On board the Tewksbury the white men gathered on the forward deck around the capstan, and continued their talk. There was Wes' Trickett, and Matthews, his engineer; Joe Mixer and Pete Staley, who were taking up an outfit to Gisborne portage to start a store, and Ralph. Meanwhile, the half-breed crew ran the boat. The warmth of the sun, the peace of the river, and the late potations at Maroney's joined to produce a lulling effect on the group. Conversation became fitful. Joe Mixer fell asleep with his back against the capstan.
The Tewksbury was not exactly a river greyhound; six miles an hour was her rate, and since the current ran four, her net progress upstream was about two. On the bends of the river, where the deep water ran swiftly under the bank on the wide side of the arc, it was nip and tuck between the little Tewksbury and the river. No one on board expressed any impatience.
"You got to go either forward or back," said Wes' philosophically, "and if you ain't goin' back you're bound to arrive some time."
"Let her puff," said Pete Staley comfortably. "'Tain't comin' out of our lungs."
Ralph was happy. The weight of weeks of boredom was lifted from his breast. After all, life was a sporting affair. He never tired of watching the moving brown flood spotted with foam, endlessly and serenely opposing their progress, ever yielding under the vessel's forefoot, without giving back. From the water he lifted his eyes to the clean, pine-clad hills, insolently planting themselves in the path of the river, and forcing it to go around. The afternoon sun was lavishly gilding the southerly slopes. Overhead the sky was an inverted bowl of palest turquoise. Ralph naturally kept these poetic comparisons to himself. Wes' Trickett, Matthews, Mixer, and Staley were a hard-headed, scornful, tobacco-chewing quartet.
The deckhouse was a rough shanty with a wide sliding door at each side, and one in front. From where he sat near the capstan Ralph could see Nahnya within, sitting on a box by one of the side doors with her hands in her lap, and her eyes bent on the river. Her quiet and self-contained air stimulated his curiosity. He wondered what she was thinking about. The fact that she had forbidden him to approach her on the boat kept his desire to do so ever fresh. He cast around in his mind for some way to get around her prohibition. She had removed the ridiculous hat to her lap, and her bare head bound round with a thick, black braid of hair was wholly beautiful and graceful against the light.
"Where did she get that proud look from?" thought Ralph. "All she needs is a diadem and an ermine cloak."
Ralph was not the only man on board who had remarked the handsome passenger. By and by Joe Mixer woke up, and blinked at her sidewise from between his thick lids.
"Good-looking gal, Joe," said Pete Staley.
Joe grunted by way of affirmation.
Joe Mixer was a well-known character up and down the Campbell. Outside he had been a butcher, they said, and had come North owing to an unpleasantness following upon his attempt to carve a piece of human meat. He was a factor in the little community of the river by reason of his bulk and the noise he made, but privately he was not regarded with much affection. In a rough, new society much is condoned through the fear of being thought self-righteous. The first commandment of the frontier is: Thou shalt not appear any better than thy neighbour. Hence Joe was accepted for one of the crowd, while stories were circulated behind his back of lingering butchering tendencies, of a dog he had tortured, of a native woman who had sought safety from him through a priest.
"Who is she?" asked Staley.
"Darned if I know," said Wes'. "She ain't any of the Cheval Noir crowd, that's sure, or from Campbell Lake neither. Says she's goin' to your dump at Gisborne."
"She come down the river on a little raft early yesterday morning," said Matthews, the engineer. "Five o'clock it was, I guess. I come out on deck to take a look at the sky, and I seen her landing below Thomson's store there. Thinking nobody saw her, she pushed the raft off in the current."
"They're a sly lot," said Staley. "A white man never can tell what they're up to."
They continued to discuss Nahnya with a freedom that caused Ralph to grind his teeth. To avoid arousing their suspicions he was obliged to keep a smooth face, and to enter into the discussion. Up to this time Ralph had thought of these four as "good enough heads" and had drunk with them at Maroney's like everybody else. Now they suddenly seemed like foul-mouthed satyrs that a man ought to knock down one by one for decency's sake. They were not as bad as all that, of course; the change was in Ralph, not in them.
Finally Joe said with what seemed to Ralph an egregious display of male vanity: "I can handle them. I'll find out who she is."
He went inside the deckhouse with a propitiatory leer on his fat red face that caused Ralph's gorge to rise. Ralph sat on pins and needles watching out of the corners of his eyes, and straining his ears in vain to hear what was said.
The conversation was like all such conversations.
"Hello, dearie!" said Joe.
The girl turned a bland, blank face toward him. "Hello," she said.
Joe pulled up another box and sat down. "Thought you might be lonely all by yourself," he said agreeably.
"I like be by myself me," she said, affecting a naïve simplicity of speech and manner.
Joe glanced at her sharply. Her eyes were modestly cast down. He decided that she meant no offence, and went on:
"What's your name, girly?"
"Mary Black, please."
"Where do you live when you're home?"
"McIlwraith Lake. My fat'er him Scarface Jack Black. Him very good hunter."
Her air of humble timidity encouraged Joe enormously. This was plain sailing. "What do you want to live in the woods for?" he said condescendingly. "That's no place for a good-lookin' gal like you—among a pack of savages."
She shrugged deprecatingly.
"You ought to be down here on the river where there's something doing. White men know how to enjoy life."
"Yes," she said demurely.
"If you stayed down at the Fort you'd knock the spots off the other gals there. There ain't one of them can touch you!"
"I got no place," she said.
"That's easy," said Joe. "I'll build you a shack."
"I think about it," she said.
"Dominion Day there's going to be a whale of a time at the Fort," Joe went on. "Racing and fireworks and dancing and free eats for everybody. Like that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, you come down to my place ahead of time, and we'll float down to the Fort on a raft."
"Thank you," she said.
Joe, overjoyed at the progress he was making, drew his box closer, and laid a ham of a hand on one of her slender brown ones. Ralph, observing the move from outside, ground his teeth afresh.
"You're all right!" said Joe unctuously. "You and me'll be good friends. I'm a liberal feller, I am. A good-lookin' gal can get what she likes out of me."
The girl drew away. "They see you outside," she said warningly.
Joe laughed thickly. "You're shy, eh? That's all right, sis. I like 'em a little bashful at first. Me and you'll have a talk later on when there ain't nobody around."
When Joe returned to the others it was with the air of a conqueror. Ralph's right fist instinctively doubled at the sight of his fat complacency, but for the present he had to content himself with picking out the spots where he would like to plant it.
"She's all right," said Joe patronizingly. "Nice little gal."
"What's her name? Where does she live?" asked Staley.
Joe repeated what