"Those of us going to Kusiak transfer here. But there's no hurry.
We wait at this landing two hours."

Gordon helped Sheba move her baggage to the other boat and joined
her on deck. They were both strangers in the land. Their only common
acquaintance was Macdonald and he was letting Mrs. Mallory absorb his
attention just now. Left to their own resources the two young people
naturally drifted together a good deal.

This suited Elliot. He found his companion wholly delightful, not the
less because she was so different from the girls he knew at home. She
could be frank, and even shyly audacious on occasion, but she held a
little note of reserve he felt bound to respect. Her experience of the
world had clearly been limited. She was not at all sure of herself, of
the proper degree of intimacy to permit herself with a strange and
likable young man who had done her so signal a service.

Macdonald left the boat twenty miles below Kusiak with Mrs. Mallory and
the Selfridges. A chauffeur with a motor-car was waiting on the wharf to
run them to town, but he gave the wheel to Macdonald and took the seat
beside the driver.

The little miner Strong grinned across to Elliot, who was standing
beside Miss O'Neill at the boat rail.

"That's Mac all over. He hires a fellow to run his car--brings him up
here from Seattle--and then takes the wheel himself every time he rides.
I don't somehow see Mac sitting back and letting another man run the
machine."

It was close to noon before the river boat turned a bend and steamed up
to the wharf at Kusiak. The place was an undistinguished little log town
that rambled back from the river up the hill in a hit-or-miss fashion.
Its main street ran a tortuous course parallel to the stream.

Half of the town, it seemed, was down to meet the boat.

"Are you going to the hotel or direct to your cousin's?" Gordon asked
Miss O'Neill.

"To my cousin's. I fancy she's down here to meet me. It was arranged
that I come on this boat."

There was much waving of handkerchiefs and shouting back and forth as
the steamer slowly drew close to the landing.

Elliot caught a glimpse of the only people in Kusiak he had known before
coming in, but though he waved to them he saw they did not recognize
him. After the usual delay about getting ashore he walked down the
gangway carrying the suitcases of the Irish girl. Sheba followed at his
heels. On the wharf he came face to face with a slender, well-dressed
youn