Burned Bridges | Page 5

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 take us to reach Port Pachugan?" Thompson made further inquiry.
"Bout two-three hour, maybeso," Breyette responded.
He said something further, a few quick sentences in the French patois of the northern half-breeds, at which both he and his fellow-voyageur in the stern laughed. Their gayety stirred no response from the midship passenger. If anything, he frowned. He was a serious-minded young man, and he did not understand French. He had a faint suspicion that his convoy did not take him as seriously as he wished. Whether their talk was badinage or profanity or purely casual, he could not say. In the first stages of their journey