CHAPTER I
"TWO WHO WERE FRIENDS"
Over the firred hill-top, behind the squat freighter's shack the wind came, shouting strongly. It clattered the stiff saskatoon bushes, and thrust at the young poplars until they ran in yellow waves along the crest, and leapt down on the river with a bullying roar that drove the water into startled foam. All across the sky the clouds were reefing, tall as churches, to the westward where the sun lay, like a blot of red paint, on clouds livid as bruised flesh.
There was a moan in the air; an uneasiness, as though Nature was afraid, not knowing why. Down the grey line of the river a loon flew, low and swift. It cried out, turning its bold black head left and right; and the harsh, unearthly sound struck a note of warning to the man who shot round the cotton-wood promontory with the long, tireless, white-man paddle-stroke. He swung the canoe-nose for the shore by the shack and halted, gripping the bunch-grass with a strong hand, and glancing left and right with bold, keen eyes, even as the loon had done.
Up-stream the cut-banks veered in, rough rock and tall earth-faces seamed with forest. Across the river, where the spruces stood, black-shouldered against the west, the wind was stringing wild harmonies such as the seamen know, and in the clearing the yellowed grass sighed and shuddered, over-ripe for the scythe.
The man looked at the shack, bringing his eyes back, step by step, over the grass to the water-lip. Then he came ashore, hauling his canoe after him, and stood upright to fill his pipe. He had read all that the clumsily-hidden grass-trail had to tell, and all that was meant by the clumsily-hidden nose of that canoe in the brush-pile. This was a trap; laid skilfully, but not skilfully enough, for it explained itself to the keen-eyed man as a trap. It explained a little more; just enough to bring a tight smile
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