,
+clinging to his arm for support.</p>
+
+<p>"I come," she said faintly at last. "Tak' me to the water, then go get
+your horses. When you come back I ride with you."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped in the cabin, and got an herb she knew of to restore her.
+Garth then carried her down the hill, and laying her at the brink of the
+water, where she could drink and bathe her face, he hastened back to his
+own shack.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was now light enough to see a way through the wood. A spectral mist
+hung suspended a few feet over the lake; beneath it the water was like a
+steel cuirass, reflecting bordering foliage as black as jet. Charley had
+gone for the horses as a matter of course and was even now landing them.
+The boy's whilom rosy cheeks were as white as the mist; and his face was
+twisted with pain. His jaw was set doggedly; and he worked ahead without
+question or comment.</p>
+
+<p>No orders were required; they laboured instinctively. Saddles were
+carried out, and flung on the dripping beasts; and while Charley girthed
+them, Garth rolled the blankets, and made three bundles of grub, as
+heavy as he dared ask each horse to carry, in addition to his rider.
+Natalie's little rifle he gave to Charley; the second Winchester had
+been won back in the raid, and the twenty-two was the only other weapon
+they possessed. In twenty minutes they were ready. Securing the door of
+the hut against the entrance of animals, they hastened to pick up Rina.</p>
+
+<p>They found her waiting, outwardly collected; her old walled, sullen
+self&mdash;but in the early light her skin showed a deathly, yellowish gray.
+Refusing any assistance, she climbed into the empty saddle without
+comment; and mutely pointed the way over the hills to the west. Garth
+lingered to affix a note to the door of the shack for those they
+expected to follow.</p>
+
+<p>As he caught up to them again, he overlooked his little party with the
+eye of a commander. It was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> a hopeful view: three wretched, half-fed
+beasts he had, complaining at the very start under their loads; and for
+his aids an injured boy and a sick girl; with one first-class weapon and
+a toy among the three of them. This was all he had with which to meet
+and overcome Grylls's strong and well-provided party. The odds were so
+preposterous, he put the thought out of his head with a shrug. At the
+last there is a moment when the hard-pressed commander must wall up his
+brain; and let the tide of his blood carry him. The daylight revealed
+Garth's face gaunt and sunken; his lips a grim stroke of red; and his
+eyes contracted to two icy points.</p>
+
+<p>As they climbed the hill Rina said: "They got fourteen horse. Nick
+Grylls bring nine, three yours, and two cayuse 'Erbe't's."</p>
+
+<p>At the top she halted them, while she walked her horse back and forth,
+searching the grass. Garth's eyes meanwhile swept the wide, brown,
+undulating sea, seeking in the hollows and the coppices for any sign of
+motion. But the plain was as empty of life as the gray sky.</p>
+
+<p>Rina rejoined him. "They break up so we can't see them so good," she
+said in her indifferent way. "Seven horse go by the edge of the coul&eacute;e,
+southwest. Five horse go west. Two horse go northwest. Bam-by I t'ink
+they come together."</p>
+
+<p>"What horse was <i>she</i> on?" Garth demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Nick Grylls's big roan," she answered. "They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> mak' a bag for her to sit
+in. She sit one side; Mary Co-que-wasa sit the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Find the roan's tracks," ordered Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Rina shook her head. "I never follow that horse," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Find the heaviest tracks then!"</p>
+
+<p>She obediently wheeled her horse; and searched the turf again; riding
+around them in wide fanlike sweeps, while Garth waited with a deadly
+patience. At last she struck off to the northwest, calling to them, and
+Garth and Charley spurred after.</p>
+
+<p>"'Erbe't, Mary and her, go this way," she said briefly, as they came up.
+"Nick Grylls take six horse west, and Xavier take four by coul&eacute;e."</p>
+
+<p>"If we can overtake her before the others come up!" muttered Garth.</p>
+
+<p>Rina, looking at their horses, shrugged significantly.</p>
+
+<p>For half an hour they loped over the prairie without speech. A chill,
+damp wind stung their faces. The immense and empty plain with its cold
+shadows wore an ominous look under the lowering sky; a look that
+clutched at the breast.</p>
+
+<p>"I t'ink it snow bam-by," Rina had said.</p>
+
+<p>It would need only snow to complete their difficulties. Garth ground his
+teeth; and urged his horse afresh up every little rise, eagerly
+searching the expanse ahead from the top. A glance at last at the
+stretched nostrils and wet flanks of their mounts told him plainly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> such
+a pace would be slowest in the end. Hardest of all to bear was the
+necessity of going slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know of their plans?" he demanded of Rina.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "They not tell me moch," she said. "They t'ink I too
+friendly for you!"</p>
+
+<p>Little by little as they rode, the story was drawn painfully out. "Soon
+as Charley come to you, they get ready right away," said Rina. "They
+catch all horses, and keep them up coul&eacute;e, and pack everyt'ing. Mary
+Co-que-wasa, her go down and watch your house all the time, for good
+chance to tak' <i>her</i>. When you go out she mak' little fire under the
+bank for signal; and Nick Grylls and 'Erbe't and Xavier, them all go
+down. They not tak' me."</p>
+
+<p>Garth cursed himself to think how he had played directly into their
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I wait, and bam-by they bring her back," continued Rina in her toneless
+voice. "She ver' quiet. She mak' no cry. By the fire I see her face. It
+is the face of a dead woman."</p>
+
+<p>A groan was forced between Garth's clenched teeth. "Did they hurt her?"
+he demanded, waiting for the answer like a condemned man waits for the
+final stroke.</p>
+
+<p>But Rina shook her head. "Nick Grylls, him tak' off his hat, polite,"
+she said. "'Erbe't not say anyt'ing to her."</p>
+
+<p>He breathed again. "Did they refuse to take you along?" he asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The stolid brown face was twisted with pain again. She lowered her head,
+and clung to the horn of her saddle. "No," she said very low. "They
+'fraid to leave me be'ind. But they don' want me. And I want to die when
+I see 'Erbe't with <i>her</i>. They all glad when t'ink I to die!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth forbore to question her further.</p>
+
+<p>His impatience could scarcely brook the necessary pause to let the
+horses feed at noon. It was a camp of wretchedness; none of the three
+riders thought of eating. All the while the horses cropped, Garth strode
+ceaselessly up and down, biting his lips; while the white-faced boy, who
+had not spoken all morning, sat holding his bursting head between his
+hands; and Rina, crouching apart, gazed over the prairie with unseeing
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Garth had it ever in mind to save the horses, but his impatience was
+incontrollable; he made them start too soon; and throughout the
+afternoon he urged them more than he knew. The animals failed visibly,
+hour by hour. It was more than three hours before they came upon the
+site of the noon camp of those ahead, showing that they were steadily
+losing in the chase.</p>
+
+<p>To be obliged to stop again two hours short of darkness was a crushing
+disappointment to Garth; but the horses could go no farther. He could
+never have told how he curbed his impatience throughout that age-long
+night. He did not sleep: but an excess<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> of suffering is in the end its
+own merciful opiate; and he was not always fully conscious.</p>
+
+<p>With the morning a fresh blow awaited them. Daylight revealed Garth's
+mount lying dead of exhaustion fifty yards from camp. In a wide circle
+on the neighbouring heights, the coyotes were squatting on their
+haunches, waiting for the sure feast. It was colder than the day before;
+and the clouds hung thicker and lower. The three of them approached the
+dead animal, and looked down upon it stolidly.</p>
+
+<p>Garth set his teeth, and laughed his harsh note. "I will walk," he said
+shortly. "I can keep going while you are spelling the horses."</p>
+
+<p>Charley, for the first time, questioned a decision of his leader. "We
+can't spare an hour!" he said with a dull decisiveness, in which there
+was nothing boyish. "You have got to keep on ahead. Besides, you can't
+follow the tracks as well as I can, you would lose yourself. I will
+walk."</p>
+
+<p>Of the two desperate expedients it was clearly the better; and Garth
+instantly acquiesced. Possessed by a master idea, he was incapable of
+feeling any great compunctions at the idea of the injured boy setting
+forth on the prairie alone&mdash;that would come later. At present he stood
+equally ready to sacrifice Charley, or himself, or all three of them
+together, if it would save Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>The boy doggedly busied himself making a bundle of his blankets, and
+food enough to last him three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> days. The rest of his pack was added to
+the complaining backs of the other two horses.</p>
+
+<p>Garth did not neglect to consider what he could do to ensure the boy's
+safety. "Better return to the shack," he urged. "You can do it in two
+marches. There's plenty of grub there."</p>
+
+<p>But Charley flatly refused.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Garth. "I'll leave a note for you every time we stop,
+telling you what time we passed. If you don't overtake us to-night or
+to-morrow, I'll leave more grub for you. If we don't catch them in a day
+or so," he added with a look at the remaining horses, "we'll all be in
+the same boat again."</p>
+
+<p>It was a grim, brusque leave-taking. The boy averted his head as they
+left him, to hide the look of despair in his eyes. He knew what the
+lowering, wintry clouds portended on the prairie; and in his heart it
+was a final farewell that he bade them. But he kept his chin up, and
+strode manfully after.</p>
+
+<p>Garth did not suspect what was passing in his mind; the city man had
+never seen a snowstorm on the prairie. Topping every rise, he looked
+back, and waved his hat at the plodding figure, slightly bent under the
+weight of his pack.</p>
+
+<p>"He's tough! He'll come through all right!" he said to Rina more than
+once&mdash;perhaps because he needed secretly to reassure himself.</p>
+
+<p>Rina, preoccupied with her own heavy thoughts, did not seem to care
+either way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>About ten o'clock they descended into a considerable coul&eacute;e whose stony
+bed still contained some standing pools. Here, by the water, Grylls's
+party had encamped for the night; and the ashes of their fire were still
+warm. From the extent of the trampling in the mud, it was clear the
+whole party had made a rendezvous here; and beyond the coul&eacute;e, even
+Garth had no difficulty in following the trail of the fourteen horses
+over the turf. He rode ahead now; consulting his compass, he saw that
+the way always led due northwest.</p>
+
+<p>Some time later his eye was attracted by a splash of white in the grass.
+Throwing himself off his horse, he pounced upon it. It was a plain
+little square of linen; and in the border was printed in small neat
+characters "N. Bland." The find nearly unmanned him; he fancied the
+scrap of linen was still damp with her tears; and the old madness of
+desperation surged over him again. He forced his weary horse into a
+gallop. Rina indifferently followed.</p>
+
+<p>Pretty soon the snow began to fall in large, wet flakes, drifting down
+as idly and erratically as the opening notes of one who dreams at the
+piano&mdash;large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering there
+like measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither and
+thither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard.</p>
+
+<p>Rina lifted her brown face to the darkening sky. "We better go back to
+the coul&eacute;e," she called after Garth.</p>
+
+<p>He frowned. "Nonsense!" he cried irritably. "A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> flurry of snow can't
+hurt anybody! It'll turn into rain directly!"</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged, and said no more.</p>
+
+<p>The mute symphony of the snow was played imperceptibly accelerando. The
+flakes became smaller, and thicker, and dryer; and each gust of wind was
+a hint steadier and stronger than the last. Their radius of view was
+little by little restricted: the distant hills faded out of sight, and
+the white dome closed over and around them, until at last they seemed to
+be traversing a little island of firm ground, with edges crumbling into
+a misty void. Presently the ground, too, was overlaid with white; earth
+and sky commingled indistinguishably; and all that held them to earth
+was the quadruple line of black hoof-marks extending a little way
+behind. The horses sulked and hung their heads.</p>
+
+<p>They came to another and a shallower coul&eacute;e, which seemed to take a
+northeasterly direction across the prairie; whereas all the watercourses
+they had crossed hitherto tended to the southeast. Garth, on the watch
+for any such evidences, suspected they had crossed a height of land. On
+the other side of this coul&eacute;e he found he could no longer trace the
+passage of the preceding cavalcade under the thickening snow. He
+impatiently called on Rina; but she merely shrugged, refusing to look.</p>
+
+<p>"No can follow in the snow!" she said contemptuously.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At every hint of stoppage, Garth's blood surged dangerously upward. He
+pressed his knuckles against his temples, and strove to think. The two
+horses, instinctively drawing close together, turned their tails to the
+driving flakes. Rina sat hunched in her saddle, as indifferent as a
+squat, clay image.</p>
+
+<p>"I will ride on," he said thickly.</p>
+
+<p>She gave no sign.</p>
+
+<p>He consulted his compass. "We have ridden due northwest all the way," he
+said. "Where are they heading for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Death River, I guess," she answered, pointing. "The crossing is
+northwest."</p>
+
+<p>"How far?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Two days' journey, maybe seventy-five miles."</p>
+
+<p>"You wait for the boy in the shelter of the poplar bluff across the
+coul&eacute;e," he said. "When the snow stops, follow on as well as you can."</p>
+
+<p>"Charley not come any more," said Rina in a tone of quiet fatalism.
+"When snow hide our track, he walk round and round. Bam-by he fall down,
+and not get up. He die. He know that."</p>
+
+<p>Garth, ready to push into the storm, reined up again. Her sureness
+chilled his impatient hurry; and the oft-told tragedies of prairie
+snowstorms recurred to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Die in the snow!" he repeated dully, hanging in agonizing indecision
+between the two images; Natalie ahead, and the solitary boy plodding
+behind. On<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> the one hand he thought: "The storm has held them up,
+somewhere just ahead! It is my only chance of overtaking them!" and then
+he turned his horse's head north. But the other thought would not down.
+"The kid knew it meant death to walk; and he chose it!" Garth finally
+led the way back over the coul&eacute;e.</p>
+
+<p>Rina had no difficulty making herself comfortable among the young poplar
+trees. She improvised a shelter out of a blanket stretched over two
+inclined saplings; and in front of it she built a fire. Garth meanwhile
+changed to the fresher horse, and started back over their own dimming
+trail.</p>
+
+<p>"You never find him now," Rina said hopelessly, as he left her.</p>
+
+<p>Garth merely set his jaw.</p>
+
+<p>His watch told him it was past eleven. He calculated they had covered
+five miles between the two coul&eacute;es, and that it would be about
+twenty-five miles all told back to their own camping-place. Supposing
+the boy to have averaged three miles an hour, he would now be some
+twelve miles away, and if he kept walking, Garth, at his present pace,
+should come upon him in an hour and a half's riding.</p>
+
+<p>The marks of their previous passage were soon completely obliterated;
+and thereafter Garth rode compass in hand. With the wind behind, his
+horse showed a better stomach for travelling; and he made the first
+coul&eacute;e in something under an hour. Here a little search revealed the
+half-burned logs of Grylls's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> fire under the snow; and this put him
+directly in the path again. He stood up the logs, to make a better mark
+against his return.</p>
+
+<p>He began to keep a sharp lookout for the boy, frequently shouting his
+name. His voice, muffled by the thickly falling flakes, had an odd,
+deadened ring in his own ears; and he doubted if he could be heard very
+far. When he considered the vast width of the prairie, and the extreme
+improbability of two figures, shaping opposite courses, meeting
+point-blank in the middle of it, he was ready to despair of finding the
+boy. It maddened him to think how close they might pass, without either
+being aware.</p>
+
+<p>Later, he adopted another expedient. Every fifteen minutes he turned his
+horse at right angles to his course, and galloping far to the right and
+left searched the snow for human tracks; then, picking up his trail
+where he left it, he would push a little farther ahead. In this way he
+could sweep a path about a mile wide on the prairie.</p>
+
+<p>But the hours passed, and the snow deepened, and there was neither sight
+nor sound of the boy. Garth was not sparing of his bitter
+self-reproaches then, for having abandoned him. It seemed to poor Garth
+in his hopelessness, as if his whole course through the country had been
+marked by a series of hideous blunders.</p>
+
+<p>Less than three hours of daylight now remained to him, and he was all of
+ten miles from his own base.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> He dared not push farther away, for,
+little as he regarded himself, he could take no risks while Natalie's
+fate still hung in the balance. But before giving up, he determined to
+make one last sortie back and forth across the prairie. Far to the
+right, just as hope was expiring, he saw, crossing the white expanse, a
+crooked, double row of slight depressions, like little moulds, slowly
+filling with powdery snow.</p>
+
+<p>Flinging himself off his horse, with a beating heart, he hastily scooped
+out the snow. A man's footprint was clearly revealed. With a shout, he
+mounted again and jerked his horse's head around. The weary animal
+balked flatly at facing the storm, but Garth, beside himself, lashed him
+until he plunged into it. The tracks momentarily grew plainer. While
+they had strayed far to the left of his own course, he wondered to see
+that they still held the right direction in the main.</p>
+
+<p>He redoubled his shouting. At last a muffled, indistinguishable sound
+answered him from ahead; and presently out of the wild whirl of flakes,
+a spectral figure was slowly resolved&mdash;as poignant a symbol of humanity
+as the last man on earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley! Charley!" shouted Garth.</p>
+
+<p>The figure turned uncertainly. Under the snow-laden lashes the eyes were
+vague.</p>
+
+<p>Garth slipped out of the saddle; and, throwing his arm about the boy's
+shoulders, caught him to his breast. "Thank God! I was in time!" he
+cried in a great voice.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's really you!" the boy murmured. "I thought I was hearing things."</p>
+
+<p>Garth clapped him between the shoulders. "Buck up, my hearty!" he cried.
+"It's all right now!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got Natalie?" the boy said quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Garth sadly shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't have come back then," he said dully. "I didn't expect
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>Garth hugged him anew. "Dear lad!" he cried with a break in his voice.
+"I couldn't let you die in the snow!"</p>
+
+<p>The kindness brought fuller consciousness back to the boy's eyes. He
+clung to Garth then; and lowered his head; and whimpered a little. After
+all he was only seventeen.</p>
+
+<p>Garth hoisted him to the saddle; and headed into the storm again. The
+horse balked continually, sorely trying his patience. Their progress was
+very slow. Garth sought to keep Charley up with cheerful speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Bully for you to keep going!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"It was because&mdash;Natalie might need me," the boy's voice trailed.</p>
+
+<p>"And right on the course!" Garth sang. "How did you keep it?"</p>
+
+<p>"When the snow hid your tracks&mdash;I remembered&mdash;to keep the wind on my
+right cheek," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>That was the last Garth could get out of him. He was presently alarmed
+to find the boy growing increas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>ingly numb and drowsy; even he knew what
+this portended in the North. He pulled him out of the saddle; and made
+him walk; supporting him with one arm, while with the other he led the
+horse. The animal took advantage of his partial helplessness, to plant
+his legs and pull back anew. If there was ever an excuse for anger
+against a dumb beast, surely hard-pressed Garth had it then. The horse
+was crazed with exhaustion, and terror of the storm; and tugs and kicks
+were of no avail. Garth could not bring in both boy and horse by main
+strength; and in the end, with hearty curses, he was obliged to abandon
+the beast to his fate.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, pulling his hat over his eyes, and drawing the boy's arm across
+his shoulders, doggedly pushed into the storm. He thus half supported,
+half dragged his companion, who was, nevertheless, compelled to use his
+own legs. Charley never spoke except now and then to beg drowsily to be
+let alone. In Garth's flask was about a gill of precious stimulant, and,
+when the boy's legs failed him, he doled it out in sips.</p>
+
+<p>They had at least nine miles to cover&mdash;and only two hours of daylight
+left. Try as he would to banish it, the sense of nine miles' distance
+would roll itself interminably out before Garth's mind's eye. Nine miles
+into two hours&mdash;the sum had no answer. Afterward night and storm on the
+empty prairie&mdash;what was the use? But when he reached this point, he
+would grit his teeth and take a fresh hold of the boy. If he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> had any
+other defined thought besides this painful round, it was to thank God
+that he was strong; he needed every ounce of it now.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of attempting to pick up his own trail&mdash;surely obscured by now
+in the snow&mdash;he shaped his course northwest, trusting to strike the
+coul&eacute;e at its nearest point, and travel down until he hit the mark he
+had set up. It was a little longer so; but the result justified it, for
+there was some shelter in the coul&eacute;e; and working down the bottom, they
+could not miss the mark.</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past four by Garth's watch when they laboriously climbed up
+the other side; and set their course by compass again for Rina's camp.
+It grew colder hourly; and the snowflakes became as hard and sharp as
+grains of coarse powder. Charley was kept going automatically by
+frequent small doses of the spirit from the flask. Garth dared not spare
+any of it for himself. It soon began to grow dark; and long before Garth
+could hope they had nearly covered the distance between the two coul&eacute;es,
+it became totally dark; and he could no longer read the face of his
+compass. Fortunately the wind held steady from the north; he struggled
+ahead, keeping it on his right cheek as Charley had done before him.</p>
+
+<p>Garth's head became confused; he was no longer sensible of the passage
+of time. Only his will kept his legs at their work. Drowsiness crept
+over him; and with it a growing sense of the uselessness of strug<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>gling
+further. He fought it for a while, but with subsiding energy. His knees
+began to weaken under him; he sank down. With a desperate effort, he
+struggled up again; and won another painful hundred yards. He was
+falling again&mdash;and this time he did not care&mdash;when suddenly the ground
+fell away from under his feet, he pitched forward, and he and the boy
+rolled down a steep declivity together.</p>
+
+<p>Garth instantly knew they had reached the second coul&eacute;e; and the thought
+cleared his fogged senses like the draught from his flask which he could
+not spare himself. He poured the last drops between Charley's numb lips;
+and turned to the right over the stony bed of the watercourse. He
+remembered Charley had strayed far to the left of his true course when
+guiding himself by the wind; and he had also observed in himself a
+tendency to swerve to that side, when working by compass. So he was sure
+they were somewhere above the poplar bluff&mdash;how far he dared not guess.</p>
+
+<p>He was right. Utterly worn out by a seeming interminable struggle
+through the drifts in the bottom of the coul&eacute;e, at last a misty, pinkish
+aura blushed in the snowy night. It was Rina's fire&mdash;warmth and shelter!
+and before it a little animal was roasting on a spit. Garth's senses
+slipped away in rapture at the smell it sent forth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">THE SOLITARY PURSUER</p>
+
+<p>Sometime during the course of the night the snow ceased to fall; and
+morning broke clear and cold. Garth had turned in, intending to rise at
+four; but Nature exacted her due, and it was seven before he awoke. The
+sky was a bowl of palest, fleckless azure; the sun shone gloriously on
+the field of snow; and the air stung the nostrils like the heady fumes
+of wine. But he was in no temper to take any delight in morning
+beauties; he ached in every bone and muscle as if he had been beaten
+with a club; and at the sight of the mounting sun, he bitterly
+reproached himself&mdash;and Rina, for the lost hours.</p>
+
+<p>As for Charley, a glance at the boy showed that he was quite incapable
+of further travelling for the present. He suffered as much from the blow
+on the head as from the exposure in the snow. His mind was hopelessly
+confused and wandering. In any case they had but a single horse left;
+and only the one course of action was open to Garth. He instructed Rina
+to remain where she was and care for the boy, while he pushed ahead.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Even Rina betrayed some surprise. "What you do?" she said. "Three men to
+shoot, and Mary to watch <i>her</i>. You got no chance!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll find a way!" he said desperately. "This Death River, tell me about
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>Rina pointed northwest. "Big river, moch water," she said. "Come from
+mountains. Ver' moch high falls; mak' lak thunder! Above falls, ver'
+rough rapids, no can cross. Below falls, deep black hole; breeds say bad
+spirits go there. Only one place to cross, half-mile below falls."</p>
+
+<p>Garth caught the horse, who had fed himself as best he could by pawing
+the snow off the grass, and packed his blankets and a supply of food,
+including what was left of the little carcass Rina roasted. He learned
+it was a lynx; but the flesh was sweet, and he was too thankful for
+fresh meat to quarrel with the nature of it. He left Rina and Charley
+with a better will, knowing she could doubtless get others, as she had
+snared the first.</p>
+
+<p>There was about ten inches of snow on the flat, with deep encumbering
+drifts in the hollows; and his advance was very slow. The ill-nourished
+horse wearied immediately; and any pace beyond a walk was out of the
+question. Had Garth only possessed snow-shoes he could have made much
+better time on foot. The vast expanse was as empty as a clean sheet of
+paper; nevertheless, he saw the prairie was not without its busy
+population, as evidenced by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> number of tracks of little furry paws
+that had crossed his course already since the snow finished falling.</p>
+
+<p>At noon, having made about eleven miles (he figured), he came to the
+brink of a coul&eacute;e wider and deeper than any they had crossed hitherto;
+and which contained a stream in the bottom, running blackly around
+snow-capped stones. As he refreshed himself, and allowed his horse to
+drink, he reflected that Grylls would have reached this stream the day
+before about the time the snow commenced; and that it was likely the
+outfit had camped on its bank until the storm passed. He determined to
+search up and down before pushing ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Sure enough, no more than two hundred yards down-stream he began to come
+upon the tracks of horses and saw the bare patches they had pawed to
+reach the grass; and a little farther he ran plump upon the fresh
+remains of the camp; two bare spots where tents had been pitched, the
+ashes of a fire, and innumerable tracks of men and horses&mdash;the whole
+startlingly conspicuous in the sweep of unbroken snow.</p>
+
+<p>Garth's heart swelled with rage and mortification to think what a little
+distance had separated them during the night; and how by rising only
+three hours earlier, he might perhaps have caught them. But presently
+cooler counsels came to his aid; and when he considered the well-beaten
+track that led over the hill beyond, he was thankful for so much luck.
+He knew that at least until more snow should fall, they could never
+shake him off again; and he rode after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> with a renewed courage. His
+horse, too, freed of the entangling drifts, and sensing the other horses
+ahead, seemed to overcome his weakness for a while; and loped over the
+beaten trail with a good will.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this coul&eacute;e the character of the country began to change.
+Crossing a height, Garth saw a range of gleaming mountains off to the
+west at no great distance; his course was heading him obliquely into the
+foothills. The prairie gradually broke up; the mounds became hills; and
+the hollows deepened into valleys. With every mile, almost, the hills
+became higher and more conical; outcroppings of rock began to appear;
+and the little streams ran in gorges now, instead of coul&eacute;es.</p>
+
+<p>In the rougher country the horse's access of courage soon failed. His
+wind was gone, he sobbed for breath; and Garth was presently reduced to
+the necessity of leading him up every incline. On a wide flat between
+two ranges, he mounted after a long walk, and urged him into a run over
+this easy piece. The slack-twisted animal was not equal to the effort;
+halfway across, his heart broke; and he collapsed in a heap, ploughing
+up the snow, and flinging his rider over his head. When Garth returned
+to him, he was stone dead. In the midst of his chagrin the man could
+spare a glance of pity for the shaggy, misshapen beast. One of the
+vulgar equine tribe, at his best neither beautiful nor courageous, he
+had nevertheless given his life to the journey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Beside the stony watercourse that traversed this little plain, he made a
+cache of saddle, bridle and what food he could not carry on his back.
+Over the spot he piled a cairn of stones to mark it, and protect the
+little store from marauding animals. In addition to blankets, rifle and
+ammunition, he carried with him food sufficient for about five days. In
+an hour he was on his way again.</p>
+
+<p>During the rest of the day, and the following day, the character of the
+country changed only in degree. The trail never carried him directly
+into the mountains, but skirted among the foothills, which raised
+strange, abrupt, detached cones on either hand&mdash;steep, naked,
+unreasonable shapes of earth, like nightmare forms. Each day Garth
+plodded to the limit of his strength, reckless of what lay before him,
+regarding only the beaten trail which led the way. From various signs it
+was clear those ahead ever gained on him; but he kept himself up with
+the thought that they must sooner or later make an extended stop to
+recuperate their horses. Each night he made his tea with snow-water;
+and, rolling up in his blankets beside the fire, slept under the stars;
+and at dawn he was astir again. Hard work was his beneficent sedative.</p>
+
+<p>On the second night as he lay down he heard, or fancied he heard in the
+stillness, the breath of a far-off, heavy sound. He ascribed it to the
+roar of the great falls Rina had told him of; and the thought lent new
+vigour to his limbs next morning. He had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> another reason to hurry his
+steps; for each day had waxed a little warmer; and to-day the snow
+melted fast, threatening at last to obliterate the track he followed.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon the going became harder, for the mountains reached down
+long spurs athwart his path, over which he had to toil. Like the conical
+hills they were bare of all timber; only the valleys and gulches were
+wooded. On the first of these ascents, burdened as he was, over-exertion
+and insufficient sleep began to tell on Garth; and he became conscious,
+for the first, of a terrible weariness in his back. He crushed it down;
+he could <i>not</i> fail; he <i>had</i> to keep on. But the next ascent was harder
+still; and the shape of fear grew in his breast.</p>
+
+<p>The third long climb was nearly his finish. He would not allow himself
+to pause on the way up, though his heart knocked sickeningly against his
+ribs, while flames danced in front of his eyes, and there was a roaring
+in his ears. Gaining the summit at last, he flung himself down, afraid
+for the moment to look at the obstacles beyond. As he slowly recovered,
+a real booming disassociated itself from the noises in his head; and he
+eagerly raised his head. His eyes swept over a far and wide expanse of
+snow, a dish-like plateau among the hills. His heart leaped; for through
+the centre of the plateau ran a black fissure, like a crack in the dish;
+and off to the left a fleecy cloud rose lazily from the gorge, blushing
+pinkly in the light of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> setting sun. This must mark the falls; the
+Death River lay at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement of this discovery was immediately superseded by a far
+greater. In a direct line with him, on the plain beyond the gorge, he
+presently distinguished a few scattering, black objects like insects on
+the snow&mdash;but insects of the shape of horses. From the gorge itself,
+perfectly distinct in the crystalline air, rose a thin, blue column of
+smoke!</p>
+
+<p>The haggard furrows in Garth's face smoothed out; his weary eyes shot
+forth a quiet glint; and he slowly and grimly smiled. He arose; and
+instinctively unslinging his gun, examined the mechanism. A goodly
+warmth diffused itself throughout his veins; and he felt strong again.
+The end of his journey was in sight.</p>
+
+<p>Darkness had fallen before he reached the lip of the canyon. With bated
+breath he crawled to the edge and looked over&mdash;there was a chance they
+had escaped him again&mdash;but in the bottom of the pit, on the other side
+of the river, a fire was flickering redly in the darkness; and there was
+a hint of figures sitting around it. His heart beat strongly at the
+reassuring sight.</p>
+
+<p>The tracks in the snow led him to the top of the path, which descended
+into the gorge. This path was steep, narrow, tortuous and slippery; and
+he knew not what conditions awaited him at the bottom. Prudence
+counselled him to wait for daylight to reconnoitre;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> but it was not
+possible to contain his impatience the night through, with Natalie so
+near, and he not knowing if she was safe. He started down instantly,
+feeling his way foot by foot; and ever careful to dislodge no stone that
+might betray him. Within the gorge the boom of the falls was largely
+deadened by a bend in the walls above; and lighter sounds became
+audible: the lapping of the river on the stones; and, as he came nearer,
+someone breaking sticks for the fire below.</p>
+
+<p>Between him and the fire rolled the river with a deep, swift current.
+There was no more than a scant fifty yards between wall and wall of the
+gorge at the bottom. Coming still closer, he saw by the light of the
+fire that their camp was pitched on a triangle of flat ground, formed
+where a steep watercourse had made a perpendicular fissure in the
+opposite wall of the gorge. On one side of the fire was pitched a small
+"outside" tent&mdash;the same tent Garth had watched so long when it stood
+outside Mabyn's shack&mdash;and on the other side stood a tepee. A small
+raft, half drawn out of the water, explained their means of crossing the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>The descending path finally landed Garth on a precipitous incline of
+broken rock at the water's edge; and there, across the stream, so close
+he could have tossed a pebble into their midst, sat those he had tracked
+so far, all unsuspicious of his nearness. They were having their evening
+meal. Natalie was among them, facing him, the firelight strong on her.
+Her face was set and sad&mdash;but still unhumbled; and from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> this and the
+obsequious poise of Grylls's head, when he turned to her, Garth knew she
+was so far safe from him. His heart breathed a still hymn of
+thankfulness.</p>
+
+<p>Grylls sat on the other side of the fire, with his back against a rock.
+He still wore the bewrinkled suit of store clothes which had become so
+hateful in Garth's sight; and the broad-brimmed hat was set at a rakish
+angle. He was in a jovial humour, judging from the thick unction of his
+speech; doubtless, though he seldom looked at her, in his own way he was
+seeking to charm his cold and silent prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn's back was turned to Garth; his attitude was furtive; and
+apparently he spoke little. Garth did not trouble about him; for he knew
+instinctively that so long as the stronger man was by, Natalie stood in
+no danger from Mabyn. Mary Co-que-wasa, serving the food, hovered behind
+the fire, which threw a strange, exaggerated shadow of her hag-like form
+on the cliff. Nearer Garth, at a little distance from the others, Xavier
+sat on the ground, busy with his cup and plate.</p>
+
+<p>Garth watched Natalie with a swelling heart. How brave she was! how
+noble and befitting the air with which she faced her terrible situation!
+The proud sadness of her face was infinitely more affecting than any
+extreme of distress could have been. Garth bled inwardly, to think of
+the torments of mind she must have endured. He yearned mightily to let
+her know he was near. He crouched at the edge of the water, willing a
+message of cheer to her; and heartened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> himself with the assurance that
+she could not but feel it.</p>
+
+<p>She ate little; and, presently arising, disappeared within the tent.
+Grylls drew out the inevitable cigars, and, carelessly tossing one to
+Mabyn, lit his own. Mary went about collecting the dishes. Xavier
+carried his plate to the river side to wash it. Garth handled his rifle
+with fingers itching for the trigger. There were the four of them, all
+unconscious, delivered into his hands, it seemed.</p>
+
+<p>But he spared them for a while. It was not that he shrank from shedding
+blood now; taking their lives troubled him no more than killing so much
+vermin. But, close as they were, he could not be sure of nailing them
+all; a dive outside the firelight, and they were safe. And Natalie was
+in their hands; and he had no way of crossing the river. He must rescue
+her first.</p>
+
+<p>Mary went into the tent, which she apparently shared with Natalie; and
+presently reappeared with a dishtowel. Lifting a pail of hot water from
+the fire, she prepared to wash the dishes. The fire was dying down, and
+gathering an armful of brush, she heaped it on to make a light.</p>
+
+<p>Too late Garth appreciated the significance of this act. He turned to
+escape up the path again; and in his hurry dislodged a heavy stone,
+which rolled into the water with a splash. He faced about with his rifle
+ready. Only Xavier, at the water's edge, heard the sound, and looked up.
+At the same instant the fire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> sprang into a blaze, filling the canyon
+with light; and plainly revealing Garth and his shadow behind him on the
+rock. The breed sprang to his feet with a cry of warning. It was the
+last sound, save one, that he ever made. The sharp, light bark of
+Garth's rifle reverberated in the gorge; the breed spun around with a
+throaty, quenched cry, toppled over backward into deep water, and was
+swept away.</p>
+
+<p>Before Garth could aim again, Mary Co-que-wasa seized her pail of water,
+and flung it hissing on the fire. Absolute darkness filled the canyon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">IN DEATH CANYON</p>
+
+<p>Garth crouched at the water's edge, striving to pierce the murk with his
+eyes; but the blackness was like a wall. By and by the outlying embers
+of the fire began to glow faintly; but there was another splash, and
+every spark was quenched. Bending his head, he strained his ears. For a
+long time there was no sound from across the river; then little by
+little, and softly, he heard them set to work like mice behind a
+wainscot. There was a singular, measured falling of stones, which at
+first he could not interpret; then it suddenly occurred to him they were
+building a barricade across their little terrace; and he took heart; for
+the act was opposed to any design of immediate flight. But then, he
+thought, Mary, behind the wall, could easily hold the crossing by
+daylight, while the two men escaped with Natalie. Somehow, he must get
+across first.</p>
+
+<p>He searched noiselessly among the stones above the water line for
+driftwood; and succeeded in picking up a stick here and a branch there.
+Four of the stouter pieces he tied in a square with the rope that bound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+his pack; and upon this frame he piled a crib of sticks, of sufficient
+buoyancy to float his clothes, his pack and his gun. He stripped to the
+skin and waded cautiously into the water. It was of an icy coldness that
+bit like a great burn, and forced the breath out of his lungs like a
+squeezed bellows. But he set his jaws and struck out, towing his little
+raft with the end of the rope between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>He headed straight across, leaving it to the current to carry him safely
+below the camp. Ordinarily, fifty strokes would have carried him over,
+but the terrible cold congealed the very sap of his body; and the clumsy
+little raft offered as much resistance as a log. He could not tell how
+far he was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could
+scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on
+his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and
+writhe to restore the circulation.</p>
+
+<p>His limbs were rigid; his feet and hands wholly numb&mdash;but the will rules
+even bodily exhaustion. He would not tolerate the thought of weakness;
+he <i>would</i> get warm; and his reluctant blood was forced at last to
+resume its course through his veins. Warmth returned with excruciating
+pain. He conceded his worn body a little rest&mdash;for he knew they could
+not get their horses before morning&mdash;but in an hour, dressed, and with
+his pack and his gun on his back, he was crawling back toward Grylls's
+camp.</p>
+
+<p>This shore of the river, like the other, was formed of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> fragments and
+masses of rock, which had fallen from the cliffs above. He made his way
+with infinite caution, giving heed to every foothold, and feeling before
+him with his hands. Fortunately there was little snow to obstruct him;
+for what had descended into the gorge was lodged in the crevices of the
+stones. He crawled over heaps of rubble, digging his toes in, to keep
+from sliding into the water; and there were great hundred-ton boulders,
+over which he dragged himself on his stomach. Above the canyon there
+were no stars visible; and below, it was wrapped in darkness, thick,
+velvety, palpable as lamp-black.</p>
+
+<p>After measuring the inches of a long and painful journey over the
+stones, he sensed at last that he was drawing near the camp again. He
+redoubled his caution, hugging close to the wall of rock. Presently it
+fell away to the right; and before him he distinguished a faint whitish
+blur that he knew for the tepee. He stretched himself out to listen.
+Under all was the deadened boom of the falls; below him an indefinable
+murmur arose from the smooth river, and an occasional eddy slapped the
+stones; in front he was vaguely conscious of the three persons moving to
+and fro, and he heard the dull chink of each stone, as it ground its
+edges on the pile. They had relaxed their caution somewhat; once or
+twice a stone, rolling out of place, plumped into the water. They were
+at work at the other end of their barricade from Garth.</p>
+
+<p>He considered what he should do. His brain was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> working very
+clearly&mdash;dragging his exhausted body along after, as it were; for
+excitement and over-exertion had produced a curious feeling of
+detachment from it. As he waited there, the work on the barricade
+ceased; and a whispered consultation was held. If he could only hear!
+Afterward two figures approached the tepee and entered. Instantly Garth
+let himself down over the rocks behind, and snaking his body through the
+bit of herbage on the flat, applied his ear to the bottom of the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>He heard Mabyn's voice ask querulously: "What was it you said to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Told her to sit on top of the wall, and watch," Grylls carelessly
+answered. "They can't cross the river until morning, but we're not
+taking any chances, just the same. She's to watch, too, that the lady
+doesn't try to sneak the raft across to her friends."</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to clear out in the morning?" Mabyn asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Not on your life!" the other coolly returned. "We got shelter and good
+water here, the horses are safe above; and we command the only crossing
+of the river. We'll sit right here until their grub runs out. They can't
+have brought much!"</p>
+
+<p>"The police may hear," Mabyn murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'em come and welcome," said Grylls. "They know me! As for you, I
+guess a man can take a journey with his lawful wife, can't he?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. A match was struck. Garth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> guessed that Grylls was
+resuming his interrupted smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to me we hold pretty much all the trumps," he went on
+complacently. "My idea is, Pevensey's all alone over there. That was a
+pretty smart rap on the nut, the boy got. But even if there's two of
+them, what can they do? We've got cover, and they've got to show
+themselves; it's a funny thing if we can't pot them easy. We got a right
+to; they killed our man first."</p>
+
+<p>"Hadn't I better ride on with her to the Slavi Indians?" Mabyn suggested
+in a tone that he laboured to make sound off-hand.</p>
+
+<p>Grylls chuckled fatly. "What! And deprive me of the pleasure of her
+company!" he said mockingly. "I guess not!"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn was silent. Garth dimly apprehended what a torment of impotent
+fear and rage the creature must be enduring. He had delivered himself
+hand and foot into Grylls's power; and Grylls no longer even kept up a
+pretense of hiding his own designs on Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Better turn in," Grylls said indifferently. "No need for you to watch
+to-night. I'll have a snooze myself, and go out and relieve Mary before
+dawn."</p>
+
+<p>Garth had heard enough; they were all placed for him; and his way was
+clear. He softly drew himself around the further side of the tepee,
+pausing long between every move, to listen. Both their lives depended on
+his making no sound now; every faculty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> he possessed was bent on it; he
+took half an hour to make thirty feet. He circled the inside edge of the
+little triangle of flat ground, keeping in the shadow of the piled
+rocks. Crossing the little stream that issued over the flat was hardest;
+but he managed it; patiently studying each move in advance. Finally he
+approached the tent. Beyond, he fancied he could distinguish the vague
+outline of the wall running across; and upon it a huddled figure, a mere
+hint of substance against the pit of darkness behind.</p>
+
+<p>He felt his way around the tent. He found the canvas of the back wall
+was made in one piece. With shaking fingers, he drew his knife out of
+its sheath; and inserting the point in the centre of the stuff, softly
+drew it back and forth, a stroke at a time. His heart was beating like a
+steam drill; he swallowed his sobbing breath. Every instant he expected
+to hear Natalie scream from within.</p>
+
+<p>He severed the last thread at last; and put up his knife. He parted the
+flaps; and listened for sounds from within in an agony of indecision. He
+could not tell if she slept or was awake; he dared not so much as
+whisper her name; and if he touched her and she slept, how could she
+help but awake with a cry!</p>
+
+<p>But she was not asleep; and she had all her wits about her. Close to his
+ear, a voice soft as a zephyr in the grass whispered his name. A
+trembling breath of relief escaped his lips; and instantly an arm was
+wreathed about his neck; and a soft cheek pressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> against his rough
+one. He caught her to him; her slim frame quivered through and through.
+It was his own Natalie; the feel of her! the fragrance of her! Life
+holds but one such moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew you'd come! I knew you'd come!" she breathed in his ear.</p>
+
+<p>Her terrible agitation was the means of calming his own. He had to be
+cool for both. He pressed her close to him, stroking her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Brave, <i>brave</i> Natalie!" he whispered. "Not a sound, till we are
+clear!"</p>
+
+<p>He gave her a moment to recover herself, letting his encircling arms
+speak the comfort and cheer he could not utter. Little by little the
+piteous trembling subsided and the rigid form relaxed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ready, now?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>She eagerly nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I lead the way," he breathed in her ear; "and you keep close at my
+heels. Take it easy. It must be hands and knees, and an inch at a time."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie pressed his hand to her lips.</p>
+
+<p>He crawled through the hole, and waited for her outside. She made no
+sound. He touched her reassuringly; and realized with a pang how she was
+handicapped, with one arm in a sling. They crept back around the foot of
+the piled rocks, dragging themselves with tense muscles, a foot at a
+time and waiting long between. By the touch of her hand on his foot he
+knew she followed close. Looking over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> his shoulder, he sensed the
+huddled figure still motionless on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>He could not have told what gave the alarm. They had reached the
+rivulet, when suddenly Mary leaped off the wall with a cry that brought
+the two men tumbling out of the tepee.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, springing to his feet, seized Natalie's hand, and pulled her
+after him.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on!" he whispered cheerily. "We're safe now!"</p>
+
+<p>They scrambled up over the stones of the watercourse, careless of the
+noise they made.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" they heard Grylls shout below.</p>
+
+<p>A sentence in Cree explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch the raft!" he shouted. "I'll bring her back!"</p>
+
+<p>They heard him run heavily toward them. Hastily unslinging his gun,
+Garth sent a shot at random through the darkness. They heard the bullet
+spring off a stone. The steps ceased.</p>
+
+<p>"By God! <i>he's</i> up there!" cried Grylls thickly. "Come back, Mabyn!
+We'll get 'em easy in the morning!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no further sound of pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>As they climbed, Garth searched from side to side, as well as he could
+in the darkness, for a suitable spot to make a stand. High above the
+level of the river, a huge cube of rock resting squarely in the bottom
+of the ravine, and forcing the stream to travel around it, offered what
+he wanted. One side of the boulder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> lay against a steep rocky wall; and
+in the angle was a secure niche for Natalie.</p>
+
+<p>Her courage failed a little when she saw he meant to stop. "Not here!
+Not here!" she protested nervously. "We must put miles between us before
+morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"The way home lies back across the river," Garth said gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Then why did you come up here?" she said a little wildly. "They'll
+never let us back!"</p>
+
+<p>His heart ached for her, at the thought of what she must still go
+through. "Courage! for one more day, my Natalie!" he urged, drawing her
+to him. "We can't start without horses and food, and those I have to win
+for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"You make me ashamed!" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He heard no more whimpering.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, appreciating the vital necessity of sleep, if he was to keep his
+wits about him next day, lay down in his blankets while Natalie kept
+watch. With the first tinge of gray overhead, she woke him, as he had
+bidden her.</p>
+
+<p>"If we only had a good breakfast to begin on!" were his waking words;
+"and there's nothing but raw flour and water."</p>
+
+<p>Natalie, in answer to this prayer, produced a flat package from her
+dress which proved to contain bread and meat. "I always kept something,
+in case I should be able to get away," she explained.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
+
+<p>They ate, sitting quietly side by side in the darkness&mdash;they could even
+laugh a little together now&mdash;and they arose vastly refreshed.</p>
+
+<p>Garth climbed the big rock to wait for daylight to reveal the strength
+and the weakness of the position he had chosen. The top of the rock
+formed a flat plane slightly inclined toward their rear; and, lying at
+full length upon it, he could shoot over the edge without exposing more
+than the top of his head. He lifted up a heavy stone or two; and stood
+them along the edge for further protection. Then he waited&mdash;waited for
+hours it seemed to him; looking and looking down the ravine until his
+eyes were fit to start out of his head; and he could see nothing; but
+lo! when he looked again the light was there!</p>
+
+<p>On the whole he was satisfied. His rock commanded the entire ravine
+below; it was as steep as a pair of stairs. There was not a stick of
+herbage below; only a trough of heaped and broken rock masses. On either
+hand they were shut in by straight lead-coloured walls of rock; and at
+the bottom of the ravine, the forbidding, mist-gray wall of the main
+gorge cut off the view. In front and on the left they were amply
+protected; their right flank was the weak spot. Above them on this side,
+part of the wall of the ravine had given way some ages past; and a bit
+of the plain had sunk down. The hollow thus formed contained a grove of
+gaunt trees and underbrush. If their assailants, under cover of the
+rocks on the way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> ever climbed to it, Garth and Natalie would be badly
+off indeed.</p>
+
+<p>It was a grim figure that the first rays of light revealed sitting on
+the big rock. Garth had lost his hat long ago; and he was both unshaven
+and unshorn. He crouched, hugging his knees, with his rifle across his
+thighs; and his sheepskin coat hung over his shoulders ready to fling
+off, when he needed to act. The flannel shirt beneath was in rags; and
+his moccasins, mere apologies for foot-coverings. But to Natalie,
+regarding the cool, bright shine of his eyes, as he smiled down on her,
+he was wholly beautiful. She was scarcely better off; her pale face was
+enframed in a sad wreck of a limp, stained felt hat; but she could smile
+too; and Garth had never found her lovelier in her bravery.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter w500"><a name="gu04" id="gu04" href="images/hu04.jpg">
+<img class="noborder" src="images/iu04.jpg" alt="It was a grim figure that the first rays of light revealed sitting on the big rock" />
+</a><span class="caption">It was a grim figure that the first rays of light revealed sitting on the big rock</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The suspense was well-nigh intolerable&mdash;and so they fell to chaffing.</p>
+
+<p>"If mother could only see us now!" said Garth with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel like a white cat coming out of a coal-bin," said Natalie.
+"'What's the use!' she says, looking round at herself. 'The job is too
+big to tackle. If I was only a black cat it wouldn't show!'"</p>
+
+<p>"You could walk right on as Liz, the girl bandit of the Rockies," said
+Garth.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you talk!" she retorted. "You look as if Liz had missed her cue,
+and you'd been through the sawmill!"</p>
+
+<p>And then Garth saw a black sleeve sticking out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> from behind a rock in
+the ravine below; and he got down to business. A little sigh of relief
+escaped him at the sight of his enemies at last. He fired. The shot went
+wide.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie sank back in her corner, deathly pale; and with a hand over her
+lips, to keep from crying out. Her part was harder than his.</p>
+
+<p>He called down to her reassuringly. "All right! Only a try-out!"</p>
+
+<p>Further down, a second figure showed briefly, scrambling up the
+right-hand side of the trough. Garth fired&mdash;a fraction of a second too
+late. He could scarcely credit such nimble agility in a figure so gross.
+It was Grylls. Thus two of them were accounted for. Searching for the
+third, he saw the black crown of a hat projecting above a stone on the
+other side of the ravine. This was an easy shot; he aimed and fired with
+a savage satisfaction. The hat disappeared; but again he knew, somehow,
+that his bullet had not found its mark.</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment Grylls won a rock a yard higher up. He was not coming
+up the bottom of the ravine, but aiming obliquely up the side for the
+trees high above. Garth, grimly covering his shelter, saw him bob his
+head around; a bare, cropped, tousled head, like a hiding schoolboy's.
+Quick as he was with the trigger, Grylls was quicker. The bullet
+flattened itself harmlessly beyond.</p>
+
+<p>As he shot there was a scramble across the ravine;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> and he saw the other
+figure had mounted. The hat, Mabyn's hat, again showed; and he took
+another shot at it. This time the bullet knocked it spinning off the
+rifle barrel which upheld it; and in a flash Garth understood how neatly
+they were fooling him. Each in turn drew his fire, while the other made
+an advance. He resolved to shoot no more.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the first one he had glimpsed, which must be Mary, had not
+moved from the middle of the ravine. Some of the stones were moved, and
+he guessed she had made a permanent shelter there. There was a shot from
+below, and the bullet spattered itself on the heavy base of rock.
+Holding his hand, Garth awaited a second shot. He saw a tiny white puff
+at last, and marked the aperture whence it issued. The bullet hurtled
+whiningly overhead. Steadying his gun on the edge of the rock, he took
+careful aim&mdash;but the other spoke first. It was a marvellous shot&mdash;or a
+chance one. The bullet splintered the edge of the stone protecting
+Garth's head, and sang off. A jagged sliver of stone ploughed across the
+back of his extended hand. He exclaimed as in casual surprise, and his
+gun exploded harmlessly in the air. He looked at his hand stupidly as at
+an alien member; then suddenly he understood; and whipping out his
+handkerchief, bound up the wound, knotting the linen with teeth and
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this moment Garth had been playing a dispassionate game; but he
+returned to his loophole conscious of a great surge of cold rage against
+those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> below. He yearned to get even; but he could wait for it. Mabyn
+exposed his hat tantalizingly; Grylls shot out a foot, or bobbed up his
+head&mdash;but Garth saved his bullets. He would not even try to pierce the
+sharpshooters' defenses again. An occasional shot came from there; but
+never such another as the last.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Grylls changed his tactics. From behind his rock he taunted
+Garth vilely. The walls of the ravine reverberated horridly with the
+sound of the sudden human voice.</p>
+
+<p>But Garth still bided his time; merely adding the insult of the words to
+Natalie's ears, to the score of his rage.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie in the meantime, thankful to have something to do, had been
+piling stones as heavy as she could lift, on the rock behind him. She
+had torn the sling from her arm; and was using the weaker member to
+steady the other.</p>
+
+<p>Garth, fearful that Grylls might succeed in flanking them at last,
+ordered her to climb up behind him; and without turning his head, told
+her how to make a little parapet along the top of the rock on the
+exposed side.</p>
+
+<p>Garth finally got his chance. A little stone rolled down from Mabyn's
+hiding-place; and he instantly trained his gun on the spot. Mabyn,
+miscalculating, or losing his head, suddenly scurried for the next rock.
+Garth had marked it. Mabyn gained it, but before he could pull his legs
+after him the rifle spoke.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> There was a scream of pain; and Mabyn's
+body, sliding from behind the rock, rolled and dropped heavily from
+stone to stone. A leg caught in a fissure and stayed him; he hung head
+downward, writhing in hideous, theatrical postures of agony, and
+screaming like a woman. Garth, thinking of Natalie, longed to send a
+shot to still the noise; but his hand was held by his promise to Rina.</p>
+
+<p>It was all over in a minute after that. Grylls, careless of the other's
+fate, scrambled up from stone to stone. Garth peppered his course with
+bullets; but the rocks were scattered so thickly, Grylls needed to
+expose himself for scarcely a second at a time. He gained the trees at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>An instant of terrible suspense succeeded. Garth made Natalie lie close
+under the little wall she had been building. He crouched over her,
+himself fully exposed, searching the hillside with strained eyes.
+Suddenly he saw the bloated face not thirty yards away. Grylls had
+partly stepped from behind a tree and was deliberately taking aim. Garth
+sprang to his knees. The two guns spoke at once. Grylls pitched
+headfirst down the steep slope into view; and rolled down the bare rocks
+into the tiny stream.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got him!" shouted Garth triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>Even as he spoke he toppled over sideways. Natalie clutched at him
+wildly; but his coat was pulled out of her grasp. He slid off the rock
+and dropped on the stones behind. In an instant she was at his side. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>
+was already struggling to rise&mdash;his teeth pressed into his lip until the
+blood oozed between.</p>
+
+<p>"Only my left shoulder," he muttered. "I can still shoot. There's Mary,
+yet. Help me up."</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, with her aid, he managed to pull himself back on the rock, one
+arm dangling useless. Through his loophole, he saw Mary toiling openly
+up the ravine. He showed himself. At the sight of him the old woman
+paused and held out her hands as if inviting him to shoot. She had left
+her gun. When he made no offer to fire, she quietly continued her climb.
+Garth watched her grimly.</p>
+
+<p>Reaching Grylls's body, she unwound a woollen scarf from about her
+waist; and passing it under his shoulders, partly hoisted his great bulk
+on her back with an incredible effort; and started down again. Grylls
+was quite dead; his heels thudded limply from stone to stone.</p>
+
+<p>Long before she reached the bottom, Garth lost interest in her progress.
+He had fainted.</p>
+
+<p>Natalie, working to restore him, distracted, hopeless, crazed, suddenly
+heard a distant shout; and looking up distinguished a little cavalcade
+winding down the face of the great gorge. There was a red coat among
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Garth! We're saved! We're <i>saved</i>!" she cried to his unhearing ears.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2>
+
+<p class="chhead">EPILOGUE: SPOKEN BY CHARLEY</p>
+
+<p>In the city of Winnipeg on a brilliant day toward the end of winter, a
+broad-shouldered, ruddy youth, with dancing blue eyes and a capacious
+smile, came running down a side street, and catching a certain
+fence-post at full speed, swung himself inside the gate with the
+dexterity of old practice; sprang up the steps and banged on the door.</p>
+
+<p>It was opened questioningly by a little mouse of a woman, with great
+brown eyes, and gray strands mixing in her bright, brown hair.</p>
+
+<p>The boy flung his arms around her like a bear. "Mother!" he cried
+breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Charley! My boy!" she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>He picked her up bodily; and, kicking the door shut, carried her into
+the cheerful sitting room, where geraniums bloomed on the sunny
+window-sill, and a fire danced in the grate.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm bigger than you are now!" he chuckled joyously. He put her in her
+chair; and waltzed about the room, touching the well-remembered objects.
+"By<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> Jolly! the very same pictures, the good old sofa!" he sang. "Oh,
+it's good to be home!"</p>
+
+<p>The mother held out her arms. "My boy! My boy!" was all she could say.</p>
+
+<p>Dropping to his knees, he embraced her again. "You dear old lady," he
+cried. "What a trouble I always was! It's your turn to have a good time
+now!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's enough to have you back," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He gyrated about the room again. "Say, I feel as giddy as a puppy after
+a bath! Imagine trolley-cars and baby-carriages and show windows and
+silver knives and forks after two years in the North. Say, I've clean
+forgot how to eat stylish!"</p>
+
+<p>"How long are you going to stay?" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>He came to a stand beside her. "I'm not going back," he said in a deeper
+tone. "It's a bully country and I had a whale of a time&mdash;but I belong
+here! I'm going to take care of you now, and bring up the kids. I'm a
+man now,"&mdash;his face changed comically&mdash;"Don't laugh!" he begged. "I used
+to say that all the time; but it's different now; you'll see! I've had
+experience!"</p>
+
+<p>She held out her arms to him again. "Tell me, my son," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He dropped to the floor beside her; and laid his head against her knee.
+There, in front of the fire, while the sun went down, and the early
+winter twilight gathered, he told her the story.</p>
+
+<p>"When Garth rode away leaving me and Rina in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> poplar bluff," he
+said&mdash;reaching that part in due course&mdash;"I didn't know much what was
+happening. But say, that Rina, she's an out-o'-sight nurse! She brought
+me around in great shape; and the second day afterward I was as peart as
+you please. That same day the fellows from the Crossing turned up; Jim
+Plaskett, the policeman, and three others. It was Jim made them come,
+soon as he heard the story. Jim's a peacherino! One of these lean, quiet
+chaps you can depend on; decent, too, clean-mouthed&mdash;Oh! Jim's looked up
+to, I can tell you!</p>
+
+<p>"They wanted me to rest a while yet, till they came back. But they had
+plenty of spare horses, and Rina and I wouldn't stand for being left
+behind. We rode like sixty all next day, and camped only fifteen miles
+from Death River. We found the bones of Garth's horse on the way&mdash;picked
+clean; and the note he left every place he camped. You ought to have
+heard Jim Plaskett crack up Garth's pluck&mdash;and Jim knows!</p>
+
+<p>"We reached the canyon about half-past six in the morning. I'd heard of
+that place from the Indians. Say, it was a fearsome spot! a kind of
+crooked, gaping split in the prairie like the pictures in Dante's
+Inferno. The walls were as bare and hard and cold as black ice; and way
+down in the bottom there was a horrible jelly-like water swirling around
+without making any noise. Seems if you couldn't breathe good when you
+got into the place! Minded me of the receiving vault in the cemetery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There was a risky little path going down, and we kept right on. Across
+the river, there was a break in the wall where a creek came down a
+steep, wild-looking ravine. At the bottom of it we could see a tepee and
+a tent; but no people. Some said they saw a body in the ravine, but you
+couldn't rightly make out."</p>
+
+<p>Charley paused and shuddered. "Say, it was horrible!" he whispered.
+"Glad I don't have dreams! When we got down near the water suddenly we
+saw old Mary Co-que-wasa come climbing over a heap of stones that was
+piled on the flat; and she was bent almost double, half lifting, half
+dragging a man by a rope under his arms. It was Nick Grylls. He looked
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>"We shouted at her; and she looked up just once. I saw her face plain.
+It wasn't surprised or glad or anything&mdash;just stupid like a breed. She
+never stopped walking. She stepped right off the flat rock into the deep
+water with the man on her back; and they went out of sight; and some
+bubbles came up."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, staring into the fire. His mother caught him to her breast.
+"Oh, my son! what sights were these!" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Mary was a deep one!" Charley said slowly. "You couldn't tell about
+her! I never heard her open her mouth!</p>
+
+<p>"We hustled down to the edge of the water," he resumed presently. "Jim
+Plaskett threw off his coat; and went in after them. But it was no use;
+the current<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> carried them down; and it was too cold to stay in more than
+a minute or two. We never saw them again.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim landed on the other side; and brought us back the raft that was
+there; and we all crossed. There was nobody in the tents&mdash;blankets in a
+heap, as if they'd sprung out of bed suddenly. We started to climb the
+ravine. It <i>was</i> a body lying there on the rocks; it was Mabyn. Rina was
+halfway to it, before any of us saw. He wasn't dead; but had a bullet
+through both legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Say that place was full of horrors! It stunk of gunpowder; and there
+was little thin layers of smoke hanging quiet between the walls. I was
+near out of my head, thinking what had become of them. We shouted all
+the time; and by and by we got a faint kind of an answer back. By Jolly!
+I went up those rocks like a cat! I found them behind a whopping big
+rock. Garth was stretched out all bloody and she was trying to get his
+coat off; and she couldn't. She looked up at me with a face like chalk;
+and when she saw who it was, she just gave a little cry like a baby, and
+keeled over. Oh, it was pitiful! I carried her down to the river. I
+wouldn't let anybody else touch her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to make a long story short, we decided to raft it down the river
+to Fort Ochre, instead of trying to win overland to the Crossing. Garth
+had a ball through his shoulder and a gashed hand; and Mabyn was pretty
+low. It was longer that way, but we could carry them comfortable.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We built another raft and started next morning. Jim Plaskett, Mabyn and
+Rina went on the first; and Sandy Arkess, Garth, Natalie and I followed
+on the other. The other two fellows were to drive all the horses back
+over the prairie. Say, that was quite a journey! Garth was getting
+better; and we all felt pretty good, sitting round and swapping yarns,
+and looking at the scenery, while the current carried us down. When we
+got out of the gorge, coming down so quietly as we were, we saw any
+amount of game. Got a moose right on the bank! Gee! that was good meat!
+And at night, say it was out o' sight! sitting there talking about going
+home, and watching the trees march past, and a bang-up show of Northern
+lights up above! It was pretty cold.</p>
+
+<p>"There was the Dickens of a pow-pow at the Fort, when we got there at
+last! It's great sport being a hero! The Bishop and his party were
+there, just ready to start for home, and you never saw such a surprised
+man, when he saw Garth coming in from the other direction. And the old
+woman&mdash;I mean Mrs. Bishop&mdash;took to Natalie like her long-lost mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Their party was obliged to start at once for fear of the river's
+closing on them; and Garth insisted on sending Natalie out with the old
+lady. She kicked like anything at leaving him there wounded; and I
+braced him, too, to let her stay; but he told me it was for the sake of
+her good name. I didn't quite see that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>&mdash;why any one who <i>knew</i>
+Natalie!&mdash;but I suppose he knew best.</p>
+
+<p>"Garth and I stayed at Fort Ochre. The Inspector came down the river;
+and there was an official investigation. I was right in the thick of it.
+Gee! but it was sport! Colonel Whinyates is a great little chap&mdash;cheeks
+as red as church cushions, and eyes that pop like gooseberries! It was
+great to hear him bawl at the witnesses. But he's all right. Him and I
+were good friends!</p>
+
+<p>"Garth told his story and I told mine, and Rina and Plaskett. And
+Natalie had left what they call a disposition behind her. Everything was
+all straight, but Garth clinched the matter by calling Mabyn to testify.
+He was carried in on a stretcher. And blamed if he didn't tell the
+truth! He'd had a close call, you see, and had what Garth called a
+change of heart. It was Rina did it; day and night she never left him!</p>
+
+<p>"The investigation ended in a love feast&mdash;that's what Garth called it.
+Old Colonel shook hands with Garth and me, and said we were heroes, by
+Gad! He's a bird. Garth wouldn't prosecute Mabyn; and he was let out
+from under arrest.</p>
+
+<p>"The winter had set in by that time; and Garth and I couldn't get out
+till the ice formed. It was pretty slow up there, you bet! and, as Garth
+said, our hearts were outside. We talked about Natalie all the time.
+Mabyn got well, and he and Rina set off for their place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> with a
+dog-train. Garth gave them a bang-up outfit! Mabyn was a decent head,
+after he got well; and Rina certainly was happy about it. I forgot to
+tell you that Mabyn's mother had died in the fall; and there was no need
+for him to go out.</p>
+
+<p>"The first mail got through in January, and we heard from Natalie at
+last. Bully news! Garth had sent her another one of those
+dispositions&mdash;Mabyn swore to it&mdash;in the November mail; and it seems that
+was all she needed in order to have the courts annul the old marriage
+they had gone through together. Natalie has been a free woman since
+Christmas!</p>
+
+<p>"We came out with the mail man next day, you bet! That was six weeks
+ago, and here we are! Garth is waiting for me down at the station. I
+wanted him to come up; but he said he guessed you would want me to
+yourself for a while. Gee! I must be hustling! Train goes at
+six-thirty!"</p>
+
+<p>"But where are you going?" she asked in dismay.</p>
+
+<p>Charley kissed her. "East to Millerton, to the wedding, of course! Back
+in two weeks! Oh, what larks! What do you think! I'm going to be best
+man. Garth is getting me a silk tile and a frock coat! Oh, Crikey!
+Good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>The door slammed.</p>
+
+<p class="toclink"><a href="#CONTENTS">Table of Contents</a></p>
+
+<p class="s5">THE END</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="tn" id="tn">
+<h2 class="s5">Transcriber's Notes</h2>
+
+<p>The following typographical corrections have been made:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">(<a href="#Page_41">page 41</a>) "et'em" to "et 'em"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_73">page 73</a>) "immeately" to "immediately"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_85">page 85</a>) "dug-out" to "dugout"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_89">page 89</a>) comma added after "into the light"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_119">page 119</a>) added missing quotes after "came North"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_152">page 152</a>) "heartbreaking" to "heart-breaking"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_163">page 163</a>) added missing quotes after "Lillywhite"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_180">page 180</a>) "Erbe't" to "'Erbe't"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_197">page 197</a>) added missing quotes before "I haven't"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_200">page 200</a>) "dug-out" to "dugout"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_216">page 216</a>) "possesssed" to "possessed"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_227">page 227</a>) "half-way" to "halfway"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_238">page 238</a>) "," to "--" on 253 after "canvas"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_240">page 240</a>) added a comma after "promise"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_269">page 269</a>) quotation marks removed before "As if"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_278">page 278</a>) "beleaguered" to "beleaguered"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_285">page 285</a>) "!" to "?" after "hands"<br />
+(<a href="#Page_317">page 317</a>) "downstream" to "down-stream"</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+</div>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO ON THE TRAIL***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 25159-h.txt or 25159-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/5/25159">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/5/1/5/25159</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.</p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a>
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/25159-h/images/gucosp.jpg b/25159-h/images/gucosp.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2013696
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/gucosp.jpg
diff --git a/25159-h/images/hu01.jpg b/25159-h/images/hu01.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80547c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/hu01.jpg
diff --git a/25159-h/images/hu02.jpg b/25159-h/images/hu02.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01fbd7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/hu02.jpg
diff --git a/25159-h/images/hu03.jpg b/25159-h/images/hu03.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed4d0a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/hu03.jpg
diff --git a/25159-h/images/hu04.jpg b/25159-h/images/hu04.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87a242c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/hu04.jpg
diff --git a/25159-h/images/iu01.jpg b/25159-h/images/iu01.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..222f4c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/iu01.jpg
diff --git a/25159-h/images/iu02.jpg b/25159-h/images/iu02.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4221f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/iu02.jpg
diff --git a/25159-h/images/iu03.jpg b/25159-h/images/iu03.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4002506
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/iu03.jpg
diff --git a/25159-h/images/iu04.jpg b/25159-h/images/iu04.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe670ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-h/images/iu04.jpg
diff --git a/25159-page-images/c0001.jpg b/25159-page-images/c0001.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d799675
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/c0001.jpg
diff --git a/25159-page-images/c0002.jpg b/25159-page-images/c0002.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38fcb91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/c0002.jpg
diff --git a/25159-page-images/f0001.png b/25159-page-images/f0001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4778e5b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/f0001.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/f0002.jpg b/25159-page-images/f0002.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b80017
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/f0002.jpg
diff --git a/25159-page-images/f0003.png b/25159-page-images/f0003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0177af4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/f0003.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/f0004.png b/25159-page-images/f0004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a965a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/f0004.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/f0005.png b/25159-page-images/f0005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b46ef89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/f0005.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/f0006.png b/25159-page-images/f0006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..caadde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/f0006.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/f0007.png b/25159-page-images/f0007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08c2b2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/f0007.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/f0008.png b/25159-page-images/f0008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ed8a00
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/f0008.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0001.png b/25159-page-images/p0001.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..549c3f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0001.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0002-blank.png b/25159-page-images/p0002-blank.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f8b3eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0002-blank.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0003.png b/25159-page-images/p0003.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2648d11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0003.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0004.png b/25159-page-images/p0004.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00ff8e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0004.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0005.png b/25159-page-images/p0005.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa2cd3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0005.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0006.png b/25159-page-images/p0006.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd9be3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0006.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0007.png b/25159-page-images/p0007.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84f36c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0007.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0008.png b/25159-page-images/p0008.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee504db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0008.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0009.png b/25159-page-images/p0009.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..144cc97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0009.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0010.png b/25159-page-images/p0010.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244e836
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0010.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0011.png b/25159-page-images/p0011.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edaed41
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0011.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0012.png b/25159-page-images/p0012.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c77f34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0012.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0013.png b/25159-page-images/p0013.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3520b9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0013.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0014.png b/25159-page-images/p0014.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0c8e25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0014.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0015.png b/25159-page-images/p0015.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..647c79d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0015.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0016.png b/25159-page-images/p0016.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14becba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0016.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0017.png b/25159-page-images/p0017.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3e95c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0017.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0018.png b/25159-page-images/p0018.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30d51b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0018.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0019.png b/25159-page-images/p0019.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b38323
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0019.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0020.png b/25159-page-images/p0020.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3866b7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0020.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0021.png b/25159-page-images/p0021.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cc8b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0021.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0022.png b/25159-page-images/p0022.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f91a521
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0022.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0023.png b/25159-page-images/p0023.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71bcb10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0023.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0024.png b/25159-page-images/p0024.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..170655d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0024.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0025.png b/25159-page-images/p0025.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d75178d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0025.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0026.png b/25159-page-images/p0026.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0313839
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0026.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0027.png b/25159-page-images/p0027.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e88ca89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0027.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0028.png b/25159-page-images/p0028.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8c1d70
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0028.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0029.png b/25159-page-images/p0029.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de596db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0029.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0030.png b/25159-page-images/p0030.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..487bb2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0030.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0031.png b/25159-page-images/p0031.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd7413
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0031.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0032.png b/25159-page-images/p0032.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad76235
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0032.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0033.png b/25159-page-images/p0033.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9599f3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0033.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0034.png b/25159-page-images/p0034.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d1fb34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0034.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0035.png b/25159-page-images/p0035.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6dd2e4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0035.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0036.png b/25159-page-images/p0036.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..001f1fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0036.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0037.png b/25159-page-images/p0037.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8594ab6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0037.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0038.png b/25159-page-images/p0038.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2426bd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0038.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0039.png b/25159-page-images/p0039.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..721a689
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0039.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0040.png b/25159-page-images/p0040.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7692f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0040.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0041.png b/25159-page-images/p0041.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e25bf0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0041.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0042.png b/25159-page-images/p0042.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..170617e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0042.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0043.png b/25159-page-images/p0043.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58b8c98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0043.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0044.png b/25159-page-images/p0044.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7ce6c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0044.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0045.png b/25159-page-images/p0045.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c84a63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0045.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0046.png b/25159-page-images/p0046.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..361f243
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0046.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0047.png b/25159-page-images/p0047.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c89534d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0047.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0048.png b/25159-page-images/p0048.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0f4164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0048.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0049.png b/25159-page-images/p0049.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe69ea6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0049.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0050.png b/25159-page-images/p0050.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ef713e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0050.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0051.png b/25159-page-images/p0051.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee5099e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0051.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0052.png b/25159-page-images/p0052.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4e09d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0052.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0053.png b/25159-page-images/p0053.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9829d23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0053.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0054.png b/25159-page-images/p0054.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66db5cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0054.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0055.png b/25159-page-images/p0055.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..582bf46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0055.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0056.png b/25159-page-images/p0056.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7dc01a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0056.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0057.png b/25159-page-images/p0057.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b67cbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0057.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0058.png b/25159-page-images/p0058.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..201b687
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0058.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0059.png b/25159-page-images/p0059.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ba7dcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0059.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0060.png b/25159-page-images/p0060.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d4162d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0060.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0061.png b/25159-page-images/p0061.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..285efcb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0061.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0062.png b/25159-page-images/p0062.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fb4a1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0062.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0063.png b/25159-page-images/p0063.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4551bdf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0063.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0064.png b/25159-page-images/p0064.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b53021
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0064.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0065.png b/25159-page-images/p0065.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749c95a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0065.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0066.png b/25159-page-images/p0066.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..047d847
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0066.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0067.png b/25159-page-images/p0067.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..480b926
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0067.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0068.png b/25159-page-images/p0068.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7ca04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0068.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0069.png b/25159-page-images/p0069.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..49b108f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0069.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0070.png b/25159-page-images/p0070.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1a8ea0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0070.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0071.png b/25159-page-images/p0071.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f55bee9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0071.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0072.png b/25159-page-images/p0072.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..340ed04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0072.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0073.png b/25159-page-images/p0073.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4806653
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0073.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0074.png b/25159-page-images/p0074.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf4955
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0074.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0075.png b/25159-page-images/p0075.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21b27de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0075.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0076.png b/25159-page-images/p0076.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64d3463
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0076.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0077.png b/25159-page-images/p0077.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b050c76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0077.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0078.png b/25159-page-images/p0078.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07f7ddb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0078.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0079.png b/25159-page-images/p0079.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6aca207
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0079.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0080.png b/25159-page-images/p0080.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5866850
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0080.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0081.png b/25159-page-images/p0081.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b404ebf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0081.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0082.png b/25159-page-images/p0082.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7642f4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0082.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0083.png b/25159-page-images/p0083.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8497e98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0083.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0084.png b/25159-page-images/p0084.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2613e15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0084.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0085.png b/25159-page-images/p0085.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edbcb0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0085.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0086.png b/25159-page-images/p0086.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ae2ca2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0086.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0087.png b/25159-page-images/p0087.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a807762
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0087.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0088.png b/25159-page-images/p0088.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3052e37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0088.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0089.png b/25159-page-images/p0089.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c22bd46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0089.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0090.png b/25159-page-images/p0090.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a1a817
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0090.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0091.png b/25159-page-images/p0091.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67d7b2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0091.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0092.png b/25159-page-images/p0092.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07775a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0092.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0093.png b/25159-page-images/p0093.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae2ec85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0093.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0094.png b/25159-page-images/p0094.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..707a3b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0094.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0095.png b/25159-page-images/p0095.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2afaead
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0095.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0096.png b/25159-page-images/p0096.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..354ea31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0096.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0097.png b/25159-page-images/p0097.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ce789f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0097.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0098.png b/25159-page-images/p0098.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..497d4cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0098.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0099.png b/25159-page-images/p0099.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e64cc5b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0099.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0100.png b/25159-page-images/p0100.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f793fcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0100.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0101.png b/25159-page-images/p0101.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b1e69d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0101.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0102.png b/25159-page-images/p0102.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98733ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0102.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0103.png b/25159-page-images/p0103.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad4184
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0103.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0104.png b/25159-page-images/p0104.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3858fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0104.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0105.png b/25159-page-images/p0105.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3636db7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0105.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0106.png b/25159-page-images/p0106.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea37b4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0106.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0107.png b/25159-page-images/p0107.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc8c570
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0107.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0108.png b/25159-page-images/p0108.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..90fdb9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0108.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0109.png b/25159-page-images/p0109.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01e846b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0109.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0110.png b/25159-page-images/p0110.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dff8183
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0110.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0111.png b/25159-page-images/p0111.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..afb0498
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0111.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0112.png b/25159-page-images/p0112.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c625d26
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0112.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0113.png b/25159-page-images/p0113.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9e938f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0113.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0114.png b/25159-page-images/p0114.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5121521
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0114.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0115.png b/25159-page-images/p0115.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a0a15ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0115.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0116.png b/25159-page-images/p0116.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1c09b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0116.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0117.png b/25159-page-images/p0117.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4779f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0117.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0118.png b/25159-page-images/p0118.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d8fa110
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0118.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0119.png b/25159-page-images/p0119.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38495e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0119.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0120.png b/25159-page-images/p0120.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8479bab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0120.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0121.png b/25159-page-images/p0121.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5bcb82
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0121.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0122.png b/25159-page-images/p0122.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f310879
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0122.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0123.png b/25159-page-images/p0123.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63c6684
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0123.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0124.png b/25159-page-images/p0124.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf0926d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0124.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0125.png b/25159-page-images/p0125.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b06755
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0125.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0126.png b/25159-page-images/p0126.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..082de34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0126.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0127.png b/25159-page-images/p0127.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cab3d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0127.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0128.png b/25159-page-images/p0128.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d60dd10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0128.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0129.png b/25159-page-images/p0129.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4d6c6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0129.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0130.png b/25159-page-images/p0130.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7cf4f40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0130.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0131.png b/25159-page-images/p0131.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2726dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0131.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0132.png b/25159-page-images/p0132.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d1cfdb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0132.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0133.png b/25159-page-images/p0133.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..999c50e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0133.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0134.png b/25159-page-images/p0134.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1774986
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0134.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0135.png b/25159-page-images/p0135.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8abd33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0135.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0136.png b/25159-page-images/p0136.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2edef7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0136.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0137.png b/25159-page-images/p0137.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..106a44c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0137.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0138.png b/25159-page-images/p0138.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75efb96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0138.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0139.png b/25159-page-images/p0139.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3e3ccc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0139.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0140.png b/25159-page-images/p0140.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94f3e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0140.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0141.png b/25159-page-images/p0141.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce462f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0141.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0142.png b/25159-page-images/p0142.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01dad40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0142.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0143.png b/25159-page-images/p0143.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..122230c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0143.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0144.png b/25159-page-images/p0144.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ae984b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0144.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0145.png b/25159-page-images/p0145.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4a5b95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0145.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0146.png b/25159-page-images/p0146.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d1b071
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0146.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0147.png b/25159-page-images/p0147.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3556f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0147.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0148.png b/25159-page-images/p0148.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24d3db2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0148.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0149.png b/25159-page-images/p0149.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2c689b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0149.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0150-insert.jpg b/25159-page-images/p0150-insert.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3891aef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0150-insert.jpg
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0150.png b/25159-page-images/p0150.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94dc148
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0150.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0151.png b/25159-page-images/p0151.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99de92e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0151.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0152.png b/25159-page-images/p0152.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4622b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0152.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0153.png b/25159-page-images/p0153.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14a277f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0153.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0154.png b/25159-page-images/p0154.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f6b36d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0154.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0155.png b/25159-page-images/p0155.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a021b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0155.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0156.png b/25159-page-images/p0156.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4822aec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0156.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0157.png b/25159-page-images/p0157.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d560698
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0157.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0158.png b/25159-page-images/p0158.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f8dea1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0158.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0159.png b/25159-page-images/p0159.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..409bf2e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0159.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0160.png b/25159-page-images/p0160.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c93a9e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0160.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0161.png b/25159-page-images/p0161.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73dfb73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0161.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0162.png b/25159-page-images/p0162.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb39557
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0162.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0163.png b/25159-page-images/p0163.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aa2e5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0163.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0164.png b/25159-page-images/p0164.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6322dfc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0164.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0165.png b/25159-page-images/p0165.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6dc502
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0165.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0166.png b/25159-page-images/p0166.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5cd3a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0166.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0167.png b/25159-page-images/p0167.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6c78f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0167.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0168.png b/25159-page-images/p0168.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b55c3bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0168.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0169.png b/25159-page-images/p0169.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b44fc8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0169.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0170.png b/25159-page-images/p0170.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37287a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0170.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0171.png b/25159-page-images/p0171.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..141f7b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0171.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0172.png b/25159-page-images/p0172.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad717e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0172.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0173.png b/25159-page-images/p0173.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cfea97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0173.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0174.png b/25159-page-images/p0174.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51652b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0174.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0175.png b/25159-page-images/p0175.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..691613a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0175.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0176.png b/25159-page-images/p0176.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66ce6da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0176.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0177.png b/25159-page-images/p0177.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..82b084d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0177.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0178.png b/25159-page-images/p0178.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b334e91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0178.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0179.png b/25159-page-images/p0179.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83e03ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0179.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0180.png b/25159-page-images/p0180.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ecc6926
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0180.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0181.png b/25159-page-images/p0181.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..199f655
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0181.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0182.png b/25159-page-images/p0182.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..014d3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0182.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0183.png b/25159-page-images/p0183.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7512a8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0183.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0184.png b/25159-page-images/p0184.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333090e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0184.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0185.png b/25159-page-images/p0185.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ebd666
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0185.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0186.png b/25159-page-images/p0186.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2793306
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0186.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0187.png b/25159-page-images/p0187.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee2fc56
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0187.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0188.png b/25159-page-images/p0188.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..221f443
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0188.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0189.png b/25159-page-images/p0189.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24433b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0189.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0190.png b/25159-page-images/p0190.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a11622e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0190.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0191.png b/25159-page-images/p0191.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809b5bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0191.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0192.png b/25159-page-images/p0192.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1b6562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0192.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0193.png b/25159-page-images/p0193.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d721b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0193.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0194.png b/25159-page-images/p0194.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7cb3fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0194.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0195.png b/25159-page-images/p0195.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846245e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0195.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0196.png b/25159-page-images/p0196.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3619645
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0196.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0197.png b/25159-page-images/p0197.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56a950c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0197.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0198.png b/25159-page-images/p0198.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37125a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0198.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0199.png b/25159-page-images/p0199.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a77dd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0199.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0200.png b/25159-page-images/p0200.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c108a25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0200.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0201.png b/25159-page-images/p0201.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62a644c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0201.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0202.png b/25159-page-images/p0202.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c19a78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0202.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0203.png b/25159-page-images/p0203.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6552db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0203.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0204.png b/25159-page-images/p0204.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2559e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0204.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0205.png b/25159-page-images/p0205.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..221d5f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0205.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0206.png b/25159-page-images/p0206.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..412b625
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0206.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0207.png b/25159-page-images/p0207.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2638b6c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0207.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0208.png b/25159-page-images/p0208.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8a8382
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0208.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0209.png b/25159-page-images/p0209.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0053840
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0209.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0210.png b/25159-page-images/p0210.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4cac469
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0210.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0211.png b/25159-page-images/p0211.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f843
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0211.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0212-insert.jpg b/25159-page-images/p0212-insert.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6cca81b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0212-insert.jpg
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0212.png b/25159-page-images/p0212.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a5862a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0212.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0213.png b/25159-page-images/p0213.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f05e67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0213.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0214.png b/25159-page-images/p0214.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a43c01a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0214.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0215.png b/25159-page-images/p0215.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b093bfa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0215.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0216.png b/25159-page-images/p0216.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2258026
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0216.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0217.png b/25159-page-images/p0217.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7208ea4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0217.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0218.png b/25159-page-images/p0218.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d657e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0218.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0219.png b/25159-page-images/p0219.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..881cd65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0219.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0220.png b/25159-page-images/p0220.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41343be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0220.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0221.png b/25159-page-images/p0221.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8355451
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0221.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0222.png b/25159-page-images/p0222.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26000d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0222.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0223.png b/25159-page-images/p0223.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5acdd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0223.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0224.png b/25159-page-images/p0224.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f6b49a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0224.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0225.png b/25159-page-images/p0225.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f6cc6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0225.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0226.png b/25159-page-images/p0226.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..000453f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0226.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0227.png b/25159-page-images/p0227.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a40a6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0227.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0228.png b/25159-page-images/p0228.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af788d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0228.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0229.png b/25159-page-images/p0229.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2543c70
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0229.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0230.png b/25159-page-images/p0230.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..742fb2b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0230.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0231.png b/25159-page-images/p0231.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..172525c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0231.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0232.png b/25159-page-images/p0232.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b08e81
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0232.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0233.png b/25159-page-images/p0233.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf387a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0233.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0234.png b/25159-page-images/p0234.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..661c701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0234.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0235.png b/25159-page-images/p0235.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6362a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0235.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0236.png b/25159-page-images/p0236.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e10c922
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0236.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0237.png b/25159-page-images/p0237.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf0716c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0237.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0238.png b/25159-page-images/p0238.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4ece96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0238.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0239.png b/25159-page-images/p0239.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..360cdaf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0239.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0240.png b/25159-page-images/p0240.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c5f8f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0240.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0241.png b/25159-page-images/p0241.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8aa62e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0241.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0242.png b/25159-page-images/p0242.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0e553a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0242.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0243.png b/25159-page-images/p0243.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63dc5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0243.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0244.png b/25159-page-images/p0244.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..208d6b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0244.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0245.png b/25159-page-images/p0245.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..543dc35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0245.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0246.png b/25159-page-images/p0246.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..450f667
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0246.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0247.png b/25159-page-images/p0247.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6938807
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0247.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0248.png b/25159-page-images/p0248.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..faba731
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0248.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0249.png b/25159-page-images/p0249.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d50c3b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0249.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0250.png b/25159-page-images/p0250.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ff6224
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0250.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0251.png b/25159-page-images/p0251.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d185931
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0251.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0252.png b/25159-page-images/p0252.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ea45c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0252.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0253.png b/25159-page-images/p0253.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c881734
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0253.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0254.png b/25159-page-images/p0254.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f02938d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0254.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0255.png b/25159-page-images/p0255.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9881e5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0255.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0256.png b/25159-page-images/p0256.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0327aff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0256.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0257.png b/25159-page-images/p0257.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..494c0e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0257.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0258.png b/25159-page-images/p0258.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7a3820
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0258.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0259.png b/25159-page-images/p0259.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..913fa38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0259.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0260.png b/25159-page-images/p0260.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..360f330
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0260.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0261.png b/25159-page-images/p0261.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..233bc23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0261.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0262.png b/25159-page-images/p0262.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9975220
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0262.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0263.png b/25159-page-images/p0263.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5e8eeb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0263.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0264.png b/25159-page-images/p0264.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..094cc15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0264.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0265.png b/25159-page-images/p0265.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cac9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0265.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0266.png b/25159-page-images/p0266.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b1fada
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0266.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0267.png b/25159-page-images/p0267.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b02b1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0267.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0268.png b/25159-page-images/p0268.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8baa550
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0268.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0269.png b/25159-page-images/p0269.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..591a1b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0269.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0270.png b/25159-page-images/p0270.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6c20c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0270.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0271.png b/25159-page-images/p0271.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b08c9b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0271.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0272.png b/25159-page-images/p0272.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85797b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0272.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0273.png b/25159-page-images/p0273.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5490ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0273.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0274.png b/25159-page-images/p0274.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39be680
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0274.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0275.png b/25159-page-images/p0275.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a9801
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0275.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0276.png b/25159-page-images/p0276.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7d6e6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0276.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0277.png b/25159-page-images/p0277.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88481e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0277.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0278.png b/25159-page-images/p0278.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d9414a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0278.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0279.png b/25159-page-images/p0279.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c5411a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0279.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0280.png b/25159-page-images/p0280.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07e28f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0280.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0281.png b/25159-page-images/p0281.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f01aed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0281.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0282.png b/25159-page-images/p0282.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e73c785
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0282.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0283.png b/25159-page-images/p0283.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..564f18b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0283.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0284.png b/25159-page-images/p0284.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f304e53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0284.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0285.png b/25159-page-images/p0285.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..974a484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0285.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0286.png b/25159-page-images/p0286.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6404fb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0286.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0287.png b/25159-page-images/p0287.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11c7311
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0287.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0288.png b/25159-page-images/p0288.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6f1ce1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0288.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0289.png b/25159-page-images/p0289.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..459b988
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0289.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0290.png b/25159-page-images/p0290.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10e503d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0290.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0291.png b/25159-page-images/p0291.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f52610a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0291.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0292.png b/25159-page-images/p0292.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc3450
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0292.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0293.png b/25159-page-images/p0293.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd0ec3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0293.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0294.png b/25159-page-images/p0294.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cec898
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0294.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0295.png b/25159-page-images/p0295.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8106cf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0295.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0296.png b/25159-page-images/p0296.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91873d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0296.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0297.png b/25159-page-images/p0297.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b83344b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0297.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0298.png b/25159-page-images/p0298.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52f5f51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0298.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0299.png b/25159-page-images/p0299.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12e7dc0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0299.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0300.png b/25159-page-images/p0300.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..234de66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0300.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0301.png b/25159-page-images/p0301.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6119f10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0301.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0302.png b/25159-page-images/p0302.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11713c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0302.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0303.png b/25159-page-images/p0303.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d47abe3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0303.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0304.png b/25159-page-images/p0304.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19886b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0304.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0305.png b/25159-page-images/p0305.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fb5785
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0305.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0306.png b/25159-page-images/p0306.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebed3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0306.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0307.png b/25159-page-images/p0307.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d0581
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0307.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0308.png b/25159-page-images/p0308.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e3abb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0308.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0309.png b/25159-page-images/p0309.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9466b50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0309.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0310.png b/25159-page-images/p0310.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8568ce0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0310.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0311.png b/25159-page-images/p0311.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0627cfd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0311.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0312.png b/25159-page-images/p0312.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a5cea2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0312.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0313.png b/25159-page-images/p0313.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf1dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0313.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0314.png b/25159-page-images/p0314.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5b1215
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0314.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0315.png b/25159-page-images/p0315.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c725a59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0315.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0316.png b/25159-page-images/p0316.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d6a594
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0316.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0317.png b/25159-page-images/p0317.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cdfe400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0317.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0318.png b/25159-page-images/p0318.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b49108b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0318.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0319.png b/25159-page-images/p0319.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ff093e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0319.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0320.png b/25159-page-images/p0320.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cd7285
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0320.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0321.png b/25159-page-images/p0321.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba95e1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0321.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0322.png b/25159-page-images/p0322.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e436411
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0322.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0323.png b/25159-page-images/p0323.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0299af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0323.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0324.png b/25159-page-images/p0324.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2aee4f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0324.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0325.png b/25159-page-images/p0325.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5236af6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0325.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0326.png b/25159-page-images/p0326.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2833d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0326.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0327.png b/25159-page-images/p0327.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3e64f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0327.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0328.png b/25159-page-images/p0328.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d973af6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0328.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0329.png b/25159-page-images/p0329.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a301375
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0329.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0330.png b/25159-page-images/p0330.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08ddf54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0330.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0331.png b/25159-page-images/p0331.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a11888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0331.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0332.png b/25159-page-images/p0332.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95850e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0332.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0333.png b/25159-page-images/p0333.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..088d3a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0333.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0334-insert.jpg b/25159-page-images/p0334-insert.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..565139d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0334-insert.jpg
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0334.png b/25159-page-images/p0334.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..875654a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0334.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0335.png b/25159-page-images/p0335.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156a958
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0335.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0336.png b/25159-page-images/p0336.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de0404d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0336.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0337.png b/25159-page-images/p0337.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6d7540
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0337.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0338.png b/25159-page-images/p0338.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cdc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0338.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0339.png b/25159-page-images/p0339.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c49d44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0339.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0340.png b/25159-page-images/p0340.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6cb6596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0340.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0341.png b/25159-page-images/p0341.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..711fd69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0341.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0342.png b/25159-page-images/p0342.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc81c7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0342.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0343.png b/25159-page-images/p0343.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8308b71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0343.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0344.png b/25159-page-images/p0344.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42e7651
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0344.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0345.png b/25159-page-images/p0345.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..743c351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0345.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0346.png b/25159-page-images/p0346.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..312d9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0346.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0347.png b/25159-page-images/p0347.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6acc58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0347.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0348.png b/25159-page-images/p0348.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4835fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0348.png
diff --git a/25159-page-images/p0349.png b/25159-page-images/p0349.png
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c519b04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159-page-images/p0349.png
diff --git a/25159.txt b/25159.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf113d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9839 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Two on the Trail, by Hulbert Footner,
+Illustrated by W. Sherman Potts
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Two on the Trail
+       A Story of the Far Northwest
+
+
+Author: Hulbert Footner
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 24, 2008  [eBook #25159]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO ON THE TRAIL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Andrew Wainwright, Suzanne Shell, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 25159-h.htm or 25159-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/5/25159/25159-h/25159-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/5/25159/25159-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+TWO ON THE TRAIL
+
+A Story of the Far Northwest
+
+by
+
+HULBERT FOOTNER
+
+Illustrated by W. Sherman Potts
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York
+Grosset & Dunlap
+Publishers
+
+All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
+into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian
+
+Copyright, 1910, by Outing Publishing Company
+Copyright, 1911, by Doubleday, Page & Company
+Published, February, 1911
+
+
+
+
+                                     To
+                                  H. L. D.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                               PAGE
+      I. IN PAPPS'S RESTAURANT             3
+     II. THE UNKNOWN LADY                 13
+    III. ON THE TRAIL                     29
+     IV. THE STOPPING-HOUSE YARD          44
+      V. AT MIWASA LANDING                57
+     VI. NATALIE TELLS ABOUT HERSELF      72
+    VII. MARY CO-QUE-WASA'S ERRAND        81
+   VIII. ON THE LITTLE RIVER             100
+     IX. THE HEART OF A BOY              116
+      X. ON CARIBOU LAKE                 130
+     XI. THE FIGHT IN THE STORM          142
+    XII. THE NINETY-MILE PORTAGE         157
+   XIII. THE NEWLY-MARRIED PAIR          175
+    XIV. THE LAST STAGE                  186
+     XV. THE MEETING                     199
+    XVI. NATALIE WOUNDED                 214
+   XVII. THE CLUE TO RINA                228
+  XVIII. MABYN MAROONED                  238
+    XIX. GRYLLS REDIVIVUS                253
+     XX. SUCCOUR                         266
+    XXI. THE BROKEN DOOR                 284
+   XXII. THE BLIZZARD                    295
+  XXIII. THE SOLITARY PURSUER            315
+   XXIV. IN DEATH CANYON                 326
+    XXV. EPILOGUE: SPOKEN BY CHARLEY     342
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  "Look!" she cried. "Isn't it like the frontispiece
+  to a book ofadventure!"                               _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+  At the same instant the boat lurched drunkenly;
+  and they pitched overboard together                              150
+
+  There, clinging to the corner of the cabin for support,
+  stood the figure of a woman                                      212
+
+  It was a grim figure that the first rays of light
+  revealed sitting on the big rock                                 336
+
+
+
+
+                             TWO ON THE TRAIL
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+IN PAPPS'S RESTAURANT
+
+
+The interior of Papps's, like most Western restaurants, was divided into
+a double row of little cabins with a passage between, each cabin having
+a swing door. Garth Pevensey found the place very full; and he was
+ushered into a cubby-hole which already contained two diners, a man and
+a woman nearing the end of their meal. They appeared to be incoming
+settlers of the better class--a farmer and his wife from across the
+line. Far from resenting Garth's intrusion, they visibly welcomed it;
+after all, there was something uncomfortably suggestive of a cell in
+those narrow cabins to which the light of day never penetrated.
+
+Garth passed behind the farmer's chair, and seated himself next the
+wall. He had no sooner ordered his luncheon than the door was again
+opened, and the rotund Mr. Papps, with profuse apologies, introduced
+a fourth to their table. The vacant place, it appeared, was the very
+last remaining in his establishment.
+
+The newcomer was a girl; young, slender and decidedly pretty: such was
+Garth's first impression. She came in without hesitation, and took the
+place opposite Garth with that serenely oblivious air so characteristic
+of the highly civilized young lady. Very trimly and quietly dressed,
+sufficiently well-bred to accept the situation as a matter of course.
+Thus Garth's further impressions. "What a girl to be meeting up in this
+corner of the world, and how I should like to know her!" he added in
+his mind. The maiden's bland aloofness was discouraging to this hope;
+nevertheless, his heart worked in an extra beat or two, as he considered
+the added relish his luncheon would have, garnished by occasional
+glances at such a delightful _vis-a-vis_. Meanwhile, he was careful
+to take his cue from her; his face, likewise, expressed a blank.
+
+The farmer and his wife became very uncomfortable. Simple souls, they
+could not understand how a personable youth and a charming girl should
+sit opposite each other with such wooden faces. Their feeling was that
+at quarters so close extra sociability was demanded, and the utter lack
+of it caused them to move uneasily in their chairs, and gently perspire.
+They unconsciously hastened to finish, and having at length dutifully
+polished their plates, arose and left the cabin with audible sighs of
+relief.
+
+This was a contingency Garth had not foreseen, and his heart jumped. At
+the same time he felt a little sorry for the girl. He wondered if she
+would consider it an act of delicacy if he fastened the door open with
+a chair. On second thoughts, he decided such a move would be open to
+misconstruction. Had he only known it, she was dying to laugh and, at
+the slightest twinkle in his eyes, would have gone off into a peal. Only
+Garth's severe gravity restrained her--and that in turn made her want to
+laugh harder than ever. But how was Garth to learn all that? Girls, more
+especially girls like this, were to him insolvable mysteries--like the
+heavenly constellations. Of course, there are those who pretend to have
+discovered their orbits, and have written books on the subject; but for
+him, he preferred simply to wonder and to admire.
+
+Since her arrival the objective point of his desire shifted from his
+plate some three feet across the table; he now gazed covertly at her
+with more hunger than he evinced for his food. She had a good deal the
+aspect of a plucky boy, he thought; a direct, level gaze; a quick, sure
+turn to her head; and the fresh, bright lips of a boy. But that was no
+more than a pleasant fancy; in reality she was woman clear through. Eve
+lurked in the depths of her blue eyes, for all they hung out the colours
+of simple honesty; and Eve winked at him out of every fold of her rich
+chestnut hair. She was quick and impulsive in her motions; and although
+she showed such a blank front to the man opposite, her lips flickered
+with the desire to smile; and tiny frowns came and went between the
+twin crescents of her brows.
+
+As for her, she was sizing him up too, though with skilfully veiled
+glances. She saw a square-shouldered young man, who sat calmly eating
+his lunch, without betraying too much self-consciousness on the one
+hand, or any desire to make flirtatious advances on the other. Yet he
+was not stupid, either; he had eyes that saw what they were turned on,
+she noted. His admirable, detached attitude piqued her, though she would
+have been quick to resent any other. She was angry with him for forcing
+this repression on her; repression was not natural to this young lady.
+She longed to clear the air with a burst of laughter, but the thought
+of a quick, cool glance of surprise from the steady eyes opposite
+effectually checked her. As for his features, they were well enough, she
+thought. He had a shapely head, broadest over the ears, and thatched
+with thick, straight hair of the ashy-brown just the other side of
+blonde. His eyes were of the shade politely called gray, though
+yellow or green might be said with equal truth, had not those colours
+unpleasant associations. His nose was longish, and he had a comical
+trick of seeming to look down it, at which she greatly desired to laugh.
+His mouth was well cut, and decisively finished at the corners; and
+he had a chin to match. In spite of her irritation with him, she was
+reminded of a picture she had seen of Henry Fifth looking out from
+his helmet on the field of Agincourt.
+
+As the minutes passed, and Garth maintained his calm, she became quite
+unreasonably wroth. Her own luncheon was now before her. By and by she
+wanted salt, and the only cellar stood at Garth's elbow. Nothing could
+have induced her to ask for it; she merely stared fixedly. Garth,
+presently observing, politely offered the salt-cellar. She waited
+until he had put it down on the table, and removed his hand from
+the neighbourhood; then took it.
+
+"Thank you," she murmured indignantly; furious at having to say it.
+
+Garth wondered what he had done to offend her.
+
+At this moment there was an interruption; again the apologetic Mr.
+Papps with yet another guest. This was a tradesman's comely young wife,
+with very ruffled plumage, and the distracted air of the unaccustomed
+traveller. She was carrying in her arms a shiny black valise, three
+assorted paper-covered bundles with the string coming off, and a hat in
+a paper bag; and, although it was so warm, she wore her winter's coat,
+plainly because there was no other way to bring it. Her hair was flying
+from its moorings; her face flamed; and her hat sat at a disreputably
+rakish angle. As she piled up her encumbrances on the chair next to the
+girl, and took off her coat, she bubbled over with indistinguishable,
+anxious mutterings. At last she sank into the seat by Garth with
+something between a sigh and a moan.
+
+"I've lost my husband," she announced at large.
+
+Her distress was so comical they could not forbear smiling.
+
+Encouraged by this earnest of sympathy, the newcomer plunged into a
+breathless recital of her mischances.
+
+"Just came in over the A. N. R.," she panted. "By rights we should have
+arrived last night, but day-before-yesterday's train had the right of
+way and we was held up down to Battle Run. I tell you, the rails of that
+line are like the waves of the sea! I was that sea-sick I thought never
+to eat mortal food again--but it's coming back; my appetite I mean. He
+was to meet me, but I suppose he got tired after seventeen hours, small
+blame--and dropped off somewheres. S'pose I'll have to make a round of
+the hotels till I find him. You don't happen to know him, do you?" she
+asked Garth. "John Pink, the carpenter?"
+
+"I'm a stranger in Prince George," said he politely.
+
+"Oh, what and all I've been through!" groaned Mrs. Pink, with an access
+of energetic distress. She shook a warning finger at the girl. "Take my
+advice, Miss," she warned, "and don't you let him out of your sight a
+minute, till you get him safe home!"
+
+The girl looked hard at her plate; while for Garth, a slow, dark red
+crept up from his neck to the roots of his hair. Yet Mrs. Pink's mistake
+was surely a natural one; there they sat lunching privately together in
+the secluded little cabin. Moreover, they looked like fit mates, each for
+the other; and their air of studied indifference was no more than the air
+commonly assumed by young married couples in public places--especially
+the lately married. Without appearing to raise her eyes, the girl in some
+mysterious way, was conscious of Garth's dark flush. "Serve him right,"
+she thought with wicked satisfaction. "I shan't help him out." But
+Garth's blush was for her more than for himself.
+
+Mrs. Pink, absorbed in her own troubles, was innocently unaware of
+the consternation she had thrown them into. She plunged ahead; still
+addressing her remarks to the girl.
+
+"Perhaps you think there's no danger of losing yours so soon," she went
+on; "and very like you're right. But, my dear, you never can tell! Bless
+you, when I was on my wedding journey, he hung around continuous. I
+couldn't get shet of the man for a minute, and I was fair tired out
+of seeing him. But that wears off--not that I mean it would with
+you"--turning to Garth--"but nothing different couldn't hardly be
+expected in the course of nature."
+
+Garth considered whether he should stop Mrs. Pink's tongue by telling
+the truth. But it seemed ungallant to be in such haste to deny the
+responsibility. He felt rather that the disclaimer should come from the
+girl; and she made no move; indeed, he almost fancied he saw the ghost of
+a smile. Under his irritation with the woman and her clumsy tongue, he
+was conscious of a secret glow of pleasure. There was something highly
+flattering in being taken for the husband of such an ultra-desirable
+creature. The thought of her being really one with his future, as the
+woman supposed, and travelling about the country with him made his heart
+beat fast. Slender, trim and mistress of herself, she had exactly the
+look of the wife he had pictured.
+
+Mrs. Pink broke off long enough to order her luncheon, and from the
+extent of the order it appeared she had entirely recovered her appetite.
+
+"The next thing I have to do after finding my man," she resumed, with
+a wild pass at her hat, which lurched it as far over on the other side,
+"is to find a house. They tell me rents are terrible high in Prince
+George. Are you two going to settle here?"
+
+Garth replied in the negative. He had decided if the girl did not choose
+to enlighten Mrs. Pink, he would not.
+
+"It has a great future ahead of it," she said solemnly. "It's a grand
+place for a young couple to start life in. And elegant air for children.
+Mine are at my mother's."
+
+Garth swallowed a gasp at this; but the girl never blinked an eye.
+
+"But how I do run on!" exclaimed Mrs. Pink. "No doubt you've got a good
+start somewheres else."
+
+"Not so very," said Garth with a smile.
+
+The smile disarmed the young lady sitting opposite, and somehow obliged
+her to reconsider her opinion of him. "I believe the creature has a
+sense of humour," was her thought.
+
+"Are you Canadians?" inquired Mrs. Pink politely.
+
+"I am from New York," said Garth.
+
+Mrs. Pink opened her eyes to their widest. If he had said Cochin China
+she could not have appeared more surprised. For New York has a magical
+name in the Provinces; and the more remote, the more glowing the halo
+evoked by the sound.
+
+"Bless me!" she ejaculated. Then, addressing herself to the girl: "How
+fine the shops and the opera houses must be there!"
+
+"I've not been there in some years," she answered coolly. "I am from
+Ontario."
+
+"Well, I declare!" cried Mrs. Pink. "Quite a romance! Where did you
+meet?"
+
+"Here," said Garth readily. There was no turning back now.
+
+"What a nice man!" now thought this perverse young lady.
+
+"Well! Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Pink with immense interest. "Ain't that odd
+now! Was it long since?"
+
+"Not so very," said Garth vaguely. He glanced across the table and saw
+that his supposed wife had finished her lunch. His heart sank heavily.
+
+"Three months?" hazarded Mrs. Pink.
+
+"It was about half an hour ago," came brisk and clear from across the
+table.
+
+Mrs. Pink looked up in utter amazement; her jaw dropped; and a piece
+of bread was arrested halfway to her mouth. The girl had risen and was
+drawing on her gloves.
+
+"Good-bye, Mrs. Pink," she said sweetly. "I hope you find your husband
+sooner than I find mine!"
+
+With that she passed out; and the swing door closed behind her. All the
+light went with her, it seemed to Garth, and the cabin became a sordid,
+spotty little hole. Mrs. Pink stared at the door through which she had
+disappeared, in speechless bewilderment. Finally she turned to Garth.
+
+"Wh-what did she mean?" she stammered.
+
+"I do not know the young lady," said Garth sadly.
+
+"Good land, man!" screamed Mrs. Pink. "Why didn't you say so at first?"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE UNKNOWN LADY
+
+
+Garth Pevensey was a reporter on the _New York Leader_. His choice of
+an occupation had been made more at the dictate of circumstances than
+of his free will; and in the round hole of modern journalism he was
+something of a square and stubborn peg. He had become a reporter because
+he had no taste for business; and a newspaper office is the natural
+refuge for clever young men with a modicum of education, and the need
+of providing an income. He was not considered a "star" on the force;
+and his city editor had been known to tear his hair at the missed
+opportunities in Pevensey's copy, and hand it to one of the more glowing
+stylists for the injection of "ginger." But Garth had his revenge in the
+result; the gingerized phrases in his quiet narrative cried aloud, like
+modern gingerbread work on a goodly old dwelling.
+
+It was agreed in the office that Pevensey was too quiet ever to make a
+crack reporter. On a big story full of human interest he was no good. It
+was not that he failed to realize the possibilities of such stories; he
+had as sure an eye for the picturesque and affecting as Dicky Chatworth
+himself, the city editor's especial favourite; but he had an unconquerable
+repugnance to "letting himself go." Moreover his stuff was suspected of
+having a literary quality, something that is respected but not desired
+in a newspaper office. Howbeit, there were some things Garth could do
+to the entire satisfaction of the powers; he might be depended on for an
+effective description of any big show, when the readers' tear-ducts were
+not to be laid under contribution; he had an undeniable way with him
+of impressing the great and the near-great; and had occasionally been
+surprisingly successful in extracting information from the supposedly
+uninterviewable.
+
+Though his brilliancy might be discounted, Pevensey was one of the most
+looked-up-to, and certainly the best-liked man on the staff. He was
+entirely unassuming for one thing; and though he had the reputation of
+leading rather a saintly life himself, he was as tolerant as Jove; and
+the giddy youngsters who came and went on the staff of the _Leader_ with
+such frequency liked to confide their escapades to him, sure of being
+received with an interest which might pass very well for sympathy.
+It was with the very young ones that he was most popular; he took on
+himself no irritating airs of superiority; he was a good listener; and
+he never flew off the handle. Such a man has the effect of a refreshing
+sedative on the febrile nerves of an up-to-date newspaper office.
+
+Outside the office Garth led an uneventful life. He lived with
+his mother and a younger brother and sister, and ever since his
+knickerbocker days he had been the best head the little family could
+boast of. New York is full of young men like Garth who, deprived of
+the kind of society their parents were accustomed to, do not assimilate
+readily with that which is open to all; and so do without any.
+Young, presentable and clever, Garth had yet never had a woman for
+a friend. Those he met in the course of a reporter's rounds made him
+over-fastidious. He had erected a sky-scraping ideal of fine breeding
+in women, of delicacy, reserve and finish; and his life hitherto had not
+afforded him a single opportunity of meeting a woman who could anywhere
+near measure up to it. That was his little private grievance with Fate.
+
+Garth came of a family of sporting and military traditions, which he had
+inherited in full force. These, in the young bread-winner of the city,
+had had to be largely repressed; but he had found a certain outlet in
+joining a militia regiment, in which he had at length been elected an
+officer. He had a passion for firearms; and was the prize sharpshooter
+of his regiment. Wonderful tales were related of his prowess.
+
+When the _Leader_ was invited to send a representative on the excursion
+of press correspondents, which an enterprising immigration agency
+purposed conducting through the Canadian Northwest, Garth was chosen
+to go--most unexpectedly to himself, and to the higher-paid men on the
+staff. This trip put an entirely new colour on Garth's existence. He had
+always felt a secret longing to travel, to wander under strange skies,
+and observe new sides of life. From the very start of the journey he
+found himself in a state of pleasant exhilaration which was reflected in
+the copy he sent back to his paper. Pevensey's articles on the West made
+a distinct hit. The editors of the _Leader_ did not tell him so; but in
+the very silence from New York that followed him, he knew he had found
+favour in their eyes; and he felt the delicious gratification of one
+who has been unappreciated.
+
+When the excursion, lapped in the luxury of a private car (nothing
+can be too good for those who are going to publish their opinions of
+you), reached Prince George, the outermost point of their wide swing
+around the country, the good people of the town outdid themselves in
+entertaining the correspondents. Among the festivities, a large public
+reception gave the correspondents and the leading men of the country
+the opportunity to become acquainted. To Garth the most interesting man
+present was the Bishop of Miwasa. His Lordship was a retiring man in
+vestments a thought shabby; and the other correspondents overlooked him.
+But Garth had heard by accident that the Bishop's annual tour of his
+diocese included a trip of fifteen hundred miles by canoe and pack-train
+through the wilderness; and he scented a story. The Bishop was one of
+those incorrigibly modest men who are the despair of interviewers; but
+Garth stuck to him, and got the story in the end. It was the best sent
+out of Prince George on that trip.
+
+During the five days the correspondents spent there, the quiet Garth
+and the quiet Bishop became fast friends over innumerable pipes at the
+Athabasca Club. They discovered a common liking for the same brand
+of tobacco, which created a strong bond. Garth was entranced by the
+Bishop's matter-of-fact stories of his long journeys through the
+wilderness during the delightful summers, and in the rigorous winters;
+and the upshot was, the Bishop asked him to join him in his forthcoming
+tour of the diocese, which was to start from Miwasa Landing on the
+first of August.
+
+Garth jumped at the opportunity; and telegraphing lengthily to his
+paper to set forth the rich copy that was pining to be gathered in the
+North, prayed for permission to go. He received a brief answer, allowing
+him two months' leave of absence for the journey at his own risk and
+expense; and promising to purchase what of his stuff might be suitable,
+at space rates. This was precisely what he wanted; it meant two months'
+liberty. By the time he received it, the excursion had left Prince
+George behind; and was turned homeward. Garth dropped off at a way
+station and made his way back, this time without any fetes to greet
+his arrival. He caught the Bishop as he was starting for the Landing;
+and it was arranged Garth should follow him by stage, three days later.
+Meantime he was to purchase an outfit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the evening of the day following his luncheon at Papps's, Garth, in
+his room at the hotel, was packing in a characteristically masculine
+fashion, preparatory to his start for the North woods next day.
+
+It would have been patent to an infant that he had something on his
+mind. He was not thinking of the romantic journey that lay before him;
+that prospect, so exhilarating the past few days, had, upon the eve of
+realization, lost its savour. He would actually have welcomed an excuse
+to postpone it for a few days--so that he might spend a little more
+money at Papps's. It was a pair of flashing blue eyes--for blue eyes do
+flash, though they be not customarily chosen to illustrate that capacity
+of the human orb--which had disturbed his peace. He was very much
+dissatisfied with the part he had played at luncheon the day before.
+What he ought to have said and done was now distressingly clear to him;
+and he craved an opportunity to put it into practice. He had spent the
+whole middle part of this day at Papps's, loitering in the entrance to
+make sure the blue eyes should not be swallowed in one of the cabins
+without his knowledge; but they had not illumined the place; nor had
+his cautious inquiries elicited a single clue to the identity of the
+possessor. He felt sure if he had three days more in Prince George he
+could discover her: but unfortunately the weekly stage for the North
+left the following morning; and the Bishop was waiting for him at
+the Landing; likewise the _Leader_ back in New York was waiting for
+stories--and not about blue eyes. It was at this point in his circular
+train of reflections that he would resume packing with a gusty sigh.
+
+He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and, upon opening it, was
+not a little astonished to receive a note from the hands of a boy, who
+signified his intention of waiting for an answer. It was contained in a
+thick, square envelope with a crest on the flap; and was addressed in a
+tall, angular, feminine hand. Garth, his mind ever running in the same
+course, tore it open with a crazy hope in his heart; but the first
+words brought him sharply back to earth.
+
+    "Will Mr. Garth Pevensey," thus it ran, "be good enough
+    to oblige an old lady by calling at the Bristol Hotel this
+    evening? Mrs. Mabyn will be awaiting him in the parlour;
+    and as it concerns a matter of supreme importance to her,
+    she trusts he will not fail her; no matter how late the
+    hour at which he may be able to come."
+
+Garth dismissed the boy with a message to the effect that he would
+answer the note in person. As he leisurely put his appearance in order,
+he thought: "Verily one's adventures begin upon leaving home." He was
+human, consequently his curiosity was pleasantly stimulated to discover
+what lay before him: but the little adjective in the first sentence of
+his appellant's letter was fatal to the idea of any violent enthusiasm
+on her behalf.
+
+The parlour of the Bristol Hotel was on the first floor above the street
+level. Garth paused at the door; and cast a glance about the room. It
+was empty except for two figures at the further end. The one he could
+see more plainly was an old lady sitting in an easy-chair; she was
+dressed in black, with a white cap and white wristbands; a spare, erect
+little lady. Garth judged her to be the writer of the note. The other
+figure, also a woman, was partly hidden in a window embrasure. She
+was standing by the window holding the curtain back with one hand, and
+looking into the street. She turned her head to speak to the old lady;
+whereupon Garth's heart leapt in his bosom, the room rocked, and the
+chandeliers burst into song; that clear profile, that slender figure
+could belong to none in Prince George but _Her_! He was overcome with
+delight and amazement; he could scarcely credit his eyes. He wished in
+the same instant he had spent more care on his appearance, and that he
+had not kept them waiting so long.
+
+The younger lady perceived him standing in the shadowy doorway, and came
+toward him.
+
+"Mr. Pevensey?" she began in a voice of cool inquiry. Then she stopped
+aghast; and the colour flamed into her face. "_You!_" she exclaimed in
+a voice too low to reach the older woman's ears. "Oh, I didn't know--I
+never suspected it might be you!"
+
+Garth was conscious of a complicated feeling of irritation, a kind of
+jealousy of himself. "Why did they send for me, if they didn't know it
+was me?" was his thought.
+
+"What must you think of me?" she said in obvious distress.
+
+"I am in the dark," said Garth helplessly.
+
+She recovered her forces. "I am not in the habit of going to restaurants
+alone," she said. "But the hotel here is so bad! I am afraid you must
+think me a frivolous person, and I am anxious you should not think so."
+
+"I don't," said Garth bluntly.
+
+She smiled. "Very well," she said; "then there's no harm done."
+
+"Natalie!" called the old lady, with a hint of irritation.
+
+"Come and meet Mrs. Mabyn," she said quickly; and led the way.
+
+"This is Mr. Pevensey, Mrs. Mabyn," she said.
+
+The old lady regarded Garth with a sharp scrutiny; and Garth looked with
+interest at her. She was a fragile, elegant, plaintive little person
+of the old "lady-like" regime; but for all her gentleness, Garth was
+somehow conscious that he faced a woman of an iron will. She had the
+impatient, inattentive manner of one possessed by a single idea. With
+the result of her examination she appeared but half satisfied; she
+held out a delicate, wrinkled hand, dubiously.
+
+"How do you do?" she said. "Please sit down."
+
+"I am Natalie Bland," further explained the girl, who had again
+retreated to the window embrasure. "Mrs. Mabyn and I are travelling
+together."
+
+"Dear Natalie is a daughter to me," murmured Mrs. Mabyn with commendable
+feeling.
+
+The two women exchanged a glance which Garth was at a loss to interpret.
+He was looking at Natalie and he thought he saw patience, real
+affection, and perhaps a little kindly amusement--but there was
+something beyond; something grimmer and more determined, a hint
+of rebellion.
+
+"My husband, Canon Mabyn, was the rector of Christ's Church Cathedral
+in Millerton, Ontario, up to the time of his death," murmured Mrs.
+Mabyn in her dulcet tones, with the air of one delivering all-sufficient
+credentials.
+
+Garth murmured to show that he was suitably impressed.
+
+"You are from New York, I believe," said Mrs. Mabyn.
+
+Garth acknowledged the fact.
+
+"So the newspaper said," she remarked. "Of course, I know very few
+Americans, still it is possible we may have common friends. You--er--"
+She paused invitingly.
+
+"Hadn't we better explain why we asked Mr. Pevensey to call?" put in
+Natalie quietly.
+
+"My dear, Mr. Pevensey was just about to tell me of his people," Mrs.
+Mabyn said in tones of gentle reproof.
+
+Garth saw what the old lady would be after. "My father, Lieutenant
+Raymond Pevensey, was in the Navy," he said. "He was killed by a powder
+explosion on the gunboat _Arkadelphia_, twelve years ago."
+
+"Dear me, how unfortunate!" murmured Mrs. Mabyn sympathetically; but
+it rang chillingly, and her abstracted eyes dwelt throughout upon that
+relentless thought of hers, whatever it was.
+
+"I am related distantly to the Buhannons of Richmond, and the
+Mainwarings of Philadelphia," continued Garth, willing to humour her.
+
+"There was a Mainwaring at Chelsea with my husband as a boy," remarked
+Mrs. Mabyn.
+
+"Probably my great-uncle," he said. "In this part of the world," he went
+on, "there is no one who knows me beyond mere acquaintanceship, except
+the Bishop of Miwasa--"
+
+"Pray say no more, Mr. Pevensey," interrupted Mrs. Mabyn. "The mere fact
+that the Bishop invited you to accompany him is, after all, sufficient."
+She turned to the girl. "You may continue, dear Natalie."
+
+"We read in this evening's paper," began that young lady with a directness
+refreshing after Mrs. Mabyn's circumlocutions; "that you were starting for
+Miwasa Landing to-morrow morning, to join the Bishop on his annual tour.
+We wished particularly to see you before you started; and that is why
+I--why Mrs. Mabyn wrote."
+
+"We thank you for coming so promptly," put in Mrs. Mabyn with her
+gracious air.
+
+Garth murmured truthfully that the pleasure was his. He felt himself on
+the breathless verge of a discovery. Intuition warned him of what was
+coming; but he could not believe it yet.
+
+"Mr. Pevensey," resumed the young lady as if with an effort; she had the
+humility of a proud soul who stoops to ask a favour; "we are going to
+make a very strange request, as from total strangers."
+
+Mrs. Mabyn raised an agitated hand. "Wait, wait, my dear Natalie," she
+objected. "Perhaps after all, we had better go no further. I--I think we
+had better give the plan up," she said in apparently the deepest
+distress.
+
+The girl turned a patient shoulder, and looked into the street again,
+abstractedly playing with the cord of the blind.
+
+"It is really too much to ask of you," continued Mrs. Mabyn distressfully;
+"and I am so afraid for Natalie! Natalie is so very dear to me. The
+situation is _so_ unusual!" she wailed.
+
+Poor Garth was sadly perplexed and exasperated by all this. The discovery
+he anticipated was now apparently in retreat.
+
+"We are glad, anyway, to have had the pleasure of making your
+acquaintance," said Mrs. Mabyn with an air of finality.
+
+Suddenly it was borne in upon Garth, partly from the girl's patient
+attitude, partly from the other's emphasis upon her distress, that it
+was simply, in newspaper parlance, all a bluff on the part of the older
+woman. Her fanatic eyes seemed to tell him that she was still bent on
+her object, whatever it might be. Experience had taught him that the
+quickest way to find out if he were right was to seem to fall in
+with her desire. So he promptly rose as if to leave. It worked.
+
+Mrs. Mabyn's eyes snapped. She did not relish being taken up so quickly.
+"One moment, Mr. Pevensey," she said plaintively--and hastily. "Overlook
+the distraction of an old woman; I am torn two ways!"
+
+Garth understood by this that the matter was reopened; and sat down
+again. There was a pause, while the old lady struggled, with the air of
+a martyr, to regain her composure. The girl continued to look stolidly
+out of the window; and Garth simply waited for what was coming.
+
+"You may continue, Natalie," said Mrs. Mabyn at length, faintly.
+
+The girl resumed her explanation at the exact point where she left off.
+"We expected--that is, we hoped you were an older man--" Garth looked
+so disappointed she immediately added: "For that would make the request
+seem less strange." She hesitated.
+
+"What is it?" asked Garth.
+
+But she parried awhile. "What sort of a man is the Bishop?" she asked.
+
+Garth described his modesty and his manliness.
+
+"A very proper person to be Bishop in a wild country," remarked Mrs.
+Mabyn, patronizingly.
+
+"And his wife?" asked Natalie.
+
+Garth pictured a homely, unassuming body, with a great heart.
+
+"Of course!" said Mrs. Mabyn. A whole chapter might be devoted to the
+analysis of the tone in which she said it.
+
+"We had heard she accompanies her husband," said Natalie.
+
+"Yes," said Garth.
+
+"That simplifies matters!" exclaimed Mrs. Mabyn.
+
+"Their route takes in Spirit River Crossing, I believe," pursued
+Natalie.
+
+Garth affirmed it, wondering.
+
+Natalie paused before she went on. "Whatever you may think of what I am
+going to tell you, Mr. Pevensey," she said with the same proud appeal in
+her voice, "we may count on you, I am sure, not to speak of it to any
+one for the present."
+
+"Indeed you may!" he said warmly.
+
+"I am obliged to get to Spirit River Crossing at the earliest possible
+moment," she said simply.
+
+Through the wilderness with _her_! Garth had to wait a moment before he
+could trust himself to reply with becoming coolness.
+
+"Have you considered the kind of a journey it is?" he asked quietly.
+
+"That is the worst of it!" complained Mrs. Mabyn. "I had expected to go
+with her; but we find it is out of the question."
+
+Garth hastened to assure her that it was.
+
+"I have considered everything," said Natalie.
+
+"But do you know that you will have to travel two or three weeks in an
+open boat in all weathers, a mere canoe in fact; that you will have to
+sleep out of doors, and live on the very roughest of fare? Could you
+stand it?" he demanded almost sternly.
+
+"I am perfectly well and strong," answered Natalie.
+
+"That is quite so, happily," said Mrs. Mabyn. "Otherwise, I would not
+hear of it for a moment."
+
+"If the Bishop's wife can stand it, certainly I can," said Natalie.
+
+"But she is obliged to do it," said Garth.
+
+"So am I!" said Natalie quickly.
+
+There was an awkward pause. Garth said nothing, but his question was
+felt.
+
+"Naturally you wonder what forces me to undertake such a journey," said
+Natalie uncomfortably.
+
+"Couldn't I help you more intelligently if I knew?" suggested Garth.
+
+"But I cannot tell you," she said. "That is, not yet. Believe me, it is
+nothing I need be ashamed of----"
+
+"Natalie!" exclaimed Mrs. Mabyn indignantly. "Is it not I who urge you
+to go?"
+
+"Yes, I am doing what will be considered a most praiseworthy thing,"
+said Natalie with what sounded strangely like--bitterness.
+
+"Yes, indeed!" urged Mrs. Mabyn, who seemed to have forgotten her late
+anxiety on Natalie's account.
+
+"But in telling you," objected Natalie gently, "I would have to trust
+you to a far greater extent than you would be trusting me, in lending
+me, without knowing my reasons, the assistance of one traveller to
+another."
+
+Garth was ready enough to throw himself at her feet without this
+affecting appeal. "Please count on me," he said, moved more than he
+would let them see, especially the old woman. "How can I help you?"
+
+"See me as far as Miwasa Landing," she said simply. "I will then throw
+myself on the goodness of the Bishop and his wife; and trust to them
+to take me with them the rest of the way--that is, if I wish to go.
+The Bishop may be able to give me information," she added darkly.
+
+"Natalie!" put in Mrs. Mabyn, warningly. "I--I will give her letters to
+those good people," she added hastily, to divert Garth's mind from the
+strangeness of Natalie's last words.
+
+But Garth was in no temper to be deflected by a mystery. "I am thankful
+for the chance to be of service," he said fervently, having a keen sense
+of the poverty of words.
+
+"Thank you," said Natalie, simply. "Let us talk of ways and means," she
+added decisively. "What should I take?"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+ON THE TRAIL
+
+
+At a quarter to eight next morning Garth was waiting again in the
+parlour of the Bristol Hotel. Promptly to the minute Natalie came
+sailing in, in her own inimitable way, walking all of a piece, with a
+sweep like a banner, Garth thought. When he saw her, his last doubt of
+the reality of this intoxicating journey vanished. She bore no trace
+now of the seriousness of the night before; all smiles and red-cheeked
+eagerness, she radiated the very joy of being.
+
+"Enter Mrs. Pink!" she cried.
+
+She had a brown valise, a fat bundle, a flat, square package wrapped in
+paper, a coat and a parasol.
+
+"You said trunks were taboo," she explained. "I only had one valise and
+I couldn't nearly get everything in. Indeed I sat up half the night
+studying how little I could do with."
+
+"We'll get you a duffle-bag at the Landing," he said.
+
+"Am I suitably dressed?" she demanded, showing herself.
+
+Garth smiled. She was perfection; how could he blame her? She had
+interpreted his suggestions as to sober, serviceable clothes, in a
+diabolically well-fitting suit of brown, the colour of her hair. At the
+wrists and neck of her brown-silk waist were spotless bands of white;
+and on her head was a dashing little brown hat with green wings. She
+exhibited square-toed little brown boots as an evidence of exceeding
+common sense; and was pulling on a pair of absurdly small boy's gloves.
+This most suitable costume for the North was completed by a brown-silk
+parasol.
+
+"All in place and well tied down," she announced. "Nothing to fly or
+catch!"
+
+Garth pictured to himself the effect likely to be created in the
+wilderness by this adorable acme of the feminine, with something between
+a smile and a groan.
+
+They walked to the post office, quaffing deep of the delicious morning
+air, Garth glancing sidewise at his exuberant companion, and wondering,
+like the old lady in the nursery rhyme, if this could really be he. It
+was a day to make one walk a-tiptoe; the sky overhead bloomed with the
+exquisite pale tints of a Northern summer's morning; and the bricks of
+Oliver Avenue were washed with gold.
+
+Natalie's face fell a little at the sight of the stage-coach; for it
+had nothing in common with the imagined vehicle of romance except the
+four horses; and they were but sorry beasts. In fact, it was nothing
+but a clumsy, uncovered wagon, which had never been washed since it
+was built; and was worn to a dull drab in a long acquaintance with the
+alternating mud and dust of the trail. Behind the driver's seat was a
+sort of well, for the mail bags and express packages; and behind that,
+two excruciatingly narrow seats for the passengers, running lengthwise
+between the rear wheels. The entrance was by a step at the tail-board.
+
+Everything awaited the word to start. The driver, whip in hand, stood
+by the front wheel surrounded by a group of idlers; and his two great
+mongrel huskies, squatted on the pavement with expectant eyes on their
+master. Garth helped Natalie into the body of the wagon; and, climbing
+in after her, disposed her baggage with his own already in the well. The
+eyes of the driver and all his satellites were promptly transferred in
+wide wonder to the girl with the green wings in her hat. Garth, with a
+keen sense of difficulties ahead, was indignant and uncomfortable; but
+Natalie, serenely conscious that everything was in place, dropped her
+hands in her lap, and chatted away, as if quite unaware of her
+conspicuousness.
+
+Garth had put Natalie in the right-hand corner of the little cockpit.
+Another woman passenger was already in place opposite; and the aspect of
+this lady made an additional element in his uneasiness. She, too, was
+gotten up bravely according to her lights. She seemed something under
+forty, tall and angular; her hair, a crass yellow, was tied with a large
+girlish bow of black ribbon behind; and in her cheeks she had crudely
+striven to recall the hues of youth. Around her long neck another black
+ribbon accentuated the scrawny lines it was designed to hide; and on
+top of all she wore a wide black hat, which had a fresh yet collapsed
+effect, as if it had long been cherished under the lid of a trunk. Her
+knees touched Natalie's, and Garth's gorge rose at her nearness to his
+precious charge--and yet the antique girl greeted them with a sort of
+anxious, appealing smile, which disarmed him in spite of himself.
+
+Promptly at eight o'clock the door of the post office was opened; and
+the last bag of mail was thrown into the stage. Still the driver made no
+move to climb into his seat; and Garth, becoming restless as the minutes
+passed, got out and approached him.
+
+"Good morning, driver," he said, while the bystanders stared afresh.
+"What's the delay?"
+
+He gazed at Garth with a mild and cautious blue eye; and spat deliberately
+before replying. He was one of those withered little men, with a shock of
+grizzled hair, and deeply seamed face and neck and hands, who might be
+forty-five or seventy. As it turned out, Paul Smiley was within three
+years of the latter figure. He had on a pearl Fedora very much over one
+ear, a new suit of store clothes with a mighty watch chain, and new boots,
+which seemed like little souls put to torment--they screeched horribly
+whenever he moved.
+
+"I couldn't start off and leave Nick Grylls," he said deprecatingly. "He
+has spoke for two seats."
+
+Garth was sensible that he was hearing a great man's name.
+
+"I tell you it ain't often Nick Grylls travels by the stage," continued
+Smiley, addressing the bystanders impressively. "He hires a rig and a
+team and a driver to take him to the Landing, _he_ does."
+
+"Who is this Mr. Grylls?" asked Garth, pursuing the reporter's instinct.
+
+"Don't know Nick Grylls!" exclaimed old Paul, exchanging a wondering
+glance around the circle. "You _must_ be a stranger! Nick Grylls is a
+wonderful bright man, wonderful! He's the biggest free-trader in the
+North country; trades down Lake Miwasa way. Wonderful influence with the
+natives; does what he wants with them. I tell you there ain't much north
+of the Landing Nick Grylls ain't in on. Here he comes now! All aboard!"
+
+As Garth resumed his seat by Natalie he saw a burly, broad-shouldered
+figure hurrying along the sidewalk; he saw under the wide, stiff-brimmed
+hat, a red face with an insolent, all-conquering expression, and fat
+lips rolling a big cigar. There followed after, a young breed staggering
+under the weight of a Gladstone bag, which matched its owner. Arrived at
+the stage, Nick Grylls flung a thick word of greeting to the bystanders,
+and taking the bag from the boy, threw it among the mail bags as one
+tosses a pillow; and climbed into the seat by the driver. The breed
+sprang on the step behind; another passenger took the place opposite
+Garth; old Paul cracked his whip and shouted to his horses; the dogs
+leaped and barked madly; and the Royal Mail swung away to the North
+with its oddly assorted company.
+
+As they rattled through the suburbs the fat back on the front seat
+shifted heavily; and the red face was turned on them.
+
+"Hello, old Nell!" shouted Nick.
+
+The woman simpered unhappily. "How's yourself, Mr. Grylls?" she
+returned.
+
+"Fine!" he bellowed from his deep chest.
+
+This little manoeuvre in the front seat was merely for the purpose of
+obtaining a prolonged stare at Natalie. The insolence of the little,
+swimming, pig-eyes infuriated Garth. The young man opposite him too, a
+sullen, scowling bravo, was staring boldly at Natalie. Garth stiffened
+himself to play a difficult part.
+
+"I feel like a rare, exotic bird," whispered Natalie in his ear.
+
+"You are," he returned grimly. "I think it would be better if you did
+not speak my name," he added. "I will not address you by yours. We must
+be prepared to parry questions."
+
+"I will be careful," she said.
+
+To do him justice, Nick Grylls, on a close examination of Natalie, had
+the grace to feel a little ashamed of his rough outburst. He altered his
+features to what he thought was a genteel expression; but Garth called
+it a leer.
+
+"Bully day for our trip," he said.
+
+They all agreed in various tones; even Garth. He knew it would not help
+Natalie for him to start by inviting trouble.
+
+"You're the New York newspaper man," said Grylls to Garth.
+
+"That's right," said Garth quietly.
+
+"They tell me you're going to write up the country," said Grylls;
+exhibiting that curious blend of suspicion, contempt and respect his
+kind has for the fellow who writes. "I can tell you quite a bit about
+the country myself," he added with a braggadocio air.
+
+Garth thanked him.
+
+"It's an onusual trip for a lady," continued Grylls, cunningly trying to
+draw Natalie into the conversation; "but nothing out of the way at this
+season. The Bishop travels comfortable enough; separate tent for the
+women; and an ile stove like."
+
+His move was not successful; Natalie continued looking charmingly blank.
+Old Paul created a diversion by facing them with a confiding smile. The
+pert Fedora with its curly brim was comically ill-suited to his seamed
+old face, and mild blue eye. He pointed with his whip down a road on the
+outskirts of the town.
+
+"My place is down there," he said simply. "Just sold it last week; three
+hundred acres at three hundred dollars an acre. They're layin' it out in
+town lots."
+
+"Good God, man!" cried Grylls. "You could buy me out and have a pile
+over!" Every time he spoke, he glanced over his shoulder at Natalie.
+
+Old Paul smiled up at him admiringly. "But this is only a sort of
+accident," he said. "You made yours."
+
+"What in he--Why are you driving the stage, then?" demanded Grylls.
+
+"Well," said the old man slowly; "seems though I just got in the way of
+it. Seems I just _had_ to keep hanging on to the ribbons, or lose holt
+altogether."
+
+"What are you going to do with all that money?" Grylls wanted to know.
+
+"Well," said Paul with a quiet grin; "I bought me a new hat like the
+swells wear; and a pair of Eastern shoes. They pinch me somepin' cruel,
+too."
+
+"Why don't you travel East, Mr. Smiley?" suggested Nell. She whom they
+all addressed so cavalierly was particular to put a handle to each name.
+
+"Travel! I had enough o' that, my girl," he said. "Forty-five years ago
+I travelled East to Winnipeg and got me a wife. Brought her back over
+the plains in a Red River cart. Eight hunder miles, and hostile redskins
+all the way! What's travellin' nowadays!"
+
+"Were you born out here?" asked Garth, shaping a story for the _Leader_
+in his mind.
+
+"At Howard House, west of here in the Rockies," said Paul. "My father
+was Hudson's Bay trader there."
+
+"Paul's an old-timer all right," said Grylls carelessly. He was
+becoming bored with the trend the conversation was taking.
+
+"One of the first eight who broke ground in Prince George," said the old
+man proudly. "Yonder's the first two-story house in the country. I built
+it. No!" he continued thoughtfully; "I'm keeping my house and ten acres;
+and me and the old woman's calc'latin' to stop there and watch the march
+o' progress by our door. She wouldn't give up her front step for all the
+real-estate sharks in Prince George. But," he added with a chuckle, "I
+shouldn't wonder if she was shocked some when them trolley-cars I hear
+tell of goes kitin' by."
+
+"I kin understand just how she feels," remarked old Nell to Natalie, with
+her apologetic little smile. "What could take the place of a home with
+real nice things in it? I got a house up near the Landing with a carpet
+in every room. I just love to buy things for it. You see I never had what
+you might call a regular house until just lately. This trip I bought a
+pink-and-gold chiny washin' set; and a down comfort for the best room. I
+never could tire of fixin' it up. We'll pass there to-morrow afternoon.
+I'd just love to have you step in--"
+
+Grylls laughed boisterously.
+
+"Ah-h, shut up, Nell!" muttered the dark young man beside her.
+
+"Thank you, I'd like to see it," said Natalie, with a flash of the blue
+eyes.
+
+They had now left the town behind; and were rolling, or rather bumping,
+over the prairie. Here, it is not an empty plain, but a series of
+natural, park-like meadows, broken by graceful clumps of poplar and
+willow. On a prairie trail when the wheels begin to bite through the
+sod, and sink into ruts, a new track is made beside the old--there is
+plenty of room; and in turn another and another, spreading wide on each
+side, crossing and interweaving like a tangled skein of black cotton
+flung down in the green.
+
+Natalie had never seen such luxuriant greenness; such diverse and
+plentiful wild flowers. Nell pointed out the brilliant fire-weed, blending
+from crimson to purple, the wild sunflower, the lovely painted-cup,
+old-rose in colour; and there were other strange and showy plants she
+could not name. Occasionally they passed a log cabin, gayly whitewashed,
+and with its sod roof sprouting greenly. These dwellings, though crude,
+fulfilled the great aim of architecture; they were a part of the landscape
+itself.
+
+When they stopped at one of these places for dinner, Garth watched
+Natalie narrowly to see how she would receive her first taste of rough
+fare. But far from quailing at the salt pork, beans and bitter tea, she
+ate with as much gusto as if it had always been her portion. "She'll
+do," he thought approvingly.
+
+Afterward as they toiled up a long, sandy rise in the full heat of the
+afternoon sun, Paul, the old dandy, had leisure while his horses walked
+to devote to his passengers. He was pleased as a child at the interest
+shown by Garth and Natalie in his anecdotes. Turning to them now, he
+pointed to a high mound topped by a splendid pine standing by itself,
+and said:
+
+"Cannibal Hill. Used to be an Indian called Swift had his lodge there. A
+fine figger of a man too; high-chested; beautiful-muscled. He was a good
+Indian; and I want to say when a redskin is good, he's damn good--beg
+pardon, Miss--he's good and no mistake, I should say. He has a high-minded
+way of looking at things, which ought to make a white man blush; but it
+don't; for them kind makes the softest tradin'. I been a trader myself.
+
+"This here Swift had a wife and ten childer, that he thought a power of.
+He hunted for 'em night and day; and he come to be known as the best
+provider in the tribe. Well, come one winter he went crazy; yes, ma'am,
+plumb looney; and he went for 'em with his hatchet. He killed and _et_
+'em one at a time, beginning with the youngest; while the others waited
+their turn. You see an old-fashioned Indian was the boss of his family;
+and they didn't dast fight him back. Right up there on that hill, under
+that very same tree; I seen the ashes of their bones myself. In the
+Spring he come down to the settlement and give himself up; said he
+didn't want to live no more. Shouldn't think he would."
+
+Grylls made no secret of his impatience with the old man's yarns. He
+interrupted him, careless of his feelings.
+
+"Are you making the round trip with the Bishop?" he asked Garth.
+
+Garth answered in the affirmative.
+
+"I have a rabbit-skin robe at the Landing I'd be glad to lend the lady,"
+he said leering sidewise at Natalie.
+
+"Much obliged," said Garth agreeably; "but we really have all we can
+use."
+
+"What does _she_ say?" growled Nick.
+
+"Thank you very much," said Natalie quickly; "but I could not think of
+accepting it."
+
+He had forced her to speak to him at last; but the words were hardly
+to his satisfaction. He flung around in his seat with an ugly scowl.
+
+Meanwhile old Paul was still pursuing his thoughts about redskins.
+"Indians think when they go off their heads they're obliged to be
+cannibals," he continued agreeably. "They can't separate the two idees
+somehow. So when a redskin feels a screw beginning to work loose up
+above, he settles on a nice, fat, tender subject. He says his head's
+full of ice, and has to be melted. I mind one winter at Caribou Lake
+forty years back, we were all nigh starving, and our bones was comin'
+through our skins, like ten-p'ny nails in a paper bag. And one night
+they comes snoopin' into the settlement an Indian woman as sleek and
+soft and greasy as a fresh sausage--and lickin' her chops--um--um!
+There was a man with her and he let it out. She had knifed two young
+half-breed widows, as fair and beautiful a two girls as ever I see--and
+she et 'em, yes, ma'am! And nobody teched her; they warn't no police
+in them days. She lives to the Lake at this day!"
+
+"Good Law! Mr. Smiley!" cried Nell with an uneasy glance at the grinning
+half-breed on the tail-step.
+
+"Keep cool, old gal!" growled Nick. "Nobody wouldn't pick you out for a
+square meal!"
+
+Nell's companion rewarded this sally with an enormous guffaw; and poor,
+mortified Nell made believe to laugh too. Natalie's cheeks burned.
+
+"I suppose you hunted buffalo in the old days," said Garth to old Paul.
+
+"Sure, I was quite a hunter," he returned with a casual air. "It
+weren't everybody as was considered a hunter, neither. You had to earn
+your reppytation. We didn't do no drivin' over cliffs or wholesale
+slaughterin'; it was clean huntin' with us, powder and ball. I mind they
+used to make a big party, as high as two hundred men, whites, breeds,
+and friendly redskins. Everything was conducted regular; camp-guards
+and a council and a captain was elected; and all rules strict observed.
+Every night we camped inside a barricade. One of the rules was, no tough
+old bulls useless for meat should be killed under penalty of twenty-five
+dollars. I was had up before the council for that; but I proved it was
+self-defense."
+
+"Tell us about it," suggested Garth.
+
+The old man scratched his head, and shot a dubious glance at Natalie. "I
+ain't sure as this is quite a proper story," he said. "You see, I was
+having a wash, as it might happen, at the edge of a slough--a slough is
+a little pond in the prairie, Miss, as you're a stranger--and my clothes
+and my gun was lying beside me, and my horse was croppin' the grass at
+the top of the rise. When I was as clean as slough water would make me,
+which isn't much, 'cause I stirred up a power of mud, and soap was an
+extravagance them days, I begun to dress myself. Well, I had my shirt
+on, and was sittin' down to pull on my pants, when I heard my cayuse
+start off on a dead run. I looked up quick-like and blest if there
+wasn't old Bill Buffalo a-pawin' and a-bellerin' and a-shakin' of his
+head, not thirty yards away! Soon as he see me look up he come chargin'
+down on me with his big head close to the ground like a locomotive
+cow-catcher. And me in that awkward state of dishabilly!"
+
+"What did you do, Mr. Smiley?" cried Nell in suspense.
+
+Paul shifted his quid, spat, and shoved his pearl Fedora a little
+further over his ear. "G'lang there," he cried shaking the reins. "I
+reached my gun before he reached me," he said; "and I gave him the
+charge, bang in his little red eye. He reared up; and come down kerplunk
+right on top o' me; only I rolled away just in time!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The trail to the Landing is considered something of a road up North; and
+the natives are apt to stare pityingly at the effeminate stranger who
+complains of the holes. It is something of a road compared to what comes
+after; but Natalie, hitherto accustomed to cushions and springs in her
+drives, could not conceive of anything worse. As the afternoon waned,
+what with the heat, the hard, narrow seat, and the incessant lurching
+and bumping of the crazy stage, which threw her now backward till her
+head threatened to snap off, and now forward on Nell's knees, the
+blooming roses in Natalie's cheeks faded, and her smile grew wan.
+Poor Garth, anxiously watching her, almost burst with suppressed
+solicitousness.
+
+But at last the journey came to its end; and at six o'clock the Royal
+Mail with its bruised and famished passengers swung into the yard at
+Forbie's, the halfway house, fifty miles from Prince George. Garth had
+learned that the men slept in an outside bunkhouse, while the women were
+received into the farmhouse itself. He hastened to interview Mrs. Forbie
+in private, that the dreadful possibility of Natalie's being asked to
+share a room with the other woman passenger might be avoided. It is
+doubtful if Natalie would have taken any harm from poor old Nell; but
+Garth was a young man falling in love; and so, ferociously virtuous in
+judging Nell's kind. Natalie had a room to herself.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE STOPPING-HOUSE YARD
+
+
+Next morning, Old Paul, assisted by Nell's dark companion, and the
+half-breed Xavier, was hitching up in the yard of Forbie's, when Nick
+Grylls appeared from the house, and walked heavily up and down at some
+distance moodily chewing a cigar. Big Nick was wondering dully what
+in hell was the matter with him. He had tossed in his bunk the night
+through; and now, at the beginning of the day, when a man should be at
+his heartiest, he found himself without appetite for his breakfast, and
+in a grinding temper, without any object to vent it on. In his little
+eyes, bloodshot with the lack of sleep, and unwonted emotion, there was
+an almost childish expression of bewilderment.
+
+A deep sense of personal injury lay at the root of his discomfort. Nick
+was accustomed to think of himself as a whale of a fine fellow, as they
+say in the West; he heard every day that he was the smartest man up
+North; and, of course, he believed it. He regarded himself as a prince
+of generosity; for was not his liberality to the half-breed women a
+reproach among cannier white men? He was fond of children, too; and one
+of his amusements was to distribute handfuls of candy over the counter
+of his store. And candy ("French creams," God save the mark!) is worth
+seventy-five cents a pound on Lake Miwasa. When any poor fellow froze
+to death, or went "looney" in the great solitudes, it was Nick Grylls
+who dug deepest in his pocket for the relief of the unfortunate family.
+This, then, was the meat of his amazed grievance; that he, the great
+man, the patron, should, here in his own country, be coolly ignored
+by a mere boy and girl.
+
+There was good in Nick Grylls; and Garth travelling alone would have got
+along very well with him, and worked him for copy; but having Natalie
+to look after, he instinctively put himself on his guard against the
+triumphant Silenus. Grylls, with an enormous capacity for pleasure, had
+carelessly taken his fill. He had to content himself with the coarse
+plants of the North; and up to now he had desired no other. But he had
+arrived at the age when, the passions beginning to cool, the grossest
+man conceives of fastidiousness; and at this crisis Fate had thrust a
+perfect blossom before him. Never so close to a woman of Natalie's world
+before, he had been free to look at her throughout an entire day; and
+she had actually spoken to him once. He did not realize what was the
+matter with him yet; but presently, when Natalie came out of the house,
+he would know.
+
+Garth strolled out from breakfast; and filled his pipe while he waited
+for Natalie to repack her valise within. Nick's chaotic passions leaped
+to meet the aspect of the cool young man, and fastened on him. But there
+was no relief here; his hearty and irresistible career over prostrate
+necks was suddenly arrested in the light of Garth's cool glance. In his
+heart Nick suspected he was despised, and the fact emasculated his rage.
+He hung his head, and looked elsewhere.
+
+When the horses were hitched, Xavier went into the bunkhouse for his
+master's bedding, old Paul pottered around the harness, while Albert,
+Nell's companion, strolled back to join Grylls.
+
+"What do you make of this young couple?" asked Nick, assuming an
+indifferent air.
+
+"I dunno," Albert returned lethargically.
+
+"There wasn't anything about a girl in the newspaper," pursued Nick;
+"and young reporters don't generally have coin enough to travel with
+a wife."
+
+"They ain't married," said Albert.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Nick eagerly.
+
+"Nell says she heard her call him Mr. Pevensey before the stage started;
+and he called her Miss What's-this."
+
+Nick's little eyes glittered. "Then what in hell are they doing up here
+together?" he muttered.
+
+"Search me!" said Albert indifferently. "Nell says she can't make it
+out."
+
+"She seems to have taken a kind of shine to Nell," suggested Nick
+carefully. "Women are sly as links. Pass a quiet word to Nell to draw
+her out."
+
+"She's tried," said Albert. "Nice as you please but mum. Why don't you
+pump _him_?" he suggested, indicating Garth.
+
+"Because he's a damned, self-sufficient dude!" Nick burst out with a
+string of curses. "One of these porridge-mouthed Easterners that run up
+their eyebrows with a 'my word!' at any free speech or liberality in a
+man! The first time he finds himself in man's country he patronizes us!
+Going to write us up! My God! My stomach turns over every time I look
+at him!"
+
+"Well, he better not get _you_ down on him," said Albert propitiatingly.
+
+Natalie came sailing out of the farmhouse as fresh and smiling as
+the morning itself. Garth hastened to meet her. A dark flush rose in
+Grylls's cheeks, and he gritted his teeth, until the muscles stood
+out in lumps on either side his jaw. He felt a desire to possess this
+slender, swimming figure mounting in his brain to the pitch of madness.
+As she passed him Natalie nodded not unkindly, and the big man's eyes
+followed her in a sort of dog's agony.
+
+Nell followed her out of the house; and Garth handed them both into the
+stage. He did not get in himself, but stood on the ground below Natalie,
+talking up to her. One of the horses had refused to drink at the trough,
+and old Paul, wishing to give him another chance, sent Xavier for a pail
+of water.
+
+This Xavier deserves a word. The young breeds run to extremes of good
+looks or ill; and in his case it was the latter. In downright English he
+was hideous. A shock of intractable, lank hair hung over what he had of
+a forehead; and underneath rolled a pair of whitey-blue eyes, with a
+villainous cast in one of them. Some accident had carried Nature's work
+even further, for one swarthy cheek was divided from temple to chin by a
+dirty white scar. He wore a pair of black-and-white checked trousers,
+which, once Nick's, hung strangely on his meagre frame. He was absurdly
+proud of this garment. His outer wear was completed by a black cotton
+shirt, and the inevitable stiff-brimmed hat, without which no brown
+youth feels himself a man. Xavier's face wore an expression of blankness
+verging on idiocy; but he was by no means deficient in cunning. His full
+name was St. Francois Xavier Zero.
+
+Returning from the pump with the pail of water, as he passed Nick,
+the big man threw him an idle word or two in Cree. Xavier grinned
+comprehendingly; and Nick and Albert followed him a little way. Xavier
+came up close behind Garth; and in passing him, made believe to stumble.
+Some of the water splashed over Garth's legs. Garth swung around, and
+took in the situation at a glance; Grylls and Albert were grinning in
+the background. There was a crack as his fist met the half-breed's jaw;
+and Xavier rolled in the dust. In falling the pail capsized, emptying
+its contents on the cherished trousers.
+
+Nick's guffaw was quickly changed for a scowl; Garth saw that an explosion
+was imminent; and that quick thought was necessary. He knew he must at all
+cost to his pride avoid trouble until he got Natalie off his hands. He
+walked over to Nick; the big fellow clenched his fists as he approached.
+
+"Hope I haven't hurt the beggar," said Garth blandly. "Perhaps he didn't
+mean to spill the water; but you have to deal quickly with a breed.
+That's your way, I'm told."
+
+Nick was completely disconcerted by this unexpected line of action. His
+hands dropped; and he muttered something which might pass for agreement.
+Garth coolly returned to Natalie.
+
+The breed picked himself up, and went crouching to his master with a
+voluble, whining complaint in his own tongue. Nick lifted his hand;
+and with a vicious, backhanded stroke sent Xavier again reeling across
+the yard. It was the blow which was meant for Garth. Passion had set
+Nick dancing to a strange tune. Albert, seeing the look in his eye,
+instinctively edged out of reach.
+
+Old Nell looked at these things with a resigned air that spoke volumes
+for her daily life. Natalie kept perfectly quiet; but a bright spot
+burned in either cheek, and she turned a pair of shining eyes on Garth
+when he came back to her. His difficulties were by no means over. Old
+Paul, feeling that it might be well to forego the pail of water, gave
+the word to start. Grylls climbed in by the rear step, and sat next to
+Nell with a dogged air. This brought him opposite Garth, and very near
+Natalie. Albert and the half-breed following him, they started. Xavier,
+covered with dirt, snivelling, and nursing a split lip, was as ugly as
+a gargoyle.
+
+Garth saw a way out in the vacant place beside Paul. "The front seat
+would be more comfortable for you; it's wider," he said to Natalie, loud
+enough for all to hear. "Paul," he called, "have you room beside you for
+the young lady? She wants to hear some more stories."
+
+Paul, delighted, immediately pulled up, and held out a hand. Natalie
+climbed over the mail-bags and took her place beside him. In crossing,
+she gave Garth's hand a grateful squeeze; and he returned to his place
+with a swelling heart, ready for Nick Grylls and any like him. But he
+would not allow himself to depart from the course he had laid out. In
+the past he had been compelled to conciliate, to flatter, to mould such
+men as Grylls for the advantage of the _Leader_; and he could certainly
+do it once more for the sake of Natalie. Nick faced him with a venomous
+eye, but was unable to make an opening for more trouble.
+
+Old Paul, whenever they came to a hill and he could allow his four to
+walk, turned around; and half to Natalie, half to Garth, delivered himself
+of one of his characteristic stories. Neither was Nick impatient with his
+monologues to-day; for when Paul turned Natalie half turned also; and then
+Nick could watch her face.
+
+Garth had asked the old man about the half-breed rebellion.
+
+"Sure, I was through it all," he began. "I was buildin' boats in Prince
+George; and scoutin'. Upwards of three months we hadn't no news from
+outside and the settlement was in a continuous state of scare. It was
+supposed the Crees had been joined by the Montana Indians; and all said
+we was cut off on the south. Women, children and cattle was crowded
+together in the stockade; but I didn't bring my family in. My old woman
+weren't afraid; and somepin' told me it was just one of these here
+panics like.
+
+"Well, one day up came word to the commandant to send a force down the
+river to Fort Pitt, as they called it, to jine with General Middleton.
+Then it was Smiley here, and Smiley there, and they couldn't do nothin'
+without Smiley. I started down the river at last with two work boats
+carryin' fifty men under Major Lewis and Cap'n Caswell. It was a Saturday
+night, I mind. Lewis was one of these stuck-up, know-it-all johnnies, not
+long breeched. But Caswell was an old Crimea veteran; his face had been
+spiled by a powder explosion; but he certainly was a sporter! Me and him
+got along fine. My! My! what a randy old feller he was! The men used to
+sit around him with their mouths open waitin' to laugh. Grimy Caswell
+they called him, along of his speckled face--great big man!
+
+"We travelled for three days and three nights without stoppin'; and
+would you believe it, that damn fool Lewis--'scuse me, Miss--made us
+light a lantern at night! A mark for all the reds in the country! I was
+steerin' the first boat; and signallin' the channel to Dave Sinclair in
+the boat behind, with my hand; this way and so. But the second day Dave
+ran her aground. Young Lewis wouldn't allow that we knew how to lift a
+boat off a shoal up North. I let him break all the ropes tryin' to drag
+her off; then I showed him. Meanwhile, all this time, Grimy Caswell was
+dressin' himself up like a redskin in my boat; and smearin' his face
+with red earth. When it got dusk-like, he hid in the bushes; and by and
+by Lewis came along the shore. All of a sudden, Grimy in his war-paint
+popped out in front of him, let out a hell of a screech, and sent a shot
+over his head. Say, that young man near died right there. He turned the
+colour of a lead bullet; and made some quick tracks to the rear boat.
+Grimy sneaked back to ours and washed and dressed; and all night long he
+plagued Lewis to light the lantern; but he wouldn't; and the men near
+died holdin' theirselves in. Oh! Grimy Caswell was a humorous feller,
+he was!
+
+"We landed at Fort Pitt on the fourth day; and at the same time the
+steamboats come up from Battle Run with the whole army. They landed 'em
+all; and say, they had a brass band; and General Middleton rode a white
+horse. Never see such a grand sight in all my born days; they must have
+been all of seven hundred and fifty men!"
+
+At the foot of another long hill Natalie expressed a wish to walk up;
+and Garth helped her down. They set off briskly, ahead of the horses;
+and for the first time found themselves free to talk to each other.
+
+"How good you have been to me!" she murmured.
+
+"Don't think of thanking me," said Garth, almost roughly.
+
+"If I had known how literally you would have to take care of me, I would
+not have been so quick to ask you."
+
+"It was nothing, really."
+
+"Nothing, you mean to what is before us?" she asked quickly.
+
+"I look for nothing worse," he said.
+
+"Perhaps my appearance is too conspicuous," she suggested with a
+humility new to her.
+
+"A little, perhaps," Garth admitted.
+
+"What shall I do?" she said. "I have nothing else."
+
+"At the Landing I will dress you in a rough sweater, and a felt hat
+strapped under your chin," he said with a smile.
+
+Natalie was aggrieved. "I like to look nice," she protested.
+
+"You would--even then," said poor Garth.
+
+She changed the subject. "What a gross beast that big man is!" she said
+strongly.
+
+"Poor devil!" said Garth unconsciously. He understood from his own
+feelings a little of what Nick was going through.
+
+Natalie turned a surprised face on him. "Are you sorry for him?" she
+demanded.
+
+"A little."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well--I think perhaps he never saw any one like you before," he said
+quietly.
+
+"But he _hates_ you!"
+
+"Naturally!"
+
+"Why?" she demanded again--and was immediately sorry she had spoken.
+
+Garth looked away. "He thinks I am--I am more than I am," he said
+oracularly.
+
+She affected not to hear this. "What shall we do about him?" she asked.
+
+"He won't trouble us after the Landing," said Garth. "He is bound down
+the river to Lake Miwasa, while we go up to Caribou Lake."
+
+"It's a precious good thing for me I didn't start off alone," she said
+feelingly.
+
+"I'm glad if I've won your confidence a little," said Garth hanging his
+head.
+
+This meant: "Aren't you going to tell me about yourself?" Natalie's
+mystery had been a thorn in his flesh all the way along the road. He
+was ashamed to speak of it, for seeming to imply a doubt of her; but
+he couldn't help approaching it in this roundabout way.
+
+Natalie understood. "I'll tell you now, gladly," she said at once. "But
+not here; there isn't time. We have to get in directly."
+
+This was precisely what Garth desired her to say. He longed for her to
+want to tell him; but for the story itself, he dreaded it, and was quite
+willing to have the telling deferred.
+
+Later in the day they reached Nell's house, quite a fine edifice built
+with lumber instead of the usual logs. Natalie, true to her word,
+allowed herself to be shown through; and did not stint her admiration
+of Nell's treasures. When they drove on, she looked back with a genuine
+feeling for the old girl, who was so anxious to please. They left her
+standing in the doorway in her finery, with the sullen, black-browed
+bravo slouching beside her.
+
+The way became very much rougher; and Garth was glad of Natalie's having
+greater comfort on the front seat. About five o'clock they climbed their
+last hill. At the top Old Paul, pulling up his horses, swept his whip
+with an eloquent gesture over the magnificent prospect lying below.
+
+"All the water this side goes to the Arctic," he said.
+
+Looking over a wealth of greenery, away below them they saw the mighty
+Miwasa River coming eastward from the mountains, make its southernmost
+sweep, and shape a course straight away for the North. The Miwasa river!
+There was magic in the name; they gazed down at it with a feeling akin
+to awe. Off to the left lay the roofs of the Landing, farthest outpost
+of civilization.
+
+Presently they were rattling down the steep village street at a great
+pace, traces hanging slack; past the factor's house, the "Company's"
+store, the blacksmith shop and the "French outfit"; with a dash and
+a clatter that brought every inhabitant running to the hotel. Most of
+them were already there; for the arrival of the mail is the event of the
+week. Old Smiley swept up to the gallery at Trudeau's with a flourish
+worthy of coaching's palmiest days. The passengers alighted; and again
+the girl with the green wings in her hat became the cynosure of every
+eye. Garth delivered her into the comfortable arms of Mrs. Trudeau, who
+took her upstairs. Turning back into the general room, he asked the
+first man he met where the Bishop lived.
+
+"Up the street and to the left a piece," was the reply. "But say--"
+
+"Well?" said Garth.
+
+"The Bishop and his party started up the river two days ago."
+
+Garth, turning, saw Nick Grylls listening with an evil grin.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+AT MIWASA LANDING
+
+
+Miwasa Landing is the jumping-off place of civilization; here, at
+Trudeau's, is the last billiard table, and the last piano; here, the
+wayfarer sleeps for the last time on springs, and eats his last "square"
+ere the wilderness swallows him. It is at once the rendezvous, the place
+of good-byes, and the gossip-exchange of the North; here, the incomer
+first apprehends the intimate, village spirit of that vast land, where a
+man's doings are registered with more particularity than in the smallest
+hamlet outside. For where there are not, in half a million square miles,
+enough white men to fill a room, or as many white women as a man has
+fingers, each individual fills a large space in the picture. Away up in
+Fort Somervell, three months' journey from Prince George, they speak of
+"town" as if it were five miles off.
+
+And Trudeau's on the river bank, quite imposing with its three stories
+and its gingerbread gallery, is the nucleus of it all. Trudeau's is a
+reminder of the jolly bustling inns of a century ago. The traders, the
+policemen, the mail-carriers, the rivermen and the freighters come and
+go; each sits for a day or two in the row of chairs tipped back against
+the wall--for no one is ever in a hurry in the North--gives his news,
+if he be on the way "out"; takes it if he be coming "in"; and appoints
+to meet his friends there next year. The commonest type of all is the
+genial dilettante, the man who traps a little, prospects a little, grows
+a few potatoes, and loafs a great deal. Trudeau's is also the eddy which
+sooner or later sucks in the derelicts of the country, sons or brothers
+of somebody, incredibly unshaven and down at heel; capitalists of
+bluster and labourers with the tongue.
+
+Such was the crowd that witnessed Natalie's arrival open-mouthed; and
+such the individuals that fastened themselves in turn on Garth, with
+the determination of extracting a full explanation of the phenomenon.
+Garth succeeded in avoiding at the same time giving offense and giving
+information. But he could not prevent a fine podful of rumours from
+bursting at the Landing, and scattering seeds broadcast over the North.
+
+He found a letter awaiting him from the Bishop.
+
+    "I find," he wrote, "that Captain Jack Dexter's steamboat
+    will be going up the river to the Warehouse in the middle
+    of the week; and as my preparations are completed a day
+    or two earlier than I expected, I am starting on ahead
+    with my outfit. You will probably overtake us in the big
+    river, as we have to track all the way; but should you be
+    delayed, I will go on up the rapids; and will see that a
+    wagon is waiting for you at the Warehouse, to bring you
+    to me at Pierre Toma's house on Musquasepi. This will be
+    more comfortable for you, as all this first part of the
+    journey is tedious up-stream work."
+
+The good man little suspected when he wrote it what a quandary his kindly
+note would throw Garth into.
+
+After supper, he and Natalie, sitting in the rigid little parlour
+upstairs, talked it over; while Mademoiselle Trudeau, aged fifteen, sought
+to entertain them by rendering effete popular songs on the famous piano.
+From below came the rise and fall of deep-voiced talk, and the incessant
+click of billiard balls.
+
+Natalie made a picture of adorable perplexity to Garth's eyes as she said:
+"What would you advise me to do?"
+
+"How can I advise you?" he said, looking away; "I do not know all the
+circumstances."
+
+"But I can't tell you now," she said appealingly. "Don't you see, my
+reasons for going must not be allowed to influence our decision as to
+whether I _can_ go?"
+
+Garth did not exactly see this; but unwilling to beg for her confidence,
+he remained silent.
+
+"My trouble is," she continued presently, "that if we follow the Bishop
+and overtake him, he'll virtually be obliged to take me; and I do not
+wish to force myself on him."
+
+"As to that," Garth said, "one has to give and take in the North. It's not
+like it is outside. Besides, we pay our own score you know; and carry our
+own grub. I'll answer for the Bishop."
+
+"Then I see no reason why I should not go," she said.
+
+The journey with her stretched itself rosily before Garth's mind's eye;
+but his instinct to take care of her made him oppose it. "There is me,"
+he said diffidently; "travelling alone with me, I mean. Even in the
+North a girl is obliged to consider what people will say."
+
+Natalie shook her shoulders impatiently. "There's not the slightest
+use urging reasons of propriety," she said resolutely. "As long as
+my conscience is clear, I can't afford to consider it. This is too
+important. It affects my whole life," she added in a deeper voice.
+"There's something up there I have to find out!"
+
+Something in this made Garth's hopes lift up a little; for she did not
+speak as one whose heart was in thrall.
+
+Mademoiselle Trudeau concluded her piece with an ear-tearing discord;
+and turned, self-consciously inviting applause.
+
+"How well you play, dear!" said Natalie, the wheedler. "Isn't it nice
+to have music away up here! Try something else."
+
+The performer, adoring Natalie, promptly turned her pig-tails to them
+again, and attacked "Two Little Girls in Blue." Garth groaned.
+
+"Discourages listeners," remarked Natalie, indicating the curtained
+doorway.
+
+"So," she continued presently, "if you haven't any better reasons to
+urge against it, we'll consider the matter settled."
+
+"Couldn't I go for you?" asked Garth.
+
+She resolutely shook her head. "I have promised," she said.
+
+"It was a promise given in ignorance of the conditions," Garth persisted
+with rough tenderness. "This wild country is no place for you. I could
+not bear to see you wet and hungry and cold and tired, and all that is
+before us--besides dangers we may not suspect."
+
+Natalie faced him with shining eyes. "Clumsy man!" she cried--but there
+was tenderness in her scorn too. "Do you think this is persuading me not
+to go? I'm not a doll; I won't spoil with a little rough handling! If you
+only knew how I longed to experience the real; to work for my living, to
+get under the surface of things!"
+
+Garth, amazed and admiring of her bold spirit, was silenced.
+
+As they were parting for the night, she said: "As soon as the steamboat
+casts off, and it's too late to turn back, I will tell you what I have
+to do up there."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Garth sought an interview with Captain Jack Dexter of the
+_Aurora Borealis_. At once proprietor, skipper and business manager of
+his boat, and serenely independent of competition, he was a type new
+to Garth. His single concession to sea-faring attire was a yachting cap
+several sizes too small, perched on his spreading brown curls. His face
+was red; his eyes anxious, blue and bulging. He had the unwholesome,
+frenetic aspect of the patent medicine enthusiast, not uncommon in the
+North. Garth interrupted him in a grave discussion of the relative
+merits of "Pain Killer" and "Golden Discovery."
+
+"I may take a run up to the Warehouse," he said guardedly, in answer to
+the question. "I'll let you know to-morrow."
+
+"Aren't you sure of going?" asked Garth in some dismay.
+
+"Never sure of nothing in this world," said Captain Jack, with a glance
+around the circle, sure of applause.
+
+Garth bit his lip. "Haven't you freight to go up?" he asked quietly.
+
+"Plenty of freight offered me," said the skipper coolly. "Plenty to go
+down-stream too."
+
+"But it's highly important I should know what you're going to do," said
+Garth with increasing heat.
+
+Captain Jack cocked a wary eye at the sky, and spat. "No water in the
+river," he said at length.
+
+"Then you're _not_ going," said Garth.
+
+"Didn't say so," said Captain Jack. "May rain shortly, and bring her up
+an inch or so."
+
+The sky was clear and speckless as an azure bowl. "Do you mean I've got
+to wait around here indefinitely on the bare chance of its raining?"
+demanded Garth.
+
+"Told the Bishop I'd bring you up," said Captain Jack in his detached
+way. "Reckon I can't break my word to the Church."
+
+"Well, why didn't you say so in the beginning?" said Garth, wondering if
+this was a joke. "When will you be starting?"
+
+"Oh, to-morrow, maybe," said the skipper without suspecting the least
+humour in the situation; "or Thursday--or Friday; whenever I can get the
+boys together. You just stay around and I'll let you know."
+
+With this Garth was forced to be content.
+
+Next there was the business of laying in supplies from the "Company."
+Garth tasted to the full the sweets of partnership, as he and Natalie
+gauged each other's appetite, and made their calculations. Paul Smiley
+accompanied them in the capacity of expert adviser; but the old man was
+inclined to be scandalized at the extravagant luxuries Garth insisted on
+adding to the five great staples of Northern travel; viz., bacon, flour,
+baking-powder, tea and sugar. Garth must have besides, canned vegetables
+and milk for Natalie; also cocoa, jam and fresh butter. The whole was
+contained in four goodly boxes.
+
+"Mercy!" exclaimed Natalie. "Fancy our two little selves getting outside
+all that! Picture us waddling back to civilization."
+
+Garth also made the necessary rougher additions to her wardrobe; and
+bought her a rifle of small calibre.
+
+In the afternoon, with strict injunctions to Natalie to remain indoors
+during his absence, he set off to a half-breed cabin a mile up the
+river, to obtain a supply of moccasins for both. Mademoiselle Trudeau
+undertook to bear Natalie company at home.
+
+He had not been gone long before the Convent-bred child with her precise
+phrases began to get on the nerves of the irrepressible Natalie. At the
+same time the exquisite clarity of the Northern summer air, the delicate
+mantling blue overhead, and the liquid sunshine on the foliage all began
+to tempt her sorely. Across the road a field of squirrel-tail, dimpling
+silkily in the breeze, stretched to the river bank, and she saw she
+could cross it without passing any house. Natalie was never the one to
+resist such a lure; she sent the child away on an imaginary errand, and
+slipping out by the side door, crossed the field, and gained the bank
+without, as she fondly hoped, having been seen by the row of gossipers
+with their chairs tipped back against the front of the building.
+Rejoicing in her freedom, she followed the path Garth had taken along
+the edge of the bank, thinking how pleasant it would be to surprise him
+coming home, and planning how she would cajole him into forgiving her
+disobedience. The thought of Garth's being angry with her caused a
+strange, vague little thrill, half dismay, half pleasure.
+
+Natalie had not escaped the hotel unobserved; as she went leisurely
+waving her banners along the river path, a gross, burly figure with
+downcast head followed, pausing when she paused, and taking advantage
+of the taller bushes for cover. It was not characteristic of Natalie
+to look behind her; she continued her zigzag course all unconscious;
+sweeping her skirts through the grass, and ever and anon whistling
+snatches like a bird. Presently finding herself among wild raspberry
+bushes laden with fruit, she gave herself up to delicate feasting;
+searching among the leaves bright-eyed, like a bird, and popping the
+berries into her mouth--the raspberries paled beside the bloomy lips
+that parted to receive them. At last she plumped down on a stone beside
+the path; and gazing up the unknown river of her journey, thought her
+birdlike thoughts.
+
+Nick Grylls appeared around the bushes. For the fraction of a second
+she was utterly dismayed; then sharply calling in her flying forces, she
+nodded politely, as one nods to a passer-by; and looked elsewhere.
+
+But the man had no intention of taking the hint. He had the grace to
+pull off his hat--the first time he had bared his head to a woman in
+many a long day--and he paused, awkwardly searching in his mind for the
+ingratiating thing to say. What he finally blurted out was not at all
+what he intended.
+
+"You think I'm a coarse, rude fellow, Miss," he said with the air of a
+whipped schoolboy.
+
+Natalie's thoughts beat their wings desperately against her head. Here,
+indeed, was a situation to try the pluck of a highly civilized young
+lady. What should she do? What should she say? What tone should she
+take? In the end she was quite honest.
+
+"You have never given me any reason to think otherwise," she said. Her
+secret agitation peeped out in the added briskness of her tones.
+
+Grylls incessantly turned his hat brim in his fat freckled hands. "I am
+not as bad as you think," he said dully. "Somehow I seem to have a worse
+look when I am by you."
+
+Natalie let it go at that.
+
+"I ain't had early advantages," he continued. "I never learned how to
+dress spruce; and talk good grammar. But a man may have good metal in
+him for all that."
+
+"Certainly!" said Natalie crisply.
+
+"There ain't no reason why we shouldn't be friends," he said humbly.
+
+"None at all," she returned. "Neither do I see any reason why we should
+be."
+
+"But say, I can help you up here," he said eagerly. "I know the ropes. I
+have the trick of mastering the breeds. I have money in the country. I
+can do what I like."
+
+"You wouldn't want me to simulate friendship for the purpose of using
+you?" said Natalie.
+
+"Yes, I would," he sullenly returned. "I'd take your good will on any
+terms."
+
+The difficulties of her position, it seemed to her, were increasing at
+a frightful ratio. The fact that Garth might at any moment come face to
+face with Grylls only added to her fears. But she gave Grylls no sign
+of the weakness within.
+
+"I can't make believe to be friendly," she said briefly. "I give it
+gladly when I can."
+
+"Show me what to do to be friends with you," he pleaded, not without
+eloquence. "I have the time and the money and the determination to do
+it--anything!"
+
+But it was impossible Natalie should feel the slightest pity for a
+creature of so gross an aspect. "I cannot show you," she said coolly.
+"You must teach yourself."
+
+Grylls began to be encouraged by his own rising passion. "All I ask is
+a fair show," he said in a more assured voice. "Give me a chance as well
+as this squib of a reporter you picked up in Prince George. What can
+_he_ do for you? Let me take you to the Bishop. I can carry his whole
+party through the country at a rate he never thought of!"
+
+Downright anger now came to Natalie's aid. "My arrangements are made,"
+she said curtly. "I do not care to change them."
+
+Grylls's eyes quailed again under the direct look of hers; and a deeper
+red crept under his skin. His tone changed. "If I can't help, I can
+hinder," he muttered.
+
+"Threats will not help you," said Natalie, instantly and clearly.
+
+"You don't know what you're up against," he continued, still muttering,
+"I tell you I carry the breeds in my pocket. No white man knows them but
+me. I can hold you up wherever I please. I've only to give the word and
+you'll starve on the trail--you and your reporter!"
+
+Natalie arose. For the moment she was too angry to speak. The man looked
+on her flashing beauty; and in the madness of his desire to possess it
+he forgot his awe of her.
+
+"God! How beautiful you are!" was forced from his breast like a groan.
+"You poison a man's blood!" His speech came in thick blurts like
+clotting blood. "What business have you got up here? This is no country
+for the likes of you!... I was a strong man before you came; and since
+I looked at you I'm sick ... sick ... sick ... you've stolen my manhood
+out of me! Don't you owe me common civility in return? I'd fawn like a
+dog for a kindly look!... But don't you provoke me too far--don't think,
+because maybe I can't meet your eye, I couldn't crush you--or have
+others do it! You and your damned follower!... Oh, that would give me
+ease!"
+
+Natalie's breath came like a frightened bird's. Flight she realized
+was dangerous--but it was as dangerous to stay; and how could she stay
+listening to such impieties! Nick Grylls's own bulk cut off her retreat
+in the direction of the settlement--but somewhere in the other direction
+was Garth. She sized up the man in a darting glance; his swollen bulk
+promised shortness of breath.
+
+He made a move toward her. "What's to prevent me from taking you now?"
+he muttered.
+
+Natalie, turning, fled along the path; running like a bird with
+incredibly swift, short steps.
+
+Nick Grylls plunged after her, passion lending his great bulk lightness
+and speed. The path, which is used for tracking boats up-stream, skirted
+the extreme edge of a high-cut-bank bordering the river. On the one hand
+a single false step would have precipitated them to the beach twenty-five
+feet below; on the other hand the branches of an impenetrable undergrowth
+scourged their faces as they ran. Here and there the rain had worn deep
+fissures, across which leaped the nymph Natalie, with the panting Silenus
+close at her heels. She was running desperately over unfamiliar ground,
+knowing nothing of what lay ahead. She got away quicker than he; but he
+gained on her. The pursuer always has the advantage, in that he can
+measure his distance; and the quarry must make the pace.
+
+The scene flashed past her like the half-sensed panorama of a hideous
+dream. She dared not look over her shoulder, but she could hear his
+heavy steps falling closer and closer. "He can run faster than I," she
+thought; and a dreadful sinking clutched her heart. She hazarded a
+fearful glance at the water below. The man's fingers clawed at her back.
+In another instant she would have leapt over; but she felt the ground
+tremble and give under her feet. She staggered, and with a desperate
+leap, gained a firm foothold beyond. Behind her, with a rumble and a
+hissing roar a great section of the bank half slid, half fell to the
+river beach beneath, carrying down bushes, trees, stones--and her
+pursuer.
+
+She ran on without a backward look. In her thankful heart she could now
+spare a glance of pity for the half-crazed man; but it did not carry her
+to the length of stopping to see what had befallen him.
+
+A little way farther on, the bank flattened down into a little valley,
+which conveyed a brook to the river. A path struck inland here. Natalie,
+leaping from stone to stone across the stream, suddenly saw Garth's
+figure heave into sight around a bend in the path. Instantly she
+slackened her pace; and her hands went to her breast to control the
+agitation of the tenant there. She did not intend he should learn what
+had happened.
+
+So when they met she was perfectly quiet; but her eyes were luminous,
+and her voice had a new dove-like note. To tell the truth, at the sight
+of him striding along, pipe in mouth, with an interested eye for all
+that showed; so cool and strong; so honest and clean and young; after
+what she had just been through, Natalie was hard put to it to forbear
+casting herself on his breast forthwith, and letting her heart still
+itself there.
+
+He instantly started to scold her for venturing so far alone. She was
+glad to be scolded. She could not help slipping her arm through his
+for a moment, just to feel that he was there.
+
+"I will be good," she murmured in a moved, vibrant tone, like the deepest
+note of the oboe. "Hereafter I will do exactly as you say."
+
+Garth trembled at the sound; and was silent in the excess of his
+happiness.
+
+Returning, upon reaching the path up the valley, she made him turn inland;
+and they pursued a roundabout course back to the hotel. Nick Grylls,
+unhurt except as to certain abrasions of the countenance, and furiously
+sullen, had reached there before them. During the rest of their stay he
+carefully avoided them; but Garth was more than once conscious of the
+venomous little eyes fixed upon him.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+NATALIE TELLS ABOUT HERSELF
+
+
+The little stern-wheeler lay with her nose tucked comfortably in the
+mud of the river bank; and a hawser taut between her capstan and a
+tree. Every soul on board, except the three passengers, slept. Garth and
+Natalie were sitting in the corner of the upper deck astern, on the seat
+which encircles the rail. The third passenger, a mysterious person, who
+all unknown to the other two had been making it her business to watch
+them, observing where they sat, had softly entered the end stateroom;
+and with her head at the window, stretched her ears to hear their talk.
+
+The _Aurora Borealis_, after the loss of three precious days, during
+which Captain Jack endlessly backed and filled, and the water in the
+river steadily fell, had finally cast off that afternoon; and after
+ascending twenty miles or so, tied up to the bank to await the dawn.
+It was now about ten; overcast above; velvety dark below; and still
+as death. For the first time Garth and Natalie missed, with a catch in
+the breath, the faint, domestic murmur that rises on the quietest night
+from an inhabited land. It was so still they could occasionally hear the
+stealthy fall of tiny, furry feet among the leaves on shore. The trees
+kept watch on the bank like a regiment of shades at attention. The
+moment provided Natalie's opportunity to fulfil her promise.
+
+"I will try to be very frank," she began by saying, "I am so anxious you
+should not misunderstand. You have been so good to me!"
+
+"Please don't," said Garth uncomfortably. "Take me for granted as a man
+would. I shall never be at ease with you, if you're going to be thanking
+me at every opportunity!"
+
+"I'll try not to," she said meekly. The darkness swallowed the smile and
+the shine her eyes bent on him.
+
+If Garth expected a sad beginning he was immediately undeceived.
+Natalie's invincible spirits launched her gaily on her tale.
+
+"I've lived all my days in a Canadian city back East," she began;
+"too big a place to be simple; and too small to be finished. I never
+appreciated the funny side of it until I travelled. You have no idea
+of the complacency of such a place, the beautiful self-sufficiency of
+the people; you should hear what a patronizing tone they take toward
+the outside world! But they have their good points; they're kind and
+friendly with each other; and not nearly so snobbish as the people of
+little places are generally pictured. Everybody that is anybody knows
+all the other somebodies so well, it's like one great family. My people
+have lived there for ages; and so everybody knows me; and half of them
+are my cousins.
+
+"We've always been as poor as church mice," she continued in a tone of
+cheerful frankness. "We live in a huge house that is gradually coming
+down about our ears; the drawing-room carpet is full of holes; the old
+silver is shockingly dented and the Royal Worcester all chipped. There
+are other household secrets I need not go into. People are kind enough
+to make believe not to notice--even when they get a chunk of plaster on
+the head.
+
+"Everybody says it's my father's fault; they say he's a ne'er-do-weel;
+and even unkinder things. But he's such a dear boy"--Natalie's voice
+softened--"as young, oh! years younger than you! And everything
+invariably goes wrong with his affairs," she continued briskly; "but he
+is always good-tempered, and never neglects to be polite to the ladies.
+My mother has been an invalid for ten years. We do all we can for her;
+but, poor dear! she isn't much interested in us! Can you blame her? And
+I have half a dozen dear, bad little brothers and sisters. We're all
+exactly alike; we fight all the time and love one another to distraction.
+
+"You see it's not a picture of a well-ordered household I'm drawing you.
+Indeed it's a mystery how we ever get along at all; but we do, somehow;
+and no one the worse. Fortunately there seems to be something about us
+that people like. They just wag their heads and laugh and exclaim, 'Oh,
+the Blands!' and don't expect anything better of us. Conversations are
+started when some one comes in saying: 'Have you heard the latest about
+the Blands?' I'm sure they would be disappointed if we ever reformed.
+People have always been so kind to me"--Natalie's voice deepened
+again--"Ah! so _very_ kind, it makes my heart swell and my eyelids
+prickle when I think of it. I've been carried everywhere in luxury
+like an heiress," she briskened, "and there is no doubt I have been
+thoroughly spoiled."
+
+Natalie paused awhile here; and Garth apprehended that, the prologue
+finished, the story was about to commence.
+
+"A man, the first, fell in love with me when I was eighteen--six years
+ago," she presently resumed. "Of course I do not count all the dear,
+foolish boys before that--they say in Millerton that the boys attach
+themselves to me to finish their education--but that's all foolishness.
+I'm so very fond of boys! I could laugh and hug them all! They're so--so
+theatrical! But the man was different; he was fifteen years older
+than I; and alas! another ne'er-do-weel! He had been a football and a
+cricketing hero; he was very good-looking in a worn-out, dissipated kind
+of a way. He had gone to the bad in all the usual ways I believe--even
+dishonesty; though I didn't learn that until long afterward." The fun
+had died out of Natalie's voice now. "It's a miserable, ordinary kind
+of a story, isn't it?" she said deprecatingly. "Most girls go through
+with it safely; but I--well I was the simple sprat that was caught!
+
+"He was returning to Millerton after a long absence," she went on; "his
+people were well known there. He appeared to be perfectly mad about me;
+and my poor little head was quite turned. His wickedness was vague and
+romantic; for no one ever explained anything to me of course; and the
+idea of leading him back into the paths of righteousness was quite
+distractingly attractive. I had no one to put me right, you see--but
+perhaps I wouldn't have listened if I had had.
+
+"I won't weary you with all the silly details of the affair. My cheeks
+are burning now at the thought of my colossal folly. He won his mother
+over to his side. He was an only child; and she would have chopped off
+her hand to serve him. She joined her persuasions to his. He swore if I
+married him he would go out West, turn over that everlasting new leaf,
+and make his fortune. He wanted me to marry him before he went, so that
+he could feel sure of me. I did balk at that; I thought my word ought
+to be sufficient; but he and his mother pleaded and pleaded with me.
+Together, they were too much for me; and so, at last, I gave in. I
+thought I would be saving him; I thought I loved him--it is so
+easy for children to fool themselves! I married him."
+
+Natalie paused; and with the ceasing of her voice, the great silence
+of the North woods seemed to leap between them, thrusting them asunder.
+Garth's heart for the journey was gone. He was thankful for the merciful
+darkness that hid his face.
+
+Presently she resumed in the toneless voice of one who tells what cannot
+be mended: "We were married in Toronto. His mother and the clergyman
+were the only witnesses. The instant the words were spoken, the whole
+extent of the hideous mistake I had made was revealed to me--why is
+it we see so clearly _then_? We went direct from the ceremony to the
+station, where he boarded his train for the West. I have not laid eyes
+on him since. His name is Herbert Mabyn--and that, of course, is my
+legal name, which I have never used. It was his mother you met in
+Prince George."
+
+Garth drew a deep breath; and carefully schooled his voice. "Is he
+alive?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," she said. "My journey is to find him."
+
+"Was it necessary for _you_ to come?" he asked.
+
+"There was no one else," she said. "No one but Mrs. Mabyn and he and I
+know of the marriage. There were many reasons--and complicated ones. I
+do wish to be frank with you; but I scarcely know how to explain. Only
+one thing is clear to me; I _had_ to come; or never know peace again.
+
+"I have a conscience," she went on presently; "a queer, twisted thing;
+and with every man that became fond of me, thinking I was free, it hurt
+me more--though perhaps it did _them_ no real harm. And then there was
+Mrs. Mabyn--how can I explain to you about her?"
+
+"I think I understand," Garth put in.
+
+"She has been very kind to me all these years; but it was a kind of
+tyrannical kindness, too--it was as if she was tying me to her with
+one chain of kindness after another. And I wished to live my own life!
+And it seemed to me that the only way in which I could discharge my
+obligations to her, and win my freedom, was by doing this thing, which
+she so ardently desires. She believes, you see, that I am the only one
+who can save him."
+
+Garth muttered something which sounded uncomplimentary to Mrs. Mabyn.
+
+"But I am really fond of her," Natalie said quickly. "She has a mortal
+disease," she added; "one must make allowances for that."
+
+"Where is _he_?" Garth asked.
+
+"His last letter, eight months ago, was post-marked Spirit River
+Crossing," she said. "We gathered from it that he had a place somewhere
+near there. We know very little. At first he wrote often and cheerfully;
+he seemed to be getting on: but later, he moved about a great deal; his
+letters came at longer intervals; and the tone of them changed. His
+mother thinks his health has broken down. I am to find out; and to
+save him, if I can."
+
+There was a long silence here. Garth could not speak for the fear of
+betraying an indignation which could only have hurt her; and Natalie
+was busy with her own painful thoughts.
+
+"There is something else," she resumed at last in a very low tone.
+"I have not yet been quite frank with you--and I do so wish to be! You
+must not think I am undertaking this purely on his mother's account;
+for there is a selfish reason too. In the bottom of my heart there is
+a hope--perhaps it is a wicked hope--but if you knew how this collar has
+galled me!" She stopped; and then quickly resumed. "I married this man
+with my eyes open; and I will do my part by him--but if--" her voice
+fell again--"if it has not helped him; if in spite of my honest efforts
+to save him, and all the letters I wrote, if he has fallen lower than
+ever, and has ceased to struggle--then I will consider my part done!"
+
+There seemed to be no more to say. Garth's heart was beating fast;
+and he was longing to tell her that he understood, and that he loved
+and admired her for what she had told him, but he could not tell her
+coldly, and he would not tell her warmly. As for Natalie, she waited
+breathlessly for his first word; mightily desiring his approval, but
+too proud to ask it. Finally she could stand the suspense no longer
+and pride succumbed. It took her a long time to get the question out.
+
+"Are you--are you sorry you volunteered to take me?" she faltered.
+
+"No!" cried Garth in a great voice.
+
+She found his hand in the darkness; and gave it a swift, grateful
+squeeze. "Good night!" she whispered; and ran to her stateroom.
+
+Garth, with his pipe and the mighty stillness to bear him company,
+remained on deck until dawn. In the spirit of the North he discovered
+something akin to his own soul; the solitude and the stillness braced
+him to deny himself manfully what was not manfully his to have. In the
+act of relinquishing Natalie, he felt, what he would not have supposed
+possible, a great, added tenderness for her. Before he went in, his
+sober cheerfulness had returned; but in the morning he was somehow
+more mature.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+MARY CO-QUE-WASA'S ERRAND
+
+
+At noon next day the little _Aurora Borealis_ was reclining drunkenly
+on a shoal in the river at the foot of Caliper island, sixty miles above
+the Landing, and fifteen below the Warehouse. This had been the place of
+Captain Jack's gloomy forebodings all the way up. The river spread wide,
+shallow and swift on either side the island, and neither one channel nor
+the other would permit their ascent. The _Aurora_ was having a little
+breathing space on the shoal, while Captain Jack and St. Paul, the big
+half-breed pilot, debated below on what to do.
+
+The three passengers looked on from the upper deck. Natalie and Garth
+tacitly ignored any change in their relation to-day; and no reference
+was made to Natalie's story. They seemed, if anything, more friendly
+with each other; nevertheless Constraint, like a spectre standing
+between them, intercepted all their communications.
+
+The third passenger was a half-breed woman nearing middle age, clad in a
+decent black print dress, and a black straw hat, under the brim of which
+depended a circlet of attenuated, grizzled curls. Her face, like that
+of all the natives in the presence of whites, expressed a blank, in her
+case a mysterious blank. She was silent and ubiquitous; whichever way
+they looked, there she was. Captain Jack had mentioned to Garth that
+her name was Mary Co-que-wasa. The off-hand shrug that accompanied the
+information, between men, was significant. Garth resented it; and his
+sympathies were enlisted. He had made several efforts to talk to the
+woman, only to be received with a stupid shake of the head. He thought
+she could not speak English. Natalie, more keenly intuitive, took an
+active dislike to her. "I'm sure she listens to us," she had said.
+
+Meanwhile, preparations were undertaken to hoist the _Aurora Borealis_
+by main strength up the rapids. The "skiff," as they whimsically
+termed the steamboat's great, clumsy tender--its official name of
+"_sturgeon-head_" was more descriptive--was brought alongside; and a
+half-mile of hawser, more or less, patiently coiled in the bottom. The
+end of this rope was made fast on board the steamer, and the skiff,
+pushing off, was poled and tracked up the rapids with heart-breaking
+labour, paying out the hawser over her stern as she went. The other end
+of the rope was made fast to a great tree on the shore above, and, the
+skiff returning, the inboard end was turned about the capstan. Steam
+was then turned on, and with a great to-do of puffing and clanking, the
+_Aurora_ started to haul herself up hand over hand, as one might say.
+
+Alas! she had no sooner raised her head than the hawser parted in the
+middle with a report like a small cannon, and she settled dejectedly
+back on the shoal.
+
+Captain Jack refreshed himself with a pull at the Spring Tonic bottle;
+and started all over. A newer piece of hawser was produced, and the
+skiff despatched once more on its laborious errand. The loose end was
+finally picked up and knotted, and the capstan started again. But no
+better success followed, as soon as the full strain came upon it, the
+rope burst asunder in a new place. After this they went around the other
+side of the island and tried there. Each attempt consumed an hour or
+more, but time is nothing in the North.
+
+At five o'clock, after the failure of the fourth attempt, Captain Jack
+threw up his hands, and turned the _Aurora's_ nose down-stream. The
+little boat, which had sulked and hung back in the rapids all day,
+picked up her heels, and hustled down with the current, like a wilful
+child that obtains its own way at last.
+
+Garth, in dismay, hastened to Captain Jack.
+
+"Where are we going?" he demanded.
+
+Captain Jack cocked an eye, and said with his air of gloomy fatalism:
+"The Landing's the only place for me."
+
+Garth became hot under the collar, as he always did in dealing with the
+pessimistic skipper. "But we're only fifteen miles from the Warehouse!"
+he cried.
+
+"Might as well be fifteen hundred," said Captain Jack, "for all I can
+get you there."
+
+"Is there no house anywhere near?"
+
+The skipper looked at him with gloomy scorn. "Say, do you think you're
+in a rural neighbourhood?" he inquired.
+
+"I asked you a question," Garth repeated. "Is there any one living near
+here?"
+
+Captain Jack shrugged. "Sometimes there's breeds at Bear Portage below,"
+he said. "But not in the summer."
+
+"Is there no road?"
+
+"Not what _you'd_ call a road. How would you carry your outfit?"
+
+This was a poser, Garth could not deny. "Where are the breeds in the
+summer?" he demanded.
+
+Captain Jack flung up his hands. "God knows!" he said. "Pitching
+somewheres about between the East and the West!"
+
+Garth set his jaw. "Well, there's some way of reaching the Warehouse,"
+he said, "and I'm going to find it. You stop at Bear Portage, as you
+call it, and I'll see what I can do."
+
+"Sure!" said Captain Jack hopelessly. "As long as you like--But you'll
+never make it!" he added with an atrabilious eye. "Never in God's world!
+You better take my advice and get out of the country while you can!"
+
+Garth turned on his heel, and Captain Jack revisited his stateroom for
+consolation. Here, two shelves at the foot of his berth contained his
+pharmaceutical stock in ancient, torn and fly-specked wrappers. He
+bought every new variety of remedy he heard of with the ardour of a
+collector. One of his most serious occupations was to lie in bed in
+the morning, making up his mind what to begin the day on. Endless and
+ingenious were the combinations he made.
+
+They tied up at Bear Portage and had supper. Afterward, three breed boys
+with their scent for happenings in the bush, as unerring and mysterious
+as the buzzard's scent for carrion, turned up from nowhere, and at the
+same time a fourth came nosing under the bank in a crazy dugout filled
+with grass. So soft was the arrival of the last that Garth was not aware
+of it, until he happened to catch sight of Mary Co-que-wasa deep in a
+whispered consultation with the paddler. Finding Garth's eyes upon her,
+Mary, with a hasty word to the boy, embarked, and the canoe's nose was
+turned up-stream. As a possible means of transport later, Garth called
+after the boy; but he only paddled the faster. The incident caused Garth
+a vague uneasiness.
+
+In the other three he found a means, such as it was, of extricating them
+from their dilemma. He learned through St. Paul, who interpreted, that
+there was a camp of Indians engaged in cutting wild hay, seven miles
+off, and that a wagon and team could be got there next morning, to carry
+them and their goods to the Warehouse. At the mention of seven miles,
+Garth looked dubiously at Natalie, but she stoutly averred her ability
+to do it twice if necessary, and since nothing better offered, Garth
+hired the boys to show the way and carry the baggage.
+
+The _Aurora Borealis_ presently backed off, and blithely kicking up the
+water astern, disappeared down the river. Her going out severed their
+last bond with the world of civilization and henceforth they must fend
+for themselves in the wilderness. Natalie looked around at the grim,
+empty woods, and at the strange, alien boys who were to conduct them;
+and instinctively put out her hand to Garth.
+
+The eldest and smartest of the breeds was a beady-eyed youth answering
+to the name of Pake. When the _Aurora_ passed out of sight his demeanour
+changed. It was not that he became openly insolent, but what was harder
+for Garth to deal with, he was blandly and blankly indifferent to the
+whites. Garth inwardly fumed, and there was a heavy weight of anxiety,
+too, for Natalie. Pake constructed packing harness out of rope, and
+divided all their goods into five lots, of which four were of about
+equal weight, and the fifth lighter. This one Garth supposed was for
+Natalie, though he thought it too heavy, but to his astonishment he
+learned Pake intended the light pack for himself, and one of the others
+for Natalie. Upon Garth's vigorous objections, Pake coolly added the
+greater part of Natalie's load to Garth's.
+
+Hampered as he was by his augmented pack, Garth still managed to carry
+his rifle across his arm. And yet St. Paul, who interpreted for him, had
+assured him these were good boys and would treat him well. St. Paul was
+right, when Garth had been in the country longer he learned this was
+simply the breed way. Only superior, or at least equal, numbers will
+impress them, and then they are obsequious enough in good sooth.
+
+Whatever Natalie thought of their situation, she put on a bold air. As
+they started Indian file, under the great trees in the gathering dusk,
+the three swarthy youths in advance bowed under their packs: "Look!"
+she cried. "Isn't it like the frontispiece to a book of adventure!"
+
+The breeds inherit from the red side of the house a shuffling half-trot,
+produced with steady shoulders and rolling hips, that is a good deal
+faster than it looks. Natalie with her tiny bundle had much ado to keep
+up, and Garth under his, plodded doggedly behind, with breaking neck and
+shoulders. The breeds, careless of their fate, never once looked behind.
+Garth had to keep them in sight, or instantly lose the faint trail in
+the darkness.
+
+After several miles of this, without warning, the breeds simultaneously
+cast their packs on the ground, and took a rest. Every move these strange
+creatures made was unexpected. Garth laboriously ridding himself of his
+burden, proceeded to read them a severe lecture on the necessity of
+accommodating their pace to the lady's for the rest of the way. It
+was received with stolid, uncomprehending stares.
+
+Among themselves they gossiped freely enough, and from the frequent
+recurrence of the word _moon-i-yas_, Garth knew that he and Natalie were
+the subject of it all. The discomforting thought did not fail to suggest
+itself that they might be hatching a plot in the very presence of their
+intended victims. Their outfit, Garth reflected, must seem a very
+fortune to the ragged breeds. He watched them closely.
+
+Presently they set off again as fast as ever, whereupon Garth did as he
+should have done at first, lost his temper, and swore at them roundly.
+Pake looked around with a gleam of awakened intelligence, and slackened
+his pace. After a brief consultation, Pake and another set off in
+advance with their share of the goods, leaving the third boy to guide
+the feebler steps of the two _moon-i-yas_. Garth wondered if they would
+ever see Pake and the boxes again.
+
+It was a long seven miles; and absolute darkness clothed the lofty
+aisles of the pine trees long before they finished passing through;
+and beyond there were interminable, misty meadows of wild grass to be
+crossed. Garth could no longer distinguish any sign of a trail; but the
+breed bent steadily ahead. Once or twice an owl whirred suddenly low
+over their heads; and somewhere far off a loon guffawed insanely. In
+the end their guide, to cheer his own soul, lifted up his voice in the
+strident, unearthly chant of the Crees; and it only needed this to add
+the last touch of unreality to their eerie journey. They began to feel
+like spirits after death, hurried in the darkness they knew not whither.
+
+At last a bright light flared suddenly across the hay marsh; and from
+their guide's joyful exclamation, they gathered that it marked the end
+of their journey. Fire was something human and known; and amazingly
+cheering. They covered the last lap at a brisk pace.
+
+Five tepees, faintly phosphorescent with interior fires, stood in a line
+where the pine trees bounded the hay marsh. Garth's mind was relieved to
+find Pake waiting with the balance of the outfit intact. The fire they
+had seen was from an armful of brush lighted for a beacon to guide
+them. The people were all within. The three breed boys dived into the
+principal tepee without ceremony, leaving Garth and Natalie standing
+rather foolishly outside. They were evidently expected to follow; for
+presently a head was stuck inquiringly outside; and what they took
+for an invitation to enter was delivered in Cree.
+
+"Let us go in," whispered Natalie. "I'm crazy to see what it's like!"
+
+Without more ado, she lifted the flap which covered the entrance, and
+crawled, blinking, into the light, Garth close at her heels.
+
+A fire was built on the ground in the centre of the tepee; and the
+smoke, filling the apex, finally found itself out at the top. Around
+the fire was grouped a motley, gipsy crew of all ages; the elders in the
+place of honour above the fire; the children by the door. The firelight
+threw their copper-coloured faces into strong relief; each wore an
+expression of stolid expectation. Stolidity is the pet affectation
+of the breed; at heart he is as garrulous as an ape. Like mongrels
+generally, their manners were bad; a grunt served for welcome, and
+places were coolly pointed out where they should sit.
+
+With that the guests were forthwith yielded up to discussion, while the
+whole circle stared at them as if they were vegetables. In especial, the
+children sitting across the fire, transfixed them with eyes, under each
+mop of raven hair, as hard, bright and unwinking as the eyes of little
+birds of prey. Young Pake sat at the right hand of the principal man--a
+personage in frayed overalls and cotton shirt, with a scarlet handkerchief
+about his temples--and called attention to the points of the two
+_moon-i-yas_ like their showman. After all the elders had partaken of
+tea, somebody recollected to thrust the battered pot at Garth and Natalie,
+with two more than doubtful tin cups. They declined to partake.
+
+Garth was fuming. "Let's get out," he whispered.
+
+"Just a minute," Natalie begged, with bright eyes. "Never mind their
+manners. It's all so strange and different!"
+
+Presently the preparations for retiring, which their arrival had
+probably interrupted, were resumed. Hideously dirty and torn comforters
+with protruding cotton filling, were spread on the ground; and
+individuals began to roll up, feet to the fire. A woman indicated a
+place for Garth and Natalie, side by side. When her meaning became
+clear, they elaborately avoided each other's eyes, and Natalie beat
+a hasty retreat outside. She never again expressed a wish to enter a
+tepee. Garth, blushing to the roots of his hair, explained that they
+preferred to sleep outside. The breeds let them go, with a shrug for
+the queer ways of the _moon-i-yas_.
+
+Garth pitched the little tent he had for Natalie under the pine trees
+at a short distance, and spread her bed on balsam boughs inside, with
+tender hands. Natalie had suddenly half collapsed like a sleepy child.
+She disappeared with a murmured good night, and was heard of no more
+until morning. Garth spread his own bed under the stars, athwart the
+door of the tent. He remembered, before turning in, that they lacked
+water, and returned to the tepee to ask where it was to be procured. As
+he entered the second time, his attention was arrested by the sound of
+Mary Co-que-wasa's name on Pake's lips.
+
+"Who is Mary Co-que-wasa?" he asked, recollecting his previous
+uneasiness.
+
+It appeared they could understand English well enough when they had a
+mind to. The women visibly bridled, as women white or red will do,
+when an erring ewe of the flock is mentioned in company.
+
+"Mary Co-que-wasa--one--bad--woman," said one, with the toneless
+enunciation of a parrot.
+
+Another volunteered further information in Cree, in which the names
+of Mary and Nick Grylls were coupled.
+
+"What's that?" demanded the startled Garth.
+
+"Mary Co-que-wasa--Nick Grylls's--woman," said his first informant.
+
+That was all he could get out of them. It did not conduce to the ease
+of his first bed in the wilderness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the morning Natalie issued forth radiant; and Garth marvelled afresh
+at the vision of urban perfection she made in the wilderness. He was
+blowing the fire at the time; a typical tenderfoot's fire, all tinder
+and no fuel, at which the breeds grinned askance. He soon learned
+better. The breeds haunted their camp, enjoying their struggles with
+that superior, insulting grin. Natalie, rolling up her sleeves,
+announced her intention of cooking the breakfast, while Garth struck
+camp. She who had never cooked under the best of conditions, had a
+sad time of it balancing a frying pan on a fire of twigs, and keeping
+the water in the pot long enough for it to come to a boil. They were
+sad-looking lumps of bacon that she offered Garth, burnt withal, and
+she gravely informed him there was a small slice of her thumb cooked up
+with it. The cocoa, too, which obstinately refused to dissolve in a cold
+element, was watery and full of lumps; however they still had civilized
+bread and butter; and Garth would have eaten Paris green with gusto, if
+offered with the same appealing smile.
+
+Afterward an ancient box wagon came rattling up, drawn by two champing
+cayuses, guided by Pake, the "wise guy" of the bush. The duffle was
+thrown in; Pake and one of his brethren coolly preempted the box,
+allowing Garth and Natalie to dispose themselves as they chose among the
+freight; and they set off at a smart pace across the gloriously sunny
+meadow.
+
+It was rough enough in all conscience; and in spite of every effort to
+brace themselves in the body of the wagon, they were shaken about like
+corn in a hopper. But in the bush it was worse; there, though their pace
+necessarily slackened, what with the holes, roots, stumps and fallen
+trunks, they had seldom more than two wheels on the ground; and more
+than once all that stood between them and a total capsize was Pake's
+dexterous wrist. There were deep gullies, down which they precipitated
+themselves, almost turning the wagon over on the horses' backs at the
+bottom; and the climbs up the other side were heart-breaking. Pake was
+often obliged to descend and chop; and on the whole progress was so
+slow, Garth decided they might venture to insure their necks by walking.
+
+So he and Natalie strode on ahead, pausing here and there to pick the
+delicious acrid mooseberries, and discussing their problems. Their talk
+was chiefly of Nick Grylls. Natalie finally confessed what had happened
+at the Landing.
+
+"You should have told me immediately," Garth said with a frown.
+
+Natalie looked "poor," as she called it. "I was afraid you'd send me
+home," she said. "Now you can't," she added provokingly.
+
+Garth in turn told her what he had learned the night before.
+
+"Look here," said Natalie frankly; "what is the use of our hiding these
+things from each other? Let us promise to tell everything that happens
+after this. You wanted me to take you for granted as if I were a man.
+You treat me like a man and I will."
+
+Garth smiled; and promised to try--just as she had done on a similar
+occasion.
+
+"I wish I had some men's clothes," said Natalie stoutly; frowning as
+girls always do, when they see themselves in that character. And in
+the very act of wishing it, she forgot; and drove home her femininity.
+Tipping a palmful of mooseberries into her mouth, "Wouldn't I look
+nice!" she said with a sidewise sparkle.
+
+Garth, swallowing a sigh, smiled, and allowed that she would.
+
+They speculated on what Mary Co-que-wasa's errand might be; neither of
+them was experienced in villainy. There, in the matter-of-fact daylight,
+and, as Natalie said, on Sunday, August the fifth _now_, it was impossible
+for the thought of one silent old woman to cause them much uneasiness;
+besides, they presently expected to join forces with the Bishop's ample
+party. Nothing nearly so simple and devilish as the actual truth occurred
+to them; and it was brought home with the force of a blow, when they
+reached the Warehouse.
+
+About eleven, a final descent brought them to the shore of a demure
+little river flowing softly between high banks--Musquasepi, that they
+were to know so well. Off to the left it merged into the muddier waters
+of the "big" river. On the further shore stood the Warehouse they had
+heard of so often.
+
+"Oh!" said Natalie. "Only another little log shack! Why I imagined
+a--a----"
+
+"Five-story stone front?" suggested Garth.
+
+"Well, I don't know," she said, "but not that!"
+
+On the hither side was a solitary cabin; and in the doorway stood a
+breed, outwardly of a different pattern from any they had seen--but
+after all not so different. He was clad in decent Sunday blacks minus
+the coat; and wore heavy-rimmed spectacles which he took off when he
+really wished to see. On the table within was ostentatiously spread an
+open Bible--the sharp-eyed Natalie took note that it was upside down.
+This young man had a heavy expression of conscious responsibility,
+before which the insouciant Pake visibly quailed. Pake indicated to
+Garth that Ancose Mackey stood before him.
+
+"Where is the Bishop?" Garth demanded impatiently.
+
+Ancose blandly ignored the question for the present. "How-do-you-do,
+sir," he said, like a mechanical doll, at the same time politely
+extending his hand.
+
+Garth, shaking it hastily, repeated his question--but the young man was
+not to be hurried over any of his self-pleasing formalities.
+
+"How-do-you-do, sir," he repeated to Natalie in precisely the same tone,
+gravely shaking hands with her.
+
+Then they must needs come in and sit down, while their host made a
+remark on the weather, and informed them, with an air, that he was
+a very good reader. He wrapped his Bible in an end of comforter, and
+pulling a doll's trunk from under the bed, put it away. Natalie had a
+glimpse of the contents of the trunk; she said afterward, it was like
+the inside of his head; beside the Bible, there were sundry pieces
+of dried moose meat, a gaudy silk handkerchief, tobacco and a brass
+watch-chain of the size of a small cable. He took out the latter
+and put it on.
+
+Finally he appeared to hear Garth's question. "Bishop gone up little
+river. Four days," he said.
+
+"Some one was to meet me here," said Garth confidently.
+
+An expression of genuine concern appeared under Ancose Mackey's solemn
+mugging. "You Garth Pevensey?" he asked.
+
+Garth nodded.
+
+Ancose's English was not equal to the situation. He turned quickly to
+Pake, squatting in the doorway, and exploded in Cree. Pake answered in
+kind. It takes a roundabout course to say anything of an abstract nature
+in Cree. Finally Garth heard the ominous name of Mary Co-que-wasa enter
+into their discourse.
+
+"What is it?" he demanded impatiently.
+
+Ancose turned a long face to him. "Bad medicine here," he said. "Bishop
+send ol' Pierre Toma down from head of rapids with him team to get you,"
+he went on, struggling manfully with his English. "Ol' Pierre stay to me
+three days of waiting. Las' night come boy up big river in canoe. Boy
+say to ol' Pierre, Cap'n Jack stuck at Caliper Island. Boy say, Cap'n
+Jack want tell to Bishop, Garth Pevensey no can come. Garth Pevensey him
+gone back outside."
+
+Garth and Natalie looked at each other in dismay.
+
+"Mary Co-que-wasa do this," added Ancose. "Him no speak never true."
+
+"Of course!" said Natalie. "She knew they wouldn't believe her, so she
+sent the boy up, while she waited below."
+
+"Where's the boy?" Garth demanded.
+
+Ancose shrugged. "Gone down," he said. "No can catch now."
+
+"When did Pierre Toma go back?"
+
+"Early," said Ancose. "Five hours. Him horses fresh."
+
+"Maybe we can catch them yet!" cried Garth. "How much to the head of the
+rapids, Pake?"
+
+Pake had ample English to make a good bargain. However, it was finally
+struck; and cutting Ancose Mackey's elaborate adieus very short, they
+took to the road again.
+
+They had twenty-five miles to cover. This part of the trail is
+considerably used in freighting goods around the rapids, and in the
+North it is considered a good road, though the travellers' bones bore
+testimony to the contrary for several succeeding days. Pake, with the
+prospect of a substantial bonus before him, did not spare his horses;
+but the grass-fed beasts had already lost their enthusiasm for the
+journey, and they made but indifferent progress. They were presently
+compelled to stop a good hour and a half to let them rest and feed.
+
+Garth, though he strove to hide it, was now very anxious. They had laid
+in only two weeks' provisions at the Landing; the trails seemed to be
+narrowing both before and behind; and the North closing in. Moreover, he
+suspected Nick Grylls was not the man to stoop to mere mischief-making;
+and he wondered apprehensively what next move he contemplated. Looking
+at his charming Natalie, he could conceive of a man stooping to any
+villainy to possess her. However, he strove to keep her spirits up--and
+his own--with the oft-expressed belief that the Bishop would not leave
+Pierre Toma's until the next morning.
+
+Six o'clock had passed before they turned into the rough little clearing
+on the river bank. The horses were done up. They had passed no other
+sign of habitation the whole way.
+
+A bent old man with a snowy thatch came hobbling out of the cabin.
+
+His look of surprise, and the quietness of the place, answered Garth's
+question before he put it.
+
+"Where is the Bishop?"
+
+The old man spread out his hands. "Gone. Four hours," he said.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+ON THE LITTLE RIVER
+
+
+The next day found Garth and Natalie afloat on Musquasepi, headed alone
+into the North. To be exact, only Natalie was afloat; she sat in the
+stern of a tiny boat, keeping her off shore with a paddle devised
+from the cover of a grub-box. Their outfit was piled amidships. Garth
+harnessed to the end of a towing-line, plodded through the mud and over
+the stones of the bank; climbing over fallen trees, and wading bodily
+into the river, when necessary to drag his tow around a reef.
+
+Indecision had attacked Garth the night before--his responsibility was
+so great! But Natalie had said, pressing the soft curve out of her lips:
+
+"_Any_ means to get ahead! If we have to crawl on hands and knees!"
+
+"Any _safe_ means," Garth amended.
+
+"Nick Grylls without doubt is counting on our being held up or driven
+back," she said. "I have an idea he is not far behind us."
+
+It was Garth's own idea.
+
+"So we _must_ keep ahead!"
+
+"We must do whatever will best ensure your safety," Garth said doggedly.
+
+That bright red spot had appeared in either of Natalie's cheeks. "Bother
+my safety!" she cried. "You will not allow me a shred of pluck! My
+honour is engaged on this journey, just the same as if I were a man! I
+said I'd do it; and I will! And if I hear another word about my comfort
+or my safety, upon my word, I'll go on alone!"
+
+Garth had smiled at the threat, and given in; because on the whole it
+seemed safer to press ahead, than to attempt to return. Secretly, he was
+delighted with the spirit she showed.
+
+They had bought the boat from Pierre Toma, a breed of the more
+self-respecting elder generation, in whose aged eyes still twinkled
+the spirit of the voyageurs. Pake's magnanimous offer of the wagon and
+team at only twice their real value was declined; inasmuch as the trail
+was impassible for wagons beyond Toma's place, and ceased altogether at
+Caribou Lake. They counted on the boat to carry them as far as the lake;
+there, Pierre Toma had assured them, they might very likely overtake the
+Bishop, if he were delayed by contrary winds, or christenings. In any
+case Wall-eye Macgregor, said Pierre, had a strong boat at the lake that
+could take them the eighty miles across. According to the haphazard
+measurements of the breeds, Caribou Lake was twenty-five miles from
+Pierre Toma's.
+
+Their own boat was but crazily hung together. Natalie had christened
+it the _Flat-iron_ from its shape. It was of extremely simple
+construction--two planks laid V-shape, with a shorter plank to close the
+end, and boards nailed on for a bottom. Pierre Toma had said with pride,
+there was no other boat in the country like it; and after using it a day
+they were prepared to agree. It was designed to be propelled with a pole;
+and they had started in that manner; but the _Flat-iron_ showed a perverse
+disposition to travel in any direction save the desired one; and her
+favourite manoeuvre under the impetus of the pole was to swing on her
+centre without moving ahead at all. So Garth, after some study, had
+constructed the tracking apparatus.
+
+It was a simple, park-like, little river with brown, foam-flecked water
+flowing moderately through a country of small timber; and occasionally
+there were natural meadows starred with flowers, where children in their
+white dresses should have been picnicking, so intimate and peaceful it
+seemed. None the less, it was the strange and lonely North into which
+they were thrust, on their own unaided resources--like the babes in
+the woods, Natalie said. They were abruptly cast back on the great and
+simple verities of existence, where a man, be his wits never so sharp,
+must be strong, to survive. Natalie looked at Garth's broad back, as he
+slowly put the miles behind him one after another; and considering the
+impatient vigour, with which he attacked the multitude of obstacles
+strewn along the river, thanked God for sending such a one to her aid.
+
+The wonder of the unknown was in them both; and their breasts throbbed
+a little, as they looked to see what each bend in the stream would have
+to show. Only once in the course of the afternoon was there any reminder
+of human life; a breed boy suddenly appeared on the bank, only to duck
+behind a bush like a little animal, at the startling sight of white
+strangers on the river. Tempted forth at last, in response to Garth's
+question, he said they were twenty-five miles from the lake. Garth, who
+had been doing his best for seven hours to reduce that distance, felt
+distinctly aggrieved.
+
+Natalie insisted on camping early; for it had been a gruelling afternoon
+on Garth. They chose a little promontory running into the water; and once
+he had started a fire, and put up her tent, she made him lie at length
+in the grass, where he stretched his limbs in delicious weariness, and
+watched her settling the camp for the night and cooking the supper. She
+was proud in the acquisition of a new accomplishment, that of baking
+bannock before a fire in the open, learned that morning from Mrs. Toma.
+The sight of her, bustling and cheerful, working for him, had a strange
+and painful pleasure for him. They two, alone together in the wilderness,
+cut off from all their kind!--the thought squeezed his heartstrings; she
+was so much his own there--and so little!
+
+With the sinking of the sun, the awful stillness came stealing to
+envelope them; and with insistent fingers seemed to press upon the very
+drums of their ears. The little river flowed as stilly and darkly as the
+water of Lethe at their feet; and the gaunt pines over the way stood
+transfixed like souls that had drunk of it. Under the spell of the silence
+they instinctively lowered their voices; and they broke sticks for the
+fire with reluctance; so painful was the crash and reverberation up and
+down. But there is always one sound that accompanies this stillness;
+hardly breaks it, so smoothly it comes stealing on the suspended evening
+air--the quavering howl of the coyote. They heard it throb miles off;
+and it was answered from immeasurable distances side to side. Little by
+little, attracted by the smell of cooking food, the animals drew closer,
+and at last stationed themselves in a kind of wide-drawn circle about
+their camp on both sides of the river, wailing back and forth like
+souls inconceivably tormented. Natalie shuddered.
+
+"They are cowardly beasts," Garth said reassuringly. "They won't come
+any closer."
+
+They spoke but little to each other. Night, solitude and that spirit of
+woe abroad, filled them with a mighty longing for each other's arms. At
+last she crept away to her tent.
+
+As the darkness deepened; and the clear-eyed Northern constellations
+looked out, one by one, there were other sounds; a peevish growling and
+whining at the top of the bank above them; a frantic scurry when Garth
+heaved a stone. The better to ensure Natalie's peace of mind, he
+weighted the tent all around with rocks; and heaped wood on the fire.
+
+Natalie stuck her head out of her cosy refuge. "I can't bear to have
+you sleeping unprotected outside," she said anxiously.
+
+Garth's heart paused breathlessly at the thought of the alternative. He
+sprang up and thrust the thought aside. "Nonsense! I'll be all right!"
+he cried. "To please you I'll keep the fire going all night."
+
+Later, he rolled himself in his blankets across the door of her tent,
+as before; and lay there smoking, gazing at the fire, picturing Natalie
+asleep within; and assuaging his hungry heart as best he might with the
+sound of her child-like breathing.
+
+The day broke gloriously; and shortly after sunrise they were on
+their way again, under a sky as tenderly blue as palest turquoise, over
+which were flung bright, silken, cloudy scarves. As they ascended, the
+character of the river changed; the trees disappeared, giving place to
+wide, flat meadows of blue grass as high as a man's waist; the current
+slackened, and its course became more circuitous. Along the shores,
+steep cut-banks alternated with muddy shoals; and a new set of
+problems faced Garth.
+
+These chiefly took the form of stout willow bushes overhanging the
+cut-banks--diabolically malicious, sentient beings, they became to
+Garth. He tried crawling underneath with his tow-line, whereupon the
+earth gave way, precipitating him in water up to his middle; he tried
+crashing bodily through, and the line would invariably knot itself
+around the most inaccessible twig. The _Flat-iron_, too, seemed to
+rejoice in his discomfiture; and at every interruption of her progress
+took the occasion, in spite of Natalie's paddle, to turn about and stick
+her nose stupidly into the mud of the bank. Every bush in turn offered
+a different and more complicated obstacle than the last; in three hours
+they made perhaps twice three hundred yards. Natalie, alarmed by the
+spectacle of Garth's set lips, and the swollen veins of his temples,
+besought him for goodness' sake to swear and not mind her.
+
+He finally decided to change his mode of going; and contriving a
+second little paddle, he embarked with Natalie. They progressed but
+slowly against the current; for the short paddles had about the same
+effectiveness as two of those little instruments for making butter pats,
+which they strongly resembled. Garth figured they would be making a
+mile an hour--but this way was easier on his temper.
+
+To-day, the little river, placidly flowing between its grassy banks,
+had an oddly pastoral look. With the familiar shapes of the overhanging
+willows, and the brilliant marsh marigolds on the shallows, all drenched
+in the opulent sunshine, they found themselves looking for cows on the
+bank; and it seemed incredible that no church spire rose above any
+of the distant clumps of trees. They could not rid themselves of the
+feeling that this was no more than a day's picnic, with a house awaiting
+them just ahead, and company and good cheer. But instead of that,
+silently rounding a bend, they were unexpectedly introduced to the true
+genius of the country. In the mud of one of the flats at the edge of the
+water, sat a large brown bear on his haunches, soberly licking his paws.
+He was no more than twenty feet from them--a room's length. At Natalie's
+slight gasp of astonishment, he turned his head; and stared at them
+agape, with hanging paws, like a great baby. He looked so homely and
+comical Natalie burst out laughing. At the sound, Bruin promptly fell
+to all fours; and with a great "woof!" of astonishment and indignation,
+bundled over the bank out of sight.
+
+To-day, the delicate, heady air of the Northern summer inspired their
+veins like wine. As Olympians, they lunched on the greensward carpeting
+the bank of a little inlet; while their shallop floated among tiny white
+lilies at their feet. All afternoon their spirits soared into the realms
+of incoherent enthusiasm; they filled the air with their full-throated
+laughter and foolish, glancing speech. Garth's old friends would have
+been astonished then to see how he could "let himself go"; but no one
+in the world ever really saw that besides Natalie.
+
+They loved; their happy eyes confessed it freely, though their tongues
+were tied. Nothing needed to be explained, for they were perfectly
+attuned to each other; and everything was clear in an exchange of eyes.
+The tough old world, with all its tiresome, grimy businesses was thrust
+out of sight and out of mind, and they seemed to tread a brand-new sphere,
+created as they would have it, empty of all save their two selfish selves.
+On such a day, in such surroundings, crosses, hindrances, dangers, what
+were they? Life was a great joke: Nick Grylls and his minions were
+blithely whistled down the wind. Ascending between the flowery banks of
+the little river, _their_ river, nothing mattered so they were not parted.
+In the more or less tarnished circlet of life it was their perfect golden
+day; and whenever afterward either remembered it, it was as if a delicate
+fragrance arose in his soul. All day they saw no sign of human habitation.
+
+As long as the sun shone they maintained their light-hearted gaiety,
+neither remembering nor desiring anything more----
+
+"I say, Nat!" it would be, "toss me over the hatchet like a good chap.
+Hey, there! not at my head!"
+
+"What's for supper, Nat? I'm hungry as an ogre!"
+
+"Bacon _aux tomates a la Bland_ and bannock _Musquasepi avec_ ashes!"
+
+"Bully! If you taste it so much there won't be any left to go on the
+table!"
+
+"Where's the bag of hard-tack, Garth?"
+
+"Grub-box number two; port side by the rail."
+
+"Idiot! You put them on the bottom of the box! The water's leaked
+through, and they're all mush underneath!"
+
+"What's the diff? Stick the soft ones in the lobscouse!"
+
+But after supper, when the sun had gone down, and the great stillness
+crept over them again, Natalie's arms dropped at her sides, Garth's
+pipe went out, and an unaccountable sadness fell on both. Then, their
+sporadic attempts to keep up the old, friendly rattle rang so false
+that both fell silent. Their camp of itself had a gloomy aspect. It was
+pitched in an elbow of the river, where a section of the cut-bank had
+sunk down, making a little terrace of grass a few feet above the water.
+Above, there had been a small grove of trees, through which a fire had
+some time swept, leaving only a few slender, charred trunks pointing
+askew against the slow, dusky crimson of the west. On the nearest and
+tallest of these wrecked monuments, immediately above their camp, as on
+a slender pedestal, sat a great owl, the only visible living thing in
+all the wide expanse, besides themselves. As long as there was light
+enough to see him, he crouched there, motionless.
+
+Natalie sat huddled on a box, with Garth's coat thrown about her
+shoulders. Her chin was in her palm, and her lashes veiled rebellious,
+miserable eyes. There are moments when the most aerial spirits sink to
+earth; and just now Natalie could make no pretense at a flight. It was
+clear he loved her, as she loved him; what then were a few words five
+years old, to keep them apart? She tried honestly to arm her breast by
+thinking of the laws that separated them; but the insidious part of it
+was, they were worldly laws; and here the world was thrust out of sight.
+Why did he not take her in his arms, and let her heavy head fall on his
+shoulder? her heart reiterated; and that was the only voice she could
+hear then. Yet if Garth had betrayed any weakness on his part, Natalie
+would have been on the _qui vive_ to repel him. The forces of her soul
+were thrown in a sad confusion; while her woman's instinct raged against
+him, that he could resist her, she loved him tenfold more for that very
+resistance.
+
+And Garth--seeing her sitting there so small under his coat, and all
+relaxed and appealing, her mouth like an unhappy child's, and her eyes
+big with unshed tears--his arms ached to enfold her; his brain reeled
+with the intensity of his desire to take her as she trembled to be
+taken. But her helplessness, which tortured him, nerved him to endure
+the torture. In the turmoil of his blood he could not think coherently;
+but he could repeat to himself, dully, over and over: "I must take
+care of her! I must take care of her!" He busied himself with small
+unnecessary tasks; splicing the tracking line, chopping tent-pegs,
+cleaning the frying pan with sand.
+
+Natalie disappeared within her tent--and cried herself to sleep. Garth,
+lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her
+pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast.
+Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of
+tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing told him she was asleep
+at last, and undressing, waded into the river, and swam back and forth
+until the cold water chilled him through. Brisk, silent exercise
+restored his circulation, and a pipe and communion with the stars
+quieted his nerves. In the end he toppled over all standing, and
+slept on the grass until daylight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Natalie reappeared with the sun, brave and rosy again, and with little
+sign of the night's tumult, save in an added sense of gratitude toward
+Garth, which appeared in the pleasure she took in doing little things
+for him. His grayish pallor, and kind, tired eyes rebuked her sorely
+for having cast the whole burden on him. She vowed to herself it
+should not occur again.
+
+To-day the character of the river changed little; only that the
+bends multiplied and sharpened; and where they were horseshoe curves
+yesterday, to-day they were hair-pin curves. Sometimes, just over the
+bank, they would catch sight again of a particularly marked tree they
+had passed a whole laborious hour before. Endless and futile were the
+calculations they made as to how far they had gone, and had yet to go.
+
+They cut across from point to point, keeping under the bank out of the
+strength of the current as far as possible, and rounding the inside
+of each bend. In this manner they were ascending close under a willow
+bush, when suddenly and silently a huge, brown wing, like the wing of
+Sinbad's auk, sailed athwart the sky. They caught their breaths in
+astonishment. A great gray galley swept around the bend, no more than
+two oars' length from them. With her swarthy crew standing about the
+deck, their brows bound with bright silk handkerchiefs, and at the
+tiller, a great, bearded figure, she was the very picture of a pirate
+craft. It would be impossible to state which crew was the more surprised
+at the unexpected encounter; the seeming pirates likewise stared
+open-mouthed at the _Flat-iron_. Just as the galley was disappearing,
+Garth collected presence of mind sufficient to hail, and inquire the
+distance to the lake.
+
+The answer came back: "Twenty-five miles!"
+
+They began to think there was witchcraft in it.
+
+The wind had changed; and puffy, white clouds came rolling up from
+the west, passing beneath the serene and silky streamers of the upper
+air. Gradually the invaders thickened and spread over the field; their
+underbodies took on a grayish tint; and the blue openings narrowed.
+Finally a sharp shower descended; and the voyageurs sought shelter under
+a bush, where they hung, watching the millions of drops plopping roundly
+into the surface of the river; each drop with its attendant sprite
+leaping at its approach. One shower followed another, with intervals
+of hot and sticky sunshine between. It was more uncomfortable under
+the steamy, dripping bushes than in the thick of it; and they finally
+decided to paddle ahead, let it rain as it would. Luncheon, consisting
+of soaked bannock and cold cocoa, was a sorry affair.
+
+Garth was glum. He had long apprehended that bad weather would treble
+their difficulties. "How can I keep her warm and dry throughout the
+night?" was his ever-present thought. Natalie, on the other hand, was as
+happy as a lark; and she made a very attractive picture in the rain. Her
+dress had altered little by little during the last few days; and now
+comprised a blue sweater, short skirt and moccasins. The hat with the
+green wings was safely wrapped in the duffle-bag; and hitherto she had
+gone bareheaded on the river. When it began to rain she pulled a man's
+cap close over her head to keep her hair dry. As she industriously plied
+her paddle in the bow, ever and anon turning a rosy, streaming face to
+him, with a joke on her lips, in her rough get-up poor Garth thought her
+lovelier than ever. He was continually having to call himself down, as
+he would have said, for presuming to think he had measured the extent
+of her charm.
+
+"Isn't it bully, Garth!" once she cried. "Ever since I was a baby I have
+longed to be allowed to play in the rain for just once, and get as wet
+as I possibly could--just to see how it felt! And now I shall! Isn't it
+funny just to sit and let it come down, without running anywhere? Women
+are babies, anyway. I mean never to put up an umbrella again as long as
+I live. The rain feels good in my face!"
+
+Nevertheless, Garth, occupied as he was with the problems of how to find
+a dry place to put up the tent, and how to build a fire in a downpour,
+was anxious. Little by little the showers merged into each other; and
+before the end of the afternoon, it had settled down to rain steadily
+all night.
+
+He learned in the end never to trust the distances given in an
+unmeasured land. Rounding one of the endless bends toward five o'clock,
+they became aware of a new, indefinable, fresher smell on the air; and
+they increased their pace with an eager sense of a discovery awaiting
+them in the next vista. The next point proved to be the last; looking
+around it, the wind buffeted their faces fresh and cool; the river
+stretched away for half a mile, straight as a canal and there, away
+beyond, leapt the waves of Caribou Lake on the bar.
+
+Natalie cheered. "Hooray for the crew of the _Flat-iron_!" she cried.
+"We've actually done it!" She reached back. "Shake, partner!"
+
+Near the head of the river, in the wild waste of sand on the lake shore,
+squatted a weather-beaten little log cabin, almost eave-deep behind the
+dunes. Smoke arose from the chimney.
+
+"Good!" cried Garth in high satisfaction. "You can dry your clothes
+here, anyway."
+
+A glance up and down the shore of the river revealed no trace of the
+canoes or the outfit of the expedition they were in pursuit of.
+
+"We've missed him again," said Garth grimly.
+
+They landed, dripping and stiff; and plodded through the sand to the
+tiny door. The outlook was desolate in the extreme; there was no sign
+of life anywhere, save only the wisp of smoke from the chimney. At their
+left hand, the lake spread bleakly to the horizon, torn and white under
+the west wind, and with great billows tumbling on the beach.
+
+"The _Flat-iron_ could never negotiate that," remarked Garth.
+
+He knocked on the little door.
+
+"Come in!" rang instantly from within.
+
+They looked at each other in astonishment.
+
+"An English voice!" she whispered.
+
+"A white man! Thank God!" said he.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE HEART OF A BOY
+
+
+It was a youth who presently faced them on the threshold of the hut;
+an apple-cheeked boy of seventeen, who bared two rows of shining white
+teeth; and whose blue eyes, at the sight of them, sparkled with the
+purest enthusiasm of welcome.
+
+"Come right in, and dry out!" he cried. "I certainly am glad to see
+you!" The haunting reed of boyhood still vibrated faintly in the manlier
+notes of his voice.
+
+Here was a greeting from a stranger to warm the hearts of the wet and
+weary wayfarers! It presented the North in a new aspect. Natalie in
+especial, beamed on their young host; he was wholly a boy after her
+own heart.
+
+Looking at Natalie more particularly, the boy blushed and faltered
+a little. "It isn't much of a place to receive a lady in," he said
+apologetically. "I haven't been on my own long enough to get
+anything much together."
+
+It was a characteristically boyish abode. The furniture was limited
+to the cook-stove in the centre of the room; and a home-made table and
+a bench. His bed was spread on straw in one corner; and another corner
+was given up to the heterogeneous assortment of his belongings and his
+grub. Apparently the cabin had long served as a casual storehouse to
+the boatmen of the river; for pieces of mouldy sails were hung over
+the rafters; oars and a mast crossed from beam to beam; and in a third
+corner were a pile of chain and an anchor, slowly mouldering into rust.
+In wet weather, the present tenant evidently did his chopping within
+doors, the floor was littered with chips and broken wood. As they came
+in, a yellow and white kitten, retreating to the darkest corner of
+the cabin, elevated his back and growled threateningly.
+
+"That's my partner, Musq'oosis," explained the boy. "He'll make friends
+directly. He plays with me by the hour; you'd laugh yourself sick to see
+the comical way he carries on. He's great company when you're batching
+alone!"
+
+Natalie liked this boy more and more.
+
+"Say, I'm having no end of company these days," he went on, with his
+happy-go-lucky air. "The Bishop's outfit was here all day yesterday;
+they went up on the last of the east wind, this morning. The old
+woman--that's what we call Mrs. Bishop, you know; no disrespect--she
+baked me a batch of her bread before she went. Real outside bread with
+a crackly crust to it! Oh my! Oh my!--with brown sugar! Say, we'll
+have a loaf of it for supper!"
+
+Natalie in the meantime sat on the bench; and taking off her moccasins,
+put her feet on the oven sill to dry. Garth sat on a box; and their host
+squatted on the floor between.
+
+"By the way," said this youth; "I'm Charley Landrum."
+
+Garth introduced himself and Natalie.
+
+"Hope you'll stay a couple of days," said Charley anxiously--"or longer.
+There's great duck-shooting on the sloughs; and we might get a goose or
+a wavy around the lake shore. It would be a pleasant change of meat for
+the lady."
+
+Charley addressed all his remarks to Garth, without ever once looking
+at Natalie; it was clear, nevertheless, that he was acutely conscious
+of her presence; for he blushed whenever she spoke; and his eyes were
+continually drawn to her, though he dared not raise them quite to her
+face. To Garth and Natalie the nicest thing about this boy was the way
+he took her presence for granted. Of all the males they had met in the
+North, he alone had not gaped at her in vulgar wonder; and to his honest
+heart there was nothing out-of-the-way in the fact that she was Miss
+Bland, and Garth Mr. Pevensey.
+
+"We're obliged to get on as soon as we can," said Garth. "We've been
+chasing the Bishop all the way from the Landing."
+
+"How did you come up the little river?" asked Charley.
+
+"I bought a boat from Pierre Toma."
+
+"I know her," he said with a chuckle; "cranky as a bath-tub! You
+couldn't go up the lake in her!"
+
+"Not while it blows like this," said Garth.
+
+"Then I hope it hits it up for a week!" said Charley, apparently
+addressing the hem of Natalie's skirt.
+
+"I was told one Wall-eye Macgregor had a strong boat," Garth said.
+
+"Nothing doing!" returned the boy. "He's got it up at the head of the
+lake."
+
+"Then I must try to strengthen the bath-tub and coast around the shore,"
+said Garth.
+
+"I'll help you!" said Charley. "We'll pitch in first thing to-morrow."
+
+"How long have you been in the country, Mr. Landrum?" asked Natalie
+softly.
+
+The boy blushed for pure pleasure; and his voice deepened as he replied:
+"Two years next March, Miss. I came in over the ice with a freighter. I
+ran away from school. What was the use?--I got a head like a hickory
+nut; and I couldn't keep out of trouble. They gave me a bad name; and
+everything that happened was put on me. So I cleared out and came
+North."
+
+Gradually the whole naive, boyish tale came out.
+
+"I had a lot of fool ideas about the country then; but they were soon
+knocked out of me. All the kids that run away soon come sneaking home
+and have to eat their brags; and I wasn't going to do that. So I stuck
+it out. At first I admit I pretty near caved in with homesickness; but
+I'm hardened now. The first year I worked for a trader up at Ostachegan
+creek; and this spring I bought this cabin on credit. Frank Shefford up
+at Nine-Mile-Point is going to lend me his team and mower when his hay
+is put up; and I'll put up hay myself."
+
+The boy's eyes glowed, as he announced his brave plans for the future.
+
+"Next winter I'm going to keep a stopping-house for freighters. I've
+got a good location here, and stable room already for eight teams. I'll
+build to it later. There's money in that; and it's a pleasant life for a
+man--plenty of company. And when I get a little money ahead, I'll trade;
+there's good chances for a free trader that knows the ropes; and in a
+few years I'll branch out and have a whole string of trading posts,
+like Nick Grylls. There's a smart one! They say he could sell out
+for a hundred thousand any day!"
+
+Garth was reminded of his own hopeful, spouting youth.
+
+"I hope you won't be like Nick Grylls," said Natalie gently.
+
+"Don't you like him?" asked Charley in concern. "I always thought he was
+a pretty smart one. No!" he added suddenly. "I don't like him either.
+He's coarse!"
+
+Supper was an affair of joint contributions; Garth's jam for Charley's
+bread. In the meantime Charley had surreptitiously swept up the chips;
+and had then slipped away to the river bank, for a wash and a tidy-up.
+He reappeared with his hair well "slicked," his tip-tilted nose as pink
+as his shiny cheeks, and a smile that extended to the furthest confines
+of his face. But he was distressed that he had no white collar to honour
+the board; and his gratitude was silent and boundless, when Garth
+produced one for him from his duffle-bag.
+
+It was a jovial meal that followed; the spirit of youth presided; and
+wisdom and grave speech were thrust under the table. Charley recovered
+of his bashfulness so far that he could occasionally nerve himself to
+look at Natalie. For all the boy's giddy jollity, his blue eyes had a
+kind of stricken look when they rested on her face. But his appetite did
+not suffer appreciably; and it did Garth's and Natalie's hearts good to
+see the bread and jam disappear between Charley's business-like jaws.
+Jam, they agreed, had surely never before been so successful in tickling
+the human palate. "Just do without it for a couple of years and see for
+yourself," Charley rejoined.
+
+Afterward the cabin was further swept and garnished for Natalie's use;
+and a heap of fragrant hay brought from the stable on which to spread
+her blankets. The house was to be yielded up to her for the night. Garth
+and Charley shared the little tent outside. Garth, with his simplicity,
+and his air of quiet understanding, was above all one to win a boy's
+confidence; and by bedtime they were as friendly as brothers--or perhaps
+more like a very young father and his oldest son.
+
+When they rolled up side by side in their blankets Charley seemed to
+put off several years. He hunched closer to his bedfellow; and pressed
+his shoulder warmly against Garth's.
+
+"Are you sleepy?" he asked diffidently.
+
+Garth's heart warmed to the act and the speech. "Why, no!" he said.
+"Believe I'll have another smoke before dropping off. Fire away, old
+boy!"
+
+"Say, it's simply great to have somebody young to talk to," said poor
+Charley. "Somebody that understands; and that you can let yourself go
+with, and say whatever comes into your head to. Say, I never had such
+a good time in all my life as to-night. All the fellows up here--they're
+a good sort all right--but they're a rough, cursing lot. And of course,
+a fellow has to curse too; and talk big just to keep his end up--chuck
+a bluff, you know, or they'll think you're a molly. And I just love to
+laugh, and act foolish; and I always have to hold myself in. Sometimes
+I near bust!"
+
+"I get like that myself," said Garth encouragingly.
+
+There was something else on Charley's mind; but for a long time his
+tongue sheered off at every approach to it. Finally, rolling over, he
+hid a hot cheek on Garth's shoulder; and it came out with a rush.
+
+"Say! I think she's the prettiest girl I ever laid eyes on!"
+
+Garth's arm tightened about the boy's shoulders "She's the first white
+girl I've seen in nearly two years," he floundered on; "and girls meant
+nothing to me then. But I know darned well she's no ordinary white girl.
+Isn't it wonderful, the different ways she looks; and all that her voice
+seems to mean besides the words she says; and the way she walks and sits
+down; and the way she lifts her arm? Isn't it a pretty arm? And the
+finest thing about her is, she deals plain with you like a fellow;
+no silly fuss and make-believe, and hanging-back about her!"
+
+If Garth liked the boy before, he was prepared to love him for this.
+
+"Did you mark how she called me Mr. Landrum?" continued Charley eagerly.
+"She just did that to please me, I know. Didn't it sound funny? My chest
+expanded two inches, I swear it did! Wasn't she kind to me? She had
+no call to be so kind to me. It just makes me want to do something
+terrific! Oh, if I could only do something for her!--wouldn't I
+just be glad of the chance!"
+
+He was silent for a while, tossing uneasily in his blanket. "Say,
+there's something I want to tell you," he blurted out at last. "I'm
+certainly good and ashamed of myself! There's a girl down the shore, her
+name is Julia; she's not a bad-looker for a breed. She came around my
+cabin sometimes. I was kind of lonesome, you see; and she was young,
+like me--"
+
+Garth let him see that he understood--and he did understand, both the
+pitiful little tale, and the boy's reason for wishing to tell him.
+
+"And to think of _her_ asleep in there now!" he continued remorsefully.
+"It makes me sick and disgusted with myself. I'd give anything if it
+hadn't happened! You bet I'll have no truck with them in future!"
+
+"Every man makes mistakes, old boy," said Garth.
+
+Charley, his mind relieved by confession, in the midst of further
+rhapsodies, suddenly fell asleep.
+
+In the morning he awoke all of a piece, as boys do, and rolling over,
+said instantly:
+
+"Natalie is sure the prettiest name there is!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later in the day in the middle of their somewhat hopeless deliberations
+upon the repairing of the half-submerged _Flat-iron_--her flimsily hung
+planks had been started even by her gentle journey on the river--there
+was a hail from down-stream. Looking, they saw four swart figures
+bending one after another in a tracking-harness, crawling around the
+edge of the cut-bank below. Presently a sharp prow nosed around the
+bend; and a long, low, double-ended galley swung into view, floating
+lazily on the current like a gigantic duck.
+
+"A York boat!" cried Charley in surprise. "Didn't know any was due!
+Here's your chance to cross the lake!"
+
+"Hm!" said Garth doubtfully. "We'll find out, first, what news she
+brings from below."
+
+At the sight of the open water ahead, the breeds redoubled their
+shouting, and hit up their pace. It was interesting to see how, once
+having got her under way, they could allow nothing to stop them; but
+needs must crash through obstructions regardless; slipping scrambling,
+literally clawing their way along. Whenever the rope caught, it was
+the part of the fourth man to slip out of his collar, and disengage it,
+without stopping the others. It was racking work on the frame of a man;
+but the feather-headed breeds ceaselessly chattered and shouted, like
+boys out of school; roaring with laughter when any one of the four came
+down. In the stern stood the helmsman, pulling her head around, with a
+mighty sweep, extending astern; and the other four of the crew, resting
+from their spell of tracking, fended her off the bank with poles. The
+York boat, pointed bow and stern, low amidships, and undecked, reminded
+Garth of the pictures he had seen of ancient Norse galleys.
+
+Arriving opposite the cabin, they all leaped aboard; and poling across,
+landed in front of where Garth and Charley stood. Natalie, not caring to
+run the gauntlet of another battery of stupid stares, had retired to the
+cabin. On the prow of the boat, which had a dingy, weather-beaten look,
+very different from the smart green and white craft of the "Company," was
+crookedly painted the name _Loseis_. Making her fast, the breeds, with
+furtive stares at Garth, threw themselves on the ground like tired dogs.
+It was not long, however, before a "stick-kettle," the invariable tom-tom,
+was produced, the ear-splitting chant raised, and a game of _met-o-wan_,
+a sort of Cree equivalent for Billy-Billy-who's-got-the-button, started
+on the shore.
+
+The steersman, pausing only to put on a gold-embroidered waistcoat,
+approached Garth with a disposition to be friendly--too friendly by
+half, Garth thought. He was an undersized man of not more than thirty,
+but already somewhat withered; a specimen of the unwholesome, weedy
+breed of the settlements.
+
+"Well, Charley," he said affably.
+
+They shook hands with the touch of impressiveness that always marks this
+ceremony in the North; and then Hooliam, with a shifty glance, extended
+his hand to Garth. At the same time he said something in Cree.
+
+"He says: 'You want to go up the lake,'" translated Charley.
+
+"How does he know that?" asked Garth quickly.
+
+Hooliam answered in Cree without waiting for Charley to translate.
+Evidently, like most of the breeds, he understood more English than he
+cared to confess.
+
+"He says that Pierre Toma told him," said Charley.
+
+"Ask him how it is he comes up with such a small load," suggested Garth.
+
+Charley repeated the question in Cree. Hooliam's answer was prompt and
+glib. "He says that the water was too low to bring a full load,"
+translated Charley.
+
+"Ask him when he means to go on," said Garth.
+
+Hooliam gave a glance at the still tossing lake. "As soon as the wind
+dies or changes. This wind would blow him right back on the shore," such
+the gist of his answer by way of Charley.
+
+"Tell him to let me know before he starts; and I'll tell him if we wish
+to go along," said Garth coolly.
+
+"I want to have a talk with you," he added in a lower tone for Charley's
+benefit.
+
+They sat down apart on the sand.
+
+"What do you think of this outfit, Charley?" asked Garth.
+
+The boy was surprised at the question. "Well," he said, "it does look
+a bit queer, their coming all this way with half a load. But you never
+can tell about these crazy niggers; they may have dumped out half their
+stuff on the bank somewhere, and left it to rot. A French range for the
+inspector has been lying on the point across the river for two months."
+
+"Who is this Hooliam?" Garth asked.
+
+"He boats back and forth pretty regular. He's a footless kind of
+breed--but straight, as far as I know. What do you care?" the boy asked
+curiously. "If he takes you on board, he's got to put you across."
+
+Garth looked at Charley estimatingly. But there could be no doubt of the
+boy's straight-eyed, whole-souled devotion to Natalie; and he quickly
+made up his mind. He told him briefly what had occurred on the way in.
+
+Charley whistled in astonishment. "So that's the kind Nick Grylls is!"
+he exclaimed. "He sure must have gone clean daft!"
+
+"This Hooliam," Garth continued, "is too anxious, judging by others of
+his kind, to get us on board. I suspect Nick Grylls has a share in this
+outfit. On the other hand we have less than a week's grub left. What
+have you got, Charley?"
+
+"Nothing but sow-bosom and beans," said the boy disconsolately; "and
+damn little of that! It isn't good enough for _her_!"
+
+"Any chance of another boat?" asked Garth.
+
+Charley shook his head. "No Company boat due for three weeks," he said.
+
+Garth set his jaw. "Then there's no help for it," he said firmly. "We'll
+have to go with Hooliam. I'll make him take our little boat along, so we
+won't be entirely at his mercy; and I'll watch him close."
+
+Charley leaned toward Garth. The boy unconsciously clenched his hands;
+and in the intensity of his eagerness, his eyes actually filled. "I say,
+Garth, take me along with you," he pleaded.
+
+Garth, looking at him gratefully, thought none but a boy could be so
+generous. "But I can't take you away from your own work," he objected.
+
+Charley brushed it impatiently out of sight. "What does that matter!"
+he exclaimed. "It can wait." He redoubled his pleadings. "This was what
+I wanted so badly, Garth! To be a little use to her! I could help--you
+think I'm just a crazy kid, and maybe I am, but I could think like a
+man, and plan like a man for her! You and I could stand watch and watch.
+Say, after what you've told me, I'd go near out of my head to see you
+two sail away, and me left behind, not knowing what was happening!"
+
+Garth was more moved than he cared to show. "You're true blue, Charley,"
+he said in a low tone. "You come along!"
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ON CARIBOU LAKE
+
+
+From sundown until daybreak, the ki-yi-ing and the beating of the
+stick-kettle on the shore desecrated the stillness of the night with
+scarcely any intermission. Shortly after daybreak, the wind having
+gone down, Hooliam sent word to Garth that he would like to start.
+
+They were ready in a few minutes. At the sight of Charley's bundle
+with the others, Hooliam scowled and muttered in Cree.
+
+"Says he can't take me," said Charley.
+
+Garth flushed angrily. "This was all it needed," he burst out. "What
+reason does he give?"
+
+"No reason," said Charley coolly. "Just talks foolish."
+
+Hooliam added something with a great show of plausibility.
+
+"Says he hasn't got room," said Charley with a laugh.
+
+"Rubbish!" said Garth. "You tell him he takes the three of us or none!
+Give it to him strong!"
+
+Upon receipt of this ultimatum, Hooliam, shrugging, turned away; and the
+three of them boarded the _Loseis_.
+
+Running out two pairs of clumsy sweeps, which were no more than
+good-sized trees a little flattened at one end, they laboriously pulled
+out of the river. Before them the lake stretched to the horizon as
+smooth and colourless as a lightly frosted pane. Loons, herons and
+a little kind of gull; ducks in pairs and squadrons; flocks of brown
+geese and shining white swans, wheeled, sailed and swam about them
+in countless numbers.
+
+When they had rowed upward of a mile into the lake a mighty discussion
+suddenly arose amongst the crew. The oarsmen ceased their labours to
+take part in it. Eight wetted brown forefingers were held aloft.
+
+"They're scrapping about whether there is any wind," Charley explained.
+
+To a white man's senses there was no sign of wind; nevertheless the
+oars were run in, the cargo shifted, and the heavy mast, with infinite
+labour, stepped amidships and guyed. Hooliam looked on indifferently
+from the stern, idly swinging his great sweep back and forth. Finally
+a dirty square sail was raised. It declined to belly or flap in the
+slightest degree; but the breeds, satisfied with what they had done, lay
+around the boat, preparing to enjoy themselves in luxurious ease. They
+amused themselves by tempting the water-fowl close with imitations of
+their cries; and popping at them ineffectively with their twenty-two
+"trade-guns."
+
+Garth stood it as long as he could.
+
+"Look here!" he said at length to Charley. "Ask him how long this is
+going to last."
+
+Charley translated. Hooliam looked sagely astern, spat, and answered in
+Cree.
+
+"He says there'll be a breeze by and by," said Charley.
+
+The scarcely veiled insolence of this reply caused Garth inwardly to
+fume. However, reflecting that, after all, Hooliam ought to know more
+about navigation than he, he possessed his soul in patience for another
+half-hour. There was still no sign of wind; and it was growing very hot
+in the sun. Garth, setting his jaw, drew out his watch.
+
+"Tell him I'll give him just fifteen minutes longer," he said quietly.
+"If we're not under way by that time, there's going to be trouble."
+
+Hooliam received the message with apparent indifference. Garth held his
+watch in his hand. Three minutes before the expiration of the time, he
+had Charley convey a final warning to the breed. Hooliam suddenly became
+voluble and expostulatory.
+
+"He says the boys won't work when there's a breeze coming up," said
+Charley.
+
+"You tell him, then, that I will take command of this boat, and run her
+myself," said Garth.
+
+At the last moment the orders were hastily given. The mast was
+reluctantly taken down, and hung over the side; the cargo was shifted
+back, and the sweeps run out. The breeds rowed half-heartedly, with
+furtive scowls for the _moon-i-yas_ who made them work.
+
+After a couple of hours during which they covered a scant three miles,
+a breeze _did_ spring up from astern; whereupon the whole business
+of raising the mast was gone through with again. Little by little it
+freshened, and the _Loseis_ began to forge ahead, making a pleasant
+little murmur under her forefoot. The hearts of the three passengers
+rose in unison.
+
+But they had not sailed two miles more, when the exasperated Garth
+discovered that Hooliam was slyly edging his craft inside a point of the
+shore. At first the breed unblushingly denied any intention of stopping;
+but when it became apparent that he could not round the point without
+hauling down the sail, he coolly admitted that he was going to land.
+
+"What for?" Garth demanded.
+
+"They're going ashore to spell--to cook and eat," Charley explained.
+"Hooliam says there is no other place to land in fifteen miles."
+
+Garth was obliged to be content.
+
+With the characteristic prodigality of the breeds, an enormous fire
+was built on the shore, over which their tea was furiously boiled in an
+iron pail, and their dried moose meat stewed a little less tough than
+moccasins. At a little distance the three passengers made their own
+preparations for lunch.
+
+Natalie, serenely trusting in Garth, put aside all anxiety about the
+outcome of their journey; and was frankly interested and amused.
+
+"Mercy!" she exclaimed. "They'll all die of tannic poisoning! And look
+what they eat! The bacon is as green as arsenic!"
+
+She proved to be using her eyes and ears to good advantage on the way.
+
+"The tall boy," she said, "the one that looks like an actor; he's the
+humourist of the party. He keeps them in fits of laughter by giving
+_moon-i-yas_ imitations. He mimics us to our very faces. Their idea of
+us is too funny! The good-looking little one is his inseparable friend;
+they hold hands when they're not working. The one with the whitey-blue
+eyes is called by a very blasphemous name. I watched him turning over
+the pages of some stove catalogues that dropped out of a crate, with
+_such_ a serious air. And they were all exactly alike, but he didn't
+know it, because he held some of them upside down! What do you suppose
+he made of a picture of a self-feeder standing on its head?"
+
+To Garth it seemed as if they took an interminable time to prepare and
+eat their simple meal; and afterward there could no longer be any doubt,
+from the way they loafed about, that they were soldiering, as a result
+of Hooliam's low-voiced encouragement. They grinned with childish
+impudence at the scowling _moon-i-yas_. At last Hooliam produced a
+pack of cards and a game of "jack-pot" was started on the shore.
+This constituted frank defiance; and Garth took instant action.
+
+"Put up those cards!" he commanded.
+
+The boys laughed and looked at Hooliam.
+
+"Get on board the boat," Garth ordered, through Charley.
+
+Hooliam's eyes bolted; but he made no move. With the sheer perversity
+of a child or a savage, he insisted there was no wind, even while the
+ripples were washing the stones at his feet.
+
+Garth, thoroughly exasperated, picked up his rifle. His eyes glinted
+dangerously. "There's something behind this nonsense!" he cried. "And
+I'm going to stop it! You let him understand that if he opposes me any
+further I have eleven cartridges in the magazine of this rifle, and I
+would think as little of bringing him down as that wavy up there!"
+
+A wild swan, most difficult of marks, was sailing high overhead. Garth,
+as he spoke, took aim and fired; and the great bird dropped like a
+plummet in the shallow water off shore.
+
+Loud exclamations of admiration broke from the boys. Three of them
+dashed enthusiastically into the water to contend for the honour of
+bringing back the prize. Garth builded better than he knew. The boys
+while scarcely understanding the threat, were instantly impressed with
+the successful shot; and with it Garth established himself once and
+for all in their eyes. They instinctively began to carry the things
+on board as he had ordered; and in the end the scowling Hooliam was
+obliged to follow them on board, or be left behind.
+
+As they were getting under way again, Garth observed Hooliam busy with
+the sail. When it was hoisted, it appeared he had taken a reef in it.
+
+"Shake it out!" Garth commanded.
+
+Hooliam shrugged and protested.
+
+"He says the mast is not strong," Charley translated. "This heavy wind
+will carry it away," he says.
+
+"Just now he said there was no wind," Garth said. "Let her go; and if
+anything breaks we'll mend it."
+
+Hooliam in a long harangue, demanded to know through Charley, if Garth
+would pay for the damage.
+
+For answer Garth merely picked up his rifle; and the reef was let out in
+a hurry.
+
+In all this there was something more than mere savage perversity;
+Hooliam, it was clear, had an urgent private reason for wishing to delay
+the journey. He had not sufficient command of his features to hide his
+chagrin at the failure of his several attempts. He sulked all afternoon.
+Garth sat with his weapon across his knees; and his steady gaze never
+wandered far from the steersman. Willy-nilly, Hooliam was compelled to
+hold the _Loseis_ to her course; and by four o'clock, the wind holding
+light and steady, they had covered about thirty miles of their journey.
+
+About this time the mast of another boat was discovered sticking above
+the bank of a creek on shore. The usual excited discussion arose--this
+time as to the identity of the craft. Finally the _Loseis's_ prow was
+turned toward the shore. Garth demanded an explanation. Hooliam, more
+obsequious now, said that it was Phillippe's boat on the way out; and he
+had messages to deliver him from their common employers at the Landing.
+Garth suspected another excuse; but he was very reluctant to interfere
+with the real business of the North; and since it was almost time to
+spell for another meal, he decided to make no objections.
+
+With true half-breed impetuosity they chose the worst place in miles on
+which to beach the _Loseis_. Her forefoot was run on a bar fully two
+hundred yards off shore; and communications were carried on by means of
+laborious wading, waist-deep, to and fro. The moment she touched, the
+entire crew and the skipper, dropping everything, dashed pell mell for
+the beach and across the intervening sand to the camp of the other
+boatmen on the shore of the creek. The passengers ferried themselves
+ashore in the _Flat-iron_, which had been stowed, much against Hooliam's
+will, on board the _Loseis_.
+
+After supper, as time passed and there was no sign of the returning
+crew, Garth sent Charley after Hooliam with a peremptory message.
+Hooliam returned, cap in hand, his whole attitude changed. He expressed
+a willingness to start immediately; but deprecatingly pointed out that
+a storm threatened; and apologized for the unseaworthy condition of the
+_Loseis_. This time he had reason on his side; for angry clouds were
+heaped about the setting sun; and the orb itself was peering luridly
+between parted curtains of crimson rain. Garth, still suspecting him,
+was yet taken at a disadvantage. He thought of Natalie on board the
+shelterless _Loseis_ in a rainstorm; and finally announced his wish
+to remain where they were for the night. Hooliam smirked demurely,
+in ill-concealed satisfaction.
+
+All returned to the _Loseis_ for what was needed during the night. The
+preparations to secure the York boat against the threatening storm were
+highly characteristic of her hit-or-miss crew. A stake was driven in the
+sand of the lake bottom, at either side the stern, and the rudder-post
+lashed between. This flimsy apparatus was designed to keep the boat
+from being driven broadside on the bar. The practical Garth frowned
+impatiently at its utter insufficiency; but the breeds could scarcely
+contain their impatience to resume their gambling with the other crew;
+and presently they dashed off, leaving the _Loseis_ to her fate.
+
+Garth pitched his camp under the shelter of a line of willows, marking
+the edge of higher ground along the wide waste of sand. The two crews
+with their ceaseless tom-tom on the shore of the creek, were upward of
+half a mile away. Natalie was made comfortable in her tent; and Garth
+and Charley, collecting a pile of firewood, covered it with a tarpaulin,
+against the coming rain. Charley, who had slept during the afternoon,
+was to watch until two o'clock; and Garth, covering himself with a
+piece of sail-cloth, lay down at the door of the tent.
+
+It seemed to him he had no more than fallen asleep, when Charley shook
+his shoulder to awaken him.
+
+"It's one o'clock," the boy said. "I think something has happened in the
+camp over there. They quieted down; but now they have started up again,
+and have built up their fire. Looks to me as if somebody had arrived.
+Thought I'd better wake you, while I sneaked over and took a look."
+
+Charley was gone more than an hour. Returning, as soon as he had entered
+the circle of the firelight, Garth saw by his face that something
+important was in the wind.
+
+"I was right," the boy said. "Nick Grylls has come. He arrived in a
+canoe with a breed; and sent him back. Nick and Hooliam went outside the
+camp, and talked by themselves. I listened from behind a willow bush.
+Nick Grylls knows a lot more Cree than I do, and I couldn't understand
+everything; but I got the gist of it. Nick was giving Hooliam hell all
+around--first for making him paddle all night--it seems Hooliam ought
+to have waited for him at that point where we spelled this morning--and
+then for bringing me. That was the sorest touch; for Nick knows I
+understand Cree. He said it upset all his plans."
+
+"It was a mighty good thing for Natalie and me, that we had you to-day!"
+Garth put in.
+
+The boy blushed with pleasure.
+
+"Go on," Garth said.
+
+"Grylls was pretty mum about these plans of his," Charley continued. "I
+guess he only lets Hooliam know part. I caught just a word or two. One
+thing was clear; you are his mark. I made out there was to have been a
+row at the point, and you were to have been put out of business, so you
+couldn't keep on with this journey. Then Nick was to happen along as if
+by accident; you were to be sent to the half-breeds at Swan river to
+be taken care of, and Nick was going to do the friendly act, and help
+Natalie on her way. I bet she never would have got there! In some way
+Nick has learned all about Natalie; for he seems to know where she's
+going; and what for. Anyway, you put his scheme to the bad by winning
+over the boys; and he is hot.
+
+"He acted queer, too," Charley went on. "The first thing he asked
+was, if Natalie was well; and his voice sounded crying-like. Say,
+he's changed altogether from the hearty old sport, that used to travel
+through the country like a lord, handing out cigars. He's losing
+flesh. I think he's a bit touched."
+
+When the boy finished, Garth took a turn, breathing deeply; and finally
+returning to the fire, sought that trusty counsellor, his pipe. "I'm
+glad he's turned up," he said coolly. "This is more like fighting in the
+open. And thanks to you, I'm well warned."
+
+He smoked a while in silence. "I suspect I'll have my work cut out for
+me to-morrow," he resumed reflectively. Presently he gripped Charley's
+shoulder, and searched the boy's face. "I'll be damn thankful to have
+you along, old fellow," he said. "But I don't think I have any right
+to let you in for this. This man is very powerful in the country; and
+he can spoil all your chances. You had better go back with Phillippe.
+Neither Natalie nor I would ever blame you."
+
+The boy turned away his head. "I--I can't talk about it," he faltered.
+"If you go on that way you'll have me crying like a girl! You could talk
+all night, and it wouldn't do any good! What do you think I am? I'm not
+going to miss the fun!"
+
+Garth laughed. "Turn in," he said briefly. "You'll need all the sleep
+you can get."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE FIGHT IN THE STORM
+
+
+Garth and Natalie were wondering next morning with what kind of a face
+Nick Grylls would greet them. He was the last to come off to the boat.
+Hooliam took possession of the punt as a matter of course, to bring
+him aboard; but Garth, determined not to allow the slightest act of
+insolence to pass unchallenged to-day, curtly ordered it back; and the
+fat trader was obliged to wade out like the breeds, and scramble over
+the side of the _Loseis_--a very undignified reentrance upon the scene.
+
+His demeanour was remarkable. All the way out from the shore he had
+probably been shaping the character in which he meant to make his
+bow. He threw a leg over the side of the boat, affecting all his old,
+blustering heartiness; but the first sight of Natalie and Garth awaiting
+him, wholly self-possessed and unconcerned--they had determined
+in advance not to stoop to the pretense of any surprise at seeing
+him--pricked him like a blown bladder. His eyes bolted; he nodded at
+them askance; and he mumbled the words he had been intending to shout.
+Catching sight of Charley directly, he attempted to carry off his
+discomfiture by assuming an added boisterousness.
+
+"Hello, Charley!" he cried. "What's the good word, boy?"
+
+"Hello, Mr. Grylls," returned Charley with a demure grin, that was
+highly creditable to his powers of dissimulation. "Where did you drop
+from?"
+
+Grylls guffawed with an overdone assumption of a man at his ease. "Oh,
+I got a sudden call up to the Settlement," he said, in a tone meant
+to reach Garth's ears. "Got a big deal on to sell out my posts on the
+Spirit. I overtook you folks last night; and sent my canoe back. Thought
+I might as well save money. Have a cigar?"
+
+"Thanks," said Charley. The boy lighted it elaborately, and commended
+the quality with the air of a connoisseur.
+
+"You're all right, kid!" cried Nick, clapping him on the back. "I tell
+you I'm blame glad to have a white man to talk to on the way up"--this
+with a side glance at Garth. "What are you doing away from home at this
+season?"
+
+"Grub running low," said Charley readily. "Had to go to the Settlement
+for a fresh supply."
+
+"Well you go to Jonesy of the French outfit," bellowed Nick; "and tell
+him to give you my prices!"
+
+Nick kept the boy at his side all day, flattering and cajoling him with
+an immense patronage, that, coming from the great man of the country,
+was meant to turn the head of this, the youngest of its settlers. In
+this Nick had a double purpose: he wished, of course, to secure the
+boy's interest to himself; but he also wished Garth and Natalie to see
+what a fine, generous fellow he could be when he got half a chance.
+There was a great deal of the child in the self-indulgent trader; and
+he had not lived among the breeds for twenty-five years without imbibing
+many of their characteristics. As to the boy, Garth and Natalie felt
+not a moment's uneasiness; Charley met Nick's advances with a kind of
+imitative bluster, that was a source of great secret delight to Natalie.
+
+The day's journey was uneventful. Grylls kept himself forward of the
+mast, and made no attempt to address either Garth or Natalie. Indeed,
+he appeared to ignore their presence on the boat altogether; which,
+considering the shortness of the distance separating them, was not
+without its ridiculous side. Garth, refusing to be deceived by this
+apparent indifference, kept himself quietly on the alert. The breeze
+continued favourable but very light; and the day waxed hotter and
+hotter. By nightfall they had covered perhaps another thirty miles of
+the way. There had been one "spell" on shore, during which Garth and
+Natalie elected to remain on board, satisfied with a cold lunch. No
+further offers were made by Hooliam to delay the journey; indeed, such
+was now their apparent anxiety to complete it, it was announced late in
+the afternoon that they would sail all night. They did not even wait
+for their supper on shore, but brought it off from the fire in a wading
+procession of frying pans, and steaming pails.
+
+A lovely night succeeded. The velvety floor of heaven was strewn
+lavishly with bright stars; and later, the moon, just past the full,
+rose out of the lake astern and hung, a lovely pale globe, in the
+eastern sky. The breeds fell asleep one by one; and for the first, the
+jabbering, the _ki-yi-ing_ and the maddening stick-kettle were all
+stilled. The _Loseis_ hovered over the lake with her gigantic wing
+spread, like some great bird of the night. The only evidences that she
+moved at all were the flecks of foam that drifted slowly astern under
+the counter.
+
+Charley had constructed a little niche for Natalie among the freight
+astern--a bale of blankets serving for a seat, with a tall box inclined
+behind it for a back to lean against. She had insisted that Charley
+share it with her, and the boy had sat beside her too blissful to speak.
+In the end they both fell asleep, and Natalie's head dropped on his
+shoulder. In his dreams the boy smiled seraphically.
+
+Garth watched them kindly and very enviously; and for the moment wished
+that he, too, were a boy, whom she need not take seriously. There was
+no sleep for him. He sat on the narrow seat encircling the stern, with
+his back against the gunwale, where, on the one hand he could watch the
+steersman elevated on his little platform, while on the other side he
+was prepared for any demonstration from the bow. The steersman was
+Natalie's humorous breed; his name was Aleck. Nick Grylls and Hooliam
+were together somewhere forward of the mast; in the darkness Garth
+could not place them.
+
+Garth's rifle lay across his knees--he would have given it, with much to
+boot, for the quicker and handier revolver. He was painfully aware that
+nothing would suit Nick Grylls's purpose so well as to knock him swiftly
+on the head, and heave his body overboard. He shrewdly suspected that
+some such intention was the reason for this night sail. It is easy to
+seek danger, to ride at it with a shout, the pulses leaping--but to
+_wait_ for it, to wait motionless in the still dark for an attack that
+may be delivered one knows not when nor from whence--that is the great
+ordeal. Garth clenched the stem of his pipe hard between his teeth; and
+with a resolute effort of his will, put down the hysteria that will at
+such a time constrict the stoutest throat.
+
+The first interruption of the awful stillness came, not from man, but
+from the elements. All around the western horizon clouds mounted so
+swiftly and imperceptibly that neither Garth nor the helmsman was aware
+of what was preparing, until they had reached the zenith. Caribou Lake
+is known for its swift and terrible summer storms. A sharp crack of
+thunder was their first warning. Aleck shouted; and dark forms arose
+here and there from their resting places. Garth swallowed a sob of
+relief for the diversion. The storm might be playing right into Nick
+Grylls's hand; but one could face the bustle and uproar with renewed
+courage.
+
+The sail was brought clattering to the deck; a couple of sweeps were
+hastily run out; and the _Loseis_ was pulled for the nearest point of
+the shore. With true breed seamanship she was beached on a steep and
+stony incline on the lee side of a point. Garth tried his best to
+make their folly clear to them; but none of the crew, and least of all
+Hooliam, retained presence of mind to comprehend. With united strength
+the breeds dragged her up as far as they could, which was but little,
+and went through the same business of driving stakes into the bottom of
+the lake, and lashing the sternpost between. Garth threw up his hands in
+helpless exasperation. Tarpaulins and sails were spread over the cargo
+and lashed down. Charley made Natalie snug with a tarpaulin roof over
+her seat. Garth commanded him, no matter what might happen, not to
+leave her side.
+
+The storm came roaring down the lake like a vast animate being; and
+there, in their exposed position, smote them hip and thigh. Each crash
+of thunder fell forth right upon the echo of the last; and the lightning
+played like wicked laughter on the face of the destroying heavens. Then
+came the rain, with pitiless, whistling whips that lashed the water, and
+bit cruelly into exposed flesh. Every man on board, save one, instantly
+dived under the sail-cloths; and Hooliam was the first to seek shelter.
+
+Only Garth dared not relax his watch in the open. He maintained his
+place with his back against the stern, a piece of tarpaulin across his
+knees to keep his gun dry, and his eyes bent forward in the boat whence
+any move must be made on him. So sure was he that Grylls would attack
+him, he was scarcely conscious of the tumult that roared about his ears.
+The wind tore his hat off; and the cold rain drenched him to the skin.
+
+Before him, the lightning luridly showed up the trees on the shore,
+writhing horridly; and the wet mast and the guy ropes were often wreathed
+in faint, bluish flames. The _Loseis_ forward, with her irregularly piled
+cargo, and the crouching forms under the sail-cloths, presented a thousand
+shifting, fantastic shapes in the playing flashes; and Garth had a score
+of false alarms. In the end, his enemy crept almost upon him undiscovered.
+
+By the light of a great blaze, which held all the earth and the heavens
+suspended in flames for a moment, Garth suddenly saw revealed a crouching
+figure, and a hideous, distorted face no more than six feet from his own.
+In the blinding glare it was outlined with a horrid clearness; in its
+grossness and bestial hatred, less human than demoniacal.
+
+Garth, snatching up his rifle, sprang to his feet, but before he could
+point it, Grylls had flung himself upon him, and his mighty arms were
+squeezing Garth's ribs into his lungs. The useless weapon dropped to the
+deck. Grylls, trusting to his enormous strength, was unarmed; he wished to
+crush his adversary without leaving obvious traces of violence. No word
+was spoken by either.
+
+They swayed on the narrow seat encircling the stern; and all sound of
+the little human struggle was swallowed up in the dreadful uproar of the
+elements. Natalie and Charley, but three yards away, heard nothing. Grylls
+was the stronger; Garth contented himself with a dogged resistance,
+trusting to his better wind to serve him in the end. Meanwhile the
+_Loseis_ was continually heaved under their feet, and dropped heavily
+on the stones by the mounting breakers; and they maintained a footing
+with difficulty. Nick ceaselessly strained to force Garth to his knees.
+Failing, he lifted him clear of the deck. At the same instant the boat
+lurched drunkenly; and they pitched overboard together.
+
+Somehow, they gained their feet, and stood, still locked together,
+while the tumbling waves boiled around their waists, and sucked at their
+knees. But Garth had struck his head on the gunwale in falling; his
+senses were slipping away, and nausea overcame him. He tried to cry out;
+but the feeble sound was lost at his lips. Nick forced him slowly down
+until the water broke over his head. Garth was dimly conscious of
+hearing him laugh--no one knew; and the explanation next day would be
+so simple! But the wholesome chill of the water rolling over his head
+revived the swooning Garth. He collected his forces for a last effort;
+and, suddenly wrenching his shoulders from under the hands that pressed
+them down, he gained his feet, and his hands seized upon Grylls's
+throat.
+
+It was the big man's vulnerable point; and a subtle sweetness flooded
+Garth's breast as he felt him begin to fail. Foul living was telling in
+the end. Grylls struggled for his breath in loud, strangling sobs; and
+Garth could hear his bursting heart knock at his ribs. The smith's arms
+of him little by little softened of their steely strength; he strove in
+vain now to lift Garth off his feet. Garth, cool and strong again, and
+always waiting, let him tire himself. He disdained to call for help
+now; he even relaxed his grip on the thick throat a little. It was
+not necessary to strangle the man; for he had done for himself.
+
+Meanwhile the waves broke with ever-increasing violence on the frail
+bulwark the two bodies offered to their impetuous course, and it was
+only a question of moments when they would both be beaten down. Grylls's
+knees weakening under him first, down they went, Garth uppermost; and,
+the water seizing them, still gripped together, they were rolled over
+and over, and finally flung up on the stones.
+
+Stunned, bruised and breathless as he was, Garth was still able to free
+himself from the automatic grip of the other man's arms; but Grylls lay
+motionless.
+
+Briefly satisfying himself that the man still lived, Garth dragged him
+out of reach of the waves, and letting him lie in the driving rain,
+turned his attention to the boat.
+
+The _Loseis_ was in a bad way. The waves under her stern had lifted
+the driven stakes as easily as pins are drawn from a cushion. She had
+immediately swung broadside on the beach; and the waves, crashing under
+her counter, were driving over her in clouds of spray while her bottom
+heaved, and gave, and pounded sickeningly on the stones. No one on board
+required to be told that a very little of this would separate every
+plank of her from her aged ribs. The breed boys appeared one by one
+from under the coverings; and standing about, dazed and careless of the
+downpour, waited to be told what to do. There was no sign of Hooliam.
+
+Garth climbed painfully on board. Searching for the degenerate captain,
+he stepped on something soft, and a hollow groan issued from beneath the
+sail-cloth. He threw it back, and dislodged the palpitating Hooliam with
+a vigorous foot. The breed struggled to his knees, supporting himself by
+a guy rope. Just then there was a blinding flash, and the mast and the
+wet ropes were wreathed again for an instant in bluish flame. Partly
+shocked, but more from abject fear, Hooliam collapsed with a brutish
+moan.
+
+"Throw this carrion ashore!" Garth commanded with strong disgust.
+
+The breeds, understanding his gestures, instinctively obeyed; and
+Hooliam was dragged over the side, and dropped on the beach, not very
+far from the body of his unconscious employer.
+
+"We'll have to save her ourselves!" shouted Garth to Charley. "Translate
+my orders!"
+
+The storm had a revolving tendency; and the wind had now hauled to the
+south, whence it came shrieking across the lake with unabated fury. A
+little way ahead, around the shallow crescent of the exposed bay in
+which they lay, they could see by the light of the frequent flashes a
+point on which the waves were beating wildly; and beyond there was a
+promise of smooth water and safety. It was only a little way, scarcely
+an eighth of a mile; but the way was beset with heart-breaking
+difficulties.
+
+"All hands ashore to push her off!" cried Garth.
+
+The breed boys, welcoming a voice of authority in that bewildering
+chaos, sprang to do his bidding. Garth and Charley set the example,
+and the ten backs were braced under the lee gunwale of the _Loseis_,
+measuring their sinews against the crashing blows of the waves on the
+other side. They budged her inch by inch, often thrown back again; but
+at last she floated, and there they managed to hold her for a moment,
+rising and falling. Only one who has measured the strength of the surf
+against the smallest craft, may comprehend the magnitude of their
+labour.
+
+"Aleck's crew ahead with the tracking-line," shouted Garth.
+
+The line is always kept coiled and ready, hanging on the bow. Aleck
+seized it, and followed by three others, ran ahead along the beach,
+paying it out. The four of them slipped into the harness; and digging
+their moccasined toes into the beach, painfully straightened their legs
+under the pull. When the _Loseis_, answering, began to move inch by inch
+along the shore, Garth put the remaining men on board one at a time,
+where, armed with their poles, and braced almost horizontally, they held
+her off the stones.
+
+Natalie had long since deserted her sheltered nook, and, heedless of the
+drenching downpour, watched them with eager eyes. Garth, his bruises
+forgotten, seemed everywhere at once; he had even time to shout a word
+of encouragement to her, and she longed mightily to do something to
+help. Looking around, she saw her chance. The steersman's long sweep lay
+along the deck; running it aft through its ring in the sternpost, and
+pushing with all her strength against the stones astern, she added her
+mite to keep the boat headed off. Garth observing, shouted his approval;
+and Natalie's heart waxed big in her breast.
+
+Inch by inch, then foot by foot, they won their painful way along the
+lee shore. Over and over in spite of the six poles, she was thrown back
+on the stones, whereupon they all leaped overboard and put their backs
+under her lee. There was once when, Garth's pole snapping short, he
+pitched headlong overboard. He climbed back with blood colouring the
+rain in his face, and found another pole. Again, approaching the point,
+the four men on the end of the tracking-line crawling slowly around the
+edge of a steepish bank, were by a sudden heave of the _Loseis_ all four
+jerked into the water. Instantly picking themselves up, they scrambled
+ahead with their line through the breakers. Garth's heart warmed over
+the half-fed, half-clad boys. Not one of the eight faltered for an
+instant, and in the midst of their superhuman labours they could still
+be shouting at each other.
+
+A reef ran out beyond the point; and how they ever got over this, or
+how long it took, none could have told. By that time they were merely
+insensate machines striving automatically against a mighty inhuman
+adversary. The _Loseis's_ ribs yielded and trembled under the renewed
+blows on the stones. Dizzy and blind with fatigue they struggled ahead;
+but they would never have made it, had not the wind hauled still further
+around. Finally a wave greater than any preceding lifted them clear of
+the stones, and dropped them in smooth water inside. For a while, unable
+to realize they had rounded the point, they continued to struggle; then
+the _Loseis_ gently beached herself. The tracking crew scrambled aboard,
+and all hands dropped where they stood for a breathing spell.
+
+Soon after the storm showed signs of abating. In the end it ceased
+almost as abruptly as it had begun; and the moon looked wanly forth, as
+if ashamed for the recent disturbances aloft. Garth, thinking of Grylls
+and Hooliam lying on the beach around the point, consulted with Charley
+what had better be done. It took them about three seconds to arrive at a
+decision.
+
+"It is between eight and ten miles to the head of the lake," Charley
+said.
+
+"Let them walk it then," said Garth coolly.
+
+Presently the same breeze resumed its gentle course up the lake as if
+there had been no such thing as a storm. Tired as they were, it was too
+good to lose; and with hoisted sail, the _Loseis_ forged through the
+rapidly subsiding waters, with Charley at the helm. The breed boys asked
+no questions. Having raised the sail, they promptly fell asleep. Hooliam
+they had little regard for anyway; and Grylls they may have supposed was
+still somewhere under the sail-cloths. In three hours they had reached
+Grier's point, the navigable head of the lake; and all hands slept until
+long after sunrise.
+
+Garth and Natalie, meeting in the daylight, exclaimed each at the
+appearance of the other; Natalie, with remorseful sympathy, that she
+had not sooner learnt the extent of Garth's bruises; and Garth with
+delighted wonder at the freshness of her. Natalie was like the lake
+in the early sunshine; neither showed the slightest trace of a storm
+overnight.
+
+While they were at their breakfast on the shore, a deplorable figure,
+ashen-cheeked and shamed, came shuffling out of the bush. The eight
+breeds, as one, instantly set up a merciless, derisive jeering. It was
+Hooliam. He bore in his hands a little bottle and a bank-bill. Wretched
+as he was, his eyes glinted with satisfaction at the sight of the boat
+safe and sound on the shore. He went to Garth.
+
+"Nick Grylls in the bush," he said, dully pointing back. "Him sick bad.
+Maybe him die. Him give five dollar for drink of whiskey."
+
+Garth filled the bottle from his flask. "Put up your money," he said
+curtly.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE NINETY-MILE PORTAGE
+
+
+The Settlement is upward of three miles from Grier's point. Avoiding
+the houses for the present, Garth pitched his camp outside, well off
+the trail. The first thing they learned was that the Bishop had gone on.
+This time they were not surprised; there seemed to be a fatality in it.
+The old problem confronted Garth anew.
+
+"I think you should wait here," he suggested to Natalie; "and let me
+ride on for you."
+
+Natalie, as she always did when this question was brought up, merely
+looked obstinate.
+
+"It is likely we will miss him again at the Crossing," Garth went on;
+"and I have learned there are only one or two cabins there, and no white
+woman. It would be difficult for you."
+
+Natalie's silence gave him no encouragement.
+
+"But here," he urged, "you could stay with the wife of the inspector of
+the mounted police; while I go on and bring Mabyn back to you. I do not
+think you should put yourself in his hands."
+
+"He would not come with you," she said evasively.
+
+"I promise to bring him," said Garth determinedly; "if he is alive."
+
+"No!" she said with manifest agitation. "That is another reason!"
+
+"What is?" he asked mystified.
+
+"I--I could not have any trouble between you," she said in a low tone.
+
+"But I promise to bring him safely," he said doggedly.
+
+She still shook her head.
+
+"I will go to the wife of the inspector," said Garth--"a woman in such
+a position is sure to be the right sort--and I will explain our position
+frankly. She will be glad to take you in!"
+
+Natalie shot an odd glance at him. "I will not let you," she said
+quickly.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"The risk of the humiliation of a refusal is too great," she said. "I
+do not doubt she is a good woman; I'm sure she rises splendidly to all
+the demands of her position up here. But she _has_ a position to maintain,
+you see; no doubt she is bringing up girls. And me!"--Natalie turned
+away her head--"consider how extraordinary the story sounds! Only one
+woman in a thousand would believe."
+
+Garth turned a distressed face to her. "I have not taken care of you
+properly," he cried remorsefully.
+
+Natalie veiled her eyes; and her hand stole to her breast. "Let us not
+talk about _that_!" she murmured unevenly.
+
+Garth was perplexed and silent.
+
+Natalie recovered herself presently; and looked at him with a misty
+shine in her eyes. "Why do you worry?" she asked. "We're a thousand
+times better off than we were yesterday; for you have laid our enemy
+by the heels! Why mayn't I go on with you just the same as before?
+I cannot trust any one but you!"
+
+How was Garth to resist such an appeal? Besides, there was nothing else
+to do.
+
+Garth might have lodged a complaint against Nick Grylls at the barracks;
+but any investigation would have seriously delayed their journey; and a
+greater reason against it was his care for Natalie's good name. It was
+intolerable to him that the dear circumstances of their journey together
+should be made the subject of the common gossip of the North. It was
+better to let those who saw Natalie on the trail speculate as they
+chose, rather than give them an opportunity to put their own coarse
+construction upon the truth. He was well assured Nick Grylls would
+say nothing.
+
+For the same reason, he decided to avoid the Settlement altogether.
+The two of them remained close in camp; and Charley was dispatched to
+purchase ponies and saddles, and what was needful to replenish their
+stores. He returned with all they required; and during the afternoon
+instructed Garth how to pack the ponies and "throw" the immovable
+diamond hitch. Natalie in the meantime, constructed a divided skirt
+for herself, since side-saddles are unknown in the North.
+
+Their route now lay over the ninety-mile portage to Spirit River
+Crossing. The road, Garth learned, was straight, and, for the
+North, well-travelled. There were no forks or cross-trails, hence no
+possibility of their missing the way. They set off before daybreak next
+morning. The parting with Charley was a wrench all around: but Garth was
+firm in insisting that the boy must go back, and put up his hay. In the
+easy-going North it is only too easy to drop one's tools and start off
+on a jaunt. Charley bade them an abrupt good-bye; and bustled away to
+hide his tears.
+
+In the mystical gloom which, in northern latitudes, precedes the summer
+dawn, Garth and Natalie, each leading a pack pony, rode through the
+Settlement, which straggled for several miles around the shore of Moose
+Bay, a wide, shallow arm of the lake, once navigable, but now given over
+to the wild-fowl. The shacks were infinitely various; for in a land
+where every man builds for himself, a house quaintly expresses the
+character of its owner. But one thing was common to all; no one wastes
+any ornament on his dwelling; and in the luxuriant greenness of the
+northern summer, the grim, solid little houses were a reminder of
+the coming cold.
+
+Later in the day they passed the long, gradual climb over the height
+of land separating the great watersheds of the Miwasa and the Spirit.
+On the other side they came to a flat country and of the same general
+character all the way. It was a shining day; and, being young, they
+forgot their cares and rode gaily. For the most part the trail lay in
+a straight and lofty nave of aspen trees, rearing their slender, snowy
+pillars sixty, eighty--even a hundred feet aloft; and mingling their
+clusters of nimble, chattering leaves high overhead in the sun. There
+was nothing gloomy about this cathedral; the sun found a thousand
+apertures through which to launch his rays against the white pillars;
+while the green and mutable roof was bathed in almost intolerable
+radiance--it was a temple in green and white, Flora's colours.
+
+Occasionally there were cloistered openings; sunny little meadows
+inclining to a spring, where the wild pea-vine, plant beloved of horses,
+and infallible sign of a rich soil, grew knee-deep. Such an opening they
+learned, however small, was quaintly dignified by the natives with the
+name of prairie.
+
+Their ponies, each exhibiting a distinct individuality, afforded the
+excuse for their amusement on the way. Garth's mount, that a previous
+owner had christened "Cyclops," and who was tall enough and bony enough
+to be called a horse, was, like themselves, a stranger in the bush, and
+his face offered a comical study in anxiety, willingness and stupidity,
+under these new conditions. Natalie rode a young sorrel rejoicing in the
+name of Caspar. He had a dull eye, a long, sheeplike nose and a wagging
+under lip; and Natalie vowed he was half-witted. He would not ride
+abreast; but insisted on following; and he screamed with terror,
+if for an instant he lost sight of the other horses.
+
+But it was the two pack horses that offered the most diverting study of
+character. When they left the Settlement behind, Garth cast off their
+leaders. In Emmy, a rotund little mare, they had secured a treasure.
+Emmy had an indifferent air toward them, worthy of a breed; but unlike
+a breed, she was thoroughly business-like. Where the great mudholes of
+unknown depth blocked the trail, and they must strike into the bush, she
+required no guidance. They laughed and admired, to see her stop, looking
+this way and that, and deliberately pick her way through, always with
+due regard to the height and breadth of the pack on her back. Emmy
+declined to be hurried; she had an air that said as plainly as words, if
+they didn't like her pace, they could leave her behind, and be hanged to
+them!
+
+The remaining animal was Emmy's son, a half-broken colt, whose
+only virtue was that he would not stray very far from his mother.
+Mistatimoosis was his mouthful of a name. He forgot his pack sometimes,
+and striking it full tilt against a tree, would be knocked endwise in
+the trail, blinking and dismayed, as who should say, "Who hit me?" The
+thing that caused them the heartiest laughter was to see Mistatimoosis's
+endless attempts to steal the leadership of the caravan from his mother.
+It was the only thing that could tempt Emmy out of her sedate pace. On
+a fair piece of road the two of them would race at top speed for half a
+mile; and the colt was continually making sly detours into the bush to
+get around his mother. But she kept him in his place behind.
+
+The riders finding they could safely leave the packhorses to follow, had
+ridden ahead to spy out grass and water for the noon spell. They were
+walking their horses over the turf bordering the trail, when suddenly
+from among the trees came with startling distinctness the sound of a
+voice. They reined up, astonished. It was the gentle, ambling voice of
+a loquacious old man; and his conversation there in the wilderness was
+as quiet and intimate as chimney-corner talk.
+
+"I should say half-past eleven," they heard. "When Mr. Sun sits down on
+yonder spruce tree we'll make a break. So work your jaws good, Mother,
+old girl; and you Buck, my dear, stop looking around like a fool and get
+busy! Meanwhile, we'll pack up the grub-box."
+
+Garth and Natalie smiled at each other. There was nothing very alarming
+about this.
+
+"Will you have a pipe of baccy now, Tom Lillywhite?" the same voice
+resumed. "Thanks, old man, don't mind if I do! Is there any cut? No?
+Well shave it close."
+
+There was a pause here, while the speaker presumably filled his pipe.
+Then some one drew an audible sigh of content; and a kind of dialogue
+took place--though there was but the one voice full of quaint lifts and
+falls. Garth and Natalie, smiling broadly, listened without shame.
+
+"Ah! a fine day, a bellyful of bacon, and a pipeful of tobacco!--would
+you change with a moneyed man, Tom Lillywhite?"
+
+"Well I don't know, sir! Mebbe he don't enjoy his grub as much as us,
+havin' gen'ally the dyspepsy; but how about the winter, old sport, when
+we don't fetch up no stoppin'-house; and has to make a bed in the snow,
+hey? It's then a flannel bed-gown looks good to old bones; let alone
+woolly slippers and a feather bed! Seems I wouldn't kick agin the
+job of takin' care o' money in the winter time!"
+
+"Ah! g'long with you, Tom Lillywhite! You'd a been dead long ago if you
+had money! Swole up and bust with good eatin', y'old epicoor! You'd be
+havin' a pig killed fresh every week if you had money!"
+
+"Say, b'lieve I would cut some dash if I had money! I'd build me a house
+of lumber clear through, and I'd paint it all over, paint it blue! And
+I'd have sawdust on the settin'-room floor and a brass spittoon in every
+corner! 'Have a chair,' I'd say to stoppers, not lettin' on I was puffed
+up at all. 'Have a ten-cent seegar. Don't mention it! Don't mention it!
+I get a case full in every Fall!'"
+
+Here there was a jolly chuckle.
+
+Their packhorses joining them noisily, the dialogue was cut short.
+
+"Some one comin'," said the voice.
+
+Rounding the clump of bushes, Garth and Natalie found themselves in a
+grassy opening in the bush. An untraced wagon stood in the centre; and
+two horses browsed. Immediately under the bushes, an old man sat on the
+ground. They instinctively looked around for the other persons brought
+into his conversation; but, save for the horses, he was alone.
+
+At the sight of them his face lighted up with the pleased naivete of
+a child. "How do! How do!" he said immediately, without getting up or
+raising his voice at all. "My horses are quiet. They won't tech yours.
+The spring is down there at the foot of the spruce. Just blow up my fire
+a little and it will do for you." He seemed to take them entirely for
+granted; and he spoke as if resuming a dropped conversation.
+
+There was something very troll-like in the old figure, squatting on the
+ground; in his bright, glancing eyes, in his incessant, matter-of-fact
+loquacity, and the slight, peculiar gesticulation, with which he
+illustrated his talk. He was all of a colour; high moccasins, breeches,
+shirt and cap were weathered to the same grayish-brown shade--and that
+much the colour of his skin. Against a background of withered grass,
+only his white hair would have been visible. He was like some
+good-tempered, little familiar of the forest.
+
+He stared hard at Natalie in his bright-eyed, impersonal way; and as
+soon as Garth, having made his horses comfortable, came to build up the
+fire, he started in with his questions.
+
+"Where you going?"
+
+"Spirit River Crossing," said Garth.
+
+"Thinking of settling?"
+
+Garth shook his head.
+
+"No, you don't look like settlers. Company business, maybe?"
+
+"No," said Garth.
+
+"Police? Gov'ment survey?"
+
+"Private business," said Garth--his usual answer to the question direct.
+
+Baffled inquisitiveness, vice of the kindest natures, made the old man's
+face ugly; and for a moment he looked like a wicked troll. For a little
+while he preserved an offended silence; but then, probably recollecting
+that he would hear the whole story at the Settlement, or simply because
+he could not keep still any longer, his face cleared, and he resumed his
+engaging, inconsequential babble.
+
+"See that horse over there, the buckskin? Best horse I ever had! True
+buckskin! Mark the zebra stripes round his legs, Miss; and the black
+stripe on his backbone. You can't kill a buck; he's got more lives
+than a cat. I call the old one Mother; she's good-natured, she is!"
+
+"You're a freighter, I see," remarked Garth as a leader.
+
+"Sure thing, stranger! Tom Lillywhite and his team is known to every
+settler in the country! Been here thirty-five year; and always on the
+move! Never sleep in the same place two nights going! That wagon there,
+and the grub-box is my home. It's a variegated life!"
+
+Garth bethought himself the old man would likely prove a valuable source
+of information. "You must know everybody in the country!" he said,
+feeling his way.
+
+"None better!" said Tom Lillywhite, bridling with pride.
+
+"Are there many white men at the Crossing?" asked Garth.
+
+"Quite a crowd," said the old man; "eight or nine at the least. There's
+the two traders, and Mert Haywood the farmer, and old Turner the J. P.,
+and the priest, and the English missionary, and the school-master;
+that's seven. Then there's old man Mackensie but you wouldn't hardly
+call him a white man--smoked too deep, and squaw-ridden."
+
+"Is that all?" said Garth, disappointed of his quest.
+
+"Well, there's a sort of another. He doesn't regularly belong to the
+Crossing but he comes into the store for his goods once or twict a year.
+I forgot him--most everybody's forgot him now. It's Bert Mabyn."
+
+Garth and Natalie pricked up their ears; and their hearts began to beat.
+
+"I got good cause to know Bert Mabyn, too," continued old Tom innocently;
+while the other two listened still as mice, and apprehensive of
+disclosures to be made. "But that's all past. I don't bear him no ill-will
+now. He's a cur'us chap, a little teched I guess; but as pleasant a spoken
+and amoosin' a feller as another feller could want to have with him on the
+road! Want to hear about him?"
+
+Garth looked at Natalie dubiously.
+
+"Yes," she said boldly.
+
+"Well, it was three years ago," began Tom Lillywhite, with the zest of
+the true story-teller. "The Gov'ment sent four surveyin' parties in; and
+I had more'n I could do freightin' from the Settlement to the different
+camps. It was rough haulin', you understand, over the lines they cut
+through the bush, straight as a string over muskeg and coulee. You
+couldn't load over twenty hundredweight, and sometimes you had to dump
+half of that, and go back for it. But right good pay, Gov'ment pay is.
+
+"I needed another team bad, and I see a good chance to get one on credit
+from Dick Staley, with the wagon and all; but I couldn't get no white
+men to drive it for me. A breed, you understand, soon kills your horses
+on you!
+
+"Well, it might be I was settin' outside the French outfit, talkin' it
+over," he went on tranquilly, little suspecting with what meaning his
+story was charged for the two strangers; "when along comes a feller and
+asts for me. Say, he was a sight! He was wearin' black clothes, though
+it were a workin'-day; and all muddied and tore, showin' the skin under;
+and his coat was pinned acrost the neck, with a safety-pin 'cause he
+hadn't no shirt. He had a Sunday hat on too--all busted. At the best
+he weren't no beauty; his teeth was out."
+
+Natalie shuddered.
+
+Garth, suffering for her, could not bear to meet her eyes. "Perhaps
+you'd rather hear another story," he suggested.
+
+She braced herself. "No! Go on!" she said.
+
+"Soon as I see him, I knew who he was," continued old Tom; "for I hear
+the fellers talk about a white man that took passage up from the Landing
+on Phillippe's boat. He let them pull him all the way; and when they got
+to Grier's point, he hadn't no money. They took it out of his skin; and
+say, when a white man is beat by a breed it's good-day to him up here!
+In a hundred years he couldn't live it down.
+
+"'Do you want to hire a man?' says he mumbling-like; he was too far down
+to meet your eye.
+
+"'Hum!' says I thoughtful, 'I want a _man_,' I says.
+
+"You should have heard the fellers laugh at that! They still talk about
+it! 'Tom Lillywhite, he wants a man', they say. It's quite a word in the
+country. 'Tom Lillywhite wants a _man_!'"
+
+The old freighter went off into an interminable chuckling over the
+antique jest.
+
+It was inexpressibly painful to Natalie to have Garth there, a witness
+to her humiliation; but she would not stop the story-teller, nor let
+Garth stop him.
+
+"However, thinks I, you can sometimes make a man out of unpromisin'
+mater'al," he resumed. "And in the end I took him for his grub. That was
+Bert Mabyn. For three months I didn't regret it; he was used to horses,
+and was first-rate company on the trail. I didn't give him no money--said
+he didn't want none--but I fed him up good, and he soon got fat and sassy.
+I give him other things too. I couldn't stand for the poor wretch a
+shiverin' by my fire in his buttoned-up coat, so I give him blankets;
+and afterward an outfit of clothes.
+
+"What do you think was the first thing he ever ast me for?--a razor
+and a glass! And every day after that he used to shave hisself--every
+day mind you, if we was in the thickest part of the bush! And forever
+trimmin' of his nails, and polishin' 'em to make 'em shine! Wasn't
+that remarkable?
+
+"He was a great talker. Nights around the fire he used to tell me all
+about himself. Seems he comes of real high-toned folks outside; but went
+to the bad young. Said he come West three years before that again, full
+of good resolutions, which lasted just so long as his money. Since then
+he'd been a grub-rider 'round the ranches, and dish-washer in hotels,
+and, 'scusin' your presence, Miss, worse than that--but he hadn't no
+shame about it!
+
+"I liked the feller. He wasn't no good, but he had that persuasive way
+with him! And he knew so much more than me! You'd think a man 'ud feel
+shame to tell such stories on himself; but no! he'd make out as you
+ought to like him for bein' such a good-for-nothing waster; and by Gum!
+in the end you did! Never see such a feller!
+
+"Well, all summer we travelled, me and him; him always behind me on the
+trail; and I hadn't any fault to find. But come September I had a rush
+lot up to Whitefish Lake; and at the same time there was some stuff
+wanted in a hurry in Pentland's camp over on the Great Smoky. So for the
+first time we divided. I sent him to Pentland's over this very trail!
+
+"I got back long before he did. After a while word come from Pentland,
+where in thunder were the goods? It was after the first snow before
+Mabyn come back. He was a wreck and the horses were just alive, and no
+more. He told a story how his wagon capsized in the river, and he lost
+everything; but the whiskey gave the lie to that. By and by we found
+he'd buried a keg of it, outside the Settlement. In the Spring when it
+was too late to do anything, it all come out through a breed. Seems away
+up by Fort St. Pierre, he met one of them crooked traders, that
+sometimes sneaks acrost the mountains; and he sold him the stuff for a
+keg of rot-gut. When I hear that I was thankful he brought back the
+horses at all. The business near busted me; for I had to make good three
+hundred worth of groceries to Pentland; and sacrificed the second team,
+'count of the shape they were in. That was what Bert Mabyn cost _me_!"
+
+"Didn't you have him arrested?" asked Garth indignantly.
+
+Tom shrugged. "What were the use of that? The inspector was after me to
+prosecute; but it was too late to get my money back, and put flesh on
+the horses--besides, I was too busy. Of course, it weren't just the same
+as robbin' me in cold blood," he added in the tone of one who must be
+fair; "for it were the whiskey, you see."
+
+Natalie kept her face averted from the old man. "And what has become of
+this man since?" she asked, steadily controlling her voice.
+
+"Oh, he hung around the Settlement, sponging on one and another till he
+were kicked out; then he come down to the breeds. It was a great honour
+for them to have a white man of any kind runnin' after them, you see, so
+they put up with him. Then he drifted West, up Ostachegan way; and
+lately, I understand, he's taken up a deserted shack he found on
+Clearwater Lake, away up on the bench there, northwest of the Spirit.
+There they tell me he lives all alone; but no one's seen him in a dog's
+age."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Garth and Natalie avoided everything beyond the merest commonplaces to
+each other until they were alone; and even after Tom Lillywhite, bidding
+them farewell, had driven off, chirping to his horses, it was a long
+time before either had the courage to make a move toward overcoming the
+ghastly constraint his story had caused between them.
+
+"Haven't we heard enough?" said Garth quietly at last. "Need you go any
+further?"
+
+Natalie in the interim had had time to pass her emotional crisis. She
+was very pale, and her eyes were big; but she was now calmer than he. "I
+have heard enough, surely," she said; "but after coming all this way it
+would seem cowardly, wouldn't it, to be satisfied with hearsay
+evidence?--and there is still my promise to his mother."
+
+Her tone impressed Garth with the utter hopelessness of trying to
+dissuade her. "But how can I let you expose yourself to--to what we may
+find!" he groaned.
+
+"I am not a child," said Natalie quietly. "And I shall not quail at the
+mere sight of ugliness." She turned away from him. "Besides," she added
+in a lower tone, "you know the worst now; and that was the hardest thing
+to bear--your hearing it I mean. No," she went on, facing him again,
+wistfully and valorously; "it promises to be _very_ ugly, but then I
+undertook it, you see. I am going on."
+
+They could not bear to meet each other's eyes; and miserably turning
+their backs, affected to busy themselves with small tasks. Natalie,
+quivering with the shame of the lash all unwittingly applied by old Tom,
+longed with an inexpressible longing to have Garth with a hint or a look
+assure her that he loved her, and so, thrusting the wretch Mabyn out of
+their charmed circle, reinstate her in her self-respect. But poor Garth
+in his clumsy, masculine delicacy thought that to obtrude himself at
+such a moment would only hurt her more. He kept silent, and he averted
+his eyes, and Natalie, misunderstanding, tasted the very dregs of
+shame.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE NEWLY-MARRIED PAIR
+
+
+Out on the bosom of that infinite prairie, which rolls its unmeasured
+miles north and west of the Spirit River, a last place of mystery and
+dreams, still unharnessed by the geographers, and reluctantly written
+down "unexplored" on their maps, two human figures were riding slowly,
+with their horses' heads turned away from the last habitations of men.
+The prairie undulated about them like a sea congealed in motion--but
+seemingly vaster than the sea; for at sea the horizon is ever near at
+hand; while here the very unevenness of the ground marked, and fixed,
+and opened up the awful distances. The grass was short, rich and browned
+by the summer sun; and it mantled the distant rounds and hollows with
+the changing lights of beaver fur. The only breaks in its expanse were
+here and there, springing in the sheltered hollows, coppices or bluffs
+of slender poplar saplings, with crowding stems, as close and even as
+hair. The leaves were yellowed by the first frosts.
+
+The man rode ahead, slouching on the back of his wretched cayuse, with
+eyes blank alike of inward thought or outward observation. He was not
+yet forty years old, but bore the cast of premature decay, more aged
+than age. What showed of his hair beneath his hat was sparse and faded;
+and of his visible teeth he had no more than a perishing stump or two
+left in his jaws. His discontented, satiated, exhausted mien, had a
+strange look there in the fresh and potent wilderness.
+
+The girl who followed with a travoise dragging at her pony's heels, was,
+on the other hand, in harmony with the land. Of the extremes to which the
+breeds run in looks, she was of the rare beauties of that strange race.
+Her features were moulded in a delicate, definite harmony that would have
+marked her out in any assemblage of beauty; and the spirit of beauty
+was there too. There were actually pride and dignity under the arched
+brows--so capricious is Nature in shaping her wilder daughters--and in the
+deep soft eyes brooded, even when she was happiest, a heart-disquieting
+quality of wistfulness. She was happy now; and ever and anon she raised
+her eyes to the slouching back of the man riding ahead with a look of
+passionate abandon in which there was nothing civilized at all. She was
+slenderer than the run of brown maidens, and her clumsy print dress could
+not hide the girlish, perfect contour of her shoulders. In her dusky
+cheeks there glowed a tinge of deep rose; testimony to the lingering
+influence of the white blood in her veins.
+
+Topping a rise, the man paused for her to overtake him.
+
+"Here we are, Rina," he said indifferently. His voice was oddly cracked.
+His manner toward her expressed a good-humoured tolerance. His eyes
+approved her casually; inner tenderness there was none.
+
+The girl apparently was sensible of no lack--but the breeds do not bring
+up their daughters to expect tenderness. Her eyes sparkled. "How pretty
+it is, 'Erbe't!" she breathed. "Ver' moch good land!" She spoke the
+pretty, clipped English of the convent school.
+
+At their feet lay a shallow valley, hidden close until the very moment
+of stumbling upon it. In it was a sparkling slough but large enough to
+be dignified with the name of lake. It was something the shape of a
+gourd, with a long end that curved out of sight below, a very girdle of
+blue velvet binding the waists of the brown hills. At their left the
+shores of the wider part of the lake, the bulb of the gourd, were, in
+unexpected contrast to the bareness of the uplands, heavily wooded with
+great cottonwood trees and spruce. A grassy islet ringed with willows
+seemed to be moored here like the barge of some woodland princess. Away
+beyond, elevated on a grassy terrace at the head of the lake, and
+overlooking its whole expanse, stood a tiny weather-beaten shack,
+startlingly conspicuous in that great expanse of untouched nature.
+Sheltered by the hills from the howling blasts of the prairie above; and
+with wood, water and unlimited game at its door, it was a wholly
+desirable situation for a Northern dwelling--but it was seventy-five
+miles off the trail.
+
+The girl brought her pony alongside Mabyn's; and slipped her hand into
+his. "It is jus' right!" she whispered. "We will be ver' happy,
+'Erbe't!"
+
+He let her hand fall carelessly. "It's damn lonesome!" he grumbled.
+
+All the shy boldness of an enamoured girl peeped out of Rina's eyes, as
+she whispered: "I'm glad it's lonesome! I don' want nobody to come--but
+you!"
+
+Mabyn was unimpressed. He struck the ribs of his tired pony with his
+heels. "Come on," he said; and led the way down the incline.
+
+Later, reaching the shack, on the threshold Rina spread out her arms
+with an unconscious gesture. "This is my home!" she cried. "I will jus'
+love it!"
+
+Mabyn looking around at the gaping walls, the empty panes and the foul
+litter, laughed jeeringly at her simplicity.
+
+The girl was too happy to feel the sting. "I will fix it!" she said
+stoutly. "I will mak' it like an outside house. It will be as nice than
+the priest's parlour in the Settlement!" She clasped her hands against
+her breast in the intensity of her eagerness. "Jus' you wait, 'Erbe't!
+Some day I will have white curtains in the window! and a piece of carpet
+on the floor! and a holy picture on the wall! Oh! I will work so hard!"
+
+"Get about the supper, Rina," said Mabyn shortly.
+
+She prepared the meal at the rough mud fireplace built across the corner
+of the shack, for they had no stove; and they ate squatting on the floor
+in the breed fashion, for neither was there a table. Afterward Mabyn
+dragged the bench--a relic of the former tenant, and sole article of
+furniture they possessed--outside the door; and sat upon it, smoking,
+yawning, looking across the lake with lack-lustre eyes.
+
+Rina having redd up the shack, came to the doorway, where she stood
+looking at him wistfully. Finally she hovered toward him and retreated;
+and her hands stole to her breast. She was longing mightily to sit
+beside him; but she did not dare. In a breed's wife it would have been
+highly presumptuous, and would very likely have been rewarded with a
+blow; but Rina had a dim notion that a white man's wife had the right to
+sit beside him--still she was afraid. In the end her desire overcame her
+fears; drifting hither and thither toward the bench like a frond of
+thistledown, she finally alighted on the edge, and her cheek dropped on
+his shoulder. The act must have been subtly suggested by the tincture of
+white blood in her veins, for it is not a redskin attitude. The man
+neither repulsed nor welcomed her.
+
+"'Erbe't," she whispered, "my head is so full of things I am near crazy
+wit' thoughts! And my tongue is in a snare; I cannot speak at all!"
+
+Mabyn's only comment was a sort of grunt, which meant anything--or
+nothing.
+
+Rina was encouraged to creep a little closer. "Oh, 'Erbe't, I love you!"
+she whispered. "I am loving you every minute! I so glad you marry me,
+'Erbe't!"
+
+The man took his pipe out of his mouth, and uttered his brief, jeering
+cackle of laughter. "That wasn't altogether a matter of choice, my
+girl," he said. "It was a little preliminary insisted on by your father
+and mother."
+
+Rina hardly took the sense of this. "But you do love me, 'Erbe't? jus' a
+little?" she pleaded.
+
+"You're all right, Rina," he said patronizingly. "I never was one to
+make much of a fuss about a woman."
+
+Little by little gathering courage, she began to pour out her soul for
+the man she loved. "I never love any man but you, 'Erbe't," so ran the
+naive confession; "the breed boys, they always come aroun' and show off.
+I not lak them. They foolish and dirty; they eat same lak cocouche; and
+they know not'ing; but they think themself so fine. They mak' me sick!
+My mot'er say to me; 'You eighteen year old, Rina; w'en you go to
+marry?' I say to my mot'er, 'I never marry a pig-man; I want to stay to
+you.'"
+
+Her voice changed, borrowing the soft, passionate music of the
+nightingale she had never heard. "Then bam-bye w'en the spring come, an'
+we pitch by Ostachegan creek, an' the crocus flowers are coming up on
+Sah-ko-da-tah prairie so many as stars in the sky--then you come by our
+camp, 'Erbe't; and you so poor an' sick I feel ver' bad for you! An' you
+talk so pretty, and know so much, my heart him fly straight out of my
+breast like a bird, 'Erbe't; an' perch on your shoulder; an' him go
+everywhere you go; an' I got no heart any more. I empty lak a nest in
+the snow-time!
+
+"So you stay to us," she went on, "and I mad to see all the men mock at
+you, an' treat you bad, an' mak' you eat after all have finished, and
+mak' you lie outside the fire. They t'ink themself better than a white
+man, hey! All the time you ask me to come away from the camp with you;
+an' you t'ink I don' want to come, but you don' know. Many, many nights
+I not sleep, 'Erbe't. I want so bad to come to the ot'er side of the
+tepee where you are, but I hold to my mot'er's blanket!"
+
+The man looked up. "Hm! You did, eh?" he exclaimed. "If I had known!"
+
+"But I t'ink I mos' not let you see I love you. So I mak' show I don'
+care at all. An' it hurt me ver' moch in my empty breast, 'Erbe't. But
+why I do it?--I want you so to marry me! an' bam-bye you marry me; an' I
+so scare and happy lak I was lose my head! Four days I married now! You
+not mad at me, 'Erbe't, 'cause I mak' you marry me?"
+
+He shrugged. "What's the diff?" he said carelessly.
+
+Rina dared to let her arm creep around his shoulders. "But bam-bye you
+ver' glad you marry me," she whispered. "For I mak' me ver' nice! I
+white woman now. I go no more to the breeds. I spik only Engliss now; we
+will sit in chairs and eat pretty with knives and forks; and always say
+good morning and good night, lak white people. 'Erbe't, you will teach
+me all the ways of white people, lak they do outside? I want so bad to
+be ver' nice, jus' lak white woman!"
+
+"Sure!" said Mabyn vaguely.
+
+Rina was silent for a while. "'Erbe't," she said at last, "you never
+tell me about your folks; about your house where you live outside.
+Please tell me."
+
+He muttered, and writhed uncomfortably on the bench. "What's the use of
+bringing that up?" he said at last. "You wouldn't understand if I tried
+to tell you."
+
+"Loving makes me onderstan' moch," she softly pleaded.
+
+He was silent.
+
+"Have you any sisters outside, 'Erbe't?" she gently persisted.
+
+"No," he said.
+
+"Your mot'er, she is not dead?"
+
+"No."
+
+"She mos' be ver' nice, I think."
+
+"She's a lady!" he blurted out.
+
+Rina nodded wisely. "I know what that is," she said. "A lady is a ver'
+nice woman." Her voice dropped very low. "'Erbe't," she whispered, with
+infinite, passionate desire in her voice--stroking his cheek, "will you
+teach me to be a lady?"
+
+He laughed. "You 'tend to your work about the place," he said, "and
+don't bother your head over that."
+
+Tears slowly welled up in Rina's eyes, and stole one after another down
+her cheeks. "I do so ver' moch want to be a lady," she whispered, more
+to herself than to him. He did not know she wept, she was so still.
+
+By and by she raised her head, and shook the tears away. "To-morrow, I
+will begin to fix things nice for you, 'Erbe't," she said with renewed,
+soft tenderness.
+
+He vented his hopeless, jeering chuckle. "Nice!" he echoed. "My God,
+Rina! What are you going to begin on?"
+
+"I show you!" she said eagerly. "I have a whole tanned buckskin my
+father give to me when I go 'way; and my mot'er, she give silk, all
+colours. I make seven, eight, maybe ten pairs of glove, with cuffs; and
+work them with silk flowers! No woman can work so good with silk than
+me! I work all the time there is light; and when all are done I get
+forty dollar in trade at the store! And I buy cartridges and traps and
+grub, and another skin to work. Not any more will you be poor, 'Erbe't!"
+
+"Lord! How will we ever drag out the winter in this God-forsaken spot!"
+he grumbled--unconsciously shifting the initiative to her shoulders.
+
+Her arm tightened about him. "We will do fine!" she said eagerly. "We
+will mak' moch money. There is no plentier place for fur; and we will
+have it all! Me, I can set traps and snares as good as Michel Whitebear.
+Maybe I will get a silver fox, or a black one. I know the fox! In the
+spring we will have plenty good credit at the store. We can travel to
+the Settlement then, and you will not be lonesome. There are many white
+men. We could stay in the Settlement all summer; and I would cook meals
+for the freighters and the travellers and mak' more money. I am a good
+worker, 'Erbe't. Everybody say so!"
+
+Mabyn partly roused himself. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "Under
+cover of the restaurant, it would be dead easy to run in a little
+whiskey over the Berry Mountain trail, and make a pot of money. Fifty
+cents a drink, by Gad!"
+
+Rina drew away from him. "I will not help you do that, 'Erbe't," she
+said quietly.
+
+"You'll do what I tell you to do," he said coolly.
+
+Rina remained silent. Her breast heaved and trembled with terror at her
+own temerity in defying her husband--but there were both firmness and
+reproach in her attitude. It was more than the weak Mabyn could bear for
+long in silence.
+
+"Good God!" he burst out. "Have I married a breed to tell me what I
+ought to do, and ought not to do? Better learn once for all, my girl,
+that I'm the head of this outfit, and I mean to do whatever I damned
+please!"
+
+Rina sat gripping her hands together in her lap to control their
+trembling. Her head was bowed. "I am only a breed girl," she said. "You
+are my 'osban', and you can beat me, and you can kill me, but I would
+not cry out, or think bad of you. But you cannot mak' me help you to
+mak' a pig of you again. I will mak' you to have good credit, an' to be
+a rich and strong man, an' you can go back and spit on the poor breeds
+that mock you before. I will not help you trade in whiskey; whiskey mak'
+you poor, an' sick, an' crazy!"
+
+Mabyn got up. "God! Women are all alike, white or brown!" he muttered
+indifferently. "Come on in."
+
+But he had yielded the point. The regeneration of Herbert Mabyn had been
+undertaken.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE LAST STAGE
+
+
+The hours of the afternoon that followed their encounter with
+Tom Lillywhite were long and heavy ones for Natalie and Garth. A
+haggard misunderstanding rode between them on the trail. Denied the
+all-explaining, all-healing touch of hands--or lips, the unreasonable
+despair of lovers seized on each; and the sunny way was plunged in murk.
+They rode, and camped, and ate their supper in silence; and in silence
+they turned in for the night. But there was little sleep for either; they
+lay apart, each nursing a burden of unhappiness; unable to say now what
+it was all about, only dreadfully conscious that they were divided.
+
+As soon as it was light enough to see, a pale and heavy-lidded Natalie
+crept noiselessly out of her tent. In front of the door she saw Garth
+on his knees preparing to build a fire; but the hand that held the
+hatchet-helve had dropped nervelessly to the ground; and his eyes, fixed
+and staring in the torpor of miserableness, had forgotten what he had
+set out to do. At the sight, a rapturous peace came back to Natalie's
+harried soul; for, she thought, if he were so unhappy as that, he must
+love her in spite of all. And Garth, looking up, saw the tenderness
+break in her weary face, and he understood it all too. The forest sprang
+into leaf again for them; and presently the sun came gaily up. They
+became as wildly and unreasonably happy as they had just been miserable;
+and not a word was exchanged either way. It was not necessary. That they
+did not fling themselves into each other's arms at that moment, must
+surely be written down to their credit somewhere.
+
+They made but a leisurely progress this day and the next. The labour of
+the journey was greater than at any time hitherto, for in addition to
+the ordinary routine of making and breaking camp twice a day, Garth had
+now the four horses to look after. Catching them was a task of uncertain
+duration, even though they were turned out hobbled; in particular, the
+exasperating Timoosis developed the proficiency of a very circus horse,
+in walking on his hind legs. And once caught, there was all the business
+of saddling, packing and drawing the hitch.
+
+Besides, there was that in both their hearts which delayed them even
+more. No ardently desired goal awaited them at the end of this journey;
+on the contrary they dreaded what they were to find. The last few miles
+of the way together, before the inevitable came between them, was
+therefore very dear; and it became ever easier to say "Let's camp!" and
+harder to say "Let's move!"
+
+Their boisterous jollity on the trail gave place to much quiet
+happiness; and there was ceaseless friendly contention, where Garth's
+every thought was for Natalie; and hers for him. Each was on his mettle
+to be worthy of the other's best. Above all they avoided the insidious
+danger of contact; but inevitably sometimes in the business of the camp,
+their hands did meet--and each to himself stored up and told over the
+events like secret treasures. In every labour Natalie insisted on taking
+her share like a man; and Garth never ceasing to upbraid her, yet loved
+her for it prodigiously.
+
+Day by day, now, the leaves of the more exposed trees were yellowing;
+and on the second night of their journey across the portage, the first
+heavy frost of the season descended. Garth, under his sail-cloth at the
+door of the tent, awoke covered with rime.
+
+Toward the end of the third day they had their never-to-be-forgotten
+first glimpse of the mighty Spirit, the dream river of the North, whose
+name evokes the thought of a garden in a bleak land. The unvarying
+flatness of the portage with its standing pools, and the interminable
+lofty wood that had hemmed them in for three days, had given them the
+sense of travelling on the bottom of the world, and that somewhere ahead
+must be a hill to climb. What then was their astonishment this
+afternoon, when, without warning they emerged from among the trees on
+an abrupt grassy terrace, and beheld the great river lying nearly a
+thousand feet _below_.
+
+It was a view inimitably gorgeous and sublime. Coming so suddenly upon
+it they caught their breaths and gazed in silence; for there was nothing
+fitting to say. The high point on which they stood overlooked a deep and
+narrow gorge at their left, through which a little river fell to the
+great stream; and across this they could look up the vast trough for
+miles. In the distance the river seemed to rise, until one would say it
+issued molten from the low-hung sun itself.
+
+It had an individual and peculiar look, like no watercourse they had
+seen. Its course drew a sharp line between the wooded country and the
+prairie. Like a figure dressed in motley, the steep southern bank was
+everywhere dark and wooded, while the other side, sweeping up in
+countless fantastic knolls and terraces, was bare, except for the brown
+grass, and patches of scrub-like hair in the hollows. Far back from the
+opposite rim of the vast trough swept the unmeasured prairie, as flat,
+in the whole prospect, as the country they had lately traversed.
+
+It was the wealth of colour that most of all bewitched their eyes. The
+river itself was of an odd, insistent green--emerald tinged with milk;
+the islands on its bosom hung out the rich bottle-green of spruce; the
+grass on the north bank was beaver-brown; the wild-rose scrub glowed
+blood-crimson in the hollows; and the aspen bluffs, touched with frost,
+were as yellow as saffron. The wild and beautiful panorama was made
+complete in their eyes by a great golden eagle perched on the brink of
+the immediate foreground and, like themselves, gazing over. Though but a
+hundred yards or so distant, he contemptuously disregarded their
+arrival. When Garth, full of curiosity, came closer, he spread his vast
+wings and drifted indifferently out into space.
+
+For a long time they gazed at the scene without speaking. It was Natalie
+who finally expressed their common thought.
+
+"Wouldn't it be sweet," she said wistfully, "if our journey had no other
+object but to see this! With what satisfied hearts we could now turn
+back!"
+
+Skirting the edge of the steep, presently the Settlement came into view
+far below, a hut or two along the river, hugging the base of the cliffs.
+The trail zigzagged gradually down, frequently doubling on itself; and
+whereas the eagle might have descended in a minute, it promised to be
+more like half an hour for them.
+
+Garth, following his previous policy, did not intend to expose Natalie
+to the stares of the Settlement, until he had at least reconnoitred.
+Before coming on the houses, therefore, he led his little caravan off
+through the bush to the left; and descended to the shore of the smaller
+stream they had seen from above. Here, in a private glade beside the
+noisy brown water, they pitched their camp; and Garth, leaving Natalie
+armed against all eventualities, proceeded into the Settlement.
+
+His inevitable first question at the store elicited the information that
+the Bishop had gone up the river to Binchinnin, Ostachegan Creek and Fort
+St. Pierre. Next, the name of Herbert Mabyn called forth contemptuous
+shrugs. None of the men could give certain information of his whereabouts,
+though Clearwater Lake was mentioned again. He had not been in to the post
+for four months; and there was a handful of letters waiting for him.
+Garth was referred to the breeds across the river for better news. It was
+clearly intimated that all self-respecting white men had cast Mabyn off.
+
+Inquiring the means of crossing the river, the ferry was pointed out
+to Garth, a barge propelled with sweeps. It must be tracked up-stream
+for a quarter of a mile before starting across, to allow for the current,
+he was told. The trader offered to help him when he was ready. Garth
+thanking him, privately resolved to cross before the Settlement was
+astir next morning. He saw that his own reticence in answering questions
+inspired the three simultaneously with the idea that he was a detective
+from outside, in pursuit of Herbert Mabyn for some early sin; and he let
+it go at that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Garth roused Natalie long before dawn; and they crossed the river by the
+first greenish light of the East. Garth handled one sweep, Natalie the
+other; and their labour was great. The incorrigible Timoosis, who never
+neglected an opportunity to make trouble, balked furiously at the ferry;
+and, finally driven on board and tied, managed to work the other horses
+up to a high state of excitement during the passage.
+
+Finally, when they had almost made the other shore, he succeeded in
+breaking his halter; and, leaping over the stern, perversely struck
+out for the shore they had left. Cy and Caspar, horses of no character,
+blindly leaped after him. For a moment a dire disaster threatened; for
+Timoosis, borne down by the weight of his pack, could scarcely keep his
+head above water; and they thought they had lost both their horse and
+their camp equipment. But the self-contained Emmy, who had not budged
+during all the excitement, merely turned her head, and sent an imperious
+whinny in the direction of her offspring; whereupon Timoosis, with true
+coltish inconsistency, turned about, and came meekly swimming after
+the barge, followed by the other two. Since the shore was not above
+twenty-five yards off he managed to win it pack and all, and staggered
+up on the beach, chilled, exhausted, and much chastened in mind.
+Warned by previous experiences, they never trusted him with anything
+perishable, so the damage to his pack was slight.
+
+After an hour's travelling, they halted by the trail at sunrise to eat,
+and to dry out what had been wet. This part of the trail traversed the
+heavily wooded bottom-lands, before starting to climb the grassy steeps
+of the further bank. As they sat on a log discussing their bread and
+cocoa, a rollicking song came, as a sound comes fluctuating through the
+woods, now from this side, now from that, and curiously deadened. It
+finally resolved itself into the air of _Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay_ with words
+in Cree. While it still seemed some distance away, suddenly the singer
+rode upon them; and reining up his horse, called the song into his
+surprised throat.
+
+He was the handsomest native they had met, a young fellow of twenty-odd,
+lean and broad-shouldered, with flashing black eyes and high-bridged
+nose. His stiff-brimmed "Stetson" was tilted at a dashing angle; he had
+a scarlet silk handkerchief about his throat; and he sat his horse like
+a young prince of the woods. Whether pure redskin or breed it was
+impossible for them to tell; certainly there was no visible evidence of
+a white admixture; but in spite of his strange and savage air, there was
+something instantly likeable about the young man--according to Natalie
+he was the first native they had met who seemed human. He rode a fine
+black horse as bravely accoutred as would become the captain of a
+round-up.
+
+He seemed disposed to be friendly; and Garth invited him to share their
+meal. As politeness demanded, he broke a small piece of bread, and drank
+some cocoa, which was plainly not at all to his taste. When he sat down
+he had the grace to take off his hat, something else they had not seen
+before in a native.
+
+His name, he volunteered, was Gene Lafabe. Since his English was about
+on a par with Garth's Cree, communication was difficult. In his
+simplicity, the young man was continually forgetting they could not
+understand his language; and when Garth shook his head, only shouted the
+louder.
+
+"You know Herbert Mabyn?" Garth asked.
+
+Gene vigorously nodded his head, adding a stream of information, which,
+had they only understood, would have materially altered their subsequent
+line of action.
+
+Garth shook his head hopelessly. "Where is he?" he asked.
+
+Gene pointed north. "Clearwater Lake," he said; and in the twinkling of
+an eye, counted seventy-five with his ten fingers.
+
+"Where is the trail?" Garth asked.
+
+Gene shrugged. "Nomoya!" he said. "No trail!"
+
+Garth had an inspiration. "Can you take us there?" he asked.
+
+Considerable patience and good-humour were called for from both sides,
+in the arduous course of arriving at an understanding; but finally a
+bargain was struck. Gene, in addition to the credentials of his person,
+bore a highly satisfactory letter of recommendation from the company
+trader at the Crossing. Whatever his errand in the first place may have
+been, he never gave it another thought; and in half an hour blithely
+turned his horse's head, and took the lead on the trail.
+
+Gene looked at every considerable tree, every little gulley, and every
+rise in the ground with the eye of an old friend. In a mile or so, at a
+place marked in no way that Garth could see, he abruptly turned out of
+the trail; and led them with an air of certainty through the apparently
+trackless woods. The trees ended at the steep rise that marked the
+bottom of the northern bank; and thereafter they climbed the grass.
+
+By a devious route known to himself Gene led them through many little
+grassy ravines, and over ridges, gradually upward. There was no sense or
+order in the arrangement of the knolls and terraces and spurs of
+turf--the ground seemed to be pushed up anyhow, like bubbles on the
+surface of yeasty dough. For a while they would be swallowed in a
+cup-like hollow; then, surmounting a ridge, they would have a brief
+glimpse of the distant river behind. It was only when they reached the
+top that, looking back over the turbulent rounded masses of earth, they
+were able to comprehend the great height to which they had climbed.
+
+Reaching level ground, Gene with a shout set off at a lope in a bee line
+across the prairie; and Garth bringing up the packhorses in the rear,
+caused the sedate Emmy to put her best foot foremost. Meanwhile, with
+pocket-compass and memorandum book, he made notes of the route they
+took; and when opportunity offered tied a strip of white cotton to a
+bush. It was his intention to dismiss Gene before coming to Mabyn's hut;
+and he wished to be sure of the way back. The guide, comprehending what
+he was doing, gave him to understand that Emmy could bring them back
+over their own tracks--unless snow should fall. But Garth was neglecting
+no precautions.
+
+Garth and Natalie deplored to each other the inadequacy of their means
+of communication with their guide. The bright-eyed Gene had a hundred
+things to point out to them on the prairie, most of which they could
+only guess at. For one thing, he made them understand he was following
+in the tracks of two cayuses that had gone that way three days before.
+One was lame, he said, and the other dragged a travoise. All this he
+learned from certain marks in the grass, which the other two could not
+see at all. In all ways Gene proved himself a very pearl among guides.
+Garth, merely from watching him, learned as much trail-craft these two
+days as he had picked up during the weeks preceding; and Natalie
+confessed that his cooking put her utterly to shame.
+
+Such was the energy of their pace that they reached the last waterhole
+before coming to Clearwater Lake early next afternoon. Here Garth
+decided to camp; for he had determined with Natalie to time their
+arrival at Mabyn's hut for the morning; so that after the briefest stay,
+they could immediately start back. Clearwater Lake was only three miles
+distant; and Gene was able to point out a poplar bluff marking the rise
+behind which it lay.
+
+Neither Garth nor Natalie obtained much sleep that night; only Gene,
+wrapped in his rabbit-skin robe beyond the fire, slept the sleep of the
+savage or the child. They were all astir at dawn; and after eating, they
+parted; Gene careering south without a care on his mind; while Garth and
+Natalie turned their apprehensive faces toward the lake. What they were
+to find there they did not know; but intuition warned them it would be
+sufficiently painful.
+
+When they reached the brow of the last hill, and the lake stretched
+vividly below them, they had no eyes for the loveliness of the prospect.
+The little hut at the head of the water far to the left was the first
+thing they saw; and it was charged with a significance that obliterated
+everything else. Facing the early sunlight it stood revealed with
+startling distinctness; and even at the distance had a ghastly look;
+gray, artificial and decayed in the midst of the mellow autumn
+loveliness.
+
+"I will picket the packhorses down at the edge of the water," Garth
+said; "and we'll ride on without them. It will provide us with an
+obvious excuse to return immediately."
+
+Natalie scarcely heard. Her eyes were fixed on the distant shack. "What
+do you suppose it hides from us?" she whispered. "Death, misery, or
+disgrace?"
+
+Garth could scarcely forbear groaning in the pain of his solicitude for
+her. "Oh, Natalie!" he said hoarsely, "I haven't done right to expose
+you to this!"
+
+"I made you!" she said quickly. "Besides, it's not a question of right
+or wrong. As you said we would, we have only done the best we could,
+under the circumstances that arose."
+
+"At least let me ride on ahead a little," he begged. "You stay with the
+outfit. I will hurry back."
+
+She shook her head. "I couldn't stand the suspense," she said simply.
+"Do not be afraid on my account," she added; "merely looking with my
+outward eyes at something that always faces me within won't hurt me.
+Come on!"
+
+But presently she reined up her pony again, and turning a pair of
+brimming eyes on him, extended her hand. "Garth!" she murmured, "I--I
+would like to thank you--but I can't!"
+
+"Oh, don't!" he begged.
+
+"Whatever we find down there," she said wistfully, "it can't make any
+difference, can it? We will still be the same partners of the trail?"
+
+Garth went pale to his lips--but he contrived to smile at her. He took
+her hand and looked at her full. "Until death," he said quietly.
+
+She drew her hand away, with a deep breath. "Come on," she said. "We've
+got to face it!"
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE MEETING
+
+
+The spot of the lake shore where Garth picketed the two horses was
+something under two miles from Mabyn's hut. The way led among the trees
+which filled this part of the valley of the lake; and underfoot they
+could distinguish traces of an old trail. The growth ended abruptly at
+the edge of a small, dry watercourse, which came down to the lake; and
+issuing into the open here, the riders beheld the dreaded goal of their
+long journey immediately before them.
+
+As they crossed the stones, they were ready to fancy they could hear,
+each the beating of the other's heart; and the scene before them was
+bitten into their brains, to endure hideously vivid and minute while
+life endured. The shack presented a three-quarter view, front and side.
+It topped a gentle, uneven acclivity of grass, rising from the
+watercourse at its side; while in front, the ground extended level a
+hundred feet to the edge of a cut-bank. This bank rose out of the lake
+sheer and loamy, to the height of a cottage roof; and over the edge hung
+a tangled fringe of grass-roots.
+
+Desolation was the cry of it all; winters upon winters had bleached the
+logs of the shack silvery like old hair; the chimney had fallen; and all
+four quarters of glass in the single window were out. At one time the
+slope between the hut and the bed of the stream had evidently been a
+theatre of industry; for the ground was pitted and hummocked and rutted;
+but long ago the grass had indifferently muffled it over, like graves in
+an old cemetery. In the centre of this waste stood, the picture of
+dejection, an Indian-bred cayuse, miserable burlesque of the equine
+species, no bigger than a donkey, and incredibly hairy and misshapen.
+His back was galled; and one leg, which he painfully favoured, puffed to
+treble its size at the hock. Even the great cottonwood trees springing
+beyond the hut, with their shattered branches, and blotched and greenish
+trunks, breathed decay. An ancient dugout, lying at the mouth of the
+watercourse, was, like everything else, rotting and seamed.
+
+And on the bench at the door of the hut sat the evil genius of the
+scene; a man with his legs sprawling in front of him, and his head
+fallen over and back against the wall. He made no move at their
+approach; and when they came close, they saw that he slept. Pitilessly
+revealed in the strong sunlight, he made a spectacle at which the most
+indifferent stranger would have shuddered and sickened--and it was
+reserved for the woman who had exalted him in her maiden's heart, to see
+him then. His mouth hung open; he breathed stertorously; and the flies,
+buzzing in and out of the open door beside him, crawled at will over his
+ashen face. That his chin was freshly shaven, and his hair brushed,
+added to the ghastliness. The whole picture was horribly vivid; the
+littlest details of it struck on the retinas of the two observers like
+blows--the oblong patch of sunlight cleaving the gloom of the shack
+inside the door; six muskrat pelts above the man's head, tacked to the
+logs to dry; an old foul pipe with a silver mounting, half fallen from
+his relaxed fingers and spilling ashes on the bench; his old-fashioned
+rifle leaning against the door-frame. Garth could have furnished the
+size, the style and the make of that gun.
+
+Natalie turned a stony face to Garth. "It is he," she whispered.
+
+Garth thought of an old photograph she had shown him of a dark-haired
+youth sitting on a horse, with a charming, imperious grace of body and
+feature, in which there was something godlike and unanswerable; and
+looking at this wreck of a man, toothless, bald and livid, he was struck
+with awe.
+
+"You have seen," he whispered to Natalie. "Let us ride back."
+
+She shook her head. "I must say what I came for," she said.
+
+"Will you dismount?" he asked.
+
+Natalie shuddered. "Never, here!" she whispered.
+
+In a moment she had commanded herself again. "Please speak to him," she
+said.
+
+"Mabyn!" called Garth peremptorily.
+
+The man's lids parted. Natalie was directly in front of him. As his
+sleep-stupefied eyes slowly took her in, he raised himself to an upright
+position, and struck his eyeballs sharply with his knuckles.
+
+Garth instinctively drew away a little.
+
+"A white woman!" muttered the man, lost in amazement.
+
+Natalie, her head slightly averted, sat her horse like a carven woman.
+
+Fear grew apace with wonder in Mabyn's eyes; his breath quickened; he
+ceaselessly passed his hand in front of his face. "Natalie!" he
+muttered, still in the toneless voice of one who sleeps. "Oh, my God!
+It's Natalie!"
+
+Grasping the edge of the bench, he pulled himself to his feet; and took
+a few uncertain steps toward her. He put out his hand fearfully.
+
+Natalie sharply reined back her horse. "Don't touch me!" she said.
+
+It broke the spell that held him--but not wholly. His hands dropped to
+his sides; a saner light appeared in his eyes; and he looked all around,
+as if to convince himself of the realness of his surroundings. On Garth
+his eyes lingered stupidly for a moment; then impatiently returned to
+Natalie.
+
+"If it's you, how did you get here?" he asked quietly enough--still
+bemused.
+
+"I came over the prairie, as every one comes," she said sharply.
+
+Mabyn frowned. "I'm wide awake," he said irritably. "I know where I am.
+I fell asleep on the bench half an hour ago--but," his voice deepened
+and swelled on the note of awe, "_you_, Natalie! You or your wraith!
+I--I can't take it in!" The faded eyes bolted, and swept wearily and
+unseeingly over the lake.
+
+Natalie winced every time he spoke her name. "Try to collect yourself,"
+she said coldly. "There is no doubt of its being I."
+
+"The voice too!" he muttered, struck with the new thought. His eyes
+returned to her. "Natalie--and not changed at all!" he murmured
+dreamily. "But more beautiful!"
+
+"If you please!" said Natalie haughtily.
+
+He still stood looking at her with something the air of a bewildered
+child, but more of the aged lunatic. "The first time I saw her, she was
+on a horse," he said in his dull voice. "But she was better dressed.
+Where did you get those clothes?" he asked suddenly.
+
+Natalie shot an appealing glance at Garth.
+
+He, in his over-mastering disgust of the man, could not put away the
+thought that there was something feigned in this excessive bewilderment.
+"Come to yourself, Mabyn!" he said sharply. "We can't stop here!"
+
+Mabyn darted a startled, spiteful glance at the new speaker, and without
+another word, turned and went back to the bench, where he sat, burying
+his face in his hands. Natalie and Garth looked at each other, scarcely
+knowing how to act. But presently Mabyn lifted his head again; and,
+spying his pipe where it had fallen, picked it up, and attentively
+knocked out what remained of the ashes in the bowl.
+
+Natalie thought she might venture to address him again. "I have
+something important to tell you," she began.
+
+Mabyn darted a queer, furtive look at her; shame, suspicion,
+obsequiousness and a sudden, reborn passion all had a part in it.
+"Won't you shake hands with me?" he asked suddenly.
+
+Natalie drew the long breath that invokes Patience and looked elsewhere.
+
+"You've changed toward me," the man whined.
+
+Indignation suddenly reddened her cheeks, and she levelled her blue eyes
+upon him in a glance that should have struck to his soul.
+
+But it failed to penetrate very far. "I know I've treated you badly,"
+he went on. "I was coming out in the spring, though; just as soon as I
+got things straight. I've worked like a son-of-a-gun too, but luck has
+always been against me." His voice gathered assurance from his own
+excuses.
+
+"Never mind that now," said Natalie. "Please listen to what I have to
+say."
+
+But the man, shrinking from matter hateful to his ears, strove to divert
+her. He struck his forehead with his knuckles, and jumped up. "By Gad!
+What's the matter with me!" he cried. "I never asked you in! It's a
+wretched hole, but such as it is----" He had turned to the door. Sudden
+recollection chopped off the speech midway; and he turned a furtive,
+frightened face over his shoulder to Natalie.
+
+"N-never mind," he gabbled hurriedly. "Don't come in! It's not fit to
+receive you! It's better out here!" Little beads of sweat were springing
+out on his forehead.
+
+His whole bearing had been so wild and stupefied since his waking, that
+they attached small importance to this display of terror. Natalie
+patiently essayed to speak again; but again he interrupted.
+
+His face cleared. "You've left your outfit somewhere back on the trail,"
+he said eagerly. "I'll go back with you; and we can talk things over
+quietly there!" He actually started toward the watercourse, walking with
+jerky, uneven steps.
+
+Natalie made no move to follow. "I will say what I have to say here,"
+she spoke after him.
+
+Mabyn was voluble, scarcely coherent in his incontinent desire to take
+her away from the hut. Natalie waited, letting him talk himself out.
+Finally compelled to give in, he returned with strange, apprehensive
+glances around the hut, and over the summits of the hills behind. Garth
+thought his brain was beginning to be affected by a solitary life.
+
+However, he now listened patiently enough.
+
+"You have not written to your mother or to me in many months," began
+Natalie coldly; "and your letters for three years past have given us no
+information. Your mother's whole thought is of you; and through her
+anxiety and suspense she is worn to a shadow of what she was; the
+doctors tell her she has a mortal disease that must soon prevail."
+
+In spite of herself Natalie's voice softened as she delivered her
+pitiful plea; but it was not from any kindness for him. "She has been
+very kind to me all these years," she went on, "and I, to ease her what
+I could of the torment of her mind during her last days, volunteered to
+go with her to find you. Her age and her infirmities prevented her from
+coming any farther than Prince George. I have been fortunate in finding
+friends who have assisted me the rest of the way. I have come to beg
+you, on behalf of your mother, to let her see you before she dies. She
+is waiting in Prince George. She bade me tell you that neither poverty,
+misfortune nor disgrace could abate any of her love for you; that she
+would die happy if she might once more press your hand against her
+cheek."
+
+Garth watched Mabyn narrowly while Natalie was speaking. He saw by the
+man's rapt expression that her voice charmed his senses, while the
+purport of what she said was wholly lost on his consciousness. When her
+voice broke a little at the close, Mabyn's lips parted, and his breath
+came quicker--but it was no tenderness for a devoted parent, only a
+passion purely selfish, that caused his lack-lustre eyes to glitter
+again.
+
+"These letters," concluded Natalie, drawing them forth as she spoke,
+"three of which I have brought from the post office, and the fourth
+which she gave me herself, will let you know, better than I can tell
+you, what she feels."
+
+Mabyn took the letters; and thrusting them carelessly in his pocket--one
+fell to the ground and lay there unheeded--snatched back at Natalie's
+hand, and attempted to retain it. Reining her horse back, she wrenched
+it free.
+
+A little shame reached the seat of Mabyn's consciousness. He reddened.
+"I'm not a leper," he muttered. "You came to me of your own free will,
+didn't you?"
+
+"Build nothing on that!" said Natalie instantly and clearly. "I allow no
+claim on me!"
+
+Mabyn quickly changed to obsequiousness. "I don't want to quarrel with
+you, Natalie," he whined. "Especially not after what you've just done!"
+
+He went to his bench again; and sat heavily. Again he struck his
+forehead with his knuckles. "Gad! I can't yet realize it is you that is
+here!"
+
+Natalie looked at Garth as much as to say that she had accomplished what
+she came for.
+
+The look was not lost on Mabyn. He sprang up. "I'll do just what
+you want!" he said hurriedly. "I'll start for Prince George at
+once--to-day--this minute! God knows there's nothing to keep me here! You
+have a spare horse, I suppose. I've nothing but that galled cayuse and
+another as bad!" He uttered his cracked laugh in a tone that was intended
+to be ingratiating. "That's the advantage of poverty! I've no preparations
+to make; so lead on!"
+
+Natalie paused irresolutely. This was a contingency she had not foreseen.
+She shuddered at the possibilities it opened up. In her perplexity she
+looked again at Garth.
+
+"We will leave you a horse," said he curtly. "And your passage out from
+the lake Settlement will be arranged for."
+
+"And what money you need," added Natalie in a low tone, and blushing
+painfully.
+
+But Mabyn's feelings were not hurt. "I can go with you just as well," he
+blustered.
+
+Natalie looked at Garth once more.
+
+"You may follow us as soon as you choose," said Garth coolly. "We do not
+desire your company on the way."
+
+For the first time Mabyn appeared to recognize Garth's presence on the
+scene. He turned a baleful eye on him; and his lips curled back over his
+gums. "Who are _you_?" he snarled, adding an oath.
+
+"That is neither here nor there," said Garth. "I speak for Miss Bland."
+
+"Mrs. Mabyn, you mean," sneered the other, thinking to crush him with
+the information.
+
+"She does not use that name," returned Garth imperturbably.
+
+Mabyn turned furiously to Natalie. "Who is this man?" he cried, his
+cracked voice sliding into falsetto; "this sleek young sprig that rides
+alone with you through the country! I demand to know! I have a right to
+know!"
+
+"I admit no right!" Natalie said firmly.
+
+Mabyn, beside himself with jealous rage, no longer knew what he said.
+"You won't explain!" he cried. "You _can't_ explain! Here's a nasty
+situation for a married woman!"
+
+Garth's self-control, stretched on the rack through all this scene,
+suddenly snapped in twain. Temper with Garth took the form of laughter;
+mocking, dangerous laughter, that issued startlingly from his grave
+lips.
+
+He laughed now. "You scoundrel!" he said in cool, incisive tones--though
+he was not a whit less blinded by passion than Mabyn himself--"after the
+kind of life you've been leading up here, have you still the assurance
+to lay a claim upon _her_! And to cast a reflection on _her_ good name!
+Have you no mirror to see what you are? Go in the lake, then, and see
+the vile record written on your face!"
+
+Mabyn was staggered. Garth's terrible scorn penetrated the last
+wrappings of the warmly nurtured ego within. He shot a startled glance
+at Garth; and from Garth to the hut and behind, as if wondering how much
+he knew.
+
+Garth was not through with him. He slipped his stirrups, preparatory to
+leaping off his horse. Natalie trembled at the quiet man's new aspect.
+
+"Garth!" she entreated urgently.
+
+The sound of her voice recalled him to himself. Settling back in his
+saddle, he abruptly turned his horse, and went off a little way,
+struggling to regain his self-command.
+
+Mabyn, misunderstanding, was vastly lifted up by this word of Natalie's,
+and the writhing ego within hastened to repair the horrid breach Garth
+had made. He approached her, hidden by her horse from Garth.
+
+"Oh, Natalie!" he gabbled whiningly; "don't listen to him. He's a low
+cur! But he can't make trouble between you and me! Send him away!
+Natalie, I seem to have acted badly; but I can explain everything!
+Circumstances were all against me! In my heart I've never swerved from
+you! I dream of you every night in my lonesomeness! Wherever I look I
+see your face before my eyes!"
+
+It was the old trick of passionate speech; Natalie remembered the very
+words of old; but the man--she averted her head from the hideous
+spectacle. She was afraid to move or cry out, sure that Garth in his
+present mind would kill him if he heard.
+
+Mabyn, conceiving nothing of the sublime irony of the figure he made,
+continued to plead. "Natalie, don't turn away from me! You took me for
+better or worse, remember! You found me at a disadvantage to-day; I
+don't look like this ordinarily. And you can make whatever you like of
+me! Remember the old days at home! I am the same man--Bert--your Bert!
+Look--he can't see us--I kneel to you as I did then!"
+
+And down he went on his knees, stretching out his arms to her.
+
+There was an odd, slight sound behind him. They both looked--and froze
+in the attitude of looking. Garth from his station, seeing the new look
+of horror overspread Natalie's face, spurred to join her.
+
+There, clinging to the corner of the cabin for support, stood the figure
+of a woman. Her brown skin was blanched to a livid yellow; and her eyes
+were the eyes of one dead from a shock. She swayed forward from the
+waist as if her backbone could no longer support her. At her feet a tin
+pail emptied wild cherries on the ground.
+
+Mabyn scrambled to his feet, shamed, chagrined, furious. "What do you
+want around here?" he cried brutally--even now seeking to outface her.
+
+The piteous, stricken girl moistened her lips; and essayed more than
+once to speak, before any words came. "'Erbe't, who is this woman?" she
+said quite simply at last.
+
+"What is that to you?" he blustered roughly, thinking to beat her down;
+perhaps to kill her outright with cruelty. "This is my wife!"
+
+"Oh, no! no!" whispered Natalie, sick with the sight of so much misery.
+
+It is doubtful if the girl heard her. She tottered forward; and seized
+and clung to Mabyn's arm. Her breast was heaved on hard, quick pants
+like a wounded animal's; and her eyes were as frantic, and as inhuman.
+
+"'Erbe't, who am I?" she breathed.
+
+Mabyn, seeing that Natalie heard and understood, beside himself, and
+reckless with rage, flung out his arm, throwing her heavily to the
+ground. "You! damn you!" he cried. "You're just my----"
+
+Natalie, with a low cry of horror, instinctively clapped her heels to
+her horse's ribs, and set off down the hill. Garth wheeled after her.
+
+"Oh, stay--stay and help her!" she gasped.
+
+"You come first!" said Garth grimly.
+
+Mabyn, as Natalie turned, sprang after her; and running desperately,
+managed to cling to her stirrup. Casting off the last vestiges of
+manliness he wept and prayed her to wait for him. Her horse, Caspar,
+kicked out wildly, and struck him off. He lay on the ground sobbing and
+cursing; striving to drag himself along with clawing hands.
+
+Just before they gained the watercourse, Garth looked over his shoulder;
+and his heart leapt into his throat. The brown woman was reaching for
+Mabyn's rifle. He shouted a warning; and desperately strove to throw
+his horse behind Natalie. But it was too late. Hard upon his voice, the
+shot rang. A strange, low cry broke from Natalie; and she reeled in her
+saddle. Garth, spurring ahead, grasped Caspar's bridle, and caught her
+from falling. A pang, far more dreadful than the hurt of a bullet, smote
+his own breast.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+NATALIE WOUNDED
+
+
+The frightened horses struggled over the watercourse, and gained the
+trees before Garth, hampered as he was, succeeded in drawing their heads
+together, and stopping them. Slipping out of the saddle without
+loosening his grasp of Natalie, he lifted her off, ever careful to
+shield her from possible further shots with his own body. He remembered
+Mabyn's was a single-shot weapon; and he counted on the time it would
+take the Indian woman to obtain ammunition, and reload. Quickly and
+tenderly laying Natalie on the ground under shelter of a stump, he
+unslung his own rifle. But as he dropped to his knee, and raised it, he
+saw the woman on the edge of the cut-bank swing the stock of her gun
+around her head, and send the weapon spinning out over the water.
+Meanwhile Mabyn was running up the hill toward her with significant
+action. No immediate further danger threatened. Garth put the pair out
+of his mind, and bent over Natalie. What happened to the woman at
+Mabyn's hands was a matter of indifference to him now.
+
+Natalie's left arm hung useless; and a soaking crimson stain spread
+broadly on her sleeve between elbow and shoulder. Her face had gone chalky
+white, her eyes were half closed, and her teeth were set painfully in her
+blue nether lip. To see his sparkling, vivid Natalie brought so low, was a
+sight to open all the doors of Garth's brain to madness. His heart swelled
+suffocatingly with rage and grief, but there was no time for that, when
+every faculty he possessed must be concentrated on saving her; and forcing
+it back, he picked her up again with infinite tenderness. His first and
+instinctive thought was to return and seize the hut; so that he might
+at least have a roof to cover her. He suspected the other two were now
+without arms; but even if they had a weapon, he had a better one; was
+a sure shot; and was on his guard.
+
+At the first move he made in the direction of the hut, Natalie, whom he
+had thought unconscious, divined his intention.
+
+"Garth! Not in his house!" she murmured feverishly. "I will not go in
+there! I will not!"
+
+He paused in a painful perplexity. "But dearest, there is no other
+house," he said.
+
+"Put me down in the open air," she begged. "It would suffocate me! I
+will not endure it!"
+
+So Garth turned back among the trees. He strode over the dead leaves and
+the pine needles to the lake shore. Here, between the willows that grew
+thickly at the water's verge, and the heavier timber, extended an open
+strip of grass, still fresh and green. He laid his burden down upon it;
+and, rolling up his coat, put it under her head for a pillow.
+
+He hastily cut away her sleeve, exposing the injury. The ball had passed
+through, making a clean opening where it entered, and a jagged wound
+whence it issued. It was clear the bone was broken; but from the
+character of the bleeding, even Garth could see that the artery was
+uninjured. He brought water from the lake in his hat, and gently washed
+the wound; but even in this he doubted if he did right; for the water
+was cold--but he had nothing in which to heat it. The best he could do
+was to take the chill out of it by pressing the handkerchief between his
+hot hands.
+
+Everything they possessed that might have been of service was two miles
+off; and might just as well have been a hundred; for Garth could not
+think of leaving her; and he shrank from the thought of inflicting the
+agony it would cause her to be carried so far. And even suppose they
+gained their own camp, the situation would be little improved; for how
+was he in his ignorance to undertake the delicate task of setting the
+shattered bone; of improvising splints and bandages; and supplying, what
+a glance at the ugly wound showed to be needful, antiseptics? A surgeon,
+whatever his skill, rarely dares trust the steadiness of his hand on the
+bodies of those he loves; what then was Garth to do, who had no skill at
+all?
+
+He had his dark hour then, tasting ultimate despair. He sat beside her,
+gripping his dull head between his hands, and striving desperately to
+contrive, where there was nothing to contrive with. Oh, the pity and the
+wrong of it, that it was _she_ who must be hurt! he thought; and how
+joyfully he would have taken it himself to relieve her. _He_ bled
+inwardly; and the physical pain of the most hideous wounds could not
+equal the agony he experienced in his helplessness.
+
+Meanwhile the wound momentarily changed. The arm began to swell and
+darken; and Garth knew there was no time to lose. He made one attempt to
+proceed, kneading the flesh of the arm very gently to explore the broken
+ends of the bone--but Natalie's piteous cry of pain completely unmanned
+him. He desisted, shaking like a leaf, and sick with compassion; and he
+knew he would never be able to do it.
+
+What seemed like an age passed; though it was no more than a few
+minutes. He was bending over her, doing what little he could to ease her
+pain; and with knotted brows rapidly considering, and rejecting, one
+after another, the desperate expedients that suggested themselves.
+Suddenly looking up he perceived among the trees, at the distance of a
+few paces, Rina standing. Hot anger instantly welled up in his breast,
+and made a red blur before his eyes. Rina's sex was no protection to her
+then. He picked up his gun.
+
+Observing the action, Rina mutely spread her hands, palms outward. Her
+entire aspect had changed; the storm of passion had passed; and she
+stood contrite and sullen. It was impossible for the blindest passion
+to shoot at a figure in such an attitude. Garth lowered his gun; but he
+still kept it across his knees, and his face did not relax. The woman
+was loathsome to him.
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded coldly.
+
+Rina came a little closer. "I sorry," she said sulkily--like a child
+unwillingly confessing a fault. "I t'ink I go looney for a while. I not
+hear right. I t'ink she try to tak' my 'osban' from me!"
+
+Garth glanced at the suffering Natalie with contracted brows. "That's
+all very well!" he said bitterly. "But it can't undo what's done!"
+
+"I can mak' her well, maybe," said Rina, still affecting indifference.
+"I know what to do. My mot'er, she teach me. If you let me look at her,
+I tell you."
+
+A wild hope sprang up in Garth's breast. If the girl were only able to
+help Natalie, his hate of her could very well content itself a while.
+But dare he trust her? With keen, hard eyes he sought to read her face.
+Her own eyes avoided his; and she made a picture of savage indifference;
+but as he looked he saw two great tears roll down her cheeks. In his
+desperate situation it was well worth the risk.
+
+Raising his gun, he said coldly: "You may look at her. If you try to
+injure her, I will send a bullet through your head."
+
+Receiving the permission, Rina came forward, careless of the threatening
+gun; and dropped to her knees beside Natalie. She examined the wound on
+both sides; and felt of the fracture with delicate fingers. To judge of
+the normal position of the bones, she manipulated her own arm. Garth never
+took his eyes from her; but she was tenderer with the patient than he
+could have been.
+
+Finally she raised a mask-like face to Garth. "I can fix it," she said.
+"If you let me."
+
+Whatever her private feelings were, she had a confident air, that could
+not but convey some assurance to him. He nodded silently; after what he
+had suffered, he scarcely dared believe in such good fortune.
+
+Rina quickly rose. "You mak' a fire to heat water," she said coolly. "I
+go to bring everyt'ing."
+
+With the words, she was gone among the trees; and Garth, overjoyed to be
+able to do something with his hands, hastened to build a fire.
+
+Before he really expected her, she was back with what she needed, a pot
+for heating the water, a basin, several kinds of herbs, some strips of
+yellowed linen for bandages, a blanket and a knife. While the water was
+heating, she cut a deep segment of the smooth white bark of a young
+poplar for a splint--the curve of it was judged to a nicety to fit
+Natalie's arm. During the operation of setting the bone, Garth watched
+her unswervingly, clenching his teeth to bear the spectacle of Natalie's
+agony. For every pang of hers he suffered a sharper; the sweat coursed
+down his face.
+
+But at last it was over; the wound washed and fomented with bruised
+leaves, the splint fitted snug, and the whole neatly bandaged. Natalie,
+wrapped in the blanket, soon fell into the sleep of exhaustion.
+
+Rina looked at the pale and shaken Garth with an odd expression. "If you
+have whiskey, better tak' a drink," she suggested.
+
+Garth had his flask; and he obeyed without question.
+
+Throughout the operation, Rina had preserved an admirable, professional
+air, intent and impersonal; and when necessary she had brusquely ordered
+Garth to help her. Now that it was all over her face altered; she
+continued to kneel at Natalie's side, gazing at her soft hair, and the
+whiteness of her skin with a kind of sad and jealous wonder.
+
+Garth on the alert at the change, which portended he knew not what
+explosion of passion in the savage woman's breast, ordered her from
+Natalie's side. She obeyed, resuming her sullen mask, but lingered near
+him, plainly full of some question she desired to ask. He observed for
+the first, a purpling bruise above her temple. Rina saw his eyes upon
+it, and her colour changed.
+
+"I run against a tree," she hastily volunteered.
+
+At the same time her hand stole to her throat to hide certain marks on
+its dusky roundness. Garth knew instinctively that she was loyally
+lying. Mabyn had beaten her. He wondered how far the wish to serve the
+woman she had injured was Rina's own impulse and how far she had been
+forced to it by Mabyn. He began dimly to conceive that the red woman had
+good qualities.
+
+At last the question on her breast was spoken. "Who is she?" she asked,
+pointing sullenly at the sleeping Natalie.
+
+Garth rapidly considered what he should answer. He could not pretend to
+himself that he had forgiven the woman; but since Natalie's pain was
+mitigated he was cooler; and his sense of justice forced it home on him
+that Rina, too, had been through her ordeal. In his present desperate
+situation, his only chance of assistance lay in her--Mabyn was an
+egomaniac, and utterly irresponsible. Frankness had served Garth in good
+stead before this; and finally he told her the plain truth in such terms
+that she could understand.
+
+"This feeling Mabyn has for her," he insisted in the end, "is only a
+passing one. If we can get her out of his sight all will go on as
+before."
+
+Rina nodded. Her inscrutable face softened a little, he thought. "I
+on'erstan' now," she said quietly. "So I not go crazy wit' t'inking
+about it."
+
+Garth was glad he had told her.
+
+Rina stood studying him with her strange and secret air. "You love her
+ver' moch," she said suddenly, pointing to Natalie.
+
+Garth bent over the sleeping figure in a way that answered her better
+than words.
+
+"I t'ink she love you too," said Rina gravely. "When I 'urt her, she try
+not to cry because it 'urt you so bad."
+
+A slow red crept under Garth's skin. He hated to betray himself under
+the eyes of the red woman; and he bustled about, averting his face from
+her. "When can she be moved?" he asked, brusquely changing the subject.
+
+Rina shook her head. "I not know," she said. "Maybe she have fever.
+Three, four week maybe."
+
+Garth's heart sunk heavily, as he considered their scanty supplies, the
+approach of winter--and, more dangerous still, the fruitful opportunities
+of conflict the weeks would offer to four souls so strangely opposed, and
+so strangely bound together in the wilderness.
+
+"What is Mabyn doing now?" he asked suddenly.
+
+Rina's face instantly became as blank as plaster. "I not talk to you
+about him," she said coolly.
+
+Garth was conscious of receiving a rebuke.
+
+"But I help you," she added presently. "I go bring your outfit in."
+
+Before she went, she brewed a draught for Natalie with some of the herbs
+she had brought; and instructed Garth to administer it when she woke.
+For an instant all Garth's suspicions returned; and he looked at her
+hard. Rina, divining his thought, coolly lifted the pail to her lips,
+and drank of it. Once more he felt himself rebuked.
+
+Left alone, his thoughts reverted to Mabyn. What would he have been
+plotting all this time? he wondered; what stand would he take in this
+new posture of affairs? It was too much to hope, he decided, that one so
+selfish and so jealous could be persuaded to sink his animosity against
+Garth, for the purpose of serving Natalie while she lay injured. Garth's
+business had made him more or less familiar with the workings of the
+diseased ego; and he was convinced that Mabyn, if for nothing else,
+hated him intolerably for having been the spectator of his repulse by
+Natalie.
+
+As time passed, Natalie began to stir and mutter in her sleep and Garth,
+bending over her, fearful of fever, put the man out of his head.
+Returning to her from the edge of the lake, with cloths wrung out of
+cold water, he found her with wide eyes and flushed cheeks.
+
+"Send him away! Send him away!" she muttered. "I cannot have him near
+me!"
+
+At first he thought her mind wandered, but following the direction of
+her eyes, he saw the figure of a man skulking among the trees; and his
+face grimmed. Soothing her, he offered Rina's drink; and it had an
+immediate effect. She dropped off to sleep again. Then Garth picked up
+his gun and strode toward Mabyn.
+
+The man waited for him with an air oddly mixed of fear and bravado.
+As Garth came close he smiled in a way that he intended to be
+ingratiating--but Mabyn's smile only rendered him more hideous.
+Garth's first look made sure that both his hands were empty.
+
+"Is there anything I can do?" Mabyn asked with apparent solicitude.
+
+"Yes, keep away from here," returned Garth curtly. "If I catch you
+within a hundred yards of my camp, I'll wing you so you won't move again
+as long as we're here."
+
+Mabyn assumed an aggrieved expression. "You needn't take that tone," he
+grumbled. "I came in friendliness. I want to have a talk with you."
+
+"I'm listening," said Garth.
+
+Mabyn twisted uneasily. "Damn it! How can a man make friendly advances
+when you're standing over him with a gun!" he said.
+
+"Say what you've got to say, or clear out," said Garth.
+
+The aggrieved air proving ineffectual, Mabyn substituted offended
+silence; offered to go; and came back. "Well, look here!" he said at
+last. "This is it. Here are the three of us up here----"
+
+"Four," amended Garth.
+
+"Well, four if you like," said Mabyn. "We're stuck here together. We
+can't afford to quarrel. We've got to have some working agreement."
+
+"Is that all?" said Garth uncompromisingly.
+
+Mabyn looked around with the air of a much-tried man, appealing to the
+bystanders--that they were only indifferent trees, rather spoiled the
+effect. "I wouldn't take this from any man if it wasn't that I was bent
+on avoiding trouble," he blustered.
+
+Garth suppressed the scornful inclination to laugh.
+
+"Look here," began Mabyn afresh, with a reasonable air. "I came to offer
+you the shack for Natalie. She can't sleep in the open in her condition."
+
+"Much obliged," said Garth coolly. "I intended to take it in the first
+place. But Miss Bland refused to allow herself to be carried there."
+
+Mabyn's eyes bolted. His control over his facial muscles was imperfect;
+and the struggle between the open character he desired to convey, and
+the secret feelings that tortured him, was plain. "What are you going
+to do?" he asked.
+
+"Build her a house," said Garth.
+
+Mabyn, turning his back, appeared to be considering.
+
+"Is that all you have to say?" asked Garth.
+
+The other turned a face of obstinate friendliness and good will. "Look
+here--" he began all over. "I don't know your name----"
+
+Garth informed him.
+
+"Well, Pevensey, I'm sorry for what passed this morning. I regret what I
+said. I was only half awake; and scarcely knew what I did. Will you
+overlook it?"
+
+"Talk is cheap," said Garth guardedly. "I will be guided by your actions
+henceforth." But his voice was milder; for an apology could not help but
+speak to his sense of generosity.
+
+Mabyn, encouraged, amplified his penitent, ingratiating air. "As to the
+future," he said, "I mean to show you. You'll soon be satisfied!" He
+came closer. "In the meantime let's make a truce! Shake hands on it!"
+
+Garth thoroughly distrusted the man; but he could see no harm to Natalie
+in accepting his offer, while privately determining to relax none of his
+vigilance. It was only too true, as Mabyn had said; neither could afford
+to quarrel. Mabyn had no gun, and Garth could not leave Natalie's side
+for an instant.
+
+"I am willing," said Garth readily. "But it's understood this doesn't
+affect what I said before. You are not to come within a hundred yards of
+this camp!"
+
+Mabyn shrugged, as at the unworthiness of Garth's suspicions.
+
+"You agree to it?" Garth persisted.
+
+"All right!" said Mabyn--a shade too readily. "Shake!"
+
+Garth shifted his gun; and advanced to take Mabyn's hand. The man could
+not keep an ugly little gleam from showing in his shifty gray eye; and
+Garth stopped abruptly. Mabyn sneered. Garth, fired by one of the
+imperious impulses of the blood of youth, strode forward and grasped the
+extended hand defiantly.
+
+He saw instantly his mistake. Mabyn's face was suddenly transfigured by
+the deadly hatred he had long repressed. His right hand closed on
+Garth's like a vice; and at the same time a knife slipped out of his
+sleeve into the other hand. He jerked the surprised Garth halfway round;
+and aimed a blow between his shoulders. Garth was oddly conscious of the
+fresh marks of the whetstone on the blade of the knife. With the
+incredible swiftness of our subconscious moves, he dropped his useless
+gun; and twisting his body around, flung up his free hand, and warded
+the descending blow. Seizing Mabyn's wrist, he flung himself forward to
+bear the other back.
+
+It was all very brief. Mabyn, braced to receive Garth's weight, held his
+ground. Inspired with a febrile strength, he enjoyed a temporary
+advantage. Unable to reach Garth's back, he thrust desperately at his
+face, his neck--but only stabbed the air. They were locked together with
+their arms crossed--surely as strange a posture as ever men fought in!
+But Mabyn had staked all on the first blow; and that failing, there
+could be but one result. His fictitious strength suddenly failing, he
+collapsed in Garth's arms. Garth wrenched his hand free and hurled him
+to the ground, where he lay, livid and sobbing for breath. The attack
+had been contrived with devilish cunning; but every design this man
+undertook in life was foredoomed to failure.
+
+Garth secured the knife; and stood looking down at the broken wretch,
+with strong waves of disgust welling over him. He laughed briefly.
+
+"Too contemptible to kill!" he said; and turned on his heel.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE CLUE TO RINA
+
+
+Rina brought all four horses handily through the wood, bringing up the
+rear on the back of old Cy. She slipped off beside Garth, and looked in
+the direction where Natalie lay.
+
+"Still sleeping," Garth said.
+
+As Rina's eyes fell on him, they suddenly widened; and plain fear broke
+through the mask of her face. "'Erbe't been here!" she said breathlessly.
+
+"How do you know?" he said in surprise.
+
+Rina pointed to his belt. "You got his knife!" she said. "How you get
+his knife?"
+
+"He tried to murder me with it," said Garth, watching her face narrowly.
+
+Rina had no more thought for Natalie. "Where is he?" she said agitatedly.
+"W'at you do to him?"
+
+"I let him go," Garth said carelessly. "Murder is not exactly in my
+line."
+
+"He try to kill you an' you let him go!" she breathed incredulously.
+Plainly such magnanimity was outside her ken. She walked away from him,
+considering it.
+
+Presently she came back with a swift glide. "You got to promise me not
+to 'urt 'Erbe't!" she said, threateningly and passionately.
+
+"If he attacks me, I defend myself--and her," Garth said coolly.
+
+Rina studied the ground. It was impossible for him to tell what was
+going on behind her inscrutable eyes. In a moment she went to Natalie as
+if nothing had happened; and dropping beside her, listened attentively
+to her breathing. Garth, ever watchful, followed her close. When she
+arose, they moved off a little to avoid disturbing the patient; and
+Rina briefly instructed Garth what he should do during the night.
+
+Garth, not satisfied with merely knowing what to do, asked the reason
+of her various measures; whereupon Rina became suddenly evasive.
+
+"But I must know why you do these things," he insisted.
+
+Rina looked away. "I not tell you," she said coolly.
+
+"What does this mean?" he demanded, surprised and frowning.
+
+Rina met his eyes. "Nobody but me can mak' her well," she said boldly.
+"I mak' her well if you not 'urt 'Erbe't. If you go after 'Erbe't, she
+can die. I not look at her no more!"
+
+This at least was honest; and Garth could respect such an opponent.
+"He's safe!" he said coolly. "Provided he keeps away from here."
+
+Rina vouchsafed no comment. "I come to-morrow," she said and disappeared
+through the trees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The horses offered Garth his next problem. Since immediately they were
+turned out they would bolt for the sweet grass of the prairie above,
+there was no way in which he could secure them from Mabyn, or keep them
+within reach against a time of need. They might stray for miles over the
+plains before he could leave Natalie long enough to round them up. But
+there was no help for it; the beasts would all die of starvation, if he
+attempted to keep them in his camp. There was a little grass between
+the willows and the timber; and he determined to keep old Cy picketed
+nearby, to be sure of one mount in the case of an emergency. The other
+three he hobbled, hung a bell around Emmy's neck, and turned them loose.
+
+He was now able to make Natalie more comfortable. Putting up her tent,
+he spread a bed of balsam within, and her own blankets upon it. The next
+time she awoke, he carried her inside; and at the door of the tent,
+where he could look at her, and speak to her, he cooked her the best
+invalid's supper the grub-box and his own skill could afford. This same
+grub-box was an ever-fresh cause of anxiety to him; allowing for liberal
+contributions from his own gun, he could not see much more than a week's
+supply for two. This he kept to himself, however, while he joked and
+made light of their situation for Natalie's benefit. She was very
+quiet; she did not suffer much, she said; but she had little humour to
+talk. When Garth thought of her, only the day before, galloping over
+the prairie, he ground his teeth afresh. But the silver lining of
+this blackest cloud of his was that in her weakness she clung to
+him unreservedly.
+
+Some time after supper she fell asleep again; and Garth prepared for
+his night-long vigil. His head was much too busy to allow of any desire
+for sleep. Sitting in the dark, he faced the situation open-eyed. There
+they were in the remotest wilderness, imprisoned in the narrow valley by
+Natalie's injury for weeks to come; with insufficient food and inclement
+weather in prospect, and without the remotest chance of succour from the
+outside. Moreover, there hovered about them an implacable and half-insane
+enemy, whose busy brain was bent on Garth's destruction. The outlook was
+enough to unnerve the strongest; there were things in it that Garth in his
+courage could only glance at, and hurriedly avert the eyes of his mind.
+
+The night was so still he could hear the breathing of the horse at fifty
+paces. He had let the fire die down, for fear its loud crackling would
+awaken Natalie. Overhead the Northern lights flung their ragged pennons
+across the zenith, with a ghostly echo of rustling. He suddenly became
+conscious of distant human voices in the void of stillness; and presently
+distinguished the voice of Mabyn. Rina's answers he could not hear,
+though he sensed a second voice. The sound was from the neighbourhood
+of the hut.
+
+Garth was tempted by the opportunity to discover at the same time the
+plans of his enemy, and Rina's true disposition toward himself. He glanced
+at Natalie; she had but lately fallen asleep, and was sleeping soundly;
+there were no animals abroad that could harm her; he need be gone but half
+an hour. The role of eavesdropper was not at all attractive to him; but he
+felt he had no right to refuse to use any weapon that offered. Finally he
+fastened the flaps of Natalie's tent, replenished the fire, and stole away
+through the trees.
+
+He crossed the stony watercourse to the left of the usual place and
+mounted the slope. Coming closer, he satisfied himself that the speakers
+were sitting on the bench at the door of the shack. In the darkness he
+almost fell across the figure of the little cayuse, prone in the grass.
+The animal scrambled to its feet and trotted away. Garth paused,
+listening, his heart in his throat--but Mabyn's voice presently went
+on undisturbed.
+
+He finally gained the top of the rise; and let himself down in the
+grass, distant some thirty feet from them. A flash of lightning--or even
+the lighting of a lantern would have revealed him clearly.
+
+He instantly understood that he was the subject of their talk.
+
+"It's his life or mine," in Mabyn's blustering whine were the first
+words he distinctly heard.
+
+"He could kill you to-day, and he let you go," Rina quietly returned.
+
+"That's a lie!" blustered Mabyn. "How do you know?" he added
+inconsequentially.
+
+"He tak' your knife from you. I saw it in his belt," said Rina. "And he
+let you go."
+
+Mabyn made no reply.
+
+"He say to me he not 'urt you, if you keep away from there," Rina went
+on.
+
+"Keep away!" Mabyn fumed. "This is my place! I'll go where I choose on
+it! He's trespassing on my land! I've a right to drive him off! I've a
+right to kill him if he doesn't go!"
+
+"He will hear you!" said Rina warningly.
+
+"Let him hear me!" said the man--nevertheless he lowered his voice.
+"They're a quarter-mile off," he added.
+
+"Listen!" said Rina.
+
+Over the lake, from an immeasurable distance, came throbbing the
+imbecile laughter of a loon.
+
+"Loon, him three miles off," said Rina significantly.
+
+Thereafter, Mabyn spoke in a whisper; a wheedling note crept into his
+voice. "That was a good scheme of yours, going to the camp to set the
+girl's arm," he said. "Now we can find out all they do!"
+
+"I not go to find out," said Rina sadly. "I go for I sorry I 'urt her. I
+shoot her jus' lak a breed I am!"
+
+Mabyn paid no attention to this. "Keep your eyes open when you're in
+their camp every day," he urged. "See how much food they have; find out
+where he keeps the shells for his gun. If you could only steal the gun!"
+
+"He carry it always on his back," said Rina. "He never put it down."
+
+"I know, he's on his guard now," said Mabyn. "But if you act friendly
+all the time, he'll forget. We've got plenty of time; do nothing for a
+few days. I'll keep away from there too. He'll think it's all right.
+_Then_"--Mabyn's whisper was pure venom--"sneak up behind him and knock
+him on the head with an axe! Choose a moment when the girl is asleep or
+delirious. We will throw his body in the lake. No one will ever know how
+it happened!"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Will you do it?" said Mabyn eagerly.
+
+Rina remained silent.
+
+Mabyn cursed her under his breath. "I believe this smooth-faced young
+whelp has cast an eye on you too," he snarled. "You're false to me!"
+
+A low cry was forced from Rina's lips; she made a rapid move; and Garth
+understood that she had thrown herself at the man's feet. "'Erbe't, you
+know you don' speak true," she whispered painfully. "You my 'osban'! All
+men I hate, but you!"
+
+"Then do what I tell you," snarled Mabyn.
+
+"'Erbe't!" she pleaded rapidly and urgently. "Let them go! What have
+they got to do with us? To-morrow I go to him. I tell him how to mak'
+her well. The man will give me a horse and things. An' you and I will
+ride to the Rice River people. They are my people. They will give me a
+gun. We will be so ver' happy, and not think of this man and this woman
+any more!"
+
+"You can go, and be damned to you!" said Mabyn sullenly. "I stay on my
+own place!"
+
+Garth understood then, that she drew very close to the man, lavish in
+the expression of her sad love and timid caresses, in a desperate effort
+to move him. He could not hear it all; but his cheeks burned to be the
+intruder on such an exposure of a woman's soul--a white soul, he
+thought, whatever the colour of her skin.
+
+Mabyn was utterly insensible to it all. In the end he became impatient,
+and flung her away from him with an oath. She fell to the ground with a
+soft thud; and for a while there was no other sound, but the dreadful,
+low catch of her breath, as she sought to strangle her sobs.
+
+"'Erbe't, if you no love me I die," she breathed.
+
+"Rid me of this man and I'll love you fast enough!" said Mabyn eagerly.
+His breath came thick and stertorous. "Ah! Let me once grind my heel in
+the smooth, sneering face of him! and you shall do what you like with
+me!" Rage robbed him of speech; he made mere brutish sounds in his
+throat.
+
+By and by he managed to control himself; and his voice resumed its
+crafty, wheedling tone. "Only do what I tell you, my Rina, and you shall
+know what it is to be loved by a white man. I shall have no thought all
+day, but of you! Up to now you have done all the loving; I will repay it
+twice over! You shall be loved as no red woman was ever loved before!"
+
+"'Erbe't! 'Erbe't! Don't mak' me do it!" she whispered terror-stricken.
+
+Garth could stand no more. Springing to his feet, he strode forward,
+grasping the barrel of his rifle to use it for a club. Shooting was too
+merciful for such a creature.
+
+"You damned scoundrel!" he cried.
+
+Mabyn fell back against the wall with a gasping cry of fright. Quick as
+Garth was, Rina was quicker. Before he could reach the man, she
+scrambled over the ground, and clutched him by the knees.
+
+"Let him be!" she screamed. "I kill you!"
+
+Garth struggled vainly to free himself. Finally bending over and seizing
+her shoulders, he thrust her away. But the blow he again aimed at Mabyn
+never descended; for with incredible swiftness Rina gained her feet, and
+darted down hill.
+
+"I kill _her!_" she shrilled.
+
+A sickening fear gripped Garth's heart, instantly obliterating all
+thought of Mabyn. He dashed after Rina, nerved to a desperate fleetness.
+She knew the ground better than he; and hampered, moreover, by the
+weight of his gun, he despaired of overtaking the moccasined savage. But
+at the watercourse the strange creature stopped dead; and waited for him
+to come up.
+
+"Go back to your white woman!" she cried stormily. "If you 'urt him, I
+pull her bandage off, and beat her arm till she die of pain!"
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+MABYN MAROONED
+
+
+When Natalie awoke, it was a gray and haggard Garth she saw through the
+raised flaps of her tent. His arms, folded on his knees, bore up his
+chin; and he stared before him, still pursuing the narrow round of his
+troublous thoughts. He was the gainer for his excursion, by valuable
+information--but he was no nearer the solution of it all.
+
+Natalie partly raised herself on her good arm. "My poor Garth!" she said
+softly. "How very tired you are!"
+
+His weary eyes lighted up. "I'm all right," he cried. "And how are you?"
+
+"Splendid!" she said, matching his tone--while her face was drawn with
+pain. "Come in," she added softly.
+
+He sat a little diffidently on the ground beside her; Natalie's
+room--though its walls were of canvas--was a sacred place to him when
+she was in it.
+
+"Look at me!" she commanded.
+
+He turned his grave, smiling eyes down on her. In spite of difficulties,
+dangers and weariness, he had to smile when he looked at her; he loved
+her so! His eyes were full of it.
+
+Natalie's eyes fell; her hand crept into his. "You may tell me to-day,"
+she whispered.
+
+He understood. "Oh, my Natalie!" he murmured deeply. "I love you! It
+breaks my heart to see you suffer!"
+
+She caught up his hand, and pressed it to her cheek. "I am cured!" she
+whispered with a lift in her voice.
+
+"There is something I want you to do for me," she said presently.
+
+"Anything in the world!" he cried.
+
+"No!" she said. "This is only a little thing--but you mustn't laugh!"
+
+He immediately smiled.
+
+"I want to feel, for a moment, that I have helped you too," she
+whispered. "Put your head down on my good shoulder."
+
+He flung himself down beside her, and laid his head where she bid. Her
+breath was warm on his cheek. He slipped his over-heavy burden, and
+glided into Paradise for awhile.
+
+"My brave, brave Garth," she whispered in his ear. "All my heart is
+yours! I thought about this last night--every time I woke. I thought we
+might steal one such moment. I thought, what if something happened to
+you, or to me, and we had never known it!"
+
+She tried to tempt him to sleep a while, but Garth, fearful of tiring
+her, and with his responsibilities pressing on him, drew himself away.
+He arose, better refreshed, he vowed, than by all the nights of sleep he
+had ever had in his life.
+
+As he rose, their lips met, once and briefly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Garth's first task after breakfast was to clear the growth of willows
+that obstructed their access to the lake. The little island was framed
+squarely in the centre of the opening made by his axe; and off to the
+left, across an estuary formed at the mouth of the watercourse, Mabyn's
+shack stood on top of its cut-bank in plain view.
+
+At sight of the convenient island, Garth was struck by an idea. He
+examined it attentively. It lay something less than a quarter of a mile
+off shore; and a triangle might have been drawn between his camp, the
+island and Mabyn's shack, of which the three sides would have been of
+about equal length. The island was about three acres in extent; and
+completely ringed about with willow bushes. In the centre, two or three
+cottonwood trees elevated their heads above the willows.
+
+Later, he asked Natalie casually: "Could Mabyn swim, when you knew him,
+do you remember?"
+
+"He could not," she said instantly. "In fact he had a childish horror of
+the water."
+
+Garth turned his head to hide his satisfaction; and his plan began to
+take shape.
+
+While the sun was yet low, Rina, true to her promise, came to attend
+upon Natalie. There was no change in her manner; her unreadable eyes
+expressed no consciousness of the events of the night before. She
+questioned Natalie in her best professional way. It was not yet
+necessary to disturb the dressings on the arm; but she volunteered to do
+Natalie's hair; and what other offices would contribute to her comfort.
+Garth, convinced now that he had as sure a hold on her as she on him,
+unhesitatingly allowed her to enter the tent alone. But he kept within
+earshot.
+
+He necessarily overheard part of their talk. Natalie, it seemed, had a
+method of her own with Rina. Obliterating the fact that she had received
+her injury at the breed's hands, she was unaffectedly grateful for all
+that was done for her; and what was more subtle--or kinder--she treated
+Rina as her equal, as one who understood in herself the thoughts and the
+instincts of a lady. Garth, with the clue he possessed to the unhappy
+heart of the girl, could not tell which he ought to commend the more,
+Natalie's mother-wit, or her generosity.
+
+Rina apparently sought to steel her breast against the other's
+overtures. For the most part she maintained a hardy silence; and when
+she did speak, it was in sullen monosyllables.
+
+Issuing out of the tent, she surprised Garth by asking, as one who
+demands a right, to take old Cy. She needed an herb for Natalie, she
+said, that could only be procured on the shore of a slough five miles
+away. Garth was prompt with his permission. There was a possibility
+that it was merely a pretext to deprive them of the horse; but his heart
+leaped at the chance of getting Rina out of the way for an hour. It was
+all he needed to complete his plan; and it had seemed an insuperable
+bar. If she turned the horse out, he would come back anyway; for Cy was
+the town-bred horse, always waiting anxiously about camp for his
+vanished stable; and Garth had further trained him to stick to the
+outfit, with judicious presents of salt and tobacco.
+
+Rina, disdaining a saddle, scrambled on his back, and rode off. Garth
+waited, not without anxiety, to see what direction she would take. She
+presently reappeared, mounting the rise to the shack. Pausing briefly at
+the door, apparently to speak within, she continued her way up the slope
+behind; and, gaining the prairie, disappeared over the brow.
+
+Garth instantly put himself in motion. He had his compunctions in thus
+moving against Rina while she was absent on an errand for Natalie; but
+he consoled himself with the thought that Rina, with all she could do,
+had still a heavy score to pay off. He told Natalie what he was about to
+do; and at her earnest pleading carried her out of the tent, and propped
+her partly upright at the edge of the lake where she would be able to
+see him. Then, looking to his gun, he set off a second time for the
+shack.
+
+From the circumstance of Rina's pausing at the door, he was well assured
+that Mabyn was within. He had marked that the door stood open. On his
+way, he paused to examine the ancient dugout lying at the mouth of the
+watercourse; and found it in a sufficiently seaworthy condition to
+answer his purpose. A paddle lay in the bottom.
+
+Garth ascended the grassy slope swiftly and noiselessly; and making a
+detour around the window, presented himself suddenly at the door. Mabyn
+was revealed to him sprawling on his blankets in the corner, plucking at
+his face, and scowling at the rafters, he, too, no doubt, plotting and
+scheming. When the armed shadow fell across the floor of his shack, he
+started to his elbow; his eyes widened, his flesh blanched and a visible
+trembling seized his limbs.
+
+"What do you want?" he contrived to stammer.
+
+Strong disgust seized Garth again; so despicable an adversary shamed his
+own manhood. He shifted his gun significantly.
+
+"Get up!" he said.
+
+Mabyn dragged himself to his hands and knees. It was some moments before
+he could control himself sufficiently to stand upright.
+
+"What are you going to do with me?" he kept muttering.
+
+Garth stepped backward. "Come outside!" he commanded.
+
+Mabyn obeyed, making a circuit of the walls for support. His eyes were
+always riveted on the gun; and however slightly it was moved, he
+experienced a fresh spasm of fear.
+
+"Face about!" ordered Garth; "and walk to the mouth of the creek!"
+
+Mabyn became even paler. His skin was like white paper on which ashes
+have been rubbed, leaving streaks and patches of gray. "Would you shoot
+me in the back?" he said shrilly. "An unarmed man! I will not turn my
+back!"
+
+"Then walk backward!" said Garth, with his laconic start of laughter.
+
+Mabyn went like a crab down the rise, with his head over his shoulder, a
+ludicrous and deplorable figure. He was unable to drag his eyes from the
+gun, consequently he stumbled and lurched over every obstacle. Once he
+fell flat; and a sharp scream of fright was forced from him. Garth
+sickened at the sight, while he laughed. He had to give him a minute in
+which to recover himself.
+
+Mabyn, scarcely coherent, ceaselessly begged for mercy. "Do not kill
+me!" he whimpered. "I _can't_ die! Oh, God! Not like this! I never had a
+chance! You kill Natalie if you kill me--the breed will fix her!--and my
+mother! You'll have three murders on your soul! I _can't_ die yet!"
+
+"Get up!" commanded Garth.
+
+Reaching the edge of the water, he ordered him into the dugout.
+
+Mabyn fell on his knees on the stones. "Not in the water! Not in the
+water!" he shrilled. "Kill me here!"
+
+"No one is going to kill you," said Garth with scornful patience. "Do
+what you're told, and you'll not be hurt!"
+
+Mabyn darted a furtive look of hope and suspicion in Garth's face. He
+got up.
+
+"What are you going to do with me?" he muttered.
+
+"Put you on the island," said Garth coolly.
+
+"I'll starve," he whined.
+
+"Food will be brought you regularly, as long as you obey orders," said
+Garth.
+
+Mabyn, his extreme terror subsiding, showed an inclination to temporize.
+"Let me get a few things," he begged. His eyes wandered to the hill over
+which Rina had disappeared.
+
+Garth was anxious on the same score. He fingered the trigger of his gun.
+"In with you!" he said.
+
+Mabyn jumped to obey.
+
+Garth, sitting in the bow with his weapon in his arms, faced Mabyn; and
+forced him to wield the paddle. Mabyn, seeing that he did mean to put
+him on the island, realized there had been no occasion for his brutish
+terror; but instead of feeling any shame for the self-betrayal, he
+characteristically added it to his score against Garth. His gray eyes
+contracted in an agony of impotent hate. At that moment unspeakable
+atrocities committed on Garth's body would not have satisfied Mabyn's
+lust to destroy his flesh. Any move on his part would have overturned
+the crazy dugout, but, shivering at the sight of the water, he was
+unable to take that way.
+
+Garth, wary of the furtive gleam in the man's eye, sprang to his feet
+the instant they touched the island, and leaped out, careful never to
+turn his back. He forced Mabyn to retire a dozen paces, while he took
+the place he vacated in the stern; and then he ordered him to push off.
+
+At the prospect of being left alone, Mabyn's flesh failed him again. He
+clung to the bow of the canoe, and gabbled anew for mercy. Garth,
+wearying of it all, suddenly sent a shot over his head. His weapon,
+silent and smokeless, had an effect of horrible deadliness. Mabyn, with
+a moan of fear, pushed the canoe off, and sank back on the grass of the
+islet.
+
+Exchanging his gun for the paddle, Garth hastened back to the mouth of
+the creek, pausing only to wave his hat reassuringly at Natalie, whom he
+could see reclining on her grassy couch. An essential part of his plan
+was yet to be effected; and he knew not how soon Rina might return.
+Hastily ransacking the cabin, he gathered together all their meagre
+rations; flour, sugar, beans, tea and pork; and he likewise commandeered
+everything that might be turned to use for a weapon; an axe, a chisel,
+and all knives. Three trips up and down the hill conveyed it to the
+dugout. Reembarking, he had no sooner brought it all to his own camp
+than Natalie's sharp eyes discovered Rina returning on the distant hill.
+
+Garth carried Natalie into the tent again; and nerved himself to await
+the inevitable scene. Meanwhile he could see Rina alight at the door,
+search the cabin hastily, and dart about outside, like a distracted ant
+returning to find her dwelling rifled. She followed the tracks down to
+the water's edge, dragging the horse after her. Seeking over the water,
+she soon discovered the dugout lying at Garth's camp; whereupon she
+clambered on the horse again. Presently she came crashing through the
+bush.
+
+This was a vastly different kind of antagonist, that slipped from the
+horse and faced him with blazing eyes. Rina regarded the weapon in his
+hands with as little respect as if it had been a pop-gun. But there was
+nothing baffling about her now, she was just the furious woman common to
+any shade of skin.
+
+"Where is he?" she cried--and without waiting for any answer, emptied
+the hissing ewer of her wrath over Garth's head. Her careful English was
+drowned in a flood of guttural Cree--she fished it up only to curse him.
+
+Garth received the impact in silence, for at first she was in no
+condition to take in the answers she demanded. He suddenly realized, as
+a man thinks of an interesting circumstance that does not concern him at
+all, how beautiful she was; and the thought gave him greater patience.
+
+Rina, bethinking herself at last that her Cree was wasted on him, went
+back to English. "You wait!" she cried threateningly. "Bam-bye, her
+bone, him grow together, and she all the time cry of pain! Then you
+want me bad, and I not come! She will have fever and die!" She
+passionately threw down the leaves she had brought and ground them under
+her heel.
+
+"Mabyn is unhurt!" Garth repeated patiently more than once. "I put him
+on the island."
+
+At last it seemed to reach her. "What for you do that?" she demanded.
+
+"He is always trying to kill me," he said. "I have only put him where he
+can do no harm!"
+
+"I tak' him off!" she cried defiantly. "I mak' a raft! You can't stop
+me!"
+
+"I have seized all the food," said Garth quietly. "You will get none for
+him unless he stays where he is."
+
+Rina's anger stilled and concentrated. "You devil!" she hissed.
+
+Garth turned away. "When you are yourself," he said coolly, "I will talk
+to you plainly and honestly about us all."
+
+"I not talk with you!" she stormed. "You tell lies to me! I not come
+again--till some time you sleep--then I come and kill you!"
+
+He faced her with a sudden imperiousness she could not ignore. "Then the
+way is made open for Mabyn to come to _her_!" he cried. "Where will you
+be then?--thrown on the ground, as you were yesterday!"
+
+The shot told. Her arms dropped, she visibly paled. The white man's
+blood in Rina's cheeks betrayed her at the moments when most she
+desired to secrete her heart. She lowered her head to hide her stricken
+eyes from him. Suddenly she turned and fled through the trees.
+
+Garth was beginning to believe that Rina after all was not so different
+from her white sisters; if so, he thought she would come back. Natalie,
+who had overheard all that passed, said so too. Garth wished to carry
+Natalie out of the tent, that she might help him work with the girl; but
+Natalie, with better wisdom, said no, that Rina would be more tractable
+if she were out of sight.
+
+Meanwhile he set to work with an air of unconcern he was far from
+feeling--there were a hundred ways this plan of his might miscarry, and
+only one way it could succeed! He tied old Cy to his stake again; and
+carefully gathered up what remained of the herbs Rina had cast on the
+ground. He unloaded the seized supplies and made a temporary cache under
+a piece of sail-cloth.
+
+By and by, while he was so engaged, he became aware that Rina was
+hovering about among the trees. He went on with his task, carefully
+avoiding any notice of her. She approached by devious stages, like a
+child drawn against its will. When it became impossible longer to
+conceal herself, she came into the open with her old, wistful, sullen,
+inscrutable face. Garth went about his work, displaying no anxiety to
+treat. He made her speak first.
+
+"What you want say to me?" she asked at last, feigning supreme
+indifference.
+
+"Sit down," he said.
+
+She dropped obediently on the grass; and averted her head. She did not
+squat like the other red people; but reclined, supporting herself on one
+hand, much as Natalie might have done.
+
+Garth lit his pipe, considering what simple, figurative form of words
+would best appeal to her understanding.
+
+"I do not wish Mabyn harm," he began mildly. "He is nothing to me. My
+heart knows only one wish--to make her well, and to take her back safely
+to her friends outside. To accomplish that, I will let nothing stop me!"
+
+He paused to let it sink in. Rina gave no sign of having even heard.
+
+"That is your wish, too," he continued. "You want her away from here.
+She and I are nothing to you. You were happy before we came!"
+
+She darted a startled look at the man who could so well read her
+feelings.
+
+"Mabyn is mad because she will not have him!" Garth went on. "He is
+always crazy for what he cannot have."
+
+She turned her head again with the look that said so plainly, "How did
+you know that?"
+
+"When we get her away, he will soon forget. All will be as it was
+before!"
+
+She maintained her obstinate silence.
+
+"Do I not speak true words?" Garth challenged.
+
+She evaded the question. "If you go out, you send the police after him,"
+she muttered.
+
+He saw Mabyn's hand here. "I will not," he said quickly. "I give you my
+word on that!"
+
+She looked at him incredulously. She did not understand the pledge.
+
+"There's my hand on it," said Garth, offering it.
+
+Rina gravely laid her own in it, and let him wag it up and down. This
+form of binding an agreement she knew.
+
+Still she had not committed herself to anything; and Garth paused,
+determined to make her speak before he went on.
+
+She favoured him at last with a walled glance purely savage. "Let
+'Erbe't go off the island," she said indifferently. Clearly she asked it
+more with the idea to see what he would say, than with any hope of his
+agreeing.
+
+"I will not do that," said Garth firmly. "Night and day he would be
+plotting to kill me. Night and day he would be driving you on to do it
+for him. You would try to do it. You cannot say no to him! And if you
+did bring me down--" Garth sunk his voice--"all, _all_ would be
+lost!--Mabyn and you and Natalie and I!"
+
+Her eyes sought his with a poignant glance; and she paled again. He felt
+he had made an impression.
+
+"I will treat him kindly," he said, seeking to follow up his advantage.
+"You shall go to the shack now for everything he needs; and we will take
+it to him."
+
+"Can I spik with him?" asked Rina in a low tone.
+
+Garth rejoiced--it was the first token of submission. "For five minutes
+by my watch," he said.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+GRYLLS REDIVIVUS
+
+
+On the next day but one Natalie's condition took a sharp turn for the
+worse; and for many days thereafter, Garth put every other thought out
+of his head. She fell into a high fever and suffered incessantly and
+cruelly. At this call, Rina showed forth in colours wholly admirable;
+day or night she seldom left her patient's side; she was never at a loss
+what to do; and Garth comforted himself with the thought that Natalie
+could scarcely have had better care anywhere.
+
+During these busy days Rina appeared to forget her own heartache in a
+measure; and never once on the occasion of their daily trip to the
+island (Garth forcing her to accompany him) did she again express a wish
+to speak to Mabyn. At their approach Mabyn always retreated; and they
+were accustomed to set his rations down on the shore and immediately go
+back.
+
+But Garth could not trust the breed unreservedly, and unceasing
+vigilance was his portion. He had little enough sleep before, and now he
+strove to do without it altogether. For three days and three nights he
+did not close his eyes. On the fourth day, warned by his tortured,
+wavering brain that it must be either sleep or madness, he took his fate
+in his hands and lay down on top of the cache, with his gun beside him.
+
+He was unconscious for nearly twelve hours. When he awoke it was to find
+Rina's eyes fixed upon him strangely. He sprang up, and she turned away
+her head. He could not read that expression--still he had lain there at
+her mercy and she had spared him. Neither had she liberated Mabyn from
+the island, for Garth could see him moving about. He began to hope that
+his arguments had real weight with the breed; and little by little,
+under pressure of his great need, he began to trust her.
+
+But when the dread promontory was weathered at last, and Natalie, a
+wraith of her blooming self, awoke in her right senses, Rina changed
+again, resuming her old sullen, moody self; and all his work was undone.
+It was clear the unfortunate girl was dragged ceaselessly back and forth
+between her new-fledged soul and the old savage impulses of her blood.
+She learned to love the irresistible Natalie whom she had snatched back
+from death--but she likewise hated her; hated her blindly because Mabyn
+loved her; and inconsistently, but naturally, too, hated her because she
+despised Mabyn. The same with Garth; over and over she unconsciously
+showed she trusted him; but her blood still rebelled because he was
+Mabyn's enemy; and he would sometimes find her eyes fixed on him in a
+quickly veiled expression of savage, implacable hatred.
+
+On the first day of his imprisonment, Garth, under threat of withholding
+supplies, had forced Mabyn to cut down the willows fringing the hither
+side of the island; and his movements about his fire and tepee were in
+plain view of those on shore. Concealed from him by a tree, Rina would
+often sit by the hour, watching him wistfully. "God knows what course
+her harried brain pursues!" Garth, observing her, thought--"if she
+thinks at all!" One thing was sure: under the strain of continued
+separation, her resistance to Mabyn's evil suggestions was gradually
+breaking down.
+
+Meanwhile Garth was straining every nerve to complete the shack that was
+to be at once their habitation and their fortress. Within the shelter of
+its walls he hoped to sleep at peace again. His nerves were stretched
+like violin strings from the lack of it; for all he could permit himself
+was an hour or two in the morning while Natalie was awake and could warn
+him. All afternoon he chopped pine trees, which old Cy with an
+improvised harness dragged into camp; and far into the night, until
+overtaken with complete exhaustion, he trimmed his logs, squared the
+ends, and lifted them into place.
+
+It was their second red-letter day, when the last sod was dropped into
+place on the roof, and Garth carried Natalie inside. Strictly considered,
+the house was not very much to brag about, perhaps; for it slanted this
+way and that like the first pothooks in a child's copybook; but Garth,
+fired by Natalie's enthusiastic praises, could not have been prouder
+if he had completed the Taj Mahal.
+
+One end had been partitioned off for Natalie's room; and in finishing
+this part Garth had spent all his pains. The floor was made of small
+logs, filled and plastered with clay, which he had hardened by building
+fires upon it; and had then strewn rushes over the whole. There was a
+rough bunk in one corner, with a low table by its side--the latest thing
+in rustics, the maker explained. There was a tiny window high up on the
+side overlooking the lake; it had no glass, but a stout shutter swinging
+on wooden pins, and which fastened with a strong wooden bar. But the
+crowning feature of the room, constructed with infinite pains after
+countless failures, was the fireplace in the corner. Garth deprecated
+it; it wasn't much of a fireplace; only a sort of little arched doorway
+of baked clay, so narrow the logs had to stand upright in it, making
+cooking very difficult--but when Natalie saw the flames curling up the
+chimney in the most natural way possible, she set up a feeble crow of
+delight.
+
+The balance of the interior was to serve for Garth's room and storeroom
+combined. It had a very small door, also on the lake side; but he could
+not afford a window beside; and he also saved himself the trouble of
+flooring it. The door was constructed in the same manner as the shutter,
+of matched poles strongly braced behind, and further strengthened with
+rawhide lashings.
+
+Natalie had Garth hang a spare blanket over the doorway between the
+two rooms; and she produced a shawl to serve for a table cloth. After
+supper, when they locked themselves in and heaped up the fire, Natalie
+propped up on her couch, and Garth sitting on a stool, smoking by
+especial request--it was as snug as Heaven, Natalie said. The nights had
+been growing dreadfully keen of late; and poor Natalie wrapped in all
+the blankets they possessed had nevertheless more than once lain awake
+with the cold. But now, within thick walls--what matter if they were out
+of the perpendicular?--and under a tight roof, with the flames leaping
+briskly up the chimney, no king in his palace ever experienced such a
+sense of opulent and all-sufficing luxury as Garth and Natalie the first
+night in their miserable shack.
+
+This was the fourteenth day after Natalie's accident. Every day after
+the first week had shown a slight improvement in her condition; and
+every day had therefore lessened the hold Rina had over them; until now
+Garth felt, should it be necessary, he could bring the patient safely
+back to health unaided. Rina knew this too; and became daily more morose
+and sullen in her demeanour. To separate her longer from Mabyn would be,
+Garth felt, simply to promote an explosion. Besides, sufficiently housed
+now, well armed, and with the food safely stored, he felt strong enough
+to be merciful. On the night they moved into the shack he pointed out
+the canoe to Rina, telling her that henceforth she was free to use it as
+she would. He would go to the island no more, he added; but Rina might
+come every day for rations for both--as long as Mabyn remained where he
+was.
+
+He hoped by this to incite the energetic Rina into planning Mabyn's
+escape from the island. They could catch a couple of horses and ride to
+their friends at the distant Settlement, or where they would. He felt he
+could trust Rina, if she ever got Mabyn among her own people, to keep
+him from coming back. Thus he would at the same stroke be rid of them,
+and conserve his rapidly diminishing stores. It was no great matter if
+they drove off all the horses, for he still had old Cy under his eye for
+Natalie to ride; and their own journey back would have to be undertaken
+at a walking pace, anyway. He had learned enough of Rina's mixed
+character to be sure that this would have a greater chance of coming
+about if he let her think of it for herself, so he said nothing to her.
+
+He was disappointed. Mabyn, too timid to undertake so long a journey
+without ample supplies, or perhaps too obstinate to go, they remained on
+the island; and Rina came every day for food. If she was grateful for
+being allowed to join Mabyn she did not show it. Every trace of her
+better nature rapidly disappeared, and she seemed wholly the sullen
+savage. Bad treatment was the explanation they thought; and they pitied
+her.
+
+Garth waited five days more. Natalie was by that time moving around
+freely; and they had begun to count the days to their ardently desired
+retreat from that unhappy valley. The question of food became more and
+more pressing--their journey would have to be spread over many slow
+stages; and he finally decided to drive Mabyn and Rina away.
+
+So the next time Rina came, he told her he would give her two days'
+rations for two persons the following day; and after that they need
+expect no more. In the meantime, he said, she was free to go up on the
+prairie and catch the first two horses she met. He even offered her old
+Cy to round them up, secure in holding the dugout for a hostage. Rina
+betrayed not the least surprise, or any other feeling at his ultimatum,
+but coolly rode off as he bid her. She returned within an hour driving
+Emmy and Timoosis, which she picketed below Mabyn's hut.
+
+What passed between Rina and Mabyn when she returned to the island, the
+other two could only guess at. However, Garth, up at dawn next morning,
+saw them striking the tepee. They made two trips back and forth between
+the island and the mouth of the creek; and afterward, while Mabyn
+saddled and packed the horses, Rina paddled to Garth's camp to get the
+promised rations. They both awaited her on the bank.
+
+Rina presented the mask-like face they had grown accustomed to, and
+maintained a dogged silence. The only sign of feeling she gave was a
+shadow-like pain drowned deep in her dark eyes. Natalie's own eyes
+filled at the sight of her stubbornness; in the days of her suffering
+she had grown very fond of her dark-skinned nurse; and it was she who
+had insisted throughout on the existence of Rina's better nature, and
+had never given up hope of reclaiming the worser part. And now it
+seemed, she must admit herself defeated.
+
+Garth laid out the food he had allotted them; and packed it in a
+flour-bag convenient to carry. He also gave Rina an open letter he had
+written, setting forth their situation (without implicating Mabyn or
+Rina) and asking that food and an escort be sent. That it would ever
+fall into responsible hands was problematical; but it was a chance. He
+refrained from any suggestion that it should be concealed from Mabyn,
+but Rina of her own accord thrust it in her dress; and he argued well
+from the act.
+
+Rina turned to go without a word; but Natalie called her softly. In her
+hand she was holding a round silver locket, in which she had put a tiny
+picture of herself. She held it out to Rina with a wistful smile.
+
+"For you," she murmured. "Keep it because I love you."
+
+Rina looked at the little picture, struggling to maintain her parade of
+unconcern. But suddenly she snatched it out of Natalie's hand; and
+thrust it in her own bosom. Her face worked with the pain of those who
+weep with difficulty; her eyes filled and overflowed at last. With a
+wild, brusque abandon, she flung herself at Natalie's feet and pressed
+the hem of her dress to her trembling lips.
+
+"You good! You good!" she sobbed. Then springing to her feet as abruptly
+as she had fallen, she flew away among the trees.
+
+Half an hour later they heard the two horses passing the trail behind
+their camp; the same trail by which they had all first entered the
+valley; and the way to Spirit River Crossing.
+
+At first they dared not believe they could really be free of their enemy
+so easily; and they continually found themselves listening for the sound
+of their return. Garth saddled Cy at last; and rode along the trail to
+the top of the bench. He saw Mabyn and Rina two specks in the distance;
+and still travelling south. When he returned with the news to Natalie,
+they allowed themselves to rejoice at last; and they were filled with a
+great peace.
+
+Going home! was the burden of their happy speech; home to the land of
+friendly faces, the urbane land, the place of comfortable little things,
+where life was lapped in ease, sane and well-ordered! How their ears
+ached for a human noise again! the bustle of crowded sidewalks, the
+clang of gongs, the fall of hoofs on asphalt! How their flesh yearned
+for the creature comforts! delicate feasting and good clothes to wear!
+One must be plunged into the wilderness for a while to sense the gifts
+of civilization at their true value.
+
+"I can understand now why men are so crazy to be explorers and things,"
+said Natalie. "They go away just for the tremendous fun of coming back
+to it all! Oh-h! Think of dances--and even despised tea-parties now!
+Think of theatres and restaurants and going to the races!"
+
+"And wouldn't I like to take you straight through to New York, though!"
+sang Garth. "Oh! Broadway and the Avenue in September! Everything
+getting under way again! And Coney Island is still going! Picture Luna
+Park dropped down on the island out there!"
+
+They laughed at the incongruous picture.
+
+"Where would we dine the first night?" asked Natalie.
+
+"Martin's," said Garth. "Fancy us in the balcony looking down on the
+giddy crowd; and the orchestra sawing off the sextet from _Lucia_ for
+dear life!"
+
+"Lobster a la Newburg and a _peche Melba_!" cried Natalie in an ecstasy.
+
+"Not on your life!" said Garth. "Just like a girl's bill-of-fare.
+Something sensible for yours when you go out with me! How about a filet
+_dernier cri_?"
+
+"Don't know it," said Natalie. "Besides, I refuse to be sensible in my
+imagination," she added.
+
+Garth described the delicacy. "And a cheese sauce on top all browned,
+with strips of red pepper laid criss-cross; and it comes steaming hot
+under a little glass cover!"
+
+Natalie groaned. "Oh, talk about something else!" she said faintly.
+
+"What will you wear?" asked Garth with a grin.
+
+Natalie drew a long breath and plunged forthwith into elaborate, excited
+descriptions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Their respite was very short--only to the middle of the following
+morning. They were still dwelling on the subject of home. Garth had
+carefully lifted Natalie into the saddle; and was leading the horse up
+and down the strip of grass to see how she bore it. Suddenly she bent
+her head, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Horses!" she said.
+
+Garth sharply pulled up old Cy. "The Indian cayuses, perhaps," he said.
+
+Natalie shook her head. "Heavier animals than that," she said. "And more
+like the steady trot of ridden horses!"
+
+They listened with strained attention; and presently the pound of hoofs
+was clearly audible returning on the same trail through the woods of the
+lake shore. The approach of strangers is charged with a tremendous
+significance to those immured in a wilderness. They bated their breaths
+to hear better.
+
+Garth scowled. "If they come back they can starve!" he said shortly.
+"They'll not get another stiver's worth from our store!"
+
+Natalie's ears were very sharp. "There are more than two!" she said
+suddenly. "Four--six--more than that!"
+
+Garth's face cleared. "Friends, undoubtedly," he said. "Mabyn could
+never enlist anybody, not even breeds, against us!"
+
+But this was only for Natalie's benefit. Even while he spoke another
+thought struck a chill to his heart. Lifting Natalie off the horse, he
+sent her into the house; and taking his gun, he struck back through the
+woods to the side of the trail, to reconnoitre. He dropped behind a
+clump of mooseberry bushes where he could see without being seen.
+
+The cavalcade was close upon him. The first to ride past was Herbert
+Mabyn. His livid face was alight with triumph; and he carried a new
+Winchester slung over his back. An ill-favoured breed youth followed;
+his face struck a chord in Garth's memory; but so hard is it to
+distinguish alien faces that for the moment he could not place him. Next
+there came six packhorses, laden with food and camp outfit, and driven
+by the next rider, a breed woman, whose face happened to be turned from
+Garth as she passed. He had an uncomfortable sense that he knew her too.
+Rina followed, turning a sad and troubled face in the direction of their
+camp as she rode by.
+
+This seemed to be all; and Garth was about to rise, when he heard still
+another rider approaching. He crouched back with a sure foreboding of
+who it was; hence there was little surprise in the actual sight of the
+faded check suit enwrapping the burly figure, the broad-rimmed
+"Stetson," and the ragged cigar ceaselessly twisted between fat lips. He
+looked older, that was all; and he bore marks of illness. Nick Grylls
+had found them out.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+SUCCOUR
+
+
+Garth was thankful he was alone when it happened. The reaction after
+their day of joyous hopefulness was too sudden to be borne. Crouching
+behind the bush, he dropped his head in his arms. What could he hope
+for, single-handed against such overwhelming odds? For a while his heart
+failed him utterly, and all his faculties were scattered in clownish
+confusion. He knew not which way to turn. At last one thought shone
+through the murk of his brain like a star: Natalie must not be rudely
+frightened. He got up; and composing his face with a great effort of
+will, he hastened back to her.
+
+But the riders having crossed the bed of the stream, and mounted the
+rise, Natalie already knew as much as he. Her first thought was likewise
+for him. She turned a solicitous face.
+
+"My poor Garth!" she said. "More care and danger for you!"
+
+The simple words acted on him like a strong tonic. His brow smoothed;
+his mouth hardened; and he was mightily ashamed for his moment of
+weakness.
+
+"More fun!" he said with his dry, arrogant note of laughter. "Act four
+of the drama begins!"
+
+Natalie caught his spirit and laughed back.
+
+"Who was the half-breed, do you suppose?" he said. "Whitey-blue eyes,
+ugly scar!"
+
+"Don't you remember?" she said quickly. "The stage to the Landing----"
+
+"Xavier! Of course!" he cried.
+
+"And the second woman?"
+
+"I only saw a ring of gray curls under her hat."
+
+"Mary Co-que-wasa!"
+
+"Hm! The entire _dramatis personae_?" said Garth.
+
+Natalie, not to be outdone, saluted with her good arm, and asked:
+"Orders of the day, Captain?"
+
+In a truly desperate pass one breaks down--or laughs. Youth laughs. They
+bolstered each other's courage with their jests, each secretly wondering
+and admiring of the other.
+
+"We have the house, anyway!" said Garth. "Good old tumbledown shanty!"
+
+"No! Fort Indefatigable!" amended Natalie.
+
+"It'll be besieged all right," said Garth. "We must carry in everything
+we own, and fill up the rest of the space with wood for the fire. I
+would share my room with Cy, but the old boy couldn't get his ribs
+through the door!"
+
+Natalie was told off for sentry duty. She took up her position at the
+edge of the shore, where she could report on all that transpired in the
+other camp. It seemed to be the design of these people first to overawe
+them with a display of force. They pitched camp openly, in and around
+Mabyn's hut; and moved about all day in plain view. The men amused
+themselves by shooting their guns at various marks, clearly to show the
+number and strength of their weapons. Up to dark, Natalie was able to
+report that none of the five had left camp.
+
+Garth, meanwhile, worked like a Trojan. All the wood cut for the fire
+was carried inside, and he had, besides, a quantity of logs left over or
+discarded from the building of the shack; and these were likewise
+stored. The hut was built so near the edge of the bank there was little
+possibility of an attack from in front; in each of the other three sides
+he cut a loophole for observation and defense. The last hours of
+daylight he spent in hunting near camp; and in setting snares to be
+visited later. Two rabbits were all that fell to his bag.
+
+At nightfall they locked themselves in. Garth did not stop then, but
+worked for hours piling the spare logs around the three vulnerable sides
+of the shack; so that if the bullets should fly, they would be protected
+under a double barrier.
+
+The night passed without alarms.
+
+In the morning Garth wished to venture forth as if nothing had happened.
+Inaction was intolerable to him. He insisted it would be fatal for him
+to act as if he were afraid.
+
+Natalie was all against it.
+
+"But this is the twentieth century after all," he said; "and we're under
+a civilized Government. They would never dare shoot me in cold blood!"
+
+"Not kill you, perhaps," she said; "but bring you down, helpless!" Tears
+threatened here; and Garth was silenced.
+
+Opening the shutter in Natalie's room, they could still command a view
+of the other camp. Grylls and Mabyn were visible; and at intervals the
+two women appeared. Xavier was missing.
+
+"He will be watching us," Natalie said.
+
+As if to give point to her words, a rifle suddenly barked its hoarse
+note, close outside. Garth sprang to the loophole in Natalie's room; and
+was in time to see the poor, stupid, faithful old horse, tethered
+outside, sink to his knees, and collapse on the grass.
+
+He leaped up, turning an ominous, wrathful face.
+
+"Oh! The damned cowards!" he muttered.
+
+Natalie flew into the adjoining room, and flung herself in front of the
+door. "You must not go out!" she cried. "What would I do, if you were
+hurt?"
+
+She was unanswerable, and he turned from the door, sickened with balked
+wrath, and flung himself face down on his blankets until he could
+command himself.
+
+As if to give this act time to sink in, nothing further was undertaken
+against Garth and Natalie all day; though they were undoubtedly under
+surveillance, because the five were never about their own camp at the
+same time. It was a bitter, hard day on the besieged; Garth, chafing
+intolerably, paced the shack like a newly caged animal; and even Natalie
+suffered from his temper.
+
+At nightfall he eased his pent-up feelings by a cautious sally. He
+filled all their vessels in the lake; and revisited his snares, which,
+however, yielded nothing. They were too near camp. He saw no sign of any
+adversary; but some of them came about later in the night like coyotes;
+for in the morning Garth saw that the body of old Cy had been dragged
+away--in the fear, perhaps, that his flesh might furnish them with food.
+
+After breakfast Garth took his pipe to the window, and folding his arms
+on the high sill, watched the movements in the camp across the little
+bay. They were watching him too; he presently sensed a pair of
+field-glasses in Grylls's hands. Garth laughed and obeying a sudden,
+ironical impulse, waved his hand. Grylls abruptly lowered the glass and
+walked away.
+
+Garth was still smiling, when all at once, without warning, Rina came
+around the corner of his shack and faced him point blank. The smile was
+fixed in astonishment; Rina was unperturbed.
+
+"What do you want?" he demanded, picking up his gun.
+
+"I got no gun," she said, indifferently, exhibiting her empty hands.
+"Nick Grylls, him send you letter."
+
+Garth reflected that by letting her in, he stood the chance of getting
+much useful information; so bidding Natalie stay in her own room, he
+opened the door.
+
+Rina handed him the note from Grylls. It was scribbled in a small,
+crabbed hand on the back of a business letter. On the other side Garth
+had a glimpse of the time-honoured formula: "_Dear Sir: Yours of the
+first instant to hand, and contents noted. In reply we beg to say_----"
+It gave him a queer, incongruous start: outside, it seemed, people still
+went to and from their offices, absorbed in their inconsequential
+affairs--while here in the woods he was fighting for his life, and
+Natalie's honour!
+
+"Where is _she_?" Rina asked--she had never referred to Natalie by name.
+"I will fix her hair for her if she want," she added humbly enough.
+
+Natalie immediately came forward, offering her hand. Rina clung to it
+without speaking, turning away her head to hide welling tears.
+
+"Where did you meet these people?" Garth asked her.
+
+"On the prairie," she answered, low-voiced. "Yesterday, noon spell. They
+coming this way. Nick Grylls, him mak' moch friend with 'Erbe't, and
+'Erbe't, him glad. Nick Grylls big man, rich man, everybody lak to be
+friend with him. Nick Grylls say him come to help 'Erbe't. Him give
+'Erbe't ver' fine gun."
+
+"Humph! Mabyn will pay dear for it!" Garth exclaimed.
+
+"I say so him," Rina said eagerly. "Me, I tell 'Erbe't everybody see
+Nick Grylls him jus' mak' a fool of you. What he want with you? He want
+her for himself. 'Erbe't on'y laugh. 'E say--" Rina's voice sunk very
+low--"'Let him help me get her, and I'll keep her, all right!'"
+
+Garth frowned and clenched his fists. His gorge rose intolerably, at the
+thought of this precious pair contending which was to have Natalie.
+
+Rina went on: "Nick Grylls say to 'Erbe't, mustn't let her get out of
+the country. He say 'If she go out she divorce you.'" Rina pronounced
+the word strangely. "Nick Grylls say he know a place to tak' her all
+winter, Northwest, many days to Death River, where no white man ever go
+before. Him think I not hear what he say."
+
+This was valuable information indeed.
+
+Garth opened the letter. It was a curious document, for while the
+thoughts were like Grylls's, they were clothed in a certain smoothness
+of phrase more likely supplied by Mabyn:
+
+     MR. GARTH PEVENSEY, SIR: (Thus it ran) I am astonished beyond
+     measure at the story I have learned from the lips of my good
+     friend, Mr. Herbert Mabyn. I assure you, sir, that, though this is
+     an unsettled country, we are not accustomed to lawlessness; nor do
+     we propose to stand for it from strangers. You have twice attempted
+     Mr. Mabyn's life; you have stolen and converted to your own use his
+     household effects and supplies; you have unwarrantably imprisoned
+     him on an exposed island to the great detriment of his health. Your
+     purpose in all this is transparent. You seek to part him from his
+     wife; and you are at this moment detaining Mrs. Mabyn in your
+     shack.
+
+     I flatter myself I am not without weight and standing in this
+     community; and I hereby warn you that in the absence of the regular
+     police, I mean to see this wrong righted. If Mrs. Mabyn is
+     immediately returned to her husband, you will be allowed to go
+     unmolested. If you still detain her, we will seize her by force, as
+     we have every right, moral and legal, to do. We know you have only
+     food enough for a few days, so in any case the end cannot remain
+     long in doubt.
+
+     NICHOLAS GRYLLS.
+
+Scorn and amusement struggled in Garth's face. His nostrils thinned; he
+suddenly threw up his head and grimly laughed.
+
+"Well, this beats the Dutch!" he said feelingly.
+
+Natalie, reading the cunningly plausible sentences over his shoulder,
+was inclined to be anxious. "Surely he has no legal right over me," she
+said.
+
+"Not a shadow!" Garth said.
+
+"Grylls may have believed this story Mabyn told him," she said.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" Garth said quickly. "Grylls is not so simple." He
+stuck the letter sharply with his forefinger. "I'm a newspaper
+reporter," he went on dryly, "you can believe me, this is a perfect, a
+beautiful, a monumental bluff! I'm almost inclined to take off my hat to
+him! But the length of it gives them away, rather; they must have spent
+all day yesterday cooking this up."
+
+"What will you do?" Natalie asked.
+
+A wicked gleam appeared in Garth's eyes. "Oh, wouldn't I love to answer
+it in kind!" he said longingly.
+
+"An innocent, simple little billet-doux that would make them squirm.
+Why, that's my business!"
+
+"Better not," said Natalie anxiously.
+
+"You're right," he said with a sigh. "It's the first thing you learn:
+never to write when you feel that way. But it's mighty hard to resist
+it!"
+
+Rina understood little of all this. "You send answer back?" she asked.
+
+"No. Tell him there's no answer," said Garth. "Tell him we nearly died
+laughing," he added.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Garth determined not to leave the cabin until shortly before
+dawn. He had seen Xavier leave the other camp before dark; and he
+guessed the breed youth had been told off to watch them. From what he
+had observed of the incontinuity of the breed mind in any given
+direction, he strongly suspected if they kept still throughout the first
+part of the night Xavier would fall asleep before morning. He had a
+little plan in his mind, which he did not confide to Natalie. About
+three o'clock, therefore, he called Natalie to bar the door after him;
+and he sallied forth, concealing from her that he carried a coil of
+light rope.
+
+He was gone more than an hour, of which every minute was an age to poor
+Natalie crouching over the fire and straining her ears. She had
+successively pictured every possible accident that might have befallen
+him, before her heart leaped at the sound of his signal at the door.
+
+Garth was for sending her back to bed forthwith, but Natalie apprehended
+he had not been gone so long for nothing; and presently she heard him
+stand two guns in the corner.
+
+"What have you got?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"Oh, I just made a trade." Garth airily returned. "Thirty feet of
+clothesline for a Winchester and a bag of cartridges. I threw in a
+handkerchief to boot. Pretty good, eh?"
+
+Natalie pulled him in by the fire, and made him light his pipe and tell
+her what had happened.
+
+"Well, I had a hunch Xavier was watching us to-night," he began. "I bore
+a grudge against Xavier's pretty face, and I thought I'd have a little
+fun with him, you see."
+
+Natalie glanced up in alarm.
+
+"A fellow would go mad, if he couldn't do _anything_," Garth apologized.
+"I'll be good now for a week."
+
+"Xavier?" said Natalie inquiringly.
+
+"I wouldn't have minded a little bit, giving the brute his quietus,"
+Garth said coolly. "He killed my horse. But he had no chance to put up a
+fight; and I couldn't murder him; so at this present moment he's
+unhurt--except his feelings. But Grylls will half kill him in the
+morning!"
+
+"What did you do to him?" she demanded.
+
+"I was pretty sure he would be watching the path we have made to the
+trail," Garth went on. "I figured he would be on my left hand--his
+right; it's the position a man instinctively takes. You can't shoot so
+well over your right. So I crawled along the path, inch by inch on my
+stomach----"
+
+"Garth!" she cried in horror. "If I had known!"
+
+"Exactly!" he said. "So I didn't tell you. But there was no danger,
+really. It was too dark for him to shoot me--pitchy dark there, under
+the trees. I couldn't see an inch before my nose; and as I went I felt
+with my hand out in front of me, both sides the path. Thistledown was
+nothing to the lightness of my touch.
+
+"Sure enough, no more than thirty yards behind the house here, I touched
+his moccasin--you couldn't mistake the feel of a moccasin. And, just as
+I expected, he was sitting on my left. That was a pretty good guess
+if----"
+
+"Oh! Go on! Go on!" she begged.
+
+"He had his back against a tree. I listened for his breathing. They
+breathe very light--tubercular, probably. Finally, I decided he was
+asleep.
+
+"Well, I mosied around behind him; and then I grabbed him. He let out
+just one little squawk; and then he shut his mouth. He struggled;
+slippery as an oiled cat, but not very strong. Finally I got him gagged
+with my handkerchief. Then I tied him up with my rope; round and round;
+just like the stories we read when we were kids. I expect I pinched him
+some; that was for poor old Cy.
+
+"Afterward I sat down opposite him; and lit my pipe; and thought over
+what I'd do with him, now I had him. We certainly weren't going to feed
+his ugly phiz; and he was no use as a hostage, for Grylls wouldn't give
+a hang what became of him. Meanwhile I was relieving my mind, by telling
+him a few plain truths about making war on dumb beasts. Hope he
+understood!"
+
+Natalie concealed a smile. "What did you say?" she asked.
+
+"Never mind," said Garth. "It was more forcible than polite. It's been
+sizzling inside me for two days. Finally I decided to return him to his
+own camp."
+
+"Their camp!" exclaimed the startled Natalie.
+
+"Not all the way," he said; "but just where they'd see him in the
+morning. Horrible example, and all that, you know. So I hoisted him on
+my back, and carried him around to the brook. I propped him against a
+tree there, with his face turned home." Garth chuckled. "To finish the
+thing up brown, I suppose I ought to have pinned a placard on his
+breast: Notice! This is the fate that awaits all who--_et cetera_. But I
+didn't think to take any writing materials along with me!"
+
+"Oh, Garth!" said Natalie reproachfully, as he finished.
+
+He turned a face of whimsical penitence. "Honest, I won't do it again!"
+he said. "But I was under two hundred pounds pressure. It was a case of
+blow off or bust!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They could joke for each other's benefit; but privately neither
+attempted to disguise from himself what a desperate pass they had
+reached. When they parted for the night, Natalie would lie staring
+wide-eyed at the fire, and ceaselessly reproaching herself for having
+drawn Garth into the sad tangle of her life; while he, tossing on his
+blankets on the other side of the partition, blamed himself no less
+bitterly for having allowed her to run into danger; and wrung his
+exhausted brain for an expedient to save her.
+
+A little beleaguered garrison watching its small store lessen day by
+day, and counting the crumbs--this is the situation of all to try the
+soul. But a garrison is always buoyed up by the hope of succour; and
+Garth and Natalie could expect none. On the other hand there was no
+possibility of treachery within this garrison; no need to measure out
+the rations, or to guard the store; for each was jealous of the other's
+having _less_; and each sought to give away his share.
+
+There was no variety in those days. They waited in vain for an
+attack--even longed for it; for behind their walls, the odds would be
+more nearly equal. But the other party knew this too; and preferred to
+starve them out. Garth's snares yielded nothing in four days; the only
+flesh they ate during that time was a fish he caught with a line set at
+night in the lake. Their stores were reduced to a few handfuls of flour
+and a little tea. Meanwhile their enemies feasted insolently all day
+about their fire; this siege was child's play for them; they were so
+perfectly sure of their prey in the end.
+
+There came a night at last when Garth and Natalie no longer cared to
+keep up the show of joking; they liked to be quiet instead; and they
+instinctively drew close together. They sat in the inner room; her head
+dropped frankly on his shoulder; and her hand lay in his. It made his
+heart ache to see how thin it was. But her spirit was still strong.
+
+"Garth!" she said suddenly. "Let's make a break for it! Anything would
+be better than this!"
+
+He shook his head. "No go, dearest," he said. "I've been over that, over
+and over it, every night for a week!"
+
+"Couldn't we start down the lake in the canoe?" she said. "And make our
+way from some point below? We could cover our tracks that way, and gain
+much time. You have a rough map and a compass."
+
+"They would discover in the morning that the canoe was gone," he said.
+
+"They might not miss it for a day or two."
+
+"They have the smoke of our fire to go by, too."
+
+"They're careless. We might get a good start."
+
+"Dearest, even if we had many days' start, they know we must make for
+the Settlement. How easy it would be to head us off!"
+
+"But it _might_ succeed," was all she could say.
+
+"It's seventy-five miles," he said sadly. "You're not strong yet. How
+could you walk it, without food to support you on the way?"
+
+"You have your gun," she said faintly.
+
+"There's no hunting on the open prairie for a man on foot!"
+
+Natalie dropped her head back on his shoulder; and said no more.
+
+Garth's face grew grimmer and grimmer in the firelight. "Do not lose
+heart, dear," he said at last, in a gentle voice that was strangely at
+variance with his eyes. "Matters will take a turn to-morrow; I promise
+you that."
+
+"What are you going to do?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"I'm thinking it out," he said, evasively. "I'll tell you when it's
+pieced together."
+
+She was too weary to question him further.
+
+In the darkness of his own room, he faced the thing. There was to be no
+sleep for him this night. The alternative had been there from the first;
+but hitherto he had averted his eyes from it, hoping against hope. Now
+it could be put off no longer. It was Natalie's life against theirs; and
+throughout the hours of the night, he steeled his heart to launch five
+souls to eternity--two of them the souls of women. Rina he knew would be
+transformed into a tigress by the death of Mabyn; so even Rina, whom
+Natalie loved, must go too. He found himself dwelling with horror on the
+harmony of her beauty, the deep fire of her eyes, the soft play of
+colour in her cheeks--which he was to mar!
+
+Supposing he succeeded, the dreadful consequences were painfully clear
+to him; the hideous noise it would make in the world when they got out;
+the ugly look it would have, with no one to bear out his story but
+Natalie, and her lawful husband among the dead! Grylls's lying letter
+had shown him how easy it would be to paint that side of the story in
+the colours of justice. For himself, Garth cared nothing; but the
+thought of Natalie, the sport of a world of malicious tongues, maddened
+him. But there was no help for it; it had to be done.
+
+His plan was simple in the extreme. He intended to cross the lake in the
+canoe; land well beyond Mabyn's camp; and fire the grass to the windward
+of the shack. No rain had fallen in weeks; the grass was as dry as
+tinder; and the old bleached shack itself almost as inflammable as
+gunpowder. He had, moreover, a small quantity of oil among the things
+seized from Mabyn. The night itself seemed to speak for the deed; it was
+as dark as Erebus; and there was a blustering, raw wind from the north,
+presaging snow.
+
+After starting the fire, he meant to climb the rising ground behind; and
+when they ran to beat out the flames, he would pick them off one by one.
+His gun would shoot as fast as he could think; he might get all five
+then. And if any regained the hut, they would soon be driven out again.
+Whichever way they ran, Garth could run as fast on the higher ground;
+and none of them was such a shot as he. Grylls first; then Mabyn; then
+the breeds. He meant to wait until dawn, so that if any escaped the
+radius of the fire, he could get them by daylight.
+
+But no executioner may have imagination; in the darkness of his room the
+attitudes of the slain were pictured to Garth as clearly as if they
+already lay before him: Grylls's gross body huddled in the grass; Mabyn
+hideous in death; and Rina cold and still in her wistful beauty. Cries
+of terror and agony rang in his ears; and he saw himself afterward
+burying the bodies--partly eaten by the flames. Small icy drops broke
+out on his forehead. Though he was doing it for her, when it was done,
+Natalie could not but shrink from such a bloody wretch. It would part
+them forever. But it must be done!
+
+When his watch showed half-past four--the dawn was later now--he arose
+to start. He called Natalie to bar the door after him. He told her he
+was going merely to look about and that she must not worry if he was not
+back until daylight. Natalie was scarcely awake. He yearned mightily to
+take her soft, sleepy form in his arms for once before they were
+imbrued; but he dared not, knowing she would instantly interpret the act
+as a possible farewell.
+
+When she closed the door behind him, he felt as one lost to hope.
+
+As he grasped the canoe, preparatory to pushing it off, he suddenly
+became aware through his sharpened senses--he could not have said
+how--that some one was very near him. He noiselessly dropped to one
+knee; and unslinging his gun, waited. The wind was making confusing
+noises and he could not be sure. The suspense became too great to be
+borne in silence.
+
+"Who's there?" he said sharply.
+
+There came a strange, new, and yet familiar voice out of the darkness:
+"Garth, is that you?"
+
+His heart began to beat wildly. "Who are you?" he whispered.
+
+"Charley!" returned the voice with the boyish break in it.
+
+They sprang to their feet simultaneously, not ten paces apart in the
+grass.
+
+"I've brought you grub!" sang the boy. "How's Natalie?"
+
+In an instant they were in each other's arms. A swift reaction passed
+over Garth; his knees weakened under him; he clung to the boy's
+shoulders; and lowered his head.
+
+"Oh, thank God! thank God!" he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+THE BROKEN DOOR
+
+
+Garth beat recklessly on the cabin door crying:
+
+"Natalie! Natalie! Good news!"
+
+She was not long in opening.
+
+"See what I've brought you back!" he shouted.
+
+They slammed the door shut; and together pulled Charley in by the light
+of the fire.
+
+"Charley! _Charley!_" cried Natalie, quite beside herself with delight;
+and flinging her free arm around his neck, she pressed her lips full on
+his.
+
+The honest full-moon face of the boy turned as red as a peony; but his
+arms closed around her too, with a right good will; and it was Natalie
+in the end, who was obliged gently to disengage herself.
+
+They all talked at once; they laughed and wept in concert. As soon as
+they finished shaking hands all around, they began again. Whenever Garth
+was at a loss to express his feelings, he whacked Charley between the
+shoulders, until the boy coughed. In the end, speech failing them
+completely, they whooped and capered about the shack like wild things.
+
+"I say!" said Garth suddenly. "We're giving ourselves away nicely! The
+news has reached Mabyn and Grylls by this time."
+
+They quieted down.
+
+"Tell us your adventures, Charley dear," said Natalie.
+
+"I'd better bring my stuff in first," said he.
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+The boy unslung a bundle from his back. "Thought you might be hungry, so
+I brought enough for a couple of squares," he said; "sugar, and tea, and
+bacon, and flour. And say, I thought something fancy would go down good;
+so there's a tin of sardines and a box of biscuits."
+
+"Oh! you darling!" said Natalie.
+
+Charley was much embarrassed. "The rest of the stuff's cached two miles
+down the shore," he went on hastily. "I'll trot along and bring it in."
+
+"Take the canoe," said Garth; "and they can't hold you up."
+
+"What will I do with the horses?" asked Charley.
+
+This was a problem. "How many?" Garth asked.
+
+"Three."
+
+"How will we keep them out of Grylls's hands?"
+
+"Why wait at all?" asked Natalie. "Let us all get in the canoe, and
+start for home. It will take me just five minutes to get ready!"
+
+But Garth shook his head. "You can't ride above a walk yet," he said.
+"It would mean a running fight all the way. The odds are still too
+great against us in the open!"
+
+"The fellows from the Settlement promised to come look for us in a week
+if we weren't home," said Charley.
+
+"Good!" said Garth. "Then we'll wait for them!"
+
+"And the horses?" said the boy anxiously. "They're not much to brag
+about; but I'm in debt a hundred bones for them."
+
+Garth clapped him on the back again. "Don't you worry about that, old
+boy!" he cried. "The debt is mine! Tell you what we'll do!" he added,
+"We'll bring them up here, and swim them off to the island. There's
+forage enough over there for a day or two, and they will be right under
+our eyes!"
+
+They set off immediately in the canoe; and it was all accomplished as
+planned. Charley brought the precious grub back by water, out of
+Grylls's possible reach; while Garth drove the horses in over the trail
+at a smart pace. Nothing happened en route; it was probably all done
+before their adversaries had time to plan an attack. They swam the
+horses to the island, and were both back in the shack, before it was
+light enough to aim a gun.
+
+Breakfast followed; and such a breakfast! They both helped the one-armed
+cook. There was bannock light and snowy; bacon fried crisp--"breakfast"
+bacon, very different in the North from plain "bacon"; and fried
+sardines--delectable morsels! and coffee, and jam. All the delicious
+things Garth and Natalie had dreamed of paled beside this homely
+reality. Each of the three was delighted, moreover, to see the others
+eat; Charley in especial, at the sight of the good he had brought, could
+scarcely stop grinning to chew. Afterward he had to be told all that had
+happened; and he in return related his adventures.
+
+"Tell you what! I was sore when Garth sent me back!" Charley began.
+"'What's the use!' I thought. 'I can't do any work, not knowing what's
+come of them.' In the end I just didn't go back. I had all kinds of
+crazy ideas about following you along the trail; but at last I thought
+maybe I could be some real use by hanging round the Settlement, and
+keeping an eye on Nick Grylls. And I did.
+
+"Say, he really was knocked out all right, all right. They carried
+him in from the lake; and the sisters nursed him in the Convent.
+Construction of the brain he had, or something like that. Seems he
+got up when he first come to on the shore, walked ten miles, and then
+collapsed right near Grier's Point. But they kept that low. Hooliam gave
+out a great story, how a big storm came up on the lake, and how Nick
+fell overboard, _et cetera, et cetera_; Garth wasn't mentioned in it
+at all!
+
+"Long before Nick was able to be around, he sent down for Mary Co-que-wasa
+and Xavier; and then I knew there was more mischief brewing. Say, those
+two are the toughest of the whole tough bunch. They say Xavier is Mary's
+son. All this time I was getting mighty worried myself, why you didn't
+come back, and I was going to look for you anyway. However, as soon as he
+was up, Grylls got a big outfit together, and started over the portage
+with the two breeds. He gave out that he was going up to Ostachegan
+Creek--but I knew! I got a couple of cayuses on credit, and a little
+grub; and followed him inside three hours.
+
+"He beat me by a day to the Crossing, and went right through. Over there
+I heard about you from the fellows; and say, I was scared for fair, when
+I counted up the grub I knew you had, and then thought how long you'd
+been away! I hustled and got another horse and all the grub they would
+trust me for. I tried my darnedest to get some of the fellows to come
+with me. They laughed at me! They said I'd been reading too many dime
+novels--I never read any! You see, every one knows Nick Grylls so well,
+and nothing like this ever happened before. Jim Plaskett, the policeman,
+would have believed me; but he was away. I left a letter for him. I lost
+a couple of good days at the Crossing over this. The most the fellows
+would say was, if I didn't bring you back in a week, the bunch would
+ride up here.
+
+"I was so excited with it all, I lost myself like a bloody fool for two
+days on the prairie; and I just ran on the lake, by accident, yesterday
+afternoon. Say, I almost gave the whole snap away, for I came over the
+hill right above Mabyn's shack. Maybe I didn't duck in a hurry! There
+was the whole bunch below me! Across the corner of the lake, I could see
+this house too. I know it must be yours because it was just built; and
+it had a sort of tenderfoot look to it. Say! I wasn't glad to see smoke
+coming out of the chimney! Oh, no!
+
+"Well, that's about all. I took a long sweep around the prairie, and
+came down at the place where we got the horses. I thought they would
+have you watched, so I figured I'd better wait for night, before trying
+to open up communications. When she got good and dark, I crawled around
+the shore of the lake. But when I got here, I didn't know how in thunder
+to let you know it was me, without bringing down the bunch on us. So I
+decided to lay low till morning, and show myself to you, the first
+chance I got. Then Garth came out and it was all right!"
+
+"Just in the nick of time!" said Garth grimly.
+
+"What were you going to do?" asked Natalie quickly.
+
+But he never told her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They settled down with what patience they could muster, to wait for
+their relief. Two days passed without any hostile demonstration from the
+camp on the hill; but that their enemies kept themselves well informed,
+they had the best reason to know; for it snowed on the second day, and
+on the following morning there were moccasin tracks around the house,
+and the rounded marks of two knees under the loophole in Natalie's room.
+Garth had taken the precaution to hang a piece of canvas over the hole;
+nevertheless, the discovery made them decidedly uncomfortable. Garth
+nailed a board over the hole; and they searched the walls anew for any
+tell-tale crack that might betray them.
+
+It grew warm again; and the snow melted off the ground. Frequent
+observations of the other camp taught them nothing. This apparent
+inactivity puzzled Garth, since the others must know that the game of
+starving them out was blocked with the arrival of Charley. They waited
+in momentary expectation of attack, or a proposal; but none came.
+
+Garth's only serious anxiety now was for the three horses. They must by
+this time have cropped the limited herbage of the island; and in another
+day, when they began to suffer with hunger, they would undoubtedly swim
+off; and all his trouble to save them would be lost. He was greatly
+tempted by the recollection of a wide, low meadow on the edge of the
+lake below, where the blue-joint grass grew as high as a man's thigh,
+curing naturally in the sun. With an hour's labour, he reflected, he
+could cut enough to last them for a day.
+
+There was a risk, of course, in depriving the cabin of its principal
+defender for even so long; but he would not be at any time more than
+half an hour's journey from them; and Charley ought surely to be able
+to hold the fort for that time. In case of an attack it might even be
+an advantage for him, Garth, to be on the outside of the cabin, where he
+could flank the attackers with his gun.
+
+In the end he went; setting off two hours before dawn, according to his
+custom. On issuing from the shack, he found with some anxiety that the
+sky had become heavily overcast, and an east wind had sprung up. This
+would prevent his hearing as well as he wished; however, he considered
+that if Grylls intended a night attack, he would scarcely wait until so
+near morning: and he kept on.
+
+He sat in the stern of the canoe pushing hard against the opposing wind.
+The raised bow danced over the water, slapping the little waves, and
+sending out musical cascades of drops on either side. The wind had the
+same cool, damp smell of the east winds at home; and he was reminded of
+a score of nights when he had nothing heavier on his mind than the
+approaching end of a vacation. After two days' imprisonment in the
+shack, the tussle with the wind was highly exhilarating; and it was very
+good to measure the strength of his arms. He sang under his breath as he
+worked. Black as it was, he could guide himself by the dimly-sensed
+outline of the tree masses; and when they receded he knew he had arrived
+opposite the meadow.
+
+It took him longer than he had counted on to gather what he could carry;
+for he was hampered by the intense darkness. He collected the hay into
+small armfuls, which in turn he tied into great bundles; and wedged them
+into the canoe. Embarking again, he raced back before the wind at double
+the speed he had made against it.
+
+On the way, a single, dull sound, coming muffled through the night,
+brought his heart into his throat. He paused; but no other sound
+followed, except the song of the water, and the sweep of the wind
+through the branches on shore. He redoubled his strokes, filled with a
+vague anxiety; and pausing only to cast out his bundles on the shore of
+the island, hastened back to the camp. He heard no other untoward
+sounds; but crossing from the island, he saw that the fire in the other
+camp had died down. This had never happened any night before; and it
+added to his uneasiness. The increased chill of the air now heralded the
+approach of dawn; but it was not yet any lighter.
+
+As he landed, the familiar outline of his own house, just as he had left
+it, allayed his fears. Everything about the camp was still. Cautiously
+drawing up the canoe, he advanced with confidence to give the prearranged
+knock on the door. His knuckles beat upon the air. The door was wide open.
+
+Then Garth's heart shrivelled in his breast; and his throat was
+constricted as by sudden deadly fumes. He staggered in. There was
+a stale odour of gunpowder in the room.
+
+"Natalie! Charley!" he called, in a choked whisper.
+
+The stillness mocked him.
+
+He ran into Natalie's room, still faintly illumined by the embers of
+the hearth. A glance told him it was empty; but he felt with his hands
+in all the dim corners, agonizingly whispering her name. There was no
+evidence here that any struggle had taken place.
+
+Running out to the outer room toward Charley's bed, he fell over a body
+lying on the floor. A touch told him it was the boy. He disregarded it,
+until he had made sure Natalie was not there. Then dragging the body
+into the inner room, he built up the fire. He saw the boy was not dead;
+he could find no wound on him. He worked desperately to bring him to.
+
+Charley stirred at last, and opened his eyes.
+
+"What happened?" besought the distracted Garth.
+
+The boy only looked at him stupidly.
+
+"For God's sake collect your wits, and tell me!" he cried.
+
+Charley, suddenly clutching Garth's arm, raised himself on his elbow.
+"Garth!" he cried wildly. "Natalie! Where is she?"
+
+"God knows!" groaned Garth.
+
+Terrible recollection returned to the boy's eyes. He sat up dizzy and
+nauseated. "I remember now!" he stuttered.
+
+"Quick! Quick!" implored Garth.
+
+"It was a little while after you went," Charley continued, getting it
+out with difficulty. "Natalie came and shook me. She said she heard a
+sound outside.... We waited and listened--a quarter of an hour it
+seemed.... We heard nothing.... Then suddenly with one big crack, the
+door flew open. They drove a log against it.... I couldn't tell how many
+came in--maybe three.... I shoved Natalie behind me in the farthest
+corner. I had the Winchester ready in my hands.... They dropped to the
+floor when they came in; and scattered. I couldn't tell where they
+were--I don't know how long it was.... Suddenly I heard something close
+to--somebody breathing. I fired. In the flash I saw them all, Xavier,
+Mary, and right over me, Nick Grylls, swinging the butt of his gun--then
+my head split in pieces ... and you came!"
+
+"Oh, my God!" cried Garth.
+
+He picked up his rifle, and ran like a madman from the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+THE BLIZZARD
+
+
+Garth had no conscious design in running; his muscles merely reacted in
+obedience to the grinding tumult in his brain. His eardrums rang with the
+fancied sound of Natalie's cries; and his eyeballs were seared with the
+picture of her shrinking in the brutal hands of Grylls. As he crashed
+through the wood, the little branches whipped his face unmercifully; and
+the spiny shoots of the jackpines tore his clothes. He ran full tilt into
+unyielding obstacles; and was flung aside, unconscious of the shock.
+
+He instinctively sought the other camp. He found it deserted; the tent
+gone; the door of the empty cabin swinging idly in the wind. He came to
+a stop then; and his arms dropped to his sides: without knowledge of the
+direction they had taken; and without the craft to follow their tracks
+in the grass, in his helplessness he hovered on the brink of sheer
+madness. He was sharply called back to himself by the sound of a faint
+groan from the edge of the cut-bank. A tinge of gray had by this time
+been woven into the unrelieved blackness. Running toward the sound, he
+found a human form prone in the grass; and he saw it was a woman lying
+on her face. Grasping her shoulders, he rolled her over. It was Rina.
+
+A tiny hope sprang in his breast. Here at last was a clue.
+
+"Get up!" he said roughly.
+
+She made no answer. From her limpness, and her cold, moist hands, Garth
+apprehended that she was physically sick. Partly raising her, he poured
+part of the contents of his flask down her throat. She choked, and
+turned her head away.
+
+"Let me be!" she murmured. "Let me die!"
+
+The wildness in Garth's veins subsided. Here he had something tangible
+to work upon; and his conscious brain resumed operations; prompting him
+at first like a small, strange voice at an immense distance.
+
+"Tell me what happened!" he said hoarsely. "If they have wronged you,
+too, help me to find them, and we'll pay them off together!"
+
+"No! I want die!" whispered Rina in a voice as dull and hopeless as the
+sound of all-day rain in the grass. "I say I kill myself. He laugh. He
+see me tak' bad medicine. He don' care. I fall down. He leave me. I
+t'ink I die then. I ver' glad. But I tak' too much; and it only mak' my
+stomach sick. Bam-by I try to go to lake and jomp in--but my head go
+off!"
+
+In spite of her unwillingness, Garth forced more of the stimulant down
+her throat. Presently she was able to sit up. She bowed her back, and
+buried her face in her crossed arms.
+
+"Ride with me after them!" urged Garth. "They have less than an hour's
+start! We will overtake them at their first camp. Rouse yourself!"
+
+But Rina only shook her head; and continued to murmur: "He want me die!
+He glad I die!"
+
+Garth's desperate need brought craft to his aid. "Very well," he said
+coolly. "I shoot him on sight! Mabyn goes first!"
+
+Rina, touched home, raised an agitated face. "No! No!" she said
+tremblingly. "Grylls, him took her--not 'Erbe't!"
+
+"No matter!" he said, feigning to leave her. "Mabyn dies like a
+dog--unless you come with me."
+
+Rina struggled to her knees, and clutched at him. "Wait a minute!" she
+stammered.
+
+"Come with me, and I promise you his life, if I can save it," he urged.
+"I will give it to you!"
+
+She attempted to rise; and he lifted her. She stood swaying dizzily,
+clinging to his arm for support.
+
+"I come," she said faintly at last. "Tak' me to the water, then go get
+your horses. When you come back I ride with you."
+
+She stopped in the cabin, and got an herb she knew of to restore her.
+Garth then carried her down the hill, and laying her at the brink of the
+water, where she could drink and bathe her face, he hastened back to his
+own shack.
+
+It was now light enough to see a way through the wood. A spectral mist
+hung suspended a few feet over the lake; beneath it the water was like a
+steel cuirass, reflecting bordering foliage as black as jet. Charley had
+gone for the horses as a matter of course and was even now landing them.
+The boy's whilom rosy cheeks were as white as the mist; and his face was
+twisted with pain. His jaw was set doggedly; and he worked ahead without
+question or comment.
+
+No orders were required; they laboured instinctively. Saddles were
+carried out, and flung on the dripping beasts; and while Charley girthed
+them, Garth rolled the blankets, and made three bundles of grub, as
+heavy as he dared ask each horse to carry, in addition to his rider.
+Natalie's little rifle he gave to Charley; the second Winchester had
+been won back in the raid, and the twenty-two was the only other weapon
+they possessed. In twenty minutes they were ready. Securing the door of
+the hut against the entrance of animals, they hastened to pick up Rina.
+
+They found her waiting, outwardly collected; her old walled, sullen
+self--but in the early light her skin showed a deathly, yellowish gray.
+Refusing any assistance, she climbed into the empty saddle without
+comment; and mutely pointed the way over the hills to the west. Garth
+lingered to affix a note to the door of the shack for those they
+expected to follow.
+
+As he caught up to them again, he overlooked his little party with the
+eye of a commander. It was not a hopeful view: three wretched, half-fed
+beasts he had, complaining at the very start under their loads; and for
+his aids an injured boy and a sick girl; with one first-class weapon and
+a toy among the three of them. This was all he had with which to meet
+and overcome Grylls's strong and well-provided party. The odds were so
+preposterous, he put the thought out of his head with a shrug. At the
+last there is a moment when the hard-pressed commander must wall up his
+brain; and let the tide of his blood carry him. The daylight revealed
+Garth's face gaunt and sunken; his lips a grim stroke of red; and his
+eyes contracted to two icy points.
+
+As they climbed the hill Rina said: "They got fourteen horse. Nick
+Grylls bring nine, three yours, and two cayuse 'Erbe't's."
+
+At the top she halted them, while she walked her horse back and forth,
+searching the grass. Garth's eyes meanwhile swept the wide, brown,
+undulating sea, seeking in the hollows and the coppices for any sign of
+motion. But the plain was as empty of life as the gray sky.
+
+Rina rejoined him. "They break up so we can't see them so good," she
+said in her indifferent way. "Seven horse go by the edge of the coulee,
+southwest. Five horse go west. Two horse go northwest. Bam-by I t'ink
+they come together."
+
+"What horse was _she_ on?" Garth demanded.
+
+"Nick Grylls's big roan," she answered. "They mak' a bag for her to sit
+in. She sit one side; Mary Co-que-wasa sit the other."
+
+"Find the roan's tracks," ordered Garth.
+
+Rina shook her head. "I never follow that horse," she said.
+
+"Find the heaviest tracks then!"
+
+She obediently wheeled her horse; and searched the turf again; riding
+around them in wide fanlike sweeps, while Garth waited with a deadly
+patience. At last she struck off to the northwest, calling to them, and
+Garth and Charley spurred after.
+
+"'Erbe't, Mary and her, go this way," she said briefly, as they came up.
+"Nick Grylls take six horse west, and Xavier take four by coulee."
+
+"If we can overtake her before the others come up!" muttered Garth.
+
+Rina, looking at their horses, shrugged significantly.
+
+For half an hour they loped over the prairie without speech. A chill,
+damp wind stung their faces. The immense and empty plain with its cold
+shadows wore an ominous look under the lowering sky; a look that
+clutched at the breast.
+
+"I t'ink it snow bam-by," Rina had said.
+
+It would need only snow to complete their difficulties. Garth ground his
+teeth; and urged his horse afresh up every little rise, eagerly
+searching the expanse ahead from the top. A glance at last at the
+stretched nostrils and wet flanks of their mounts told him plainly such
+a pace would be slowest in the end. Hardest of all to bear was the
+necessity of going slowly.
+
+"What do you know of their plans?" he demanded of Rina.
+
+She shook her head. "They not tell me moch," she said. "They t'ink I too
+friendly for you!"
+
+Little by little as they rode, the story was drawn painfully out. "Soon
+as Charley come to you, they get ready right away," said Rina. "They
+catch all horses, and keep them up coulee, and pack everyt'ing. Mary
+Co-que-wasa, her go down and watch your house all the time, for good
+chance to tak' _her_. When you go out she mak' little fire under the
+bank for signal; and Nick Grylls and 'Erbe't and Xavier, them all go
+down. They not tak' me."
+
+Garth cursed himself to think how he had played directly into their
+hands.
+
+"I wait, and bam-by they bring her back," continued Rina in her toneless
+voice. "She ver' quiet. She mak' no cry. By the fire I see her face. It
+is the face of a dead woman."
+
+A groan was forced between Garth's clenched teeth. "Did they hurt her?"
+he demanded, waiting for the answer like a condemned man waits for the
+final stroke.
+
+But Rina shook her head. "Nick Grylls, him tak' off his hat, polite,"
+she said. "'Erbe't not say anyt'ing to her."
+
+He breathed again. "Did they refuse to take you along?" he asked.
+
+The stolid brown face was twisted with pain again. She lowered her head,
+and clung to the horn of her saddle. "No," she said very low. "They
+'fraid to leave me be'ind. But they don' want me. And I want to die when
+I see 'Erbe't with _her_. They all glad when t'ink I to die!"
+
+Garth forbore to question her further.
+
+His impatience could scarcely brook the necessary pause to let the
+horses feed at noon. It was a camp of wretchedness; none of the three
+riders thought of eating. All the while the horses cropped, Garth strode
+ceaselessly up and down, biting his lips; while the white-faced boy, who
+had not spoken all morning, sat holding his bursting head between his
+hands; and Rina, crouching apart, gazed over the prairie with unseeing
+eyes.
+
+Garth had it ever in mind to save the horses, but his impatience was
+incontrollable; he made them start too soon; and throughout the
+afternoon he urged them more than he knew. The animals failed visibly,
+hour by hour. It was more than three hours before they came upon the
+site of the noon camp of those ahead, showing that they were steadily
+losing in the chase.
+
+To be obliged to stop again two hours short of darkness was a crushing
+disappointment to Garth; but the horses could go no farther. He could
+never have told how he curbed his impatience throughout that age-long
+night. He did not sleep: but an excess of suffering is in the end its
+own merciful opiate; and he was not always fully conscious.
+
+With the morning a fresh blow awaited them. Daylight revealed Garth's
+mount lying dead of exhaustion fifty yards from camp. In a wide circle
+on the neighbouring heights, the coyotes were squatting on their
+haunches, waiting for the sure feast. It was colder than the day before;
+and the clouds hung thicker and lower. The three of them approached the
+dead animal, and looked down upon it stolidly.
+
+Garth set his teeth, and laughed his harsh note. "I will walk," he said
+shortly. "I can keep going while you are spelling the horses."
+
+Charley, for the first time, questioned a decision of his leader. "We
+can't spare an hour!" he said with a dull decisiveness, in which there
+was nothing boyish. "You have got to keep on ahead. Besides, you can't
+follow the tracks as well as I can, you would lose yourself. I will
+walk."
+
+Of the two desperate expedients it was clearly the better; and Garth
+instantly acquiesced. Possessed by a master idea, he was incapable of
+feeling any great compunctions at the idea of the injured boy setting
+forth on the prairie alone--that would come later. At present he stood
+equally ready to sacrifice Charley, or himself, or all three of them
+together, if it would save Natalie.
+
+The boy doggedly busied himself making a bundle of his blankets, and
+food enough to last him three days. The rest of his pack was added to
+the complaining backs of the other two horses.
+
+Garth did not neglect to consider what he could do to ensure the boy's
+safety. "Better return to the shack," he urged. "You can do it in two
+marches. There's plenty of grub there."
+
+But Charley flatly refused.
+
+"Very well," said Garth. "I'll leave a note for you every time we stop,
+telling you what time we passed. If you don't overtake us to-night or
+to-morrow, I'll leave more grub for you. If we don't catch them in a day
+or so," he added with a look at the remaining horses, "we'll all be in
+the same boat again."
+
+It was a grim, brusque leave-taking. The boy averted his head as they
+left him, to hide the look of despair in his eyes. He knew what the
+lowering, wintry clouds portended on the prairie; and in his heart it
+was a final farewell that he bade them. But he kept his chin up, and
+strode manfully after.
+
+Garth did not suspect what was passing in his mind; the city man had
+never seen a snowstorm on the prairie. Topping every rise, he looked
+back, and waved his hat at the plodding figure, slightly bent under the
+weight of his pack.
+
+"He's tough! He'll come through all right!" he said to Rina more than
+once--perhaps because he needed secretly to reassure himself.
+
+Rina, preoccupied with her own heavy thoughts, did not seem to care
+either way.
+
+About ten o'clock they descended into a considerable coulee whose stony
+bed still contained some standing pools. Here, by the water, Grylls's
+party had encamped for the night; and the ashes of their fire were still
+warm. From the extent of the trampling in the mud, it was clear the
+whole party had made a rendezvous here; and beyond the coulee, even
+Garth had no difficulty in following the trail of the fourteen horses
+over the turf. He rode ahead now; consulting his compass, he saw that
+the way always led due northwest.
+
+Some time later his eye was attracted by a splash of white in the grass.
+Throwing himself off his horse, he pounced upon it. It was a plain
+little square of linen; and in the border was printed in small neat
+characters "N. Bland." The find nearly unmanned him; he fancied the
+scrap of linen was still damp with her tears; and the old madness of
+desperation surged over him again. He forced his weary horse into a
+gallop. Rina indifferently followed.
+
+Pretty soon the snow began to fall in large, wet flakes, drifting down
+as idly and erratically as the opening notes of one who dreams at the
+piano--large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering there
+like measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither and
+thither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard.
+
+Rina lifted her brown face to the darkening sky. "We better go back to
+the coulee," she called after Garth.
+
+He frowned. "Nonsense!" he cried irritably. "A flurry of snow can't
+hurt anybody! It'll turn into rain directly!"
+
+She shrugged, and said no more.
+
+The mute symphony of the snow was played imperceptibly accelerando. The
+flakes became smaller, and thicker, and dryer; and each gust of wind was
+a hint steadier and stronger than the last. Their radius of view was
+little by little restricted: the distant hills faded out of sight, and
+the white dome closed over and around them, until at last they seemed to
+be traversing a little island of firm ground, with edges crumbling into
+a misty void. Presently the ground, too, was overlaid with white; earth
+and sky commingled indistinguishably; and all that held them to earth
+was the quadruple line of black hoof-marks extending a little way
+behind. The horses sulked and hung their heads.
+
+They came to another and a shallower coulee, which seemed to take a
+northeasterly direction across the prairie; whereas all the watercourses
+they had crossed hitherto tended to the southeast. Garth, on the watch
+for any such evidences, suspected they had crossed a height of land. On
+the other side of this coulee he found he could no longer trace the
+passage of the preceding cavalcade under the thickening snow. He
+impatiently called on Rina; but she merely shrugged, refusing to look.
+
+"No can follow in the snow!" she said contemptuously.
+
+At every hint of stoppage, Garth's blood surged dangerously upward. He
+pressed his knuckles against his temples, and strove to think. The two
+horses, instinctively drawing close together, turned their tails to the
+driving flakes. Rina sat hunched in her saddle, as indifferent as a
+squat, clay image.
+
+"I will ride on," he said thickly.
+
+She gave no sign.
+
+He consulted his compass. "We have ridden due northwest all the way," he
+said. "Where are they heading for?"
+
+"Death River, I guess," she answered, pointing. "The crossing is
+northwest."
+
+"How far?" he demanded.
+
+"Two days' journey, maybe seventy-five miles."
+
+"You wait for the boy in the shelter of the poplar bluff across the
+coulee," he said. "When the snow stops, follow on as well as you can."
+
+"Charley not come any more," said Rina in a tone of quiet fatalism.
+"When snow hide our track, he walk round and round. Bam-by he fall down,
+and not get up. He die. He know that."
+
+Garth, ready to push into the storm, reined up again. Her sureness
+chilled his impatient hurry; and the oft-told tragedies of prairie
+snowstorms recurred to him.
+
+"Die in the snow!" he repeated dully, hanging in agonizing indecision
+between the two images; Natalie ahead, and the solitary boy plodding
+behind. On the one hand he thought: "The storm has held them up,
+somewhere just ahead! It is my only chance of overtaking them!" and then
+he turned his horse's head north. But the other thought would not down.
+"The kid knew it meant death to walk; and he chose it!" Garth finally
+led the way back over the coulee.
+
+Rina had no difficulty making herself comfortable among the young poplar
+trees. She improvised a shelter out of a blanket stretched over two
+inclined saplings; and in front of it she built a fire. Garth meanwhile
+changed to the fresher horse, and started back over their own dimming
+trail.
+
+"You never find him now," Rina said hopelessly, as he left her.
+
+Garth merely set his jaw.
+
+His watch told him it was past eleven. He calculated they had covered
+five miles between the two coulees, and that it would be about
+twenty-five miles all told back to their own camping-place. Supposing
+the boy to have averaged three miles an hour, he would now be some
+twelve miles away, and if he kept walking, Garth, at his present pace,
+should come upon him in an hour and a half's riding.
+
+The marks of their previous passage were soon completely obliterated;
+and thereafter Garth rode compass in hand. With the wind behind, his
+horse showed a better stomach for travelling; and he made the first
+coulee in something under an hour. Here a little search revealed the
+half-burned logs of Grylls's fire under the snow; and this put him
+directly in the path again. He stood up the logs, to make a better mark
+against his return.
+
+He began to keep a sharp lookout for the boy, frequently shouting his
+name. His voice, muffled by the thickly falling flakes, had an odd,
+deadened ring in his own ears; and he doubted if he could be heard very
+far. When he considered the vast width of the prairie, and the extreme
+improbability of two figures, shaping opposite courses, meeting
+point-blank in the middle of it, he was ready to despair of finding the
+boy. It maddened him to think how close they might pass, without either
+being aware.
+
+Later, he adopted another expedient. Every fifteen minutes he turned his
+horse at right angles to his course, and galloping far to the right and
+left searched the snow for human tracks; then, picking up his trail
+where he left it, he would push a little farther ahead. In this way he
+could sweep a path about a mile wide on the prairie.
+
+But the hours passed, and the snow deepened, and there was neither sight
+nor sound of the boy. Garth was not sparing of his bitter self-reproaches
+then, for having abandoned him. It seemed to poor Garth in his
+hopelessness, as if his whole course through the country had been
+marked by a series of hideous blunders.
+
+Less than three hours of daylight now remained to him, and he was all
+of ten miles from his own base. He dared not push farther away, for,
+little as he regarded himself, he could take no risks while Natalie's
+fate still hung in the balance. But before giving up, he determined
+to make one last sortie back and forth across the prairie. Far to the
+right, just as hope was expiring, he saw, crossing the white expanse, a
+crooked, double row of slight depressions, like little moulds, slowly
+filling with powdery snow.
+
+Flinging himself off his horse, with a beating heart, he hastily scooped
+out the snow. A man's footprint was clearly revealed. With a shout,
+he mounted again and jerked his horse's head around. The weary animal
+balked flatly at facing the storm, but Garth, beside himself, lashed him
+until he plunged into it. The tracks momentarily grew plainer. While
+they had strayed far to the left of his own course, he wondered to see
+that they still held the right direction in the main.
+
+He redoubled his shouting. At last a muffled, indistinguishable sound
+answered him from ahead; and presently out of the wild whirl of flakes,
+a spectral figure was slowly resolved--as poignant a symbol of humanity
+as the last man on earth.
+
+"Charley! Charley!" shouted Garth.
+
+The figure turned uncertainly. Under the snow-laden lashes the eyes were
+vague.
+
+Garth slipped out of the saddle; and, throwing his arm about the boy's
+shoulders, caught him to his breast. "Thank God! I was in time!" he
+cried in a great voice.
+
+"It's really you!" the boy murmured. "I thought I was hearing things."
+
+Garth clapped him between the shoulders. "Buck up, my hearty!" he cried.
+"It's all right now!"
+
+"Have you got Natalie?" the boy said quickly.
+
+Garth sadly shook his head.
+
+"You shouldn't have come back then," he said dully. "I didn't expect
+it!"
+
+Garth hugged him anew. "Dear lad!" he cried with a break in his voice.
+"I couldn't let you die in the snow!"
+
+The kindness brought fuller consciousness back to the boy's eyes. He
+clung to Garth then; and lowered his head; and whimpered a little. After
+all he was only seventeen.
+
+Garth hoisted him to the saddle; and headed into the storm again. The
+horse balked continually, sorely trying his patience. Their progress was
+very slow. Garth sought to keep Charley up with cheerful speech.
+
+"Bully for you to keep going!" he cried.
+
+"It was because--Natalie might need me," the boy's voice trailed.
+
+"And right on the course!" Garth sang. "How did you keep it?"
+
+"When the snow hid your tracks--I remembered--to keep the wind on my
+right cheek," he murmured.
+
+That was the last Garth could get out of him. He was presently alarmed
+to find the boy growing increasingly numb and drowsy; even he knew what
+this portended in the North. He pulled him out of the saddle; and made
+him walk; supporting him with one arm, while with the other he led the
+horse. The animal took advantage of his partial helplessness, to plant
+his legs and pull back anew. If there was ever an excuse for anger
+against a dumb beast, surely hard-pressed Garth had it then. The horse
+was crazed with exhaustion, and terror of the storm; and tugs and kicks
+were of no avail. Garth could not bring in both boy and horse by main
+strength; and in the end, with hearty curses, he was obliged to abandon
+the beast to his fate.
+
+Garth, pulling his hat over his eyes, and drawing the boy's arm across
+his shoulders, doggedly pushed into the storm. He thus half supported,
+half dragged his companion, who was, nevertheless, compelled to use his
+own legs. Charley never spoke except now and then to beg drowsily to be
+let alone. In Garth's flask was about a gill of precious stimulant, and,
+when the boy's legs failed him, he doled it out in sips.
+
+They had at least nine miles to cover--and only two hours of daylight
+left. Try as he would to banish it, the sense of nine miles' distance
+would roll itself interminably out before Garth's mind's eye. Nine miles
+into two hours--the sum had no answer. Afterward night and storm on the
+empty prairie--what was the use? But when he reached this point, he
+would grit his teeth and take a fresh hold of the boy. If he had any
+other defined thought besides this painful round, it was to thank God
+that he was strong; he needed every ounce of it now.
+
+Instead of attempting to pick up his own trail--surely obscured by now
+in the snow--he shaped his course northwest, trusting to strike the
+coulee at its nearest point, and travel down until he hit the mark he
+had set up. It was a little longer so; but the result justified it, for
+there was some shelter in the coulee; and working down the bottom, they
+could not miss the mark.
+
+It was half-past four by Garth's watch when they laboriously climbed up
+the other side; and set their course by compass again for Rina's camp.
+It grew colder hourly; and the snowflakes became as hard and sharp as
+grains of coarse powder. Charley was kept going automatically by
+frequent small doses of the spirit from the flask. Garth dared not spare
+any of it for himself. It soon began to grow dark; and long before Garth
+could hope they had nearly covered the distance between the two coulees,
+it became totally dark; and he could no longer read the face of his
+compass. Fortunately the wind held steady from the north; he struggled
+ahead, keeping it on his right cheek as Charley had done before him.
+
+Garth's head became confused; he was no longer sensible of the passage
+of time. Only his will kept his legs at their work. Drowsiness crept
+over him; and with it a growing sense of the uselessness of struggling
+further. He fought it for a while, but with subsiding energy. His knees
+began to weaken under him; he sank down. With a desperate effort, he
+struggled up again; and won another painful hundred yards. He was
+falling again--and this time he did not care--when suddenly the ground
+fell away from under his feet, he pitched forward, and he and the boy
+rolled down a steep declivity together.
+
+Garth instantly knew they had reached the second coulee; and the thought
+cleared his fogged senses like the draught from his flask which he could
+not spare himself. He poured the last drops between Charley's numb lips;
+and turned to the right over the stony bed of the watercourse. He
+remembered Charley had strayed far to the left of his true course when
+guiding himself by the wind; and he had also observed in himself a
+tendency to swerve to that side, when working by compass. So he was sure
+they were somewhere above the poplar bluff--how far he dared not guess.
+
+He was right. Utterly worn out by a seeming interminable struggle
+through the drifts in the bottom of the coulee, at last a misty, pinkish
+aura blushed in the snowy night. It was Rina's fire--warmth and shelter!
+and before it a little animal was roasting on a spit. Garth's senses
+slipped away in rapture at the smell it sent forth.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE SOLITARY PURSUER
+
+
+Sometime during the course of the night the snow ceased to fall; and
+morning broke clear and cold. Garth had turned in, intending to rise at
+four; but Nature exacted her due, and it was seven before he awoke. The
+sky was a bowl of palest, fleckless azure; the sun shone gloriously on
+the field of snow; and the air stung the nostrils like the heady fumes
+of wine. But he was in no temper to take any delight in morning
+beauties; he ached in every bone and muscle as if he had been beaten
+with a club; and at the sight of the mounting sun, he bitterly
+reproached himself--and Rina, for the lost hours.
+
+As for Charley, a glance at the boy showed that he was quite incapable
+of further travelling for the present. He suffered as much from the blow
+on the head as from the exposure in the snow. His mind was hopelessly
+confused and wandering. In any case they had but a single horse left;
+and only the one course of action was open to Garth. He instructed Rina
+to remain where she was and care for the boy, while he pushed ahead.
+
+Even Rina betrayed some surprise. "What you do?" she said. "Three men to
+shoot, and Mary to watch _her_. You got no chance!"
+
+"I'll find a way!" he said desperately. "This Death River, tell me about
+it!"
+
+Rina pointed northwest. "Big river, moch water," she said. "Come from
+mountains. Ver' moch high falls; mak' lak thunder! Above falls, ver'
+rough rapids, no can cross. Below falls, deep black hole; breeds say bad
+spirits go there. Only one place to cross, half-mile below falls."
+
+Garth caught the horse, who had fed himself as best he could by pawing
+the snow off the grass, and packed his blankets and a supply of food,
+including what was left of the little carcass Rina roasted. He learned
+it was a lynx; but the flesh was sweet, and he was too thankful for
+fresh meat to quarrel with the nature of it. He left Rina and Charley
+with a better will, knowing she could doubtless get others, as she had
+snared the first.
+
+There was about ten inches of snow on the flat, with deep encumbering
+drifts in the hollows; and his advance was very slow. The ill-nourished
+horse wearied immediately; and any pace beyond a walk was out of the
+question. Had Garth only possessed snow-shoes he could have made much
+better time on foot. The vast expanse was as empty as a clean sheet of
+paper; nevertheless, he saw the prairie was not without its busy
+population, as evidenced by the number of tracks of little furry paws
+that had crossed his course already since the snow finished falling.
+
+At noon, having made about eleven miles (he figured), he came to the
+brink of a coulee wider and deeper than any they had crossed hitherto;
+and which contained a stream in the bottom, running blackly around
+snow-capped stones. As he refreshed himself, and allowed his horse to
+drink, he reflected that Grylls would have reached this stream the day
+before about the time the snow commenced; and that it was likely the
+outfit had camped on its bank until the storm passed. He determined to
+search up and down before pushing ahead.
+
+Sure enough, no more than two hundred yards down-stream he began to come
+upon the tracks of horses and saw the bare patches they had pawed to
+reach the grass; and a little farther he ran plump upon the fresh
+remains of the camp; two bare spots where tents had been pitched, the
+ashes of a fire, and innumerable tracks of men and horses--the whole
+startlingly conspicuous in the sweep of unbroken snow.
+
+Garth's heart swelled with rage and mortification to think what a little
+distance had separated them during the night; and how by rising only
+three hours earlier, he might perhaps have caught them. But presently
+cooler counsels came to his aid; and when he considered the well-beaten
+track that led over the hill beyond, he was thankful for so much luck.
+He knew that at least until more snow should fall, they could never
+shake him off again; and he rode after with a renewed courage. His
+horse, too, freed of the entangling drifts, and sensing the other horses
+ahead, seemed to overcome his weakness for a while; and loped over the
+beaten trail with a good will.
+
+Beyond this coulee the character of the country began to change.
+Crossing a height, Garth saw a range of gleaming mountains off to the
+west at no great distance; his course was heading him obliquely into the
+foothills. The prairie gradually broke up; the mounds became hills; and
+the hollows deepened into valleys. With every mile, almost, the hills
+became higher and more conical; outcroppings of rock began to appear;
+and the little streams ran in gorges now, instead of coulees.
+
+In the rougher country the horse's access of courage soon failed. His
+wind was gone, he sobbed for breath; and Garth was presently reduced to
+the necessity of leading him up every incline. On a wide flat between
+two ranges, he mounted after a long walk, and urged him into a run over
+this easy piece. The slack-twisted animal was not equal to the effort;
+halfway across, his heart broke; and he collapsed in a heap, ploughing
+up the snow, and flinging his rider over his head. When Garth returned
+to him, he was stone dead. In the midst of his chagrin the man could
+spare a glance of pity for the shaggy, misshapen beast. One of the
+vulgar equine tribe, at his best neither beautiful nor courageous, he
+had nevertheless given his life to the journey.
+
+Beside the stony watercourse that traversed this little plain, he made a
+cache of saddle, bridle and what food he could not carry on his back.
+Over the spot he piled a cairn of stones to mark it, and protect the
+little store from marauding animals. In addition to blankets, rifle and
+ammunition, he carried with him food sufficient for about five days. In
+an hour he was on his way again.
+
+During the rest of the day, and the following day, the character of the
+country changed only in degree. The trail never carried him directly into
+the mountains, but skirted among the foothills, which raised strange,
+abrupt, detached cones on either hand--steep, naked, unreasonable shapes
+of earth, like nightmare forms. Each day Garth plodded to the limit of his
+strength, reckless of what lay before him, regarding only the beaten trail
+which led the way. From various signs it was clear those ahead ever gained
+on him; but he kept himself up with the thought that they must sooner or
+later make an extended stop to recuperate their horses. Each night he made
+his tea with snow-water; and, rolling up in his blankets beside the fire,
+slept under the stars; and at dawn he was astir again. Hard work was his
+beneficent sedative.
+
+On the second night as he lay down he heard, or fancied he heard in the
+stillness, the breath of a far-off, heavy sound. He ascribed it to the
+roar of the great falls Rina had told him of; and the thought lent new
+vigour to his limbs next morning. He had another reason to hurry his
+steps; for each day had waxed a little warmer; and to-day the snow
+melted fast, threatening at last to obliterate the track he followed.
+
+In the afternoon the going became harder, for the mountains reached down
+long spurs athwart his path, over which he had to toil. Like the conical
+hills they were bare of all timber; only the valleys and gulches were
+wooded. On the first of these ascents, burdened as he was, over-exertion
+and insufficient sleep began to tell on Garth; and he became conscious,
+for the first, of a terrible weariness in his back. He crushed it down;
+he could _not_ fail; he _had_ to keep on. But the next ascent was harder
+still; and the shape of fear grew in his breast.
+
+The third long climb was nearly his finish. He would not allow himself
+to pause on the way up, though his heart knocked sickeningly against his
+ribs, while flames danced in front of his eyes, and there was a roaring
+in his ears. Gaining the summit at last, he flung himself down, afraid
+for the moment to look at the obstacles beyond. As he slowly recovered,
+a real booming disassociated itself from the noises in his head; and he
+eagerly raised his head. His eyes swept over a far and wide expanse of
+snow, a dish-like plateau among the hills. His heart leaped; for through
+the centre of the plateau ran a black fissure, like a crack in the dish;
+and off to the left a fleecy cloud rose lazily from the gorge, blushing
+pinkly in the light of the setting sun. This must mark the falls; the
+Death River lay at his feet.
+
+The excitement of this discovery was immediately superseded by a far
+greater. In a direct line with him, on the plain beyond the gorge, he
+presently distinguished a few scattering, black objects like insects on
+the snow--but insects of the shape of horses. From the gorge itself,
+perfectly distinct in the crystalline air, rose a thin, blue column of
+smoke!
+
+The haggard furrows in Garth's face smoothed out; his weary eyes shot
+forth a quiet glint; and he slowly and grimly smiled. He arose; and
+instinctively unslinging his gun, examined the mechanism. A goodly
+warmth diffused itself throughout his veins; and he felt strong again.
+The end of his journey was in sight.
+
+Darkness had fallen before he reached the lip of the canyon. With bated
+breath he crawled to the edge and looked over--there was a chance they
+had escaped him again--but in the bottom of the pit, on the other side
+of the river, a fire was flickering redly in the darkness; and there was
+a hint of figures sitting around it. His heart beat strongly at the
+reassuring sight.
+
+The tracks in the snow led him to the top of the path, which descended
+into the gorge. This path was steep, narrow, tortuous and slippery; and
+he knew not what conditions awaited him at the bottom. Prudence
+counselled him to wait for daylight to reconnoitre; but it was not
+possible to contain his impatience the night through, with Natalie so
+near, and he not knowing if she was safe. He started down instantly,
+feeling his way foot by foot; and ever careful to dislodge no stone that
+might betray him. Within the gorge the boom of the falls was largely
+deadened by a bend in the walls above; and lighter sounds became
+audible: the lapping of the river on the stones; and, as he came nearer,
+someone breaking sticks for the fire below.
+
+Between him and the fire rolled the river with a deep, swift current.
+There was no more than a scant fifty yards between wall and wall of the
+gorge at the bottom. Coming still closer, he saw by the light of the
+fire that their camp was pitched on a triangle of flat ground, formed
+where a steep watercourse had made a perpendicular fissure in the
+opposite wall of the gorge. On one side of the fire was pitched a small
+"outside" tent--the same tent Garth had watched so long when it stood
+outside Mabyn's shack--and on the other side stood a tepee. A small
+raft, half drawn out of the water, explained their means of crossing the
+river.
+
+The descending path finally landed Garth on a precipitous incline of
+broken rock at the water's edge; and there, across the stream, so close
+he could have tossed a pebble into their midst, sat those he had tracked
+so far, all unsuspicious of his nearness. They were having their evening
+meal. Natalie was among them, facing him, the firelight strong on her.
+Her face was set and sad--but still unhumbled; and from this and the
+obsequious poise of Grylls's head, when he turned to her, Garth knew she
+was so far safe from him. His heart breathed a still hymn of thankfulness.
+
+Grylls sat on the other side of the fire, with his back against a rock.
+He still wore the bewrinkled suit of store clothes which had become so
+hateful in Garth's sight; and the broad-brimmed hat was set at a rakish
+angle. He was in a jovial humour, judging from the thick unction of his
+speech; doubtless, though he seldom looked at her, in his own way he was
+seeking to charm his cold and silent prisoner.
+
+Mabyn's back was turned to Garth; his attitude was furtive; and
+apparently he spoke little. Garth did not trouble about him; for he knew
+instinctively that so long as the stronger man was by, Natalie stood in
+no danger from Mabyn. Mary Co-que-wasa, serving the food, hovered behind
+the fire, which threw a strange, exaggerated shadow of her hag-like form
+on the cliff. Nearer Garth, at a little distance from the others, Xavier
+sat on the ground, busy with his cup and plate.
+
+Garth watched Natalie with a swelling heart. How brave she was! how
+noble and befitting the air with which she faced her terrible situation!
+The proud sadness of her face was infinitely more affecting than any
+extreme of distress could have been. Garth bled inwardly, to think of
+the torments of mind she must have endured. He yearned mightily to let
+her know he was near. He crouched at the edge of the water, willing a
+message of cheer to her; and heartened himself with the assurance that
+she could not but feel it.
+
+She ate little; and, presently arising, disappeared within the tent.
+Grylls drew out the inevitable cigars, and, carelessly tossing one
+to Mabyn, lit his own. Mary went about collecting the dishes. Xavier
+carried his plate to the river side to wash it. Garth handled his
+rifle with fingers itching for the trigger. There were the four of
+them, all unconscious, delivered into his hands, it seemed.
+
+But he spared them for a while. It was not that he shrank from shedding
+blood now; taking their lives troubled him no more than killing so much
+vermin. But, close as they were, he could not be sure of nailing them
+all; a dive outside the firelight, and they were safe. And Natalie was
+in their hands; and he had no way of crossing the river. He must rescue
+her first.
+
+Mary went into the tent, which she apparently shared with Natalie; and
+presently reappeared with a dishtowel. Lifting a pail of hot water from
+the fire, she prepared to wash the dishes. The fire was dying down, and
+gathering an armful of brush, she heaped it on to make a light.
+
+Too late Garth appreciated the significance of this act. He turned to
+escape up the path again; and in his hurry dislodged a heavy stone,
+which rolled into the water with a splash. He faced about with his rifle
+ready. Only Xavier, at the water's edge, heard the sound, and looked up.
+At the same instant the fire sprang into a blaze, filling the canyon
+with light; and plainly revealing Garth and his shadow behind him on the
+rock. The breed sprang to his feet with a cry of warning. It was the
+last sound, save one, that he ever made. The sharp, light bark of
+Garth's rifle reverberated in the gorge; the breed spun around with a
+throaty, quenched cry, toppled over backward into deep water, and was
+swept away.
+
+Before Garth could aim again, Mary Co-que-wasa seized her pail of water,
+and flung it hissing on the fire. Absolute darkness filled the canyon.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+IN DEATH CANYON
+
+
+Garth crouched at the water's edge, striving to pierce the murk with his
+eyes; but the blackness was like a wall. By and by the outlying embers
+of the fire began to glow faintly; but there was another splash, and
+every spark was quenched. Bending his head, he strained his ears. For a
+long time there was no sound from across the river; then little by
+little, and softly, he heard them set to work like mice behind a
+wainscot. There was a singular, measured falling of stones, which at
+first he could not interpret; then it suddenly occurred to him they were
+building a barricade across their little terrace; and he took heart; for
+the act was opposed to any design of immediate flight. But then, he
+thought, Mary, behind the wall, could easily hold the crossing by
+daylight, while the two men escaped with Natalie. Somehow, he must get
+across first.
+
+He searched noiselessly among the stones above the water line for
+driftwood; and succeeded in picking up a stick here and a branch there.
+Four of the stouter pieces he tied in a square with the rope that bound
+his pack; and upon this frame he piled a crib of sticks, of sufficient
+buoyancy to float his clothes, his pack and his gun. He stripped to the
+skin and waded cautiously into the water. It was of an icy coldness that
+bit like a great burn, and forced the breath out of his lungs like a
+squeezed bellows. But he set his jaws and struck out, towing his little
+raft with the end of the rope between his teeth.
+
+He headed straight across, leaving it to the current to carry him safely
+below the camp. Ordinarily, fifty strokes would have carried him over,
+but the terrible cold congealed the very sap of his body; and the clumsy
+little raft offered as much resistance as a log. He could not tell how
+far he was carried down. Reaching the other side at last, he could
+scarcely crawl out on the stones. He was too stiff to attempt to draw on
+his clothes; the best he could do was to roll in his blankets, and
+writhe to restore the circulation.
+
+His limbs were rigid; his feet and hands wholly numb--but the will rules
+even bodily exhaustion. He would not tolerate the thought of weakness;
+he _would_ get warm; and his reluctant blood was forced at last to
+resume its course through his veins. Warmth returned with excruciating
+pain. He conceded his worn body a little rest--for he knew they could
+not get their horses before morning--but in an hour, dressed, and with
+his pack and his gun on his back, he was crawling back toward Grylls's
+camp.
+
+This shore of the river, like the other, was formed of fragments and
+masses of rock, which had fallen from the cliffs above. He made his way
+with infinite caution, giving heed to every foothold, and feeling before
+him with his hands. Fortunately there was little snow to obstruct him;
+for what had descended into the gorge was lodged in the crevices of the
+stones. He crawled over heaps of rubble, digging his toes in, to keep
+from sliding into the water; and there were great hundred-ton boulders,
+over which he dragged himself on his stomach. Above the canyon there
+were no stars visible; and below, it was wrapped in darkness, thick,
+velvety, palpable as lamp-black.
+
+After measuring the inches of a long and painful journey over the
+stones, he sensed at last that he was drawing near the camp again. He
+redoubled his caution, hugging close to the wall of rock. Presently it
+fell away to the right; and before him he distinguished a faint whitish
+blur that he knew for the tepee. He stretched himself out to listen.
+Under all was the deadened boom of the falls; below him an indefinable
+murmur arose from the smooth river, and an occasional eddy slapped the
+stones; in front he was vaguely conscious of the three persons moving to
+and fro, and he heard the dull chink of each stone, as it ground its
+edges on the pile. They had relaxed their caution somewhat; once or
+twice a stone, rolling out of place, plumped into the water. They were
+at work at the other end of their barricade from Garth.
+
+He considered what he should do. His brain was working very
+clearly--dragging his exhausted body along after, as it were; for
+excitement and over-exertion had produced a curious feeling of
+detachment from it. As he waited there, the work on the barricade
+ceased; and a whispered consultation was held. If he could only hear!
+Afterward two figures approached the tepee and entered. Instantly
+Garth let himself down over the rocks behind, and snaking his body
+through the bit of herbage on the flat, applied his ear to the
+bottom of the canvas.
+
+He heard Mabyn's voice ask querulously: "What was it you said to her?"
+
+"Told her to sit on top of the wall, and watch," Grylls carelessly
+answered. "They can't cross the river until morning, but we're not
+taking any chances, just the same. She's to watch, too, that the lady
+doesn't try to sneak the raft across to her friends."
+
+"You're going to clear out in the morning?" Mabyn asked anxiously.
+
+"Not on your life!" the other coolly returned. "We got shelter and good
+water here, the horses are safe above; and we command the only crossing
+of the river. We'll sit right here until their grub runs out. They can't
+have brought much!"
+
+"The police may hear," Mabyn murmured.
+
+"Let 'em come and welcome," said Grylls. "They know me! As for you, I
+guess a man can take a journey with his lawful wife, can't he?"
+
+There was a pause. A match was struck. Garth guessed that Grylls was
+resuming his interrupted smoke.
+
+"Seems to me we hold pretty much all the trumps," he went on complacently.
+"My idea is, Pevensey's all alone over there. That was a pretty smart rap
+on the nut, the boy got. But even if there's two of them, what can they
+do? We've got cover, and they've got to show themselves; it's a funny
+thing if we can't pot them easy. We got a right to; they killed our man
+first."
+
+"Hadn't I better ride on with her to the Slavi Indians?" Mabyn suggested
+in a tone that he laboured to make sound off-hand.
+
+Grylls chuckled fatly. "What! And deprive me of the pleasure of her
+company!" he said mockingly. "I guess not!"
+
+Mabyn was silent. Garth dimly apprehended what a torment of impotent
+fear and rage the creature must be enduring. He had delivered himself
+hand and foot into Grylls's power; and Grylls no longer even kept up a
+pretense of hiding his own designs on Natalie.
+
+"Better turn in," Grylls said indifferently. "No need for you to watch
+to-night. I'll have a snooze myself, and go out and relieve Mary before
+dawn."
+
+Garth had heard enough; they were all placed for him; and his way was
+clear. He softly drew himself around the further side of the tepee,
+pausing long between every move, to listen. Both their lives depended on
+his making no sound now; every faculty he possessed was bent on it; he
+took half an hour to make thirty feet. He circled the inside edge of the
+little triangle of flat ground, keeping in the shadow of the piled
+rocks. Crossing the little stream that issued over the flat was hardest;
+but he managed it; patiently studying each move in advance. Finally he
+approached the tent. Beyond, he fancied he could distinguish the vague
+outline of the wall running across; and upon it a huddled figure, a mere
+hint of substance against the pit of darkness behind.
+
+He felt his way around the tent. He found the canvas of the back wall
+was made in one piece. With shaking fingers, he drew his knife out of
+its sheath; and inserting the point in the centre of the stuff, softly
+drew it back and forth, a stroke at a time. His heart was beating like a
+steam drill; he swallowed his sobbing breath. Every instant he expected
+to hear Natalie scream from within.
+
+He severed the last thread at last; and put up his knife. He parted the
+flaps; and listened for sounds from within in an agony of indecision. He
+could not tell if she slept or was awake; he dared not so much as
+whisper her name; and if he touched her and she slept, how could she
+help but awake with a cry!
+
+But she was not asleep; and she had all her wits about her. Close to his
+ear, a voice soft as a zephyr in the grass whispered his name. A
+trembling breath of relief escaped his lips; and instantly an arm was
+wreathed about his neck; and a soft cheek pressed against his rough
+one. He caught her to him; her slim frame quivered through and through.
+It was his own Natalie; the feel of her! the fragrance of her! Life
+holds but one such moment.
+
+"I knew you'd come! I knew you'd come!" she breathed in his ear.
+
+Her terrible agitation was the means of calming his own. He had to be
+cool for both. He pressed her close to him, stroking her hair.
+
+"Brave, _brave_ Natalie!" he whispered. "Not a sound, till we are
+clear!"
+
+He gave her a moment to recover herself, letting his encircling arms
+speak the comfort and cheer he could not utter. Little by little the
+piteous trembling subsided and the rigid form relaxed.
+
+"Ready, now?" he whispered.
+
+She eagerly nodded.
+
+"I lead the way," he breathed in her ear; "and you keep close at my
+heels. Take it easy. It must be hands and knees, and an inch at a time."
+
+Natalie pressed his hand to her lips.
+
+He crawled through the hole, and waited for her outside. She made no
+sound. He touched her reassuringly; and realized with a pang how she was
+handicapped, with one arm in a sling. They crept back around the foot of
+the piled rocks, dragging themselves with tense muscles, a foot at a
+time and waiting long between. By the touch of her hand on his foot he
+knew she followed close. Looking over his shoulder, he sensed the
+huddled figure still motionless on the wall.
+
+He could not have told what gave the alarm. They had reached the
+rivulet, when suddenly Mary leaped off the wall with a cry that brought
+the two men tumbling out of the tepee.
+
+Garth, springing to his feet, seized Natalie's hand, and pulled her
+after him.
+
+"Come on!" he whispered cheerily. "We're safe now!"
+
+They scrambled up over the stones of the watercourse, careless of the
+noise they made.
+
+"What is it?" they heard Grylls shout below.
+
+A sentence in Cree explained.
+
+"Watch the raft!" he shouted. "I'll bring her back!"
+
+They heard him run heavily toward them. Hastily unslinging his gun,
+Garth sent a shot at random through the darkness. They heard the bullet
+spring off a stone. The steps ceased.
+
+"By God! _he's_ up there!" cried Grylls thickly. "Come back, Mabyn!
+We'll get 'em easy in the morning!"
+
+There was no further sound of pursuit.
+
+As they climbed, Garth searched from side to side, as well as he could
+in the darkness, for a suitable spot to make a stand. High above the
+level of the river, a huge cube of rock resting squarely in the bottom
+of the ravine, and forcing the stream to travel around it, offered what
+he wanted. One side of the boulder lay against a steep rocky wall; and
+in the angle was a secure niche for Natalie.
+
+Her courage failed a little when she saw he meant to stop. "Not here!
+Not here!" she protested nervously. "We must put miles between us before
+morning!"
+
+"The way home lies back across the river," Garth said gently.
+
+"Then why did you come up here?" she said a little wildly. "They'll
+never let us back!"
+
+His heart ached for her, at the thought of what she must still go
+through. "Courage! for one more day, my Natalie!" he urged, drawing her
+to him. "We can't start without horses and food, and those I have to win
+for you!"
+
+"You make me ashamed!" she whispered.
+
+He heard no more whimpering.
+
+Garth, appreciating the vital necessity of sleep, if he was to keep his
+wits about him next day, lay down in his blankets while Natalie kept
+watch. With the first tinge of gray overhead, she woke him, as he had
+bidden her.
+
+"If we only had a good breakfast to begin on!" were his waking words;
+"and there's nothing but raw flour and water."
+
+Natalie, in answer to this prayer, produced a flat package from her
+dress which proved to contain bread and meat. "I always kept something,
+in case I should be able to get away," she explained.
+
+They ate, sitting quietly side by side in the darkness--they could even
+laugh a little together now--and they arose vastly refreshed.
+
+Garth climbed the big rock to wait for daylight to reveal the strength
+and the weakness of the position he had chosen. The top of the rock
+formed a flat plane slightly inclined toward their rear; and, lying at
+full length upon it, he could shoot over the edge without exposing more
+than the top of his head. He lifted up a heavy stone or two; and stood
+them along the edge for further protection. Then he waited--waited for
+hours it seemed to him; looking and looking down the ravine until his
+eyes were fit to start out of his head; and he could see nothing; but
+lo! when he looked again the light was there!
+
+On the whole he was satisfied. His rock commanded the entire ravine
+below; it was as steep as a pair of stairs. There was not a stick of
+herbage below; only a trough of heaped and broken rock masses. On either
+hand they were shut in by straight lead-coloured walls of rock; and at
+the bottom of the ravine, the forbidding, mist-gray wall of the main
+gorge cut off the view. In front and on the left they were amply
+protected; their right flank was the weak spot. Above them on this side,
+part of the wall of the ravine had given way some ages past; and a bit
+of the plain had sunk down. The hollow thus formed contained a grove of
+gaunt trees and underbrush. If their assailants, under cover of the
+rocks on the way, ever climbed to it, Garth and Natalie would be badly
+off indeed.
+
+It was a grim figure that the first rays of light revealed sitting on
+the big rock. Garth had lost his hat long ago; and he was both unshaven
+and unshorn. He crouched, hugging his knees, with his rifle across his
+thighs; and his sheepskin coat hung over his shoulders ready to fling
+off, when he needed to act. The flannel shirt beneath was in rags; and
+his moccasins, mere apologies for foot-coverings. But to Natalie,
+regarding the cool, bright shine of his eyes, as he smiled down on her,
+he was wholly beautiful. She was scarcely better off; her pale face was
+enframed in a sad wreck of a limp, stained felt hat; but she could smile
+too; and Garth had never found her lovelier in her bravery.
+
+The suspense was well-nigh intolerable--and so they fell to chaffing.
+
+"If mother could only see us now!" said Garth with a grin.
+
+"I feel like a white cat coming out of a coal-bin," said Natalie.
+"'What's the use!' she says, looking round at herself. 'The job is too
+big to tackle. If I was only a black cat it wouldn't show!'"
+
+"You could walk right on as Liz, the girl bandit of the Rockies," said
+Garth.
+
+"Don't you talk!" she retorted. "You look as if Liz had missed her cue,
+and you'd been through the sawmill!"
+
+And then Garth saw a black sleeve sticking out from behind a rock in
+the ravine below; and he got down to business. A little sigh of relief
+escaped him at the sight of his enemies at last. He fired. The shot went
+wide.
+
+Natalie sank back in her corner, deathly pale; and with a hand over her
+lips, to keep from crying out. Her part was harder than his.
+
+He called down to her reassuringly. "All right! Only a try-out!"
+
+Further down, a second figure showed briefly, scrambling up the
+right-hand side of the trough. Garth fired--a fraction of a second too
+late. He could scarcely credit such nimble agility in a figure so gross.
+It was Grylls. Thus two of them were accounted for. Searching for the
+third, he saw the black crown of a hat projecting above a stone on the
+other side of the ravine. This was an easy shot; he aimed and fired with
+a savage satisfaction. The hat disappeared; but again he knew, somehow,
+that his bullet had not found its mark.
+
+At the same moment Grylls won a rock a yard higher up. He was not coming
+up the bottom of the ravine, but aiming obliquely up the side for the
+trees high above. Garth, grimly covering his shelter, saw him bob his
+head around; a bare, cropped, tousled head, like a hiding schoolboy's.
+Quick as he was with the trigger, Grylls was quicker. The bullet
+flattened itself harmlessly beyond.
+
+As he shot there was a scramble across the ravine; and he saw the other
+figure had mounted. The hat, Mabyn's hat, again showed; and he took
+another shot at it. This time the bullet knocked it spinning off the
+rifle barrel which upheld it; and in a flash Garth understood how neatly
+they were fooling him. Each in turn drew his fire, while the other made
+an advance. He resolved to shoot no more.
+
+Meanwhile the first one he had glimpsed, which must be Mary, had not
+moved from the middle of the ravine. Some of the stones were moved, and
+he guessed she had made a permanent shelter there. There was a shot from
+below, and the bullet spattered itself on the heavy base of rock.
+Holding his hand, Garth awaited a second shot. He saw a tiny white puff
+at last, and marked the aperture whence it issued. The bullet hurtled
+whiningly overhead. Steadying his gun on the edge of the rock, he took
+careful aim--but the other spoke first. It was a marvellous shot--or a
+chance one. The bullet splintered the edge of the stone protecting
+Garth's head, and sang off. A jagged sliver of stone ploughed across the
+back of his extended hand. He exclaimed as in casual surprise, and his
+gun exploded harmlessly in the air. He looked at his hand stupidly as at
+an alien member; then suddenly he understood; and whipping out his
+handkerchief, bound up the wound, knotting the linen with teeth and
+fingers.
+
+Up to this moment Garth had been playing a dispassionate game; but he
+returned to his loophole conscious of a great surge of cold rage against
+those below. He yearned to get even; but he could wait for it. Mabyn
+exposed his hat tantalizingly; Grylls shot out a foot, or bobbed up his
+head--but Garth saved his bullets. He would not even try to pierce the
+sharpshooters' defenses again. An occasional shot came from there; but
+never such another as the last.
+
+Finally Grylls changed his tactics. From behind his rock he taunted
+Garth vilely. The walls of the ravine reverberated horridly with the
+sound of the sudden human voice.
+
+But Garth still bided his time; merely adding the insult of the words to
+Natalie's ears, to the score of his rage.
+
+Natalie in the meantime, thankful to have something to do, had been
+piling stones as heavy as she could lift, on the rock behind him. She
+had torn the sling from her arm; and was using the weaker member to
+steady the other.
+
+Garth, fearful that Grylls might succeed in flanking them at last,
+ordered her to climb up behind him; and without turning his head, told
+her how to make a little parapet along the top of the rock on the
+exposed side.
+
+Garth finally got his chance. A little stone rolled down from Mabyn's
+hiding-place; and he instantly trained his gun on the spot. Mabyn,
+miscalculating, or losing his head, suddenly scurried for the next rock.
+Garth had marked it. Mabyn gained it, but before he could pull his legs
+after him the rifle spoke. There was a scream of pain; and Mabyn's
+body, sliding from behind the rock, rolled and dropped heavily from
+stone to stone. A leg caught in a fissure and stayed him; he hung head
+downward, writhing in hideous, theatrical postures of agony, and
+screaming like a woman. Garth, thinking of Natalie, longed to send a
+shot to still the noise; but his hand was held by his promise to Rina.
+
+It was all over in a minute after that. Grylls, careless of the other's
+fate, scrambled up from stone to stone. Garth peppered his course with
+bullets; but the rocks were scattered so thickly, Grylls needed to
+expose himself for scarcely a second at a time. He gained the trees at
+last.
+
+An instant of terrible suspense succeeded. Garth made Natalie lie close
+under the little wall she had been building. He crouched over her,
+himself fully exposed, searching the hillside with strained eyes.
+Suddenly he saw the bloated face not thirty yards away. Grylls had
+partly stepped from behind a tree and was deliberately taking aim. Garth
+sprang to his knees. The two guns spoke at once. Grylls pitched
+headfirst down the steep slope into view; and rolled down the bare rocks
+into the tiny stream.
+
+"I've got him!" shouted Garth triumphantly.
+
+Even as he spoke he toppled over sideways. Natalie clutched at him
+wildly; but his coat was pulled out of her grasp. He slid off the rock
+and dropped on the stones behind. In an instant she was at his side. He
+was already struggling to rise--his teeth pressed into his lip until the
+blood oozed between.
+
+"Only my left shoulder," he muttered. "I can still shoot. There's Mary,
+yet. Help me up."
+
+Somehow, with her aid, he managed to pull himself back on the rock, one
+arm dangling useless. Through his loophole, he saw Mary toiling openly
+up the ravine. He showed himself. At the sight of him the old woman
+paused and held out her hands as if inviting him to shoot. She had left
+her gun. When he made no offer to fire, she quietly continued her climb.
+Garth watched her grimly.
+
+Reaching Grylls's body, she unwound a woollen scarf from about her
+waist; and passing it under his shoulders, partly hoisted his great bulk
+on her back with an incredible effort; and started down again. Grylls
+was quite dead; his heels thudded limply from stone to stone.
+
+Long before she reached the bottom, Garth lost interest in her progress.
+He had fainted.
+
+Natalie, working to restore him, distracted, hopeless, crazed, suddenly
+heard a distant shout; and looking up distinguished a little cavalcade
+winding down the face of the great gorge. There was a red coat among
+them.
+
+"Garth! We're saved! We're _saved_!" she cried to his unhearing ears.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+EPILOGUE: SPOKEN BY CHARLEY
+
+
+In the city of Winnipeg on a brilliant day toward the end of winter, a
+broad-shouldered, ruddy youth, with dancing blue eyes and a capacious
+smile, came running down a side street, and catching a certain
+fence-post at full speed, swung himself inside the gate with the
+dexterity of old practice; sprang up the steps and banged on the door.
+
+It was opened questioningly by a little mouse of a woman, with great
+brown eyes, and gray strands mixing in her bright, brown hair.
+
+The boy flung his arms around her like a bear. "Mother!" he cried
+breathlessly.
+
+"Charley! My boy!" she gasped.
+
+He picked her up bodily; and, kicking the door shut, carried her into
+the cheerful sitting room, where geraniums bloomed on the sunny
+window-sill, and a fire danced in the grate.
+
+"I'm bigger than you are now!" he chuckled joyously. He put her in her
+chair; and waltzed about the room, touching the well-remembered objects.
+"By Jolly! the very same pictures, the good old sofa!" he sang. "Oh,
+it's good to be home!"
+
+The mother held out her arms. "My boy! My boy!" was all she could say.
+
+Dropping to his knees, he embraced her again. "You dear old lady," he
+cried. "What a trouble I always was! It's your turn to have a good time
+now!"
+
+"It's enough to have you back," she murmured.
+
+He gyrated about the room again. "Say, I feel as giddy as a puppy after
+a bath! Imagine trolley-cars and baby-carriages and show windows and
+silver knives and forks after two years in the North. Say, I've clean
+forgot how to eat stylish!"
+
+"How long are you going to stay?" she murmured.
+
+He came to a stand beside her. "I'm not going back," he said in a deeper
+tone. "It's a bully country and I had a whale of a time--but I belong
+here! I'm going to take care of you now, and bring up the kids. I'm a
+man now,"--his face changed comically--"Don't laugh!" he begged. "I used
+to say that all the time; but it's different now; you'll see! I've had
+experience!"
+
+She held out her arms to him again. "Tell me, my son," she whispered.
+
+He dropped to the floor beside her; and laid his head against her knee.
+There, in front of the fire, while the sun went down, and the early
+winter twilight gathered, he told her the story.
+
+"When Garth rode away leaving me and Rina in the poplar bluff," he
+said--reaching that part in due course--"I didn't know much what was
+happening. But say, that Rina, she's an out-o'-sight nurse! She brought
+me around in great shape; and the second day afterward I was as peart as
+you please. That same day the fellows from the Crossing turned up; Jim
+Plaskett, the policeman, and three others. It was Jim made them come,
+soon as he heard the story. Jim's a peacherino! One of these lean, quiet
+chaps you can depend on; decent, too, clean-mouthed--Oh! Jim's looked up
+to, I can tell you!
+
+"They wanted me to rest a while yet, till they came back. But they had
+plenty of spare horses, and Rina and I wouldn't stand for being left
+behind. We rode like sixty all next day, and camped only fifteen miles
+from Death River. We found the bones of Garth's horse on the way--picked
+clean; and the note he left every place he camped. You ought to have
+heard Jim Plaskett crack up Garth's pluck--and Jim knows!
+
+"We reached the canyon about half-past six in the morning. I'd heard of
+that place from the Indians. Say, it was a fearsome spot! a kind of
+crooked, gaping split in the prairie like the pictures in Dante's
+Inferno. The walls were as bare and hard and cold as black ice; and way
+down in the bottom there was a horrible jelly-like water swirling around
+without making any noise. Seems if you couldn't breathe good when you
+got into the place! Minded me of the receiving vault in the cemetery.
+
+"There was a risky little path going down, and we kept right on. Across
+the river, there was a break in the wall where a creek came down a
+steep, wild-looking ravine. At the bottom of it we could see a tepee and
+a tent; but no people. Some said they saw a body in the ravine, but you
+couldn't rightly make out."
+
+Charley paused and shuddered. "Say, it was horrible!" he whispered.
+"Glad I don't have dreams! When we got down near the water suddenly we
+saw old Mary Co-que-wasa come climbing over a heap of stones that was
+piled on the flat; and she was bent almost double, half lifting, half
+dragging a man by a rope under his arms. It was Nick Grylls. He looked
+dead.
+
+"We shouted at her; and she looked up just once. I saw her face plain.
+It wasn't surprised or glad or anything--just stupid like a breed. She
+never stopped walking. She stepped right off the flat rock into the deep
+water with the man on her back; and they went out of sight; and some
+bubbles came up."
+
+He stopped, staring into the fire. His mother caught him to her breast.
+"Oh, my son! what sights were these!" she murmured.
+
+"Mary was a deep one!" Charley said slowly. "You couldn't tell about
+her! I never heard her open her mouth!
+
+"We hustled down to the edge of the water," he resumed presently. "Jim
+Plaskett threw off his coat; and went in after them. But it was no use;
+the current carried them down; and it was too cold to stay in more than
+a minute or two. We never saw them again.
+
+"Jim landed on the other side; and brought us back the raft that was
+there; and we all crossed. There was nobody in the tents--blankets in a
+heap, as if they'd sprung out of bed suddenly. We started to climb the
+ravine. It _was_ a body lying there on the rocks; it was Mabyn. Rina was
+halfway to it, before any of us saw. He wasn't dead; but had a bullet
+through both legs.
+
+"Say that place was full of horrors! It stunk of gunpowder; and there
+was little thin layers of smoke hanging quiet between the walls. I was
+near out of my head, thinking what had become of them. We shouted all
+the time; and by and by we got a faint kind of an answer back. By Jolly!
+I went up those rocks like a cat! I found them behind a whopping big
+rock. Garth was stretched out all bloody and she was trying to get his
+coat off; and she couldn't. She looked up at me with a face like chalk;
+and when she saw who it was, she just gave a little cry like a baby, and
+keeled over. Oh, it was pitiful! I carried her down to the river. I
+wouldn't let anybody else touch her.
+
+"Well, to make a long story short, we decided to raft it down the river
+to Fort Ochre, instead of trying to win overland to the Crossing. Garth
+had a ball through his shoulder and a gashed hand; and Mabyn was pretty
+low. It was longer that way, but we could carry them comfortable.
+
+"We built another raft and started next morning. Jim Plaskett, Mabyn and
+Rina went on the first; and Sandy Arkess, Garth, Natalie and I followed
+on the other. The other two fellows were to drive all the horses back
+over the prairie. Say, that was quite a journey! Garth was getting
+better; and we all felt pretty good, sitting round and swapping yarns,
+and looking at the scenery, while the current carried us down. When we
+got out of the gorge, coming down so quietly as we were, we saw any
+amount of game. Got a moose right on the bank! Gee! that was good meat!
+And at night, say it was out o' sight! sitting there talking about going
+home, and watching the trees march past, and a bang-up show of Northern
+lights up above! It was pretty cold.
+
+"There was the Dickens of a pow-pow at the Fort, when we got there at
+last! It's great sport being a hero! The Bishop and his party were
+there, just ready to start for home, and you never saw such a surprised
+man, when he saw Garth coming in from the other direction. And the old
+woman--I mean Mrs. Bishop--took to Natalie like her long-lost mother.
+
+"Their party was obliged to start at once for fear of the river's
+closing on them; and Garth insisted on sending Natalie out with the old
+lady. She kicked like anything at leaving him there wounded; and I
+braced him, too, to let her stay; but he told me it was for the sake of
+her good name. I didn't quite see that--why any one who _knew_
+Natalie!--but I suppose he knew best.
+
+"Garth and I stayed at Fort Ochre. The Inspector came down the river;
+and there was an official investigation. I was right in the thick of it.
+Gee! but it was sport! Colonel Whinyates is a great little chap--cheeks
+as red as church cushions, and eyes that pop like gooseberries! It was
+great to hear him bawl at the witnesses. But he's all right. Him and I
+were good friends!
+
+"Garth told his story and I told mine, and Rina and Plaskett. And
+Natalie had left what they call a disposition behind her. Everything was
+all straight, but Garth clinched the matter by calling Mabyn to testify.
+He was carried in on a stretcher. And blamed if he didn't tell the
+truth! He'd had a close call, you see, and had what Garth called a
+change of heart. It was Rina did it; day and night she never left him!
+
+"The investigation ended in a love feast--that's what Garth called it.
+Old Colonel shook hands with Garth and me, and said we were heroes, by
+Gad! He's a bird. Garth wouldn't prosecute Mabyn; and he was let out
+from under arrest.
+
+"The winter had set in by that time; and Garth and I couldn't get out
+till the ice formed. It was pretty slow up there, you bet! and, as Garth
+said, our hearts were outside. We talked about Natalie all the time.
+Mabyn got well, and he and Rina set off for their place with a
+dog-train. Garth gave them a bang-up outfit! Mabyn was a decent head,
+after he got well; and Rina certainly was happy about it. I forgot to
+tell you that Mabyn's mother had died in the fall; and there was no need
+for him to go out.
+
+"The first mail got through in January, and we heard from Natalie at last.
+Bully news! Garth had sent her another one of those dispositions--Mabyn
+swore to it--in the November mail; and it seems that was all she needed in
+order to have the courts annul the old marriage they had gone through
+together. Natalie has been a free woman since Christmas!
+
+"We came out with the mail man next day, you bet! That was six weeks ago,
+and here we are! Garth is waiting for me down at the station. I wanted
+him to come up; but he said he guessed you would want me to yourself
+for a while. Gee! I must be hustling! Train goes at six-thirty!"
+
+"But where are you going?" she asked in dismay.
+
+Charley kissed her. "East to Millerton, to the wedding, of course! Back
+in two weeks! Oh, what larks! What do you think! I'm going to be best
+man. Garth is getting me a silk tile and a frock coat! Oh, Crikey!
+Good-bye!"
+
+The door slammed.
+
+
+                                  THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+
+The following typographical corrections have been made:
+
+  (page 41) "et'em" to "et 'em"
+  (page 73) "immeately" to "immediately"
+  (page 85) "dug-out" to "dugout"
+  (page 89) comma added after "into the light"
+  (page 119) added missing quotes after "came North"
+  (page 152) "heartbreaking" to "heart-breaking"
+  (page 163) added missing quotes after "Lillywhite"
+  (page 180) "Erbe't" to "'Erbe't"
+  (page 197) added missing quotes before "I haven't"
+  (page 200) "dug-out" to "dugout"
+  (page 216) "possesssed" to "possessed"
+  (page 227) "half-way" to "halfway"
+  (page 238) "," to "--" on 253 after canvas
+  (page 240) added a comma after "promise"
+  (page 269) quotation marks removed before "As if"
+  (page 278) "beleaguered" to "beleaguered"
+  (page 285) "!" to "?" after "hands"
+  (page 317) "downstream" to "down-stream"
+
+The word "manoeuvre" on pages 34 and 102 was printed with an
+oe-ligature in the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO ON THE TRAIL***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 25159.txt or 25159.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/1/5/25159
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/25159.zip b/25159.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f36c91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/25159.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c32b6fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #25159 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25159)