Mantrap by Sinclair Lewis, from Project Gutenberg Canada (2024)

by Sinclair Lewis

To FRAZIER HUNT

Chapter One

Prickly heat jabbed its claws into Ralph's sweaty neck as he staggeredunder the load. All through the long portage and the torture of paddlingafterward, he had looked forward to the shooting of Ghost Rapids, asanxiously as he looked backward to the man who was in pursuit.

He was glad to get it done, to come at last to those notorious rapidsand see Lawrence Jackfish leap up in the bow, pointing with his paddletoward the one safe passage through the frenzy of broken currents. Thestream poured between gnarled rocks in a gush smooth as a sculpture ofpolished bronze. Ralph fancied that if he touched that swellingsleekness of water it would be hard and slippery to his hot fingers. Butbeyond the gate of danger the churning and frightened river spread intoa hundred whirlpools among rocks half hidden in the foam.

As he bent over the paddle, bringing the canoe's head sharply to theright to follow the fantastic jagged course which Lawrence was choosing,the rocks ashore caught the tail of his eye and he realized that thecanoe was going with aeroplane speed into the maelstrom.

Suddenly they were in the calm waters beyond the rapids, and in reliefRalph sobbed above his lifted paddle, so that the girl looked back inwonder, and the Indian snickered. There was a sacred moment of security.But always Ralph knew that they were fleeing from the angry man whomight be following them--angry and swift and menacing.

****

Ralph Prescott was perhaps the most conservative member of thatextraordinarily conservative firm of New York lawyers, Beaseley,Prescott, Braun and Braun. He played law as he played chess. A squabblewas as inconceivable to him as a fist-fight, and it was a shock to findhimself twitchy, irritable, likely to quarrel with clients and waitersand taxi-drivers.

He muttered, "Overwork--must take it a little easy--too much strain inthe hydro-electric negotiations--try a little golf." But the littlegolf, or even the unprecedented dissipation of going to the "Follies"instead of staying home working over the documents with which his soberbrief-case was always crammed, was insufficient to lull his janglingnerves, and night by night he awoke to obscure panics, lay rigid withblack and anonymous apprehensions.

At forty Ralph Prescott was more than ever a bachelor. The explanationwas a mother so much more serene and fine and instantly understandingthan any girl he encountered that he had preferred her dear presence toinsinuating romance. But she had been dead these two years, and whereshe had once coaxed him away from his desk at midnight for a chat andeasy laughter and a glass of milk before she ordered him off to bed, hesought now to fill the vacuum of her absence by working till one--tilltwo--till weary dawn.

A friendly, grave man was Ralph, quietly popular among his friends, thedozen lawyers, doctors, engineers, and brokers whom he had known incollege and whom he met nightly at the Yale Club; a man slight andeyeglassed and perhaps a little naïve.

However sharp he was, and however formidably solid about following up apoint of law, he was still as respectful toward all the Arts and all thePolitenesses as he had been in college, when he had listened toProfessor Phelps in literature classes and from afar, with a small flameof worship for sweetness and light, made his bow to Thoreau and Emersonand Ruskin. It was concentration, with a trick of being obliginglyfriendly to judges and juries, which had won his legal prestige, notthat thrusting power to bully and bluff and dazzle which distinguishesmore realistic attorneys.

On a May day in the nineteen-hundred-twenties Ralph Prescott perceivedhow badly his nerves were frayed.

He was driving, this Saturday afternoon, to the Buckingham Moors CountryClub, beyond White Plains, for eighteen holes. He was driving his owncoupé, which, with its prim nickel bumpers, its windows of specklessplate-glass, its chaste seat-coverings of much-laundered crash, was asdepressingly proper as an undertaking parlor.

It was the first brilliant Saturday of late spring, and every one in NewYork who could drag out any sort of motor vehicle, from a 1910 Ford to anew Rolls-Royce, from a limousine to a passionately trembling oldmotorcycle, had been seized by the same enthusiastic notion and haddashed out to view Westchester County. When Ralph carefully turned fromEast Thirty-seventh, where was his small restrained flat, to FifthAvenue, he found himself too tired to cope with the cruel and unyieldingmass of cars.

Only by acrobatics and the risk of death could he zigzag his way aheadof the others. For miles he crept behind a venerable sedan, stopping ina panic whenever it stopped, till he came to hate the refulgence of thesedan-driver's bald head. Always he had to be attentive to the opposingline of cars so close to his left fender; had to be conscious of the carjust behind him, which was apparently ambitious to run him down.

"And I'm supposed to be having an afternoon holiday!" he groaned. "I'vesimply got to get away. This isn't living. I'd like to go some placewhere I can have elbow-room and breathe again."

Once, when a traffic policeman halted him just as he came to a crossing,once, when a small boy ran out into the street in front of him, hisheart almost stopped, in a panic as grotesque and alarming as the shriekof a lunatic. Through all the drive he never relaxed but only waiteddesperately for the end of this ordeal.

He finally won past the distasteful litter of gas stations, hot-dogstands, ugly frame houses, and came into the spacious peace of theBuckingham Country Club grounds. He halted his car on the curving gravelroad hedged with rhododendrons, and drooped flabbily over the wheel.

"Got to take more care of myself," he meditated. "Rotten shape. Smokingtoo much--"

In that limp mood he was more than usually depressed by the locker-roomof the club.

Damp cement walls, gritty cement floor, odors of sweat and gin andancient bath-towels, sight of paunchy middle-aged men trying to beboyish in athletic undershirts, sound of overconfident laughter and moreor less humorous boasting about scores--he had always felt fastidiousabout this den, but today it was intolerable. It was a relief to betaken up, bolstered up, by the compelling breeziness of Mr. E. WessonWoodbury.

Woodbury was the chairman of the greens committee, and vice-presidentand sales-manager of the fabulously powerful Twinkletoe StockingCompany, whose sleek wares are to be observed on the ankles of half thegirls in the country, from Japanese cannery hands in Seattle to chorusladies in New York. Mr. Woodbury was a round, thick, self-satisfied man.He gave the impression of a particularly large and juicy drumstick fromthe fricasseed chicken at Sunday dinner, and his loud sudden laughterhad all the horror of gears jammed by an unskilled driver.

Woodbury was dressing at a locker only four removed from Ralph's. He wasdonning checked knickers, and stockings with rings of crimson and yellowand pea-soup green, diversified by a few pretty adornments in the way ofdiamond-shaped blotches. While he dressed he shouted as though Ralphwere a mile away:

"Better come join us--got three of a foursome--just got three--me andJudge Withers and Tom Ebenauer--just got three, but some gang, boy, somegang, great gang. Better join us--better come join us--the Judge mightlet you off easy when you come up for transporting liquor."

Usually Ralph avoided Woodbury. He preferred men quieter and more deftand honest. But today, in his alarming shakiness, he was buoyed up byWoodbury's pink, swelling, shining self-confidence. He felt like thesmall boy in prep school who may not esteem greatly the footballcaptain's notion of Latin declensions but who is glowingly flattered byhis friendliness.

"Well--" he said.

Somehow, Woodbury was the sort of chap who would take care of him. Heneeded some one to lift him out of his shaky depression.

Ralph played a precise and conscientious game of golf, and for all hisrecent quiverings he was easily the best of the foursome. Woodbury hadfaith that by bellowing, "Well, by golly, how'd I happen t' do that?" hecould make up for any slicing. As the four of them trailed along theserene pastures of the elm-shadowed course, Ralph found peace again andstrength, and a certain affection for his jesting companions.

Woodbury was not always jesting, however. He had a grievance:

"I've certainly been having tough luck. Been planning a great ol'fishing and canoeing hike in northern Canada--way up north of railhead,along the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border--the Mantrap River country. Greatplace--get entirely away from civilization; just forget there are anydoggone desks and phone-calls and bad accounts. I was up there threeyears ago--didn't quite get to Mantrap but nearly there. And fishing?Say! Muskalonge, pike (only they call 'em dorés in Canada), ten-pound,fifteen-pound lake trout--boy! I had it all planned out to go up therethis summer with a friend of mine lives in Winnipeg--canoes bought,route picked, four corking Indians hired for guides; and then Lou--myfriend--he had the rotten taste to up and get sick on me. Say, Prescott,you better think about coming along in his place. You lawyers don't haveanything important to do anyway. Why don't you let up on your poor oldclients for a while and give 'em a chance to grab a little money thatyou can take away from 'em next fall!"

"I'd rather like a vacation," mumbled Ralph, more attentive to theprobable lie of his ball than to the Great Open Spaces.

"Like it? Ma-an! Pulling in a fifteen-pounder! Sitting by the camp-fire,listening to the Old Timers pull the long bow about pioneering! Sleepingin a tent, without any autos honking! And look, Prescott: seriously now:an awful easy trip, the way I make it. The Injuns do all the carrying onthe portages; they cook the chow and clean the fish and put up thetents. And when we don't use the outboard motor, they do the paddling,not us."

"Motors? On canoes? In northern Canada?" gasped Ralph. It wassacrilegious.

Woodbury waved his midiron in an hysteria of laughter.

"You poor old tenderfoot! You Manhattan backwoodsman! Every Cree chiefin Canada-- I suppose you expect 'em to wear buckskin and paddlebirch-bark canoes! Why, there isn't hardly a chief there that hasn't gotan outboard motor and a white man's canvas canoe. Lord, you fellows makeme tired. You--why, you know all about London and Paris and theRiviera--I've heard you gassing about 'em with Eddie Leroy--and youdon't know these here North America no more'n a rabbit. Gosh, you'reignorant! Better come along and meet some real folks for a change!"

Ralph was both nettled and conscience-ridden. It was true. He knewnothing, nothing whatever, of the trappers and prospectors who stillguard the frontier. He had never slept on the ground. He was soft. Hewas soft and timorous--he with his pretty little vacations in Brittanyand Devon and the Bavarian Oberland! But also he was irritated byWoodbury's superior manner as he explained, like a radio lecturer, thatthere were six methods of propelling the big cargo canoes used for thelong northern hikes: paddling, poling, motoring, lining, sailing, andeven, in high waves, oars.

Mr. Woodbury evidently viewed with scorn the dainty canoes with redcushions and fancy names which are to be found at summer resorts. Now asthose were the only canoes Ralph had ever known, as he remembered withfondness a certain lake, a certain canoe, and a certain girl whom he hadpaddled as much as a whole mile in the golden days of twenty years ago,he felt that Woodbury was a boor.... Horrible sort of chap to havewith you in the strained intimacies of a wilderness journey!

But at the end of the game, as they tramped back to the clubhouse and tothe gin and ginger ale for which a hard week of sentencing people forselling gin had made Judge Withers peculiarly thirsty, Woodbury flunghis arm about Ralph's shoulder and cried in a boyish and fetching mannerhe had now and then:

"Don't mind my kidding you, Prescott. You're not used to the wilds, butyou'd learn--you've got nerve and sense. If you could make it, I'd loveto have you come along. Think of it! Up towards Hudson Bay, where youbegin to get the Northern Lights streaking across the sky in August!"

Though he had not taken the proposal seriously, all the way home fromthe country club Ralph drove easily, unconscious now of the press oftraffic, absorbed in visions of the North--visions derived from theyarns which he absorbed in bed, after midnight, when he was too twitchyto sleep....

The long trail. A dim path among enormous spruces. Overhead, gold-greenlight slipping through the branches. Lost lakes, reflecting as ebony thesilver of birch groves. The iron night, and in the vast silence morebrilliant stars. Grim wordless Indians, tall and hawk-nosed, followingfor league on league the trail of a wounded moose. A log cabin, and atthe door a lovely Indian princess. A trapper bearing a pack offurs--luxuriant ermine and cross-fox and beaver.

Dreaming thus, cheered by an excellent dinner at a Japanese restauranton the Croton River, Ralph drove home and left his car in the hugehumming garage where live like royalty the motors of corporationcounsels and millionaire bootleggers and even movie actresses. He camewhistling home to the old brownstone residence turned into flats, and hewhistled as he opened his fantastic black and orange door.

He stopped short, gasping with terror, his heart somersaulting. Facinghim was an intruder, his arm out, holding a revolver...

In two seconds he saw that the intruder was himself, imaged vaguely inthe full-length mirror of the bathroom door; that the outstretched armwas his own, and the shining revolver his conservative door-key. But theshock left him panting as he wobbled down the hall, into the heavilyornate and bookish living-room, and lay limp in a red leather chair.

"I've--I've got to do something, or it'll be a breakdown! I will go toCanada with Woodbury! After all, he's a mighty good fellow, despite hisbellowing and his confounded pep and punch. I'll go!"

In all of his guarded and carefully planned existence he had neversounded so desperately resolute.

His voice seemed frightened as he gave Woodbury's number on thetelephone and as he addressed that good man in his West End Avenueresidence; it sounded but a little less frightened as he summoned ataxicab and said good night to the janitress, who leered from thevestibule at the spectacle of the well-behaved Mr. Prescott starting outat eleven P.M.

"You bet--you bet--come right up--don't matter how late, and I'll tellthe wife to have the Jap stick some real genuwine beer on the ice,"Woodbury had greeted him. As Ralph bounced northward in the taxi, hisheart was warm with the friendliness of the quartermaster-colonel ofprogress.

"--quit all this cross-word-puzzle mongering of the law, and theseconcerts and highbrow English weeklies and cautious games of bridge. Getout among real men and eat real grub and sleep on Mother Earth," hemurmured. "Good old Woodbury--what a generous fellow he is!"

Woodbury was waiting in the lower hall when Ralph arrived. He greetedhim by thrice shaking hands, thrice pounding his shoulders, and led himup the highly carven black-walnut staircase to the Den, a room rich andslightly stuffy, profuse in mounted ducks, old pipes hanging on apyrographed rack celebrating the valor of Colgate University, and theoriginals of those very paintings of girls with lovely silk-smooth legswhereby the good tidings about Twinkletoe Stockings had been made knownto a yearning world.

He produced Mrs. Woodbury, a pretty woman of thirty, who gulped:

"Oh, Mr. Prescott, I do think it would be too delightful if you could gowith Wesson. The old bear! He pretends to be such a husky man of thewilds, but he's as soft as a baby, and I do hope you'll go along withhim and keep him in shape. You say you aren't used to roughing it, buthonestly you look quite athletic--like a track-runner."

Her lord admitted: "Yes, I guess that's about right. I'm not so good asI let on. But I get along on bacon and bannock a lot better than thelittle woman here thinks, and it'd be just as well for you to make yourfirst stab at the Big Woods with a man who wasn't too hard-boiled, andwouldn't keep you hiking maybe eighteen hours a day."

Their modesty about Woodbury's achievements as a Hardy Pioneer did morethan hours of boasting to convince Ralph that it would be agreeable toaccompany him; and as Woodbury, like a rather bloated but very jollysmall boy, dragged all his beloved playthings out of closets and cedarchests, what won Ralph's affection more than the beauties of a varnishedfish (looking too disagreeably dead to suggest any joy in the catching),more than the cleverness of an agate-mounted reel, was a worn andwrinkled pair of laced boots.

"Now there's some real Ritzy dancing-pumps," yearned Woodbury. "Look atthose spikes--like they'd been sprinkled on with a salt-shaker. Had 'emdone specially. And that foot--soft as a moccasin. Those boots--why,say, they've been with me in Maine and Michigan and Canada. Many's thebig ol' bass I've pulled out wearing them! Many's the hill I've climbed!And now let me show you something that is something!"

He flipped open a linen-backed map bearing the legend "Mantrap River andVicinity." There was Winnipeg, at the lower right-hand edge; there wasthe Flambeau River; there were Lake Warwick and the Mantrap River,Mantrap Landing and Lac Qui Rêve, Ghost Squaw River and Ghost Rapids,Lost River and Weeping River and Lake Midnight.

Ralph could more or less picture Winnipeg, though he had never been westof Chicago; and he had heard of the Flambeau River. He imagined itssulky yellow flood, rolling for a thousand miles through a wilderness ofpines and willow thicket and lone swamp melancholy at sunset. But mostof the map, whether the Manitoba side or Saskatchewan, was as unfamiliarto him as central Tibet, and the names lured him: War Drum Rapids;Singing Rapids; Lake Neepegosis; Mudhen Creek; Thunderbird Lake;Jackpine Point. And settlements named Whitewater and Kittiko and MantrapLanding--villages, no doubt, entrancing with swart Indians, papooses onthe backs of squaws, the log cabins of Hudson's Bay Company posts, andtrappers gay in checked shirts of red and black.

Before his usually shrewd and unromantic eye had half traced the map, heknew that he was going to break away from his neat little accustomedlife and plunge into mystery; and before he had half finished the bottleof beer which Woodbury proudly opened for him (under the handle of adrawer in the kitchen cabinet, in the astounding but surely temporaryabsence of all openers), Ralph flung out what was for him an almosthysterically incautious statement:

"I really think I might try to see if I couldn't arrange to get away,and I'm most frightfully obliged to Mrs. Woodbury and you for welcomingme at this indecently late hour, and--"

That night, very late, he walked all the way back to Thirty-seventhStreet. He felt brawny and tall and free, and as his trim feet,supercilious in black tie-shoes and linen spats, clacked on thepavement, to him they were padding in the mold and moss of far northerntrails.

Chapter Two

Among the Fifth Avenue windows given over to silver cocktail-shakers,emerald bracelets, and gowns direct from the Faubourg St. Honoré, is themagnificent display of Messrs. Fulton & Hutchinson, the great sportsoutfitters.

It is a camping scene. How green the cotton grass, how aqueous the glasswater, how affecting to any exiled Dan'l Boone must be the stuffedblackbird singing a soundless lyric on a lifeless reed. And hownecessary for hardy camp-life are the portable radio set, the pneumaticcushion which becomes a life-belt, and the four-burner gasoline stove.

Ralph Prescott stared at this realistic scene reverently, marched intothe store, and was directed to the Outing Garments Department, on theseventh floor.

"I'm going to northern Canada, fishing, and I want something durable andquite simple in the way of clothes," he said modestly to the clerk whoglided up.

"Certainly, sir. The entire outfit? May I recommend these whipcordriding-breeches, with laced boots, a real Ouspewidgeon flannel shirt,and a waterproofed canvas jacket with game pockets? Now these breeches,for example, they'll last a lifetime, and they're a very nice value atonly sixty-eight dollars," beamed the clerk.

Ralph winced, and squeaked slightly, but let himself be led into them.He chose two pea-soup shirts--one of black and crimson checks, one ofgreen and yellow plaid. He added a bold two-gallon Bill Hart hat with anornamental leather band, and in a triple mirror he regarded himself inall his bravery.

To Ralph, as to most males, trying on clothes was ordinarily a torture,and the newness of a new suit made everything he had worn before seemfrayed and shabby. But out of his camping armor he had all the pleasureof a masquerade. He looked very virile and competent, he told himself.He straightened up with ferocity, he put both fists on his hips with aswagger, then he removed the rimless eyeglasses which took away slightlyfrom his appearance as a tough man of action. At that moment he had nodoubt of his competence to shoot rapids, tote three hundred pounds onthe portage, and whip the most aggressive Indian.

"I'll order some big round spectacles, like Wes Woodbury's--look moreoutdoorish," he determined.

The expert clerk, whose training in perilous exploration had not beenentirely within the establishment of Messrs. Fulton & Hutchinson, buthad included three weeks in a Y.M.C.A. camp on Lake Chautauqua, unloadedupon Ralph a few large red bandannas, coat and trousers and hat ofoilskin, self-ventilating gloves, folding slippers, woolen socksespecially made by some special firm for some special purpose aboutwhich the clerk was a little hazy, high laced boots, low laced boots,and shoes of canvas with rubber soles an inch thick.

By this time Ralph was recalling Wes Woodbury's tense prayer, "Whateveryou do, for the love of Mike keep your outfit small!"

He escaped from the seventh floor after buying, under the clerk's ardentcounsel, a duffle-bag so large that if it were entirely filled no Indianyet born could have carried it across a portage. It was a charming andtricky duffle-bag. It had inside pockets, outside pockets, and topsidepockets, each with straps and flaps and delightful little padlocks. Ithad loops and whorls and thongs. There was only one trouble: the topflap was so ingenious that there was no way of fastening it to preventits bulging open and admitting all the rains of heaven. Ralph did notdiscover this until he was in a canoe on Lake Warwick.

The rest of his outfit he purchased on the main floor.

Tents, blankets, canoes, and the like had been arranged for byWoodbury's friend in Winnipeg, and would be awaiting them at railhead,at Whitewater, so Ralph contented himself with not more than two orthree times as many things as he needed.

The sports-specialists managed to unload upon him certain toys whichwere later to give his Indian guides unmitigated delight: a ball-bearingcompass, mosquito dope which the grateful mosquitoes regarded as nectar,an emergency ration of highly condensed and entirely indigestiblefood-tablets, and an apparatus which was variously a knife, a nail-file,an auger, a corkscrew, a pair of pliers, and a screw-driver. But severalobjects really were more or less useful on the trail: a magnificentelectric torch, a twenty-gauge shotgun, and some small part of thereels, rods, flies, trolling-hooks, and fish-nets which thetackle-expert assured him were necessary.

For a first adventure in outfitting, Ralph had really been veryself-denying, when it is considered with what dreadful hypnotizedfascination he looked at tents with phonographs and folding ice-boxesand portraits of Roosevelt; at lovely duck-hunting suits of grass, likethe costumes of Hawaiian dancers; and compellingly real wax modelsslumbering with every sign of comfort in eiderdown sleeping-bags.

It was done. Ralph shook hands with six, several clerks and theconcierge, and took proud leave. All his purchases went with him in thetaxicab. They were too delightful to wait for, and in their knobbysuggestive packages they surrounded him on the seat and the floor of thetaxi.

At home he did on his armor and stood before the long door-mirror whichso recently had frightened him. He was a splendor of wide-brimmed hat,canvas jacket with huge pockets for game--yet uncaught--red and blackchecked shirt, whipcord breeches, boots, and the startling, theferocious, spectacles which he had picked up at the oculist's on the wayhome.

"Heh! I don't look so bad! I look like the real thing! I--"

Inexplicably all the magic was shattered, and he was no longer a childplaying at being a hero, at being free and swift and strong; he was onlya tired scholar on the slope of middle age.

"Hell, I look like Ralph Prescott, dressed up in baggy clothes! I looklike amateur theatricals! Those clerks at Fulton & Hutchinson's areprobably laughing themselves sick at me!"

He was suddenly as deep in self-conscious doubt as he had been high inselfless joy. In his costume of the wilds, stained as yet by no streakof mold, no drop of blood, no blot of rain, he sat miserable again anddoubtful in a humorless red leather chair.

But out of his melancholy came one fact: He had a friend!

All his life he had known tepid and cautious acquaintances; loyal enoughand sufficiently charted, intelligent and easy, but afraid of life, soreafraid of the sacrifices and hot partisanship of veritable friends. Andin the same E. Wesson Woodbury at whom he had often laughed as a noisyand shallow fool, he had found the one enduring friendship.

"We'll have a bully time in the wilds. Wes is a real he-man. He'll makeme get over my confounded cautiousness."

With a pale reflection of his afternoon's ecstasy, Ralph began packing.But it had come to him that this expedition might be perilous, and as hefussily arranged his treasures in the vast duffle-bag, he thought ofcanoes smashed in rapids, of broken legs in the wilderness, of bearsprowling about lonely tents, of city weaklings lost in pathless forests.

Chapter Three

When Ralph awoke and rolled up the blind, the train was steaming throughthe Manitoba prairie.

He had seen the immensity of the Alps, he had seen steamers dwarfed inthe unending round of ocean, but he had never felt the boundlessness ofthe world so sharply as now, looking across these level acres brokenonly by distant farmhouses with scant cottonwood windbreaks. It was aland valiant and young. As he lay relaxed and expectant in his swayingberth, he wanted to ride on forever.

They saw the pleasant city of Winnipeg; they had a night at BearpawJunction; then all day long they lumbered through swamp and jack-pineforest on the mixed train to Whitewater, which is on the Flambeau River.

The train had a caboose and an aged passenger car behind the long browncreaking line of freight-cars. Trains had to Ralph been affairs of steelPullmans, disdaining the country through which they dashed, and it hadnever occurred to him that it might be agreeable to talk with atrainman. Now he sat in the caboose, tilted back in a wooden chair, andlistened to the aged conductor, who had woolly hair in his ears and adrawling endless wisdom in his gossip of weather and government andtraveling-men and the reason why wives are, of many, accountedirritable.

It was Woodbury who had secured for them the chance to ride in thecaboose, sacred to trainmen, instead of in the crammed passenger car.Woodbury was the sort of man who knew how to get passes to theaters,discounts on tires, and tables in restaurants on a holiday eve. By thetime they had been aboard for five minutes, he knew that the conductorhad a grandson in business college, he had advised the brakemanregarding his dyspepsia, and moved Ralph and himself into the caboose.

It was like the office of a lumber-camp, the interior of the little redcar at the end of the train. There was a desk, a shelf-table which couldbe folded up against the wall, and hard-looking chairs. Here gatheredthe aristocracy of the train: the conductor, a traveling salesman forgroceries who knew every person and every scandal from Bearpaw toKittiko, and a real sergeant of the Royal Mounted Police, as good as amovie in his taut scarlet coat, his broad hat, his incredibly well-cutriding breeches.

The train jogged on so slowly, the earth, seen through the open reardoor of the car, was so close, that Ralph felt identified with itsdrowsy strength. He no longer belonged to the hectic city. No, he wasone with these brown swamps stretching to a far horizon tragic withblack skeletons of trees burned in forest fires. He liked the roughnessof the caboose; he was released by it--released from all the stuffyneatness of offices and polite flats. He was strong and serene andungarrulous; he was--

Then he was highly uncomfortable, jarred out of his reverie by the talkof the policeman.

"Terrible thing--never found his body--must have smashed all to piecesamong the rocks--found part of his canoe and a paddle--never couldunderstand how as good a waterman as he was ever tried to shoot SingingRapids," the policeman was fretting.

"Wh-what rapids are those?" Ralph mumbled to Woodbury.

"Singing Rapids, on the Mantrap. The sergeant was just telling us abouthow a half-breed--corking good canoeman he was, too--how he got drownedin 'em."

Suddenly Ralph knew that he was a coward.

He knew that he was afraid, and deathly afraid, of rapids and of all theunknown risks of the wilderness. And because he was afraid he sought tosound careless as he chuckled:

"Hum. Really? Well, then, I hope we won't shoot 'em, Wes!"

"No. We go up 'em. Our route is up river."

"I see. But would, uh-- What do you think about that sort of thing?Would you take a chance and try to shoot 'em if they were so kind as tobe going our way? And what do you do? Line up 'em, or what?"

"Prob'ly portage around 'em. Time enough to think of that when we cometo 'em.... They getting much moonshine up here now, sergeant?" saidWoodbury, with booming amiability.

"Time enough to think of them...."

Ralph's time to think of them, he shuddered, began right now.

"Am I going to be afraid all the while?" he agonized. His joy inadventure had dimmed; it almost vanished as he listened to the chatter,as he heard of wolves, of forest fires, of canoes capsized while sailingon lakes ten miles wide, of canoes sinking in a storm when they struckhidden snags.

And with his dreary apprehensions was a certain boredom.

For nearly four days he had been constantly with E. Wesson Woodbury, andhe was a shade weary of that barking laugh, that loud patronage, thatstory about monkey glands which he had heard now seven times.

"Just as well we'll have separate canoes. Wes is a prince, but he'snever learned to be quiet," Ralph sighed; and, "Now if we were in therapids--if the canoe struck a rock and you had to swim-- What if thecurrent banged your head against a rock?"

Thus afraid of being afraid, which is of all fears the most unmanningand pitiful, Ralph sat paralyzed; and hour by tedious hour, as theycrept through the dusty jackpines, as the train stopped at every lonewheat-elevator, and switched box-cars for interminable vacuities, historpor was broken only by irritation at Woodbury's manly laughter.

It was a relief when the train reluctantly staggered into Whitewater, onthe Flambeau River--end of rail, jumping-off place, end of what iscalled civilization--and it was a relief to see his first rapids and getit over.

The Flambeau crawls like a bloated boa constrictor through the shaggywoods. At the edge of town, beside the railroad, it breaks into theWhitewater Rapids. The whole stream is flung between two black granitebastions, gushing as smoothly as though it were poured from amillion-gallon bottle. But below, among the slippery boulders, it isbroken up into a welter of milky foam. No canoe could live in thatchaos, where the tortured water is dashed up in rainbow-streaked foam,to fall in a curdle of snowy whirlpools.

Yet Ralph was comforted.

Like most silent and too-imaginative men, he was chiefly afraid of whathe could not see. He had pictured all rapids as cloaked in menacingdarkness, and however turbulent this cataract, it was something real andconquerable, under the light of the tardy northern sun. Swimit?--certainly he could swim it--well, perhaps he could--if he had to!

With a renewed joy of adventure and, tangentially, a renewed liking forE. Wesson Woodbury, he climbed down from the train, his shotgun andfishing-tackle clattering and his new boots making the most touching andsatisfactory clump on the plank platform, and came to his first frontiertown.

Chapter Four

Whitewater was once a sawmill town of fifteen hundred persons. But thepatriotic lumber company has slashed away all the timber, that is, allthe timber that was not carelessly burned, and the place has dwindled toa hundred souls--a cluster of tumbling shanties in a prickly wildernessof stumps and bogs.

The chief adornment is a tall iron sawmill chimney, covered with a domeof wire netting to keep in the sparks. But the chimney is ruined now andlikely to collapse in the next storm. The secondary pride of Whitewater,rising loftily among the tar-paper shanties, is the Bunger House: Mealsand Lodging.

It rises three whole stories. It has never been painted, and thedinginess of its gray clapboards is broken only by the clean yellownessof such new boards as Mr. Bert Bunger has been compelled to tack on tokeep out the rain. Most of its windows are broken. Where once the lumberkings, or at least lumber knights, had suites of two rooms (both withoutbath--one room to sleep in and one to play poker), where once thedining-hall banged to the tread of lumberjacks' clogs, now Mr. Bunger islucky if he has a single roomer, and six mealers festive over the porkand beans.

But Mr. Bunger in poverty cannot forget that once he was powerful. Ithurts him to have to do anything for guests. It disturbs his games ofsolitaire and his sense of seigniory to receive perfect strangers.

Ralph and Woodbury were to spend the night here before taking the riversteamer Emily C. Just up the Flambeau River to Kittiko, where theywould finally embark in canoes. They came mildly into the office of theBunger House. Behind them was the sergeant of Mounted Police, asrespectful as they. The Royal Mounted are not noted for timidity, butMr. Bert Bunger was the only person in Whitewater who could provide foodand lodging.

The office was rather like a pigsty. Then again it was like an atticfilled with furniture of 1870. It was a largish room. On one side was apile of rickety chairs and warped tables. Beside them was a porcelainbathtub, indecently public. Probably somebody had intended to install itin a room upstairs and connect it with water-pipes sometime; probablynobody ever would connect it with anything any time. (It must not besupposed that it was the only bathtub in the house. There was one other,in a room the key of which Mr. Bunger had chronically lost. But this wasa scaly structure of tin with peeling paint, an extraordinarily roughobject for plump and meditative persons to sit in.)

The rest of the office was agreeably filled with a pool-table of torngreen cloth, a round pine table on which rested, for hotel library, acopy of the Montreal Star of six weeks ago, and the grained pinecounter behind which Mr. Bunger played solitaire with cards over whichsoup--at least--must have been spilled.

Of the dust in corners, of the spider-webs in electroliers withoutelectricity, of the general mixture of red mud, sawdust, and cigarettebutts, it would not be refined to speak.

As Woodbury and Ralph and the sergeant filed up to the desk, Mr. Bungerraised his head in irritation.

"Could we get a couple of rooms for tonight, and supper?" inquiredWoodbury, in his most flamboyant good-fellowship.

Mr. Bunger (and a skinny little man he was) carefully placed the nine ofspades upon the eight thereof, dusted his hands, looked learned, placedthe ten upon the nine, looked up again, and groaned, "Huh?"

"We'd like two rooms, and I guess the sergeant wants one. Be all right,eh, all right?"

"Oh, I suppose so," sighed Mr. Bunger. "Will you guys register? Now whothe hell has taken that register away? Somebody always monkeying withthings here! I'm getting good and tired of it!"

Ralph, genially permitted by Mr. Bunger to carry his own bag and findhis own room, discovered that it had most of the legal equipment ofhotel rooms, namely a bed, a bureau, and a chair, though the bed was ofso sensitive a nature that it squeaked when he merely looked at it, thebureau drawers would not open, and the lone chair had beenunsuccessfully repaired with fence-wire. But one thing generally foundin hotel rooms it did vigorously lack: breathable air. He found that thewindow had been nailed down. As a substitute for air there was anancient scent of pink soap, crushed insects, and moldy linen.

He dumped his duffle-bag on the floor, took out only a handkerchief ortwo, and fled into the corridor.

Woodbury was fleeing with him. They met at the stairs.

"Fierce place! I think I'll tell Brother Bunger how much I love himbefore we leave here," growled Woodbury, and Ralph admired him again forthat surly hardihood.

It was half-past five now, and the Bunger supper was at six. But theyhad to see that their Indian guides, their canoes and tents, hadarrived. Ralph lost the feeling of desolation which had oppressed him,as they passed through the street of rotting log cabins and crazy shacksand came to a camp of white tents and wigwams in the shadow ofjackpines.

"I really am in the North, among Indians!" he exulted.

Their Indian guides, who had come on by themselves from Bearpaw,escorting the supplies, were encamped with a band of Crees. WhenWoodbury inquired for them, they came filing out of their tent.

Ralph Prescott had been brought up on the Fenimore Cooper tradition ofIndians. He expected all of them to look like the chieftain on thebuffalo nickel, like the statue which in all proper parks stands betweenGoethe in marble and General Sherman in bronze--a sachem eagle-nosed,tall, magnificently grave. His heart was pinched as he saw shamblingtoward them four swart and runty loafers, introduced as Jesse, Louey,Charley, and Nick.

They did not look in the least like lords of the wilderness engaged inwatching, under lean shadowing hands, the flight of a distant eagle.They looked like undersized Sicilians who had been digging a sewer, andtheir only human expression was their supercilious, self-consciousgrins. Feathers and blankets they wore not, but rusty black suits fromthe cheaper kind of white man's back-street shops. The one sign ofIndian art was their moccasins and one hectic bead belt displaying theUnion Jack. They spoke only Cree, except for Charley, an older Indianwho could do well enough with English when he was not too bored.

Ralph was regretful that Woodbury had taken Charley for his own canoe,leaving himself in the hands of two smoky men whose language was asintelligible as that of a woodchuck. Still, Woodbury was the captain ofthe fleet; he would have to take the lead--

Woodbury was greeting the Indians with boisterousness: "Well, well,well, boys! Here we are! Ready to pull out tomorrow! Got all our stuffon the steamer?"

Charley grunted, "No, not yet."

"Then what are you doing hanging around your tent? Got most of itaboard?"

"No-uh."

"Got any of it?"

"Not ye-et."

"Not yet! Not yet! Not yet! What do you think this is? Why didn'tyou-- What's your explanation?"

Charley exchanged with the others a glance half sheepish, half amused atthe rage of the tenderfoot over the insignificant matter of catching asteamer this week or next or a month after. Crees were not made forclocks. When Woodbury had finished his raving, ending with a powerful"And you get busy right now," Charley pacifically answered, "All right."He lounged toward the pile of supplies, contentedly followed by theothers.

Charley was a moral man and a great canoe-steerer, but he was onlyfifty, he had only thirty-five years of experience in guiding white men.He was perfectly willing to do anything he was asked, but he never, byany chance, remembered to perform such duties as pitching tents orpreparing meals or bailing out a canoe with three inches of frigid watergurgling about the miserable feet of his employer until he was reminded.

Woodbury's rage made him take the longer in checking up their supplies,heaped under a tarpaulin: tent, blankets, canoes, paddles, sails, motor,gasoline, food. It was nearly seven when he finished barking items forRalph, who looked like a diffident bookkeeper, to mark off on the list,and they started back to the Bunger House. As they entered thedisheveled lobby, Mr. Bert Bunger, in shirt-sleeves and sweat-stainedsuspenders, picking his teeth and scratching his head, was resting frominnumerable labors, tilted in a chair with his feet on the decayedbilliard table.

Woodbury was cheerful now, and he boomed fondly at Mr. Bunger, "Supperready?"

"Yeh--and et!"

"We better wash and skip in."

"Wash all you want to, and skip all you want to, but you don't get nosupper here, not this time o' night! Supper's over."

"Supper's ov-er--at six-forty?"

"Supper's ov-er!"

"Then have the cook shake us up something."

"I will not have the cook shake you up nothing! The cook's had all thework he wanted, feeding these hogs of railwaymen and teamsters, withoutworking till midnight for a bunch of galoots that haven't got the savvyto come to their meals on time. I'm the cook!"

"Then why didn't you call us? We were at the Indian camp, not a hundredyards--"

"I've got enough to do, without going out and hunting for folks that'retoo lazy to come to meals."

"Then where can we get something to eat?"

With delicious enjoyment, punctuating his drawl by sucking histoothpick, Mr. Bunger drawled, "No place a-tall!"

"Then by thunder--"

Woodbury was off again. He shouted, he shook his fist; he would have thelaw on Bunger; if they didn't have supper at once, he would do somethingdreadful.

The dirty little man looked at him with contempt. Suddenly Ralph hadenough of this dog-fight.

"Oh, don't make so much noise!" he snarled at Woodbury; then,apologetically, "I mean--there's no use talking to a swine like this."

"Who you calling a swine?" yapped Bunger. "You better be careful who yougo calling names around here!"

As to the shooting of rapids, Ralph might be timorous enough, but he wasaccustomed to handling angry men and threatening men in courtrooms, andhe ignored Bunger with a disdain more infuriating than words, as hecontinued to Woodbury:

"No use wasting time on this poor white trash. It's his inn--such as itis. Can't force him to cook after hours. Let's have our Indians preparesome bacon, and have 'em put up the tent. We'll take our stuff out ofthe rooms here and camp tonight."

"You can," bawled Mr. Bunger, "sleep in your tent all you damn' want to,but you'll pay for your rooms! You registered. It's the law!"

Woodbury emitted a portentous "Oh, it is, is it!" but Ralph cut him offwith a sharp, "And I'm a lawyer! See here, my man!" (But that was amistake. Bunger was so far down in the social scale that he didn't evenknow he was being insulted by "my man.") "The Mounted Police sergeant isover at the railway station. Just go to the door and shout for him, willyou? Please ask him to arrest us for jumping our board-bill. Please! Andthen you listen while I ask him a few things about the lex talionisnisi sub super cum poena, code 47! Just call him, will you, while we goup and pack!"

Woodbury was swelling with desire to spoil the chill judicial effect bythrowing another of his rotund and pumpkin-like orations into thedebate, but Ralph held him with an unfriendly eye, with a sound halfwaybetween a grunt and an exasperated sigh, and led him to theirsour-smelling rooms.

"That was a good bluff you threw," Woodbury admitted. "By golly, I'drather pay a hundred-dollar fine and a lawyer's fee than give him thethree dollars for our rooms!"

"Yes. Lawyers love to hear people talk like that," said Ralph. "Iwouldn't. And it isn't the principle of the thing--it's the hundreddollars. But I'll do that hog out of anything I can."

"You called him fine! Great stuff! He won't dare holler for thesergeant. That was a bully stunt of yours, to walk out on him. He won'tdo a thing."

Woodbury was for the first time adoring--and Ralph liked his pompousadoration as little as he had liked his undisciplined rage.

"Come in my room. Look," said Ralph. He pointed to the station platforma few yards away, where the sergeant of Mounted Police was talking tothe local Provincial Policeman. In a moment he saw the raging BertBunger--but respectable now, with his coat on and even an aged tie--runacross to the two functionaries.

"Bluff's called!" said Ralph. "Nothing we can do, I fancy. Weregistered, and got in too late for supper. Let's move anyway, and notlet him make anything on our breakfasts. But we pay for the rooms."

Woodbury was instantly the oratorical business man,going-to-by-golly-do-something-about-it.

"We do not pay! If any man thinks he can get away with the stuff thatfellow's trying to pull on us in this God-forsaken rat-hole, then let metell you, let me tell you--"

Ralph left him abruptly, stalked downstairs, to meet Bunger and both thepolicemen as they entered the lobby.

Bunger shouted at him, "Now we'll see--" But Ralph ignored him, and ofthe Mounted Policeman, who looked sympathetic, he demanded, "From whatI've heard of Canadian law, you have certain magisterial powers?"

"Yes."

"Then will you permit me to treat you as the court, and pay you thethree dollars which we owe for the two rooms which we shall not occupy?You know the opinion that every decent person must have of this man. Ihate to trouble you about this, but may I say, without libel, that he'sso dirty that I'm really afraid to hand him the money myself."

The Mounted Policeman looked beatific. "So am I," he crooned--straightand formidable in his scarlet and blue, turning a razor glance on theinfuriated Mr. Bunger. "I'm a little afraid of germs myself. I thinkwe'll leave the job to the Provincial Policeman here. The Mounted areexpected to get shot and frozen, but I don't believe they ought to takea chance on an infection like this."

Both policemen radiated delight. They knew that for a hundred milesabout--gossip flying from frontiersman to frontiersman as though it werea boarding-house of old women--for a hundred miles and for ten years,every one who had suffered under Mr. Bert Bunger would yelp at the taleof the man who said Bunger was so dirty he would not hand money to him.

Their ecstasy was not lessened when, as the Provincial Policeman handedhim the money, Bunger tore up the three bills and hysterically trampledon them.

But in Ralph there was no delight. His rage had gone dead. He left thelobby abruptly, clumped up to his room, and answered Woodbury's rumblingquery with a curt "All settled. Let's pack and get out."

He sat on the edge of his frowsy bed, brooding.

It was his misfortune as a private citizen, and his blessing as alawyer, that he could see both sides of any controversy, both of twoconflicting personalities, even when one of them happened to be himself.Yet he was too thin-skinned for heroism--not so resolute as often to acton the knowledge when he saw that his opponent was right. It is such menwho flee to monasteries, to narcotic reading, to a gregariousnesshateful yet protective; unable either to tolerate or to change thechildish hurts and squabbles with which we poison life.

He loathed himself, suddenly, for the cheapness of his triumph.

"Lord, how petty! So proud of myself for actually thinking up a way ofinsulting that mangy alley cat! Brought up in a log stable--how shouldhe have courtesy? And is he any worse than the city lad who seems politewhen he really hates you? And I so cocky! Oh, yes! 'Call the cop! I'lltell him something about lex talionis sub nisi!'

"The great I! The great lawyer! The clever city-man! Worse than Wes.He's simple and courageous. And he too--I've been feeling so superior tohim, with his anecdotes--"

He perceived that much of his depression was due to the enfeeblement ofhis admiration for Woodbury. He perceived how necessary authenticfriendship had become to him in a world left vacuous and bewildering bythe death of his mother. In such circles of thought as had maddened himin his lonely flat, in black and sleepless reveries by night, he beganto admire Woodbury again.

He did not veil the man's irritating qualities--his boasting, hisnoisiness, his fuss over inessentials, his pretentious ignorance--but hefound assurance in that driving self-confidence, that cheerfulness whichmade Woodbury of good flavor between tantrums, that physical strength,gone flabby now.

He sprang up, flung into his duffle-bag the few things he had taken out,and closed it before Woodbury appeared at the door with his own luggage.

"Sorry I started all this scrapping, Wes. Do forget it. Let's get out ofthis absurd place and sleep on the decent honest ground."

Five minutes before, Ralph's hard fury had turned Woodbury into ananxious follower.

(You could see Wes as a boy, a puffy boy, the butt of his Gang, moreingenious than any of them at devising plans for stealing melons andtorturing cats, but the first and only one to be, in a most unhygienicmanner, initiated into the fraternities they founded and forgot within avacation-time week; a wistful fat boy, complaining "Ah--gee--quit, can'tyah?" and with drooping bulbous lips following a sharp-nosed littleleader half his size; always longing for some one to bully as he hadbeen bullied.)

Now, instantly, he bounded back into command with:

"I tell you, son, you got to learn to never fuss, up here in the woods.Take things the way they come, Ralph--take things the way theycome--just the way they happen to come. No sense in cussing anddiscussing with that pup Bunger. I'd just have handed him one and walkedout. This trip'll be a fine thing for you; teach you to pack all yourtroubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile--that's theticket--that's what we said at my officers' training-camp--that's thestunt up here, in the big outdoors--pack up your grouches and smile,smile, smile. Well, we'll forget it now. Tell you"--brightly--"whatwe'll do. We'll sleep on the ground. That'll make you husky."

Thus, wavering with his duffle-bag, Ralph followed the generalissimo whohad thought up all these plans and beneficial ideas, and he had themanner of meek discipleship.

But he was again dreading a plunge into the wilds with no protectionfrom Wes Woodbury's nobleness.

Chapter Five

Their tent, as the Indians set it up for them, was to Ralph not a mereshelter but a symbol of the wilds and of every gallant exploration. Itwas of balloon silk, with the bottom sewed to the sides, so that therewas no crevice through which the man-eating mosquitoes of the Northcould creep. The five windows of netting were protected by silk flapswhich in rain could be lowered by cords cunningly placed inside thetent.

There was a playhouse quality about these windows which roused in Ralpha gay childishness uncommon in that grave life of his. He chuckled as helowered and raised the window-flaps, and Woodbury chuckled and exclaimedwith him, and in wide good-humor they crawled out under themosquito-netting to attack their first camp meal--the tea and bacon andbannock which old Charley, the chief guide, had prepared for them.

Now bannock is, technically, a variety of bread. But only among thecopper-stomached Woods Crees is it considered to be an edible bread. Itis well thought of as ballast, as a missile or an anchor, but forinternal use it ranks with tripe and pemmican. Bannock is made withoutyeast. It is flour and water, caused to cleave together by boiling it inlard in a frying-pan over a maddened fire. Yet Ralph managed to swallowit, with liberal butter and marmalade; he found himself relishing thetea diluted with condensed milk; and he imitated the great Woodbury ineating the bacon with his fingers.

Woodbury was a zealot at showing how lusty and he-mannish he could be inthe Great Open Spaces of which all city-dwellers speak so admiringly. Hehad as much pleasure now in acquiring grease as in New York he wouldhave had in avoiding it. And he was mighty in discovering sportiveevents for the evening.

Now in June, in the far North, there was light until eleven, and theyfelt disinclined to go to bed, though they had to be up at five to catchthe river steamer. The evening did rather drag. Ralph struggled toappreciate Woodbury's companionship, but he became a little melancholyover undiluted conversation about municipal bonds and the beauties ofthe stocking business.

Other entertainments were few in the hamlet of Whitewater. There hadnever yet been a movie in town; the last theatrical company had been theLionel Lornton Big London Tent Show in "Little Lass o' Tennessee" and"The Perils of Limehouse," seven years before; and, even had Ralphparticularly relished prayer-meetings, there was none tonight in thebleak frame chapel. Their friend the Mounted Policeman had driven intothe country to examine a Swede who wanted to be naturalized. So the twoexplored the place, craving excitement--and they discovered a socialgathering.

In front of the "British Jack General Supply Company: Hats and Caps,Boots and Shoes, Clothing and Table Delicacies: Furs Bought at BestPrices and Whitefish Forwarded: Our Motto a Fair Deal to All," which wasa log cabin covered with tar-paper, the tin discs holding the paperrusted by years of rain, sat three men in overalls.

Ralph and Woodbury sat with them, greeted by not unfriendly grunts of"Haaryuh."

For seventeen minutes the assembly argued as to whether hay could begrown north of Reindeer Lake. For nine minutes they discussed, withardor, the reason why Pete Wrzska's outboard motor--the one on his redrowboat, not the old motor Pete bought from Harry Larssen, two yearsago--had not started this morning.

Ralph and Woodbury fled on to the next soirée; the four men and a womanin an apron standing in front of the doctor's cottage and listening tothe doctor's account of the state of old Mrs. Bjone's rheumatism. Butthis seemed a choosey, private affair, and they felt they could notintrude.

"Tell you what we'll do--tell you what we'll do!" rejoiced Woodbury."You know that Provincial Policeman stationed here. Well, they're alwaysgood fellows--real hard-boiled birds. We'll rout him out and get up apoker game! You've never seen any poker up here in the North. Boy,they're the boys can play! Trappers and traders and everybody, and someof the Injuns. Bluff on two deuces. Why, I've seen, I've seen afur-buyer that was down to his last twenty dollars in the world--I'veseen him bet every cent he had on the turn of one card. Great stuff!Playing up there in the woods, log cabin right among the thick pines,rough pine table, with one smoky ol' oil lamp, playing till dawn, thenall of 'em jumping into the lake for a swim, just as the sun came upacross the water. Boy, that's living!"

Ralph felt that to him it was a peculiarly painful way of living, but hewarmed up his smile and, in as lively and anticipatory a way aspossible, he followed as Woodbury galloped toward the ProvincialPoliceman's house, emitting poker enthusiasms punctuated with "You'llsee--he'll be wild for a game--tickled to death--they always like to getus tenderfeet into a game and try to trim us--but not me theywon't--you'll see!"

Ralph was appropriating thirty dollars as the amount he would lose, andframing a treacherous play for escaping from the game before midnight.

It was nine-thirty, and the sunset was still burning across the muddycurrent of the Flambeau, beyond the willows along the bank, beyond thegaunt sheet-iron chimney of the abandoned sawmill. At the shiny yellowand white cottage of the Provincial Policeman, there was silence, noanswer to their knock.

"This is fierce," said Woodbury. "Nine-thirty is a little too early togo to bed in this metropolis--about a quarter of an hour too early--butit certainly is too blame' late to be out indulging in the giddydelights of visiting. Something gone wrong. Probably Bert Bunger'smurdered the policeman in bed."

From the whitewashed log cabin next door, with its brave posy-bed ofpansies and frail wild roses, a gaffer with silvery chin-whisker andspectacles halfway down his nose came crouching out to bawl:

"Looking for somebody?"

"For the policeman."

"For the policeman?"

"Yes."

"Somebody done something?"

"No."

"Well. Well! Strangers here, ain't yuh?"

"Yes. Say, has--"

"Going on the river steamer tomorrow?"

"Yes. Say, has the policeman gone to bed, or what--"

"Heh?"

"Has he gone to bed?"

"The policeman? Gone to bed?"

"Yes!"

"Why, no! Course not!"

The aged one felt wounded surprise. "Him and his missus have gone downto Milligan's, to do the crossword puzzle in the Winnipeg paper thatcome today."

"Think he'd like a game of poker?"

"Him? The policeman? Why, he's a Seventh-Day Adventist! He ain't got asingle vice, not one. Oh, maybe except chewing tobacco, and lapping up alittle moonshine, just a little, when he pinches a still. No, sir.That's a good moral fellow. Now me, when I was a trapper, years ago,that was before I went with the trading company--I worked for them quitesome time and then I come down with the rheumatism, but my daughter shemarried Ed Toggerman, a fine steady hard-working fellow he is, too, whenhe keeps off the booze, he sends me sixty dollars a month regular as aclock, he's got a new job over to Regina in a lumberyard, got a goodthing of it. Zis saying, when I was a trapper I played some, but don'tknow's ever cared much for cards, always rather get in a little sleep.Still, guess if you gentlemen'd like a game, try to oblige you. Guess Iremember how to play all right, and maybe we could get my granddaughter.She ain't only twelve, but she's smart 's a whip--she ain't Ed'sdaughter, she's my other daughter's daughter that works in the Bon TonStore, and I don't know if she plays poker, but I know her and her maplay casino sometimes--"

They averted the calamity of family poker. They sat in front of theirtent, on a bucket and a box of canned pears, and watched the river run.

It kept running.

Before eleven they were abed.

For Ralph, his bed-roll had something of the ingenious fascination ofthe tent. It was a sleeping-bag covered with festive green and browncanvas, lined with blankets filled with soft eiderdown. There werebuttons, straps, snaps; there was a flap to cover his head in case ofrain. It was in itself a little house and, feeling at once adventurousand secure in privacy, Ralph crawled into its cave.

He had started to undress, but Woodbury had snorted, "What do you thinkyou're doing? All you take off in the North is your shoes and coat, youpoor fish! And-- You don't mean to tell me you've brought a pillowalong?"

Ralph had, and a very nice little pillow it was, of the best down. Tohim a pillow was the noblest part of sleep. He liked to snuggle into it,to tuck it up about his sound-wearied ears as a protection from theintrusive world. He had felt proud of the practicality of his newtraveling pillow. It was so conveniently small, and it was covered withgay dirt-proof calico in a pattern of parrakeets and orchids among whichany one ought to be glad to sleep.

"Why not a pillow?" he squeaked.

"Good Lord! Takes up enough room for a three-days' ration! Besides,everybody will die laughing at you up here, if you're going to be such amollycoddle. Roll up your coat and sleep on it, like a real man!"

Ralph rolled up his coat, but he was not so successful at sleeping on itlike a real man.

For a second, weary with the day's cramped riding and the Bungersquabble, he stretched out luxuriously between his blankets. But thistrodden ground beside the river was curiously hard. In ratio as he grewmore drowsy, it thrust up the more viciously against him. It fought him.It heaved up and hit him. He discovered the importance of his shouldersand the points of his hips. They were sore with the incessant banging.

Woodbury had for a moment dropped snoringly into sleep, but he too wasroused by the unyielding earth, and he stirred with the obscure cloudysounds of night-time. The tent was not yet dark. Ralph lay studying thereënforced seams along the ridge; suffering with sleepiness and unableto sink into it--there was no sinking about this resolute ground.

And the manly rolled coat was like a pine board to his ear.

"Awake?" grunted Woodbury.

Ralph was silent.

"Awake?"

Still Ralph restrained himself. For no very definite reason he longed tohit Woodbury with something--something heavy, but smooth to the claspinghand.

"Doggone earth's so doggone hard it makes every bone in your doggonebody ache. Well, gotta get used to it," Woodbury said illuminatingly,then turned again and apparently slept.

While Ralph lay in the clutch of creeping paralysis, he remembered andtried to forget and remembered again that he conceivably could desertWoodbury--and that this was his last chance to leave him. He picturedcamp-hotels in Maine: the pines as gracious as here, the lake as joyous,but with food meant for self-respecting stomachs and reasonable beds infragrant log cabins. He recalled a friendly old inn on a hilltop in NewHampshire. He saw a pension in the Bavarian Oberland, with mountainsbeyond the carved eaves of peasant houses; an inn on the Breton coast; apath through Highland heather. In six days he could be on a steamer,among civilized people who would talk of something besides municipalbonds and the stocking business; in twelve days he could be landing atSouthampton--see again the chimney-pots and the Bovril advertisementsand sniff at the smoky exhilarating odor which meant distant London.

To escape from this narrow companionship with Woodbury, from this rawand traditionless land, from this senseless discomfort...

"The most blatant of all our American myths: roughing it in the wilds!

"The virile open spaces--Wes Woodbury trying to play poker!"

Then he swore:

"No. I won't do it. I don't like this place. It occurs to me that Idon't like this man Woodbury. But I've lived too soft. I must stick byit. Only--"

As though he were defying a throng of accusing sportsmen he clamored,and mighty was the noise, though it was entirely within his brain:

"Only let me tell you fellows right now that baseball bores me, and Ithink fishing is dull, and poker is duller, and even if it makes me losemy American citizenship, I maintain that sleeping on the ground isrot!"

Exhausted by this declaration of agnosticism, he slept for half an hour,and awoke to a further defiance so dreadful that his cloud of accusersgasped.

"And I'd just as soon shoot a duck sitting as on the wing. I don't knowthat it makes such a whale of a lot of difference to a duck whether hegets murdered sportingly or otherwise. Understand?

"And I won't throw away my little pillow! I'll sneak it along withme!"

Chapter Six

The steamer Emily C. Just crept down the yellow flood of the FlambeauRiver to Kittiko, where Ralph and Woodbury and their Indian guides wouldat last take to canoes.

As to the tonnage of the Emily C. Just--it hasn't any tonnage inparticular; it has only pounds and ounces. Though it is sixty feet long,with no less than seven staterooms (including one cabin de luxe fittedwith running water and a special china cuspidor, for such infrequentdignitaries as the Fishing Inspector), yet the superstructure is of inchpine, and the partitions of cardboard.

It has none of the regular habits of a liner. It runs each way twice aweek--except when it is a day or two late, or when Captain Venner stopsto look over the potato crop on his claim en route, or finds a pokergame and gives up that particular trip entirely. It is a stern wheeler,and paddles contentedly through three feet of water or turnssurprisingly from steamer into canoe and shoots a rapids, curvetingamong the rocks.

Once or twice it has sunk, and after such misfortunes the mud has beenscraped off and the boat been repainted a pleasing robin's-egg blue withan orange smokestack.

There is an idle charm to river steamers. They are not forlorn in analien expanse of waters. They run so close to one shore or the other asto share in its life, yet they are free from the cinders and stink of atrain skirting tenements. The passengers leaning on the rail of theEmily C. Just and gravely spitting into the Flambeau can consider thefamily affairs of every chicken scratching in every runty clearing; andin luxurious scorn of hurry and ambition they can learnedly argue as towhether or no that ruined reed-mound of a muskrat nest was occupied lastwinter.

The Emily C. Just stops in at ports consisting of two log cabins and awigwam; the captain, lordly in his pilot-house, is hailed by ahalf-breed trapper, with a face like bacon-rind, as "Cap," or "Billy,"and that is all very pleasant and domestic. Sometimes the steamer makesa port that is not so populous, that is only a woodpile on the bank, andthen the deck-gang, all three of them, pass the cordwood from hand tohand into the hold, which is a cross between a Vermont woodshed and anantiquated machine-shop.

The passengers may go ashore at any stop, with no formalities aboutpassports, customs inspectors, jinrikisha drivers, postcard vendors,bars, or the rules of the purser. If they do not return in time, thesteamer whistles for them like a hen clucking to its young, then waitscontentedly, while the captain plays cribbage with the chief (and only)engineer, or shows the missionary's children how to make birch-barkcanoes out of paper.

Ralph was relaxed in his raw-nerved and egotistic resistance to theunknown land. He speculated on ruined cabins of trappers along theshore, on clearings wrung from the forest with such bitter grubbing ofstumps, such painful plowing of root-knotted fields, but abandonedagain, and tragic against the forbidding and dusky spruce. He speculatedon mink holes and on mother black ducks, fearfully trying to save theirskittering brood by leading them right beside the leisurely and chuggingcourse of the steamer, in the typically maternal impression that theywere racing and beating this monster of modernity, and that but fortheir adult wisdom and clucking, the children would instantly have beendestroyed.

He went ashore (escaping Woodbury's company and regretting suchdisloyalty and most vigorously keeping it up), and he discovered a realCree Indian encampment--birch-bark wigwams, young wives with babiesswinging on their backs, old women smoking pipes while they curedmoose-meat and whitefish on frames over a sluggish fire, Indian menmagnificently doing nothing, thinking nothing, and wanting nothing. Heambled into a forest of jack-pine and poplar and occasional clumps ofbirch silver as Diana; he was driven out by an ambush of mosquitoes; hewent aboard, and cheerfully he sat on the deck floor of the Emily C.Just, his back against the wall, smoking a pipe.... Wes Woodbury hadexplained to him that nothing was more necessary in the art of beingvirile than giving up cigarettes for a brave jimmy pipe.

He found in the steamer the same toy quality which had betrayed him intogayety in their tent. The dining-salon was a touchingly absurd closet inwhich a glazed-faced Chinaman served, he asserted, hamneggscoffpie. Thecaptain welcomed them in the tiny pilot-house, and showed them how torecognize the snags and ghostly sunken logs in the foam-streaked currentahead. And all day long the stern-paddles churned the yellow paint ofthe water into leaping foam through which, above that mossy mill-wheel,a rainbow burned.

If he could have gone on for a week, Ralph would have grown intoserenity, have heard Woodbury's incessant heartiness through a veil ofcontentment. But next morning they landed at Kittiko--two log stores,two log boarding-houses, and the fish warehouse--for their embarkationin canoes.

Woodbury, in his zeal of being efficient and hardy, immediately blew uplike a toy balloon.

Though they had two large freight-canoes, nineteen feet long, it seemedimpossible that they should ever be able to stow away all this pile oftents, bedding, duffle-bags, boxes of food, sacks of flour and sides ofbacon, sails and oars and gasoline-tins and frying-pans, which toweredon the log wharf. And Woodbury's outboard motor had to be fitted to theforward canoe--Ralph's canoe he would tow, when smooth and open waterpermitted them to run on gasoline. A scratch or two had to be smearedwith canoe-glue and paint. Saplings had to be cut as masts.

In all these tasks Ralph was sensationally useless.

Woodbury had at its highest the schoolmaster's art of making sportcompulsory and laborious and pious and dreadful. He was a four-minuteman, a suburban-development sales-manager, a lady chairman.

He rushed at the guides and agonized, "Now hurry up and get the stuffin--get it in--get it all aboard." He tried to fit the outboard motor tothe rack on his canoe, and banged his finger-nails, and swore, andglared at Ralph. He bellowed that the sapling masts were too large forthe holes in the thwarts, and when they proved to be exactly right, hescowled, and announced, "Well, they don't look strong enough."

He shouted at Ralph: "Well, try to do something, anyway! Don't sitthere admiring yourself!"

When Ralph ventured to lower a box of bacon into his canoe (riskilytilting on the gunwale, holding the rough edge of the wharf with onehand), Woodbury exploded, "Good Lord, don't put that box for'ard--gottahave the weight in the center."

Ralph felt meek, horribly useless, in everybody's way. He wastremulously polite to Louey, the youngest and most bored guide, he wasfilial to Charley, to Woodbury he was absolutely reverent; and when thegreat white chief condescended to hear his tribute, "You certainly doknow this game, Wes," he was grateful.

For all of Woodbury's sales-manager efficiency, the work did somehow getitself done.

The cargo seemed to condense as it slid into the canoes. There hadapparently been twice as much load as they could carry, yet by magic thecanoes seemed only half full.

Amidships of each canoe was a nest for one of the white men, hisbed-roll as seat and his toys at hand--fishing-tackle, gun, even apaddle (though Woodbury had to sit in the stern when the motor wasrunning). The Indians didn't at all mind the tenderfeet pretending tohelp propel the unwieldy canoes now and then, providing they werecareful not to spatter water from their paddles. Indeed they scarcelylaughed at their efforts, after the first few times.

Everything was complete except Woodbury's especial charge, the outboardmotor, and that was clamped in place, all pretty and shining, all readysave for one thing--it would not start.

It would not give one sputter. Not after half an hour of profane jerkingat the starting-cord could Woodbury get it to take hold.

Ralph looked wistfully from the log wharf down on the raging Woodbury.He was alone. The population of Kittiko, five whites and nine Indians,had come to gape at the expedition, but in his present disillusionmentabout life Woodbury was not so cordial as usual, and they had driftedaway. The Indian guides, their loading done, squatted on a pile ofsawdust ashore and let the sun shine.

Whether they started this week or next year was the same to them,providing the bacon and cigarettes lasted.

Ralph knew as much about motors as the average man who has driven a carfor only ten or twelve years. He knew a steering-wheel from ahand-brake, and he could pour water into a radiator. The outboard motorwas a heathen mystery to him--a round something with a finned singlecylinder, a long handle, and nothing else identifiable.

When Woodbury had for a moment given up, when he stood looking bitterlyat the motor, as though he was wondering how he could best hurt itsfeelings, Ralph ventured:

"Do you suppose the feed-pipe might be plugged up?"

Woodbury, swaying in the canoe, raised his hands to heaven in theprotest of a dying martyr, then patiently gave voice:

"It must take a great brain to think up suggestions like that! You'recertainly helping me a lot! Of course I've only cleaned out thefeed-pipe a couple of times now, while you've been looking on!"

Ralph retired to the end of the wharf; he considered two mud-hens and aclump of weeds, and longed for the Yale Club.

The Hudson's Bay factor ambled down the wharf. Woodbury could be seenstiffening, down in his canoe, ready to leap the five feet up on thewharf and choke the fellow at his very first suggestion. The factor, wholooked like a preacher and who had a magnificent flow of divinelanguage, squinted one eye, heaved with amusement, grunted "Vent chokedin tank," and humped away with a scorn which reduced to pitifulgreenness not only Ralph but the great E. Wesson Woodbury.

Ralph saw Woodbury swell like a pussy-cat's tail while he sought forproper language. But also he saw him examine and poke at the vent in thegasoline tank; seize the starting-cord and jerk it.

Instantly the motor spatted and ran clear, with the sound of a very tinyairplane.

Woodbury stood up in the canoe, his fists clenched, glaring at Ralph,daring him to say one word. Ralph looked as blank as possible. ThenWoodbury glowered the other way, at the Indians on shore. They had goneto sleep. The cruelly used leader felt injured. He brooded for a timeover all his unprecedented wrongs, then he roared, "Well, are youfellows going on a canoe trip or not?"

So the golden Argosy embarked; so the fabulous expedition started forthe unknown heart of the North.

One Indian squaw came to her wigwam door and stared after them.Otherwise, the world seemed ignorant that Ralph Prescott and E. WessonWoodbury were making history.

Then for two weeks all life was a routine of struggling on and stoppingto catch muskalonge.

Sometimes they poled or paddled through shallow snaky creeks; sometimesWoodbury towed them, the motor's burr as hypnotizing as a humming bee.They came into Lake Warwick, a vast plate of water, island-spattered andstretching to a shore of black cliffs fantastic with orange lichens. Oncalm days the motor-driven canoe clove the polished water, but with afollowing wind they sailed.

There were only three or four inches of freeboard to the canoe, andoften they took water. Ralph was tremulous as he considered theirhelplessness in sailing. They were miles from shore, in a shell whichwould go down instantly if they struck a submerged rock, and he couldnot have swum a quarter-mile.

He fought himself, he scorned his cowardice, he reproved himself by thespectacle of Woodbury relaxed in enjoyment of the sail, but he could notkeep from speculating as to what chance he would have of drifting ashoreif they sank.

Yet it was beautiful: waves glittering, triangular sails like curvingwings of a gull till at evening the low sun turned the sails to gold,with that orange glory burning through them.

He hated the guides during sailing hours.

He had heard always of the "grim silent Indians." The Woods Crees, atleast, exhibited a silence almost equal to their hatred of whisky. Theykept quiet enough during the labor of paddling, and the motor drownedtheir clack when it was blessedly working, but in the stillness ofsailing, when Ralph most longed to forget his detestableself-consciousness and timidity, to be absorbed in beauty, then hisbow-man and stern-man babbled like washerwomen, giggled like littlegirls, shouted witticisms across to the Indians in the other canoe.

Some of their exasperatingly unending jabber was smutty stories, heconcluded from their neighing; some of it, from their glances, certainlywas poignant comment on Woodbury and himself. As his own Indians spokeonly Cree, he could neither understand them nor tell them to shut up.And he wanted to be a "good sport," to keep from complaining. Helistened, and suffered--and grew hourly more irritated.

They crossed from Lake Warwick to the wide Mantrap River, and headedtoward Lac Qui Rêve, on which was a trading center where they couldrenew their food-supply and gasoline--a settlement called MantrapLanding, with a Revillon Frères store, a Hudson's Bay post, and a freetrader by the name of Joe Easter; a place with a vast population ofperhaps a dozen whites and, in summer, when they loafed after thewinter's trapping, fifty or sixty Indians.

Ralph felt hardened. He could sleep on the ground as in a four-poster,he could relish bacon, he was only a little apprehensive about sailingand rapids. He had watched his Indians zigzag their way down half adozen smoking rapids now, and had come to see with indifference therocks rushing up at them.

But he could no longer endure E. Wesson Woodbury.

Woodbury had developed from fussiness to nagging. He criticized Ralph'skit, his fly-casting, the amount he carried on portages, the way hestrapped his bed-roll, his shrinking before a swim in icy water, asthough Ralph were his office boy and given to losing messages. Whateverhis mood, Woodbury was unrestrained about it. His jovialities were ashard to endure as his bad tempers, and there were many of them to endurein the forced intimacy of tent and meals, and fishing from the samecanoe. When he had a feeling for smoking-room stories, he shouted themand emphasized all the dirty words. But worst of all was hisearly-morning jokiness.

Before Ralph had even washed his sandy eyes, or swallowed a drop ofcoffee to strengthen himself against pleasantries, Woodbury would bebounding with dreadful good spirits.

He would poke Ralph awake and yelp: "Going to pound your ear all day?Well, there's one thing you can do decently--you can sleep. Ha, ha, ha!"(But the sound wasn't really a ha; it was a more gurgling andcomplacent noise, and more enraging.)

As they went down to the water's edge, frowsy in rumpled shirts, to washtheir faces, Woodbury would playfully splash a bit, and whoop, "All youneed is a little water on you to look like a drowned rat, dearie. Didumsgot bad temper when ums wakes up?"

Of the matter of the odd slice of bacon when they boiled the kettle atnoon, "Oh, don't mind me, Ralphie--just eat all the chow. I can liveon air!"

And when Ralph spoke of anything more profound than bonds, the stockingbusiness, golf, or motors, Woodbury croaked, "Great little talker, ain'tyou! You'd make a fine college professor. Let's have a lecture now onevolution!"

He was full of bright sayings and winning ways.

Ralph was not ridiculously meek. He snapped back at Woodbury sometimes,but his effort was to endure everything from cold to wittiness. Andhere, so wholly submerged in a life new to him, he had almost ceased tobe the self-reliant Prescott who would never have tolerated rudeness ina courtroom. In the arts of fishing and the canoe, in the strangeness ofcamp and portage, among the silent lakes and the noisy Indians, he couldnot predominate. These alien surroundings pointed by implication morestrongly than Woodbury by derision his complete feebleness, and pointedit so strongly that he could not imagine any environment in which RalphPrescott might perhaps be respected.

He had, for a time, no soul of his own. He became a serf to Crees and toWoodbury, with little thought, small feeling, and only a numb sense ofhis own stupidity--an insignificant figure crawling over the giantlakes, amid the engulfing gloom of forests.

"But how long can I stand being disciplined like this?" he wondered,when for a moment the breeze cleared away his torpor.

Chapter Seven

At nightfall, after traveling too long in search of a goodcamping-ground, they came to the portage beside Wardrum Rapids, the mostdangerous current on the Mantrap River. They heard rushing waters faroff, and the unrelenting rumble disquieted their weary senses.

The beginning of the portage was a sloping bank of clay, raddled andbefouled by the feet of many canoe parties, no suitable place for theirtents. But Woodbury said crossly: "Oh, let's camp here. We're too tiredto make the portage and go on."

It was a lowering, unhappy dusk, the air wetly fresh. Ralph sat stifflyin his canoe, on his bed-roll, as the two canoes nosed up under thepoplar shadows. Even in the looming distant growl of the rapids, he feltchoked with stillness at the cessation of the motor's whir. The Indianscrawled ashore, silent and morose, and morosely they lifted out thecargo, turned over the canoes on the muddy beach, pitched tents and madefire. No one spoke as they drank their evening tea. The bacon wasburned. Wet clay seemed of itself to crawl over their boots, their coldhands.

And no one spoke as they crawled into blankets.

It was not till Ralph was half asleep that Woodbury grumbled: "I wishthere was some way of getting you to remember not to leave your duds allover this tent. Here's your boots under my bed-roll. Even if you do wantto lose 'em and go barefoot with your pretty tootsie-wootsies, you mightshow a little consideration for other people!"

Ralph's drawing of breath was audible as he started to snarl back, buthe clenched his jaws and kept still.

He was awakened by the violence of rain on the tent. As he reached forhis watch, with its radium-painted dial, he found the khaki ground-clothof the tent soaking. Water was running down the slope on which they werepitched, flooding them. But there was nothing to do. There was probablyno better site for miles, and the clouds had smothered the world withdarkness.

Half an hour later Woodbury generously woke him to explain that it wasraining.

They were both on edge when they crept out at five, in oilskins, todrink bitter coffee and gnaw wet bacon, but Ralph said with what heconsidered measured mildness, "Guess we'll have to stick here all day."

"Stick here, hell!" observed Woodbury. "On this slope? Sit in a puddle?We'll push right on till we find a camp with some shelter."

The rain promised to continue all day. Silently they began the portage,the Indians trotting with the inverted canoes on their shoulders. Ralph,as had always been his custom, and Woodbury's, prepared to carry onlyhis own shotgun and fishing-tackle on the portage--a seeping mossy path,among dripping ferns, under poplars and birch beside the welter of therapids. But this morning Woodbury chose to be zealous and generallydisagreeable. He loaded himself with suitcases and food-boxes till hestaggered and dropped a box or two. He tried to adjust a tumpline roundhis forehead to carry the boxes, and failed, while Ralph stared at himlike a meditative calf.

Woodbury screamed, "If you can't help us by portaging, day like this,you might at least give me a hoist with my load and not stand therelooking foolish!"

"Oh, shut up!" Ralph heard himself say, with more savagery than he hadshown for years. But he repented; he mumbled, "Be glad to," and loadedon Woodbury's proudly athletic shoulders at least one-third of thenormal pack of an Indian on the portage. Himself, he was shamed intocarrying his own duffle-bag as well as gun and tackle.

The strain of the weight on his back as they set off was slightly lessof a torture than being burned at the stake.

While Woodbury wavered ahead, along the wet path, in the green lightthrough the showery trees, he sonorously kept up his sermon:

"Of course the Indians are supposed to work for us, but there comes atime when they can't do everything, and wet day like this, when we wantto make time and get on to a decent location, where we can campcomfortably, I should think even a tenderfoot like you would want topitch in and help 'em out. Besides, they ain't dumb animals, you know!They're human beings just 's much you are! They may not belong to theYale Club and wear lovely expensive whipcord pants and be able to spielabout music like you can, but, Gawd, they do have some rights! Matterof fact, don't see why you shouldn't do a little of the work all thetime, and not just sit around and think how doggone clever you areand--"

"I do as much as you do, Woodbury!"

"Oh, you do, do you! You do like hell! Say, can you beat it! And me withall the care of the motor on my hands--filling it, cleaning it, keepingit running all day long, so's I almost never get a chance to sit downand loaf the way you do--Can you beat it!"

That this was true did not soothe Ralph, but it did keep him silent.

He had been looking, always, for something useful which he could do, buthe had neither the strength nor the training. What would to him havebeen an aching load on the portage was to the trained Indians butanother insignificant ounce; what would have been an agony of paddling,to them was play. It had seemed absurd to kill himself on this "pleasuretrip" without particularly relieving the guides.

As if they didn't have a beautiful loaf all the while the motor was inuse...

And weren't they paid for it, and...

So he brooded, now miserably, now hotly, while they slushed along thepath, dropped their loads, and went back for more. All the whileWoodbury growled at him, at the Indians, at the rain, at the fish which,with a sudden feeling of injury and suspicion, he now remembered havinglost off his hook day before yesterday.

The rain beat with gray resolute steadiness as they loaded the canoesand started up the river, motor-driven, at an unvarying pace, past anunbroken smear of rocky shores, of pines and poplars. The river bankswere as lacking in human kindness as they were lacking in the bigness ofmountains or open lake. Ralph's body was dry enough in oilskin coat andoveralls and fishing hat, but the canoe was soaked with a wetness whichseemed to pierce through oilskins to his dreary heart. The Indians hadcovered the cargo with the heavy canvas of their tent, but the canvaswas drenched. Greasy pools of water lay in its folds or leaked through.When Ralph drew it up about his chest, for a little warmth, the canvaswas clammy to his hands. He envied, he respected, the Indians in theirstolid patience. They were so wet now that they could be no wetter, andwithout even the nasty covering of the canvas to protect them, they satunmoving, hunched over, expressionless.

But Ralph found himself creating a tolerable sort of shelter, crouchedon the canoe bottom, his back against a bed-roll, the canvas making adoubtful roof. He had lost all feeling. They would go on forever,through eternal rain, joyless and with no destination, no hope; so whytear himself with desire? And as his body ceased demanding, his brainran clear.

With all his stilled misery, he was rejoicing that for once the Indianswere too soggy to chatter, and that he was free of Woodbury's nagging.Ahead, in the other canoe, partitioned off by the loud hum of theoutboard motor, the man was abolished, a nuisance forgotten, so far backin history that now he seemed almost diverting.

Ralph's mind began to tick as steadily as the motor.

"Even if I am a dub--yes, say it, a weakling!--there are people whothink I have certain qualities...

"Definitely, I've had enough of this--enough fishing--enough of thewilderness--it's all alike. And more than enough of Woodbury.

"Blatant fool! Empty-headed buzz-saw! Hog! Lord, if he werereal--intelligent, solid, or even stupid and kind--I'd stick by himthrough everything, no matter how rough. I haven't complained once, haveI? But I'm through.

"I'd leave him here and now--if I could! Oh, people would call me aquitter. Let 'em! I've gone beyond the point where names matter--gonethrough to reality.

"But how can I leave? How could I talk to my Indians and tell 'em whereI wanted to go? Charley's the only one who understands English enough tointerpret, and naturally dear Wes would grab him. Here I am, imprisoned.Have to stick till the trip's over. With that blatting counter-jumper!

"No. Be fair. He's not to blame. I annoy him equally. What he needs is acompanion who likes smutty stories and fishing. Nobody to blame. Itwould be just as silly to try to find out which of a divorced couple wasto blame, when they just didn't get along together and that was all.Once I start really analyzing him I'll become desperate. Must keep cool.Either find some way to shut his mouth or get out of this.

"I wouldn't mind the rain, if there were some civilized people to laughwith after a day like this."

He was besieged by a vision of easy people, well-bred people, graciouspeople, talking on a sheltered porch facing the stormy sea, and allmorning the thought of them tormented him as he crouched and waited.

For many miles there was no fit camping-place. The rocky cliffs rose toosteeply, and so close did they come to the water that when theexpedition reached a long shallow rapids, there was no path for portage.The water was not deep enough for motor or paddling, and Woodbury'sIndians jerked their way up the pebbly current by poling.

But Ralph's bow-man, a reckless and fantastic youth named Jesse, whoresembled a Chinaman, being now so cold and wet that coldness andwetness had ceased to be important, leaped out into the water and linedRalph's canoe up the rapids, towing it in front while the Indian at thestern poled. Ralph crawled out as the canoe hung ashore for a moment,crept up the slippery rock face of the cliff above the river, andmiserably made his way among the poplars, whose wet leaves slapped hisface at every step.

Jesse was a slant-eyed genius at picking his track through roughcurrents, and a genius at Indian quadrilles in log cabins, but with hisgenius went a certain domestic undependability. He did not watch hisfooting as he trudged ahead through the shallow whirl--he had nottroubled to remove his trousers or soaked moccasins. He hummed andregarded the heavens, pulling with stolid strength, the line over hisshoulder.

He jested at Charley's poling in the canoe ahead. He remembered RedWing, the belle at Mantrap Landing, and as he splashed on he bawled tothe other Indians his highly colored opinion of her, all in fire-crackerCree. Just then he slipped, sprawled under water, let go the line, andthe canoe shot back.

Looking down from among the poplars on the high bank, Ralph saw hiscanoe turn broadside and bump a rock. The Indian at the stern, pushingwith his pole, lost balance and tumbled out, while the other Indianscackled with delight. As Jesse splashed and galloped after it, the freedcanoe gained speed, struck a fanged rock which slit its side, humped itsshoulders once or twice in indignation, and peacefully sank.

Jesse reached it in time to rescue the bacon, but not Ralph's duffle-bagnor his bed-roll, which rested in a canoeful of water. Jesse shrugged,and began to line the water-logged craft up the rapids again. No beachhere on which to make repairs. There was a wide enough beach beyond therapids, and amiably, as part of the day's work, the four Indians made afire by which to dry the soaked cargo a little, and began repairs, withnew slats, new canvas, canoe-glue and paint, while even Jesse whoopedand ceaselessly giggled about his disaster.

It was not till the Indians were already at work that Ralph, caught in atangle of brush, sliding and bruising his shins on mossy rocks, made hisway past the rapids and joined them.

He found Woodbury striding the shingle by the river as though it werethe quarter-deck of a pirate craft. Before Ralph could let himself downthe cliff, Woodbury was screaming at him:

"I might of known you'd do something like this! And in the rain! Ruin agood canoe! Ruin a sack of flour! All the--"

"Had nothing to do with it!" Ralph retorted. He spoiled his effect alittle by sliding down the last four feet of the cliff and flaying hishands on the gravel, but he did not sound obedient now.

"Help it? Course you could help it! Letting Jesse play the fool with thetow-line!"

"How could I tell him? Charley's the only one here that understandsEnglish, and of course you hogged Charley!"

"Well, anyway, you--"

Woodbury's gust had blown itself calm, but Ralph's had begun. He facedthe bigger man. He was no longer slightly absurd in his baggy oilskins,so hard was his thin face.

"You knew before I started that I wasn't used to this hiking, and yetyou've done nothing but kick, the whole way. Let me congratulate you onone thing, my friend: you've managed to spoil the one long vacation I'vetaken in years!"

"Well, if you think it's been any picnic for me, Prescott, with yoursulking and your would-be polite condescension and your would-behighbrow gassing and--And your inconceivable butter-fingered clumsiness!Things any real American boy of ten could do! When you said you weren'tused to hiking, I didn't suppose you were a paralytic!"

...A crescent of gravel, five or six feet at its widest, under adripping slope of rocks fleeced with wet lichens; on the other side, theriver hastening down to a debauch of rapids, a stream black under blackclouds, viciously glazed save for sinister little whirlpools and thepitting of ceaseless rain. On this crescent of gravel, a few forlorn anddirty men, two of them squabbling like old women over a back fence. Allthe glory of history and the human will choked and made futile by a rentin a canvas canoe, a clash of incompatible senses of humor. And roundthem a million square miles of tangled forest and bleak lake and drearytundra, dwarfing their heroic contest to the buzzing of flies in aspider-web.

Of this disproportion Mr. E. Wesson Woodbury was probably not conscious.He went on with as much joy in hurting his companion and hurtinghimself, and hurling out nastinesses which he would later regret, asthough he were a drunkard accused of being a drunkard. But Ralph, withhis years of legal controversy to weary him of all ugliness, wasinstantly tired of the spat, and instantly aware of the snickers of theIndians, who were listening to them with beautiful glee.

There was for once nothing of the Neat Little Man about him, there wassomething stripped and formidably direct, as he stared down Woodbury'sbumbling and stated: "Very well. I'm a burden. And let me warn you thatit'd be a pleasure to quit you."

"Don't be a fool! You can't!" chuckled Woodbury.

Chapter Eight

It was toward evening when, with the canoe repaired, the motor drummingthrough the rain, they came to the end of the poplar-crowned cliffs andfound an open camping-spot in an ancient clearing. It was marked as anold Indian haunt by the staggering poles of a one-time drying-rack forwhitefish.

Neither Woodbury nor Ralph knew it, and if Charley the guide had knownhe would not have dreamed of telling, but here the first Frenchmissionary-explorers built wigwams in 1587; here ever since had governorand bishop and lone trapper found rest for a night, a week. Though theforest round about is as unbroken as it was in 1492, the Mantrap Riveris the royal highway, the Boston Post Road, the Great North Road, of thewilderness.

It was a grassy and friendly place, well drained, free of rocks,sheltered by a wall of rare white pine. The Indians pitched the tents,and in five minutes they had burning a vast bonfire which would havetaken a white man half an hour to set going. Soaked of neck and wristand hands, numb and stiff, Ralph sat luxuriously on a food box under acanvas shelter which was stretched over a bough lean-to before the fire,his arms out toward the rejoicing flames.

For the first time Woodbury and he did not make up their quarrel. Therewas tension, silence between them and a sense of waiting, of listeningfor danger.

Woodbury sprang up. "Get a few fish," he belched.

Ralph saw him on the low rocks by the river, throwing out histrolling-line again and again, sometimes pulling in a pickerel. It waspresumably not at all dry, down there on the rocks, and Woodbury lookedinfinitely lonely and pathetic. Ralph felt guilty. He buttoned the longoilskin coat, which with such delicious relief he had thrown open, hesighingly tugged on his water-logged boots, and ambled to the shore.

"I say," he murmured, as Woodbury forlornly dragged in histrolling-line, hand over hand, the water dripping through his puffyfingers, "I do know I'm not a very useful companion, and I do know youhave some reason for feeling sore at me just now, but I hope I'm notkeeping you from the fire."

"You? Keeping me? Don't be silly!" Woodbury did not sound highlylovable. (But, oh, all the time you might have seen him as that fatlittle boy from nowhere in particular, being so touchy because he knewthat he was nothing, being so offensive because he was always beingoffended and hurt. And a little of this Ralph understood, but not much,for nowhere here has it been stated that Ralph Prescott was a greater ormore tender soul than most of us.)

"I happen to enjoy fishing," said Woodbury. "I enjoy it enough so thatafter coming two thousand, and maybe it's three thousand, miles for it,I like to fish! The rain won't hurt my complexion, like apparently itdoes some people's!"

Ralph said slowly and carefully, but really without much interest, "Allright, you can go to hell!"

He returned to the canvas shelter and the enrobing warmth; he strippedoff his oilskins entirely. He wasn't quite sure how, but he felt that hewas being defiant in thus settling down to effete comfort; and heconsidered that he was being absolutely mutinous when, without askingpermission of Woodbury, whose stomach had been the only legal clock onthe trip so far, he ordered Charley to break out a hunk of bannock forhim and give him a cup of the tea which the Indians--sound fellows withno nonsense about the joys of fishing in the rain--were contentedlyguzzling in a tent smoky with the steam from their wet clothes.

He watched Woodbury fish his way up the river, out of sight round abend. He felt that the chieftain was being a martyr for his benefit. Buthe refused to be moved into obedience again, and he was beatificallydozing off when he was roused by the sound of another motor.

It was a sharper, more aggressive outboard motor than Woodbury's.Through the haze of rain Ralph watched a strange canoe fleeing up theriver, heading toward their own camping-place. When it was come near hesaw that there were two men in it: at the bow a young,unpleasant-looking Indian, at the stern a white man in an ancientblack-rubber raincoat and canvas hunting-cap. Where Woodbury had backedand filled in making landing, had stood up and shaded his eyes andbellowed vague queries at Charley, the stranger shot up unquestioningly,in a wide curve, nothing of him moving save his hand on thetiller-throttle of the motor as he headed for exactly the right strip ofsand.

He rose, took off his wet cap, wrung it out. Ralph saw that he was agaunt, rusty-headed man of forty or forty-five, large-nosed,heavy-browed--a North-of-Boston Yankee perhaps, or a Cape Breton sailor.

He called out curtly, "Mind our camping here with you?"

"Why, no!" said Ralph.

He sounded independent enough, but he was quavering at making anarrangement without permission from the great E. Wesson Woodbury. And hedid not like the stranger, who helped his Indian bow-man unload thecanoe and turn it over, pitch their one low tent and put upmosquito-bars inside it--theirs was no silken tent to keep out pests.

"Oh, Lord, this fellow is going to be more pestilentially virile thanWes!" Ralph groaned.

The man stooped under Ralph's shelter and without asking permission hesat on a low flat bacon box. He pulled out his pipe.

"Got any tobacco? My pouch is all soaked," he said.

His tone was mild enough, but he did not look at Ralph; he ignored himas a possibly knowable human being with an indifference worse thanWoodbury's blowhardiness.

"Sorry," Ralph said curtly. "Have some cigarettes though. Don't supposeyou smoke such effeminate things."

"Why! I'd be real glad to have one if you could spare it!"

The man spoke with surprise, and he turned full upon Ralph the blaze ofastoundingly pale and innocent blue eyes.

For a second Ralph liked him, felt in him something simple and superblygenuine. But he smoked silently, and Ralph sank into discomfort again,feeling pitifully the tenderfoot as he watched those chapped,long-fingered hands, thin yet big-knuckled, apparently of steel.

In a puzzled way the newcomer pondered, after a time: "Say, I guess Imade some break somehow, brother. You seemed kind of touchy aboutcigarette-smoking. Did I hit on a sore spot? Oh, Lordy, I'm always doingthat! Haven't got much tact in my make-up, I guess. Or--say--gee--maybeyou're almost out of cigarettes!"

He spoke with a grave gentleness, the rare gentleness of the man to whomit never occurs that any one could be such a fool as to take advantageof it, the man who never fights because he never has to.

Ralph urged: "No! Really! I have plenty, and they're in tin boxes--gotsoaked today, but thank Heaven the cigarettes are all right. It's justthat the--well, the chap with me says that you must be a he-manif-- You've probably guessed that I'm not the General Commanding inthis party, but only the orphan tagging after it!"

Again the amazing light of those candid blue eyes, but this time with aworried query in them; and:

"No--no--hadn't figured out your party. Course before I landed I knewthere was another white man--"

"How?"

"Why, I saw the footprints--city boots--where both of you jumped out ofyour canoes. But I didn't do any real sizing-up. By the way, I betterintroduce myself. My name's Joe Easter. I'm a free trader, at MantrapLanding, on Lac Qui Rêve. I'm trying to run an opposition store to theH.B.C. and Revillon Frères, and one tough time I'm having of it,too--those big companies are pretty cute. The Hudson's Bay factor atMantrap is a whiz--fine man, and his wife's an awfully nice lady, too.I've just been outside--Brandon--buying supplies. Say, I guess you comefrom the East, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Chicago?"

"New York."

"Well, well! That a fact! Met a man from New York one time--goingthrough here fishing--no, four years ago it was--fellow named Brown--inthe wholesale grocery business he was--don't suppose you know him?"

"I--"

"Say!"

Joe Easter suddenly reared up his shoulders, astonishingly broad for sogaunt a man, and smiled, a rugged smile, unreserved, taking in his blueeyes, his wrinkling heavy brows, ugly mouth and rough red cheeks. It wasas though sunshine had burst out on these soggy pines, this lugubriousriver. "Say! I suppose a New Yorker feels about the same when you askhim if he comes from Chicago as a bloomin' Londoner does when you ask ifhe's from Regina!"

"Oh, I don't know that there's any peculiar virtue in coming from thecity with the largest number of idiots!"

"Maybe not, but I find that in this life--which is the only life I knowmuch about yet--a man isn't just stuck on his virtues. Oh, Lord, here Iam philosophizing again! You see, couple of years ago I pinched a copyof some magazine off the Emily C. Just at Kittiko, and there was apiece in it about a fellow they called a 'backwoods philosopher.' That'sme, I says! Two years ago, and I ain't hardly got over it yet! Everytime I buy mushrats cheap and sell 'em high, I put it down to my giantbrain, and every time I get stung on 'em, why, that's because I'm toogood for this mean world. Sure! But it's funny to watch me trying toshow off when I meet an educated fellow, eh?"

Joe Easter was red with laughter. Ralph relaxed. He talked shyly buthonestly of his difficulty in mastering the wilds; he was edging towardhis real worries when, like a cyclone on the prairie, they were smittenby the appearance of Woodbury, roaring ill-naturedly, "Hello."

He stood by their shelter, dripping, brave with many fish, feelingabused at not having been greeted as a martyr hero.

"Hello," Joe Easter said, equably.

"Don't believe I know you, my friend!" snorted Woodbury.

Ralph saw Easter's eyes, much less candid and friendly now, as heremarked to Woodbury: "Hope you fellows don't mind my butting in. Thisis kind of a favorite camp-site for me. My name's Easter--got atrading-post at Mantrap Landing--"

Then did the sales-manager (and vice-president) of the TwinkletoeStocking Company excel himself in cordiality and worthy salutations, asbetween two strong men met face to face though they came from the endsof the earth:

"Well, well, well! Joe Easter! Put her there, old-timer! I've heard ofyou a thousand times. I was up here three years ago; didn't get as faras Lac Qui Rêve, but planned to. Why, I was figuring on buying grub atyour store when we got there. My name's Woodbury, Wes Woodbury, Joe.Introduced yourself to--Prescott? His first time up here.... Hisfirst time anywhere away from the nursery, by God!... Say, what doyou think! He wanted to wear rubber sneakers instead of boots! Courseyou got on rubbers and moccasins, day like it is today, but I explainedto him--"

Into the rapids of Woodbury's confidences Joe Easter's voice cut likethe stem of a canoe:

"I never wear boots in summer. Always moccasins in the canoe, andrubbers over 'em ashore."

(Ralph was remembering that he had paid thirty-five dollars for thenoble boots recommended by Woodbury.)

Woodbury gurgled: "Well, well. I'll have to try moccasins and rubbers,Joe. But say, this'll give you a laugh. The boy here--he's beginning tofeel his oats today and figure out he's become a sure-enough old-timer,but when he started he lugged a pillow along, and he wanted to undressall over at night and put on pajamas! Up here! North of fifty-three!"

"Is that a fact!"

Easter stared at Ralph; Woodbury glared at him; he was reduced to theposition of the bright boy who has thought that he was entertainingsister's suitor, but who is now sent up to bed with smothered adultgiggles. Easter turned away his edged glance, looked patiently up atWoodbury, who stood stooped with his head just under the canvas shelter,and drawled:

"Let's see. I'm forty-six. I was born in New Brunswick. Son of ashoemaker. Worked in a wagon factory quite some time. So I've only beenin the woods for twenty-five years or so. When I come here first, a realeastern swell with an extra shirt, I started teaming, then trapping,before I got into the wicked wiles of trading. Well, at first Icertainly did want to be a real, hard-boiled, dyed-in-the-woolroughneck. So I used to sleep in my pants, even on hot nights.But--well--tell you--here's how it is: getting old and rich--often gotseveral dollars left after I pay my year's bills--and now, when I'm offon the trail with the dogs in winter, buying furs, I sleep in everythingI own, except my reading spectacles. But--"

He stopped abruptly. His eyes were fixed on Woodbury. His voice wasfrozen.

"But, my friend, summer nights I wear pajamas, especial' when I'm outon the hike. And they're silk pajamas, friend, and I'd rather give up mybow-man--Lawrence Jackfish, who's stealing your tomaties overthere--than give up the nice pillow I've lugged around these five years!Of course for a smart city-man like you--traveling salesman, ain't ye,Woodbury?--it's fine to enjoy hardship while you're hiking through here;but for me it's business, and I travel just as soft as I can, and if Icould bum another cigarette off you, Mr. Prescott, I'd be real obliged."

There fell a Niagara of silence, and Easter smoked and Ralph smoked andWoodbury sought for words and found them not.

Woodbury, after a suitable time of indignation over this betrayal andlevity, dragged another box beneath the shelter, and Woodbury--he smokedalso. Save for the giggles of the four Indians over the latestWhitewater scandal, related by Lawrence Jackfish, the snap of pine-conesin the fire, the dispiriting rattle of rain, the protesting gulp ofMantrap River, there was nothing to be heard.

Ralph broke the unkind silence with a thin voice:

"Joe, my first name is Ralph. I want to retain you in this case. May Iput something up to you?"

"Sure, Ralph."

"I'm a piker. I'm thin-blooded. I couldn't paddle a nineteen-foot canoefor half a mile. I couldn't carry a hundred pounds on the portage. Icouldn't shoot a rapids, by myself. I couldn't--"

Dryly (and it was at Woodbury that the arbitrator stared, not at Ralph),Joe Easter suggested: "Why should you? Why should anybody but a foolexpect you to? Which are you--doctor, professor, lawyer?"

"Lawyer."

"I guess you could lose me in five minutes on Broadway. I guess the bandwouldn't care much what I thought about it if I went to the Opera. Iguess you could handle a case in court better than I could. Well,then--it's only four-flushers, folks that need to stiffen their wabblyfeeling about themselves by making out there's somebody they can lookdown on, that go round telling a tenderfoot how bad he is. Course youcan't carry big on the portage. Why should you? Ain't going into thetrucking business, are ye? Nobody slave-driving--" Joe's voice wascuriously menacing: "Nobody slave-driving and bullying ye, is there--inmy country?"

Another vast and uneasy silence. Ralph fumbled for the words whichshould break his imprisonment in this bleak land, in the torturinggabble of Woodbury. Joe Easter would know a way of escape. But hehesitated before pouring out the words which might change life asswiftly as a colorless and powerless-seeming vial of poison.

The surprise, when it came, was not from Ralph nor Joe but fromWoodbury.

He leaned forward under the canvas shelter, holding out his pipe,looking down at it in a hurt and puzzled way, speaking with the kindnesswhich in an irate man is always touching:

"Ralph, I guess I have been riding you pretty hard. Prob'ly Joe thinksso too. Prob'ly you're both right. I'm sorry, Ralph, old-timer; I'mreally awfully sorry. I didn't mean to. I go off half-cocked too easy.Let's shake and call it quits."

His hand was held out, flabby in the firelight; he was looking at Ralphtrustingly.

Against rage, Ralph had been steeled, but to be dragged back intoslavery by the man's decency was intolerable. He did not at once answer.Woodbury's hand dropped, unsaluted. The river vanished in the early,rain-shrouded darkness. The huge fire of pine-logs seemed brighter, asits glare quivered along the slanting canvas behind and over them. Thefour guides, with Easter's man, were preparing supper in the communismof the wilds, and Lawrence Jackfish was agreeably tasting the tinnedpimento-cheese of the tenderfeet.

When Ralph let himself speak, he was no longer hysterical. He might havebeen summing up in a law-suit:

"Wes, it's too late. You're not a bad fellow, essentially. You're merelyan ignoramus who's been elevated to prosperity by this amazing modernsystem of the sanctity of salesmanship, and--"

"Well, let me tell you that--"

"Please! But I can't travel another foot with you."

"You'll have to! And from now on, you'll do your share--"

"Wes, it isn't so much your insulting me as your boring me. And if Joecan think of any way for me to do it, I'll leave you--yes, leave youflat! Yes, quit! Be a quitter! And right now! Why, I'd rather starve bymyself than have a feast to the sound of your yammering. My God, man, Iwas so tired, and I struggled to-- Hell! Never mind that; that's over;and now--Joe, can you help me?"

"Why--" said Joe, and stopped.

Desperately, wondering if he had misjudged the baronial integrity of JoeEaster, aghast at being again delivered to the rack of Woodbury'stongue, Ralph pleaded: "I don't want comfort, Joe. I can live onbacon--or just bannock. I don't mind rain or rapids. But to have towaste what ought to be a holiday with this stuffed shirt, thisafter-dinner speaker, this--"

"Whoa-up! Whoa-oa!" Joe was clucking patiently. "I wasn't thinking ofany difficulties. I was just wondering whether you'd prefer sleeping onthe screened porch or in the spare-room, my place at Mantrap Landing.Why, sure, Ralph. If you'd like to come, I'll give you some fishinground home, and see you get back to railhead. And I certainly would liketo show you a kind of picnic place I found one--"

Then the great Woodbury burst.

He burst, he exploded, he gushed lava all over the lean-to:

"Now that you fellows have settled on a nice summer, including a lovelypicnic, let me tell you a few things! This man Prescott, Easter--Ipicked him up in New York when he was so damn' badly shot that his handwas shaky. Maybe drugs, maybe secret drinking, I don't know! I gavehim a chance to come in, at cost, on an expedition I'd spent monthspreparing--telegrams and personal planning, to say nothing of themoney--what do I care for money! And then--"

"I'm paying my half"--ineffectually from Ralph.

"And then he lets me down. Well, if you think, Mr. Prescott, that it'sany skin off my nose to lose the pleasures of your company--and if thereever was a more scared, whimpering, grousing bird on a wilderness trip,I just want to know who he is, that's all, I just want to know who hewas; and if you think I'm going to sit up nights worrying over losingthe pleasure of your highbrow company, well, you got another thinkcoming, that's all, you certainly got a good long think coming! Go on!I'm not stopping you! Not for one second! But let me tell you this, myboy--you sniveling little social climber!--these are my Indians. I hired'em! These are my canoes. I bought 'em! You're supposed to pay for yourcanoe later--for what's left of it, after you smash it in a few morerapids! But how do I know you will? How do I know but what you quit onyour debts like you do on roughing it? I've never had a poker I O U ofyours yet--thank God!"

"Splendid," said Ralph.

"So," said Woodbury, "if dear Mr. Easter thinks you're such a greatlittle social entertainer that he wants to take you along, why, allright. But when I get to Mantrap Landing, I'm going to have a few wordswith the other white men there--I mean, with the real white menthere--and when I get through telling 'em what I know, I don't think Mr.Ralph E. Prescott will be so blame' welcome!"

Joe Easter had, this while, been more silent than the tall spruce behindtheir shelter, for at least the spruce sighed in the steady wind, theunrelenting rain. Once Ralph had, unasked, handed him another cigarette.He had lighted it from a stick thrust into the fire. The blazing branchturned the wrinkles of his dry face into folds like valleys of redearth. Now he spoke, indifferently:

"Woodbury, you are not going to Mantrap Landing."

"Oh, I ain't, ain't I! Well, I'd damn' well like to see who's going tostop me!"

"Nope. You're not going. Not that I mind your spreading the news--amongfolks like Pop Buck and George!--about Ralph's general crookedness, orme kidnaping him. But I just naturally don't like your boots, Wes, orthis dirty habit of sleeping in your clothes. So you ain't coming toMantrap Landing. You're going to--"

"And who's to prevent me?"

"Me. I'm a magistrate. And I'd have to pinch you and send you to Bearpawon trial, for shooting moose out of season."

"Don't be a fool. I never shot a moose in my life!"

It is to Ralph's credit that he did not protest, "Why, you told me youshot half a dozen of them, three years ago!"

Joe Easter was droning on: "No, probably you never have. Wonder how manyyou've tried to shoot. But there's another thing I can pinch youfor--and that I will and do pinch you for--and that is the carrying ofliquor into Indian territory. Shut up, you fool! For once in your life,shut up and listen! You have a flask of hooch in your back pocket rightnow, and when I made my landing here, I saw you sucking it, up round thebend. Well, that's that, as the missionary at Mantrap says. Now, Wes, wedon't want you here. And so if you'll hike East--"

Then for a second Ralph admired E. Wesson Woodbury as much as he haddespised him. Woodbury was retorting, vigorous but no longerpretentious; he retorted as the fat boy who by some magic had become aforty-thousand-dollar sales-manager:

"Joe, you've got a lot of interesting conversation. Maybe you couldarrest me for bootlegging, but you're not going to. For some fool reason(God help you later!) you like Prescott here, and he'd be dragged intoany case against me.... Have some tobacco? You must be a little tiredof cheap cigarettes by now!"

"Thanks," said Joe. He filled his pipe, and let it gurgle as hemeditated, while Ralph felt more abandoned and desolate than in all hislife before.

"Yes, maybe," said Joe. "Might have some trouble convicting you,besides. But-- Look here, Wes." He spoke appealingly. "Me and Ralph aregoing to fish Lac Qui Rêve and the other waters around Mantrap Landing.If you and your two nice canoes was to go back and try Lake Solferino,you'd have a lot better fishing."

"Thanks so much; so thoughtful of you; only I'm not going!" saidWoodbury, with a placidity beautiful to behold.

"Yuh, it is thoughtful of me--not many pants-salesmen or bootleggershave a chance at Lake Solferino--but you are going. Charley!"

To the innocent word "Charley" were added others in Cree--crackling,bitter, raging, enticing Cree. Woodbury's Indians leaped up by the fire.They dropped bannock-pan and teakettle; they stood in horror, listening.

"I just told 'em," explained Joe, "what would happen to 'em if they cameto Mantrap with a bootlegger. They'll start guiding you to Solferinotomorrow--or otherwise, you'll walk!" He raised his voice again inindecipherable sounds, and the Indians crouched in the firelight. "Now,Wes," said Joe, "let's all have some of your supper. You start at fourtomorrow morning."

Chapter Nine

Only for a moment, that next day when the sun beamed on placid river andrejoicing pines, was Ralph unhappy, and that was at parting withWoodbury, who said: "I don't know what it's all about, Ralph. I hate togo off alone like this. Do you think you're treating me very square, oldman? Remember when I found you shaken to pieces in New York? Think youcan face me when you come back there, after deserting me like this?"

That moment was forgotten as Joe Easter cheerily shouted: "Try themiddle of the canoe, Ralph. Think you'll be more comfortable there.Unless you'd like to run the motor?"

Incredulously Ralph looked back and watched Woodbury's caravan, his owncaravan, his own canoe, Wes and the familiar Crees, dropping down theMantrap River, while he himself chugged up it with a man he had neverseen till last night, into a land unknown and improbable.

He was aware of a difference in the manner in which Joe conducted hisexpedition. With only one Indian and himself for crew, this lanky man insweater and blue overalls never fretted, never shouted, gave his ordersonly as suggestions. And where Woodbury had watched his outboard motoras though he were making an etching, Joe Easter twiddled screws andadjusted the carburetor uninterestedly, and for him it sang valiantly.

In his new canoe home, with his bed-roll and suitcase, his gun andfishing-tackle again tucked in front of him, Ralph sat between thestrange Joe Easter and the stranger Lawrence Jackfish, that slender andsly-eyed Cree with the bead hatband on his cowpuncher hat. It was allincredible. He was not here. He couldn't be, possibly.

Woodbury had maintained--often--that the noise of his motor made itimpossible to hear the suggestions of Charley. He must have had a gooddeal of pleasure out of impatiently stopping the motor and complaining,"Oh, what the deuce are you trying to say?" But Joe seemed able to hearthrough the motor's hum. As they swept up the clear glistening spaces ofthe river, he set Ralph talking with an innocent question or two--andRalph did talk!

Normally not a chatty man, today he was like a small boy whose importantquestions and theories have for a week been dammed up by an impatientparent. He turned round in his place amidships, and poured out all thefancies and memories which had so bored Woodbury.

London--had Joe ever been abroad? Never? London! The library of theInner Temple, turrets across ancient lawns.... Trafalgar Square onArmistice Day, with ten thousand people hypnotized into a unity ofsilence.... Side street shop-windows with the chocolate signs whichare more English than Westminster.... The black oak fireplace at theCock Tavern.... Berkeley Square on a spring afternoon, and prettywomen whirring up for tea at the bleak tall house of a duchess....Piccadilly Circus in a pea-soup fog, the red-faced policeman shining aswith inner flame.... Then the Dover cliffs as you saw them returningfrom France; and the stout and jolly porters, after the little shrillfacteurs at Calais.

What did Joe think--what would happen when this vast land had no morefur for trapping; when agriculture came, and the rumored gold mines wereopened?

Religion--how did prayer seem to a man like Joe, alone for day after dayon the winter trails--prayer and the hand of Omnipotence in the wilds?

Music--the theater--pictures--did Joe care for them when he went toWinnipeg to buy goods? Did he miss them at Mantrap Landing?

All this while, Ralph was thinking aloud, letting his mind, after theseweeks of sluggishness, course through the complexities andcontradictions he loved. Joe was apparently not bored. For a time thereseemed to Ralph nothing absurd in rhapsodizing under the loomingindifference of the rolling clouds. But in late afternoon the spirit ofthe hour and place enchanted him, and he was contentedly silent. TheMantrap River had widened into a lake. The gold-green light lay on palepoplar trunks, on gray rocks, on water like a polished shield, with theshadows meditative and long. Their wake was in two long curves, unbrokenand unrippling, carven in crystal; and behind them rose in a calm beautyalmost intolerable the great full moon.

In awed quiet they swept ashore and boiled the evening kettle; serenelythey sat smoking.

"This is what I came for!" said Ralph.

"Fine!" That grave gentleness of Joe Easter belonged to the stilledhour. They watched a fish leap from the water. The widening rings wereof orange fire. Joe reflected:

"The woods can be pretty nice, if you don't nag 'em. But I've had somegood times in the cities, too. I don't go much to these concerts youtell about. Heard Sousa's band once, though! In Minneapolis that was.Yes, I been clear down there. And I saw a dandy billiard match. But thefunniest thing that happened to me there--Say, did you ever get yourfinger-nails manicured?"

"Why, yes, sometimes."

Ralph marveled. Certainly Joe's nails, cracked with carrying fur-packand fire-log, did not suggest any especial interest in manicuring.

"So did I, once. Peculiar thing it was. It was when I was inMinneapolis, as I said, about a year ago. Thought I'd blow myself to asociety shave and haircut, and I took a chance on their throwing me outand went to the Ranleagh Hotel. Swell place--marble and gold all overeverywhere. Girls sitting waiting for their fellows, I guess, in a placeoff the lobby, all plush and everything. Peaches! Barber-shop down inthe cellar, but what a barber-shop! All white tiles, with gold doodadsalong the ceiling, and a great big enormous table with magazines, andmorris chairs to sit in while you're waiting, and a couple darkies tobrush you off and sneak your hat away from you and just when you'relooking around and figuring out they've stole it, there they are,handing it to you with a bow like you were the Duke of York!

"Well, sir, my barber, he was a skinny little wop--but say, some barberthat boy was; he shaved this rough old map of mine like velvet! And whathe didn't do to me besides that! Sprayed me with perfume! Massaged myface--guaranteed to give me a complexion like Lilian Russell, only itdidn't take. Washed my head--I found out then what become of that plugof tobacco I lost four summers ago. But--here was the big show:

"When I sits down he says to me, 'Shine?'

"'Sure,' I says.

"'Shine!' he hollers, like he'd banged his thumbnail, and a darky boyjumps like he was shot, and slid clean across the floor and tackles myfoot. I didn't dast look down at him to see what he thought about myshoes.

"'Shampoo?' the barber says.

"'All right,' I says.

"'Violet-ray treatment?' he says.

"'I don't know what it is,' I says, 'but I don't get to civilizationvery often, and I'll take a shot at it. Well, I'm stepping intosociety,' I says. 'When I go out of here, I expect they'll ask me to bepresident of some bank.'

"You could see he was kind of bothered. I'd called all his bluffs. He'dthought he had me stopped on the violet-ray, but I'd took his dare. Thenhe gets a bright idea. He kind of snickers, and winks at the JuliusCaesar barberin' at the next chair, and says, loving-like, 'Manicure?'

"'Sure,' I says, before I realized what he meant. And by golly, before Icould stop him, out of the next room comes a girl--man! the prettiestgirl you ever laid an eye on!--golden hair, all bobbed, cute as apicture, and peaches-and-cream cheeks and swell figure and lovely smile,and before I could think of anything to say, she'd set right down besideme and grabbed my rough old mitt in her tender little hand and--

"Well, I could of died of shame, making her work over my old paw--andanyway, Joe Easter getting a store nail-cut, and right out in public,wouldn't that knock you cold? Suppose Curly Evans (he's the ProvincialPoliceman up in this district--kind of wild sometimes, and maybe alittle thoughtless, but a great pal of mine; real roughneck; you'll likehim)--suppose Curly had come in and seen me doing a stunt like that!Never'd of heard the last of it! And I didn't know how long it wouldtake the manicure to wear off. Suppose when I got back to Mantrap Istarted playing poker with Curly and Pop Buck and some of the trappers,like Pete Renchoux, and suppose just when I started dealing Curly wouldsay, solemn--I can hear him saying it, like reading the First Lesson inchurch: 'Brethren, this dearly beloved dog-thief, Joe Easter, has had amanicure while he was away from us.' On top of that--"

Curly Evans's putative suggestions as to Joe's further dissipations wereimproper.

"Well," Joe sighed on, "there I was, risking murder and suddendeath--risking it?--why, say, I was getting it! I was dying withembarrassment at having that girl--about twenty-two, she was--look overmy mitt. Like a boiled ham!

"I says to her, 'I don't guess you want to tackle the giraffe's hooftoday,' I says, 'and I don't blame you. You oughtn't to have to work inthe zoo.'

"Well, sir, the smile she gave me--like a sunrise on Lac Qui Rêve--andsuch a darn' nice respectable smile, too, not like these Janes you seein the Junction Restaurant at Bearpaw--and she says, 'Oh, it's so muchnicer to do a real strong he-man's hand--'

"I could feel my barber snickering, and I got kind of sore, and I mustof blushed clear down to my watch-chain. And say--her voice--like ameadow lark it was--say, I do sound like a damn' fool, but honest, shewas all them things, and already I was gone for fair.

"'So much nicer,' she says, 'to fix a real husky hand for once, 'steadof all these fat traveling-men and'-- she let him have it straight--'andthese sap-headed, perfume-stinking barbers!'

"Zowie! You could feel my barber getting the electric current rightthrough him, one million volts. Maybe he didn't stop his palavering forthe rest of that beauty-treatment! (And three dollars and sixty-fivecents it cost me!)

"Me, I couldn't think of anything to say to her. Alverna (found outafterward that was her name--pretty name, don't you think?--kind offancy, maybe, but nice-sounding, and kind of different--Al-ver-na!)--shehad me so scared by her elegant voice and her quick come-backs andeverything that I didn't any more dast speak to her than I would to getup in church and call the preacher a liar.

"When the barber'd finished doing all the things to me that they had inthe catalogue there, and couple new ones I guess he just made up on thespot--I never have figured out whether the time when he got the talcumpowder up my nose was an accident or a treatment--well, when he was allthrough, she hadn't quite finished my claws. Guess she'd found 'empretty tough. Gee, I was ashamed! But the barber turn me out and I hadto go off with her to her table. And maybe I didn't feel like a fishthat's just been heaved to a hungry dog-team when I had to get out ofthat safe chair and the nice big sheet they'd hid me with, and gochasing after her to the next room, across that slippery tile floor,before all them barbers and the swells getting shaves, haircuts, andsinges and everybody, and sit down at that dinky little table....There was a barber-supply calendar with a picture of two kittens in abasket, on the wall right behind it.

"Well, we got talking. She certainly was a great hand at getting afellow over feeling shy. She'd look at you--not in no come-on way, butlike she trusted you and thought you were a great guy--and, well sir, Ifound myself telling her all about fur-buying, and what a dandy littlehouse I had at Mantrap Landing, and everything. And she told me she wasan orphan--dad died when she was a kid, mother had just died this lastyear; she and couple other girls had a little flat. And told me howcrazy she was about music and so on--like you are.

"She was getting the digging and blasting pretty well finished up now,and me--

"I was scared chilly. One thing in the world I wanted to do was to seeher again. Couldn't come in for another manicure next day--that ain'tsomething you can do every day, like getting drunk.

"I wanted to ask her could she go to supper or something with me, but Ididn't dare. It was like the first swim in spring, up here, when theice's just gone out, and you stand there and teeter on the bank, andmake out like you're going to dive, and then you look around solemn, andwalk back to the house as dignified as you can without never diving,like it's just a great habit of yours to go walking bare-naked.

"And she finished, and she says, 'I think that's all,' and I stands up,and I stands on one foot and then I stands on the other foot, and Iwonders if she'll let me give her something for herself over 'n' abovethe amount of the check. But I was afraid she'd be offended if I made abreak like that, and I guess I looked like a gawk generally, and then Isaid good-by.

"Well, she just smiled, like she liked me, and she says, so polite: 'Ido hope I'm going to see you again before you go North. I'd like to hearsome more about that lead-dog of yours.' And I blurts out,'Kuk-kuk--come 'n' 'ave supper with me t'night!'

"Like a ten-year-old!

"But she came. Supper? Man, it was a banquet! It was nectar and whatd'you call it. She showed me how to order--right to the Hotel Ranleaghwe went--great big enormous room all long red curtains and paintings onthe wall, about history and so on--Alverna said it would be all right;didn't make any difference about me not having a dress-suit.

"And she taught me a lot of new stuff to eat. Joe Easter, shoveling inalligator-pear salad (ever try that?--it wasn't so good--kind of a damptaste it had), and lobster Newburg, and kidneys that the waiter--hefixed 'em right before your eyes, there on the table, in a chafing-dish!

"Well, I want to show you how unfair a fellow can be. You know, for asecond, when she got me to order all this, I wondered if-- She was evenprettier'n I'd thought; she was wearing a dandy little dress, silk Ithink it was, just showed her neck a little--she was so pretty it scaredyou, and nice and refined and everything; but just for a minute Iwondered if she wasn't trying to work me for a lot of expensive food.And, Ralph, that kind of hurt me; didn't care a bit about the cash, butI'd admired her so--

"Well, anyway, when she'd suggested all this junk for me to eat, and Isaid, 'And you'll take the same?' she just puts her hand on her breast,and she says, 'I will not! If I can have what I want, I want a great bigman-sized steak and a cartload of French-fried potatoes! I'm so hungry Icould scream! All I had for lunch was a napoleon and a cup of coffee.All I could afford. I don't make enough money to feed a goldfish. And Idon't let many gents take me out--honest, I don't!'

"Say! So frank and honest and everything--I just loved her! LittleAlverna!"

"What became of her?" asked Ralph, as Joe lapsed into dreams. "Have youever heard from her?"

"Oh, yes! I married her, next day. You'll see her tomorrow."

Chapter Ten

Tilting to the sail, soaring among bright rocky islands, they crossedLac Qui Rêve and came to the huddle of log cabins which was MantrapLanding.

All day, though he had tried to be cheery and full of wisdoms for Joe'sbenefit, Ralph had been uneasy. Alverna, queen of the manicure table,was the fiend who gnawed at him.

He was pestered by two contradictory pictures of her and of her house."Told how crazy she was about music and so on." Yes, of course! Shewould be so artistic that an artist would hate her; she would be soprimly ladylike in her new prosperity that she would make a lady burstinto obscenity. She would probably snub him. She would describe herperfectly elegant gen'leman-friends in undertaking parlors and expressoffices. She would hint that Ralph couldn't get away with no pretendingto be a gent and a Yale man, not with her he couldn't! And she wouldturn his easy friendship with Joe into a horror of plush-coveredgentility.

Or, as bad, she would not be genteel, but have turned slattern.

Ralph remembered the Bunger House at Whitewater; and at Warwick he hadseen the trappers' cabins. He knew how filthy a ménage could become inthese carefree wilds. He recalled a cabin at which they had boughtgasoline: a kitchen-dining-room where the frying-pan lay, drippinggrease, in the flour-barrel, and the dish-towel had been used forcleaning boots; where gummy dishes remained on the table from the end ofone meal till the beginning of the next, at which moment they werecleansed by dipping them into a boiling pot of soup apparently meant foreating.

The bed was a whirl of dirty blankets, black-streaked pillow-slip, axes,guns, fish-scales, torn newspapers, and injudicious dogs. Over andthrough and under everything was a heavy sour smell of wet clothes andancient food.

Would Joe's cabin be like that--only, added to these masculine horrors,an odor of stale scent, of Alverna's cold-cream and nail-paste? And,languidly slopping through the mess, a peroxide blonde in a torndressing-gown, no longer trying to be attractive now that she hadtrapped her innocent and infatuated man of the wilds?

All day long Ralph looked cheerful and told Joe that he was a great man,and tried to enjoy these last hours of spacious freedom.

From across the lake the settlement of Mantrap Landing was a speck on aragged green shore. As they buzzed through the glowing water it grewlarger to their eyes. Ralph made it out as a straggly line of log cabinson a bluff by the mouth of the Mantrap River--which flowed through LacQui Rêve and on. Behind the cabins were shaggy hills of pine anddisorderly brush, part burnt over, part lumbered off, more desolate inhalf-nudity than the gloomy forest. In a cluster halfway along the lineof cabins, beside a frame church of peeling slaty paint and spirecovered with rusted tin, were Cree wigwams of canvas and birch-bark.

Even close at hand, the settlement seemed to Ralph so impermanent, solittle of a solid and civilized dwelling-place, that he compared it tothe scattering of boxes and bales dumped in the reeds and long wildgrass at the beginning of a portage.

A lonely place and sad it must be at sunset; no enduring shelter to warmthe melancholy heart.

Instead of coming directly to the nearer cabins, Joe made a great sweepand approached the other end.

"Got to give old McGavity--the Hudson's Bay factor--his chance. My hatedrival in business, all right, and Alverna thinks he's an old crab andpretty awful moral, but he's a fine old coot," said Joe. "He's aScotsman--he likes porridge! Still homesick after thirty years inCanada. So I always give him a chance to fly the flag for me. I don'tsuppose it's hardly official, but I'm the Justice of the Peace--as muchas there is one. That's how I could throw the fear of God into Woodburyabout carrying hooch.... Kind of a dirty trick, too, considering Igot a whole case of Scotch aboard!"

Lawrence Jackfish, at the bow, had taken their own flag from an oilskincase, and he attached it to the rough sapling mast, while Joe twicefired his shotgun.

They were sliding fast toward the Hudson's Bay post--the "fort," it wascalled, and once it had been a fort indeed, besieged by Indians. NowRalph saw a trim log cabin, the ends of the logs squared as in a Swisschalet, and across the front a glossy new sign "Hudson's Bay Company."

It meant to him the conquest of the wilds.... Indians of the old timein feather bonnets and fringed buckskin; the hawk-faced Governors,gentlemen adventurers with lace ruffles and cocked hats; canoes witheight lusty paddles; and, floating down unknown rivers, the songs ofFrench voyageurs.

The space before the post was a prim lawn, with a shining flagpolepropped with whitewashed stones. Out of the store rushed a man plump andapparently not young. He waved his hat; he held up a revolver and firedit twice in greeting; then broke out the flag.

Scarlet and bright in the sun, it flickered against the dull greenhills. Ralph was not an Anglomaniac, but he felt the romance of thatflag; saw it flying, felt it proclaiming British daring, not only herein the barren pines but round the world--over steaming Burmeseriver-ports, on ships rolling through icy seas, against gilded temples,on the Horse Guards' Parade in rumbling London. He thrilled to it; hesaw in McGavity and Joe some sharing in a high tradition; and so he cameto Mantrap Landing, no longer lonely and doubtful but with the pride ofa man welcomed by resolute friends.

As they turned, slid by the Hudson's Bay post, by the church and Indiancamp, other shots saluted them, answered by Joe's banging gun, and theyapproached a long wharf of logs and planking. On shore was a log store,Joe's store, labeled "Easter Trading Company," with a shambling logwarehouse and a surprisingly neat cottage--log too, no doubt, butcovered with clapboards painted in cheery green and white. A girl ranout of the cottage, down the bluff, and out on the wharf, waving tothem, her hair bright in the sun.

"Alverna," said Joe.

He seemed to Ralph strangely noncommittal.

Ralph looked at her anxiously. As the motor was shut off and theyfloated through the placid shallow water, dark yet clear in the shadowof the wharf, he saw that Alverna was surprisingly all that Joe hadpainted her. She was young; she was slim and radiant. There was noperoxide to that honey-colored fluff of hair, bobbed and curly. Herwhite skirt and low linen sailor-blouse were crisp. Her eyes werebabyish, childish her straight little nose--very face of a child--andher cheeks were unpainted; her voice was caressing as she hailed them:

"Joe, I've been terribly lonely for you!"

As the canoe grazed the wharf and Ralph stood up stiffly, she leaneddown with her hand out in frank welcome, and sang: "Hello! Pleased tosee you, I'm sure."

Ralph Prescott, the professional bachelor, was in fact considerably moreexcited about the presence of Alverna than he had been aboutfifteen-pound muskalonge, the prospect of seeing a moose, E. WessonWoodbury's travail with the outboard motor, or anything he hadexperienced in the Wild Northland save the sturdy friendship of JoeEaster. He felt for the first time since the death of his mother that hewas veritably coming home, as he crawled up on the wharf.

Not till he had peeped at Alverna for half an hour did he decide thather eyes were not babyish but damp and secretive with desire; and nottill that night, when he lay sleepless on the porch of the cottage, didit come to him that it might be difficult to combine his friendship withJoe--a man whom he liked as well as any one he had everencountered--with the incessantly feminine, the softly and inescapablyalluring, the unconscious and illiterate and overwhelming sorcery, ofJoe's moist-eyed wife.

As they trailed up the wharf, Alverna asked only: "Everything go allright? Oh, did you get me the crêpe de Chine? And the candy? Fivepounds? And the fashion magazines?"

She flung out an aria of light, excitable chatter about all that hadhappened. Old Mag had had pups. Her biscuit dough had fallen. There hadbeen a mosquito in her room last night. Curly Evans, the policeman, wason his way here--some Chippewyan Indians had passed him way up the GhostSquaw River. And she had washed her hair, just this morning.

Ralph was curious about Joe's attitude, as he followed them. Himself, hewould have been stirred by her, yet irritated by her twittering.Apparently Joe was neither; apparently he took her just as she was, ashe took warm sun or hopeless rain, toil or feasting--gravely,peacefully, never seeking to change anything in life from what itinevitably was. His arm was about Alverna's shoulder, but he was notardent; he bent his head to her exclamations, but he did not comment onthem.

They made procession through the bare yard, beaten by the moccasinedfeet of many Indians, a court surrounded on three sides by the store,the warehouse, and the cottage. They passed a gate, a garden with a fewnorthern flowers, roses and tiger-lilies, and entered the cottage.

To the neat-minded Ralph, after the filth of the other cabins, of tentand camp-fire, it was a linoleum-floored paradise. There were fourrooms: two bedrooms, living-room, and kitchen-dining-room. EitherAlverna or Joe was a born housekeeper, for the house was as fussily inorder as a New England kitchen. The rooms were lined with artificialwallboard, painted in glossy blue. There was no litter of dirty dishes,and the wood-stove shone black. On the polished sideboard was a row,luxurious to Ralph after weeks of greasy enamelware, of gilt-rimmedchina plates, and by the sideboard a canary cheerful in a cage.

"I carried that damn' bird four hundred miles in a canoe!" said Joe.

The pictures were chromos of yearning maidens in rowboats, or ofcavaliers in something like the costumes of 1500 bowing to young ladiesof 1750.

Six weeks ago Ralph would have twinged with elaborate and cynicalreflections to the effect that they were horrid pictures--socrude--but here they gave him a feeling of home, of cheerfulness, ofsecurity, of rest.

Beside the poison-green tufted velvet couch in the living-room was aparlor-organ of the days of William Dean Howells: a magnificentstructure with diamond-shaped mirrors, potted geraniums on airybrackets, and red silk behind carved fretwork. (Both couch and organ hadbeen carried by sled along the winter highway of frozen lake and river.)On a shelf was Joe's astonishing accretion of books: a paper-backedBertha M. Clay novel beside "Pickwick Papers"; a Church of Englandprayer-book, "The New System of Accounting," and "Pollyanna" together;Wells's "Outline of History," a James Oliver Curwood novel, Longfellow,and "The Smoking Car Joke Book."

Ralph had small time to glance about. Alverna seized both his hands andcried: "I'm awfully happy you came along with Joe. Are you going to staysome time?"

"If you'll let me!"

"Oh, sure--oh, you bet! Be awfully glad. Are you up on business, or avacation?"

"Just a little fishing."

"Say, I bet you come from Chicago."

"New York."

"Honest? Oh, that's grand! I've always been craaaazy to see New York!But I'm not a hick. I was born in Minneapolis--well, practically inMinneapolis--in Idella. Oh, we'll have some dandy good long talks,Ralph--you don't mind me calling you Ralph, do you?" She languished athim. And it is written that Ralph Prescott did not look on her so coldlyas his stenographer would have expected. "You can call me Alverna, ifyou want to."

"Why--" said Ralph.

"Any of that ale left in the cellar?" said Joe.

"Sure. You bet," she caroled. "I'll get you boys lunch in a jiffy. I betyou're hungry, after all that horrid bannock. Say, Ralph, do you want togo and wash? Do you like perfumed soap? Lots of gen'lemen don't. Butthen lots do. Oh, say, Joey! We got to give Ralph a party tonight. We'llget Georgie Eagan and Pete Renchoux--they're trappers, Ralph; they'retaking a loaf here before they go back to the woods for the winter;we'll get Pete and Georgie and Pop Buck, and maybe Nels Stromberg, andshake up some poker. We got plenty of gin, and Nels'll bring some of hisnew batch of white mule--it's awful nasty but oh, Bertram, maybe itdon't pack a kick! Shall we, Joe? Come on, Joe! Aw, let's!"

"Why, sure--tomorrow, maybe," droned Joe. "Wouldn't mind a little pokerand a drink myself. But tonight, Ralph bein' a New Yorker and a greathand at reading and music and all that, I think we ought to havethe--the respectable folks--Mac and his wife and the Reverend Dillon."

"Oh, God!"

Alverna brought it out in a startling shriek.

"Honest, Ralph, Joe is the limit. Mac--that's McGavity, Hudson's Bayfactor--he's as funny as a crutch. He's got neuralgia in the sense ofhumor, and Ma McGavity, she hates anybody having a good time. ReverendDillon, he ain't so bad; I guess maybe he wouldn't mind a touch of hoochhimself if he could get away with it, but still he's a missionary, andhe's hired to crab the game. Oh, Joe--"

"We'll have them tonight--the Macs--and get it over. See how I mean,Alvy?" Joe said placidly.

"Damn you!" She flew into the tantrum of a four-year-old child. Shestamped her foot. She seized his lapels and shook him. "I could killyou! You never listen to a word I say! I want a party! I don't want afuneral!"

"Get it over, Alvy, and then we'll throw a real party tomorrow evening."Joe had not even frowned at her explosion. "Got a surprise for theboys--whole case of real Scotch! And I'll tell 'em it's your present."

She hesitated, then she flew into ecstasy as she had into rage. Shebussed him smackingly; she even hurled herself on Ralph and, to hisembarrassment, kissed at his cheek.

"All right," she clamored. "Maybe you're right to get the old crows offour chests. Now I must find you boys something to eat."

She began to bustle about the kitchen, humming "I'm Just Wild AboutHarry" as amiably as though never in her life had she cared for anythingmore violent than cooking for the men-folks.

Ralph noticed that her nails still bore the unreal flush of manicurist'spaste. He (who had always hated unduly rosy nails as he hated muckilyperfumed hair) found himself admiring her for keeping up her poorattempts at refinement. And he meditated: "No wonder she's furioussometimes. Joe is the soul of kindness, but he's so sedate--like me, Isuppose--and she must find it dull here sometimes."

She prepared for them coffee served in real china cups, real incredibleham between thin slices of real and more incredible bread, and wholeripe tomatoes from Joe's tiny greenhouse, with a clean linen napkin onthe tray.

Ralph Prescott of New York would not have regarded china cups, cold ham,or white bread as epochal; certainly he would have refused a nakedtomato; and he would have taken clean napkins for granted. But afterweeks of bacon and bannock and tea, in a land whose season is so shortthat it is hard to grow vegetables, he had discovered food.

How luxurious not to squat on a tarpaulin, with knee-bones cracking,holding a tin cup fiery to the fingers and dribbling into his coffeecondensed cream from the two holes punched in a tin can, but to sitrighteous in a chair, his legs ecstatically stretched under a table withclean beautiful oilcloth, and pour the cream--though it was the samecondensed cream--from a jolly little gilt and white pitcher! Howdelicious was the ham, how exquisite every crumb of the fluffy bread!And the incredible relish of a fresh tomato--rarer in its crisp flavorthan fruits of Araby; the love-apple, very food of love, to be eaten tosoft music and fainting lights.

"By golly, that's good!" he shouted, in the tones of a Wesson Woodbury,and Alverna's smile made his feast the more joyous.

Never had he felt so intimately at home as with his friends Joe andAlverna, over a red oilcloth chastely depicting the burning of thecapitol at Ottawa.... Her bent elbows were white and sweet againstits conflagration.

Before they had finished, the screen door creaked open and, withoutknocking, in rolled an aged and whiskered man, mighty of shoulder, hugeof paunch, wrinkled and hoar and very smiling.

"Oh, Pop, you old sweet thing!" screamed Alverna, leaping up from thetable and launching herself at his chest.

"Hey, git off me!" he said casually, encircling her with a grizzly-beararm, lifting her, and dropping her in a garish golden-oak rocker.

Joe explained: "Pop, here's a fellow we got to give the keys of the cityto--Ralph Prescott. Got to show him some real fishing. Ralph, this isPop Buck, the toughest old scoundrel north of Dauphin--been in the woodsfor sixty years--first man to team from Winnipeg to the MackenzieRiver--seventy-five years old, and hasn't quit cussing yet."

"And," said Pop Buck, complacently, "can hold more liquor than any tenyoung men in the Mantrap River district, and win more pots on twodeuces. Glad see yuh, Ralph!"

Ralph's hand was white and feeble in the grasp of that hairy paw. Popseated himself cautiously in a kitchen chair. Alverna flew over to perchon his lap. He stroked her tinsel hair while he rumbled:

"Yep, sixty years since I hit Winnipeg. Just a fort and a mudhole then.But my days are over. Used to could kill an ox by twisting his head. Butnow I've retired on my pension--that's my polite name for the dough Imake my boy send me, 'less'n I go bust his head in--and I'm no good nolonger for anything but light amusements, like booze and love-making."

"Oh, Pop, you're just ter-rible!" crooned Alverna.

"Well, you ask any likely young squaw around here if she don't think PopBuck is a better dancer'n any of these young cusses! Ralph, glad see youup here. Take you out fishing any time Joe's too busy."

"Thank you very much."

"From Winnipeg or the Twin Cities? Or maybe Chicago."

"No, New York."

"New York, eh? Well, well, well! And you look perfectly human. Well,New York's got along pretty well without me. I was born Eastmyself--Fort Wayne, Indiana--but I never could figure out why a fellowthat had plenty of damn' meanness and ugliness right in his own self hadto snuggle up to six-seven million other fool humans to keep warm. Badenough here--all-year-round population of eight white men and twentyIndians, and maybe fifty more crowding in every summer between trappingseasons. That's enough brands of foolishness for me. Only one sensibleperson here anyway--Joe Easter--fellow that can take a drink or leave italone, and usually shows enough sense to take it. And even he's up andmarried this toil and trouble with the goldilocks."

Alverna curled against his chest, purring, "You know you're crazy aboutme."

"I am like hell! Well, yes, maybe I am. So am I about liquor. But that'sno sign I like to take it on my porridge. You're a luxury, that's whatyou are, Kitten, and a natural-born, hard-working, conscientious,able-bodied grafter, and there's nothing that tickles you so much as toget all the young trappers and storekeepers around here crazy about youand then look innocent."

"I do not!"

Alverna flung away from him, almost indignant. "I can't help it if a lotof idiots hang around. They haven't anything else to do."

"That's as may be," Pop Buck snorted genially--genial as an old pinetree in a June breeze. "Anyway, I'm glad Ralph comes from New York. Hewon't fall for you! There's chickens like you on every block in thatburg, Kitten!"

She looked at Ralph. Her eyes demanded, "Are there many girls like me?"And reluctantly his eyes admitted, "No."

Winsomely, with soft insolence, like one who knew many secrets, sheslipped from the room, glancing back with a look which seemed to bemeant for each of them alone.

Chapter Eleven

"Whadyuh think, Pop?" mused Joe, when Alverna had left them to thefreedom of masculine conference. "Alvy had a fit because I insisted weought to have Mac and his frau and Reverend Dillon for supper tonight,and get 'em out of the way, and then do a little climbing among themountain-tops with a real party tomorrow.... Ralph: Mac and theReverend will be crazy to meet you and hear all the news about New Yorkand Europe and everything. McGavity ain't so much on books, but he'straveled a lot--believe he went to France one time, 'fore he come overhere from Scotland--and the Reverend, he's a holy terror--guess he'sread about every high-class book that was ever written. Why, he readsthe Bible in Greek! Way I figured it out, Pop, we ought to have 'em intonight. Whadyuh think?"

Pop Buck shifted his corpulence in his chair, tugged a pipe out of hismighty pockets--they were like wheat-sacks sewn to the tent of his wornjacket--laboriously filled the pipe, wheezed out a whiff of smoke,grunted, tamped the pipe, lighted it again, and lumbered into speech:

"Well--tell you--here's how I figger it.... Ain't a professor, areyou, Ralph?"

"No, a lawyer, Pop."

Alverna had slipped from Ralph's mind. He liked Pop Buck. It was this hehad come to seek, this refuge from the fidgets of New York.... Yes,he was glad that he had deserted Woodbury--

"Lawyer, eh? Well, that's some better than being a professor. Professortakes boys and makes 'em into fine moral young fellows, and a lawyermerely keeps 'em out of jail for acting that way. Hope you don't mind mycoughin' and snortin' and bein' blasphemous, Ralph. Joe always makes melike that, him and his dern' refined poetic feelings!"

"Anyway," said Joe placidly, "I've got you now so you don't spit tobaccojuice on my clean floor any more. Now look here, Pop: was I right aboutthe supper tonight?"

Pop Buck sucked mellifluously on his foul pipe and sighed:

"Well, I don't hold with George Eagan and all these fellows that insistmissionaries is all devils. I'm kind of a radical about that. Way Ifigure it, a missionary is all right--long as he don't interfere withdrinking and cussing. Now you take Reverend Dillon here. He's a prettygood coot, for a fellow that's spent all his life in college and so on.One time when he was out on the trail with me in January--and by gollyit was cold, too; mittens almost froze to my nose when I blewit--Reverend Dillon, well, he thought about it a long time, and finallyhe figures out it's up to him to pass some observation, and he says,'Pop,' he says, 'Pop, it's damn' cold!'

"Don't know's I'd go so far 's to say that it was a good Damn. Fact,between us, it wasn't more'n a boy-sized Damn. But it showed good willand hopes. So I'd have him tonight, I think. But--"

There was in Pop's voice a heavy anxiety.

"But I hope you won't waste any liquor on him, when there's so dern'little round here, and all us young fellows needing it to keep ourhealth up."

"I won't," said Joe.

Pop Buck departed.

While Joe galloped out to invite his guests and Alverna began to preparesupper, Ralph lolled on the screened porch, looking across the wide glowof Lac Qui Rêve. There was a cot on the porch, and he had chosen it forbedroom as against the stuffy spare-room with its small windows. He wasat once content and worried. He saw Joe Easter's little philosophiesdrowned in the flood of Pop Buck's booming cynicism; he saw Joe'sfondness for Alverna rubbed raw by her flirting and mincing andplay-acting; he saw the man lonely, and courageous in his loneliness;and Joe's life and its problems were more to him than the puzzles of anygolden client, any fatuous acquaintance of the club.

Then, "What a rotten useless bookworm I am!" he sighed, and went out totry to help Alverna.

It amused her to create food. Her art of cooking was the higher in thatshe had to depend on canned things and make them seem fresh. Joe hadbrought with him boxes of new luxuries, into which she dived frenziedly,bubbling (she never stopped talking while she worked): "Isn't it a shameto waste all these viands and everything on dubs like the Macs! ReverendDillon (I call him Ray, in private, and believe me, I get away with it,too, but Joe would skin me alive if he caught me being fresh with aReverend)--Ray does appreciate nice grub, but I guess old McGavity andMrs. Mac think it's kind of naughty to be caught eating anything butprunes and pork and beans."

Soup--canned vegetable soup--she prepared, but she enlightened it withEnglish sauce, and carrots and parsley from their amateur greenhouse.The asparagus was canned as well, and so was the butter which formed thebasis of the sauce, but with red pepper and slivers of onion and whiteof an egg (precariously fetched from Kittiko) she did cunning chemistry.

It was luxury to watch her slim fingers, to listen to the silver currentof her voice, and presently Ralph forgot that her only adjectives were"cute," "swell," "dandy," and "nice."

The central dish was to be that moose-meat which, killed legally inseason or illegally out, in the house of the Justice of the Peace or themissionary or the law-abiding McGavity quite as much as in the recklessshacks of the Crees, was the staple meat of the land. And it was, asusual, tough; it was extraordinarily tough; a knife rebounded from itsrubbery mass, and forks fell beside it bent and weary.

"Just a matter of gumption and elbow-grease," said Alverna. "I made Joeget me that sausage-grinder--almost the only one north of Bearpaw, Iguess. Here, you turn the handle."

Thrice she had Ralph grind the tenacious fibers of the moose-meat in thelittle aluminum mill, after she had belabored the cut with a steelhammer. This Hamburg steak she briskly mixed with sliced onions, garlic,and bamboo shoot--canned, from a Chinese shop at Winnipeg--sprinkled itwith celery sauce, and set it slowly broiling over an even bank of birchcoals.

"Watch it now, Ralph dear, and I'll scoot in and change my dress andshow the lilies of the field a coupla tricks!"

She darted into the bedroom beyond the kitchen. He wished that she wouldshut the bedroom door completely. She was so innocently comradely, buthe would have preferred her not taking quite so much innocence forgranted. He tried to ignore her white-clad figure whisking about thenext room as he stood solemnly guarding the moose-steak.

If she was still fussy about polished nails and a certain delicate useof rouge, Alverna was also admirably quick, and in ten minutes she hadchanged from sailor-blouse and white skirt to a frock of black moirewith fantastic scarlet embroidery flaming at the hem. In its darknessshe was the more slender and flexible; her hair, sleek now and demure,was the more luminous. For the first time he saw her not as a livelychild, a "good sport," who was something of a nuisance and rather to beadmired for keeping up her little airs and gayeties among the leatherywhite wives and greasy squaws of the barren land, but as a girl withwhom one might walk proudly through a drawing-room.

She posed in the door, her hand held drooping before her shoulder, tooobviously showing off to be offensive.

"Do you like me?" she murmured--clinging voice, eyes caressing, moistseeking eyes.

It was with almost the voice of Pop Buck that Ralph grumbled: "Oh, yes,I guess so. Come on now and watch your steak. Do you keep turning itover or not?"

She sidled toward him; she begged, like a white puppy with a blueneck-ribbon begging for bonbons: "You're an old grouch! Now isn't it asweet little dress?"

"Of course it is," nervously.... Mr. Ralph Prescott, so calm toinstruct Supreme Court justices, so full of abstractions and ofsucculent words all set end to end, reduced now to irritated vacuity.

He was glad when Joe lumbered in--his blue eyes lighting at the sight ofhis guest, resting happily on his pretty wife. Joe hemmed, "Well, ifI've managed to stay away long enough so you children have most of thework done, I'll take a chance on sticking around. The Macs and theReverend both coming, Alvy. Be right here.... I'll do you proud. I'llshave, and wash my neck, and I'll put on a clean white shirt....Decided what you want to do, next few days, Ralph? Fish, or rest up abit, or what?--that is, aside from flirting with Alverna. Course youcouldn't keep from that; she'd feel insulted if you did."

"I do not flirt! I think you're horrid, the way you talk!" poutedAlverna.

"Why, you poor child!" Joe chuckled, casually removing his coat anddisposing of it by the neat method of firing it across the kitchen intothe bedroom. "I'm not bawling you out. As soon expect a calf to bearkittens as expect you not to look come-hither at every poor cuss thathappens along. I'm just trying to protect Ralph."

There was, Ralph fancied, a wistful seriousness behind Joe's teasing ashe went on:

"Besides, even if you weren't the lightweight flirting champion, Alvy,you'd want to grab Ralph off and hear the latest about the shows anddance-steps and everything. I'm a noble soul, and a great authority ontrap-bait and third-grade arithmetic, but not so much on society. Only,don't bore Ralph to death!"

It was an implied compliment, perhaps, to be taken quite so soon intothe heart of a family quarrel, to be made part of it, but Ralph felt itrather an irksome compliment, when Alverna hurled a plate on the floorand screamed: "Oh, you and your old Ralph and all the rest of you menmake me sick! Because I try to be jolly, and have a little conversationbesides just dirty stories and swearing and how all-hellish smart youbirds are at shooting and fishing, and because I like to have folks actlike educated ladies and gen'lemen, and maybe ask you to take a littletime off from your hard work at sitting and listening to your hair grow,and clean up and look kind of nice and civilized-- Oh, you make mesick! Just because a girl is nice to people, you all got such nastyminds that-- The steak's burning!"

Her tirade ended in a shriek of domestic solicitude, and Ralph sneakedaway to the front porch.

Three minutes later he could hear Joe's voice cheerful as he recountedthe incidents of his trip Outside, while she amiably gurgled questions,and encouraged him with "That's swe-ell," or "Gee, that was fierceluck!"

"Oh, for the reticence of an E. Wesson Woodbury and the philosophicalcalm to be found in that golden presence!" Ralph sighed, in a ratherflabby attempt to be sardonic. But he knew that he did not wish toescape Alverna's violences as he did those of Mr. Woodbury.

Family dissensions and family confidences were both interrupted by theappearance of Mr. McGavity, the Hudson's Bay factor, his good wife, andthe Reverend Mr. Ray Dillon of the Church of England Mission, allwalking as gravely as cats on eggs.

Mrs. McGavity had a double chin, gold spectacles, cheeks that were roundbut parchmentlike and adorned with liver-spots. She had a simpering,pious jocosity. Her converse was full of little personal jokes, littlesly digs, which no one ought really to have minded and which caused themost amiable persons to choke with quick fury.

In another circle of society, she would have tapped people with fans.Very virtuous she was, never accused even by the most venomous ofdrug-taking, arson, worshiping heathen idols, robbing banks, or beingoften in the way of eloping; virtuous she was, and lush with ideals forothers as well as for herself, and full of jolly rebukes which shepresented in the kindest, sweetest, most matronly way, with a brightdisplay of gold teeth. She had wonderful eyesight. She never missed aflirtatious look, nor a cobweb in the cabin of a neighbor.

The Reverend Mr. Dillon was a tall, thin young man with a high foreheadand a remarkable Adam's apple. He was always forgiving the Indians forbeing Indians.

After their sweetness there was a certain relief in the heavy gruffnessof Mr. McGavity. He was an anxious man, with a mustache and an abdomen.He said in a hesitating way the most lugubrious things aboutstore-fixtures and the duty on furs.

Mrs. McGavity opened the merriment with a tenderly sighing "Goodevening, Mrs. Easter. I do hope we're not putting you to much trouble,coming to supper sudden like this."

She peeped at Alverna's bouquet of roses in a marmalade jar on thetable. She giggled slightly, in the direction of Joe.

"You know, Mr. Easter," she snickered, "we all love the dear child forbeing so young, and believing she can just put it all over the oldgrannies like Aunty McGavity, that've gotten so lazy and stupid afterall these years. It's darling, her being so dear and ambitious, andfussing so much over the way things look, and I do hope she'll still beable to keep up some of it when she's had children!"

Mrs. McGavity looked again at the table, and choked a little inneighborly mirth. Ralph noticed that Alverna's mouth was drawn in a thinline.

His own turn came:

"How do you do, Mr. Prescott? I'm real pleased to meet you, I'm sure. Ihear you're from the States. From--New York, Joe said. But you weren'tborn there?"

Her really miraculous powers of observation were devoted to his stainedand greasy whipcords, his spotty jacket, and at the end she smiled withfaint fat amusement. He could feel his spine prickle as he labored atpoliteness:

"No, I was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts."

"Really? Massachusetts? It's so curious. You look so much like a man Imet that came from Oklahoma--he kept a shoe-store. Massachusetts. Um.You see, I come from the States, too. My husband's from Scotland. Youand I will have to stand together. He thinks all Scotsmen are sosuperior, but I often laugh and tell him--he doesn't mind my having myjoke, and rubbing it in now and then--life would be so dull without asense of humor, don't you think? I tell the Reverend that humor is nextto godliness and--And I often say to my husband, 'Oh, you wildHeelanders may think so well of yourself and all, but I notice most ofyou are working for somebody else over here!'"

Mr. McGavity's lips had the same tightness as Alverna's.

His helpmeet turned on the Reverend Mr. Dillon:

"Have you been trying to hold services in the Cree language again, Mr.Dillon?... It's so dear and good and sweet of the Reverend, Mr.Prescott; he tries to preach in Cree, and I do admire him for it so,but--he! he! he!--the Indians can't understand one word he tries to say!Oh--soup!"

So, having put every one into a delightful humor, the good lady leapedat her chair, tucked her napkin under the folds of her shiny neck, andsucked in an ecstatic mouthful.

Mr. Dillon was less jocund:

"Come among us for a little fishing, Mr. Prescott?"

His voice was surprisingly profound for one of so thin a neck.

"Yes, a little."

"Your first visit in the North Country?"

(Would they never shut up, and let him enjoy the rapture of soup? Realsoup! Hot! With a flavor! In china plates!)

But: "Yes, it's--uh--it's my first visit."

"Well, well, indeed! Your first visit here. So you come from New York.At first I thought it was from Chicago."

"Oh, come now, Reverend!" gleefully presented Mrs. McGavity. "Youmustn't be making such terrible social breaks. These folks from New Yorkare all so high and mighty, with their skyscrapers and banquets andeverything, that if we don't guess they come from there when we firstlay an eye on 'em, we just show ourselves up as awful rubes. Oh, yes!Yes. You can always tell 'em by their touch-me-not ways.... Don'tmind Aunty McGavity having her little joke, Mr. Prescott!... Thisreally is nice soup, Mrs. Easter."

As with dreadful neighborly mirth they made their way through soup,moose, asparagus, canned corn, wine-jelly out of gelatine and coconutbiscuits out of a tin--each mouthful Ralph rolled over his tongue, withgratitude to the fat little gods of eating--Mrs. McGavity seized most ofthe conversation:

"Are you still having trouble with the cookstove, Mrs. Easter?"

"I didn't really have any trouble with it," said Alverna.

Her tone was, for a second, more hostile than a respectable person wouldhave liked to hear from a young chit addressing a veteran of thefrontier.

Mrs. McGavity shook a coy forefinger at her, and:

"Oh, come now, deary, 'fess up! Mustn't be afraid to admit--I've gotsuch a good one on her, Mr. Prescott! When she first came here shethought she could keep a nice fire of coals, just as if this were thecity, where you can get hickory wood instead of our pine and popple thatburn up so quick and all. She told me that she wasn't going to use afrying-pan all the time, like the rest of us stupid old housewives! Oh,no, she was going to broil! And then, when she couldn't keep up a bedof coals, she said--she said--" Mrs. McGavity almost choked on her humorand her ample spoonful of corn. "She said it was the fault of thestove!"

"But," remarked Alverna, "I can keep a bed of coals now. With birch."

"But there's none near here--not for two miles."

"I know. I got some."

"Oh, now, dearie! You didn't make--"

For once Mrs. McGavity was not merry, but grieving, and hurt in herfiner feelings:

"You didn't make poor Joe, with all he has to do, go way off in thewoods and lug you some birch-wood!"

"No, Mrs. McGavity, I did not. I carried it myself. Two miles."

"Oh!"

For the moment Mrs. McGavity seemed robbed of material for wit, and shelooked unhappy about it. She discussed with Mr. Dillon the impiety ofthe Indian children who, unless absolutely driven, never seemed to careto go to Sabbath school. Then she thought of another one. She turned onAlverna:

"Were you much worried, with Joe away and all?"

"N-no."

"Mr. Prescott, it was such a joke on her when she first came. Why,whenever she heard a dog, just a plain team dog, sneaking around thebushes at night, she thought it was a bear or a wolf or maybe an Indianor Heaven knows what all!... Now didn't you, Mrs. Easter!"

Alverna confessed:

"Yes, I'm afraid I did. I was such a little idiot; oh, a regularnitwit!"

"I'm sure," said Mrs. McGavity, "you were real brave about it--for agirl that'd just worked in cities--in a barber-shop!"

Alverna had suddenly fled to the stove.

"Tea--boiling over--" she choked. She stood with her back to them.

Mrs. McGavity was continuing: "Of course it's hard for me to understandbeing scared. Maybe I just never had enough imagination. But I nevercould get myself to be afraid of anything. Why, when I first come intothe woods--and it was just after the Riel rebellion, and the Indianswere still real horstile; they scalped a woman a few miles away fromme--and I said, 'I'm not going to let anything get the best of me!' Andnothing ever did!"

To Alverna, still at the stove:

"Why, dearie, is that another new dress? My, you certainly do know howto handle your husband and make him buy things! You can make him bringyou back a new dress every time he sticks his nose outside Mantrap, andmy old man--why, he wouldn't get me anything if--Maybe he's afraid theyoung fellows would pay too much attention to me! And maybe he's so fondof all these nice quarters with his Majesty's head on them that he feelsit wouldn't be patriotic to let 'em get away from him! There, there!"

She leaned past Ralph, to the considerable impediment of a valuable dishof wine-jelly, and patted her husband's chunky red hand.

"Don't you mind my joking, Jimmy," she comforted her consort. "I'drather have you than all the handsome fellas like Joe, even if you are aporridge-headed, nickel-pinching old Scottie!"

"Hell, woman, I don't mind ye!" Jimmy's accent was as thick as knitting."But I wonder if Mrs. Easter always gets your pee-culiar sense ofhumor!"

Alverna whirled about at the stove. "It isn't new--my dress. It's theold thing that had the silver belt on it. I bought it myself, with themoney I earned myself--in a barber-shop! And I put these red dingusesaround the edge myself! I did!"

"Oh, there, there, dearie!" Mrs. McGavity ballooned up, stalked Alverna,embraced her with a vast smothering by shoulders and expansive bosom.Alverna could scarcely be seen in the eclipse. "There, there, there! Ihope I didn't hurt your feelings! It was just Aunty McGavity's littlejoke."

"No--I know--I just meant--"

"It's all right, dearie. And you made a real pretty job of it, with thered embroidery."

Mrs. McGavity stepped back to admire the revamped dress. Alverna,displaying its charms, spread out her skirt like a ballet dancer. Mrs.McGavity whispered delicately and helpfully, with a whisper which couldnot have been understood much farther away than the lake-shore: "Becareful, dearie! You're showing your legs!"

And beaming forgivingly on one and all, Mrs. McGavity waddled back tothe table, while Alverna's new smile stopped abruptly, and she droppedher spread-eagled hands and turned again to the stove.

Mrs. McGavity's moment of absence had perilously given the conversationover to the others.

Ralph had little to say and Joe Easter less, but the Reverend Mr. Dillonwas full of plaintive anecdotes, and Mr. McGavity desired to talkbusiness.

Mr. Dillon was no intellectual Titan, but he was kindly and serene. Butthen again he was no intellectual Titan. He had a thankless labor inthis field, he sighed. The Indians did not seem to have much spiritualoutlook. They were obedient enough about attending Morning and EveningPrayer, and they listened to his sermons--and maybe Mrs. McGavity wasright about his poor attempts at Cree, but he noticed that the Indiansseemed, they certainly did seem, to understand what he was trying tosay! But right after Evening Prayer, the Indians would go off toCounselor Three Foxes' cabin, and dance there; and he knew for apositive fact that last Sunday evening five of the younger Indiantrappers had played poker, and played for money, till nearly midnight,in the wigwam of a very doubtful character named Tristram Dogteam.

Then, while Mr. Dillon was catching his breath, and Mrs. McGavity wasmaking up for her previous inattention to the wine-jelly and the tin ofcoconut biscuits, her husband seized the scarlet thread of social joy:

"Did you see Tom Pinkford at Brandon, Joe?"

"No, I didn't see him, Mac," said Joe.

"Didn't you see him at all?"

"No, never saw him."

"That's funny. I thought he was there now."

"Don't know, Mac. I never saw him. Maybe he was out of town--didn't layan eye on him.... Ralph, you must get Mac to tell you--"

"But, Joe," insisted Mr. McGavity, "I thought you were going to talkover Tom's white-fox farm with him."

"Yuh, I had kind of thought of it, Mac, but--I didn't happen to run intohim."

"What do you think, Joe? Are you stocking Wishepagon woolen socks fornext winter, or are you sticking to Hamilton socks?"

"I'm going to order Wishepagon."

"Ah, I told ye so!" Mr. McGavity shook his hand in triumph. He turned onRalph; he made it all clear and fascinating: "But it was me that firsttold Joe about the Wishepagon socks! He used to carry nothing but theHamilton socks. Every sock in his store--Hamilton! And the Wishepagonsock--it won't shrink, it won't run, the red border is just as fast asif it was gray--it's real honest Scotch wool! And what do ye think? Whatdo ye think? Time and time and time again I've spoken to the Inspectorand I've told him, I've warned him, I've explained to him--I've talkedto him honest, Mr. Prescott, as man to man--I've told him I could selltwice as many Wishepagon socks as I can sell Hamilton socks--the Indiansmay be awful boobies in some ways, you know, but they know what socksthey like--they know whether socks shrink or don't shrink--theyknow--the Indians know whether their feet are dry or their feet are notdry--and I've told that to the Inspector, and still I get Hamiltonsocks! And what do you think of that, Mr. Prescott?"

Mr. Prescott said that so far as he could see, it was at leastunfortunate and ill-deserved.

Alverna urged Mr. Dillon: "You must have some more sauce on yourasparagus. I made it myself. It's a kind of mayonnaise."

Mrs. McGavity pointed out: "Oh, did you hear her? 'It's a kind ofmayonnaise.' Now isn't that cute?" She giggled three fat whifflinggiggles, and smiled on Alverna condescendingly--as a spinster publiclyquotes and smiles on a clever child.

Alverna scowled exactly as that child would scowl.

And this was the beginning of an evening which, save for Alverna'sunfortunate crying later, was full of neighborly cheer and of bravefrontier talk.

Chapter Twelve

Ralph had never admired any one more than Alverna during that officialfeast. It is true that her phrasing lacked the scholarly charm which oneexpects in a female. "Oh, gee, that's dan-dy!" was the way in which sheacclaimed the Reverend Mr. Dillon's portrayal of his efforts to interestIndian ladies in weaving; and at Mr. McGavity's moral references to thecharms of her revealed throat she giggled, "Oh, say now, where do youget that stuff!" And once, as testified, she had broken under areference to her extravagance. But otherwise she was filially attentiveto all of Mrs. McGavity's observations--and we have considered here butan insignificant portion of that lady's jolly and bustling andforward-looking observations of the evening.

When Mrs. McGavity told how she had driven away a wolf by shooting blankcartridges, awed a homicidal Indian by remarking, "Well sir, and what doyou want?" and made Mr. McGavity's pants last two years extra bycunningly darning them, Alverna cheerfully applauded: "That was great!I'll say it was!"

When the Reverend Mr. Dillon explained the differences between thegovernment of the Church of England and that of the Wesleyans, shelistened like a lady disciple, bending intently forward, her radiantlittle face tight in her slender hand. And when Joe yawned during Mr.McGavity's disclosure of the fact that a net stretched from Two PinesPoint to Sullivan Island would be much more likely to catch whitefishthan one sunk in Island Channel, then Alverna covered it by crying:"Why, Joe, you poor old dear, you're so tired after your hike that youcan scarcely keep your eyes open!... Ralph, it's just wonderful theway Mr. Mac knows all the best fishing-grounds around here!"

Between exclamations Alverna was forever gayly hustling--leaping up fromthe table, waiting on all of them, whisking away used plates, cleaningthem with a lively sound of scraping, and singing "Yes, We Have NoBananas" as she wiped them. She divined that Mr. Dillon wanted more ofthe asparagus (she herself took none at all, Ralph noted) and that Mrs.McGavity had a lecherous eye upon the platter of wine-jelly.

And thrice Ralph saw her affectionately slip her hand across Joe's hairas she skipped back from the stove and took her seat.

They were his family, he felt grimly; for Joe or Alverna he wouldzealously cut the throat of Mrs. McGavity, and that would be no brieftask nor pretty.

The last smears of the wine-jelly had been scraped up with clashingspoons, and Mrs. McGavity had absent-mindedly fished all the coconutbiscuits out of the tin by her elbow. They had sipped the tea, servednot with condensed cream but with real lemon excitedly produced byAlverna from the new treasure-chest brought in Joe's canoe. For half anhour they sat in the morris chairs in the living-room, suckingtoothpicks thoughtfully passed by Joe, while in the kitchen Alvernawashed the dishes. She had refused Ralph's aid: "Any other night; butthose wild sports need somebody new to show off to," she giggled. Whenall these greenwood sports were over, Mr. and Mrs. McGavity rose,solemnly hid yawns, solemnly gasped: "Guess it's about time to think ofhitting it for home, Joe."

Mr. Dillon shot up from his chair with them, "Why! My good gracious!It's half-past nine! I hadn't any idea it was so late! Let me thank youand your good lady, Mr. Easter, for a most delicious feast. And I hope,Mr. Prescott, that you will have a most delightful vacation here. Goodnight, all! Good night!"

"Good night--such a love-ly supper, Mrs. Easter," said Mrs. McGavity.

"G'night, Joe. Night, Alverna. Pleased met you, Prescott," said Mr.McGavity.

"Simply love-ly! I wish I had a husband that would get me a lot ofcanned goods, instead of having to fix up everything by myself. Goodnight--good night!" said Mrs. McGavity.

And they were gone, and on the house fell a bounteous silence.

Ralph, teetering on the piano-stool at the parlor-organ, revolving it alittle with a faint squeaking, watched Joe, gauntly relaxed in a morrischair, and Joe watched the silent Alverna. She stood at a window, herback to them, plucking at the tidy net curtains herself had washed andhung. She could not have seen much; even in the late northern twilightthere was only the meshed and cloudy outline of the trees.

She turned toward them:

"Well, I hope you're satisfied, Joe."

"Yuh, yuh, sure, went fine! Got it over. That McGavity woman does liketo shoot her mouth off, don't she! You handled her just right, Alvy. Andit's all over!"

"Yes, for you it is, Joe Easter. You'll forget about it. You wouldn'tthink of making her apologize. You wouldn't even apologize to me forher. You'd have her here in this house again--over my dead body youwill!"

"Why, what's the matter?"

"You know good and plenty well what's the matter! Aside from calling mea fool and a rotten housekeeper, and saying I gold-dig you for all themoney I can get and blow it in on foolishness, and saying I was a dirtylittle coward--after what I've gone through these last few nights, alonein the house!--and hinting I was a streetwalker--oh, otherwise she wasmother's little sunbeam, the damn' neighing hyena! I've had enough! Iplayed fair. I stood it while she was our guest. Now I'm going to startsomething. I'll run her and her fat-head of a husband out of--"

"Eh, eh! Whoa--whoa-up!" Joe had risen; he stood with his hands on hershoulders. "She was mean, and you were a corker. But keep it up. Don'tdo her stunt. Don't expect her to be something she ain't. Got to takeeverybody in this world the way they are. And don't make us pay forher being such a stinker. You were so decent--don't spoil it."

"It's your turn! I've suffered--now you'll suffer!"

She threw his hands from her shoulders; she raced the floor.

Joe placidly stood with his hands in his pockets, droning: "It's alltrue. Mrs. Mac is a fool and a bad actor. She expects you to be asetting hen. But then, you expect her to be a hoppin' jaybird. Me, Iexpect nothing at all. And I'm the only one that gets what he expects!You got to think of Ralph and me, and how--"

With a frightful scream she interrupted him. She threw up her fists,clenching and unclenching her fingers like the tentacles of some hugewhite insect, her pointed nails jabbing her palms. She tossed her headback, hair flying insanely. She screamed again. She rushed at Joe andbeat his chest, raging: "Oh, shut up, shut up, shut up! Just likeyou--you let that devil shame me, then go and be so calm about it--youcold-boiled potato, and you are a cold fish, too, I'll tell the world!You'll go right off to sleep tonight! You'll snore! You'll forget! AndI'll lie awake and feel so darn' sick because I can't get my hands onher fat neck and choke her to death! I'll show her.... Where's thatwhisky you brought in?"

"It's-- Why?"

She darted into the kitchen, snatched off the tarpaulin cover with whichJoe had hidden from the pure eyes of Mrs. McGavity the new case ofScotch. She yanked out a bottle as though she were pulling a hated weed.She savagely drew the cork and, standing before them, in the doorbetween kitchen and living-room, she tilted the bottle and drank with along gurgle.

"Don't do that!" Joe said sharply.

"Go to the devil!" she observed, as she banged the bottle down on theledge of her sewing-machine.

Ralph, longing to escape and feeling that this would only draw the moreattention, almost skipped off the piano-stool as she brushed by him. Shestrode to the green couch, hysterically threw herself down.

"That drink makes me feel a little better. If I hadn't had a spot ofsomething, I'd of gone crazy," she snarled. "Now you look here, Joe.Come down to cases. You brought me up here to the woods. You got to makeit possible for me to stay here. Figure it out for yourself: Just oneother white woman in the whole place, and she's that pious old fakethat's bound and determined to make me wretched. Either she's got to go,or I have. I've never done one single thing to give her any excuse forpanning me--"

Joe stepped lightly across the room and closed her mouth with his broadpalm. She choked, struggled, bit, but he silenced her, and he remarkedsomewhat coldly:

"Aside from your making Ralph sick, you're-- You fool, I know theMcGavity woman is a mischief-maker. But it's because she is the onlywhite woman around here that you've got to put up with her--have her todepend on. She doesn't get you, but then you don't get her. And youwon't. You won't listen to what I say. And-- You've never done anythingto start her gossiping? What about your pulling the wildest parties fromHerschel Island to Nipigon? What about encouraging Curly and George andthe rest of the boys to play poker all night and drink a lot of rot-gutwhite mule and holler so they can be heard way up at Revillon Frères'?"

"You enjoy it just as much as--"

"Sure I do! But I don't expect a holy bird like Ma McGavity to think I'ma Sunday-school scholar because of it! Imagine what she must think ofyou."

"Well, what I think of her--"

"Yuh. You kind of gave us a hint about it! As I say: why, she hasn'teven begun to spout all she thinks. Her spirit's probably willing, butshe ain't strong on vocabulary! And you can figure out for yourself howMac and she must talk about you when they see you throwing a come-onlook at every doggone last thing in pants that happens along! And thenyou expect her to admire you for-- And Lord only knows how you carryon with George Eagan and Curly when I'm away!"

She sat bolt up on the couch. Her voice was not hysteric now but stilledwith shocked fury.

"Joe Easter! Are you hinting that I'm a bad woman?"

He did not answer. His eyes were steady. Something in him so dominatedthe room that the wretched Ralph could not stir.

"Are you? Go on! Say it! Don't you dare start making all these dirtyinsinuations unless you're ready to back them up! Well?"

Still he answered only with a look like a vise.

She shrugged uneasily; she turned her eyes from him; she said feebly:"Oh, you make me tired. All these silly suspicions--honest, just silly.Because I want to dance and kid folks along, the dubs that like to situp late talking about their corns, they think I'm tough. And"--ratherweakly--"you listen to 'em! Why, Joe Easter, you ought to be ashamed ofyourself!... Hadn't he ought to, Ralph?"

Once addressed, Ralph was released from his unhappy trance. "Oh, I wishyou'd both stop quarreling! It gets you nowhere. I'm going to bed."

"But honest, Ralph," she begged, "you got no idea how hard it is for mehere, with nothing but these poker parties. I'd rather have nicedances--like we used to have in Minneapolis, at Lake Harriet--with alive bunch--but you know: respectable. Maybe I wasn't anything but amanicure girl in a barber-shop, like that old hellion hinted--how I hateher!--but I was brought up real nice. My papa was in the furniturebusiness. He had his own store! And believe me, a manicure girl meetsmore swell birds and interesting people and everything than an oldturkey-buzzard like Ma McGavity ever heard about. Didn't I meet my oldJoe there!"

She tried to make it cheerful, affectionate, forgiving; but Joe,slouching on the arm of a morris chair, did not look at her.

She desperately swung back to Ralph. Her defenselessness touched him,and her pleading:

"Honest, I met some wonders--you see, it was at the Hotel Ranleagh, andall the important people stop there. And a manicure girl gets a chanceto talk with 'em real intimate, like nobody else in the hotel would. Andno matter what they tell you, if a manicure girl respects herself anddon't let guys get fresh with her, most folks treat her like they wouldtheir sisters, practically. Why, the people that I've met--and talkedto! Senators and bankers and automobile racers and bishops and bigadvertising-men--And then Joe expects me to settle down contented here!When he could just as well start a store in Winnipeg (I hear that's adandy town) or some place like that, and see life! The people I've met!Why, Ralph--" She sprang up and ran to him, a radiant child. "Once, whenhe was in Minneapolis, touring, I did the nails of Jack Barrymore!"

Joe suddenly came to life. He rose, he seized her arm.

"Been thinking, Alvy. I know it isn't easy for you here. Not that I'mblind, mind you! I know that--Oh, prob'ly it is dull here. But I don'tsee how I can get away. Got my investment. With what little I've madethese last two years, all the big losses on my furs, I couldn't possiblystart business Outside. But maybe I could a few years from now. If youcould just wait, be a little steadier and not fly off the handle likeyou do! When Mrs. Mac thinks she's being so cute, why, laugh at her.That's why--that's one reason why I tolled Ralph here. Part because Iliked him right off when I met him. You bet! But part because I wantedyou to have a chance to talk to a fellow that can enjoy the North andstill do a job of thinking sometimes, and not just raise Cain all thewhile. Am I right, Ralph? Oughtn't she to try to stick it? Or ought I tosend her back to the cities?"

"Oh, gee, Joe, couldn't you maybe do that?" She pirouetted, a skirtdancer. "Just go down for this winter, and come back right after thebreak-up in May?"

"And do what?"

"Oh--I could stay with the girls at the flat again."

"And get your manicure job back?"

"I wouldn't want to do that. One thing I do like here--besides you,dearie. I like my own kitchen and my own house, and doing things in myown time. And I am a good housekeeper, ain't I! I couldn't standgoing back and having to be in the shop exactly at eight-thirty, andtaking all the mean customers--the guys that are so stuck on themselvesthey think they can make you P.D.Q., even if they're old and fat, with abreath like a brewery. And having to be there days when you feel so sickand your head aches. And the fly barbers that won't never let you alone.No. Why couldn't I just sort of stick around and go to the movies--"

"With your fondness for hell-raising? Mind you, I'm not blaming you;guess wouldn't care much for a barber-shop myself; but you'd absolutelygo to pieces if you didn't have a job of some kind to keep you busy andsteady. And then, as you know, I'm not flush enough to keep up twohomes--"

He explained to Ralph:

"Situation's like this. Fur-buying--and that's a more important part ofa trader's business than keeping store--it's awful' speculative. Thisyear the market dropped right after I finished my buying, and I had tosell every doggone mushrat skin for sixty cents less than I'd paid for'em--and I had seventeen thousand of 'em! About wiped out my capital.And now--even the store is doing almost nothing. The Hudson's Bay andRevillons' and I, we all had to shut down on giving credit to theIndians, because they wouldn't pay their debts. They've gotten into agreat habit lately of running up as big a bill as they could, and then,when they get some money--the Government treaty-money, forinstance--they won't come in and pay up, no matter how long we'vecarried 'em. They'll jump in a canoe and go clear down to Lake Warwickand spend the money there, where they haven't any bills to settle. Don'tblame 'em entirely. Poor devils don't get much money. But I'm not rich.I can't go on supporting a hundred Cree families. And so the onlybusiness I'm doing is with the few that pay cash."

Alverna, now for several minutes the demure and wistful lady, wasshrieking again:

"Yes! And what he didn't tell you--Joe's nerve, to bring you into allthis danger! And to leave me alone here nights, while he was gone!"

"I hope you were alone!" Joe grunted.

"Damn you, I won't stand your insinuations! And I'm going to tellRalph what you've let him in for!... Because we've shut down oncredit, the Indians are crazy-sore. They say we're starving 'em. And weare. And they've sworn they'll burn all three stores here, and murder usin our beds! Any night now, they may be down on us--"

"That," said Joe, "is plumb idiotic, and you know it. If it were true,I'd have both you and Ralph out of here--and myself. I don't like beingmurdered more'n most folks, in my bed or anywhere else. The Indians arei-rate, but they're shiftless--these particular bands of Woods Creesaround here, I mean. They're scared of us."

"A man can be awful' scared," said Alverna, "and still burn all of us inour beds or-- God! Look!"

She was pointing at the darkened window.

Ralph's heart stopped.

"Oh, it's nothing," she said apologetically. "For a second I thought Isaw an Injun's face at the window. And that, Mr. Joe Easter, is thelovely, happy, safe way I've felt almost every second while you've beengone!"

And that, felt Ralph, was probably how he would feel from now on.

They debated, Joe and Alverna, for another half-hour; the interminablegrievances and recollections of a domestic squabble; the debaterssinking almost into sleep, then springing into wakeful rage; both ofthem right and both of them cruelly unjust. Certainly Joe was unjust,considered Ralph; certainly Alverna was pitiful. Yet with it all hesneakingly sided with Joe.

Joe belonged to a man's world. He was out of place in dealing with ahectic temperament. The kindness which carried Ralph or McGavity or theReverend Mr. Dillon was shipwrecked when Joe tried to navigate Alverna'sgay calms and squalls of fury and fogs of passion.

Ralph tried to escape, but both of them turned to him constantly and hewas bound in this madhouse. At the end of the combat he was too sleepyto care which of them won, too sleepy to care whether all the Indians inthe Mantrap River country came burning and killing.

It was Joe who exclaimed: "Keeping poor old Ralph up all night, and nothis scrap at that! Could you fix his cot on the porch?"

But it was Alverna who prepared his bed.

Men can, no doubt, make beds in a mechanical, heartless way: Japservants, hospital orderlies, stewards, French valets de chambre; butwhich of them would ever end with the busy and cheery pat of the pillowwhich mystically lures to slumber? Thus busy and cheery was Alverna,proud of her deftness.

Joe had gone to see that the warehouse was locked. When she had finishedshe stood beside Ralph in the dim little room of the screened porch,with the lapping lake on one side, the door of the lighted sitting-roomon the other. She mercurially dropped again from briskness into grief.She was so slim a child in the dusk, and her voice so young.

"What am I going to do, Ralph? I'm scared to stay here, and so bored!Joe won't support me Outside. And how could I stand going back tomanicuring, or being on my feet all day long in a store, or maybe ahired girl getting bossed around?" She held out her hands to him.

He backed away. It seemed natural to put his arm about her in abrotherly way--too natural.

"I don't know," he complained, as though he were begging for releasefrom her burdens.

"Anyway, you are a dear sweet lamb. And don't think I'm too bad. Pleasedon't. I could--for heaven's sake don't ever dare tell Joe this, butthere was a man came here, a trader, oh, a dandy fellow, and he wantedme to go away with him, and I wouldn't. But-- To travel and see theworld! Oh, well--good night."

In the luxury of clean pajamas, in the triple luxury of clean sheets andmattress and springs, he slid into drowsing. But always he startedawake. The house was still; Joe and Alverna asleep; the rustle of littlewaves on the lake but a deeper silence; and in that quiet, everymysterious stirring was the sound of an Indian--creeping toward thehouse; brushing along the screen of the porch; trying to open the screendoor; scratching a match to touch off kerosene-soaked rags; stealthilydrawing a knife; creeping through the darkness...

He lay tense. Suddenly he was shooting upright, sitting rigid, his heartgalloping. There were muted footsteps, there was--

Unmistakable. Brushing through the grass. Brushing against a rosebush.

"Wh-who's that?" he quavered.

Some one running softly, then the black stillness.

Chapter Thirteen

With all his panic, with all his irritated memories of Alverna's handsand eyes, he must have slept, since certainly he woke--and woke ateight, which for that land is almost noon. The sun was riotous on thelittle waves, the pines a serene splendor and, after drugged sleep, hedid not know whether he had dreamed the sneaking footsteps or heardthem.

"Anyway, I'll sort of keep guard, tonight," he vowed--and did not carefor it in the least.

But perhaps now the Indians knew two men were in the house,strategically stationed, they would not dare attack. And perhaps it hadbeen just a drunkard staggering home. And perhaps--

Oh, it was all nonsense!

Thus he comforted himself, like a child calculating that though theBlind Ghost is two steps down the hall, and the Shrouded Burglar twojumps beyond that, daddy and mother can be heard laughing downstairs andthere is quite a good chance of safety.

It was a morning, that, of much fishing, after the first important andWoodbury-defying rite of providing Ralph with moccasins and rubbers fromJoe's store. Joe--his own breakfast he had cooked and gobbled atsix--came over to beam on Ralph while he luxuriously savored his coffeeand flapjacks; he beamed at Alverna, too; and there was nothing butfriendship and sun and kindliness apparent in the world.

Joe had to do his accounts, but with Ralph he sent Lawrence Jackfish,who seemed to combine the duties of sailor, teamster, janitor, gardener,and huntsman, in intervals between dancing with young squaws or lyingdrunken in the sun. Lawrence had sneaky and lecherous eyes, but he couldsmell out fish in twenty feet of water. Probably, had Ralph'sex-Indians, Jesse and Louey, been along, Lawrence would have been asmaddeningly witty as they in hours of sailing. But now he was silent,though he spoke adequate English, and Ralph, grateful for the lightnessand swiftness of a ten-foot canoe, grateful for this summery ease afterthe big cargo craft, slipped among the islands, proud of being thebow-man.

At his first cast in the cool golden water off Blue Nose Island, hisreel sang and his pole arched as a big one ran away with the hook. Heplayed it for a quarter of an hour, and brought to the side of the canoea fifteen-pound lake trout, silver-sided and spotted with scarlet.

Radiantly he came in for twelve o'clock dinner, Indian prowlers anddomestic squabbles forgotten; and Joe admired the trout as though never,in all waters and all ages, had any one caught quite such a fish. Heinsisted on photographing Ralph holding up the trout. (That photograph,as piously preserved today, shows Ralph simpering like a young mother.)

Alverna sang as she served at dinner the same unfortunate trout, rolledin cornmeal and fried. Her music was erratic but pleasing; she managedto make all tunes sound curiously like "What'll I Do?" but her noiseshad the agreeable twitter of frogs in the twilight, of the cricket onthe hearth.

That she could ever have felt martyred, that Joe could ever have beenstern with her, was clearly absurd. Joe told immense legends of PopBuck, who was reputed, when he could no longer find any one to match himin drinking Swedish aquavit, to have trained an amiable brown bear, andto have sat up with the bear all night, full of hilarity and wisdom andalcohol, in an ice-sheathed skin tent under the Northern Lights.

In the happiness of his friends, Ralph was blissful.

Before the dinner dishes were washed, the two white trappers who wereloafing at Mantrap Landing by way of summer vacation came ambling in togreet the stranger: Pete Renchoux, a swart and bouncing Canuck ofperhaps forty, a round man full of little shrill laughters, and theyoung Britisher (or he may have been Irish) George Eagan, whose silencesabout himself hinted that he had left home for reasons not too laudable.They brought with them two quarts of moonshine, a powerful, determined,single-minded explosive, colorless as water and effective as cholera.These they solemnly presented to Joe, with the casual explanation thatthey had stolen them from Chief Burberry of the Lake Midnight band ofCrees when he was sore in liquor; and they indicated that it was theircontribution to a party which they earnestly hoped and manfully expectedto begin now and to last till all hours, at least.

The hosts did what they could to be obliging.

Ralph drank one glass of moonshine mercifully so cozened with ginger alethat it did not taste like vitriol but merely like gasoline.

It was proper that after the trappers' gift Joe should reciprocate byurging them to try his real Scotch. He was successful in his urging,remarkably so, and by three o'clock, when Pop Buck waddled in, bearing agallon of dandelion wine and as full as the trappers of ideas abouthaving a party, the festivity was begun.

Naturally, Alverna had to kiss "Uncle Pop," and naturally, she had tokiss Eagan and Renchoux then, to show that there was no discrimination.

By five, Nels Stromberg, assistant to McGavity at the Hudson's BayCompany, and Biermeier, the Revillon Frères factor, had heard telepathictidings of the affair--and by five Ralph had had enough of it. He hadnever found that more than five whiskies and soda at a time werebeneficial to law-practice.

He heard Joe whispering, "Let's sneak out to the store and have a littlefurlough."

Like a country general store with patent medicines of forgotten vintagesand boots of a bygone bucolic age resting on dusty shelves in a darkinterior scented with plug tobacco and hay--like a ship-chandler's shopromantic with binnacle-lights and ancient figureheads and tarryrope--such was the inside of the log cabin store of the Easter TradingCompany. It was neat enough, for Joe was as fussy a housekeeper asAlverna, and fussier was his solemn assistant, a Wesleyan half-breed whowas painfully loyal to his chief but who would never enter the housebecause playing-cards and alcohol were to be seen there.

For all its sweptness and orderliness, the store was electric with everylegend of the North. Here were mackinaws, scarlet and green and russetand ultramarine; pea-soup shirts striped and checked in unknownpassionate hues; lumbermen's boots of leather and rubber; a caribou-hideparkee bought from the Eskimos who come trading to Brochet on LakeReindeer; nets for whitefish and deadly rifles for moose; traps forbeaver, huge traps for bear; poison for wolves; and rows of bright redcans of salmon, peaches, jam. One end of the counter displayed such hatsas a Hottentot lady might have invented. If you had taken a pink strawhat, covered it with glue, dipped it first into a pile of many-coloredfeathers, then into a heap of brass buckles, then an assortment of allthe velvet scraps from a very large dressmaker's shop, you would havecreated such a hat.

"Fierce, ain't they!" said Joe. "But the squaws love 'em. If you werehere when they get their Treaty money, you'd see every other squawhustling in to buy one of 'em, and parading out with it on, over a shawland a calico skirt."

In a dark room at one side were bales of furs, tight-packed, the hideousfleshy wrong sides out. Ralph was disappointed. He had expected the fursto lie in glossy piles, as in the palace of a fabulous northern king.These bales were as poetic as bundles of bark, and ten times heavier.But he realized that when they had been borne, by canoe and portage, bytrain and steamer, to London, they would blossom again, and nestle onthe shoulders of women on the Place Vendôme, flash from limousineswhispering through fog-enchanted Mayfair.

Joe guided him to the office at the back of the store, a verybusinesslike office with golden-oak desk and letter-files ofyellow-painted pine. Ralph might have found there an unfortunatesuggestion of law-offices and work, but actually this sober peace wasrestful, after the clamor surging about Alverna.

"Do you mind the racket? They're good boys, Ralph," sighed Joe.

"I know--"

"Not one of 'em but what'd risk his life for you, if a canoe upset or ifyou were out with 'em in the woods and busted a leg and had to becarried on their shoulders."

"I know."

"Ralph--tell me: Where will the tragedy strike?"

"Eh?"

"Alverna's going to get awful hurt, or I am, or some third chump, or allthree of us. I'm sure of it."

And Ralph was sure of it, and not all his training in cooing to worriedclients gave him anything to say.

They sat brooding. From the house they could hear Joe's phonographrasping out a fox-trot, could hear heavy boots scraping, and Alvernascreaming: "Quit now, George! Ah, gee, quit!"

Joe sighed.

There was another sound; the crack-crack-crack of a rifle.

"Wonder what that is?" Joe mused, not very excitedly.

They sauntered back through the store, from the low stoop looked overthe lake. Ralph could make out only a distant canoe, a vaguely seen manstanding in the stern. But Joe exclaimed:

"Now there will be a shindig! That's Curly Evans--the ProvincialPoliceman in this district--great card--fine fellow."

He dashed back to his office, returned with a revolver, and shot everychamber into the lake. Already the other stores and the Indians in campwere firing their salutes, and Curly Evans swooped up to Joe's wharfwith the tumult of an admiral's landing.

Evans was in uniform, with a broad military hat bound up on one side,like an Australian trooper. He was a sturdy youngster, his yellow hairkinky, his big and good-humored mouth always grinning--especially whenit was a matter of sneaking, through brush and stumps, on a murdererblockaded in a log cabin. He dashed up, shook hands with Joe and Ralph,and chuckled:

"Spree on? Lemme at it. Glad meet you, Prescott. Heard you were here."

He ran off to the house, to be greeted at the door by one of the kisseswith which Alverna appeared always to be generous.

Ralph mused: "How could he know I was here? There's no telegraph--"

"Nobody ever moves ten inches in the North without being seen," saidJoe. "You may think-- Suppose you'd committed a crime and thought youwere making a get-away. Some Indian would have watched your canoe fromshore, and told the next Indian he saw. We're all of us being watchedevery second. Wilds? Why, say, every burnt tree up here has ears andeyes. I'll show you. Curly!"

Standing at the cottage door, still in ardent discourse with Alverna,Curly bawled back, "Yeh?"

"Where's this bird Woodbury--the white man that Prescott was with?"

"Fellow in the Spirit River band of Chippewyans told me Woodbury wascamped on the Little Moccasin River last night. He's headed for LakeSolferino."

Ralph had a feeling of hidden hateful eyes about him, sinister in thegreen and kindly forest; and uneasily he remembered the slinkinganonymous footsteps of the night.

Then in the fury of what Alverna and Curly Evans and Pop Buck regardedas a "slick party," he forgot all insecurity and the secret watchers.

By six o'clock, supper-time, every one except Joe and Ralph was riotous.Alverna was decidedly not an exception, nor was Curly Evans. Neither ofthem had gulped down so much of the throat-clawing moonshine as had PopBuck, Eagan, Renchoux, but they had had enough to rise to that state ofecstatic gloom which is the mark of the more poetic drunk. Alverna andCurly were solemnly waltzing, round and round and round the living-roomto the tune of "It's Three o'Clock in the Morning," played so slowly onthe phonograph that it resembled a funeral march. The others sat aboutthe table in the kitchen, very earnest about nothing whatever, poundingthe table and asserting, "I tell you--I tell you--say now, listen," andnever by any chance explaining what was this priceless thing theydesired to tell.

Joe lolled back, tilted in a chair, thoughtfully and slowly sipping aweak whisky and soda, and talking to Ralph. Through the clamor, like agull seen through a pasty fog, Ralph perceived Joe's shy passion for theNorth and all it meant.

"I'd hate to leave this country and have to take a job Outside, and Imay darn' well have to do it, if I go any broker," Joe sighed.

For the third time since they had met, Ralph tried to feel out a way ofoffering to pay for his board. He could not do it. He knew that it wouldbe as great an insult to Joe as to the lordly host of some old southernplantation.

"Course," said Joe, "I might try to go back trapping, if I went bust.But the rheumatism gets me, after a few weeks in the snow. But-- Gosh,Ralph! I wish you could come out with me in the winter, just for a week,buying furs."

Through Joe's halting stories, Ralph saw that great white unknown land.The crackle and shimmer of the Northern Lights in a vast darkness overdark vast forests. The savage stars of the winter night. The joy of acabin's yellow lights seen far down a frozen and snowy river when afur-buyer was numb with hunger. High noon, and the frozen tundras afield of diamonds under the roaring sun.

"I wish you could see it. Always did kind of hate to hog a pretty view,"said Joe.

Ralph wondered if Joe noticed Alverna at all. It seemed improbable thathe would ever miss anything, yet he went on with his stories of bearsand moose, of Indians desperate with hunger, unmoved, while she flewinto a hysteria of gayety. Evans, Stromberg, Eagan, Renchoux--they wereall quarreling now for the privilege of dancing with her, and when thesehearty young men quarreled, they cast most important doubts on thepurity of one another's parentages, and they could be heard out on BlueNose Island.

She compromised by dancing with two of them at a time, an arm abouteach, giggling at every solemn triple whirl, kissing both of herpartners as another lusty pair seized her. And all the time the oldphonograph dragged out lugubriously,"I've--been--daaaaancing--the--whollllllle--night--throuuuuuuugh."

It was seven before Joe hinted to her, "We better shake up a littlesupper now, eh, whadyuh say?"

There was great activity.

Alverna stood on a chair and shrieked that she would not cook supper.No. Not for a bunch of bums like this. She would go on dancing withCurly Evans. George and Biermeier and Nels could wash up afterwards; PopBuck would be cook, Pete Renchoux waiter; and as for those old grouchesJoe and Ralph Prescott, they could get t' hell out of the way, that'swhat they could do; and she was going to dance till

Three o'clock in the morrrrrning
With Curly--come on now, kid!

Pop chuckled fatly: "Great girl. Pete! Lez show 'em what the old men cando."

"Fine! I'll be a lady waitress!" yelped Pete Renchoux.

Renchoux, mighty trapper, mighty drinker, mighty squire of ratherdoubtful dames, was a plump manikin, slightly greasy, very gay. Heseized Alverna, lifted her from the chair on which she had beenstanding, while she kicked wildly and screamed, and yelled, "Come, youdress me nice now!"

He dragged her from the room, and returned coquettish in Alverna'sred-bordered black frock, with a frilly white apron. On his head was akerchief for cap.

Pop Buck was preparing supper: bacon, pork and beans, baking-powderbiscuits--Pop's highest concept of a party supper. Now Pop was, by allcamp standards, a good cook. In a blizzard, with moss for fuel and flourand water for his only materials, he could have produced eminent bread.But in his burly, jolly, kindly, riotous soul, one thing was lacking:any prejudice whatever in favor of cleanliness. In five minutes he hadAlverna's prim kitchen looking like a dump-heap.

As he frizzled the bacon, he spat on the floor, and bellowed, "Say,Ralph, d'ever tell you about the time I shot the jumping deer with abownarrow?" He set the frying-pan down on the shiny red oilcloth--itleft a filthy circle. And when he opened the can of beans, he amiablykicked the can under the stove.

But the company enjoyed the banquet--all save Biermeier, who showed alonging to slumber amid the beans, and was gravely guided by Joe toRalph's couch on the porch, where he went earnestly and sonorously tosleep.

Renchoux, as capped and aproned waitress, was very noisy even if he wasnot very funny.

"Oh," announced Alverna, "you're just too darling, Pete!" and sheskipped up from the table and saluted Renchoux with a mighty hug.

She also kissed Pop for his excellence in cooking, and that ancientseemed to relish the salute.

In the midst of all this merriment and sisterly love, Ralph glanced atJoe, and it seemed to him that Joe looked very old, very tired, nearlybeaten.

However hectic she might be, Alverna loved expertness in housework, andafter supper she insisted on washing the dishes, with Stromberg andEagan as wipers, and when she had gayly driven Pop out to smoke his pipein the court between cottage and store, she removed the signs of hischeerful sloppiness. Ralph had never seen any one more pleasantlyenergetic than was Alverna, her sailor-blouse sleeves rolled up, dippingthe plates in the iridescent soap-suds, holding up the plates andcalling, "Who's the next punk dish-wiper?"

"Let me help you," Ralph said ardently.

"No, dear," she crooned; and her voice was--Ralph believed justthen--the tenderest voice of woman he had heard since his mother hadleft him. "No, you go look out for poor old Joe. He's out theredigesting, with Pop Buck. Cheer him up, the old cunnin'."

Ralph discussed with Joe and Pop the important question as to whether asafety-razor blade will float if it is dropped on water, but he yearnedfor the clamor within the glow of the kitchen; he raged at being takenfor one of the aged noncombatants who smoke and drone apart from dancingyouth. He heard her calling, "Up on the top shelf, Nels dear," and: "Oh,wait a minute! Gee, wait a min-ute, can't you, Curly! I'll come in anddance as soon 's we get rid of these darn' dishes."

Ralph had tried to drink as little as possible. Certainly, in anyinvestigation of the affair, it is known that he had always hateddrunkenness as he hated split infinitives or the devil or white-edgedblack dinner-ties. But throughout supper Alverna had been a violenthostess. Whenever she had seen an empty glass she had leaped up, dashedto the drainboard of the sink, where moonshine and Scotch were displayedas in a frontier saloon, and filled the glass with a yelp of "Come onnow, dearie, don't you go and die on us!"

Presumably Ralph had drunk much more than he had intended. He knew thatacross Lac Qui Rêve there was the stain of a forlorn sunset. He knewthat Joe was talking with the quietude of an unhappy man. But he couldnot really see, not really hear. He walked as in a fog, he heard as in adelirium, and all the while he was sure of three things: Joe Easter wasthe best friend he had ever known; Joe's wife was to him sacred, setapart; and he longed to be in there, dancing with her.

When Pop and Joe and Ralph returned to the house, after adequatelydeciding that the name of the man who had held up those twobank-messengers in Montreal was Buller, not Butler, and that itcertainly was a shame that people should go about holding upbank-messengers, Alverna was dancing dreamily with Curly Evans, andGeorge Eagan and Pete Renchoux and Nels Stromberg were standing by,waiting.

Stromberg greeted them: "Say, Joe, I hear Ed Tudor is throwing a dancetonight. What say we all go?"

"Well," said Joe, and "Well, all right," said Joe.

They started as soon as Alverna had changed her sailor-blouse and linenskirt for a frock of muslin, cornflower blue. While she was changing,quite an assortment of men stood about her bedroom door and explainedwith loud jollity that they would be willing to help her.

Joe smiled, Ralph noted, rather wearily.

When she came out, preening herself, airily thrusting her bobbed hairback from her temples, passing her coquettish smiles from man to man,Joe croaked: "Say, folks, if you don't mind--I've got to finish up myaccounts. The clerk got 'em kind of balled up while I was away. So I'llappoint Ralph here to be chaperon for me at the dance."

Alverna flashed across the room and hung on his neck. "Oh, Joe, darling,I'd just hate to go unless you came along! Think of what Mrs. Mac andthe Reverend--think of what all the killjoys would say!"

Ralph said, rather desperately, "Shall I stay with you, Joe?"

He caught Joe's eyes again--those pale and fiery blue eyes--and theywere pleading. The celebrated counselor-at-law, who by ordinary was wontto take up every human problem as though it were a problem in dominoes,was altogether confused. He felt that Joe was too fond of these men tokick them out, yet knew them too well to leave them with Alverna, yettoo sick of her madness to endure it, yet too proud to know what heknew.

Joe trusted him alone, felt Ralph. Did he deserve that trust? He would!

He nodded to Joe, uneasily, and went strutting forth as leader of theclamorous procession which filed down a forest path to the dance at EdTudor's. All the while he was conscious that Alverna, behind him, wassinging "Tea for Two" with Curly Evans, and that his own mind was fullof her.

"She's so gallant--trying to make a life for herself in thisloneliness," he meditated; and, "Oh, dry up! Forget her!"

Chapter Fourteen

Despite his royal name, Ed Tudor, otherwise Edward Tudor, was no memberof the British aristocracy. He was a three-quarters-breed Indian, squatand dark, and at least one-quarter in him was a stew of French,Portuguese, and probably Mexican. But Ed was the most successful trapperof the district, and the possessor of a magnificent log cabin with tworooms.

Nor was Ed Tudor's dance really Ed Tudor's. It was paid for by LawrenceJackfish, who, having received real money for his trip with Joe Easter,was itching to get rid of it, and successfully caring for that itch. Hehad already bought a new hat like a movie cowpuncher's, a new beadhatband for the same, and a sixth-hand shotgun, and he was devoting theremains of his wealth to hiring Ed's cabin and giving a dance free toall comers.

The main room of the cabin, wide and very low, was floored with knottypine planks and lined with newspapers pasted on the inside of the logs.On the rafters were piled sledges, dog-harness, and snowshoes. One sidehad the fireplace and table, the other a bed covered with a dizzycrazy-quilt. Two chairs drifted in a general way about the floor, and onthese sat the more venerable Indian squaws. The rest of the guestslittered the bed, squatted on their heels along the wall, or stoodwaiting with a patience almost Chinese for improbable gayety.

It was not the rule in the Etiquette Book of Mantrap Landing for theyoung men to ask partners to dance with them. When, after half an hourof thinking it over, four males had decided that they might as welldance at this dance, they stood in the middle of the floor, their hatson, whispering to one another and giggling, till four squaws, frequentlyyoung, made the same difficult decision and voluntarily joined them. Themen and girls spoke not one word. Small talk did not exist for them;they wanted to get to the business of dancing.

They waited till the octet was completed, then began to pound the floorin a diligent square-dance, the young men swinging the girls violentlyor being swung as heartily by the powerful wenches. Though few of themspoke English, all the calling of the figures was in that tongue. InCree the calls would have been too dismayingly long even for Indianpatience.

"Birdie in the cage and three hands round," bellowed Lawrence Jackfish,and an unsmiling squaw was surrounded by four unsmiling bucks. "Birdieflies out and hawk flies in; hawk flies out and gives birdie a swing."

...Bump, bump, bump of the moccasined feet. Shriek of the caller,"Hawk flies IN!" Prancing figures, dull in the lamplight, dim in thewhirling tobacco smoke. Under and over and behind the dance, thestarveling squeak of the hungry fiddle, the louder thumping of thefiddler's feet, keeping time to the jerky strains, the jerky strains ofthe old-time jigs, Turkey in the Haystack, Turkey in the Straw....Turkey in the Haystack.... Turkey in the Straw. Bump. Bump.Bump....

Thus the dance as Ralph and his procession saw it, heard it, from thedoor, as they thrust their way through the crowd watching from outside.He was conscious that the gathered Indians looked at them uncomfortably.They stared at Alverna (laughing, flushed of cheek, jiggling always withthe excitement of having a party), and edged away from Curly Evans inhis uniform.

"Do you think we better intrude?" Ralph muttered to Alverna.

"Oh, to thunder with 'em! Show 'em a good time. Show 'em how to reallydance!"

Seizing Curly's arm, Alverna dragged him in with her. The quadrillestopped, the blatting fiddle stopped, the dancers gaped. To the host,her husband's servant, Alverna bubbled, "Are we invited, Lawrence?"

He did not look very happy about it, but sheepishly he said, "Yeh, Iguess so."

"Then tell the fiddler to play something a little peppier. Is that allhe can play, those punk old tunes? Well, all right then, I guess we cankind of one-step to 'em."

While the Indians peered, their party taken away from them, while thefiddler went on with his tune like a mechanical piano out of repair, shecircled round the room with George Eagan.

Pete Renchoux and Curly Evans found two Indian girls who could move withsomewhat more grace than ant-eaters, seized them despite their tittersof shyness, and tried to teach them the one-step, which they took upwith all the vigor of a galloping cow. Pop discussed esthetics andmink-trapping with Lawrence Jackfish's grandmother, a matriarchal ladyof twenty stone and much bass laughter.

Ralph looked solemnly at the roomful of Indians and they looked solemnlyat him; and neither seemed to enjoy the sight much, and it is doubtfulwhich of them was the more uneasy. But one by one the young bucks wereenticed into the white man's game, and with reluctant squaws they walkedrapidly round and round the room, in what they fondly conceived to be aone-step and what more resembled a Swedish drill.

The air grew more dizzying with tobacco smoke. Through this fog came thescraping of feet, the ceaseless honk-a-tonk of the fiddle, and thefiddler's beating feet. But piercing the racket was one clearnote--Alverna's laughter.

"She does enjoy it, poor kid. She turns it all from a surly mob intosomething young and really happy," reflected Ralph, and his heartexpanded, he felt suddenly free--free from the incessantthought-mongering of Ralph Prescott, free from worry about Joe Easter.

Curly and Alverna came pushing past him, through the cabin door.

"So smoky--get a breath of fresh air," she murmured, but she lookedinstantly away from him, into the daring eyes of Curly.

He saw them standing in the outer border of light from the door, under aspruce tree. Curly was teasing her, holding her hand, pretending to readher palm, while she bounced with pleasure and tried to withdraw herhand--and seemingly did not try particularly hard. Suddenly Ralph hatedCurly with a flood of black jealousy. When she was with Joe she wastaboo; when she was with Curly Evans she was something to be fought for.He stopped his eternal pest of thinking and let himself feel. And hisfeeling toward Alverna was something deeper and tenderer and seeminglymore free from baseness than any emotion he had ever known.

Pity for her forlorn gayeties, admiration for her pluckiness, solicitudefor her madness, need of the comfortable softness of her slim hands.

He was a lonely man!

So he felt, without putting it into words. He was a lonely man, and heneeded her, while Curly Evans was an unscrupulous and wanderinglight-o'-love against whom he must protect her. He found himselfslashing through the crowd outside the door, stalking to her under theshadow of the spruce.

"Alverna!" he snapped. "You oughtn't to be standing here with theseIndians watching you! If you're going to dance, dance! I-- Will youdance with me?"

"Can you dance, dearie?"

"I can! Damned well!"

"Well, Mr. Ralph Prescott, there's always been one simply elegant way ofgetting to have the pre-rivilege of dancing with me, and that was to askme. Why didn't you?"

"I'm asking you!"

Curly complained, "Look here--"

"You go soak your head," she said to Curly, perhaps not very elegantly.She seized Ralph's arm, and soared with him through the onlookers, intothe fetid cabin, out on the puncheon floor.

"Now we'll see about that 'dancing damn' well!'" she said.

But she looked at him affectionately.

She did see about it. Ralph was certainly the only trained dancing-manin that amorphous land. But hitherto he had always danced with the coldand tutored perfection of the man who does proper things because theyare proper. His dancing came to life now, as his spirits rose to herlightness and eagerness and living warmth. Forgetful of the foggy room,the jumpy ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta of the galumphing fiddle andthe plunk of the fiddler's foot, he soared to a heaven of consciousnessof being near her.

"Say, you certainly shake the old hoofs. Why didn't you ask me to dancebefore?" she demanded.

Sturdily: "Afraid to! Why, hang you, Alverna--"

"Golly! The man's alive, after all!"

"If it weren't for Joe, I'd have fallen for you even before this."

"Why, I think you're perfectly horrid! You have a nasty mind! As if ourjust dancing a little could hurt poor old Joe! I think you ought toapologize!"

"You don't think anything of the kind!"

She seemed to look at him not less kindly for his harshness. She sighed(he had, in that tumult, to catch her words by the movement of herchildish lips): "There's Curly wanting another dance."

When he grumbled, "Oh, curse Curly!" she apparently could endure itwithout suffering.

While Ralph discovered her and forgot himself, the dance also discovereditself and forgot its awkwardness. The room was clotted now with Indiancouples, trying to reverse and walk backward, with much bumping and muchstumbling and a great deal of joyous cackling. Curly, after watchingRalph and Alverna sulkily, was now contentedly whirling with theslimmest of the young squaws, and Pop Buck was panting in his effort tomove the protesting and delighted grandmother of Lawrence Jackfish aboutthe room.

The fiddler was stirred to more violent scrapings, more furiouspoundings of his foot. Outside the cabin, the onlookers were squawkingtheir admiration. George Eagan, who spoke Cree and who had theremittance-man's delight in going Indian after his exile from Home, wasstaggering among them, giving the bucks sips from his bottle of whitemule, and the young men began to dance with one another in front of thecabin, full of yelping laughter.

And through the leaping crowd Ralph glided with Alverna, unconscious ofeverything save her.

He came to with a jar. At the door was an irate voice, a voice thickwith Scotch accent and thicker with wrath, rumbling; "You people muststop this racket. I won't have it! I can't sleep!"

The fiddler stopped playing. The shuffling feet were still. The dancersstared at McGavity of the Hudson's Bay, McGavity of the Fort, standingin the doorway, red and glaring and afraid of no one.

When McGavity saw Ralph and Alverna and Curly Evans, his lips puckeredwith doubt, and he scratched his chin.

"Hello, Mac," said Curly genially.

"Hello, Evans," said McGavity, not at all genially.

"We making too much noise?" said Curly.

"Well--the Missus and I couldn't sleep. I thought this was an Indiandance!"

McGavity sounded as though he meant something by it.

Alverna was whispering to Ralph: "Oh, Lord, what an earful Mrs. Mac willget about this, and what'll happen to me afterwards! Joe is a dear, but,God, how he can jaw!" She sailed toward McGavity, twittering: "We justdropped in for a minute, to show them how to one-step. Joe was comingfor me, but I guess the poor lamb must have fell asleep. We're about dueto be on our way home. Good night, Lawrence. Good night, everybody. Comeon, Ralph. Good night, Mr. Mac."

She took Ralph's arm and confidently pattered toward the door. Theonlookers made way for her, and she flowed through them, bowing rightand left, looking as much like the lady of the manor as was possiblewith the red and irate eye of Mr. James McGavity upon her.

Ralph felt the nervous pressure of her fingers on his arm, and thatmoment he would have killed McGavity with speed and zest.

He marched with her from the cabin light into the dimness of the foresttrail, undefinably happy, inexplicably excited, conscious of the night,of the snoring lake, of being alone with her. All problems, worries,loyalties, were lost in her quivering vitality--this manicure girl whowas also Helen and Iseult and Héloïse.

Then, abruptly, he was very much not alone with her.

Curly Evans had caught up with them, striding down the rivulet of path.He seized Alverna's other arm, with the playful friendliness of a youngbrown bear. He shouted: "Gee, old Mac is just as chummy as a bullfrog,ain't he! I wish a cop didn't have to go on being a guardian of law andorder and a pincher of liquors and generally a perfect gent after sixP.M.! Why, I might as well be a missionary! Golly, Ralph!"--with abrotherly affection which Ralph, just now, sniffily detested. "Youcer'nly agitate a mean double-A at the one-step.... But nobody cantouch Alvy!"

He was obviously squeezing her arm; he was obviously squeezing it withboyish heartiness. Ralph was sick with jealousy. Why couldn't thisblatant young fool let them alone? He--he would have talked to her aboutgood old Joe, and they would have walked so quietly and happily anddecently through the breathing night.

The three of them headed the homeward straggling of the party, and asthey came bumbling into the Easter cabin, they found Joe asleep,stretched out in one kitchen chair with his feet on another. What Curlysaw, and Alverna, has not been recorded; but Ralph saw Joe defenseless,drooping, all his courage lost in abandonment to weariness.

Joe's head hung back, his cheeks gaunt, his neck corded; and his hand,drooping by his side, was lax and almost aged with its swelling veins.So, in a fiery moment, all of Ralph's wretched worrying quickenedagain.... Had he guarded Alverna as Joe had trusted him to do? Had hekept her sacred? Had they, by rousing the scandal-mongering McGavitys,hurt Joe forever as a proconsul?

But Alverna seemed admirably free of worry. She cuddled on Joe's lap,she laughed at him and tickled him and kissed him, and, as he woke witha snort of alarm, she chuckled, "Ah, de rosy posy Josey!" and heaccepted it equably, he observed only, through portentous yawns: "Backagain? Better see 'f the boys want 'nother drink."

The boys did want another drink. They were polite about it, but firm.Pop Buck, Eagan, Renchoux, Stromberg, as they came trailing in, and evenBiermeier, as he awoke from his intoxicated sleep, spoke of it as athing to do.

"Now the real party beginneth, with little game poker," said Pop Buck.

"Oh, swell, sure, you bet!" trilled Alverna.

"That'll be fine," said Joe.

If as a dancing-man Pop Buck was rather less than perfection, he had allthe art of poker. He squinted at his cards most casually, he neverpounded the table, he never bluffed--apparently--but whenever he calledhe seemed to have more aces than any one else in the hunched circleabout the red oilcloth, under the hanging lamp. And Joe Easter awakened.He was tireless in shuffling, dealing, filling, raising, his faceexpressionless as the mummy of Rameses.

All of them drank steadily, and except for Pop and Joe and Ralph, alltheir voices rose--rose--grew shriller and more emphatic, and all ofthem became more hectically desirous of betting everything they had onthe turn of a card.

Alverna had taken a hand, but she seemed to have no decent reverence forthe sport. She diversified the grim routine of jackpots by singing, bypinching Joe, by throwing a glass of water at Pete Renchoux, by arguingwith Curly Evans as to whether she would later kiss him good night--anargument at which Joe raised his brows, seemingly not very well pleased.

She was unanimously invited to "get out of this and hustle us a lilgrub."

"I'll help you, Alverna," Ralph said hastily.

"Shake us up some bacon and eggs, Alvy," demanded Pete.

"These trappers," Alverna confided to Ralph, beside the stove, "haven'tany good taste. Always bacon and eggs! I'll show 'em!"

And she did. With scrambled eggs and tinned tomatoes, she producedsomething with which a French cook would have been satisfied. As Ralphdrained the can of tomatoes and Alverna whipped the eggs, shut off fromthe poker-players by the cloud of their rough grumbling, he insistedsoftly, "You like Curly, don't you?"

"Sure. You bet. He's a grand fellow!"

He wanted to moon at her, "Do you like him better than me?" but even inhis growing insanity the question seemed a little too puerile. Hedrained the water from the tomatoes, sulkily and silently, and it wasshe who carried on:

"Ralph!"

"Eh?"

"You're such a baby!"

"Why?"

"Oh, I suppose you're dreadfully smart about books and the law andeverything--and I will hand it to you, the Jane that taught you to dancecer'nly did know her job; but you don't--oh, you just don't know how totalk to a girl."

"Yes?"

"Yes! You're such a funny shy bird! Gee, if all of New York is like you,it must be as exciting as the morgue on Sunday afternoon! But, oh,boy, if you ever do get waked up! You came out and grabbed me offCurly like you were old Mr. Lancelot, or whoever that fellow was thatcame riding out of the West that we used to read about in school--OldDoc Lancelot himself. I bet if you ever take ten minutes off sometimeand fall in love, you'll be a regular little volcano."

She peeped at him, under bright lashes; he sighed, and smiled with her,and was content to stand at a kitchen sink, in a log cabin, with amanicure girl--the wife of his loyalest friend.

"But you," he hesitated, as she poured out the coffee, "you care a lotfor Curly."

"Him? Why, you're crazy! He's lots of fun, but he's just a fool kid."

Ralph was strangely comforted. He told himself that it was on behalf ofJoe that he was making these deep researches.

Into the maws of the heroes intent on poker the scrambled eggsdisappeared without comment, and whisky and water washed them down.

However quietly and earnestly, in the passion of poker, a group of malesmay drink their whisky, it does sometime get its effect. The nightglided tranquilly and dream-wise, with no more squawking from the agedphonograph, but it glided not without results. Biermeier rose in themidst of a full-house versus four treys, lived as far as the nearestbedroom, and passed out again. Pete Renchoux vanished and was not heardfrom until morning. He had gone to sleep on the floor of the frontporch. Ralph and Alverna took the places of the deserters in the gametill they both nodded at the table and staggered out to the porch forair.

When they had left Ed Tudor's cabin, a little after eleven, it had beenmilkily dark. Now the miracle of night had been performed, and Ralphrealized, in a haze of sleepiness, that it was day again, gray secretday before the sunrise.

Alverna was drowsing as she sat on his cot. He put her head down on thepillow, tucked her in there, and himself lay on the floor, between thehuddled Pete Renchoux and the cot. He was blindly conscious of lightsand dull voices in the house, of some one blaring, "And raise you onebean!" Then he was conscious of nothing at all, neither of dawn nor ofAlverna sleeping babylike near him, neither of poker nor of stealthyIndians nor of the leaden rustling lake.

He was awakened to a gasp of terror by long-drawn howling, the wailingof the hosts of hell.

He sat up to realize that he had been dreaming of E. Wesson Woodbury;that he saw Woodbury, mud-caked, his face bloody with briars andmosquitoes, stumbling through a swamp, lost and starving.

After a bewildered moment he knew what the howling was. It came from theteam-dogs kept for the summer on Blue Nose Island, away fromfood-stores; melancholy dogs, passing the howl from one to another inthe unhappy dawn. But the vision of Woodbury persisted; lonely Woodbury,perplexed and silent now, his vacation turned into a solitary horror.

"Why! I deserted him! I ruined all his outing for him! And he meant tobe so decent! We had so much fun planning the trip, back in New York,"Ralph thought miserably.

It had seemed natural and just to leave him, in the vexation ofWoodbury's nagging. Now Ralph felt like a traitor.

The dogs were howling again, long, hopeless, quavering howls, the veryvoice of that sad land. Along the shore a burnt pine trunk stood againstthe colorless lake. Near Ralph were many people, but apparently theywere all dead in sleep, dead as the ghost of sound in that unhappyhowling, dead as the black ghost of the murdered tree.

He perceived that all the party must have been too far sunk to go home.George Eagan was snoring on the green couch in the living-room. Pop Buckand Nels Stromberg had presumably taken the beds, for Joe Easter hadjoined Ralph on the porch. He lay hunched on a blanket, shivering in hissleep.

Alverna, still in her crumpled cornflower muslin, partly covered withthe blanket Ralph had drawn over her on the cot, was so defenselesslyyoung and unwise, so pitifully young and helpless. Her lips drooped. Sheslept with her hand between her cheek and the pillow, as a kitten sleepson its curled paw.

"She couldn't have gone very far with Curly Evans and the rest of them.And I shan't lose my head. It'll be all right. Good old Joe! DearAlverna!" he sighed.

Their nearness solaced him, but as he went to sleep the vision offorlorn Woodbury, no longer grotesque in bawling energy but tragic inabandonment, hovered over him, and he knew that he must do somethingabout it.

And beyond the screen of the porch Lac Qui Rêve stretched itself in thegrowing light.

Chapter Fifteen

There were many cracking heads that morning in the residence of JoeEaster.

Indeed, but for Pop Buck, there was no one who did not look blue andfeeble. Pop was awake before any of them, ferreting out the Scotch forhis morning's morning, and preparing ferocious black coffee to succorthe rest of them.

"That was a nice little party," he reflected lovingly, to a rumpled anduninterested group at breakfast. "And that was a great story you toldjust before you passed out, Curly."

"Did I tell a story?" growled Curly.

"Why, yes! About the traveling man and the revolver that wasn't loaded.Nice story. And that was a swell hand you held--the four queens,George."

"Did I ever hold four queens? Say, who the devil won, last night, Pop?"groaned Eagan.

"Lookit here!" Pop was worried. "Don't know what the world's coming to.Folks can't hold their liquor any more. Me, I was just as happy as ahoptoad, last night. Why, say, every year till I'm a hundred--don't knowbut what I'll quit drinking then--every year I'm going to keep theanniversary of last night like it was my birthday--"

"Oh, quit being so blankety-blank cheerful!" screamed Curly, and therest moaned in agreement, while Alverna wandered in from the porch, sogloomy that she was almost silent.

Curly had apparently given up dissipation and the vain ways of youth andtaken to being official and generally unpleasant.

He urged, at breakfast: "Say, Joe, Mac and you and Biermeier have got todo something about this fuss with the Crees over credit. I don't knowbut what you ought to have a policeman stationed here right along tillthe trouble blows over. They're terribly sore about you three notextending 'em any more credit. I hear 'em talking out on the portages.They're planning trouble. You don't want to get murdered in your beds."

"Oh--Joe!" wailed Alverna.

Joe laughed. "Rats! Those fellows'll never do anything. Too shiftless."

"Even a shiftless bird can pull a trigger," insisted Curly. "I'm goingto have a talk with Mac this morning, right away, and don't know butwhat I'll have you, as J.P., call a meeting of all the Crees campedhere, and we'll thrash it out. I'm worried, Joe, for you"--he lookedacross the table at Alverna; their glances met and clung--"and for yourwife."

"Curly, you will make Joe do something!" begged Alverna.

"You bet, honey! Watch me!"

Ralph felt the understanding in their voices. And suddenly, shamelessly,he was angry at Curly, not on Joe's behalf but for himself. And stillthe specter of the lonely Woodbury fluttered round him. No one at thatbreakfast of the morning-after was more quiet or more desolate thanRalph.

While Curly was away at the Hudson's Bay Company, Ralph waylaid Joe anddemanded, without hedging:

"Joe! How did that fellow Woodbury who was with me strike you? Did youlike him?"

"No, I didn't. Awful blowhard!"

"Well, wouldn't you have left him flat, as I did, if you'd been in myplace?"

"Well, that--I--"

"Go on. Tell me. Straight."

"N-no, don't guess I would have."

"Why?"

"Oh, it's just--Well, a fellow that's used to hiking much in the wilds,he sticks to his bunch, that's all, no matter if he always likes 'em ornot. Kind of a habit. You figure: suppose the other fellow busted hisleg or something."

"Do you blame me for quitting?"

"No--no--sure not. Man's got to decide these things for himself. Thatis, of course, if you were making a business of being up here, andtaking things like they come. But I can see how you felt."

"Look: I got to dreaming about Woodbury. Felt I oughtn't to have lefthim. Look: Would it be possible, maybe, to send out Lawrence Jackfish tofind him, if he can, and get him to come here? Probably he could rent aroom from McGavity."

"No. I don't like the fellow. Don't want him around. Once you lefthim--What's done's done. I'd just forget it, Ralph. Well--got to skipover to the store and get busy. Oo, my head! S'long. See you later."

Ralph, alone on the porch, fell into a misery of meditation. There was,then, no escape from the conviction that he had been shoddy in quittingWoodbury.

"But I wasn't! He deserved it! Been a fool to let him spoil myvacation!"

His mind swore that he was right, but his emotions croaked doggedly thathe had been a deserter.

So he had to rejoin Woodbury? Well, he would escape thus from the dangerof falling in love with Alverna! (Where was she now? The house, hersinging gone, was blank. He longed for the comfortable sound of herquick footsteps.) Yes! His duty to Woodbury, his duty to Alverna, hisduty to Joe, his duty to himself! He would go.

But--oh, not for another day.

He would have a moment or two with Alverna and from the serene height ofthis self-sacrificing virtue he would plead with her to become anotherMrs. McGavity and generally virtuous and safe and dull.

He had gone no further with his meditations when Curly came charging into find Joe, for the meeting with the Indians. Ralph accompanied them.

There were two groups of Indians in summer encampment at MantrapLanding--the Lac Qui Rêve band, under Chief Wapenaug, and a small partof the Lake Midnight band, from the uncharted country to the south, witha chief whose Indian name had somehow been Anglicized as Burberry.

The title of Chief, Ralph had discovered, was considerably less royal inreal life than in fiction. It was about as important as the title ofPresident of the Village Council in a hamlet of three hundred. The Chiefcould call meetings, and he served as intermediary between his wanderingband and the Government, but he was elected by his people and he couldbe removed without trial by the Indian agent. His principal ducalprerogatives were receiving twenty-five dollars a year instead of five,when the Government paid the annual Treaty money to its wards, andwearing a vast gold band around his hat, a blue coat with brass buttonsand a gold armband, and a medal so huge that it recalled a comicpoliceman in a burlesque show.

But the absolute splendor of titles and decorations has nothing to dowith the pride taken in them by their possessors. The new recordingsecretary of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Literary and Embroidery League ofSouth Wappington gets as much excitement out of her elevation to officeas an Empress of Austria; the tennis champion of the Rosedale VillasCountry Club hears the hoarse cheering of the nine spectators with morebeatitude than William Tilden at Forest Hills.

Wapenaug and Burberry, marshaling their hundred braves for a councilwith three storekeepers and a policeman, strutted with a pomposity whichwould have been absurd in the King at the opening of Parliament. Theirrather dirty shirts were concealed by their brave brass-buttoned coats,their decidedly dirty faces were shaded by gold-banded hats, theirenormous medals thumped on their proud stomachs.

Mr. Dillon, the missionary, had lent the church for the meeting. Infront, below the altar, facing the Indians, were Mr. Dillon, CurlyEvans, Joe, McGavity, Biermeier of Revillons', Ralph, Pete Renchoux, andthe chiefs. The chapel was almost filled with Indians. They were swart,a little grim, expressionless as Orientals, but to Ralph they seemed tohave lost all the spirit of the ancient Indians. As they used whitemen's traps, paddled white men's canoes, and knew no music save thecheaper ballads from Broadway, so they wore white men's unromanticclothes: store shirts, black coats, long black trousers.

With Pete Renchoux to prompt him now and then as to a word, Curly Evansaddressed them in Cree, and Joe whispered the translation to Ralph.

He was grieved, he was shocked, indeed he was sore astonished, Curlywas, to hear that certain irresponsible young Indians had beenthreatening the factors. He could understand that loss of credit musthave inconvenienced the trappers who had had a bad season. But theythemselves were to blame. In the old honest days, the Indians, who werecarried on credit for as much as three years, came in and paid theiraccumulated bills the moment they had money.

And such patriarchs as Chief Wapenaug and Chief Burberry--Curly bowed tothem, and they bowed back, like wrinkled gingerbread idols--would stilldo the same. But he knew positively, did Curly, that certain Indians,instead of paying up when in funds, had gone off to Lake Warwick and notonly spent their money but bought things they did not need: outboardmotors, for the sons of men who had once paddled fifty miles a day;cigarettes, where pipes had always been good enough; ten-dollar shoes todance in. Then they expected the Mantrap factors to trust them for beansand rifle-shells!

And if they thought that what they did in Warwick was not known to theall-seeing eyes of the Government--

Chief Wapenaug nodded; Chief Wapenaug looked sadly at his wicked young.(Chief Wapenaug had owed Joe Easter three hundred dollars now for fouryears, and three weeks ago he had come back from Kittiko with a motor, abanjo, and silk stockings for his industrious but indiscreetgranddaughter.)

Curly had gone thus far with high eloquence. He stooped his shouldersnow, and tried to make his voice creepy and his boyish eyes mysteriousand sinister.

In the center of the chapel a tall young Indian rose, yawned, walkedout. Other braves looked at one another, and followed.

Curly hinted how mighty was His Majesty's force, the ProvincialPolicemen. They could see as far as thunder could be heard. But hisdramatics were shattered by the grave exit of twenty men in single file.

"Sit down!" he shouted at the last of the disturbers.

Some one in the back snickered. A giggle went through the room. ChiefWapenaug grinned. And before that tittering mass Curly tried to go onwith injunctions that they must be good boys and pay their bills; thentheir loving foster-uncles, the storekeepers, would give them furthercredit.

He finished rather weakly, flushing.

In the pause, while everybody wondered who ought to powwow next, thewhole audience rose and flowed away, perfectly orderly, perfectlycheerful, hatefully snickering.

They could be seen standing outside the church, standing stolidly orwith leers, unimpressed, waiting, ready for anything.

"God help you now!" Curly muttered to Joe and McGavity. "This'llencourage the young fellows to start something. In ten minutes I'll beout of here. I'll hit it up night and day, and in a week I'll be backfrom Whitewater with two constables to station here permanently. 'By!"

This was no longer the laughing, dancing young Curly. He was a soldierin action. Ralph saw him dash through the Indian wigwam village to Joe'shouse. He saw him lugging a sack of flour, a sack of beans, a side ofbacon, a canister of tea, and a drum of gasoline to his canoe; heard himwith sharp, unpleasant-sounding orders arouse his two Cree boatmen fromtheir holiday slumbers against the log side of Joe's store.

In ten minutes from his promise he was outward-bound. The lake wasrough, but he headed into the center of it, the canoe flinging itself upin leaps, the stout little motor beating like a watch.

Then Joe spoke.

"Good boy, Curly," he said. "But I figure he went off half-cocked. Nodanger from the Indians when they laugh like that."

"Maybe not," said McGavity, "so when I tell you I'm going home to oiland load all three of my guns, you'll know it's just for exercise."

"Um," said Ralph.

He could not return to Woodbury now, and desert the endangered Joe.

But suppose Woodbury were in danger, too, a lone white man unwarned?

"I've got to do something. And I will! And whatever it is, it'llprobably be wrong," reflected Ralph.

Chapter Sixteen

If secretly Joe worried over an Indian outbreak when Curly Evans dashedoff for help, he kept all signs of it out of his nutcracker face.

"Nothing much to do at the store. Caught up on my accounts. What sayAlvy and you and I stick a couple sandwiches in our pockets and hikeover to the swamp along Ghost Squaw River, and see if we can't shoot usa duck?" he proposed.

Alverna was, she chattered, when they entered the house, delighted. Shewas, she said virtuously, tired of all these fellows like George andCurly and everybody, that wanted to dance and drink hooch and make a lotof noise all the time. She was, she cooed, enchanted to have a nicebeneficial quiet day in the open with her friend Ralph and her dear Joe.

Alverna had more costumes than were to be expected in a northern cabin.She donned a very practicable khaki skirt with a dun flannel shirt andhigh laced boots. But Ralph noticed that they were the boots of aheroine in a Wild West melodrama. They were so narrow, their heels sohigh, that she could not have walked over rocky ground withoutstumbling.

And she carried a blue velvet bag patterned with scarlet beads.

"Good Lord, what you dragging that thing along for?" complained Joe.

She rose to indignant shrillness. "Well, upon my word! I guess I got aright to take a handkerchief and a little powder, ain't I!"

"You got pockets in your shirt, ain't you?"

"And crush my nice little powder box? Fat chance! Wrong number! Ringoff!"

"Oh, all right!" sighed Joe, while Ralph, who a few drowsy hours beforehad admired her gallantry, found himself listening to an inner voiceprotesting, "What a confounded nuisance she is!"

She minced beside them, complaining of the narrowness, the mossyslipperiness, the rockiness, the darkness of the trail through thepines. But Ralph almost forgot her as he listened to Joe, who read tohim the signs of the forest. Where by himself Ralph would have seen onlythe alligator bark of the pines, the brown needles and lichen-splashedrocks, Joe revealed to him the spoor of a jumping deer, the track of awolf, the den of a porcupine, the glory of tiger-lilies and the demureblossoms of the sarsaparilla. Alverna skipped characteristically fromher injured mood into a contentment with their mild adventure. She evenhad, for as much as half an hour, the genius to keep still.

The world of dancing and of sulky Indians forgot, they brushed throughthe hot pines, edged round a slew exclamatory with red-winged blackbirdsand agitated jack-snipe, and made themselves comfortable on a piny rockridge between the slew and a pond, awaiting a flight of teal.

Ralph was unconsciously playing soldier and very proud and happy aboutit.

He sat with his light shotgun across his knees, feeling virile, asthough he were about to slay something and show himself extremely heroicin so doing. He did not know it--he would have denied it--butunconsciously he was telling himself a story:

"His powerful shoulders revealed a careless confidence. Those mightyhands rested so lightly on his shooting-iron, those hawk eyes seemed soveiled in thought, that a creeping enemy would never have guessed howswiftly our hero could have leaped into action."

Alverna sat outlined against the gold-green of the reedy slew. Sheinterestedly opened her little velvet bag, and humming "Oh, How Do TheyGet That Way!" she powdered her nose, reddened her lips, fluffed up herhair with little backward flips of her hand, and settled down topolishing her nails.

Ralph noted that Joe looked at her with irritation, but himself he wasadmiring: "She's awfully cute!"

He to whom, a month ago, the word "cute" had been more abominable thanall obscenities.

Black, orange, and gray, the lichens on their rocky ridge made Japaneseprints--little bridges and silver mountain cones. Through a screen oftrees, the lake beyond them twinkled. The slew at their back was asimmer of drowsy warmth, with shiny patches of still water among thereeds. A blackbird caroled, swaying on a willow bush, and round them thewild bees hummed. The hour was full of comfort and of dreams.

Then Alverna shattered it:

"Oh, gee! This ol' place is so hot. I could go right off to sleep. Wheredo you get that stuff about ducks flying over here? I haven't seen aone-legged sparrow yet. Wasn't that a great party last night,Ralph--wasn't it, Joe? Wasn't it-- Gee, I thought it was a dandy party,even if Pete did get lit and talk so fierce, he ought to be ashamed ofhimself, but of course he didn't really mean nothing by it, and I toldPop if he told that story about the elevator-man again I'd bust him one.Gee, wasn't he funny, wasn't Pop funny, when he put on my apron andtried to dance the Highland fling and-- Curly was crazy--darn him, whodoes he think he's talking to, like he could run me and everybody--hewas just crazy when he said I hadn't ought to of laid down with mybob-tailed flush. I knew George had a full-house; here's how I couldtell: I was watching him, and I saw him get his first four cards, and hekind of put two of 'em together, and then another two, and I said tomyself, 'I'll bet he's got two pairs,' and then when he got his fifthcard, he licked his lips like a pussy-cat, and I says to myself, 'Oh,all right, Mr. Smarty,' I says, 'I'll bet you've turned one of thosedear little twins into triplets, that's what you've done!'"

Her laughter echoed among the somber rocks.

"Say, for God's sake, Alvy, if there were any ducks, you'd scare 'emfourteen miles off," sighed Joe.

"Oh, you make me tired!"

She yelped out the word "tired." Three ducks had that second come intosight, darting above the blind of trees. At her shriek they swoopedupward, and before Joe could fire, before Ralph could quite rememberwhich end of his shotgun should preferably be set against his shoulder,they were gone.

Ralph said nothing. Joe said nothing. Alverna looked the angrier thatshe had nothing to say.

There was half an hour of ducklessness.

"I suppose we better be getting back. Poor time of day for ducks anyway.Maybe we'll try 'em again tomorrow afternoon. This evening we're goingto Biermeier's--Revillons'--to feed," said Joe.

Then he exploded:

"And besides, Alvy-- Maybe I'm unreasonable, but it makes me sodoggone sick to see you here, outdoors in the woods, making up yourface like you were in a bathroom!"

"Oh, of course! You'd like me to look as sloppy as Ma McGavity! You justwant me to look nasty, so nobody will ever look at me! Well, let me tellyou, Mr. Joseph Easter, I'm not going to turn into a fright for you oranybody else! All you want is a housekeeper, but there are people whothink I'm not so bad!"

"Yuh, I'm sure of it!"

"Now what d'you mean by that? What d'you mean by that? Just what're youtrying to insinuate?"

"Oh, Alvy"--very wearily--"do shut up, and let's go home."

She had brought, for sole burden besides her velvet bag, a twenty-gaugeshotgun, light as a target rifle, and for all her apparent slimnessAlverna was as sturdy as a washerwoman. But like most young femaleathletes, she yearned now and then to be treated as a fading lily.

"Oh, Joe, this gun is so heavy!" she whined, as they trod the rut ofpath in Indian file.

Her husband shrugged.

"And it gets all tangled up with my legs."

Domes of silence.

She looked back at Ralph, her lips trembling, a tear actually on herlids. "It isn't that I care a damn whether he carries it, but I do thinkI might have a little attention!"

"I'll carry it for you," Ralph glowed. He knew that she was a pest, heknew that he ought to sympathize with Joe, but she was so pitiful, thisalley kitten among the hound-pack--

No, he realized, he was lying to himself. It wasn't her pitifulness thatdrew him, but her unscrupulous feminineness, her professionalgirlishness, her devilish instinct for working up fond idiocy in everymale. He was a traitor to Joe--whose back seemed so forlorn in his roughbrown coat.

And her grateful eyes swept away these profound and edifying reflectionslike a sponge.

Now Ralph had brought not only his twelve-gauge shotgun but also arifle, in the hope of practice; and three guns are no burden for agreenhorn to carry on a trail where at every yard you stumble on a rootor a mud-hidden stone. The guns got themselves crosswise, they slipped,they banged his shins. He tried to carry them over his shoulder, thenunder his arm, in a dignified, accustomed-looking manner. He was reducedto lugging them in his two arms, like an armful of stove wood--whileAlverna, glancing back tenderly, lisped:

"You're sure it isn't too much trouble?"

"No-uh."

"Sure now?"

"Oh, they're all right!"

"You'll let me know if they get too heavy for you?"

"Surely."

"Hadn't I better take mine now?"

"I can carry it all right."

"Oh, did you trip?"

"Well, sort of."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry! Don't you want me to carry my gun now?"

"No, I'll manage it."

"Well, be sure and tell me when--"

Joe looked back at them.

Hitherto his expression had seemed to apologize to Ralph for letting himbe pestered by this female gadfly. Now he seemed to lump them togetheras morons. Ralph had been annoyed enough by her commenting, but hisannoyance turned toward Joe, his affection took in Alverna. So! Thatboor thought they were both--merely because they were aware of citycourtesies, because they were interested in something besides poker andduck-hunting--he thought they were affected chatterboxes. All right! Joemight be a noble soul, but the way he failed to appreciate this poor,kind-hearted little--

Then, sharply: "I'm getting obsessed by this brat! I've got to dosomething about her. I've got to get out of this!"

They came back to the house and abruptly, gently as possible, Ralphurged of Joe:

"I ought to go join poor Woodbury, if I can find him. Enjoyed my stayhere enormously, but--ought to start right off this afternoon."

Joe opened his eyes in slow wonder; he spoke with a friendliness thatsubmerged Ralph in misery:

"Wish you could put it off till tomorrow, Ralph. You remember wepromised Biermeier we'd go over to his place for supper tonight. He'dfeel hurt if we laid down on him. He's an awful' nice fellow. I wishyou'd try to stay."

Ralph stayed.

Chapter Seventeen

Floating on a lake so smooth, so clear of depths, that he seemed todrift in a motorless airship between sky and valley, Ralph fishedthrough the afternoon, and in this peace the conflicts of man and wife,of white man and Indian, seemed remoter and more absurd than the wars ofant-hills.

He shrank from, then happily forgot, the coming violent socialengagement at the cabin of Mr. Biermeier. Rumor, flaunted by Pop Buck,predicted that the occasion would be as bibulous and sportive as lastnight's Bacchanalia at Joe's. It would, in fact, Pop rejoiced, beexactly the same party with the same conscientious drinkers and the samepoker.

Ralph fumbled for excuses to get free, but when he returned to the househe found Alverna so ecstatically hopping with anticipation that he couldsay nothing.

Joe, according to the rules, should have preferred staying prosy andslippered at home. He should have labored at secret plans to keep hisfrivolous lamb away from the wolves. But when Ralph whispered, "Wouldn'tyou like to sneak back here right after supper, instead of playingcards?" Joe replied in wistful surprise, "Why, golly, I like a fist ofpoker and a little drink!"

He sounded as if his new toys were being taken away from him, and hewere being sent to bed early.

"Oh, yes--yes--course--" said Ralph.

Alverna was dancing all by herself to the phonograph, her eyesbrilliant. That afternoon she had busily made over her red-borderedfrock. She had turned in the edges of the bodice and filled the V withcheap lace.

"Isn't it nice? Don't I look nice in it? I fixed it all by myself!" sheexulted, coquettishly turning, peeping at Ralph over her charmingshoulder.

"What a pair of children they are! Complications? Absurd!" reflected themature Ralph, placid after his lazy voyaging.

He had not noticed that she wore a new pair of slippers with high redheels, and had he noticed them he would not have divined that they mightbe important. With much good-humor he dressed for dinner--that is, hewashed his face and fetched out from his bag a deplorably wrinkled towncoat.

The Revillon Frères post and Biermeier's cottage were a mile from therest of Mantrap Landing, and away from the lake, on the Mantrap River atits junction with Ghost Squaw River. The path was a damp trail throughswamp and scrub pine, and in one place it led across a morass oninsecure logs laid end to end through the mud.

At the beginning of this bridge through the morass, Alverna stopped, andsqueaked to Joe, "I can't get across!"

"Why not?"

"My new dancing slippers. The heels so high. I'd slip off the logs andruin 'em in the mud. Oh, I can't, Joe, honest! I cannnnn't! You got tocarry me! You got to!"

"Hell!" observed Joe. "Hard enough to balance myself. Why didn't youwear some regular shoes, and carry them darn' things in your pocket?"

"Well, I didn't, and you got to carry me!"

"Well, you ought to of, and I'm not going to carry you!"

Ralph would have liked to volunteer. She would be an agreeable burden.But it seemed no time for friendly offers.

Joe grumpily wavered over the bridge, and she followed him, swaying onthe teetering logs or inching along sidewise, pushing one foot ahead anddrawing the other up to it, her arms an agitated windmill. Her face wasa knot of unhappiness the while, and without ceasing she whimpered andgasped her fear.

Halfway over, where the bridge broke off for a moment in a patch of firmground, Joe awaited her, and spoke apologetically:

"No reason at all, wearing those slippers. You knew what the path waslike. If you couldn't remember to wear proper shoes, you ought to oftaken off your shoes and stockings. Here--I'll try to carry you the restof the way, if you don't choke me to death."

"If! But! Though! When!... I will take 'em off!" she screamed.

Ignoring Ralph, she flung herself on a stump, tore off her silkstockings and her little slippers and, with her skirts high, shefuriously splashed through the mud that tarred her white legs.

Behind him Ralph heard George Eagan shouting: "Hey, Alvy! Having a fit?"

Not looking back, informing the world of her woes, she asserted, "Joewanted me to ruin my clothes that I worked so hard to make, but I'llshow him he can't bully me!"

Ralph was suddenly very sick of it all, and of his own middle-agedfatuousness he was most weary. He was sicker afterward when their host,as Ralph helped him bring ice in from the sawdusty ice-house forwhiskies and sodas, grunted: "Poor old Joe! I wonder if he knows CurlyEvans is making love to Alverna."

"It isn't true!" insisted Ralph.

"Don't make me laugh!"

If ever Ralph had been grotesquely out of place among the men of theforests, it was at that evening's poker game. In fiction, all propertenderfeet, particularly if they wear eyeglasses and weigh not over onehundred and thirty-seven pounds, after three weeks on a ranch, in alumber-camp, or on a whaler become hardened and wise. Usually they beatthe two-hundred-and-sixteen-pound bully and marry the boss's daughter.But Ralph was tonight rather more of a tenderfoot, and a boredtenderfoot, than when he had left Whitewater on the steamer.

The third time Biermeier boomed, "Well, I'll just whoop youwise-crackers one large quarter 'f a dollar, the fourth part of adollar, gents"; the seventh time Pete Renchoux piped in what heconsidered a Swedish accent, "By me, by Yumpin' Yiminy"; the eleventhtime Pop Buck rumbled, "And another little drink wouldn't do us anyharm"--then Ralph had had enough of merriment.

He tilted back in his kitchen chair, which squeaked, and tried to beexcited over a hand consisting of the deuce of clubs, the four of clubs,the seven of diamonds, the ace of hearts, and the queen of spades.

He was conscious that Biermeier's cabin smelled of damp clothes, stalecondensed milk, and fried fish; that the insurance-calendar picture onthe log wall was torn; and that Pete Renchoux was forever spitting onthe cigarette-littered floor. He knew that by all canons of being virileand sporting and wildernessy, he ought to relish these splendors.

He didn't.

He was glad when, three hours after supper, Joe yawned, and proposed:"Kind of all in, after last night. Stand going home, Ralph--Alvy?"

She had a number of complex things to say to each of her admirers, butthey started.

Biermeier's young Aberdeen assistant proposed to walk back with them.Alverna whispered to Ralph: "Let's get ahead. That Scotch kid is soserious he makes me tired."

When they came to the bridge of logs, she peeped at him, in the dusk,and without a word he picked her up and carried her across.

So light and dear a burden she was--at first. Before he had balanced hisway across, he was panting, and desperate with swaying over abysses ofmud, but extremely proud of himself for his might.

When he set her down, on firm earth, he patted her shoulder with quietfriendliness. Their petty adventure had brought them together, wiped outhis fencing and her incessant fretful grasping for admiration. Thishonest embrace, free from the morbid and teetering infatuations of thedance, had contented them. She spoke no longer with the prettysaccharine voice of the woman demanding compliments, but as a comrade.

"You were nice, Ralph. And Joe was right. Ought to have put on regularshoes for that trail. I'm such a nitwit!"

"Alverna!"

"Yes?"

"You oughtn't to tease Joe as you do, and keep demanding things fromhim. He's so frightfully decent and straight and kind. Andintelligent."

"I kn-ow it. Gee, don't be silly! I'm crazy about him! But--this is sucha dumm place up here, it gets me nervous. Golly, if I could come back tolife again for a couple months! And see a show! Maybe I don't envy you!Seeing all the New York shows that I read about. You must 'a' seen this'What Price Glory.' Was it swell? I'd like to seen that. It must be agreat show. I knew an A.E.F. sergeant that--Say, there was a fellow! Henever took any lip off any girl--just as soon hit you as eat--but nice,oh, awful nice, and never vulgar or anything. And 'Rain.' I'd like toseen that. I used to go to the theater all the time, when I was inMinneapolis. You see, I knew some actors. I don't know as I ever toldyou, but I did Jack Barrymore's nails one time! Say, tell me about'Rain.' What kind of a show was it?"

When Joe reached home he found them talking with vast propriety.

Her mention of the plays, just the names of them, had flung Ralph'simagination to the streets of New York. He would be glad to be there,when the brisk autumn came and he was rested.

He was there now! A little fed up with poker, Pete Renchoux, and thegulping of Biermeier, he thought of quiet friends, bright drawing-roomswith flowers, and the still excitement of legal problems.

When Joe had gone into the cabin, Ralph still talked. He held out lifeto her. The Berkeley case, and his argument before the robed pontificalJustices of the Supreme Court at Washington. His ambition to write anenduring book on the laws of water-power. His friends: the classmate whowas now a diplomat, the doctor who had performed an operation in anaeroplane, the explorer who had been tortured to death in North China.

Ralph did not know it, but his inner self was boasting: "I'll show her!She may think I can't jig and make noisy jokes like Pete. And maybe Ican't. Or face danger like Joe or Curly. But I'll show her I amsomebody!"

Dinners--yes, he did "put on a dress-suit" for them--yes, quite often.

The opera, smart night-clubs, week-ends.

His European ambles. An autumn day in Rotterdam, the leaves of theplane-trees dropping into the canals. Midnight of Christmas Eve in Rome,and the shawled throng on the steps of the Ara Coeli. The red-and-whitetablecloths of restaurants in Daubigny; and a Mass of beer at theHofbräuhaus in Munich. Striped awnings and the click of frivolous heelsat Monte Carlo.

"Gee, you certainly have traveled some!" she admired.

"Good night," he said to her warm hand.

He wandered from the porch to the lake-front, brooding.

The theory he had encountered in dinner-talk and such moral fiction ashe had read (he meditated) was that for a man to be nobly fond of afriend, to admire him and trust him, and yet be intolerably lured bythat man's wife, was in all decency impossible. That theory he perceivedto be idiotic. He liked Joe Easter as well as any man in the world; hewould do anything imaginable for him; and he hoped that all their livesthey two--in difficult New York as well as in Mantrap Landing--would beintimates. He understood Joe's miserable irritation at his wife's folly,and shared it. Yet all the while he was as inescapably absorbed by heras though Joe and all loyalty had never existed. He could see every lineof her cheeks and shoulders, hear her voice and be stirred by it toinsatiable tenderness. A good thing (he sighed) that he felt pity forher. Let him hold to it! For too easily he could fall into a fascinationwhere, blind and bound, he would no longer see her as childish,ignorant, vulgar, pawing at every soul, but as the bright rose of allthe world, veiled in her own radiance.

But on the other hand (he outlined it, as to a jury) it was equally alie that a man could not fight against such fascination. The honestfriendship of two men was worth more than all the enchantments of women.

He would fight.

No, he must flee!

This was not his world. He was lost here. There was nothing from whichhe could draw strength. And forever it would be a satisfaction to haveplayed out the game with Woodbury; it would be enduring strength to findhim again and to--well, no, not tolerate him, but fight his petulance,and fight openly.

He was in this high mood of self-approbation when, on the path from theIndian settlement, he stumbled upon a tree across the path. In the thindarkness he made out that the tree had stood by the trail; it had beencut to fall across the way, and deliberately, during the few hours sincethey had used this path.

He returned swiftly to the cabin. He fancied footsteps among the trees.

Alverna had gone to bed, but he found Joe sitting in the kitchen,comfortable in stocking feet, smoking a corncob and reading the weeklyedition of the Montreal Star.

Softly, to hide it from Alverna, Ralph told of his discovery.

Joe muttered: "Don't know what the idea is. Let's have a look."

He tugged on his shoes with a nervous swiftness unusual in him, and hetook an electric torch. As they strode down the path together, Ralphrejoiced in feeling free of the embarrassment which, like a curtain,Alverna had hung between them.

"Um," Joe commented on the cut log. "Fool thing to do, but I guess someIndian figured out it would bother us. Maybe kind of a warning. Say,don't tell Alverna! I didn't say anything, but when we come back tonightI noticed some one's stolen that fourteen-foot canoe of mine--the grayone. Least it's missing from beside the wharf. Are they startingsomething? Well"--Joe chuckled--"it proves they don't dare do so awful'much, anyway, don't it! Well, how about bed? Gosh, I cer'nly am sleepy!"

Ralph certainly was not.

He started to undress; then resolutely he buttoned his shirt again andfrom beneath his cot on the porch drew out his rifle and quietly filledthe magazine. For the first time in his life he faced danger for someone else--though whether it was for Joe or Alverna he was not quitesure. He let himself out of the screened door, and sat on the steps,waiting.

The forest night was full of moving shadows and cautious rustling. Hedrowsed, with the edge of the upper step a pain across his back; henodded; then--it may have been half an hour later--he jerked awake.

There had been a sound, the more terrifying in its indistinctness. Hewas slow with sleep, and incredulous when he realized through drowsyblindness that he wasn't playing a game, that some one really wascreeping toward him.

He sat rigid. His eyes felt like burning spotlights. He peered intently.It was a sound as of faint sweeping--brush, brush, brush--relentless.Then he made out a crouched figure between house and store, a figure onhands and knees--

A dog? He almost laughed, but his laughter was chilled with fear as thefigure rose, fumbled at the wooden shutters of the store.

"Who's that?" he clamored shakily.

The figure started to run. Ralph fired, twice, in an astonishing,murderous, frightened fury. There was no cry; only silence in thatcourtyard of beaten earth.

Suddenly Joe was beside him, grotesque in an old torn cotton nightshirt,saying calmly enough, "What's the trouble?" Alverna, behind him,huddling a negligee about coquettish yellow silk pajamas, was wailing,"Oh, what was it, what was it?"

"Fellow trying to get into the store."

"Well," Joe said mildly, "guess he won't try it again. Guess you didn'thit him, though--I could see somebody running up the south trail when Ilooked out. Might as well turn in. Don't worry about 'em, Ralph. We'lllock the doors, and nobody can get in; and before they could pry openthose shutters on the store, I'd hear 'em, sure. But much obliged for--"

"You could not! You didn't hear that fellow! Oh, I won't go back to bed!I'm too frightened!" protested Alverna.

"Well, you sit and read till you feel sleepy again," Joe yawned. "Wakeme up if you get real scared. But it'll be all right. G'night."

Side by side Ralph and Alverna sat on the steps, their feet wet withdew, in sunken relaxation after the battle.

"Terrified. Just terrified. Frightened to death!" Alverna whispered. Hetouched her arm in reassurance. She clung to his hand fiercely. "Oh,Ralph, I was so bored here! I didn't think anything could be worsethan being so bored. But there is: being so scared. I'm just nevermyself. I'm always waiting for something dreadful to happen. And I don'tknow from which way it might be coming. Oh--terrified! You mustn'tleave us. Joe says you feel you have to go join this awful man you werewith. Oh, don't, Ralph dear! I know Joe wants you to stay. He likes youso much."

"And you?"--softly.

"Oh, a lot! Maybe you think because I raise so much Cain and all, and Ilike to dance and holler and be the village cut-up--maybe you thinkthat's all I care for. But I get sick and tired of it. Hon-est, I doappreciate folks that are elegant and cultured and everything. Like you.Or do you think I'm just a pinhead?"

"No, you baby!"

"I'm glad. You'd be s'prised if you knew how I read the magazines andeverything. And books, too, when I get time--of course I'm terriblybusy. I'm so glad you don't think I'm all cantaloupe above the neck!"

She let herself relax in purring contentment beside him, then rousedagain in panic fear:

"You won't desert us! You'll help us? You won't go off and join that pigyou were with?"

"Of course. Poor scared kid!"

"I am! I'm just a sparrow in the cat's claws. And I'm so sleepy, too!"

So he sat, guarding her, as she drooped into little fitful naps. Himselfhe felt guarded and fearless in her presence. And the lake crept intovisibility in the returning light.

Chapter Eighteen

"I think perhaps I'd better stay around a few days, till Evans returnswith his policemen. I'll let Woodbury enjoy the sweet fruits of solitudea while," Ralph said at breakfast.

"That's fine. Hope you will. But don't feel you have to on our account,"droned Joe. "If Alvy's scared, I can get Pop and maybe George and Peteto sleep here. But we'd be real tickled to have you stay as long as youcan. And I'd like to hear some more about this water-power stuff. Whatd'you say Alvy and me and you have a picnic over on Blue Nose Islandtoday?"

It expanded Ralph's ego, it made him feel that he was not merely aweakling among these men valiant in canoe and portage, to have Joelisten noddingly while he showed the possibilities of water-power plantsin the wilderness.

A little before noon they buzzed by motor-canoe over to Blue NoseIsland. Alverna had been most brisk and calicoed in preparing the basketof food, but now she dramatized herself as a young lady boating,presumably on the Isis. In her newly pressed cornflower-blue muslin,with clocked white stockings and red-strapped white shoes, a slightlytorn paper parasol (her only parasol) over her, she lay in the bowagainst two pillows, of which one flaunted a Princeton banner and theother showed in burnt-leather a feather-bonneted Indian strangely unlikeLawrence Jackfish or Chief Wapenaug.

"And, confound it," Ralph thought savagely, "with all her monkey-tricksand her pretentiousness and her ignorance, she is pretty. Horriblypretty. And she could learn-- Give her three years of decent society,and she'd be snubbing me for my bad table manners. Oh, curse it! Can't Iever stop thinking about her?"

He turned to Joe and made high endeavor to discuss pickerel andliterature, but the sound of an out-board motor is not advantageous tosubtleties.

They landed on a flashing beach under pine-fringed bluffs. When they hadbrought the food--and Alverna's pillows--ashore, Joe climbed the bluffin search of firewood.

Alverna reclined on the beach, her cheek on her hand.

"If you did go, I'd make you take me with you and get me away from thisterrible place," she murmured. "Or would you be scared of me, without achaperon?"

"Afraid not very feasible."

"Wouldn't you-- Don't you think it would be fun to have me along?"

"Oh--yes--but--"

"It was so nice, last night, snuggling up beside you and feeling sosafe, and just going by-by and-- I hope you didn't kiss me, when I'ddropped off to sleep."

"I did not!"--irately.

"Wouldn't you have liked to of? Just a teeny, weeny, butterfly kiss?"Her glance was itself a kiss.

He sprang up, with an irritation that was not entirely irritation.

"Hell, yes, probably I would! But I'm not going to. Ever! This isenough, Alverna. This afternoon I start off and join Woodbury. I'mthrough! I'm going! I don't trust myself with you, and as for you,you're a complete fool--and so cursedly lovely! Can't stand it. Enough.I'm going."

"But just this morning you said-- Don't you ever know your own mind?"

"Apparently not!"

"Can't a person depend on you for more than five hours?"

"Apparently not!"

"And you'd desert us now, when we're threatened by the Indians?"

"I'm threatened by something much worse--losing my honor!"

"Whatever that may mean, Ralph dearie! I've heard that before! I go tobum melodramas myself! And you'd desert us, when--"

"You can get Pop and George Eagan to come stay in the house. Maybethey'll kiss you!"

"Oh, Ralph! Ralph! Oh! That was mean, that was pretty mean! That wasn'tfair! When I was just joking! Maybe I was sort of silly, but-- Oh, youweren't kind!"

"I didn't intend to be!"

When Joe returned, with a charred log and an armful of dry branches, hefound Ralph looking expressionlessly over the lake, his back to Alverna,while she stared up at him pitifully.

Ralph swung toward him; he spoke curtly.

"Joe, I hate to annoy you by changing my mind all the time, but I'vebeen thinking it over again and I've decided that if you could lend meLawrence or some other Indian and a canoe and a tent, I'll startout--this afternoon!--and try to find Woodbury. It's been--uh--frettingme. Feel like a deserter.... Though I suppose I'll go on feeling thatway, leaving you at a time like this."

"All right, Ralph. Darn' sorry to see you leave us, but just as youfeel. You got to do what you think best. Sure: take Lawrence. I can getSaul Buckbright if I ever need a canoeman. Wish I could lend you mycanoe-motor, but I don't guess Lawrence or you could run it. Can youhelp him paddle?"

Ralph caught Alverna's lips, silently forming: "Don't go! Please!" Heignored her.

And that was all.

It was twelve-thirty now. And at three that afternoon, his borrowedcanoe stocked from Joe's store and from Joe's private camp equipment,with Lawrence Jackfish at the stern, imperturbable as though he weremerely going to a dance, Ralph started out across Lac Qui Rêve, boundfor Lake Solferino.

He unhappily said good-by to Joe, Pop Buck, George Eagan, Pete Renchoux,McGavity, the Reverend Mr. Dillon--and most of these good friends, whomight have been his intimates forever, vanished from life as though theyhad been but printed symbols in a book read at midnight.

Alverna was not there to say good-by.

"I guess she hated to see you go. Don't know as you realized it, butAlvy is really awful' fond of you," Joe said gravely, while Ralph feltlike a pickpocket. "She slipped away right after we come back here.Guess she's out in the woods somewheres, crying. Poor kid! Now don'tworry about the Indians. I'll have George Eagan come stay here. Godbless you, Ralph! Come back to us whenever you can!"

As the canoe slowly crept out on the lake and Ralph, in the bow, lookedback at the knot of men standing on the log wharf and waving to him, itwas the saddest farewell he had ever known, save for that moment whenhis mother had taken his hand and sighed and closed her eyes.

His mind curdled with manifold regret. Was he deserting Joe? Had it notbeen the fault of his own flabbiness that Alverna had been flirtatious?Could he never, even in this land of brave forest and unsullied lakes,be direct and of inflexible purpose?

Were tragedy and confusion and hurt involved in all human contacts, savewith such men as Joe Easter, who were ungnawed by Self?

And he would never see Alverna again. But he had to. He ached for her.

And, to drop far below the plane of honor and passion and righteousness,was he not a plain fool to subject himself once more to the blatting ofWes Woodbury?

And could he possibly keep up this shoulder-aching labor of paddling?

He had not, in his stormy complex-mongering, considered how hard itwould be to paddle even two hours a day. Why hadn't he taken anotherIndian? He couldn't go back now and admit his weakness and say good-byall over again. But could he keep up?

Already--in fifteen minutes--each dip of the paddle was agony. Hisshoulders were cramped, the back of his neck was in a vise. Hisuncalloused hands stung. And he could not, he snarled, avoid drippingwater on his lap every time he swung the paddle from one side to theother.

Well--grimly--he'd have to get hardened.

If their food did not run out; if they did not starve meantime...

The invariable route for one heading toward Lake Solferino or LakeWarwick was past a long sliver of sand and jack-pine called Windy Point.It was perhaps two miles from Mantrap Landing by water, and three byland, if one should go over a scraggly hill known as Moose Mountain.

"When we reach the Point, I'll rest a little," Ralph promised himself."Lawrence Jackfish will snicker at me. Well, Lawrence Jackfish can go tothe devil!"

As they labored past the sandy spit at the end of the Point, out ofsight of Mantrap Landing and its cabins on the bluff, Ralph was aware ofa figure running along the far side of the Point, a figure in skirts,bearing a pack, a light swift figure.

It was Alverna.

She was gesturing to them. She staggered a little as she came to thesoft sand of the beach.

Lawrence, without orders, turned the canoe toward her. Ralph could seethat her face was creased and old with unhappy stubbornness. She woreher sailor-blouse, her white skirt, and white canvas shoes--the samecostume in which, so happily, she had welcomed him three days ago. Buther hat was an aged felt, black-streaked with rusty gray, belonging toJoe.

She carried a bundle, seemingly of clothes, tucked into a pillow-slip,and at her waist was a revolver.

As the canoe touched shore, Ralph leaped out, as forgetful of wettinghis moccasins as an Indian.

"Good Lord, what are you up to?" he implored. "Come along up the beachand--"

"I don't care if Lawrence hears me! I don't care if the whole worldhears me!"

"Well, I do!"

"Yeh, you would!"

But she plodded along the beach with him.

They sat on a rough hummock at the edge of the jack-pine. She droppedher bundle, wiped her wet forehead, sighed with weariness. His ownsweat-stinging shoulders Ralph had nearly forgotten.

She plunged into it fiercely:

"I'm going with you."

"You can't! Impossible! Don't be insane. You can't!"

"Well--I am! You've got to take me. Listen: It isn't just being scaredof the Indians. It's-- To have to live there the rest of my life, withnothing but a cookstove and duck-hunting--and I hateduck-hunting!--till I'm old and wrinkled and bad-tempered and as much ofa fiend as Ma McGavity--the devil curse her! I won't!"

"But you owe something to Joe."

"Not a thing! Man, can't you talk honestly, just once? Are you New Yorkswells as hog-tied by a lot of words as a trapper or a barber? 'Owesomething'? I've given him a year of sweetness. Oh, I know he found itsweet! He's had me, body and soul, and I'm not ugly; I'm not stupid,no matter what you think, no matter how much of a fool I am! And I playthe fool mostly because otherwise I'd go crazy with the monotony.

"I've given him love. And I've cooked for him, I've swept for him, I'vesung for him. And now he doesn't love me any longer. I know. A womandoes know! He thinks I'm a fly-by-night. Oh, he's fond of me, but hedoesn't like me the way he does you or Pop Buck. And I never didsure-enough love him. He's a peach--he's so brave and straight andeverything--but he's just a regular old school-teacher, that's what heis! Don't argue, man! I guess I know pretty near as much about Joe andme as you do, even if you do think you invented law!"

"I don't think--"

"Well, you can if you want to. It wouldn't hurt you any! Oh, I didn'tmean to be mean. Honestly, I think you're terribly smart." Herpassionate integrity turned with the dismaying swiftness of a motorcollision into unscrupulous luring. "I was just kidding. I think you gota swell brain. Wouldn't I like to wake you up once!"

"I'm sure that's most gratifying, my dear child, but you simply cannotgo with me. Now do have some sense! Go back to Joe, and talk to himstraight. I have no doubt he'll see that you get to Minneapolis or someplace, if--"

"You have no doubt! Oh, you damned fish! Excuse me, Ralph. But would itbe too hard for you to be a little bit human for a few minutes? Dear,I'm not like the skirts you know in New York. I haven't got anybody toturn to--except you. Listen, dear. I can't do it. If I was in thecities, Joe'd feel he had to have me watched or something. He'd prob'lymake me live with a skinny-necked old aunt he's got in Iowa. Nag me todeath. Honor of his name or something. Oh, you men, with your Honor! Howyou do like to chain up your women-folks with it!"

"But you'll have to--"

"I won't! Now look here! You listen to me, Ralph Prescott. If you don'ttake me with you-- And I mean it, d'you hear, I mean it! Don't Isound as if I did? If you don't take me with you, then I'll start offfor Kittiko on foot, through the woods."

"You couldn't. It's absurd!"

"I kno-o-o-ow it's absurd! But I'll do it. I'd rather die in the woodsthan go back and be murdered in my bed--or jawed to death by McGavitys.You don't know it, but last night Joe laid down the law to me, and hesays I've got to see more of that old hell-cat. I got to make myselflove her. Sure. And I'm to be influenced by her and not by bad eggs likeCurly Evans. I will like hell! I'll starve first!"

"I suppose you do mean it. But, good Lord, how would you get anything toeat, if you tried to walk--"

"I've got a side of bacon and some flour cached back in the woods here.Enough to last me a few days. And I got a fish-line and a trolling-hookhere in my bundle. (Oh, Ralph, I just couldn't leave that sweet littleblack dress behind, or my new red-heeled slippers. I did love them so!)And I'll try to shoot some ducks with this revolver. Oh, I'll getalong--maybe. I'll get a lift in a canoe from some trapper or someInjun."

"And be-- Would you like to be picked up by some unknown roughneck, andcamp with him, and find out he's a scoundrel?"

"Certainly I wouldn't! But you, when you're all nice and cozy in yourcamp, and feeling so fine and proud because you were a good littleman--with a heart like a stone!--you can think of Alverna begging helpfrom some son of evil, and paying him for it!"

"Oh, curse it! I do wish you'd--"

"Well, I won't! Ralph! Dear Ralph! Listen, dear. I won't be in your way.Honestly I won't. I couldn't make it walking, and I couldn't paddle allthe way, if I stole a canoe. But I'm ever so much stronger than I look.I won't be a fool, like I was when we went duck-hunting. That was justto tease you. Why, I could of carried all three of those guns, and thensix more! I'll paddle--you got an extra paddle in the canoe, haven'tyou? I'll do all the cooking. I'll carry--oh, I'll carry a terrible loton the portage."

"It isn't that."

"Am I so ugly? Am I so cranky? Is it so stupid to be with me--when Ising for you, and crack little fool jokes, and try to jazz it up andmake all my men-folks happy? Am I so hideous?"

"Wish you were!"

"Don't you like me?"

"Too well. That's it. You sneer at my talking about a sense of honor,but it's just that. Precisely that. Toward you and toward Joe and towardmyself."

"Oh"--hopelessly--"I know!... I wonder if there ever was a man ofhonor who had so much honor that he could sacrifice it for a woman? Oh,my little man, God pity you for your honor! Good-by, my Ralph."

She rose, she plodded away, not heeding his protests. Her shoulders, soairy once to express every hilarious childishness, were stooped underher pack and old as a beaten squaw's.

He ran after her; he seized her arm; he took her hand. She let it lielistlessly in his.

"It's no use," she croaked. "I'm going. I really am. Joe is a dear, buthe made one mistake. He oughtn't to of ever brought me up here. I'mgoing to be free, or I'm going to leave my bones in some swamp."

Her threat broke him more than all her gibes. Yes, she really would doit. He could see those frail bones found years afterward in some horrorof slime; fragile white bones and leering skull once veiled and joyouswith rosy flesh.

"But--"

He was no longer senile and intelligent, full of advice and of elderlyamusement. He was youthful and rather terrified. "Suppose I did take youwith me. Joe would guess we were together. He'd follow us."

"Are you afraid of Joe?"

"I am!"

"Golly, so am I!"

She grinned, for the first time. Then she spoke eagerly, outlining a mapon the palm of her little hand:

"Look here. There's two ways to Whitewater and the railroad. There's theway you came--the way you're supposed to be going now--the Mantrap Riverand Lake Warwick and steamer to Whitewater. But there's another route.You sneak along back of Mantrap Landing, the other side of MooseMountain, and you hit the Ghost Squaw River, then up that a little way,and right straight south to Whitewater, by way of Lost River and GooseLake and Weeping River and Lake Midnight and Bulldog Lake. It's shorter,as the crow flies, but there are a terrible lot of portages, they tellme, and some mean little creeks where you got to pole or line. Almostnobody goes that way, but you can do it. Curly did once. Joe's neverbeen through there, nor Lawrence."

"But if Lawrence is to guide us and he doesn't know--"

"Oh, I've got a map of it. Took it off Joe's chart."

"When? When did you decide--"

"Oh, this afternoon, when you were getting ready to run away from me, ormaybe from yourself, and I made up my mind we were going together. Joewill never in the world guess we've gone that way. If he did try tofollow us--only I don't believe he would; he's really an old corker atletting you have your own way if you plank your foot down hardenough--but if he did chase us, he'd go the other way, by Lake Warwick."

"Well--"

"Ralph! Ralph dear! Can't you ever take a vacation from being the swellMr. Prescott? Have you always got to go around admiring your conscience?Feeling you just had to go off and resurrect that boob Woodbury! Theidea! Pfui!

"We're not going to hurt Joe, not the least bit. I'll be as good as amouse--probably! And, oh, Ralph, I will work so hard! I'll help carrythe canoe on the portages. Honest, dear, I'm terribly strong. Listen!Stop talking! You know you're going to take me with you! You are! Ralph!Wouldn't it be kind of nice to have Alverna along, with no horriblepeople to make things ugly?"

He tried to answer judiciously...

Chapter Nineteen

It had taken them all one day to make the three-mile portage behindMantrap Landing, behind Moose Mountain, to the Ghost Squaw River.

Lawrence Jackfish had at first refused to go with them. He had been wonby a promise of two dollars extra a day, and for two dollars a day,which meant ever so many red shirts and red silk handkerchiefs andcigarettes and mouth-organs, Lawrence would have committedmurder--several murders.

But if he continued as their guide, he was not their servant; and hisyellowish eyes peeped at them, his crooked teeth leered at them, tillRalph thought with relish of using an ax when Lawrence's back wasturned.

All afternoon they panted on the hot secret trail. It was a foot-widepath through pine thickets. The air was lifeless as in a shuttered andabandoned house on an August afternoon.

Following Lawrence, who carried the upturned canoe on his shoulders,Ralph toiled with such a load of flour and bacon and blankets as hewould never have believed himself able to lift. He was not walking--hewas merely putting one foot before the other, endlessly, forever, with aseparate effort of his will at each step. He was not alive. All of himwas dead save scorching shoulders, wrenched small of his back, andplodding feet. He was a quarter aware that behind him, carrying almostas large a load as his own, Alverna was panting. But it was only when hehad laboriously revolved the thought in his cloudy brain for ten minutesthat he came to life sufficiently to suggest: "You've got too much tocarry, child. Put down part of it, and we'll pick it up later."

"No," she said, breathlessly but stoutly. "I'm going to do my share."

He pitied her, the white and golden moth fluttering in a cobweb, but hewas too paralyzed with fatigue to do anything about it. The mostspirited part of his cerebration was the fear that some one, crossingover the mountain from Mantrap Landing, should see them and bring araging Joe down upon them.

As to whether he was virtuous in rescuing Alverna, or vile in treacheryto Joe, or maddeningly both at once--such frail philosophies could notmake themselves heard in the torment of his toil.

If they could but get this portage done, if they could be joyfully away,in the freedom of the racing rivers, the wide and desolate lakes--

He learned to trot the back trail burdenless, like Lawrence, when hereturned for another load, and behind him he heard Alverna forlornlypattering through the dry pine needles. He did not look at her, but hefelt her comradeship.

They labored till the late dusk. Then only they boiled the kettle and,with fingers stiffened into hooks, devoured their bacon and bannock.Lawrence withdrew a little, and Ralph was happy in sitting with her by alow fire, coals glowing in a hollow of glittering quartz sand. He hadnever supposed that she could display such brilliant and lucid andendearing silence. And treacherously that silence drifted into sleep.

Ralph woke bewildered. The spell of slumber was like an eiderdown quiltover his head, and fumblingly he thrust it aside. In the light ofash-filmed coals, under the thin mistiness of northern midnight, Alvernawas curled in stillness and Lawrence was snoring in his blankets, undera mosquito-bar. Mosquitoes. Ralph realized dully that it had beennothing more romantic than a mosquito which had roused him.... Thenhe perceived that Alverna was looking at him. Though her cuddlingchildish body had not moved, it seemed to him that her eyes were open.She was very near him, they two alone.

She peered at him drowsily and rolled into his arms.

His hands gripped her sides, then remained cramped and unmoving, notdaring to move. A thousand times he had wondered, a thousand timespictured himself gallant in love. Now he worried, over and over, "Whatdoes she expect me to do?"

Terror, sheer terror and incapacity for life, began to shadow hisembarrassment. He wanted to escape from her.

The fire was low. He had more imagined than seen her. But her shoulderswere close to his eyes now; her sailor-blouse was gaping, and torn withtoil on the portage. Terror and anxiety vanished from him as heirresolutely kissed the hollow beside her collar-bone. He awaited for asecond her indignation but she sighed and moved closer. She said nothingsave a slow sighing "Oh, my dear!" and he forgot all the world of RalphPrescott.

They were on the portage again at dawn; and by noon, with relief soprofound that their panting was like the sob of wailing women, theyteetered into the canoe and slowly paddled up the Ghost Squaw River.

There were two more portages, immediately, but they were short; theywere almost luxurious. And then for the first time Ralph took his sharein shooting rapids.

Though their general direction was up-river, they had cut across thecurves of an S in the current, and for two miles they went downstream.Thus it was that the Ralph who a few days ago had shivered before rapidsfound himself shooting them and depending not on guides but on his ownmuscle, his own nerve.

They came to Ghost Rapids, silently, ignoring their peril.

Lawrence took the bow. He stood there, pointing with his paddle at theone inevitable way through the welter of rapids. Where Ralph would havesteered to the right through an apparently even current, Lawrence readthe cryptic manuscript of the water and directed him to a crazy zigzagleft, then right, left again, and straight ahead, almost grazing afanged rock.

It was Ralph's hour of test. Without for a moment ceasing to be afraid,he was steady at the steering paddle, abrupt at wrenching the canoe fromside to side, all the while cursing hideously under his breath.

Suddenly they were in the last gush of the water, the bow of the canoeleaping five feet in the air, while Ralph chewed his lip. As suddenlythey shot into the calm water beyond the rapids, and in relief Ralphsighed above his lifted paddle, so that Alverna looked back in wonder,and Lawrence loosed his hissing snicker.

Chapter Twenty

For a week there was a nightmare of portages and snaky creeks up whichthey had to pole, of mosquitoes and the inferno of endless paddling; andRalph's only solace was the unbroken gallantry, the smiling kindness ofAlverna, as she took her turn at the paddle, as she plodded on theportage, as she sat by the camp-fire, her lacerated little hands twinedabout her knees, in a mud-smeared garment which had once been a whitelinen skirt.

He had courage because she believed that he had courage. When sheslipped a trusting hand into his and murmured, "You've been sowonderfully good to me!" he was rewarded for his labor.

As he watched her sleeping, under wretched and insufficient blankets, inthe cold nights which swooped down after the panting sun-drenched days,his dry heart blossomed in tenderness.... To think that he had onceesteemed people because they understood Goossens's music or JamesJoyce's fiction, because they wore sleek clothes and were clever at theuse of forks, because they could set up wooden words as a barricadeagainst roaring life!

Tenderly he covered her with his own blanket, and lay shivering under atarpaulin. And in the morning when side by side they washed theirstreaky faces in the chill water of a northern lake and their cheeksstung with sudden life, they smiled at each other and intelligently saidnothing at all, and Ralph Prescott was no longer a cautious forty-odd,but twenty and aware of all romance.

Now this was their route, set down for any lunatic who shall of his ownwill leave wife and lawn and sheltered porch and stagger from Whitewaterby the back way to Mantrap Landing, or from Mantrap dolorously toWhitewater.

By the Ghost Squaw River and Ghost Rapids and Bucking Rapids, up whichthey poled, with that chastening feeling of leaning out over the side ofthe canoe and wondering how soon the pole will slip and you will flopinto the river, then by portage to Lost River, a portage half ofsun-broiling rocks that were torturing to moccasined feet and half ofswamp reeking with vast mosquitoes poisonous to sweaty neck andstraining wrist, they came on Pike Lake. For five miles they sailedthere more luxuriously than Cleopatra and Antony in scarlet-pinionedcaravels.

Ralph marveled that he could ever have felt uneasy in a sailing canoe.By contrast with portages and the ache of paddling, to loll in theshadow of the bending sail, to feel the breeze on his scorching cheeks,to hear Alverna softly singing, yet all the time to be on their way,each moment safer from the menace of Joe Easter's fury--this was aheaven he had never known.

Another portage, a reeling madness of five miles through thickets, andthey came again to the openness of Thunder Bird Lake. But there was nobreeze; they had to paddle all the shoreless and blistering plain ofthat dead expanse. And then, slowly, they perceived and acknowledged adanger.

Ralph had wondered at the persistent fogginess of the air in fullsunshine. The shore was indistinct; the sun was a red ball at which hecould stare undazzled; and the sun's reflection was a necklace of rubieson the pallid ripples of the pearl-gray water.

He looked back from the bow. "Getting foggy," he suggested.

"Yeh. Forest fire some place--smoke," said Lawrence.

"Forest fire? Near us?"

"Don't know. Maybe."

"I noticed it quite a while ago. But I guess it's pretty far off,"Alverna made pretense. "Smoke will carry hundreds of miles."

Ralph had forgotten his fear of Joe's pursuit. But new danger stirs theimagination, and now to the travail of sixteen toiling hours a day wasadded a desperate wonder as to where the forest fire might be, and whenthey would burst out in a horror of arching flame.

And there was nothing he could do about it. He must go on. He was ashelpless as though he were on a steamer in mid-ocean.

Where once he would have thought only of saving his own hide, he thoughtnow of Alverna. Lawrence Jackfish might burn like a pitch-pine torch,and welcome; but if they should be caught by the fire (he pictured it,slowly, painfully, his mind dulled by paddling) he would protect her; hewould cover her with his jacket, souse her in the lake...

Their chart showed that they were to pass from Thunder Bird Lake to LakeMidnight--the largest body of water on their route--by way of WeepingRiver. Here the streams turned southward. They would go downstream, andRalph hoped for swift and easy passage to Lake Midnight.

They camped at the beginning of the Weeping River, in a sunset ofcrimson clouds murky with the impalpable smoke. The sun was red-eyed andirate as it set; the dusk was thick; and over the whole world was asense of brooding fate.

They were wearily silent when they rose next dawn. There was nofreshness in the air, and somberly they started down Weeping River.

It started out promisingly enough, with a gush of brown water betweensandy banks monotonously lined with low willows. But the river became soshallow that the canoe scraped the sandy bottom. Presently they had butthree inches of water, littered everywhere with rocks over which thecanoe had to be lifted, in terror lest it be slashed beyond repair andleave them abandoned, starving, in the wilderness.

Instead of darting down a pleasant stream, they made less than a mile anhour, wading in slippery pools, tugging at the canoe. Alverna was stillplucky, but her face was drawn, and Ralph bore all her suffering withhis.

Mosquitoes joyously clouded round them, more portentous in theirvenomous insignificance than the black-winged fates.

"We'll have to give it up and hit cross-country for Lake Midnight. Lookshere on the map as if we could get across to Mudhen Creek, which flowsinto Midnight.... Course map may not be right. So much of thiscountry unexplored," said Ralph.

"All right. Let's," said Alverna, listlessly.

But Lawrence Jackfish said nothing at all, and Lawrence scowled, andRalph wondered: "What's he thinking? What's he planning to do? How longcan I make him take orders?"

They did, in fact, reach Mudhen Creek, and so came at last on the openwaters of huge Lake Midnight. But the history of that passage would be aconfused and unchroniclable nightmare. Ralph could never put ittogether; never determine whether they took three and a half days orfour and a half from Weeping River to Lake Midnight. The portage toMudhen Creek was a delirium of quaking muskeg which let them down todrenched knees, of swamps crawling with scum, of brush which slashedtheir unprotected faces as they staggered with their loads, of airymosquitoes singing their contempt, of persistent bulldog flies circlinground and round their eyes, lighting and circling again, with a zizzwhich made the lords of creation shriek like lunatics, broken as theywere with weariness.

And the cloud of smoke from the forest fires was over them always, butthat menace had become as distant as Joe's possible pursuit.

They began to admit their shortage of food. It was Alverna who had thecourage to speak of it.

Not always had Ralph plodded beside her in ecstasy. Before breakfastcoffee and in the strain of the portage, he had often been irritated byher humming, her trick of pushing back her hair, the cruelty with whichshe split infinitives, and her bland supposition that everything whichwas not fierce or awful was either cute or nice. But these annoyancesscarce rose to perception in his mind. For her strength and patientcourage he had such affectionate admiration as he had once given to Joe.

"We got to start starving ourselves," she blurted. "Hardly enough grubto last us down Lake Midnight. The map says there's a trading-stationnear the south end of the lake. Once we hit it, I guess we'll be on areal good trail, and we can get some grub there. But our stuff has tolast-- Maybe we better cut it down to two meals a day now, and one aday pretty soon."

"I suppose so," sighed Ralph.

Bacon thrice daily had come to be all of his concept of heaven that wasnot comprised in Alverna.

"Hey, you, Lawrence, don't hog so much bannock! We got to go slow,"Alverna observed, as sweetly as possible, but the Indian scowled.

To piece out the larder, they stopped at every swamp which promised apickerel. But there were few fish, and the long delays made the fear ofapproaching forest fire more lively.

So hour by day-long hour they lumbered through swamp and muskeg andthicket, blind and mute, and when at last they came through a cool birchgrove and found Mudhen Creek, Alverna stood weeping with relief, herface smeary as a muddy child's, and Ralph was too frayed to feel relief,too tired even to comfort her.

But after an hour of swift paddling down the Mudhen, helped by thecurrent, on their way to Lake Midnight now, on their way to sailing andsacred food, his spirits rose and they two smiled again.

But they were so hungry!

At a pool below shallow rapids in the Mudhen, Ralph flung in histrolling-hook and drew in, hand over hand, a ten-pound muskalonge morebeautiful than the silver doe of heaven. They lit a fire, but scarcewaited for the fish to broil; they tore at it half-cooked, black-handedsavages, and when Ralph gave Alverna his bit of better-cooked fish, itwas his one heroism in life.

He was sure now that their toil was over--but he was not quite sure thathe was sure. When the Mudhen flowed into the magnificent stretches ofLake Midnight, apprehension once more gathered round him.

There was a sinister look to those cruel waters. He understood the nameof Lake Midnight when he saw that vasty stretch, the color of abottomless spring. The lake was smooth enough; it reached out in a floorof black marble. But to venture on that frowning immensity in a canoewas like risking open ocean.

"Looks tricky, somehow. And no islands for shelter. Wonder if there'smany squalls on it?" Ralph meditated. He kept his worry from Alverna.

There were squalls.

A breeze lifted before they had paddled half a mile. But it was a fairwind and they had to use it. Ralph was relieved that Lawrence kept asclose to the east shore as possible, but that was not particularlyclose, for the shore-line was broken by many indentations. They werenever more than a mile from land, Ralph calculated, yet they might aswell have been a hundred. Neither he nor Alverna could swim half a mile,if they capsized, and the chicken-faced Lawrence would not try to savethem.

Was it really only a mile to those distant trees, that secure beach?Ralph gazed to south, to west--a hundred and twenty miles it was to thesouth end of the lake, and to the west shore, forty. From the low planeof their canoe, the swart vastness of Lake Midnight was more engulfingthan the round of desert.

He played with these thoughts and put them from him. He could not affordnow the luxury of being timid; and when Lawrence suggested that theyland and boil the kettle, though being ashore would provide half an hourof surcease from the feeling of danger he snapped: "No, go on. Wind maychange."

They were, their map asserted, more than halfway to Whitewater and thehigh civilization of Bert Bunger's hotel when they camped that eveningon the shore of Lake Midnight.

They had for supper only bacon and milkless tea.

When Ralph rose, a little after four, and came out rubbing his sandyeyes, the world was a mystery of fog. Only a patch of gray lake wasvisible, motionless except for faint etchings of ripples. He felt thevigor of the damp fog. The earth seemed new, recreated in a doubtfulyouth, and but for the specter of Joe, he would have rejoiced and feltready for any venture.

He grew conscious that something was wrong with the scene, somethingvery wrong, something missing. There was no canoe turned properlyupside-down on the beach. There was no canoe anywhere. Nor was LawrenceJackfish in sight, under his mosquito-bar.

"Lawrence! Lawrence!" Distress gave awe to his voice.

Alverna appeared at the flap of their tent, tousled and sleepy.

"What is it, Ralph?"

"Apparently Lawrence and the canoe are gone. Oh, probably he's out onthe lake, to catchum fish for breakfast. You can't see far in this fog."

She stared; she hastened to the tarpaulin which covered their stores.

"No. He's skipped out for keeps," she said resolutely. "He's taken allour grub except a little flour and a quarter of a pail of lard and ateeny bit of tea. He's taken everything. He expects us to die here."

Chapter Twenty-One

She neither wept nor scolded. They both lied about it; they assured eachother that Lawrence would certainly be coming back. But their twinedglances grew more intimate with common apprehension.

"Maybe we'd better wait half a day and see if he comes back," she said.

"Yes.... God! No canoe! Well, we'll try to walk to the trading-post.Wonder how far it is? What's it look like on the map, Al?"

"Must be eighty miles, anyway--providing we can come anywheres nearfollowing the shore; providing there aren't a lot of bluffs and thickwoods that'll shove us back from the lake and maybe get us all lost.Anyway, dear--" She spoke cheerfully. "Thank Heaven, dear Lawrencedidn't get away with the line and trolling-hook. And I've got enoughmatches. We can always catch some fish and broil 'em in their ownblessed juice. And I've got the revolver and a box of shells....Maybe we'll need the last two cartridges bad!"

They waited till noon, sitting on the beach, two babes in the woods,brave only in each other's presence. They were savages, both. Ralph hadnot shaved for four days. Once, with the noble Jesse and Louey to paddlefor him, he had elegantly shaved daily in the canoe, his pocket mirroron his knees, dipping his brush over the side. But during these days offlight he never had the time. He showed a surprising stubble of blackbristles; his nails were rimmed with dirt; his canvas jacket, once thepride of the polished young sporting-experts at Fulton & Hutchinson's,was foul with fish-scales, smeared with the blood of ducks and snipe,clotted with gray mud.

But his mouth had an angry steadiness. It no longer drooped and twistedin the duress of vain philosophizing.

Alverna had turned into a mad gypsy. As she sat beside him, quiet,undemanding, pouring pebbles from one hand into the other, she was aspirit of the forest. Her white blouse and skirt were torn, andpatterned with waves of mud. Her pale bobbed hair she had combedsleekly, and she had conscientiously washed her face in the cold lake,but she had acquired a comic smut on one cheek as she had cooked thebannock that morning, and it gave her something of the impudent look ofa fox terrier with a black jowl. One stocking was torn, the other hadbeen discarded entirely, and along one of her canvas shoes was a longrip... the edges touched with blood. Yet there was confidence in therelaxed flow of her body, and confidently she whispered to him:

"I don't know if you can stand it, but I'm going to sing 'Three o'Clockin the Morning.' You've got to take me out to a dance when we hitWinnipeg--before you ship me off to Minneapolis and forget me--if weever do get out of this."

She could not keep it up.

She whimpered, "I guess maybe we're going to die together, dear." Shetried to smile. "Do you mind much?"

He lied sturdily.

She sprang up. "Might as well make-believe do something useful. I'mgoing to wash this awful skirt. Haven't got enough soap, but I can dosomething with sand. And you, Ralph, a shave wouldn't hurt your manlybeauty one bit. Have a manicure, sir, and a violet-ray treatment?"

He did shave--with cold water and a film of lather from the bad littlesliver of pink soap which was all they had. It hurt. She gaily washednot only her muddied sailor costume but also his proud and virile redcotton handkerchiefs, kneeling at the margin of the lake, stooped andsinging and scrubbing like an Italian laundress by the Tiber.

They gave up waiting for Lawrence.

They were off at noon, after pretending to enjoy the last crumbs of thebannock and the one skinny jackfish which Ralph was able to catch bythrowing out the trolling-hook from shore. Their packs were heavy, for ahundred-mile march, yet they had abandoned the tent, Alverna's belovedblack frock and slippers; everything save blankets, flour, lard,fishing-tackle, the revolver, matches, mosquito-netting and the onefrying-pan which the good Lawrence had been so generous as to leavethem.

But Ralph brought along Alverna's scarlet-beaded velvet bag, with rouge,lip-stick, powder, three absurd little embroidered handkerchiefs, andthe priceless wafer of soap.

"Oh, let's leave that fool bag," she said regretfully.

"No. It's all there is of the old Alverna.... There's nothing of theold Ralph!"

She looked at him lingeringly. "There will be, when you get back tocivilization. You'll hate me then!"

"Never! Look! We'll write to Joe, and we'll ask him for a divorce."

"Don't, dear. Please! Let's not make any plans. Let's not startthinking!"

She plodded down the shore, and he followed her. For three miles theywere able to keep to the beach of Lake Midnight. The yielding sand madedragging toil of every step, but at least they knew their way. Then thebluffs rose. For a time they scrambled between pine-trunks and the topof the bluff, high above the beachless water. Once they made fifty feetby edging along sidewise, holding by branches and bushes, hanging outover the sharp drop. They were forced into the forest, away from thelake, and at each step they looked in panic for the shine of waterthrough the trees. They lost it, they lost themselves; and in a panic,running, glancing at each other with terror, they became snarled in athicket of jack-pine. When they had struggled through and suddenlyregained sight of the lake, Alverna deliberately sat down on the bristlyearth and bawled, while he stood by her stroking her hair.

The bluffs dropped again, and they inched along hard shingle and muddybog. When they quit, at darkness, in ten hours they had made fourteenmiles--out of eighty, or a hundred, or, if they should find bays notrecorded on their tentative map, perhaps twice a hundred miles--withfood enough for scarce one day.

He was unable to catch a single fish for supper, and they supped onmilkless and sugarless tea and a fragment of bannock before they rolledup in their blankets, with mosquito-bars clumsily hung over them onstakes.

All next morning, as they struggled on, Ralph was conscious of but fourthings in all the world: Alverna's uncomplaining pluck, the increasedsmokiness from the unknown forest fires, the fact that his moccasins andrubbers were wearing so thin that sharp stones were agony to hisfeet--and the absurd impossibility of the whole thing.

It was incredible that he, Mr. Prescott of Beaseley, Prescott, Braun andBraun, Ralph Prescott of the Yale Club, R. E. Prescott whose thirdcousin was a first secretary of embassy, should be starving and raggedin the northern wilderness; that what had been play should have becomeinescapable peril; and that an ex-manicure-girl should be to him thewhole meaning of life.

When they stopped at noon, while Alverna sat on a slippery rock watchinghim throw out the hand-troller, she shrieked, without preface: "Ralph! Ihear an airplane!"

"Why, honey, you're crazy! You'll be hearing Kreisler playing the violinnext! You must-- Say! I hear it! No, probably it's an outboard motor.Suppose it were Joe coming to-- No! It is an aeroplane!"

Up the lake, a speck in the smoky atmosphere from the forest fires,swiftly growing larger, its humming momently more aggressive, heincredulously saw the air machine.

"They'll rescue us! Wave to 'em! Safe!" cried Alverna, prancing on thebeach, running heedlessly out into the water to brandish herhandkerchief.

Ralph joined her, flapping his dirty canvas hat.

In the rescue he felt a little sadness that their adventure should beover, that suddenly he was again merely Mr. Prescott of New York.

It was a hydro-aeroplane. The aviator was flying low. He saw them,swooped in an enormous circle, settled on the lake, and came taxiingtoward them in a cascade of plowed-up water, a spectacle as strange inthis barrenness of pineland and lifeless lake as a gondola with singingmaidens.

The machine ran up to the beach, and Ralph and Alverna galloped over tolean against it, to gape at the occupants with faces almost idiotic inthe unexpected bliss.

There were three men aboard. The aviator grumbled, "What's trouble?"

"My name is Prescott--New York. Been camping and fishing. This--uh--thisis my wife. Our food got low, and our Indian guide deserted us. Took ourcanoe. We're almost starving, and I don't know whether we can make it tothe next trading-post. Can you take us along?"

"Oh! I'm in the Canadian air force--these are two forest fire rangers.Wish we could take you, but it's impossible. You see there's no room,not an inch."

The Alverna who for days had been all selfless devotion to Ralph wasinstantly titillated by the sight of three young men, especially by theflying officer--who, Ralph noted jealously, was damnably like CurlyEvans. She was shining at them, preening herself, fluffing back herhair. In some incomprehensible way she had in the last two minutescontrived to rouge her lips.

She spoke teasingly:

"Oh, major, you wouldn't leave us here, would you? Oh gee now, have aheart! How d'you get that way! And I thought army officers were soawful' obliging and everything!"

The aviator was stern.

"But can't you see there's no room, madam? And I'm not a major! Perhapsone of the foresters could stay with your husband and give you hisplace, but we're hustling out to fight the forest fires--warn thesettlers and organize fire-lines. Fact, we must buzz on immediately. Andif you went with us, you might be burnt to death. We're going into theworst section. Though-- Prescott, you better watch out along here, too.The fire's sweeping this way."

She wailed, a strange hopeless little ululation. Already she had losther flirtatiousness.... She had kept it up just long enough to makeRalph forget all her loyalty and distrust her again.

The three men in the hydro-aeroplane looked at one another unhappily.One of the foresters suggested, "Guess we can leave 'em some grub andthe folding boat and couple paddles."

"Right-o," agreed the others.

While the foresters were unloading the boat, and a side of bacon, asmall sack of flour, a tin of lard, a really spectacularly beautiful canof corn, the aviator inquired:

"Deserted by your guide, eh? That happens very rarely. Which way haveyou been?"

"We--uh--we spent some time at Mantrap Landing," said Ralph.

"Oh, did you? Heard that Joe Easter--the forester we stayed with lastnight said Joe Easter, the trader there, had his wife stolen by somesport, and Easter's after them. Never saw her, but they say she's anawfully pretty girl--"

As he spoke, the aviator's cheerful face was stilled with suspicion. Heglanced from Ralph to Alverna.

They must have looked too expressionlessly innocent for innocence.

The aviator's voice became dry:

"And on Mudhen Creek, heading for the lake here, I saw a canoe with afellow who looked, far as one could tell from five hundred feet up, asif he might be Easter. If I were the guilty laddie, I think I'd bemaking very active tracks.... All right, Kromer? Right. Good-by,people; watch out for the forest fire; camp close to the water."

One of the foresters had pushed out the machine and turned it a little;the other had twirled the propeller; and already the heavenly rescuerwas dashing away in a gush of foam, an agony of roaring; it was liftingfrom the water and climbing.

In the silence Ralph stared at Alverna. He was not irritated andsuperior now at the flirtatiousness which she developed the second anymale came into sight; he was pitiful, and he tried to persuade himselfthat she had yearned at the aviator only in order to insure theirrescue.

"Gee, we better be making time! Cheer up," she said. "Maybe Joe won'tnotice us. If we see him coming, we'll sneak ashore and hide."

To have to hide from Joe Easter, his friend, was to Ralphgutter-crawling. He was silent, robbed of all romance, as he looked overthe folding boat and studied its nasty ways.

The boat, when it was opened out, was like a canvas soap-dish six feetlong. The passengers had to squat on the floor. It was tippy and ghastlyuncomfortable, but they hastened to load their small stores, and,forgetting hunger, they were off.

The lake was not too smooth. It grew rougher. Neither of them had yetlearned the craft of paddling: how to meet a wave and breast it. Watergushed constantly into their canvas platter, and Alverna was busybailing with a sod of moss, like a coarse sponge, while he tried to keephead up to the wind. Though they sought to hug the shore, they wereconstantly driven out, and Ralph was obsessed by a wonder as to whether,when they sank, his body would float across the lake and hang bobbingalongshore.

But another obsession was stronger. Now that he had been forced againout of his cozy illusions about Alverna, now that Joe was possibly ontheir trail, he began to think. He saw Joe--those naïve eyes, thatsteady kindness, that honest courage. For days he had been able to defythe vision, and joyously convince himself: "Joe was a fool. Good friend,but idiotic lover. He didn't understand her. I do! He couldn't hold her.I can! I don't feel guilty in the least."

Now he felt guilty enough; so guilty that no argument about having savedher from plunging out to starve in the forest was enough to strengthenhim.

Yet all this while the power of thought, the pull of conscience, werefeeble beside Alverna's youth. It was his first love; the first time inhis life that he had been roused to throw away caution and dignity.Well! If fate was on him, for once he had lived!

Thus as he struggled with onrushing waves.

They were approaching a point thrust for miles out into the lake, outinto rough open water where the canvas boat would never live. Theycrawled painfully along the point. As they came to the end of it, theylooked fearfully beyond.

"We can't make it. I guess we're windbound, all right. We'll have tostay here till the gale goes down," he said despairingly.

But no fears, no regrets, could quench the Olympian delights of eatingagain--the richness of bacon, the reliability of bannock, the ecstasy ofauthentic corn out of a can raggedly opened with his sheath-knife.

Alverna had been silent and very industrious in their paddling, and shehad made much of humming (only he caught her peeping at him, to see ifhe was impressed) while she boiled the bannock in the fiery lard. Whenthey lolled back, gorgeously stuffed, she hinted: "But we don't knowit was Joe he saw."

"No, that's so."

"So let's cheer up. Why, Joe'd never find out we'd gone this way! Ifeel like a fighting kitten, now we've got some grub and our lovelylittle boat that-- Damn the thing!" Her effort at light laughter wasexcellent. "We'll make the trading-post, and get a real canoe there andanother Indian to do the work. And two cans of corn! I'm going toswallow 'em both right down, like this--glup! Have you enough money?"

"Yes, I think so. Fierce how the wind keeps up."

"Oh, let's enjoy the rest. You really have enough?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Are you awfully rich?"

"No. I'm-- Oh, I make a good living."

"What do you make, Ralph? I haven't got the least idea if you make fourthou a year or four hundred thou."

"Well, say about forty."

"Forty--thousand--dollars--a--year! Gee! Well, I hope you've saved it,because when we get to Winnipeg you got to lend me my fare home, andenough to buy a dress and some shoes and stockings. Think of havingclean silk stockings again!"

"I fancy we can manage that, and perhaps two pairs."

"Ralph!"

"Eh?"

"Dear! Please!"

"What is it, child?"

"You feel-- You were cross because I jollied that aviator. I saw you."

"Oh, of course, you had to try to get him to take us--"

"No. Let's not lie. We haven't been lying, all these days, and gosh, I'ms'prised how I like it! I guess it's about the first time since I vampedthe old school prof when I was in the sixth grade! You hated me forpulling the goo-goo eyes on that aviator and-- Say, just listen at my1900 model slang, will you! Don't know how I happened to think of thatold one!... But I mean: You kind of looked sick when I tried to makehim. You were wondering if I'd go back to that when we hit the pavementsagain. Weren't you, dear? Honest!"

"Well, a little."

"This'll hand you a surprise. So was I! Oh, I guess I'm an awfulfly-paper. It looks like I just couldn't keep my hooks off any he-malethat blows into town with the visiting firemen! But I had sort ofthought I was off that, these last few days.... Oh, Ralph, Ralphdear, what are we going to do?"

"I don't know."

"Make it a double order! Suppose I did get a divorce. Suppose you didfeel you had to marry me--"

"'Had to!' My God, don't you know how ghastly fond of you--"

"Oh, yes! Fond! But when you get back, when you're a smart lawyer againand awfully busy-- Suppose you married me. Oh, I'd study like sixteencollege profs, and I'd get so I could talk pussyfoot, but sometime whenI'd had two cocktails, I'd bust loose and throw a gosh-awful shock intosome of your doggy cousins (and I bet you got 'em by the truckload!) andthey'd say, 'That Jane's a vulgar manicure girl, that's what she is,'and you'd get the toothache in your social standing. And you'd begin tofeel you'd done Joe dirt, and--you'd hate me."

"What does it matter? Alverna! Child! But--can't you learn not toflirt? Don't you know--"

"Poor toy soldier! You haven't learned how to say, 'I love you.' Noteven yet. I know. And I know--oh, after our starving together, and afterI've learned what a real self-starting brain you have, I'll never--Iguess I'll never fall for anybody else. But I won't have you ashamed ofme. I couldn't stand it, dear. Just because I do like you! Hang it!"

She fled from him, along the point. He lay on the sand, his tired headon his arm, trying to think and completely not succeeding.

He was aroused by her shriek, above him: "Ralph! Ralph! I think Joe'scoming! Oh, I'm terrified! Maybe it isn't Joe, but--"

He sat up abruptly. He could hear afar the tiny stutter of an engine; hecould make out a speck in the lake to northward. Miles away he saw thebow of a canoe lifting to the rollers.

They were still windbound, hopelessly, and there was no use of fleeingalong the shore, into the forest. There they would starve, if they werenot first burnt to death by the forest fire. Better remain, and dieswiftly.

For it came to Ralph that he was this moment in danger of beingmurdered. He remembered how relentlessly Joe's pale blue eyes hadregarded that bounding ass, E. Wesson Woodbury.

He considered shooting Joe first. He could take Alverna's revolver--

No. Aside from the highly probable and ridiculous chance of missing, hiswhole training had been so conservative that he could not shoot at anyman, particularly not at Joe Easter, whom he loved as much as he hadinjured him.

He felt Alverna rubbing kitten-wise against his arm. He kissed her onelast time, and stood quietly, ragged and dirty, very proud and erect,and watched the coming of the unknown canoe.

Chapter Twenty-Two

There was no doubt of it. The gaunt man hunched over the tiller was JoeEaster.

His canoe was leaping half its length out of water with each singingcomber, the spray glittering over the bow as it dipped again. When itturned to make a landing and wallowed through the trough, it rolledgunwales under, while the Indian at the bow fought with agitated plungesof his paddle to keep it from capsizing. But Joe rose to his feet asplacidly as though he were ashore; he waved to them casually, and withhis back to them he shut off the motor.

"I could have shot him," reflected Ralph.

The canoe was being swept along the point. Joe sprang into the water,dragged the canoe ashore, and stood considering the ragged forlorn pair,who waited hand in hand. There was no wrath about him; his eyes wereexpressionless, his lips unmoving; but he did not offer to shake hands;and Joe Easter usually shook hands when he did not shake a fist.

They waited--waited, with that red-granite face looming over them, tillRalph screamed:

"Oh, get it over! Shoot, if you're going to! I can't argue. We've beenstarving. Go on--shoot! Only let me tell you you did not treat herdecently! Well, you've won. You've saved her from me."

Joe's eyes widened to mildness, and most mildly he said: "I didn't cometo save her. I was aiming to save you!"

"I don't want to be saved!" Ralph was hysterical. "I won't be bullied!And you're not going to bully her any longer!"

"Why, Ralph, I couldn't bully you. I think a lot of you. Except maybefor Pop Buck, I guess I've come to like you better'n anybody I ever met.I was kind of looking forward to us being great friends all our lives.And--"

For the first time his glance particularized Alverna; dwelt on her witha brooding dislike. Then he turned again to Ralph, more warmly:

"I heard from the Indians which way you were heading, and I guessedshe'd coaxed you to lug her along with you. I know you're strong onduty. I figured that once you were Outside, in New York, you'd feel youhad to stick by her. And then there'd be hell to pay. That's what I beenplanning to save you from. You'd come to hate her. Oh, I was as bad asmost, at first. Made me mad to think of my wife preferring some otherfellow to a great noble guy like me. But I've got over that, and-- Nowoman that ever lived is worth giving up a real friendship for.Especially not this girl, Ralph. She's sweet, but she's rotten. She'sbeen going pretty far with Curly Evans, right along."

"That's a lie!" piped Alverna, but it was feeble, and Joe drowned herout:

"How many others, I don't know. But I know about Curly, all right. Ihoped she'd come to her senses. I guess she never will. I'm through. ButI'm not going to have her spoil your life, too, Ralph. I'm going to takeyou both to Winnipeg, and put her on the train for Minneapolis, and saygood-by to you. Or maybe now you'd rather make another stab at joiningyour friend Woodbury."

Joe's voice was lifeless, and dreary and lifeless and futile Ralph feltin all this absurdly polite conference, this long-winded return to dailystupidity after the recklessness of his adventure.

He squatted on the sand, Alverna beside him, while Joe squatted facingthem, stupidly scratching his chin as he droned, "Yes, you could outfitat the trading-post down here on the lake and go after Woodbury."

"Yes, I could," Ralph muttered. "But he doesn't seem awfully importantnow. And Alverna does! I think I could do something for her. You see, Ithought I might take her to New York. I'm going to have her get aneducation and learn--"

"Nope; she's made trouble enough. She's going to stay with my aunt inIowa," Joe asserted listlessly. "Then maybe if she learns to behaveherself--"

"Hell!"

It was Alverna screaming. She sprang up, fists clenched.

"I've had enough of both of you! You men think you can dispose of me;you think you can buy and sell me and give me away, as if I were a dog.You could of, once. You can't now! Not after what I've gone through.Ralph! Did I whine once?"

"No."

"Did I lay down? Did I loaf? Was I scared?"

"Never."

"You bet I wasn't! As for you, Joe Easter, you can shoot or you can shutup. Kill me if you want to--I don't care an awful lot--but I'm tired ofbeing a kept woman. You fool! Oh, you ignorant fool! I was just a crazykid; I was a child. And you wanted me to turn into an old woman, like MaMcGavity--only better to sleep with. I am not going to stay with yourdear aunty! And I am not going back and be a hired manicure girl. I mayget a shop of my own. And I may go with Ralph to New York. But I'm goingto do my own deciding, now, see?"

Joe began, "You'll do what I tell you--"

"Do I look it?"

Not the temperamental girl of Mantrap Landing, childish in fury, morechildish in joy, looked down at them now, but a stern woman, armsakimbo. Her face was tanned black and torn with briars, her hands werehard and grimy, her voice was deadly, and her eyes were full of a scornthat feared nothing.

The two men glanced at each other uneasily, driven together in refugefrom her anger.

"Well--I don't know. Gosh, I'm tired! Been traveling pretty hard myself.I-- Anyway, I want to keep you from ruining Ralph's life, too." Ralphwould never have conceived that Joe could sound so meek. "Let me go withyou as far as Whitewater, and we'll talk over what we're all going todo."

"No, you might as well take yourself back to Mantrap--only lend us someof your grub," snarled Alverna. "I'll do all the talking about me that'snecessary. Go on, shoot me, if you can't think of anything better."

"But--I haven't anything to go back to Mantrap for now," said Joe.

"How do you mean?"

"The Indians got me. Burned up the place."

"They what?"

"Yuh. I was asleep. I woke up and smelled smoke. I hustled out and theroof of the warehouse was blazing like all get-out. Funny the way itlighted up the lake, and the trees--they were brighter than in thesunshine, only the light was kind of on the under side of the leaves.Well, I had a lot of powder in there, in the warehouse, and somedynamite. It blew up. Threw a lot of burning timbers on our house andthe store. They went like thunder, all but part of the log walls.Furnace. Didn't care so much about the store, but I did kind of hate tosee our nice little house go. And I heard the canary begin to sing whenthe house caught fire, and then it gave an awful screech--I guess itchoked on the smoke before the fire roasted it. And after the fire Ifound your new sewing-machine, Alvy. It was all twisted up, and thewoodwork so charred-- Everything gone. No insurance. The Indians mustof done it, I guess. Maybe they figured these forest fires would hitMantrap anyway, and nobody ever know what happened.So"--wearily--"that's all."

"But, good Lord," cried Ralph, "why did you come after us, then? Whydidn't you stay and try to catch the man that did it?"

"What's the use? Too late now. It's done. Besides, Curly was back. He'lllook into it. Besides--Oh, I guess I don't blame 'em much. I'd of doneabout the same thing, if I was an Injun and starving."

"But you're going back and rebuild?"

"No, I can't. My money's gone, after my fur losses. And I'm too much indebt to get any more credit. And after I've run my own show, don't knowas I could stand it to stay up here and work for some other fellow thatI used to beat at the game. No, I--Oh, I might as well go to Winnipegand try to get a job there. I'm--honestly, I'm an awful good judge offurs, and I'm a good bookkeeper, and once I get Alvy and you going rightagain, I'll just dig in and forget it--"

"Joe!" Alverna had been staring at him, radiant with pity. She droppedon her knees beside him as he sprawled on the sand; she stroked hishair, held his head between her palms.

"I'm going to stay with you! I'll scrub for you--I'll save money--I'llsing--I'll make you happy! I've got a real job now! Darling, I won't let'em beat you! Old Joe! We'll show 'em! I'm going to stay--Winnipeg orwherever it is--Mantrap Landing or the North Pole!"

He drew away her hands, he held them while he looked at her with tiredfondness.

"No. You were right. I'm too old for you, and too cranky, and now Ican't even support you decently. You've made a start, Alvy; you're goingon. But I'll take you as far as Winnipeg, and I can still raise enoughmoney to run you awhile in Minneapolis while you look around.... So,Ralph, you can go look for Woodbury, and I'll take care of the kid."

"Never," from Ralph. "You need me. You're feeling a lot lower than I am.Now"--rather grandiloquently--"we'll all stick together, all three--"

Alverna skyrocketed with laughter:

"Oh, it's swell! Husband comes hiking to beat the band, to catch guiltycity-feller and naughty wifie, and then all three sit around and jaw andhave a love-feast! Excuse me, but it's getting too funny for me! Men arethe talkingest idiots-- Oh, and you thought I was a child! I'm the onlygrown-up in the bunch!"

The men stared at her with solemn disapproval, as she beat her littlefists on the sand, shining with laughter.

"Well--gosh--better make camp till the wind goes down. Got any sugar, bythe way? We'll have a lot to talk over," sighed Joe.

"Oh, we will! We will! Jiminy, how we'll talk! How men do talk!" whoopedAlverna.

Chapter Twenty-Three

They had made camp; they had gorged on bacon; they had discussed Mr.Lawrence Jackfish and his lamentable disappearance.

Then Joe flashed with his one-time power of command: "We'll tend to him.Saul--this Indian I've brought with me--he'll stick. When he goes backto Mantrap, he'll look after it. Lawrence will never guide anotherparty!"

By the fire they discussed, in a silence more prickly with vexatiouscomplications than all their words, what was to become of them. Ralphbroke it with:

"Joe, I think Alverna is coming with me to New York. I wonder if youknow how fond I've become of her. Seems funny to say this to you, butsince we've been so frank, I--"

Alverna interrupted pertly:

"I thought I'd kind of pointed out to you two birds that little Alvy hassomething to say about what's to--"

"Will you shut up! Both of you!"

The apologetic and broken Joe Easter had turned into the savage fighter.

"I'm gone. Ruined. And worse than that, I've done something I'd alwaysswore I never would: I've tried to run other folks' lives. Always saidI'd take people just as they are, and not expect Reverend Dillon to be agood conscientious drinker or Curly Evans a lay-reader. But I've triedto make you over into a decent woman, Alvy, and you, Ralph, I've triedto prevent you from making a fool of yourself over this girl. Yes, I'vefailed. But I couldn't help it. Say, I wonder if you know that all thetime you two been talking so smart about 'Go on--shoot me,' I beenthinking about doing by God just that?"

In the firelight, in the crimson of the northern afterglow, the barrelof a revolver shone as he held it with a corded hungry hand.

"I thought," he mused, "that I was one fellow that could kind of run hislife philosophical. I was a fool. But it isn't fear of being hung thatkeeps me from killing both of you. It's just-- Oh, God, I am so lonely!I am so licked! Alvy, you've stole all my friends from me--Pop, Curly,now Ralph. You've made them all sneaks. And you've stole yourself fromme. And now you've made me realize that possibly you do have some brainsin your pretty fool head, so I can't bully you any more. Only I am stillgoing to do a little dictating! I want to see what kind of guts thereare in Mr. Ralph Prescott!

"You or me, Alvy, one of us is going to New York with him. He could findme a good job there--say in some big fur business, or camping-goods orsomething. Or else you're going with him, and I'll just disappear. Iknow that-- A fellow learns a lot of this fancy stuff that Ralph callspsychology when he spends a few winters shut up in a cabin with just oneother guy, trapping. I know Ralph thinks I'm about as good a friend,some ways, as he ever hit. He thinks my table-manners are lousy, but Iguess he'd like to drop into my furnished room in New York some evening,my hall-bedroom I guess it'd be, and talk real he-talk, when he wastired of his Sassiety friends. And he's going to choose--and rightnow!--between sticking by me and sticking by you. Ralph, which'll itbe?"

Ralph looked from Joe's weathered face, real as a storm, to Alverna'spretty lips--real as a skylark. And there was no choice. There could beno choice.

But Alverna took that moment to toss back her pale bright hair, with herold flirtatious gesture, and to giggle airily:

"Well, I'll just do the choosing! If dear old Ralphy or anybody elsethinks I'm sitting around waiting to be told--"

"Shut up, will you!"

Both men had spoken at once, and both had spoken with the sameintimidating harshness. Before their joint impatience she faltered andwas still.

From all the risk and uncertainty of these mad improbable days, Ralphwas suddenly delivered. It may be that he became sensible, it may bethat he sank again into the cowardice of his old sheltered life.Certainly he fled from the turmoil of Alverna's allurement, andgratefully regained the security of Joe Easter's companionship.

"Would you really like to go to New York, Joe?"

"Yes. Sure."

Still more was the mild but sagacious Mr. Prescott returning toexistence. After weeks of numbed distress and uselessness, his brain wasclicking as once it had clicked over legal problems.

Yes, it would be pleasant to have Joe Easter somewhere about--oh, notmake him miserable by having him in for dinners when there weresupercilious golden women, with their pretty urgent trivialities, buthave him as companion for long Sunday tramps on Staten Island, when theywould remember how virile and extraordinary they had once been in theromantic Far North--

"We could find something worth while for you, Joe. For instance, Fulton& Hutchinson, where I got my camping-kit--they always needsporting-experts, I fancy. And I have a friend who has a big fur-dealerfor client, and a chap that imports from Siberia and North China. Youknow--sables. Surely. We'd find something. Will you come?"

"All right," said Joe.

Alverna rose, slowly.

"So I'm out of it," she murmured. "The woman gets about her usual deal.And you two birds--" She made her voice defiantly gay. "Well, you canboth go to the devil!"

Quietly she huddled her blankets about her and went, it seemed, tosleep. Ralph heard her sobbing later.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ralph was conscious, in the night, that the wind had shifted. It blewgustily under the edge of his blankets, though at retiring it had merelyruffled his hair. He was conscious, too, that the ceaseless odor ofsmoke was stronger, but he was too fagged to awaken completely.

Then Joe was twitching at his shoulder. He saw that in the vacuous lastdarkness Joe and Alverna and Saul, the Indian, were standing between himand the wan lake, and Joe was growling: "Get up. Quick! Forest fireheaded this way."

The air was full of a subdued yet giant roaring; and all the sky toeastward was glowing with muddy crimson, surging with clouds of blacksmoke.

"Hustle!" Joe ordered them. "Get everything aboard!"

They fled to the pile of food; they pantingly rolled up blankets andchucked them into Joe's canoe. Now, burning branches were falling aboutthem and hissing in the lake. The fire was nearer; they could see it asa curtain against which tall black pines were etched. In the creepingglare, Joe was a wild-haired maniac as he seized boxes, dumped them intothe canoe. Saul was green with fear, and Alverna was an insane gypsy,her white throat blood-red.

"Ralph! You get in the canoe with Alverna," Joe shouted. "Saul can runthe motor. He'll tow me, in your canvas boat."

Alverna whispered to Ralph in awe, "He's trying to get himselfkilled--for us!"

There was no self--though perhaps there was no great heroism--in theshaky voice with which Ralph urged: "No, you go in the canoe, Joe. I'mlighter. Waves are still high and--" It took an agonized wrench to sayit; the waves were high, and he did not vastly care for them. "Canvasboat likely to swamp--"

Joe was running him toward the canoe, with cruel steel fingers at theback of his neck; Joe was bellowing: "Have I got to argue abouteverything? Do as I tell you, will yuh?"

Ralph was in the canoe, at the bow, which sickeningly rose to the abruptwaves. Alverna was behind him, and Saul was trying to start the motor,while Joe made fast the towrope to the folding boat and pushed the canoeout from shore. Then Ralph was too grimly dipping his paddle, urging thecanoe away from that horror of thundering flame, to think of anythingelse in the world. He scarce knew when the motor started. He paddled asthough the motor were not running, as though he alone could save them,while each second the lake was a more terrifying debauch of reflectedflame.

Half a mile out, Saul stopped the motor. They looked back. Theshore-line was a furnace, to the end of the point. As the blaze reachedfrom bluff to bluff, sometimes fantastically skipping a hundred yards,the dry pines did not so much catch fire as explode like kindledcelluloid, hurling up embers.

The fire traveled quickly. At dawn, though the mossy ground stillsmoldered, the curtain of flame was gone. But what had been a placidbank of green was now a stretch of tragic black skeletons of trees.

Just when Alverna had crawled forward in the canoe and piteously takenhis hand, Ralph did not remember, but there she was, small anddirty-faced and dear.

He heard Joe call from the folding boat:

"That's over. Let's go ashore and boil the kettle." And Joe stood up, onthe edge of the shallow boat--rather riskily, Ralph thought. With thegreatest deliberation, so slowly that Ralph could not believe it, theboat turned over, and Joe disappeared in the waves.

They saw him go under. When he came up, snorting the water out of hisnostrils, shaking his tousled head, he was thirty feet away. Had he beenswimming under water? He went down again, came up, headed for the canoe,and seized the gunwale.

As Ralph and Alverna reached over to haul him aboard, he spoke:

"Just a minute. Ralph, here's a funny thing--what a fool a fellow canbe! I'll bet this'll give you a laugh! I didn't mean to come up again,now I've helped get you out of the fire. Thought I could clear the wayfor you. Thought I could stay under water. But it hurt mynose"--pathetically--"and the water was so doggone cold! I'm a failureagain--failure in everything. But I can still do it. If you want me tocome aboard, you got to say so. Here's your chance to get rid of me!"

His head, raised just above the bobbing of the gunwale, out in thatsurly stretch of lake, was the gnawed and dripping head of a drownedman, and the eyes that once had blazed with such dry and incorruptibleblue flame were red now and a little mad.

"Have I done this thing to this good man?" Ralph agonized. "Have I lethim welcome me into his life and then hurt him like this? How I hatemyself--and how I love her!"

Even as he meditated, he was raging aloud, "Joe, if you drown, I'll jumpin after you--"

Alverna cut through the tragedy with a cool swift humanness: "JoeEaster, you quit being a chump! Crawl in here now, will you, or you'llcatch your deathacold. Oh, shut up! And you too, Ralph. Here, give hima hand. Catch your foot up over the edge, Joe, will you!"

And, as Joe came meekly aboard: "Here's a pretty goings-on! Don't sit onthat flour, Joe; you'll get it soaked. Put this blanket around you. Dowhat I tell you! Now you listen to me, you two brats!... Gaw, whatbabies all men are! Wanting to be heroes or some fool thing!... Thisis all the talking we're going to do. From here to Winnipeg we talkabout the crops. And that ends it, see?"

They did talk of the crops--a hesitating Joe and a humble Ralph. But itwas not the end.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The three who waited in the station at Winnipeg for the Minneapolistrain had little resemblance to the charcoal-burners who had comestaggering into the amazed settlement of Whitewater. Ralph was smug nowin gray flannels and rather a neat thing in the way of a blue and whiteshirt. (He was a man who could always be fitted in ready-mades.) JoeEaster was shaggier, but all his wildness was gone in respectable browngarments which his wife had, without giving him a voice, chosen for him.And Alverna had--

She was a manicure girl, hard and glittering, too bright of cheek andmuch too bright of voice.

During their ten minutes of waiting they strove strenuously to avoidsincerity of speech. They scrambled for something jolly and interestingto say about the station and the passengers and the weather.

When the train was made up, Alverna mocked them in the voice of aparrot:

"Now don't let me keep you boys any longer. The red-cap will get mystuff aboard."

She gave a hand to each. They mooned at her like schoolboys.

"Gosh, better let us see you on the train," quacked Joe; and "Oh, wemust take you to the sleeper!" said Ralph; and there was not apennyworth to choose between them for abashed awkwardness.

"All right, dearies. Gee, you certainly cheer me up a lot!" she said;and muffle-footed they followed her and her attendant luggage-carrierdown the platform to the sleeping-car. Stupid-eyed, they watched her asshe snappishly showed her coupon to the Pullman porter.

She stood staring at them.

"Good-by," she said.

Then, as the bemused males, sloths in a slothful nightmare, slowlymoving and slowly rising to wretchedness, slowly revolving the matter offarewell kisses, opened their mouths to produce suitable sentiments, sheturned human again for one instant:

"You poor kids! You talking children, that don't know anything aboutanything that matters! Don't you see? I can't play either of your games.I'm me! I'm going to be me! Oh, if you do love me a little, let me beme! Good-by. No! Please! Don't come in the car with me!"

They stood on the platform, gawping through the window at her as shesettled in the tiny home of her Pullman seat. They saw her taking offher hat and daintily--too daintily, too airily--tucking it into thepaper bag supplied by the admiring porter. They saw her fluffing backher hair with the familiar toss of her white wrists, her frail andshining hands. They saw her attentively observing her face in a pocketmirror and powdering her nose. And not once did she look out to findthem.

"I can't stand it!" growled Joe.

"Neither can I," said Ralph.

And the two men prowled toward the end of the platform, hands inpockets, not glancing at each other, apparently uninterested in eachother, yet closer bound by their common love for a flighty and worthlessand altogether gallant wench than they could ever have been by facingdeath together.

They were standing at the end of the platform, trying to look as thoughthey were looking intelligently at a pile of beams and rails, when theMinneapolis train started, gained speed, and passed them. Then they sawthat Alverna was no longer airily making her toilet but sitting with herhead bowed in trembling hands.

"Have men and women always got to hurt each other this way?" criedRalph.

"Yes. Anybody that ain't content with being a peddler is going to hurthimself and everybody else, I guess," said Joe. "And now, Ralph--lookhere. We've been turned upside-down by things bigger than weare--enemies that sneak by night, friends we couldn't trust, fire andstorm, and a woman. But now you go back and be a real fellow again, andI'll stay here and earn my living. You don't want to drag me along toNew York. Your being willing to get me a job there is real nice, but Icussed you into thinking of taking me, and of course it's all bunk. Imean it. Hell, Ralph, I don't entirely blame you for falling in lovewith Alvy. I did myself! But it's all over, and now it's time for you togo back where you belong, and forget me."

"But, Joe-- Yes, you did suggest it first, my starting you off in NewYork, but you were dead right. Look here."

For Ralph to complete his proof that it would be Joe's ultimatehappiness to accompany him to New York took two hours, during which(while the Minneapolis train clicked on the rails) they wandered throughWinnipeg and discovered a totally illegal public house at which they hadexcellent Scotch.

Now that he was among city streets again, Ralph was triumphant. Hediscovered that, to Joe, cities and the roar thereof were more dismayingthan any rapids. In proportion as he waxed metropolitan and eloquent,Joe grew meek; and as Joe had been his lordly guide at Mantrap, so washe lordly in plans for their joint future in New York. It may have beenthe rediscovery of loyal friendship, it may have been the lonelinessthat was inherent in the very air after Alverna's going, and it may havebeen merely the Scotch, but certainly he found himself outlining aManhattan future in which Joe and he would, at considerable profit andenormous enjoyment, found a sports-shop of their own.

So in great discussion and amity they came to the hotel.

They had arrived from Whitewater in the morning, just in time to buyclothes. Ralph had not seen the hotel; he had merely sent his clothesthere from the shops.

"Say, Ralph, you stay here, but I better go down to the Nipigon House,where I always stay," sighed Joe. "Gee, this place is too swell for me.Looks like a cathedral. And too expensive!"

"You're going to be my guest here, as I was yours at Mantrap," saidRalph, brightly, snappily, efficiently. "Honestly, Joe, I have plenty ofcash--and right with me--travelers' checks. Listen, Joe: won't you giveme the pleasure of entertaining you?"

"Well, all right, if you sure-enough want to."

The corridor of the hotel was a Gothic graystone aisle, with tallbrocade chairs adorned with the royal arms and occupied by cynicalflappers waiting for handsome men. Ralph strode the corridorhaughtily.... He did not know it, but he was mutely saying tohovering bellboy and cynical flapper and handsome suitor, "I am not thegreasy and tattered hobo who arrived in town this morning, but Mr. RalphPrescott of the Yale Club, New York!"

His heels clicked aggressively on the shiny stone pavement. But JoeEaster's footsteps were shuffling and afraid.

As he came to the long marble desk to register, Ralph heard:

"Well, Prescott! For heaven's sake! What are you doing out here?"

It was a robust and caviar-fed voice. Ralph peered at the owner of it,and discovered one James Worthington Virey, vice-president of the DorcasFidelity and Trust Company, of New York, and fellow-member of theBuckingham Moors Country Club.

They said, "Well, well!" They said, "Well, isn't this amazing!" Ralphmodestly admitted that he had been doing rather heroic things in theperilous northern wilds. Mr. Virey let it be known that he was lookinginto a million-dollar estate of which his firm was executor.

Meanwhile Joe stood behind them, uncomfortably resting his weight now onone foot, now on the other.

Virey insisted: "Prescott, if you've just come to town--I do wish you'ddo something for me. I have to go to a party here this evening--Scotchand bond-talk, I should think. I don't really know a soul who'll bethere except for meeting them at business lunches--that sort of thing.Do come with me. I'll telephone the host and have him invite you."

"I--"

Ralph came to a full stop.

"I," he said, "am here with my friend Mr. Easter--head of the EasterTrading Company, you know.... Mr. Virey, Mr. Easter.... It wouldbe very nice to go, after all these weeks in the wilds, but--If youthink they might care to invite Mr. Easter, too--"

All the while he was chirping, Ralph was wretchedly conscious that hewas lying; that there was no longer any Easter Trading Company; that inits heyday it had been but three log cabins; and that he was ashamed tosay: "I am a poor weakling, by undeserved good fortune delivered fromhell; and this is my friend Joe, a crude fellow who chews tobacco andbelieves in Dickens and who is altogether more gallant than you or I canever be; and I'll see you farther before I'll go to a twittering partytonight."

But he heard Mr. Virey elaborately saluting the great Joseph Easter,president of the Easter Trading Company; he heard Joe muttering,"Pleased meetch." He registered for himself and Joe, and with acerbitydemanded a suite of two bedrooms, two baths, and a sitting-room. Heheard Mr. Virey chanting that indeed he would call up his host anddiscover whether his enchanting friends Mr. Prescott and Mr. Easterwould be altogether welcome at the party; and that, so soon as he shouldhave done so, he would inform Mr. Prescott.

They all did a great deal of cool but polite handshaking; and Ralph andJoe found themselves in their suite.

There was a bright, intimate little sitting-room with chintz armchairs,a magenta-shaded light on the table, a buffet with Montreal-Venetiancocktail glasses, and etchings on tapestry wall-paper. In the twobedrooms were blue silk comforters, very pleasant. And the bathroomswere of marble and nickel and tile.

Joe wandered through the suite. He stared at the etchings. With a shyred stubby finger he touched a silver and pale green table runner. Hepatted the springy beds, like a good housewife renting an apartment. Butit was the glass and nickel enclosure of the shower-bath which made himhalt.

He stood before it like a farmer in a Paris dressmaker's shop.

"Gosh, can you beat it, Ralph! Say, I wouldn't never dast strip down tomy old hide and take a bath in that glass closet. Somebody might come inand snicker at me! And with that long looking-glass on the door-- Imust be getting modest! And the parlor with all those little lights andsilk shades like shimmy-shirts-- Ralph, there's no place where you canspit here! You better let me hoof it back to the Nipigon House."

"You'll get used to it in two days. Why, in a week you'll be kickingbecause the towels are too small."

Ralph unfolded a six-foot Turkish splendor.

Joe stared at it with dropping jaw. "That--a towel? I thought it was acarpet!" He touched it. "Say, a fellow could dry himself on that for twoyears! No sir, I just couldn't do it--I couldn't get it all dirty. I'vedone too much clothes-washing myself. Nope. It's too rich for me. Andlook, Ralph: I don't want to butt in on your party tonight. I'd justdisgrace you. You go ahead and forget me. I'll chase myself out to amovie."

"Nonsense. Tell 'em some stories about the North. You'll give 'em atremendous thrill. You'll be the hit of the evening."

Mr. James Worthington Virey arrived just then. Yes, indeed; oh, rather;his host for the evening, one Colonel Ackers, insisted that Mr. Prescottand Mr. Easter should come. A simple little gathering, with perhaps adrink. Colonel Ackers wanted to hear about their northern trip, aboutthe forest fires, about the Indians' credit.

"We have no evening clothes with us," hinted Ralph.

"Doesn't matter.... And you'll come, Easter? Colonel Ackers will behorribly disappointed if you don't."

Thus besought, Joe could not refuse. But when Virey was gone he viewedhis brown suit gloomily in the long mirror; he tried to turn his shockof gray-shot rusty hair into the sleekness of a movie actor by soakingit with water and assaulting it with a hairbrush till he grunted withthe pain; and most painfully did he pare and scrape his nails with anenormous jackknife, despite the training of the manicure girl, Alverna.

It was with apprehension that he followed Ralph to the vast dining-room.

After weeks of squatting over a tin plate of bacon, Ralph franklyenjoyed the magnificence of the dining-room: the arched Caen-stoneceiling, the tapestries hung between cathedral windows, the gold andcrimson chairs which would have been proper thrones for Spanisharchbishops. But as he marched after the head-waiter, enjoying the cheaptriumph of being recognized as probably a good patron, he glanced backat Joe and found him moving in agonized awe, rigidly keeping himselffrom looking at the pretty women while he risked the league-long passageto their table.

Joe permitted himself to be inserted into a chair by the head-waiter.Ralph saw that his forehead was shining wet. Joe held the menu off atarm's length and peered at its serried display incredulously. Some oneat the next table tittered. Hastily Joe laid the menu down, thrust bothhands into his trousers pockets, snatched them out again, dropped themon the table, then hid their red chunkiness in his lap.

"Find something you like, Joe? Or shall I order for you?"

"I guess--I guess maybe I'd like some bacon," said Joe wistfully.

"Haven't you had enough of it in the North?"

"Ye-eh--"

For a moment the head-waiter turned his head away, and Joe seized thesecond of safety to whisper: "That's the only human food I can see onthe bill of fare! For Pete's sake, you order for me. Ralph, I can't doit! Too rich for me!"

"You wait. Why, man, you're just the person that ought to stay here,that ought to see New York. You'll have so much novelty out of it,once you get over being awed--"

"Yuh, plenty of novelty, but meantime I'll starve! Think I'd ever facethis place alone? Only time I ever did go into a big hotel dining-roomwas with Alverna, like I told you about."

"It's going to be my business, old man, to see that you have the fun ofbeating the big cities. I'm making plans. Ten years from now you'll be apartner in Fulton & Hutchinson. And now let me order. Let's see if I cando as well as Alverna."

Ralph was tempted by terrapin soup, by squab in casserole, by mushroomsunder glass, but he ordered, in a lively hope of convincing Joe that theenvironment of the rich was not without delights, a noble pea-soup,steak with a whole harem of vegetables, and an ice like a puzzle.

They fell silent. Joe's mention of Alverna had brought her back. (Wasshe dining alone now on the train? Was she dining alone?) Here, inthis jungle of velvet and cut-glass, he felt the clear quiet days onlake and barren foreshore; he ached for her smutted cheeks, her gaylycocked eye, her loud and joyous laugh.

He peered at Joe, and suddenly: "Hang it," he sighed, "I believe we'reboth lonely for her!"

"Yes. I am. I always will be. But for her sake, Ralph--me because I'mtoo poor and you because you're too rich--we got to stay away from her."

"Yes. Probably. Then-- Joe, we must try to make something big andenduring out of friendship. You know, I probably need you growling atme, to keep from falling back into being a busy little lawyer."

"You don't need anybody."

"Anyway, you are coming to New York."

"Well-- But let me warn you that I'm going to hunt me up a hash house,with sawdust on the floor and a waiter that wears sleeve-garters and nocollar, and once a day I'm going in there and spit on the floor andholler, 'Hey, bring me some ham and beans and be damn' quick about it orI'll knock your block off!' Then--maybe--I can last through. Golly! Whata steak!"

Ralph's cunning was successful. The sight of that lordly beef, decoratedwith peas, carrots, gaufrette potatoes, and crisp fried onions, gave Joea new and interesting prospect of the possibilities of life; and whenJames Worthington Virey picked them up, at nine, Joe was apparentlyconvinced that New York might be something besides an ambuscade ofpretty women and lofty waiters, all laughing at him.

Mr. Virey had acquired, by means unchronicled, a temporary limousine.Joe settled into the upholstery, gently patting a stomach glowing withbeautiful food, and beamed on the world. He looked almost idioticallycontent. Ralph wondered, with slight alarm, if he had had too much todrink, for Virey had produced a bottle of Scotch in their suite. But hecould remember Joe's taking only one mild whisky-soda; and he forgot hisalarm as Virey chattered:

"Oh, by the way; forgot to tell you. You went North with a fellow namedWoodbury--member of our country club--didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Did you two--um--uh--did you break-up?"

"Yes, and I don't know but what I feel a little guilty about it. Ithought Woodbury was too talkative, in fact I couldn't stand being withhim any more; but I'm not sure it wasn't a rotten thing to leave him."

"I understand. Personally, I've always regarded him as a loud-mouthedcharlatan. I was surprised when you went with him, and I'm not surprisedthat you left him. But here's the funny thing: He came through Winnipegthe other day. I ran into him at the hotel. He volunteered that he hadchucked you, deserted you, because you were so highbrow that he wasbored! He sounded fishy. Never did like him. By the way, Prescott--yousaid Easter and you were going to New York. I wonder if we couldn't gotogether. I'll have to leave tomorrow evening."

"Splendid! Let's," said Ralph.

He was exultant. Alverna would do something vague, but admirable andenjoyable and highly cultural in Minneapolis. He would make Joe acommercial success in New York. Sometime, parentally andphilanthropically, he would reunite the transformed Alverna to thegilded Joe. They would be his friends. He would be godfather, uncle, andgeneral benefactor to their children. And now Woodbury had, by hislying, excused Ralph's desertion.

Everything was beautifully straight and clear and satisfactory.

So he came, full of nobility and lyrics, to the abode of Colonel Ackers.

The Colonel was something in wheat, something in railroads, something inbanks, and he had built a residence roughly the size of Windsor Castleand considerably more modern. It had three drawing-rooms, a library withseveral books, and a pipe-organ said by the Chamber of Commerceguide-book to be the largest organ north of St. Louis.

The party was rather mild. Several industrious couples danced to theradio, and a number of men applied themselves to a library table setforth with Scotch, gin, Grand Marnier, and Napoleon IV brandy. Butmostly the party consisted of solid-bottomed men who stood before afireplace adorned with elk heads, bear heads, mountain-goat heads, andstuffed fish, and discussed the rust in the wheat crop.

They made much of Joe Easter. They asked his opinion of Mantrap Rivermuskalonge and the quality of muskrat hides.

Joe had entered rather shyly, craning up at the electrolier in thehallway and the cherubs which frothed along the ceiling. He merely gapedat the footman who held out a languid hand for his hat, and gave up thatgarment of virility with reluctance. When he was introduced to thegolden hostess, to her silver daughter and a confusing host of otherprecious and metallic ladies, he sweated perceptibly, and he muttered,imperceptibly, "Pleased meet you--I didn't quite catch the name."

"It's going to be a job to teach him to be easy with strangers,"reflected Ralph. "God, I am so lonely for Alverna! I should never havegiven her up--"

But Joe, when he was surrounded by men who, however portly with bankingand the law, were yet conceivable as amateur fishermen, was only tooeasy. Ralph watched uncomfortably while he told hunting stories. Joe'svoice became louder; more and more the damn's rollicked into his tales;and they were good lusty damn's, which could be heard in the room givenover to dancing.

And once Joe backslapped a fidgety little millionaire with eyeglasses ona silk ribbon. That was before he began to drink.

Pendulum-like, Joe visited the whisky table, and while Ralph loyallykept away from him, loyally sat in the shade and tried not to spy, hecould see that Joe was holding up the whisky bottle a long time wheneverhe poured a drink for himself.

The effect was dismaying.

Joe told of the missionary into whose church entered a bear, and thatwas a story delightful in bachelor log cabins but unexpected before themahogany fireplace of Colonel Henry Tudor Ackers, with flapperslistening from the doorway. He called the fidgety and silk-ribbonedmillionaire by his first name. And he offered to dance a Highland fling.

He made the offer after every drink, and he desisted only when ColonelAckers said sharply, "I don't think you better, my friend."

All the while, Ralph perceived that Virey, who was responsible for theircoming, was looking appealing. But he insisted to himself: "Oh, let 'emall go hang! If they don't appreciate Joe, they're fools. Even if he islit, he's worth ten thousand of these fat money-grubbers.... Only Idon't suppose I'd care much for it if he acted like this some eveningwhen I had Conny and Dick and Mrs. Sandal at the flat.... Curse itall!... I am so lonely for her!"

It was not till Ackers shot out his rebuke about the Highland fling thatRalph took Joe aside and begged: "Careful, old man. You're getting alittle edged. They might--uh--misjudge you. I don't believe I'd tell allthose stories, not with the ladies right in the next room."

Joe looked at him dully, and grumbled: "Ah, t' hell with 'em! I didn'twanna come. Now I--now I--now got here, going have goo' time. Bunch ofangle-worms."

Virey indicated to Ralph, with a tilt of his head, that they might welltake leave, and with loud false cheerfulness Ralph announced to ColonelAckers: "Afraid we must be going. We had such a long train trip."

"I do' wanna go home!" protested Joe.

With shame burning him, with all the human owls gloating over them,Ralph piped: "Oh, you must, Joe. I'm so tired. Just dead tired!"

Joe came meekly enough. The only unfortunate incident on the way out wasthat, as he shook hands with their hostess, Joe stumbled a little androared: "G'night, Mrs. Ackerstein. Had hell of a good time!"

And the family Ackers were prominent enough in Winnipeg, and Joe hadbeen coming to Winnipeg long enough, so that he should have known thename.

There were numerous and violent currents of thought in the limousine ontheir way home, but a total lack of words.

Joe got himself through the door of their suite, stupidly pawing at thedoor-handle, falling over the chairs inside, feeling his way along thewall, dropping fully dressed on his bed, and immediately snoring in hisblind drunkenness. Ralph tried to lift himself to such heights as tohelp Joe undress and get him into the shower-bath, but he could not. Hewas so tired--so tired.

For hours Ralph tramped the floor of his bedroom, and the course of afly circling in a hot room would have been more direct than a chart ofhis thoughts.

For all that he had been a lawyer dealing with every conflict andconfusing shade of ethics, his own standards of conduct had been simpleenough. A man was either a Good Fellow or a Rotter. A man did not makelove to his friends' wives. A man did not, simply could not, be a stanchand dependable chap and still, after a few drinks, sink into smut andraucousness. And now--

He had admired Joe's integrity as greater than that of any man he hadever encountered. He had given him an unspoken pledge of loyalty. He hadfled from what might have been healing peace to avoid making love toJoe's wife.

And he had taken Joe's wife with him on that flight!

And Joe--one to shoot first and talk afterward--had feebly talked firstand failed to shoot at all; he had saved both their lives fromstarvation, perhaps from forest fire; and, by some twisted process notat all in accord with the straight cleavage of human motives to be foundin the books, had given his friendship in exchange for his wife! Andfinally, after betraying himself as a hero in private, he had betrayedhimself socially as a bumptious fool.

Ralph held his head; all the sterling principles which, he believed, hadguided him through the complexities of New York, had been found shakyand meaningless in a log cabin, a foodless camp, a profiteer'sdrawing-room.

But whatever his confusion he held stubbornly to his plan that Joeshould come with him to New York and find there, now that all his lifeof Mantrap Landing was broken and all his joy in Alverna ended, a newand solacing world.

"My friends have always done the right thing--and the uninterestingthing. Poor Joe! No wonder he was upset by that movie-lobby housetonight. I'll make up to him for Alverna.

"Only who's going to make up to me for Alverna?

"And if Joe wouldn't get drunk and make a fool of himself!

"So lonely for her, always--"

Chapter Twenty-Six

When Ralph awoke, very late, he found Joe (slightly comic in newlavender pajamas) steadily smoking, and staring at him.

"Afraid I was kind of stewed, last night," said Joe.

"You were!"

"Too darn' bad. But you better get used to it, if I'm coming to NewYork. Only-- Say, Ralph, no matter what I do, you got to remember thatI've liked you a lot, a whale of a lot, and I've always made a stab attrying to treat people that I'm fond of--you or Alvy or Pop Buck oranybody--the way I think they'll like it best in the long run, not theway that shows off best in the store-window."

Before Ralph, a bit testy in want of morning coffee, could framesomething neat to the effect that in the long run he would prefer Joenot to get drunk in public, the villain of the piece had paddled out ofthe room, on his raw red bare feet, and was to be heard screaming underhis cold shower.

They were starting for New York that evening, with James WorthingtonVirey. The evening before, Ralph had telephoned to Virey, withapologies, and Virey had consented to giving Joe one more chance.

All day they drifted about Winnipeg. Joe refused to let Ralph furtherfill out his wardrobe, but he gave to all of Ralph's remarks the meekinterest of repentance.

Once or twice Joe tried to hint that it would perhaps be better if hedid not go to New York. Ralph, determined to benefit Joe and to benefithim right, made it clear that he would stay right here in Winnipeg tillJoe did consent to go. Thus at last he conquered.

In the afternoon, Joe insisted on taking all their luggage to the train.

"No need of that. Bring our bags along with us in the taxi."

"Well, I want to be sure everything will be aboard when we get there,"said Joe, and, nettled by this unexpected fussiness, Ralph snapped, "Oh,all right."

The train left at nine in the evening. Ralph and Joe and Virey had arather sulky dinner at the hotel, and rather sulkily they drove to thetrain.

Joe had not only taken the baggage to the station but, explaining thathe distrusted the hotel porter, obtained their Pullman accommodations: acompartment for Ralph and Virey, a berth for himself. Aboard the train,Ralph found his new suitcase safely stowed in the compartment.

"Your berth all right? Your stuff there, Joe?" he inquired.

"Sure, you bet."

"All right, let's all settle down comfortably here in the compartmentand perhaps have a game of cards."

"I want a little fresh air. Let's walk up and down till we start,"complained Joe.

"Not for me. I stay put," said Virey.

It was because he was so irritated that he could not trust himself todiscuss it that Ralph morosely followed Joe out of the Pullman, alongthe platform.

And Joe had the most inane things to say:

"Well, gosh, I hope you enjoyed some features about being in the North,Ralph."

"Certainly. Why not!"

"And I hope you'll forgive me for pinching Alvy off you."

"Don't be silly. Naturally, it was your right--"

"I don't know as I know much about what's right and what's wrong.But-- Say, that first meal we had at Mantrap tasted pretty good, afterbeing out on the trail, didn't it! Pretty good. Not that it was so much,I mean, but you know, after chawing bacon and so on-- Eh, pretty good,eh?"

Ralph had no answer to these asinine recollections. He was dismallythinking of New York and of Joe's doubtful place there.

"All abooooooard!" sang the trainmen.

Joe motioned to Ralph to go first, and Ralph mechanically clumped up thecar steps.

Suddenly the dull-eyed, drooping-shouldered, drawling Joe, with hisobservations about the joys of eating tomatoes, straightened up. Hiseyes were bright, his voice miserable yet alive:

"Just forget us! We'll pull through. You're free of us now. Keep free.Good luck, you old cuss!"

Ralph stared down from the vestibule as the train creaked into motion.Did Joe mean that he was not going--

He started to climb down the steps. The Pullman porter rudely draggedhim back into the vestibule and slammed the door between him and thesteps. And the train was really in motion. Joe was down on the platform,trotting beside them, waving his hat.

Having closed the door, the porter had darted away. Ralph leaped intothe adjoining vestibule. That door was closed as well, and how to openit he had no notion. He ran violently through the next Pullman,startling the old ladies who were peeping into their straw suitcases,and found a door still open. He leaned out, holding by the steeldoor-jamb. But the train was going too fast for him to leap, and he sawJoe plodding along the station platform, his back turned--the dejectedback of an old and hopeless man who in his day has borne great burdenswithout reward.

Utterly puzzled, wondering whether Joe had managed to get drunk againand conceal it till now, Ralph poked back to his compartment, to takecounsel with Virey.

He encountered his Pullman porter, who besought: "Excuse me for slammingthe door that way. The gentleman on the platform, he made me promise Iwouldn't let you leave the train."

Ralph was too confused to answer. To Virey he worried: "Can't understandit. Joe wouldn't get on the train."

"Curious fellow," said Virey. "By the way, he asked me to give you thisnote after we started."

Ralph read, in Joe's neat storekeeper's hand:

"Friend Ralph: I don't seem to be able to persuade you am not a good person to take along no matter what I do & disgrace you etc. Am afraid you might persuade me to go, guess am not a very strong character and you're a great old persuader. So will just avoid argument, it might get us both sore & would not like that. Maybe I will be a little lonely but do not worry am a great hand at picking up friends. Come back to Canada some time. Good luck & God bless you. God bless you!

"JOE."

While Ralph tapped his fingers on the note, in perplexity, Vireyrepeated, "Yes, a curious fellow."

"He certainly is. I don't get him at all," mused Ralph. "He's alwaysbeen a man of some dignity and restraint. Yet the way he acted lastevening-- Why, it almost made me not want to take him to New York.But"--proudly--"I stuck by my resolution. But I can't understand how hecould possibly have got so drunk."

"I wonder if he did."

"Didn't you see him--hear him!"

"Yes, but I sat farther down the room than you did, nearer the tablewith the booze. Did you notice what he did with the whisky bottle?"

"I certainly did! He poured out half a tumblerful, every drink!"

"Wasn't his back to you?"

"Yes, but I could see his arm."

"I could see his hand. The bottles, you may remember, were thenon-refillable kind, with tiny little mouths. I noticed that Easterwould first pour a lot of ginger ale into his glass, then take thewhisky bottle--but he kept his finger over the mouth of the bottle allthe time. I don't think he took one drop of liquor; I don't think hedrank anything stronger than ginger ale, the whole evening. I wonderwhat he was up to, anyway. Maybe trying to persuade you that he wasdrunk or--"

"And this train," Ralph said savagely, "doesn't stop for miles, and thenI'll be too confoundedly sane, after talking to you, to jump out andgo back.... Just this second I've realized I'd been planning to go toMinneapolis--to see a girl. Now I never can.... I feel a littletired, Virey. Let's not talk. Shall we play some cards?... But thedear Lord help Wes Woodbury when he opens up on me!"

[End of Mantrap, by Sinclair Lewis]