CHAPTER XV

I TAKE A NEW PASSENGER

Now the great bay on which we were embarked was a water empire, fair to the eye, but tricky of wind and current.  La Baye des Puants the French called it, from the odor that came at seasons from the swamps on the shore, and it ran southwest from Lake Illinois.  The Pottawatamie Islands that we had just left well-nigh blocked its mouth, and its southern end was the outlet of a shining stream that was known as the River of the Fox.  The bay was thirty leagues long by eight broad, and had tides like the ocean.  Five tribes dwelt around it:  the Pottawatamies at its mouth, the Malhominis halfway down on its western shore, and the Sacs, the Chippewas, and the Winnebagoes scattered at different points in more transitory camps.  To the east the bay was separated from Lake Illinois by a long peninsula that lay like a rough-hewn arrow with its point to the polestar.  It was goodly land, I had been told, rich in game, and splashed with ponds, but since it was too small to support the hunting of a tribe it was left comparatively unoccupied.  All of the five tribes, and sometimes the Miamis, fished there at intervals; it was neutral ground.  I told all this to the woman as our canoes swept toward the sunset.

She sat with her back to the west, and the sun, that dazzled my eyes, shone red through her brown hair, and I scorned myself that I should have believed for a moment that such soft, fine abundance ever framed a man’s forehead.  I talked to her freely; talked of winds and tides and Indians, and was not deterred when she answered me but sparingly.  I could not see her face distinctly, because of the light, but there was something in the gentleness and intentness of her listening poise that made me feel that she welcomed the safeguard of my aimless speech, but that for the moment she had no similar weapons of her own.

So long as daylight lasted, we traveled swiftly toward the southwest, but when the sunset had burned itself to ashes, and the sky had blurred into the tree line, I told the men to shift their paddles, and drift for a time.  The last twenty-four hours had hardened them to surprise.  They obeyed me as they did Providence,—­as a troublesome, but all-powerful enigma.

And so we floated, swinging like dead leaves on the long swells.  The stars came out, the gulls went shoreward for the night, and we were as alone as if on the sea.  The woman’s slender figure, wrapped in her white cloak, became a silent, shining wraith.  She was within touch of my hand, yet unreachably remote.  I lost my glib speech.  The gray loneliness that one feels in a crowd came over me.  If I had been alone with my men, I should have felt well accompanied, master of my craft, and in tune with my condition.  It was the presence of this alien woman, whom I must protect, but not approach, that made me realize that I was thousands of leagues from my own kind, and that I must depend on my own judgment—­with which I felt much out of conceit—­to carry this expedition safely through the barbarous wilderness.  I shook myself, and told my men to pick up their paddles.