Gaviller chewed his mustache in offended silence.

Colina did not spare him. "Do you think you can make your child and hers into a prim miss, to sit at home and work embroidery?" she demanded. "Upon my word, if I were a boy I believe you'd suggest putting me in a bank!"

John Gaviller helped himself to another egg with great dignity and removed the top. "Don't be absurd, Colina," he said with a weary air.

It was a transparent a.s.sumption. Colina saw that she had reduced him utterly. She smiled winningly. "Dad, if you'd only let me be myself!

We could be such pals if you wouldn't try to play the heavy father!"

"Is it being yourself to act like a harum-scarum tomboy?" inquired Gaviller sarcastically.

Colina laughed. "Yes!" she said boldly. "If that's what you want to call it? There's something in me," she went on seriously. "I don't know what it is--some wild strain; something that drives me headlong; makes me see red when I am balked! Maybe it is just too much physical energy.

"Well, if you let me work it off it does no harm. If I can ride all day, or paddle or swim, or go hunting with Michel or one of the others; and be interested in what I'm doing, and come home tired and sleep without dreaming--why everything is all right. But if you insist on cooping me up!--well, I'm likely to turn out something worse than harum-scarum, that's all!"

Gaviller flung up his arms.

"Really, you'll have to go back to your aunt," he said grimly. "The responsibility of looking after you is too great!"

Colina laughed out of sheer vexation. "The silly ideas fathers have!"

she cried. "n.o.body can look after _me_, not you, not my aunt, n.o.body but myself! Why won't you understand that! I don't know exactly what dangers you fancy are threatening me. If it is from men, be at ease!

I can put the fear of G.o.d into them! It is the sweet and gentle girl you would like to have that is in danger there!"

"I'm afraid you'll have to go back," said Gaviller.

Colina drew her beautiful straight brows together. "You make me think you simply want to get me off your hands," she said sullenly.

Gaviller shook his head. "You know I love to have you with me," he said simply.

"Then consider me a fixture!" said Colina serenely. "This is my country!" she went on enthusiastically. "It suits me. I like its uglinesses and its hardships, too! I hated it in the city. Do you know what they called me?--the wild Highlander!

"Up here everybody understands my wildness, and thinks none the worse of me. It was different in the city--you've always lived in the north, you old innocent--you don't know! Men, for instance, in society they have a curious logic. They seem to think if a girl is natural she must be bad! Sometimes they acted on that a.s.sumption--"

"What did I tell you!" cried her father. "Men are the same everywhere!"

"Well," said Colina, smiling to herself, "they didn't get very far.

And no man ever tried it twice. Up here--how different. I don't have to think of such things."

"I have to think of settling you in life," said Gaviller gloomily.

"There is no one for you up here."

"I'm not bothering my head about that," said Colina. She went on with a kind of splendid insolence: "Every man wants me. I'll choose one when I'm ready. I can't see anything in men except as comrades. The decent ones are timid with women, and the bold ones are--well--rather beastly. I'm looking for a man who's brave and decent, too. If there's no such thing--"

She rose from the table. Colina's was a body designed to fill a riding-habit, and she wore one from morning till night. She was as tall as a man of middle height, and her tawny hair piled on top of her head made her seem taller.

"Well?" said Gaviller.

"Oh, I'll choose the handsomest beast I can find," she said, laughing over her shoulder and escaping from the room before he could answer.

John Gaviller finished his egg with a frown. Colina had this trick of breaking things off in the middle, and it irritated him. He had an orderly mind.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MEETING.

Colina groomed her own horse, whistling like a boy. Saddling him, she rode east along the trail by the river, with the fenced grain fields on her right hand.

Beyond the fields she could gallop at will over the rolling, gra.s.sy bottoms, among the patches of scrub and willow.

It was not an impressively beautiful scene--the river was half a mile wide, broken by flat wooded islands overflowed at high water; the banks were low, and at this season muddy. But the sky was as blue as Colina's eyes, and the prairie, quilted with wild flowers, basked in the delicate radiance that only the northern sun can bestow.

On a horse Colina could not be actively unhappy, nevertheless she was conscious of a certain dissatisfaction with life. Not as a result of the discussion with her father--she felt she had come off rather well from that.

But it was warm, and she felt a touch of languor. Fort Enterprise was a little dull in early summer. The fur season was over, and the flour mill was closed; the Indians had gone to their summer camps; and the steamboat had lately departed on her first trip up river, taking most of the company employees in her crew.

There was nothing afoot just now but farming, and Colina was not much interested in that. In short, she was lonesome. She rode idly with long detours inland in search of nothing at all.

Loping over the gra.s.s and threading her way among the poplar saplings, Colina proceeded farther than she had ever been in this direction since summer set in.

She saw the painter's brush for the first time--that exquisite rose of the prairies--and instantly dismounted to gather a bunch to thrust in her belt. The delicate, ashy pink of the flower matched the color in her cheeks.

On her rides Colina was accustomed to dismount when she chose, and Ginger, her sorrel gelding, would crop the gra.s.s contentedly until she was ready to mount again. To-day the spring must have been in his blood, too.

When Colina went to him he tossed his head coquettishly, and trotting away a few steps, turned and looked at her with a droll air. Colina called him in dulcet tones, and held out an inviting hand.

Ginger waywardly wagged his head and danced with his forefeet.

This was repeated several times--Colina's voice ever growing more honeyed as the rose in her cheeks deepened. The inevitable happened--she lost her temper and stamped her foot; whereupon Ginger, with lifted tail, ran around her like a circus horse.

Colina, alternately cajoling and commanding, pursued him bootlessly.

Fond as she was of exercise, she preferred having the horse use his legs. She sat down in the gra.s.s and cried a little out of sheer impotence.

Ginger resumed his interrupted meal on the gra.s.s with insulting unconcern. Colina was twelve miles from home--and hungry.

Desperately casting her eyes around the horizon to discover some way out of her dilemma, Colina perceived a thin spiral of smoke rising above the edge of the river bank about a quarter of a mile away.

She had no idea who could be camping on the river at this place, but she instantly set off with her own confident a.s.surance of finding aid.

Ginger displayed no inclination to leave the particular patch of prairie gra.s.s he had chosen for his luncheon.

As Colina approached the edge of the bank she heard a voice. She herself made no sound in the gra.s.s.

Looking over the edge she saw a man and a dog on the stony beach below, both with their backs to her and oblivious of her approach. Of the man, she had a glimpse only of a broad blue flannel back and a mop of black hair.

She heard him say to the dog: "Our last meal alone, old fel'!

To-night, if we're lucky, we'll dine with her!"

This conveyed nothing to Colina--she was to remember it later.