Chapter VII: An Emotional Crisis

Toward the end of the fourth day the pack-train wound down a hill to Fort Geikie, and they saw the great river again, that they had been following all the way, but at some distance from the bank. Fort Geikie was no more than a couple of log shacks maintained during the winters as an outpost for trading with the Indians. At present the shacks were boarded up, and the Indians ranging away to the north and the west.

The prairie came to an abrupt end here, and immediately before them rose the steep foothills, with the mountains proper looking over their heads behind. Around a point off to the left the river issued foaming from between grim, hewn walls of rock. Up and down river it was called significantly, "Hell's Back door." "Hell's Opening," it followed, was at the other end of the canyon. For upward of twenty miles between the river roared down in unchecked fury, grinding the drift-logs to shreds.

The log shacks stood in the middle of another grassy esplanade, but here elevated high above the river. The party camped on the edge of the steep bank, with a lovely prospect visible from the tent openings. The river was swifter and much narrower here; far below them lay a thin island, and beyond, the river stretched away like a broad silver ribbon among its hills, the whole mellowed and glowing in the late sunshine.

As soon as the horses were turned out Jack made his way to Sir Bryson.

The governor led him into the tent. "Well?" he said, seating himself, and carefully matching his finger-tips.

"My instructions were to take you to the big canyon," said Jack. "Here we are at the lower end of it. Do you want to make a permanent camp here, or to push farther on?"

"Let me see," said Sir Bryson. Producing a paper from his pocket, he spread it on the table. Jack saw that it was a handmade map. "The lower end of the canyon," he repeated to himself. "That will be here," and he put his finger on a spot.

Jack's natural impulse was to walk around the table, and look at the map over Sir Bryson's shoulder. As he did so, Sir Bryson snatched it up, and held it against his breast like a child whose toy is threatened by another child.

Jack, with a reddening face, retired around the table again. "I beg your pardon," he said stiffly. "I didn't know it was private."

Sir Bryson reddened too, and murmured something indistinguishable.

Suddenly it came to Jack that he had seen the map before, and a smile twitched the corners of his lips. Since Sir Bryson wished to make a great secret of it, all right--he, Jack, was not obliged to tell all he knew.

Sir Bryson did not see the smile. He was studying the map again. "How far is it to the top of the canyon?" he asked.

"Twelve miles," said Jack. "The trail, as you see, cuts across a bend."

"Is there a good place to camp?"

"Better than here. First-rate water, grass, and wood."

"Can we cross the river if we wish to?"

"There are any number of boats cached along the shore. Everybody bound downstream has to leave his boat there."

"Very well," said Sir Bryson. "Let's move on to-morrow."

When Jack joined Humpy Jull he said briefly: "I was right. The old boy is travelling by Beckford and Rowe's map."

"Did you tell him what they were?" asked Humpy, all agog.

"No," said Jack coolly. "He wouldn't have thanked me. He'll find it out himself in a couple of days."

"The nerve of it," said Humpy, tremendously impressed, "to play the governor himself for a sucker! There'll be the deuce to pay when it all comes out!"

It was impossible for Jack's spirits to remain permanently depressed. To-night, after a long silence, the banjo and the insinuating baritone were heard for a while by the fire. At the sound, Linda, in the big tent, changed colour. The ladies still dressed for dinner as far as they could, and Linda, with her elaborate hair arrangement, the pearls in her ears, and the rings on her fingers, made an odd urban figure to be here on the lonely plains.

Her attention wandered, and finally she committed the capital crime of bridge.

"You've revoked!" cried Sir Bryson aghast, "when the game and the rubber were ours!"

She was not much cast down by her parent's reproaches. "Kate, take my hand," she said cajolingly. "I've no head for the game to-night."

They changed places, and Linda carried her chair outside the door of the tent. The cook-fire was only some twenty paces distant, and she saw Jack in his favourite attitude, the small of his back supported against a log, and the banjo across his thighs. The admiring Humpy Jull sat on the other and of the log, whittling a stick.

Jack saw her come out, and he felt the call that she sent him. He drew in his upper lip a little, and stayed where he was. He would have been glad enough to go of his own volition, but the hint of coercion made him stubborn. Linda was finally obliged to retire beaten.

Next morning the pack-train climbed the steep hill that barred the way, traversed the ancient portage around the canyon, and finally camped beside the river again in a little clearing that has been a camping-place since before the white men found America. Looking across to the left, a smooth wall of rock seemed to bar the river's progress; an ominous hoarse roar issued from its foot. All around them rose moderate mountain heights green to their summits; farther upstream were the first-class peaks.

After lunch a riding-party to High Rock, down the canyon, was talked about. Long afterward Jack remembered that it had first been suggested by Jean Paul, who volunteered to put the camp in order while they were away. All the whites set out except Humpy Jull. Garrod accompanied the others.

A change had come over Garrod, a comfortable daze taking the place of the wild, harassed look in his eyes. He rode apparently without seeing or caring where. He and Jean Paul had ridden together all morning, and it was observable that the white's man eyes followed all the movements of the Indian in a mechanical way. The two were rapidly becoming inseparable. No thought of danger to himself from this connection occurred to Jack. By this time he had forgotten the scene at Fort Cheever.

They first visited "Hell's Opening" on foot, having to climb over a tangle of great trunks cast high on the rocks by the freshets. One of the great sights of earth rewarded them. The mighty river, a thousand feet wide above, plunged through a cleft in the rock that a child could have tossed a stone across, and, pent within its close, dark walls, swept down with a deep, throaty roar.

The beholders remarked upon it according to their several natures.

"Very pretty," said Sir Bryson. "Let's get on."

"By Jove!" said Sidney Vassall.

"Tertiary rocks of the Cambrian period," said Baldwin Ferrie, or whatever they were.

Garrod looked with lack-lustre eyes, and said nothing.

Linda looked at Jack. Seeing that he was genuinely moved by the sight, familiar as it was to him, she began to enthuse. It sounded overdone to Jack, and he turned on his heel.

Mrs. Worsley looked at it with shining eyes, and said nothing.

As they rode on it commenced to rain softly, and Sir Bryson was for returning. His daughter opposed him, and all the others rallied to her support. Garrod in particular, though he seemed to have no interest by the way, was dead set against giving up the expedition. They rode through a magnificent, untouched forest. The cool gloom, the slow drip of the leaves, and the delicious fragrance of the wet greenery created an effect the impressionable ones in the party were not soon to forget. Sir Bryson grumbled.

In one of the various rearrangements of the party Jack found that Mrs. Worsley was riding next behind him. Swinging around, he talked to her, hanging sideways over his saddle.

"No one has passed this way this year," he said, glancing at the trail.

"I don't see how you know the path at all," she returned. "I can see nothing."

Jack explained the blazes on the trees. "Beyond the next creek I blazed a trail myself last year," he said. "The old trail was too steep for white men's horses."

"You know the country well."

"I feel as if this bit was my own," he said, with a look around.

Crossing a little stream he pointed out the remains of a sluice and cradle, and explained their uses to her. "Joe Casey had his camp on that little hill two years ago," he said.

"What luck did he have?" she asked.

Jack shook his head. "But we all know the stuff's somewhere about," he said.

Kate Worsley was able in turn to tell Jack something about the showy plants they passed, and a bird or two. Jack's knowledge of the flora and fauna was limited strictly to what would serve a man for fuel or food.

"I believe this life would suit you, too," he said, approving her strongly.

"I believe it would," she said with a smile, "if there was any place for such as I."

"You would soon make a place," he said.

Linda, following Mrs. Worsley in the trail, wondered jealously why Jack never unbent with her like that.

Though they were never out of hearing of its thunderous voice, they had no sight of the canyon again until they suddenly issued out on the High Rock, five miles from camp. A superb view arrested them. The trail came out on a flat, overhanging table rock two hundred feet above the water. The spot was in the middle of a wide bend in the walls of the canyon, and they could therefore see both up and down, over the ragged white torrent in the bottom.

This was their destination. To dismount they had to cross the rock to a stretch of grass beyond. They instinctively lingered first for a look. Jack, Mrs. Worsley, Linda, Vassall, Sir Bryson, and Baldwin Ferrie lined up in that order, taking care to hold their horses in a safe eight or ten feet back from the naked edge. Looking down river afforded the finest prospect; here the steep, brown walls fell back a little, and in the middle of the torrent rose a tall rock island, like a tower, crowned with noble spruce trees.

Garrod, who had dropped behind the others, now came out from among the trees on to the flat rock. His horse appeared to be fretting.

"Better dismount and lead him across," Jack flung over his shoulder.

If Jack had looked squarely at Garrod the look in the man's eyes would surely have caused him to draw back himself and dismount. But he was intent at the moment in pointing out a seam of coal in the face of the rock opposite.

None of them could ever tell exactly what happened after that. Garrod did not dismount, but attempted to ride across behind the others through the narrow space between their horses and the thickly growing trees. Jack was sitting loose in his saddle with an arm extended. Suddenly his horse shrank and quivered beneath him. With a snort of pain and terror the animal sprang forward, reared on the edge of the rock, attempted desperately to turn on his hind legs--and, with his rider, disappeared.

They heard breaking branches below, and a moment later a dull crash on the rocks far beneath. No sound escaped from any member of the party. The awful silhouette of the rearing horse on the edge of nothing had frozen them into grotesque attitudes of horror, and they looked at the empty place as if they saw it still. Finally Vassall swore in a strange, soft voice, and Sir Bryson began to babble. Their horses, infected by the terror of their riders, suddenly turned of one accord, and shouldered each other off the rock to the grassy terrace at one side. Garrod slipped out of his saddle and lay inert. The horses that followed jumped over his body.

One by one the others half-rolled, half-slipped out of their saddles. Linda Trangmar was the first to reach the ground, and it was she who crawled back over the rock like a lithe little animal, and looked over the hideous edge. She saw that several spruce trees grew out obliquely from a ledge beneath the rock, and that horse and rider had fallen through the tops of these. Far below she saw the lump of dead horseflesh on the rocks. It had struck, and rolled down a steep incline to the water's edge.

The three men watched her, trembling and helpless. Sir Bryson's legs failed him, and he sat abruptly in the grass. Kate Worsley crawled toward Linda on her hands and knees, and attempted to draw her back.

"Come away, come away," she whispered. "It's too horrible!"

"Let me be!" said Linda sharply. "I haven't found him yet!"

Suddenly a piercing scream broke from Linda. Kate, by main force, snatched her back from the edge of the rock.

"He's safe!" cried Linda. She clung to Kate, weeping and laughing together.

They thought it was merely hysteria. Vassall, extending his body on the rock, looked over. He got up again, and shook his head.

High Rock was the highest point of the cliff on the side where they stood. The stretch of grass where the horses were now quietly feeding inclined gently down from the flat table.

"There he is!" screamed Linda, pointing.

Following the direction of her finger, they saw Jack's head and shoulders rise above the edge of the grass. Pulling himself up, he came toward them. He sat in the grass and wiped his face. He was terribly shaken, but he would never confess it. His pallor he could not control. All this had occurred in less than a minute.

The men gathered around him, their questions tumbling out on each other.

"I am not hurt," said Jack, steadying his speech word by word. "I slipped out of the saddle as we went over, and I caught a spruce tree. I had only to climb down the trunk and walk along the ledge to the grass."

Their questions disconcerted him. He got up, and coolly throwing himself down at the edge of the rock, looked over.

"Come back! Come back!" moaned Linda.

"Poor brute!" Jack said, turning away.

As he came back, Linda, straining away from Kate's encircling arms, bent imploring eyes on him. Jack looked at her and stopped. Instead of the worldly little coquette he had thought her up to now, he saw a woman offering him her soul through her eyes. The sight disturbed and thrilled him. It came at a moment of high emotional tension. He gave her his eyes back again, and for moments their glances embraced, careless of the others around. Had it not been for Kate's tight clasp, Linda would have cast herself into his arms on the spot.

"What could have startled your horse?" Sir Bryson asked for the dozenth time, breaking the spell.

Jack shrugged. "Where's Garrod?" he said suddenly.

Garrod had completely passed out of their minds. They found him lying in the grass a little to one side. He had fainted. It provided a distraction to their shaken nerves, and gradually a measure of calmness returned to them all. Kate Worsley and Vassall worked over Garrod. Jack, who felt a strong repugnance to touching him, rode back for water to the last stream they had crossed.

When Garrod returned to consciousness the shock to his confused faculties of seeing Jack standing in front of him, and his mingled remorse and relief, were all very painful to see. He babbled explanations, apologies, self-accusations; none of them could make out what it all amounted to.

"Don't," said Jack turning away. "I don't blame you. I should have made everybody dismount at once. It was my own fault."

At the time he honestly believed it.

It was a very much sobered procession that wound back to camp. As they climbed the side of one of the steep gullies, leading their horses, Jack and Linda found themselves together.

"I tell you, it gives you a queer start to fall through space," said Jack with a grim smile. "I never lived so fast in my life. Down below I saw every separate stone that was waiting to smash me. And in that one second before I grabbed the tree I remembered everything that had happened to me since I was a baby."

"Don't talk about it," she murmured, turning away her head. At the same time a little spring of gladness welled in her breast, for it was the first time that he had ever dropped his guard with her.

"Do you care?" he said, off-hand. "I thought you were the kind that didn't."

She flashed a look at him. "Would you have me the same to everybody?" she said.

He lifted her on her horse in the way that had suggested itself to him as most natural. It was not according to the fashionable conventions of riding, but Linda liked it. Her hand fell on his round, hard shoulder under the flannel shirt, and she bore upon it heavier than she need. They rode on with beating hearts, avoiding each other's eyes.

It signified only that their combined ages made something less than fifty, and that each was highly pleasing in the eyes of the other sex. His scornful air had piqued her from the first, and he had seen her hard eyes soften for him at a high-pitched moment. Young people would be saved a deal of trouble if the romantic idea were not so assiduously inculcated that these feelings are irrevocable.

In camp after supper they found each other again.

"Too bad about the mosquitoes," said Jack a little sheepishly.

"Why?" she asked, making the big eyes of innocence.

"There's no place we can go."

"Let's sit under your mosquito bar."

Jack gasped a little, and looked at her with sidelong eyes. True, his tent had no front to it and the firelight illumined every corner, still it was a man's abode. Linda herself conceived a lively picture of the consternation of Sir Bryson and his suite if they knew, but they were good for an hour or more at the card-table, and, anyway, this was the kind of young lady that opposition, even in prospect, drives headlong.

"Humpy Jull will chaperon us," she said demurely. "You can sing to me."

"All right," he said.

Linda sat in the middle of the tent, with a man on either hand, and the fire glowing before them. Jack reclined on the end of his spine as usual, with the banjo in his lap. The spirit of at least one of his hearers was lifted up on the simple airs he sung. An instinct prompted him to avoid the obviously sentimental.

"Exact to appointment I went to the grove
To meet my fair Phillis and tell tales of love;
But judge of my anguish, my rage and despair,
When I found on arrival no Phillis was there."

Between songs Linda, in the immemorial way of women, made conversation with the man of the two present in which she was not interested.

"Don't you like to look for pictures in the fire, Mr. Jull?"

"Sure, I like to look at pitchers," returned Humpy innocently. "But there ain't never no pitchers in camp. I like the move-'em pitchers best. When I was out to the Landing last year I used to go ev'y night."

Jack was partly hidden from Humpy by Linda. Tempted by the hand that lay on the ground beside him, he caught it up and pressed it to his lips. When he sang again, the same hand, while its owner looked innocently ahead of her, groped for and found his curly head. At the touch of it Jack's voice trembled richly in his throat.

When she thought the rubber of rubbers would be nearing its end Linda made Jack take her back. Walking across the narrow space their shoulders pressed warmly together. They walked very slowly.

"I ought to have told you my name," murmured Jack uncomfortably.

"I know it, Malcolm, dear," she breathed.

"Who told you?" he demanded, greatly astonished.

She twined her fingers inside his. "I guessed, silly."

"Well, I didn't take the money," he said.

"I don't care if you did," she murmured.

"But I didn't," he said frowning.

"All right," she said, unconvinced and uncaring.

"What are we going to do?" he said.

"Oh, don't begin that," she said swiftly. "This is to-night, and we're together. Isn't that enough?"

They had reached the tents. Of one accord they turned aside, and in the shadow of the canvas she came naturally into his arms, and he kissed her, thrilling deliciously. The delicate fragrance of her enraptured his senses. It was light love, lightly sealed.

"Kiss me again," she murmured on her deepest note. "Kiss me often, and don't bother about the future!"