She turned her little vessel sharply towards the bank of the river where it rose high, and the last of Fox Bluff projected a dense mass of Arctic willow which hung down, a perfect screen, till the delicate foliage buried itself in the bosom of the stream. A few swift strokes of her paddle and she passed from view behind it.
The nose of her vessel was securely resting on the sticky mud of the bank. She had turned about. And now she sat waiting, peering out through the foliage as might some hunted silver fox, whose pelt was one of the chief objects of her trade. She gave no sign, she made no sound. She had no intention of revealing her presence. But she would see for herself the thing she must shun, the thing whose presence in her home she must always deny.
It was a long waiting, but it mattered nothing. The daylight was almost unending now, and anyway time had small enough bearing on the simple affairs of her life. She had time for the indulgence of every whim, and the youth in her prompted a full measure of such indulgence.
A happy excitement thrilled her. Everything that lifted her out of the humdrum routine of her life on the farm became an exhilarating excitement. She was completely happy in her life. She was happy in her support of the mother woman labouring in her home for her many offspring, she was happy in her association with the Indian, Usak, whose untiring labours had built up the great reindeer farm of which he had assured her she was mistress. But her mind was groping amongst a world of girlish dreams, yearning and full of unspoken, unadmitted desires. A subtle restlessness was at work in her, and it found expression in the impulse which had become so irresistible. All her life had been bounded by narrow limits of association. Her only human associations had always been those of her far-off home, and the trading post with its factor, and those men of the fur trail who foregathered about its staunch walls. Here, for the first time, was something new. And more than all it was something that was prohibited.
The two men were gazing out at the churning waters storming over the shoals, and the outlook was threatening. They were standing on the low bank, trampling underfoot the carpet of flowers which grew in profusion down to the very edge of the river. They were surveying the junction of the two rivers where the Caribou broke its way into the flood of the Hekor, and the endless battle of conflicting streams was being fought out. The cauldron of boiling rapids extended for nearly two miles.