Ben O'Dell and Jim McAllister reached home soon after dinner time next day, canoeless, baggageless and empty but very well pleased with themselves. They found Mrs. O'Dell and little Marion Sherwood drying the last spoon.
Mrs. O'Dell gave the returned voyagers just one look before replacing the chicken stew on the stove to reheat and the baked pudding in the oven. Then she looked again and welcomed them affectionately.
“I hope you had a good time,” she said. “We didn't expect you home so soon. Why didn't you bring your blankets and things up with you?”
“We didn't fetch them home with us,” said Uncle Jim. “Left them a long ways upriver, Flora. There wasn't much to fetch back—a few old blankets and a teakettle and a mite of grub. But we had a good time. For a little while there I was having more fun than I've had in twenty years, thanks to Ben.”
“I ran Big Rapids, mother,” said Ben, with a mixed expression of face and voice. “I was paddling stern, you know, and we were in a hurry, and I let her go. The water was at its lowest and worst, but we got through—all but.”
“Sure we got through!” exclaimed McAllister. “It was the prettiest bit of work I ever saw! We were clean through, and we'd of been home earlier, blankets an' all, if Ben's paddle hadn't bust.”
“Jim McAllister! You let Ben shoot Big Rapids at low water?—that boy? What were you thinking of, Jim?”
“Let nothing, Flora! He was aft, because he's a bigger man than I am and a better one—though a mite reckless, I must say. I warned him, but not extra strong. And he did it! If there's another man on the river could do it any better, show him to me!”
“You are old enough to have more sense, Jim. And if you did it, where's your dunnage? Why did you leave it all upriver?”
“Did you run a canoe through those rapids, Ben?” asked the little Sherwood girl; “Right down those rapids between here and French River—those rapids all full of rocks and black waves and whirlpools?”
“Yes—just about,” answered Ben.
“You are very strong and courageous,” she said.
Ben's blush deepened and spread.
“Oh, it wasn't much. Nothing like as bad as it looks. And we didn't quite make it, anyhow. My paddle broke off clean just above the blade just before we struck smooth water—and so we struck something else instead!”
“You are very courageous. Dad wouldn't do it, even in our big pirogue. We let it through on a rope.”
“And he did right,” said Uncle Jim. “Yer dad showed his sense that time. I ain't blaming Ben, you understand, for I don't. It was different with Ben. He didn't have any little girl in the canoe with him, but only a tough old uncle who was seasoned to falling into white water and black before Ben here was ever born. I enjoyed it. Ben was right, sure—but Dick Sherwood was righter, Marion. He came down those rapids with you just the way any other real good father would of done it.”
The little girl said nothing to that, but she went over and stood close to Uncle Jim and held his hand. Flora O'Dell grasped her son's big right hand in both of hers. Her blue eyes filmed with tears.
“Ben, you upset in Big Rapids?” she whispered faintly.
“We were clear through, mother, and upset into the pool,” he said.
“I want you to be brave,” she continued, her voice very low in his ear. “But I want you to remember, dear, that you are the only O'Dell on this river now—on this earth—and that life would be very terrible for me without—an O'Dell.”
Ben was deeply touched. Pity and pride both pierced his young heart. Now he fully realized for the first time the wonder and beauty of his mother, of the thing that brightened and softened in her brave eyes, her love, her loneliness, her love for him. And now she called him an O'Dell; and he knew that she thought of all O'Dells as men possessed of the qualities of his heroic father. His heart glowed with pride.
“I'll remember, dear—but we were really in a hurry, mother,” he answered.
For fully ten minutes he felt twenty years older than his age.
After Ben and Uncle Jim had eaten and the little girl had gone out to the orchard with a book Ben told his mother all they had learned from old Noel Sabattis and of the clew he had discovered to the identity of Balenger's murderer. He showed her the pen and comb. She felt remorse for having doubted poor Sherwood's innocence.
“Then he must be crazy—and that is almost as unfortunate,” she said. “It is almost as bad for both of them.”