The doctor cautiously parted the bushes and looked out. Close to the bank came the canoe, the singer sitting in the stern, his hat off and his face showing brown against the fair hair. How strong he looked and how handsome! Barney remembered his own boyish pride in his brother's good looks. Yes, he was handsome as ever, and yet he was different. "He's older, that's it," said the man in the bushes, breathing hard. No, it was not that altogether. There was a new gravity, a new dignity, upon the face. All at once the song ceased abruptly. The paddle was laid down and the canoe allowed to drift. The current carried her still nearer the shore. Every line in the face could now be seen. The man peering out through the bushes was conscious of a sharp thrust of pain. The lines in that grave, handsome face were lines drawn with some sharp instrument of grief. The change was not that of years, it was more. Not simply the gravity of responsible manhood, it was that, and something else. This was the change, the old careless gaiety was gone out of the face and in its place sadness, almost gloom. Straight down the river the grave, sad face was turned, but the eyes were fixed with unseeing gaze upon the flowing water. The canoe was now almost abreast the hiding place in the bushes and still drifting.
Suddenly the man in the canoe, lifting up his face toward the sky, cried out, "I'll bring her back, please God, and I'll find him, too!" The watcher drew back quickly. A stick snapped under his hand. He threw himself face down and gripped his hands hard into the moss as if to hold himself there. "A deer, I guess, but I must get on," he heard a voice say, then a flip of the paddle and, looking out through the bushes, he saw the swaying figure of the man he most longed and most dreaded to see of all men in the world fast disappearing from his view. Twice he raised his hands to his lips to call after him, but even as he did so a vision held his voice, the vision of a room in a city far away, the girl he loved, and this man pressing hot kisses on her face.
"No," he said at length, grinding his foot hard into the moss, "let him go." But still with straining eyes he gazed after the swaying figure till the bend in the river hid it from his sight. Then he sank down on the deep moss bank with the air of a man who has just passed through a heavy fight.
The rest of the journey upstream was to him a weary drag. The brightness had gone out of the light, the sweetness out of the air.
A burning pain filled his heart and clutched at his throat. The old sore, which his work for the sick and wounded had helped to heal over, had been torn open afresh, and the first agony of it was upon him again. He arrived at the upper camp late at night and weary. But, weary as he was, he toiled on in his fight with the typhoid outbreak till near the dawning of the day, then, snatching an hour's sleep, he set off down the Big Horn, resolved that ere a week had passed he would seek in some far land the forgetting which here was impossible to him.
Steadily the paddle swung all the long morning, but without awakening any rhythmic song in his heart. It was a heavy grind to be got through with as soon as might be. Even the slip and leap of the canoe failed to quicken his heart a single beat. It was still early in the forenoon when he reached the Long Rapid. It was a dangerous bit of water, but without a moment's considering he stood upright in his canoe and, casting a quick glance down the boiling slope, he made his choice of passage. Then getting on his knees he braced them firmly against the sides of his canoe and before he was well ready found himself in the smooth, steep pitch at the crest of that seething incline of plunging water. Two long swallowlike swoops, then a mad plunging through a succession of buffeting, curling waves that slapped viciously at him as he dashed through, a great heave or two over the humping billows at the foot, then the swirl of the eddy caught him, and lifted him clear over into the quiet water. One minute of wild thrills and the Long Rapid was left behind.
"Didn't take that quite right," he grumbled. "Ought to have lifted her sooner. Next time I'll get through dry. Next time?" he repeated. "God knows if there'll ever be any next time of that water for me." He paddled round the eddy toward the shore, intending to dump the water out of his canoe. "Hello! What in thunder is that?" Up against the driftwood, where it had been carried by the eddy, a canoe was floating bottom upwards. "God help us!" he groaned. "It's his canoe! My God! My God! ****, boy, you're not lost! He'd run these rapids. That's his style.
Oh, why didn't I call him? We could have done it together safe enough!" He stood up in his canoe and searched eagerly among the driftwood. "****! ****!" he called over and over again in the wild cry of a wounded man. He paddled over to the canoe and examined it. "Ah, that's where he hit the rocks, just at the foot.
But he shouldn't drown here," he continued, "unless they hit him.
Let's see, where would that eddy take him?" For another anxious minute he stood observing the run of the water. "If he could keep up three minutes," he said, "he ought to strike that bar." With a few sweeps of his paddle he was on the sand bar. "Ha!" he cried.
