Read Ebook: The Sealed Valley by Footner Hulbert Potts William Sherman Illustrator

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Ebook has 2081 lines and 90379 words, and 42 pages

Ralph's eyes were compelled to acknowledge the truth of this.

He looked at her in silent astonishment. What extraordinary delicacy to find in a common Indian girl! As he gazed at her he abandoned that conception of her for good and all. Whatever she might be it was not common. The sullenness evoked by his laughter had passed, and her eyes now met his squarely. Pride and wistfulness contended in their dark depths. Whatever the colour of her skin they were the eyes of a woman with a soul. What he read in them caused his heart to quicken its beats. He made note of other beauties in passing: the lovely tempting curve of her cheek, and how the colour came and went in it; her lips fresh and crimson as rose-leaves.

"You have white blood," he said suddenly.

She shrugged.

"At least you can tell me your name," he said.

"Annie Crossfox," she said unhesitatingly. "White people say Annie; my people, Nahnya."

A slight constraint fell upon them. They were silent. Ralph's attitude toward the proposed journey was rapidly changing. To give him credit, it was her eyes more than the gold that worked the change. How could he have failed to be instantly struck by her beauty, he thought.

"You will come?" she murmured at length.

"When do you want to start?" he said.

"The steamboat go up to Gisborne after dinner to-morrow," she said. "We walk across Gisborne portage six miles to Hat Lake. There my boat is cached."

"What can I tell these people here?" said Ralph. "I can't just disappear."

"Tell them you take the chance of the boat going up, to see a little of the country. Everybody do that sometimes."

To "see the country" beyond was Ralph's dearest desire; to float down its rivers, to climb its mountains, to camp under its stars. And to travel seven days in a canoe with her! The Spirit of Youth rose in its might and dealt old Prudence a finishing blow.

"All right!" cried Ralph. "I'll come!"

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Somewhat to his disappointment she showed no elation; indeed, no sooner had she won him to go than she looked at him with a new question in her eyes, with a painful and hesitating air.

"What's the matter?" said Ralph.

"You promise me you never tell where you been?" she said deprecatingly. "You promise me when you come back you never tell anybody what you see at my place?"

All Ralph's doubts came thronging back. "No!" he said frowning. "I can't do that! I've got to be free to use my own judgment!"

There was a pause while their individualities contended in silence. Ralph pushed the moosehide bag impatiently toward her. On this occasion he was the stronger. She lowered her eyes.

"You still think there is something crooked?" she murmured.

"How do I know?" said Ralph harshly. "I don't know anything about you!"

She abruptly turned her back on him. Her hands lifted and dropped in an odd, unconscious gesture. "I don' know w'at to do!" she whispered, more to herself than to him. The husky sound was charged with pain. "I come so far to get a doctor for my mot'er! But I cannot tell you!"

Ralph darted around the desk, and forced her to look at him. The dark eyes were soft and large with unshed tears. Beauty in distress is mighty to achieve. Moreover, Youth and Adventure and Romance were all on her side. Ralph melted like snow before a fire.

"Here! it's all right!" he said gruffly. "I'll come. If it's straight I promise not to tell!"

They shook hands on it, and Nahnya wiped her eyes apologetically.

They fell to discussing their arrangements.

"Get on the steamboat after dinner to-morrow," she said. "When you see me make out you don' know me at all. At Gisborne I will tell you what to do. Bring only blankets. I have a mosquito tent for you. I have plenty grub and everything."

Ralph passed the little moosehide bag to her.

She quickly put her hands behind her. "You must take it," she said. "I not want you work for nothing."

"I have taken it, see?" said Ralph, with a smile. "Now I pay it back to you for taking me on a trip. I've only been waiting for the chance to make a trip."

Once more their eyes met and contended, and again Ralph prevailed. She took the bag of gold-dust and put it back within her dress.

When she went, and Ralph was left alone in his tiny office, he sat down and endeavoured to put his thoughts in order. Straightway the soberer half of him asserted its rights, and half persuaded him that what had happened during the last hour was no more than a dream. It was too fantastic, too preposterous, for a matter-of-fact person to credit for a moment. That such a thing should happen to him, Ralph Cowdray, the patientless medico! But he looked down at his desk, and there in the cracks of the boards were lodged several shining yellow grains. The matter-of-fact Ralph retired defeated, and the dreamy Ralph had full sway.

"Gad! what eyes!" he thought. "She can't be more than twenty-one or so, and she looks as if she had sounded all the depths of life!"

The sight of his watch finally reminded Ralph of dinner. Dinner brought Dan to mind, and the thought of Dan recalled the subject of their jocular argument which Nahnya had interrupted. Ralph fell back in his chair amazed and dreamy.

"Romance!" he thought. "It did come in the door with her!"

ON BOARD THE "TEWKSBURY"

Next day Ralph's preparations for the journey consisted in throwing a change of clothes and a few necessaries into a canvas dunnage bag, rolling the bag inside the blankets from his bed, hoisting the bundle on his shoulder, and locking the door of his shack behind him. No one had been unduly surprised by his announcement that he was going up on the steamboat to have a look at the country. In the unconventional North a man's time is his own, and taking a trip is the best way to while it, and one day is as good as another to start on.

Even Dan Keach, knowing how bored Ralph had been, was unsuspicious of the sudden resolution. Dan was envious. "I wish to heaven I was going!" he said.

Ralph, knowing that Dan was firmly tied to his telegraph key, felt safe in echoing his wish. Ralph's breast was warmed by a delicious secret excitement. "If they knew!" he thought.

The captain of the steamboat, Wes' Trickett, a rakish, lubberly, fresh-water sailor, like his boat, likewise dined at Maroney's, and after dessert the company adjourned to the river bank, and sat about on piles of lumber to witness the departure. There was no haste about that. Agreeable gossip and humorous anecdote mingled with tobacco smoke. When conversation flagged, Wes' would say regretfully: "Wal, time to pull out, boys!" Whereupon some one would suggest a last touch at Maroney's bar, and the company would rise as a man with the same expression of deprecatory anticipation. Wes', since he supplied the excuse for the gathering, did not feel that it was incumbent on him to pay for anything.

Ralph had not seen his mysterious visitor since she had left his office. Loitering among the others on the bank, he was reassured by a glimpse of her sitting in a dark corner within the deckhouse, her back turned to the shore. To Ralph's secret relief, Dan did not remark her there. Dan had an awkward faculty of putting two and two together, and a caustic sense of humour.

Many of the old stories of the country were recounted for the benefit of the newcomers. "Ever hear tell of Tom Sadler?" said Captain Wes'. "Tom was the first white man who ever come up the Campbell Valley. Campbell hisself, when he discovered it, he only went downstream. It was mor'n fifty year ago, before the first Cariboo gold strike. In them days the city of Kimowin was no bigger than Fort Edward here. Tom Sadler was one of these here now rovin' fellers that can't rest easy among their own kind. He roved off up the Campbell Valley and was gone a whole year. The next summer he come back down the river, and capsized in the rapids just above Kimowin. They saw him from the settlement and pulled him out of the water more dead than alive. A living skellington he was at that. His canoe and his stuff was nachelly seen no more.

"Well, he hung on for a couple of days, and then he up and chivvied out. But that ain't the end of the story. The story is about what he told when he was out of his head. Nobody believed what he said, but they tell it to this day for a good story. He went on all about a purty little valley he found in the mountains. All around it was high cliffs that you couldn't get up or down like the sides of a bowl-like. Bowl of the Mountains was what Tom called it. He said the only way you could get in or out was through a long cave under the mountains. A bear that he was after showed him the way in, or he never wouldn't have found it, being the mouth was all hid behind bushes and all.

"Well, sirs, they say he said that little valley was as beautiful as Paradise; but that wa'n't all. In the middle of it were a little lake, different-coloured water from any on earth, green as a bottle-like, good water, too. Little streams come down from the mountains all around, and flowed through meadows of flowers into that lake, and Tom said the banks of all those little streams was yellow with gold, yellow with gold, sirs! Tom said he stayed there six months and washed two hundred pound of it. Them beside his bed laughed, him having nothing to show. If he'd been content with a hundred pounds, now, 'twould have sounded more reasonable. Well, they on'y laughed at Tom and buried him. And it's got to be a saying-like 'round Kimowin when a feller gets a bee in his bonnet, 'Oh he's found Bowl of the Mountains!' they say. But I ain't so sure there ain't something in it. I seen Tom's grave in the cemetery at Kimowin: 'Thomas Sadler, who bit July 9th, 1861.' I seen it myself carved on the stone. That ain't no hearsay."

"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."

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