VII
_ROULANT MA BOULE_
AT the disappearance of the canoe Prime called the halt which the blackdarkness was insisting upon, and they made their way back in the teethof the storm to the camp-fire. In a few minutes the summer squall hadblown itself out, with scarcely enough rain to make a drip from thetrees. Weary as he was, Prime took the axe, searched until he found apine stump, and from it hewed the material for a couple of torches. Withthese for light they set out doggedly down-stream in search of theirlost hope.
Happily, since they were both fagged enough to drop in their tracks, thebirch-bark was discovered stranded on their side of the river a hundredyards below the lower rapid. This time they ran no risks, and, though itcost them a half-hour of stumbling toil, they did not rest until theyhad carried the canoe around the rapid to place it high and dry in thelittle glade where they had made their camp.
The next morning found them plentifully stiff and sore from theirstrenuous exertions of the day before, but there was good cheer in thethought that thus far they had triumphed stoutly over difficulty anddisaster.
"I feel as if I couldn't put one foot before the other, and I am sureyou must be in the same condition," Prime groaned, over the secondhelping of fried potatoes and bacon, served in Domestic Science's beststyle. "Just the same, I mean to take a dose of the hair of the dog thatbit me and go up after the remainder of our loot. While I am doing ityou must stay here and watch the canoe, to see that it doesn't run awayagain. I wouldn't trust it a single minute, even on dry land."
"No," was the firm rejoinder. "You must get the sex idea out of yourhead once for all, Donald. It will be time enough for you to make iteasy for me when I need it worse than I do now."
"Yesterday I said you were a wonder, Lucetta; to-day I rise to remarkthat you are two wonders, and mighty plucky ones at that."
"And to-morrow I shall be three wonders, and the next day four, and soon to infinity, I suppose," she said, laughing. "By the way, speaking ofdays, what day is this?"
Prime drew a notched twig from his pocket.
"Don't ever say after this that I am not the original Robinson Crusoe,"he grinned. "I cut this twig the second day, just before we began thehike for the river." Then he counted up: "According to my almanac, thisought to be Monday--wash-day."
"Then yesterday was Sunday, which is why we had all our bad luck. Weought to have gone to church. Is it possible that we were both in Quebecno longer ago than last Tuesday night? It seems as if months had elapsedsince then--months, I said, but I ought to have said ages."
"Are things changing for you so radically, then?" he asked.
"They are, indeed. And for you?"
"Yes; I guess so. For one thing, I have discovered the habitat of abouta million muscles that I didn't know I had; and for another----"
"Well?" she challenged, "why don't you say it?"
"I will say it. For another, I have discovered the most remarkable womanthat ever lived."
She laughed joyously. "See what a few days of unavoidable propinquitywill do! But you are mistaken--I'm not especially remarkable. You areonly doing what Mr. Grider said you ought to do--studying the female ofthe species at short range."
"Grider was an ass!" was the impatient rejoinder. "If I had him here I'dduck him in the river in spite of his fifty pounds excess. But thisisn't getting the remainder of the dunnage. Are you quite sure you wantto go along?"
"Quite sure," she returned, and once more they took the riverside trailto the stream-head.
The third carry was lighter than the others had been, and the six-miletramp was the best possible antidote for stiffened joints and lamedmuscles. By the time they had reassembled themselves and theirbelongings in the little glade between the rapids they were both in finefettle, and ready to begin the real journey.
The loading of the canoe was a new thing, but in this they gave commonsense a free rein. The camp stuff and provisions were made into packageswith the blankets and the tent canvas for wrappings; and each packagewas securely lashed beneath the brace-bars of the birch-bark, so that incase of a capsize there would still be some chance for salvage. Prime'sfinal precaution was worthy of a real woodsman. Drying the emptywhiskey-bottle carefully with a wisp of grass, he filled it withmatches, corked it tightly, and skewered it in an inside pocket of hiscoat.
"You are learning," Lucetta observed; and then: "Did you get that out ofa story?"
"No, indeed; I dug it up whole out of my literary imagination. If Ishould tumble overboard you want to be sure to save the pieces, if youever hope to see a fire again. Are we all ready?"
Five minutes later they had taken their lives in their hands and wereshooting the rapids. With the laden canoe the paddling was an entirelydifferent proposition. Mile after mile the quick water held, with onlythe shortest of reaches between Scylla and Charybdis for thebreath-catching. At first the keen strain of it keyed nerve and muscleto the snapping-point; but after a time the fine wine of peril had itsdue and exhilarating effect, and they shouted and laughed, calling toeach other above the turmoil of the waters, gasping joyously when thespray from the white-fanged boulders slapped them in the face, andhaving the luck of the innocent or the drunken, since disaster heldaloof and they escaped with nothing more serious than the spraywettings.
Though light-heartedness thus sat in the saddle--or knelt on thepaddling-mat--prudence was not wholly banished. At noon, when theypulled out at the foot of a quiet reach to make a pot of tea, they foundthat they were at the head of a rapid too swift and tortuous to offeranything but certain catastrophe. While the tea water was heating Primewent ahead to reconnoitre.
"Too many chances," he reported on his return. "And, besides, the carryis only a few hundred yards. It means more hard work, but we can'tafford to run the risk."
"Oh, dear me!" sighed the young woman in mock despair; "have we got tounload that canoe piece by piece, and then carry and load it all overagain?"
"We shall doubtless have to do it so many times that we shall count thatday lost when we are denied the opportunity," Prime laughed. "But,Heaven helping us, we shall make no more three-mile portages, as we didyesterday."
The task did not seem quite so formidable after they had broken theirfast. Moreover, in the repeated packings and unpackings, they weregaining facility. With the dunnage transported they were ready to attackthe birch-bark, and Lucetta had an inspiration.
"Haven't I seen a picture somewhere of the old _voyageurs_ carryingtheir canoes on their heads?" she asked.
"Why, of course!" said Prime. "Why didn't we think of that last night? Ibelieve I could carry it that way alone. Now, then, over she goes andup she goes; you set the pace, and for pity's sake don't stumble."
Nobody stumbled, and in due time the canoe was launched below therapids, was reloaded, and the paddling was resumed. This day, whichended in a snug camp at the foot of a stretch of slow water which hadkept them paddling all the afternoon, was a fair sample of their daysthrough the remainder of the week. Night after night, after they hadbeen shooting rapids, or making long carries, or paddling steadilythrough stretches where the current did not go fast enough for them,Prime found Lucetta's prophecy as to his growth coming true. Day by dayhe was finding himself anew, advancing by leaps and bounds, as itseemed, into a stronger and fresher and simpler manhood.
And as for the young woman--there were times when the realization thatin a few hours of a single mysterious night she had passed from theworld of the commonplace into a world hitherto unpictured even in herwildest imaginings, was graspable, but these moments were rare.Adaptable, even under the fetterings of the conventions, LucettaMillington was finding herself fairly gifted now that the fetteringswere removed. From childhood she had longed for an opportunity toexplore the undiscovered regions of her own individuality, and now theopportunity had come. It pleased her prodigiously to find that Primeseemed not to be even remotely touched by their unchaperoned condition.From the first he
had been merely the loyal comrade, and she triedconsistently to meet him always upon his own ground--tried andsucceeded.
On the Saturday night they found themselves at the head of a longportage, still in the heart of the wilderness, and having yet to see thefirst sign of any human predecessor along the pathway traced through thegreat forest by their little river.
"I can't understand it," Prime said that night over the camp-fire. "Wehave covered a good many miles since last Monday, and still we don'tseem to be getting anywhere. Another thing I don't fancy is the way theriver has changed its course. Have you noticed that for the last threedays it has been flowing mainly northward?"
The young woman became interested at once. "I hadn't noticed it," sheadmitted, and then: "Why don't you like it?"
"Because it seems a bit ominous. It may mean that we were carted clearover to the northern side of the big watershed, though that doesn't seempossible. If we were, we are going painstakingly away from civilizationinstead of toward it. That would account at once for the fact that wehaven't come across any timber-cuttings. The northern rivers all flowinto Hudson Bay."
Lucetta's gaze became abstracted. "Besides that, we are still groping inthe blind alleys of the mysteries," she put in. "Have you given up theMr. Grider idea?"
"I can't give it up wholly and save my sanity," Prime averred. "Think aminute; if we throw that away, what have we to fall back upon? Nothing,absolutely nothing! Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the sane mind.Don't mistake me; I haven't the slightest idea that Grider let us in forany such experience as this, meaning to. But he took a chance, as everypractical joker does, and the result in our case has spelled disaster.I am only hoping that it has spelled disaster for him, too, confoundhim!"
She smiled sweetly.
"Are you calling it disaster now? Only yesterday you said you wereenjoying it. Have you changed your mind?"
"I have, and I haven't. From a purely selfish point of view, I'm havingthe finest kind of a vacation, and enjoying every blessed minute of it.More than that, the raggeder I grow the better I feel. It's perfectlybarbarous, I know; but it is the truth. My compunctions are allvicarious. I shouldn't have had half so much fun if I had gone motoringthrough New England."
The young woman smiled again. "You needn't waste any of the vicariouscompunctions on me. Honestly, Donald, I--I'm having the time of my life.It is the call of the wild, I suppose. I shall go back home, if I everreach home, a perfect savage, no doubt, but the life of the humdrum willnever be able to lay hold of me again, in the sense that it will possessme, as it used to."
Prime's grin was an expression of the purely primitive.
"It is a reversion to type," he asserted, getting up to arrangeLucetta's sleeping-tent. "It makes one wonder if all humanity isn'tbuilt that way; if it wouldn't go back at a gallop if it were given halfa chance."
"I don't call it going back," was the quiet reply. "I feel as if I hadmerely dropped a large number of utterly useless hamperings. Life hasnever seemed so free and completely desirable before, and yet, when wehave been running some of the most terrifying rapids, I have felt that Icould give it up without a murmur if I shouldn't prove big enough tokeep it in spite of the hazards. At such times I have felt that I couldgo out with only one big regret--the thought that I wasn't going to livelong enough to find out _why_ I had to be drowned in the heart of aCanadian forest."
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