Burned Bridges | Page 5

positively. "I simply
couldn't. I know."
"You might have to," Carr answered gently. "You have never yet run
foul of circumstances over which you have no more power than man
has over the run of the tides. But we'll let that pass. I'm trying to help
you, Sophie, not to discourage you. There are some situations in which,
and some natures to whom, half a loaf is worse than no bread. Do you
feel, have you ever for an hour felt that you simply couldn't face an
existence in which Tommy Ashe had no part?"
Sophie put her arm around his neck, and her fingers played a tattoo on
his shoulder.

"No," she said at last. "I can't honestly say that I've ever been
overwhelmed with a feeling like that."
"Well, there you are," Carr observed dryly. "Between the propositions I
think you've answered your own question."
The girl's breast heaved a little and her breath went out in a fluttering
sigh.
"Yes," she said gravely. "I suppose that is so."
They sat silent for an interval. Then something wet and warm dropped
on Carr's hand. He looked up quickly.
"Does it hurt?" he said softly. "I'm sorry."
"So am I," she whispered. "But chiefly, I think, I am sorry for Tommy.
_He'd_ be perfectly happy with me."
"Yes, I suppose so," Carr replied. "But you wouldn't be happy with him,
only for a brief time, Sophie. Tommy's a good boy, but it will take a
good deal of a man to fill your life. You'd outgrow Tommy. And you'd
hurt him worse in the end."
She ran her soft hand over Carr's grizzled hair with a caressing touch.
Then she got up and walked away into the house. Carr turned his gaze
again to the meadow and the green woods beyond. For ten minutes he
sat, his posture one of peculiar tensity, his eyes on the distance
unseeingly--or as if he saw something vague and far-off that troubled
him. Then he gave his shoulders a quick impatient twitch, and taking
up his book began once more to read.
CHAPTER II
THE MAN AND HIS MISSION
At almost the same hour in which Sam Carr and his daughter held that
intimate conversation on the porch of their home a twenty-foot

Peterborough freight canoe was sliding down the left-hand bank of the
Athabasca like some gray river-beast seeking the shade of the birch and
willow growth that overhung the shore. The current beneath and the
thrust of the blades sent it swiftly along the last mile of the river and
shot the gray canoe suddenly beyond the sharp nose of a jutting point
fairly into the bosom of a great, still body of water that spread away
northeastward in a widening stretch, its farthest boundary a watery
junction with the horizon.
There were three men in the canoe. One squatted forward, another
rested his body on his heels in the after end. These two were swarthy,
stockily built men, scantily clad, moccasins on their feet, and worn felt
hats crowning lank, black hair long innocent of a barber's touch.
The third man sat amidships in a little space left among goods that were
piled to the top of the deep-sided craft. He was no more like his
companions than the North that surrounded them with its silent
waterways and hushed forests is like the tropical jungle. He was a fairly
big man, taller, wider-bodied than the other two. His hair was a
reddish-brown, his eyes as blue as the arched dome from which the hot
sun shed its glare.
He had on a straight-brimmed straw hat which in the various shifts of
the long water route and many camps had suffered disaster, so that a
part of the brim drooped forlornly over his left ear. This headgear had
preserved upon his brow the pallid fairness of his skin. From the
eyebrows down his face was in the last stages of sunburn, reddened,
minute shreds of skin flaking away much as a snake's skin sheds in
August. Otherwise he was dressed, like a countless multitude of other
men who walk the streets of every city in North America, in a
conventional sack suit, and shoes that still bore traces of blacking. The
paddlers were stripped to thin cotton shirts and worn overalls. The only
concession their passenger had made to the heat was the removal of his
laundered collar. Apparently his dignity did not permit him to lay aside
his coat and vest. As they cleared the point a faint breeze wavered off
the open water. He lifted his hat and let it play about his moist hair.
"This is Lake Athabasca?" he asked.

"Oui, M'sieu Thompson," Mike Breyette answered from the bow,
without turning his head. "Dees de lak."
"How much longer will it