A stick snapped
under his hand. He threw himself face down and gripped his hands hard
into the moss as if to hold himself there. "A deer, I guess, but I must
get on," he heard a voice say, then a flip of the paddle and, looking
out through the bushes, he saw the swaying figure of the man he most
longed and most dreaded to see of all men in the world fast disappearing
from his view. Twice he raised his hands to his lips to call after him,
but even as he did so a vision held his voice, the vision of a room in
a city far away, the girl he loved, and this man pressing hot kisses on
her face.

"No," he said at length, grinding his foot hard into the moss, "let him
go." But still with straining eyes he gazed after the swaying figure
till the bend in the river hid it from his sight. Then he sank down on
the deep moss bank with the air of a man who has just passed through a
heavy fight.

The rest of the journey upstream was to him a weary drag. The brightness
had gone out of the light, the sweetness out of the air. A burning pain
filled his heart and clutched at his throat. The old sore, which his
work for the sick and wounded had helped to heal over, had been torn
open afresh, and the first agony of it was upon him again. He arrived at
the upper camp late at night and weary. But, weary as he was, he toiled
on in his fight with the typhoid outbreak till near the dawning of the
day, then, snatching an hour's sleep, he set off down the Big Horn,
resolved that ere a week had passed he would seek in some far land the
forgetting which here was impossible to him.

Steadily the paddle swung all the long morning, but without awakening
any rhythmic song in his heart. It was a heavy grind to be got through
with as soon as might be. Even the slip and leap of the canoe failed to
quicken his heart a single beat. It was still early in the forenoon when
he reached the Long Rapid. It was a dangerous bit of water, but without
a moment's considering he stood upright in his canoe and, casting a
quick glance down the boiling slope, he made his choice of passage.
Then getting on his knees he braced them firmly against the sides of his
canoe and before he was well ready found himself in the smooth, steep
pitch at the crest of that seething incline of plunging water. Two
long swallowlike swoops, then a mad plunging through a succession of
buffeting, curling waves that slapped viciously at him as he dashed
through, a great heave or two over the hum